Today -100: March 22, 1915: Let them come, then, these charmers

Karl Liebknecht is once again the only vote in the Reichstag against the budget.

Headline of the Day -100:

Liechtenstein, which refused a friendly request from Austria to send 1,000 troops. Liechtenstein is not only neutral, it has technically been at war with Prussia since 1866, when Prussia and Austria signed a peace treaty, leaving out Liechtenstein, which they had probably just forgotten had also declared war.

The Archbishop of Cologne says children should forgo getting new clothes for their confirmations and give the money instead to support the war.

Secretary of War Herbert Kitchener threatens Liverpool dock workers with “steps” unless they start working overtime.

Austria decides to resume war against Serbia (which the NYT is now calling by that name instead of Servia), which is currently devastated by typhus, cholera, you name it, so Austria thought they’d be easier to take in a fight this time.

Headline of the Day -100:

A ship, not the actual royal person.

Zeppelins drop bombs on Paris. Not much damage done.

The US goes to war with Germany. OK, it doesn’t, but the US fort at El Morro, Puerto Rico, shoots at a German steamer, the Odenwald. The ship has been holed up there since August, but finally asked for clearance to leave. Denied permission, it tried to make a run for it, but returned meekly when the fort shot it up a bit. The US suspects the Odenwald was attempting to bring coal and supplies to a German warship.

Headline of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100:

Germany is putting about the idea that British recruitment has been so bad that they’ll start using women. You know, suffragettes and the like. Says the Frankfurter Zeitung, “Let them come, the heroic furies. We shall receive them with a thunderous salute of shells. Their sex shall not save them. ... Let them come, then, these charmers.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor, father of “scientific management” (stop-watches, deskilling, exploitation, etc) fame, dies at 59.

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Today -100: March 21, 1915: Of outlaw Indians, German pigs, Australian rabbits, duels, and the last war ever

Headline of the Day -100:  “Gen. Scott Captures Outlaw Indians.” I’d forgotten about the Piute uprising in Utah, possibly because the NYT hasn’t mentioned it in nearly a month.

Germany, which is worried about its pigs eating up fodder that could feed hungry Germans, has come up with a solution: billeting 1 million pigs on the Belgians, all of whom, without exception, will be made responsible for at least one pig. It seems unlikely to me that Germany is really using its over-stretched transport system for this, but I suppose it’s possible.

Some in America are trying to help out by mailing food parcels to Germany, which is quite expensive and the parcels may not make it past Holland. The postmaster general is asking the State Department what to do.

An Australian legislator, a Mr. Waddell of the New South Wales Parliament,  wants to help out the British with their food issues by shipping them a few million dead, refrigerated rabbits.

Maurice Pol-Roger, the mayor of Epernay, France, and a Monsieur Chapron, the prefect of the Department of the Marne, duel with swords. Pol-Roger accused Chapron of having abandoned his post and fled when the German troops arrived. Both are injured.

Andrew Carnegie says the European war will be the last war ever. Obviously in the future everyone will just turn to the International Court in the Hague.

The Republican and Democratic candidates for mayor of Chicago sign a declaration that they won’t bring up religion in the election campaign. Democrat Robert Sweitzer, who will lose, is a Catholic. We’ll see if Big Bill Thompson breaks his pledge, but in a later election he did stage a mayoral debate between himself and two actual rats, so subtle campaigning doesn’t seem to really be his thing.

Opening this week: the John Barrymore movie “Are You a Mason?”

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Today -100: March 20, 1915: Of dervishes, Armenians, slimy underground passages, and young naval love

Fog of War of the Day -100, DISPELLED!: German claims that a dervish uprising in the Sudan against British colonial rule are denied by letters from missionaries.

Headline of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100:

Putting to one side how the sub-hed sounds like a gay porno (as does “special cable”), this story of soldiers from both sides advancing slowly through huge cellars and passages underneath the monastery in Ramscappelle would make a great movie.

The US Navy will stop enforcing the ban on midshipmen and young officers marrying. Says Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, “If I were a young middy in love with a girl I would marry her if it broke up the whole navy.”

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Today -100: March 19, 1915: You do not fight, you murder

There have been accusations that Russia is killing Jews in Austrian Poland and maybe in Russian Poland as well. A Jewish group gives the NYT a copy of a supposed military order from November which says that because Jews have been spying for and giving provisions to German troops, hostages should be taken and searches made for secret telegraphs.

Germany says that because Russian troops pillaged and burned villages in East Prussia, it will fine Russian towns which it’s occupying, and if it happens again they’ll burn three down 3 villages or estates for every 1 the Russians burn.

The British take the village of Neuve Chapelle after a fierce bombardment. One Prussian officer, a wounded prisoner, complains, “You do not fight, you murder. My regiment never had a chance from the first. Nothing could live under such a fire.” So, more than half a year into the war, someone still has schoolboy illusions about war.

Yet another rumor of the death of the German crown prince. It is evidently “common knowledge in Denmark” that he was murdered by a member of his entourage.

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Today -100: March 18, 1915: Of espionage, munitions, eccentric firemen, and koocks

The German consul in Seattle, Wilhelm Müller, and his secretary are served with arrest warrants for conspiracy to buy business secrets, specifically about shipments of submarine parts to Britain. Consuls, at least German ones, don’t have diplomatic immunity. Müller says, “The statement that I offered Murdock [a shipping clerk at the Seattle Construction and Dry Dock Company] money for information is ridiculous, as I am not empowered to pay out money for secret agent services except under direction from my home office.” That may be the most German denial I’ve ever heard. The State Department will intervene to prevent the case coming to trial.

A New York state supreme court justice rules that a wife’s earnings belong to her husband. Justice Morschauser is very surprised that anyone’s upset by his decision.

The British government will take over the running of all munitions factories. Profits will be limited and unions will be politely requested to relax work restrictions. And strikes will be banned, of course. One of those restrictions is on the use of female workers. The deal will, of course, be that the munitionettes will all be fired at war’s end.

Marching bands were forbidden to play “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” in yesterday’s St Patrick’s Day parade, because it might be seen as un-neutral. One band, that of the Eccentric Firemen’s Union (!), played it anyway. Members of the Women’s Political Union were on hand to talk to the crowds about women’s suffrage.

Headline/Name of the Day -100:

That’s Mary Koock of Passaic, NJ.

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Low ready

You may have read about how a Yale campus cop pulled his gun on NYT columnist Charles Blow’s (black) son – if not, you can google it as well as I can. The cop was cleared by his department, which says he didn’t point the gun directly at the hilariously named Tahj Blow but rather held it at “low ready.” Still... remember the John Wayne line “fill your hand”? When the cop drew his gun, his hand was full, he effectively narrowed the range of possible physical interactions with Tahj available to him to one.

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Today -100: March 17, 1915: He will tell you that you are going straight to hell and try to make you forget that you are living in hell on earth right now

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The rumor that the son of former Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid was strangled has been denied. What is it with this war and dead-prince rumors?

Headline of the Day -100:

Edmond Kehren, a French reservist, sailed home from New York at the start of the war. Around the Strait of Gibraltar he threw a message for his wife and child overboard in a bottle. The bottle was retrieved a few months later in Spain and sent on to New Jersey. Which is a delightful story, and the disturbing imagery generated by the idea of a French kiss in a bottle may never leave my head.

Germany claims the British sunk the cruiser Dresden while it was in neutral waters off Chile.

A Pancho Villa court-martial convicts Gen. Mateo Almanza and his staff and has them executed.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) says Billy Sunday was paid by manufacturers to break unions. “He is coming here [Paterson] to tell you how many glasses of beer you drank and how many cigarettes you smoked, but he will not tell you how many weeks you were out of work, how many times you were docked, how many of you are blacklisted. He will tell you that you are going straight to hell and try to make you forget that you are living in hell on earth right now.”

Italy isn’t just demanding Trento and Trieste in exchange for staying out of the war, but huge swathes of Austria. But Emperor Franz Josef isn’t even willing to give up Trento and Trieste, although his government is still negotiating; it’s willing to give up the two cities in exchange for cash and renunciation of Italian claims on any other territories, some of whose inhabitants are Italian, so that won’t happen. Supposedly, Kaiser Wilhelm has asked the pope to convince the emperor to make a deal.

Aviator Frank Stites dies in a plane crash in the war. Well, in Universal City, California while making a film about the war. I can’t seem to find out what film, but the internet informs me that the Ghost of Frank Stites haunts Universal Studios to this day and has its own Facebook page (don’t bother).

Stites dropped a “bomb” on an unmanned plane which was rigged to explode:

At which point he lost control of his own plane.

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Today -100: March 16, 1915: Of oligarchies of virtue, ammunition, blockades, and wholesale bloodshed

The NYT mocks the New York World for coming out in favor of women’s suffrage, or at least declaring that it is inevitable, that “In the steady sweep of democracy, the time will come when the present opposition to woman suffrage will seem as short-sighted and senseless as the former opposition to manhood suffrage now seems.” Nah, that could never happen. The World also wants to enfranchise all women because, it says, a handful of women agitators have too much power now, maintaining “a reign of terror over legislative bodies, in consequence of which half the country is now bedeviled by some form or another of harem government”. The NYT thinks it’s ridiculous to believe “that a woman ceases to be contrary when she gets what she thinks she wants.” The editorial continues, “Women are not purer or more noble than men, and if they were that would be no reason for giving them the ballot. An oligarchy of virtue would be only one degree less oppressive than an oligarchy of vice.”

Headline of the Day -100:  “Kitchener Needs More Ammunition.” The British secretary of war blames trade union restrictions and not his own incompetent management.

Wilson proposed to Germany and Britain that Germany stop sinking British ships if the UK allows food shipments to reach Germany. Britain says no, and now has declared its blockade of Germany (while for some reason carefully avoiding the word blockade). It says the goods it seizes will be sold and the proceeds will go to the owners... eventually. Because they’re claiming this move is solely in retaliation for Germany’s submarine warfare (i.e. not what it really is, a war measure to starve Germany into submission), only Germany and not Austria is being blockaded.

Vice President Thomas Marshall says it would be a bad idea to intervene militarily in Mexico. “Wholesale bloodshed would follow.. and then we would have another Philippine Islands on our hands – something we would have trouble getting loose of.” And “what would we do with the blood-thirsty Yaqui Indians? We might never subdue them?”

Rich Germans are fleeing to Scandinavian countries. Out of a sense of patriotic duty, of course: the government supposedly asked them to leave in order to relieve some of the pressure on the food supply.

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Today -100: March 15, 1915: In fighting for the Empire Irishmen are fighting for Ireland

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond brags about how many Irishmen have joined the British Army. “Ireland,” he says, “has been admitted to her proper place in the British Empire.” Cannon fodder.

West Virginia Gov. Henry Hatfield arrests two men on a train who he says took a book he left in the dining car. He also roughs them up a bit. Hatfields take their little grudges very seriously.

The London County Council rejects requests that it change the names of Wiesbaden Road, Hanover Square etc to something less Teutonic-sounding. However, “Bismarck herring” is now sold as “filleted herring” in London delis.

Turkey moves its capital to Eski Shehr (Eskişehir), in case Constantinople falls. Eski Shehr, the NYT informs us, is famous for its meerschaum pipes.

Germany slaps another fine on Lille after deciding that a public meeting protesting German persecution was a pretext for organizing a massacre.

Jane Addams will lead an American delegation to a peace conference at the Hague in April.

Germany is trying to buy Italy off with Austrian territory, but the ancient emperor Franz Josef refuses. The police and other municipal employees of Trieste are being made to take an oath that if it is occupied by Italy they will quit their jobs and leave the city.

Former Greek prime minister Venizelos, fired by the king for favoring war, says if Greece joins the war quickly, it can quadruple the country’s size. Quadruple it!

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Today -100: March 14, 1915: I will come if you don’t mind me being a leper

Harry Thaw is acquitted of conspiracy to escape from Matteawan asylum. The jury evidently agreed with his self-assessment that he was entirely sane.

French Foreign Minister Theophile Delcassé says the war will probably be over by harvest time. That’ll be nice.

Orestes Zamar, who was president of Haiti two coups ago (in other words, one year ago), is captured.

Weird-Sounding Headline of the Day -100:

The Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco has opened, without the presence of Woodrow Wilson, who decided he needed to stay at home just in case anyone called and asked him to negotiate world peace or something. And evidently, it includes a freak show. Or at least it will if the Himalayan pinheads who just arrived aren’t deported from Ellis Island as being liable to become public charges. The guy who planned to exhibit them says they’re of great scientific interest.

The New York Times really needs to hire more European correspondents, so it won’t have to keep resorting to interviewing every American returning from the Continent. May Maugan, fashion buyer for Gimbels, tells it that the English and French POWs returned in a prisoner exchange “were all crippled. Some had lost arms, others legs, and one or two both legs.” She also reports that “The great change in the fashions, of course, is the full, short skirt and the lovely boots that go with it.” Though probably not for the limbless soldiers.

Actually, Ms Maugan does report something interesting: the basis of the prisoner exchange was the number of limbs as well as people, with Germans missing an arm or leg being exchanged for an equivalently afflicted Allied soldier.

Obit of the Day -100: Sir George Turner (b.1848), medical officer and sanitary reformer in Portsmouth and then in South Africa where, among other things, he developed a typhus serum and worked with lepers. Guess what he died from? “The first public announcement was when he refused an invitation to dine with the words, ‘I will come if you don’t mind me being a leper.’”

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Today -100: March 13, 1915: Of looting, fines, and perfect eugenic babies

John McManus, an American who owns mines in Mexico, is killed by Zapata’s forces in Mexico City, which they have just occupied. Evidently flying an American flag over your house doesn’t protect you. Gen. Salazar says McManus fired first, admittedly, while the soldiers were looting his house, or possibly they had gone to get revenge, since the last time the Zapatistas occupied the capital, McManus killed three of them trying to loot his home. The Chicago Tribune prints a letter he wrote to his sister describing how he happened to kill the “greasers”). Gen. Salazar is rumored to have had the soldiers who killed McManus shot.

Sen. George Norris (R-Nebraska) wants the US to send an invading force to restore order in Mexico in conjunction with France, Spain and Britain.

Germany is fining occupied Lille 500,000 francs for cheering French prisoners of war.

These are William Flynn (37 months) and Alene Calvert Houck (17 months). And they are perfect, evidently.

They’ve been examined at the Eugenics Congress in L.A. and been awarded trophies attesting to their 100% perfection. So yes, their mothers plan to breed them.

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Today -100: March 12, 1915: Of pigs, champagne, olde-timey pastimes, and legions

Germany is still anxious to kill off its 20 million pigs, who are eating potatoes that humans could be eating. “Each pig killed between now and the middle of April, it is estimated, will insure the existence of ten Germans until October.”

Headline of the Day -100:

The New York State Senate fails by a vote of 25-12 to ban the popular Coney Island, um, game, of throwing baseballs at a negro’s head. Why, scoffs Sen. Thompson, “you might just as well pass a bill making it a misdemeanor... to give bad peanuts to a good monkey.”

Secretary of War Garrison writes to Gen. Leonard Wood, Commander of the Department of the East, telling him to stop promoting the American Legion (again, not the current Legion but a group of former members of the military ready and willing to join some hypothetical war that the US might hypothetically enter). And he leaks the letter to the press, which shows just how pissed off he is with Wood.

The US cavalry intercepts 200 Mexicans about to cross from Texas into Chihuahua. These are refugees and former Federale soldiers who have been recruited to fight against Villa.

New York Mayor John Purroy Mitchel has changed his mind, or at least his perception of which way the wind is blowing, and now supports women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: March 11, 1915: Of plots, nervous breakdowns, and daylight savings

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany is claiming there was a Franco-British plot to assassinate the neutralist king of Greece.

More Fog: The Duke of Brunswick, Kaiser Wilhelm’s son-in-law and a major, I think, in the German Army, is said to have had an incurable nervous breakdown.

Germany will go on daylight savings time in April to save fuel. (Actually, they’ll do it next year instead). This will be the first use of DST.

Carranza, in response to what he claims was an insulting letter from Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan asking him to stop Gen. Obregon inciting the residents of Mexico City against foreigners, writes
to Pres. Wilson, suggesting that Americans and other foreigners should just leave the capital.

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Today -100: March 10, 1915: Of prefects, aliens, and hostages

The British Parliament votes to allow the government to take over the country’s entire engineering industry.

The Germans have supposedly arrested Felix Trepont, the French prefect of the Nord, for opposing something or other about raising the funds demanded by Germany from occupied French cities. Actually, I think Trepont was just taken hostage along with other notables, as was the custom. Le Matin also claims that German troops’ morale is very low and they often cry when ordered to the front, and their commander has ordered all civilian clothing stored in the citadel to prevent soldiers wearing it when they desert.

The New York Legislature revises its previous ban on aliens being employed on public works. Now they’ll be allowed when US citizens are “not available.” The building of the NY subway system can go on.

Rumors say Bulgaria has just mirrored events in Greece, with a neutralist king firing a prime minister who wanted to take his country into the war.

The military governor of Smyrna has come up with a solution to the problem that the guns of the Turkish forts on the Dardanelles have a shorter range than those of the British ships: arrest male citizens of enemy nations and use them as human shields.

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Today -100: March 9, 1915: Gott strafe England

Britain will segregate the prisoners captured from the sunken German U-boat U-8 for possible war crimes trials after the war. The British are still undecided on whether their condemnations of Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare policies mean that submariners should be treated as pirates.

The US is sending more warships to Mexico. Carranza has invited foreign diplomats to follow him in leaving Mexico City for Vera Cruz, although he claims this is in no way a ploy to get them to recognize him as the one true president of Mexico. They have declined his invitation, because they don’t want to be seen abandoning their nationals in Mexico City to the rampaging mobs.

Various stories in today’s paper say that Germany is totally convinced it will win the war by the end of the year, because Russia will collapse at any moment, while Russia is totally convinced it will the war, because Turkey will collapse at any moment.

Oh, and Germans are replacing the phrase “Auf Wiedersehen” at the end of conversations with “Gott strafe England” (God punish England).

Yes, that is the origin of the word “strafe” in English c.1915, to mean attack or bomb. The more specific current meaning dates from World War II.

Harry Thaw, the famous murderer, is still fighting in court to prevent his return to the Matteawan insane asylum, a year and a half after his escape. He claims that he was sane at the time he escaped, therefore he was being illegally confined and it was not illegal for him to escape.

Headline of the Day -100:

He took as the text of his sermon that famous religious tome Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde “and illustrated his points with a mixture of baseball yarns and Bible narratives translated into street slang.”

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Today -100: March 8, 1915: If you see something, put it in a pail of water

Basil Ruysdael, an opera singer at the Met (and later an actor whose first film was the Marx Brothers’ Cocoanuts and last film was 101 Dalmatians), knocks down a couple with his car on 5th Avenue, killing the woman. When giving his side to reporters later in the day, Ruysdael used the phrase “To complete my horror...”

Headline of the Day -100:

Was it a secret? You’d think all the explosions would be kind of a giveaway. The sub-head is

I assume “the battlefront” is what Gen. Joffre calls his genitals.

Germany claims to have captured nearly 1 million prisoners.

Germany is now drafting men as old as 55.

Headline of the Day -100:

Finding a package on his 2nd Avenue NYC stoop, Frank Razzo figures it’s probably a bomb, because reasons. So he puts it in a pail of water, cuts hair until closing time, does some other stuff, and only then takes it to the local cop shop, 10 hours after its discovery. They put it in a pail of water and call an inspector from the... wait for it... Bureau of Combustibles (I’ve googled it: that was actually a thing), who confirms that the package contains two sticks of dynamite and a faulty fulminating cap.

The new New York City phonebook is out. There are 566,000 phone numbers in the city.

King Constantine I of Greece names a new government, which is pledged to neutrality in the war. Germany was threatening to go to war with Greece if it declared war on Turkey, and Turkey evidently threatened to massacre Christians.

The German authorities suspend the Münchner Zeitung, an anti-semitic newspaper, for calling for the annexation of Belgium.

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Today -100: March 7, 1915: Everybody went to bed and slept as usual

Headline of the Day -100:  “Bulgaria’s Position in the World War.” Note the use of “World War.”

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times):  “Call Germans Incendiaries. French Indignant at Use of Burning Fluid in War.”

The Texas House of Reps votes down a women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution (90-32 in favor, but it needed 2/3, which is 94 votes).

The Lusitania docks safely in Liverpool. This time it didn’t fly an American flag. “While crossing the Irish Channel the lights were extinguished, but everybody went to bed and slept as usual.”

Justice Department agents are investigating multiple rumors of plots for a German invasion of Canada from Chicago or Buffalo or St. Paul or maybe Milwaukee, because why not.

Book of the Day -100: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear. The last (and least) Sherlock Holmes novel. Actually published last year, but the NYT reviews the US edition today. Their reviewer, Hildegarde Hawthorne, granddaughter of Nathaniel, likes it.

The Greek cabinet resigns. They want to go to war against the Central Powers (well, just Turkey really), but King Constantine does not.

A revolt in Portugal. Former minister of war Gen. Antonio Barreto is declared president of the Republic of Northern Portugal, which is evidently a thing now.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Sing Sing to Teach the Genteel Arts.” There’ll be a brass band and everything. A very genteel brass band.

The state of New York prosecuted 42 canning companies for illegal use of child labor in 1914, but only 2 were convicted, and those 2 were only fined $20. The state labor commissioner says local sentiment in favor of child labor influenced juries and magistrates. The companies erected tents outside the factories for their under-14 workers, and then claimed that, hey, they’re not working in a factory.

If it’s Sunday, it must be a flood of letters in the NYT about women’s suffrage. One from Everett Pepperrell Wheeler, failed candidate for governor of New York in the ‘90s and president of the Man-Suffrage Association, responds to a previous letter about how suffrage could make subways less crowded, or something. Wheeler says if women don’t like the city, why there are plenty of families in the country looking for servants. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mrs. Arthur Dodge are given 1½ pages each to present the best arguments pro and con, so you can read those if you haven’t made up your mind yet.

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Today -100: March 6, 1915: The burned trenches remained ours

German troops used flamethrowers in an attack in Argonne, but, according to a soldier quoted in La Liberté, they were forced to retreat. “The burned trenches remained ours.”

Belgium protests Germany illegally seizing its machinery, raw materials, etc.

Oops of the Day -100: A French steamer bringing a load of ammunition to Nieuport accidently (alcohol was involved) sailed to Ostend in German-occupied Belgium instead. So it was shelled and sunk.

Motorcyclists protest a pending bill in New York which would require motorcycles to be registered, with license plates.

Headline of the Day -100:

Totally not a euphemism, probably!


George “Honey Boy” Evans, of the Honey Boy Minstrels, the co-writer of “In the Good Old Summer Time,” “I’ll Be True to My Honey Boy,” “Come Take a Trip in My Airship,” and “Standing on the Corner Didn’t Mean No Harm,” dies at 44.

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Today -100: March 5, 1915: Englishmen do not think it necessary to put up the shutters whenever they are engaged in war

As Italy removes its troops from the interior of Libya just in case it needs them... someplace else... the natives begin a revolt.

Woodrow Wilson signs a Congressional resolution giving the president powers to enforce the neutrality laws against exports of munitions to belligerent countries, but not the absolute power to do so (I don’t understand the distinction, to be honest), which Wilson objected to as giving him too much power, if you can wrap your head around the idea of a president ever thinking such a thing.

The London Times suggested that horse racing be shut down for the duration. Lord Rosebery writes in to disagree: “You say that our Allies ‘cannot understand how Englishmen can go to race meetings when their country is engaged in a life and death struggle.’ With all submission I think our Allies understand us better than this. They know that Englishmen do not think it necessary to put up the shutters whenever they are engaged in war.” Rosebery is worried that thoroughbred lines would disappear, as it’s too expensive to keep them around “for the mere pleasure of looking at them in the stable.” The Epsom and Ascot races were held during the Crimean and Napoleonic wars, he points out.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Russian Amazons Capture Soldiers.” Actually peasant women who hadn’t evacuated the war zone.

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Today -100: March 4, 1915: We will fight, but we must have potatoes

Gen. Obregon threatens to take his troops and leave Mexico City at the first sign of rioting, rather than be forced to fire on “the hungry multitude” in order to protect merchants who he says refused his “invitation” to assist the people. Others point out that it is his army which commandeered the food supply of Mexico City, shut down the railroads, etc.

British warships are still destroying Turkish forts at the Dardanelles, firing from beyond the range of the forts’ guns.

Potato shortage in Berlin. Socialists to SPD Reichstag deputy Eduard Bernstein says, “We will fight, but we must have potatoes.”

Germany reduces the bread/flour ration from 225 grammes per person to 200.

The Ship Purchase bill is killed in the Senate by a Republican filibuster on the last day of the session.

Retiring Sen. Elihu Root (R-NY) complains about the Senate eliminating the Navy Department’s Plucking Board, which chose candidates for forcible retirement, without replacing it with anything, “leaving a lot of men in command whom a former president of the United States once described to me as a lot of wheezy, onion-eyed, old stuffed puddings.” I’m gonna take a wild case that the unnamed former president then said “Bully!”

Headline of the Day -100:  “Greatest Mountain Battle. Snow in Carpathians So Deep the Dead Remain Standing.”

Headline of the Day -100:  “For Permissive Widows’ Pensions.” Permissive widows are the best kind.

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Bibi Netanyahu and the Tentacles of Terror

Netanyahu addressed Congress today.

He started out with a lie. “I’m deeply humbled...”

IT WAS INTENDED TO BE A NON-POLITICAL CALL FOR WAR: “I deeply regret that some perceive my being here as political. That was never my intention.”

STAND UP, SIT DOWN, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT: “I know that no matter on which side of the aisle you sit, you stand with Israel.”

“The remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States has always been above politics. It must always remain above politics.” “Politics” is how things get decided. What he means is it must always remain unquestioned.

“Some of what the president has done for Israel is less well known. I called him in 2010 when we had the Carmel forest fire... In each of those moments, I called the president, and he was there.” Cursing the lack of Caller ID on White House phones.

He complains that Ayatollah Khamenei tweets about Israel.

“Iran’s goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror.” First, he gets points for “goons,” a goofy word we do not hear nearly enough these days. Second, “three tentacles of terror” suggests that he spends his Saturday nights watching bad movies on the SyFy Channel, eating Ben & Jerry’s while checking Khamenei’s Twitter feed to see if he’s talking about him.

“We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.” Again with the standing.

DA DUM DA DA DA DUM DUM DA DEE: “In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no peace for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone.” But a lot of frontal nudity.

PUT A RING ON IT: “the greatest dangers facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons.”

He makes clear that it’s not just a non-nuclear Iran he wants, it’s an Iran whose economy is strangled permanently:

Would Iran be less aggressive when sanctions are removed and its economy is stronger? If Iran is gobbling up four countries right now while it’s under sanctions, how many more countries will Iran devour when sanctions are lifted? Would Iran fund less terrorism when it has mountains of cash with which to fund more terrorism?

So any deal with Iran that includes the lifting of sanctions must be unacceptable. It’s almost like he doesn’t want negotiations to succeed.

“This deal won’t be a farewell to arms. It would be a farewell to arms control.” Some of his rhetoric in this speech is pretty good. This is kind of lame.

It is literally an irresponsible speech, a speech that says what he wants to happen and what he doesn’t want to happen, but leaves it to others to figure out how to comply with his wishes. It is Bibi talk.

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Today -100: March 3, 1915: Of exiles, coal, stealing from Indians, and attachés

The German occupation authorities in Belgium claim the tax they’re imposing on exiles was suggested by Belgians.

Germany will stop allowing the US ships bringing relief supplies to Belgium to re-coal at English ports.

Kate Barnard, the Oklahoma state commissioner of charities, appeals for the defeat of 13 bills pending in the OK Legislature, all designed to steal land from Indians by mortgaging orphan’s property, preventing proper legal notices being issued, etc.

The US military attaché in Berlin is being recalled, supposedly so he can make reports on the military situation in person that he can’t entrust to cables, but how could the timing not be related to the accusations against the German military attaché in Washington?

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Today -100: March 2, 1915: We do not propose to assassinate their seamen or destroy their ships

Headline of the Day -100: 

A ship, not the city or the state. Just arrived in New York (the city and indeed the state, not the ship) from Liverpool (the city, not a pool of liver).

Headline of the Day -100: 


Cecil C. doesn’t care that the British government has disavowed his speaking tour of the US.


The captain of a Norwegian steamship, the Thordis, says he rammed and sank a submarine.

Britain and France announce plans to cut off all of Germany’s sea trade. As retaliation for German’s sub warfare thing, of course, which Asquith describes in Parliament as grotesque and puerile. Puerile? He reassures neutral countries that this won’t necessarily mean seizure of their cargoes and “We do not propose to assassinate their seamen or destroy their ships.” So that’s okay then.

Herbert Hoover says the Germans are keeping their promise not to requisition food from Belgium, so all the food sent by the US is actually reaching Belgians, who he says are entirely dependent on those shipments.

The Arizona Legislature’s lower house rescinds its earlier vote to make the chamber smoke-free, which was evidently originally done at the behest of Rep. Rachel Berry, the only woman in the House.

Headline of the Day -100, or Euphemism for a Weird Sex Act? You Be the Judge: 




Two reporters on the pro-German New York newspaper, the Staats-Zeitung, visit Annette Stegler, the American wife of Richard Stegler, the German naval reservist arrested for fraudulently obtaining a US passport, in order to... persuade her to withdraw her charges against German Naval Attaché Capt. Karl Boy-Ed. The idea was to trick her into visiting a hotel room and threatening to ruin her reputation. When this fails (and she throws a seltzer bottle at the reporters), they have her arrested on charges of assault.  The judge throws the case out as the obvious frame-up job it is.

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Today -100: March 1, 1915: It is idle to trust to the tepid good will of other nations

Enrico Caruso will sing to benefit the French Red Cross, at the request of Prince Albert of Monaco. The German newspapers say, “We have no more use for Caruso than for Prince Albert.” There’s a joke in there somewhere.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George says the US is even more militarily unprepared for war than Britain was.

An American Legion is formed - not the current American Legion, which was formed by veterans in 1919, but a sort of informal military reserve organized privately but with the unofficial blessing of the War Department (update: or not. Secretary of War Garrison tomorrow will act as if this is all news to him. It looks like Gen. Leonard Wood was freelancing).  The Legion will consist of former soldiers, national guards and the like, aged 18 to 55, ready to spring into action if the US enters some war or other. Its leaders “wanted to make clear, first, that it is not an attempt at militarism, and, second, that while all who are loyal and patriotic are wanted to join, there will be small place in its ranks for hyphenated Americans.” Theodore Roosevelt endorses the Legion because of course he does. He says in event of war he will ask Congress’s permission to raise his own cavalry division, just like the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War. In fact, when the US entered WW1, he did ask the army for permission and was told no. It made him very sad. TR says “It is idle for us to trust to arbitration and neutrality treaties unbacked by force. It is idle to trust to the tepid good will of other nations. It is idle to trust to alliances.”

The NYT explains what’s at stake in the British Dardanelles campaign: “The capture of Constantinople will mean the extinction of Turkish rule in Europe and the collapse for all time of German plans for Asiatic dominion. It will not only check the Turks’ plan to invade Egypt, but will stop all German supplies to the Turkish troops in Asia Minor and afford a free passage from Black Sea ports of vast Russian stores of grain and oil”.

Cecil Chesterton, brother of G.K., who has been lecturing in the US, trying to win American support for the British war effort, is disavowed by the British government, which says it would never be so gauche as to propagandize in the United States.

Speaking of propaganda, Britain rolled out these passive-aggressive recruiting posters sometime this month:

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Today -100: February 28, 1915: Of guarded potatoes, saving corsets, betraying dogs, wars of starvation, grieved plutocrats, and unabashed nudity

Headline of the Day -100: 

Another Headline of the Day -100: 

Maybe that guy shouldn’t have been cleaning that gun in a hotel lobby in the first place.

Still Another Headline of the Day -100, Because It Was Just That Sort of Day: 

Supposedly, Germans craftily chalked on a ruined house in a Flanders town from which they were withdrawing, “Please feed the dogs.” The incoming French and Belgian soldiers did, the dogs started howling at midnight, and the Germans used the noise to direct their shelling. Since then, the Allied soldiers have killed all the dogs.

Yet Another Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times):  “Declaration by the Allies of a War of Starvation.” Britain and France intend to stop all shipping to Germany.

Sad Headline of the Day -100: 

By the city of Cleveland, which is actually attempting to collect taxes from him. He says he spends a lot of money in the city, and years ago prevented it being wiped off the map when the Pennsylvania Railroad wanted to move its offices to Pittsburgh, so he shouldn’t have to pay any taxes, I guess.

Chinese people in San Francisco, Fresno, Vancouver, etc. are boycotting Japanese-owned businesses to protest the Japanese government’s demands on China.

Nude Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): 

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Today -100: February 27, 1915: No one can hold me responsible for the recent earthquake in Italy

The Supreme Court is hearing the Leo Frank appeal. The state of Georgia denies that there were any intimidating mob scenes during the trial, “except such as was developed in a ‘law-abiding community’ by the evidence as it was gradually unfolded.”

The British government orders shipbuilders in Scotland not to strike for a 4p/hour wage increase; says it will arbitrate.

The German naval attaché at the embassy in Washington, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed, laughs off the accusation that he is running a spy/sabotage ring: “If another accident happens in the subway I shall probably be accused of that. ... At any rate I am happy to say no one can hold me responsible for the recent earthquake in Italy.” No, but that explosion on the bridge at the Canadian border...

South African troops are invading German Southwest Africa (Namibia), led personally by Prime Minister Botha, who was a general in the Boer War.

Like Germany, Austria will turn its schoolchildren into agricultural laborers, closing all schools for summer a month early.

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Today -100: February 26, 1915: Of spies, mines, human shields, and aliens

Richard Stegler, a member of the Germany Navy’s reserves, is under arrest in New York for fraudulently obtaining a US passport. He has implicated the German naval attaché in Washington, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed, as head of the German secret service/sabotage operation in the US. Which he is. Stegler says Boy-Ed (who is half German, half Turkish) supplied Carl Lody, the spy executed by the British a few months ago, with his false US passport.

Woodrow Wilson politely asks Britain and Germany to remove all their mines from the high seas.

A Prof. Walker, an expert on international law at Cambridge, suggests putting interned German - not even POWs, just people who happened to be German who were in Britain when the war started – on commercial ships to prevent Germany sinking them. “If election must be between the discomfort of belligerents and the lives of non-combatants and peaceful neutrals, it is true humanity will have no hesitation as to a decision.”

The Scandinavian countries give up their plan of convoys for their merchant ships, because Britain opposes the scheme.

Italy and Austria are negotiating how big a bribe Italy would require to remain neutral.

Britain says it’s destroyed all the Turkish forts at the entrance of the Dardanelles and the no doubt successful invasion of Turkey can now commence.

New York’s highest court upholds the state’s ban on aliens being employed on public works. The opinion, written by future Supreme Court justice Benjamin Cardozo, says “The moneys of the State belong to the people of the State. They do not belong to aliens.” Good luck getting those subways built, New York City.

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Today -100: February 25, 1915: Of undead princes, unmutilated prisoners, women voters, Belgian millinery, and lady cops

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Excelsior newspaper (Paris) reports that the German crown prince totally died last December. It’s been a while since one of these rumors.

More Fog: The German consul in Chicago, Baron Kurd von Reiswitz, gave newspapers an affidavit from one Robert Meyer, who says he enlisted in the British army and while he was in hospital in Ostend after sustaining a wound in Rheims in September, saw German soldier prisoners who had been mutilated – 3 whose eyes were gouged out, 3 tongues, 2 ears – at least 4 of whom were mutilated by British soldiers. The British ambassador responds that there is no record of such a person and points out certain problems with his timeline and other errors, such as there being no 14th Company of the Grenadier Guards, the unit he claimed to have been in, no British troops in Rheims in September, etc.

Birmingham, Alabama arrests Hiram De Laye, a newspaper/magazine distributor, for selling a copy of a newspaper published outside the state which contains a liquor ad, which is illegal under the state’s new strict prohibition law.

In Illinois, women have the vote in local and national elections but not state ones. This means they have separate ballots from men, so you can actually determine the gender differences in voting. Yesterday’s primaries show they don’t vote with their menfolk, but are more Democratic. And 900+ women in Chicago’s 32rd Ward, the NYT says, were “deceived by a political trick,” voting for a black barber named W.W. Taylor, who didn’t even know he was running for alderman, someone having submitted papers for him so he’d be confused for the popular W.A. Taylor. Ah, Chicago politics.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Germans Forbid New Belgian Millinery.” Women have been wearing Belgian soldiers’ caps, and the German occupiers are not best pleased.

The New Jersey Legislature passes a bill permitting the appointment of policewomen. Whatever is the world -100 coming to?

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Today -100: February 24, 1915: A people of poets and thinkers has been transformed into a united people in arms

Sarah Bernhardt is now minus one leg and is resting.

Sen. Albert Fall (R-New Mexico) proposes that the US, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil intervene in Mexico to restore order. It’s not clear what exactly he has in mind but on past form it’s something stupid.

The Prussian Diet sent Kaiser Wilhelm a message of congratulations on the victory in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes. He responds, “A people of poets and thinkers has been transformed into a united people in arms, and we can rely on the strength of its determination to triumph over all the enemies of German Kultur and civilization.”
Today’s shipping losses include: the US steamer Carib, which hits a mine off Germany, the Swedish steamer Specia, sunk by a mine in the North Sea, and the Norwegian ship Regin, hit by either a mine or a torpedo off the coast of Dover.

Carter Harrison, Jr., 5-time mayor of Chicago, though non-sequentially, loses the Democratic primary for a 6th term in some sort of intra-Democratic feud that doesn’t sound like it has a lot to do with actual issues. He was first elected mayor in 1897, 4 years after his father, Carter Harrison, Sr, who was also the mayor of Chicago, was assassinated. Both were elected five mayor times.

At the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, which just opened, a janitor finds a bomb at the Japanese building.

Dirty-Sounding Headline of the Day -100: 

To make it worse, her name was Mae Cockrell. She committed suicide in the elevator shaft of the Washington Monument.


Turkish newspapers, perhaps being fed stories by the German press bureau, have reported that His Islamic Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm has already entered Paris in triumph and had his hand kissed by the French deputies. Also, Wilhelm’s harem and the harems of his staff officers will be visiting Constantinople. So that’ll be nice.

Indian troops on the way to fight in Egypt mutiny in Singapore and go on a rampage.

The German government is asking people to stop stamping the words “God punish England” on mail going to other countries, as it might give the wrong impression.

Congress passes the Army appropriation bill, including a provision banning the use of stopwatches and other “scientific management” methods in government plants.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times, but possibly from the Manchester Guardian):  “Terrors of Bearded Troops.” Russian soldiers are going all shaggy because they think it frightens the Germans.

The US Supreme Court upholds the California law setting a maximum 8-hour work day for women in factories and shops (but not in agricultural labor, canning, boarding-houses, nurses or domestic servants).

The NYT misses this story, and the LA Times gives precisely two sentences to it: the US Supreme Court unanimously rules in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio that motion pictures do not have 1st Amendment protection against local censorship boards. They are not akin to newspapers, as Mutual had argued, the Court says, but more like circuses, theater and “other shows and spectacles” which the state can regulate in the interests of public morality. “Moving pictures is a business pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit,” and “not to be regarded... as part of the press of the country, or as organs of public opinion.”  The Court seems rather scared of movies, for some reason: “Their power of amusement, and, it may be, education, the audiences they assemble, not of women alone nor of men alone, but together, not of adults only, but of children, make them the more insidious in corruption by a pretense of worthy purpose or if they should degenerate from worthy purpose. Indeed, we may go beyond that possibility. They take their attraction from the general interest, eager and wholesome it may be, in their subjects, but a prurient interest may be excited and appealed to.” Just a few days before, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White had seen his very first motion picture - “The Birth of a Nation.”

The Mutual decision was reversed in 1952, when motion pictures were ruled to come under the 1st Amendment after all.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times):  “Bryan Wears a Toy Dove.”

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Today -100: February 23, 1915: First they came for the pigs, and I said nothing...

Germany is calling up 17-year-olds. Farm work will now be done by older children, who will be let out of school. Of course this is only until the end of the war, which they expect to be in November or so.

Germany responds to British claims of cruelty towards its POWs with an inquiry which totally clears itself, so that should settle that. “The evidence expressly states that when some of the allegations of cruelty published in England were read to the prisoners all of the Englishmen present broke out into laughter.”

The London Times reports that Turkish troops have been killing Armenians and leaving their bodies in the streets to be eaten by dogs.

Germans are told it is their patriotic duty to eat pork in order to reduce the numbers of pigs and save the grain they would have eaten for humans. There are 25 million pigs in Germany. For now.

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Today -100: February 22, 1915: Of curtailed sandwiches, sunk ships, lynchings, jewels, and bluffs

Headline of the Day -100:  “Ask German Children to Curtail Sandwich.” For the war effort, they are supposed to eat only one slice of bread.

The US steamer Evelyn strikes a mine in the North Sea and sinks, with no loss of life but considerable loss of cotton, which it was bringing to Bremen. It is not currently known whose mine it was and I don’t think it ever will be. (Correction: one dead - frozen to death - and 13 missing, it will be reported tomorrow).

Austrian torpedo boats and airplanes bomb two fishing boats clearly flying the flag of neutral-for-now Italy.

A possible train robber who got into a gun fight with cops, killing one, is lynched in Pleasant Hill, Missouri. He is white, as was not the custom.

King George of England arranges a £50,000 loan for the Queen of the Belgians, putting her jewels (which were sent to the UK before the Germans occupied Antwerp) up as collateral, although it’s not quite clear which of the jewels are legally hers and which belong to Belgium.

The Berlin police ban afternoon teas in hotels, cafés etc if they are accompanied by music, recitations, or lectures. No one knows why.

A posse led by a US marshal fights Piute Indians near Bluff, Utah.

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Today -100: February 21, 1915: Woman in politics is the last thing a real woman wants

The Lusitania arrives in New York. It didn’t fly the American flag this time, but neither did it fly the Royal Naval Reserve flag Capt. Dow is entitled to fly, and usually does.

A U-boat sinks a steamer off the Welsh coast without warning, and a Norwegian ship is sunk by a mine off the Danish coast.

Germany and Austria complain that submarines are, they say, being built for Britain in the US and shipped in pieces via Canada.

Britain and France claim to have successfully bombarded the Turkish forts guarding the entrance to the Dardanelles, silencing their guns. Turkey, of course, claims the forts haven’t been damaged.

Carranza arrests 180 native priests (i.e., not the Spanish priests Villa hates so much) for non-payment of a 500,000 peso levy on them, supposedly to be used for the poor.

Sarah Bernhardt on her forthcoming leg amputation: “I would rather be mutilated than powerless.”

The NYT prints another batch of letters on women’s suffrage:

Elizabeth Goldsmith says “It sometimes seems as if the suffragist had ceased to think of man and woman as two halves of a whole” and cites the “law of unity and polarity” in nature. You know, man the active principle, woman the passive principle, like fire and water, day and night, etc. Since woman is “the passive, the acted upon,” if she has the vote “she will do nothing original with it, nothing creative.”

Florence Howe Hall says that far from coarsening women in the states that have it, women’s suffrage has refined men.

Helen Glover, vice president of the Connecticut Anti association, says “The hysterical, emotional way in which women are clamoring for the ballot, without rhyme or reason, only shows how unfitted they are for it, and of how little use it would be in their hands if they had it. Woman in politics is the last thing a real woman wants”.

Henrietta Wheatley says “Men and women were created to co-operate – not to compete.”

Frederic Almy replies to the original editorial: “You say that women must work as men work in order to vote as men vote. I do not want them to vote as men vote, but differently.”

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