Today -100: February 18, 1916: Even handshaking!

French General Dubois issues an army order: “The Army Commander has learned with indignation that at several places on the front conversations and even handshaking with the Germans have taken place. I am at a loss to understand how a Frenchman can sink so low as to shake hands with such bandits, who spread incendiarism and destruction, assassinate women, children and old men, treacherously kill prisoners, and kill our wounded by tortures.”

France and Germany agree to pay the salaries of POWs (that is, Germany will pay French prisoners and France will pay German prisoners). Not full salaries, but the pay given to officers on leave.

The Lusitania negotiations between the US and Germany, so nearly concluded, are reopened because of the German declaration that it will sink armed merchant ships. The US now wants additional assurances, while Germany says it won’t sink armed ships if the US can get Britain to guarantee that their guns will only be used defensively and not to attack u-boats.

The New York Athletic Commission does not, after all, rescind its ban on mixed-race boxing matches, despite the ban being in violation of the NY constitution.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: February 17, 1916: Of hearings and letters

The confirmation hearings for Louis Brandeis’s nomination to the Supreme Court are set to drag on and on. That group of Boston Brahmins headed by A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard, have even hired a lawyer to question witnesses before the Senate Sub-Committee, which will allow him to do so. The US Attorney for Boston will do the questioning on behalf of Brandeis. This is very unusual, there usually being no hearings at all, much less public hearings.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s letters are being auctioned off. One written when he was two sells for $5.50. One written in the Samoan language to the King of Malie sells for $195.

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Today -100: February 16, 1916: We have been brave in words and irresolute in action

Elihu Root gives a speech to the unofficial NY Republican state convention which marks the opening move in his attempt to win the nomination for president. He attacks Woodrow Wilson for, I don’t know, not going to war with Germany when it invaded Belgium 18 months ago, or after it sank the Lusitania. “Our diplomacy has lost its authority and influence because we have been brave in words and irresolute in action.”

Headline of the Day -100:

According to an unnamed French Army surgeon, “They have become hardened and developed indifference to danger and insensibility to pain without losing civilized feelings of gratitude and obedience.” He may be thinking of dogs. 

As is New York Commissioner of Health Dr. Haven Emerson, who would like to ban all dogs from the city. Cats are okay, though. “Dogs are not necessary to a cultured existence,” says the asshole. He says there were 3,000 dog fights in the city in 1915, and I’d really like to know how he came up with that figure.

British bans the importing of paper, periodicals, tobacco, furniture woods, and stone.

Austria orders restaurants, cafes, and other public food-providing establishments to turn over all kitchen utensils made of bronze, copper, brass, nickel or aluminum.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Senate Health Committee is told that only 1/3 of lepers in the US are locked up, while the rest, including 50 in New York City and 80 in Chicago, are running loose, threatening an epidemic. Witnesses declare that a national leprosarium is needed.

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Today -100: February 15, 1916: There are only two things Mr. Wilson is afraid of

Woodrow Wilson’s plans to remain coy about his plans for reelection are foiled by the Ohio electoral law, which requires that candidates to be party convention delegates name their first and second choices for president and have the written permission of those choices to do so. So Wilson writes to the Ohio secretary of state that while he’s “entirely unwilling to enter into any contest for the Presidential nomination,” he is willing to let his name go forward.

Speaking of coy, Theodore Roosevelt says he will support any Republican candidate who can beat Wilson. “He has deadened the conscience of the American people by his foreign policy. ... There are only two things Mr. Wilson is afraid of – the Kaiser and myself.” Does that mean Teddy is running for president? Or, indeed, for kaiser? He does not say.

Britain will recruit 400,000 women for farm work. They’ll get an armlet and a special uniform (including trousers, which will be quite controversial, because how can you tell the Land Girls are girls? HOW CAN YOU TELL?)

British newspaper magnate and asshole Lord Northcliffe rejects suggestions that he be made Minister of Aviation, saying that others are more suited to the role and anyway he couldn’t join a government fighting a defensive rather than an offensive war.

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Today -100: February 14, 1916: But votes are better

Germany, unhappy with Romania’s definition of neutrality (they’ve been selling wheat to Britain but not to Germany), makes what sounds like a threat, demanding not only strict neutrality but the dispersal of Romanian troops away from its borders. The NYT quotes a British paper quoting an Italian paper quoting a Romanian paper which says Kaiser Wilhelm personally threatened King Ferdinand when they met recently, reminding him of the fates of Belgium and Serbia and that Bucharest is only 37 miles from the Danube and WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.

The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage is sending the president and members of Congress “valentines with more or less appropriate verses” regarding women’s suffrage. To Edward Pou (D-North Carolina) they write:

The rose is red, the violet blue,
But votes are better, Mr. Pou.

And that’s about the best of the ones quoted in the Times.

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Today -100: February 13, 1916: No one wants to be needlessly nasty to Germans

Italy has been at war with Austria for nearly 9 months, but not with Germany, and only now breaks off trade relations with it. Italy will declare war on Germany in 6 months.

Canada, still in the midst of an anti-German panic following the burning of the Parliament buildings in what it pleases Canadians to think was an arson attack, is targeting Germans in government posts. August Kastella is asked to resign as Superintendent of Dredging. He refuses. So he’ll be fired, although they’ll pretend it’s not because of his German birth but because he’s, I don’t know, bad at superintending dredging.

The New York Symphony Orchestra cancels a planned Canadian tour because it fears hostility towards those of its musicians who are German. The Ottawa Journal applauds the decision: “No one in Canada wants to be needlessly nasty to Germans, we hope, but we have a right to insist on the safety of our soldiers and our interests of all kinds.” Yeah, I hear a German oboist once took down an entire battalion.

Boston upper crust types really don’t like Louis Brandeis. Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell and 54 Bostonians send the Senate a petition against Brandeis’s appointment to the Supreme Court, citing his lack of the proper “judicial temperament,” which may be their term for foreskin. The NYT lists the signers so readers at home can play “Who Has the Most Boston Brahmin Name?” For my money: Pierpont L. Stackpole.

That banquet for the Archbishop of Chicago where 150 guests got sick? Arsenic poisoning. The archbishop (and the governor of Illinois, the mayor of Chicago, etc) are ok. Police are looking for “Jean Crones,” the assistant chef at the University Club and an anarchist. An actual anarchist, I hasten to add, mindful of the Chicago PD’s propensity to describe anyone they don’t like as an anarchist. One of the guests, a Dr. J.B. Murphy, himself suffering from poisoning, directed the mixture of an emetic. That plus the fact that the soup (chicken soup, by the way) had been watered down at the last minute when extra guests showed up meant that no one died.

The police investigation of Crones (real name Nestor Dondoglio) will turn up such details as that he never associated with women and that he and his anarchist friends wore black ties with windsor knots. Crones escaped to New York and wrote badly spelled taunting catch-me-if-you-can letters to the NYT, helpfully including his fingerprints so they could confirm it was him. His third letter says he was radicalized by the Ludlow Massacre. After that letter, he disappeared forever, remaining in hiding the rest of his life, assisted by various anarchist and Wobbly types, until he died in 1932.

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Today -100: February 12, 1916: This new terror leaves us cold

Lindley Garrison says his resignation as secretary of war is not an attack on Wilson and he is now out of politics and no, he does not want to be governor of New Jersey.

A “special cable” to the NYT from Manila, Philippines, insists that “anti-independence sentiment is found everywhere” and that “The leaders of all the native parties are privately opposed to the Clarke amendment.” Privately.

Emma Goldman is arrested in New York for “having lectured on a medical question in defiance of Section 1,142 of the Penal Code.” Birth control, the NYT really can’t just say it was birth control? This may (or may not) be the first time someone is charged for speaking about birth control, as opposed to distributing written materials. Goldman will be sentenced to 15 days in the workhouse.

Just out: the first issue of The Wipers Times, a newspaper by and for British soldiers issued under various names as the front lines moved (“Wipers” being what Tommies called Ypres), containing poetry and satire. Some excerpts:

“May I through the medium of your valuable paper call attention to the disgraceful state of repair the roads are getting into.” 

“a German band was heard playing at about 11-30 a.m. This new terror leaves us cold, as we take it to be only another phase of frightfulness.” 

“For Sale, cheap. Desirable Residence.  Climate warm, fine view. Splendid links close by, good shooting. Terms moderate. Owner going abroad. –Apply Feddup, Gordon Farm, nr Wipers.” [Gordon Farm is a real place] 

The world wasn’t made in a day;
And Eve didn’t ride on a ‘bus,
But most of the world’s in a sandbag
The rest of it’s plastered on us.

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Today -100: February 11, 1916: Of garrisons, eras of infinite prosperity, new frightfulness, and bad soup

Secretary of War Lindley Garrison resigns. He is upset that Pres. Wilson backed away from the plan for a “Continental Army” after it proved to be deeply unpopular amongst the general public and Congress, which didn’t want the state national guards superseded. Garrison also opposes Filipino independence, which Wilson supports. Assistant Secretary of War Henry Breckinridge (who is only 29, although he has the name of a 59-year-old) also resigns, out of loyalty to Garrison.

Woodrow Wilson tells a Chamber of Commerce dinner that if the US can keep out of the war, “an era of infinite prosperity is ahead of us.” His speech makes no mention of Garrison’s resignation.

Germany and Austria will announce that starting March 1st any merchant ships armed with guns will be treated as hostile and sunk without warning. Or, as the Daily Mail (London) puts it, “New U-Boat Murder Campaign to Start March 1.” Other British papers report “New Plea for Piracy” (The Times) and “Germany Prepares World for New Frightfulness” (the Express).

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: A Canadian doctor claims to have seen a German u-boat, caught in British nets, whose crew had all been shot in the head by the sub’s commander, who had then killed himself, and that the same thing happened in 3 other captured subs.

At Senate sub-committee hearings on the Louis Brandeis nomination of to the Supreme Court, C.W. Barron of the Wall Street Journal accuses Brandeis of various acts of professional malfeasance, including “procur[ing] the signature of an old and dying man to a deed of trust by questionable means.” He also accuses him of having tried to wreck the New York & England Railroad and of switching sides on cases (which is one way to interpret Brandeis’s insistence on following his conscience as a lawyer, usually refusing to take fees on public interest cases so that he could do so).

150 guests at a banquet in honor of George Mundelein, the new archbishop of Chicago, are taken ill. More will be heard of this.

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Today -100: February 10, 1916: Wherein trousers are dropped from an aeroplane

Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes says he is “totally opposed” to the suggestion that he run for president and he is “entirely out of politics.” So I guess that settles that.

Name of the Day -100: the man to whom Hughes wrote those things, Rep. C. Bascom Slemp (R-Virginia).

Belgium rejects a German offer of a separate peace, passed through the papal nuncio to Belgium. Under the offer, they would get their king back and Germany would control Antwerp (and its port). (Follow-up: Belgium will soon deny that there was any such offer).

Elly Reuss, a 75-year-old Seventh Day Adventist in Germany, is sentenced by a military tribunal to 7 months for preaching that soldiers shouldn’t kill. On the sabbath. The other 6 days of the week, anything goes.

The US and Germany are still negotiating over the Lusitania.  It’s down to a single word. The US wants Germany to “recognize” its liability to pay indemnities for the deaths of Americans rather than “assume” that liability, in other words to make it a matter of international law rather than Germany paying up voluntarily out of the goodness of its heart.

Book of the Day -100: Theodore Roosevelt’s Fear God and Take Your Own Part. A collection of articles on subjects warlike,

it became a best-seller.

Another chivalric story of the Modern Day Knights of the Air™: A British aeroplane is brought down by a German plane and the captured pilot’s trousers are simply ruined. He makes such a fuss about it that the German pilot who shot him down gets back in his plane and drops a note over the British lines. An hour later a British plane drops a pair of trousers. Could this silly story possibly be true?

Following on from the panic (or whatever passes for panic in Canada) over the Germans who undoubtedly probably burned down the Parliament building comes a scare over just how many people of German parentage or even German birth there are in the Canadian government.

Headline of the Day -100:

That dude will eat anything. The former president tells a dinner of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs how when he was governor  of the Philippines he introduced baseball as a way to bore civilize the natives. He says it entirely converted mountain tribes from the Filipino National Pastime (head hunting) to the American one.

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Today -100: February 9, 1916: Of settlements, bopps, anthems, and spies

The US and Germany seem to have reached an arrangement over the Lusitania. They will agree to disagree on whether Germany’s policy of reprisals (against the British blockade) is legal, but Germany will admit that the attack on the Lusitania was unjustified in that it involved the lives of citizens of neutral nations, and they won’t do it again.

Spoiler Alert: They will totally do it again.

A federal grand jury in San Francisco indicts German Consul General Franz Bopp for conspiracies to blow up ammunition factories and ships and for having a silly name. 31 others are also indicted, including the Turkish consul.

Kaiser Wilhelm has, in his copious free time, written a new national anthem. The one they’ve got has the same tune as the British “God Save the King.” Willy wants Richard Strauss to compose the music. You know, I don’t think he ever did.

The House of Representatives fires a telephone operator at its switchboard after he is accused of being a “Republican spy.”

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Today -100: February 8, 1916: Phew

The Mexican consul to the US denies reports that he has documents (among those left when Pancho Villa’s regime hastily retreated from Juarez) proving a plot between Villa and the Japanese to invade the United States.

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Today -100: February 7, 1916: You can civilize the Mexicans without massacring them

Henry Ford, preparing a new, mysterious peace project, says that those calling the loudest for preparedness are also trying to get the US to invade Mexico. “In Mexico the problem easily can be solved by educating the people of that country to industry. ... You can civilize the Mexicans without massacring them.”

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Today -100: February 6, 1916: The finger of God is beckoning us to go in and possess that land

Germany gives the US its “final” answer on the Lusitania. It complies with most of the US’s demands (reparations, not sinking civilian ships without warning in the future and letting the passengers and crew get to safety), but it won’t use the word “illegal” to describe the Lusitania sinking.

The NYT denounces the bill to give the Philippines independence as “a violation of the trust imposed upon them [the Senate] when possession of the Philippines was taken over from Spain by the McKinley Administration.” It does not explain who “imposed” that “trust” on them. That trust included “teach[ing] them the principles of free government,” because nothing teaches the principles of free government like colonial rule based on right of conquest. “The Filipinos themselves will in time protest against the withdrawal.” Any... day... now...

The Republican Club hears a talk by Ralph Ely, chairman of the New Mexico Republican Committee, calling for the US to annex Old Mexico: “The finger of God is beckoning us to go in and possess that land, for we are the chosen people of today.” The next speaker is W.E.B. Du Bois, who “made a rapid review of what he called injustices to the negroes in the South, and gave statistics of lynchings.” I love the NYT’s “what he called injustices.” So... balanced.

Former president Taft says that primaries are a terrible idea. “From a boss-ridden convention with deliberation you will get better candidates than you will through the primary.”

Inventor Maximilian Weil says battleships could deflect torpedoes with electro-magnets.

Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is performed at the Met on its 100th anniversary. Andrés de Segurola sings Don Basilio and Maria Barientos is Rosina. Rossini banged out the opera in a couple of weeks when he was 24, which is just plain annoying.

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Today -100: February 5, 1916: They put me in a cell with a murderer, a drunken man, and a white slaver

The Providence Journal, which is basically an arm of the British Secret Service’s propaganda branch at this point, claims to have given the US Justice Dept warning about a plot to burn down the Canadian Parliament Building. Justice denies this.

Canada arrests a suspect in that fire (which was not actually arson). Charles Strony, a Belgian classical violinist and conductor, will be quickly released. The only reason he fell under suspicion was that he happened to be leaving Ottawa for another gig. And he happened to have a postcard picture of the Parliament houses. At the time the fire started, he was performing at the Russell Theatre. “They put me in a cell with a murderer, a drunken man, and a white slaver and made me stand up for nine hours while they told me that I was a liar,” says Strony.

The Senate follows the House in voting for Philippines independence by 1921.

John Griffith, the passenger on the SS Appam with the pet leopard, is worried that the cat (whose name is Pompey), who is still aboard the ship, is moping.

Not sure what happened to Pompey. He may have wound up in a US zoo.

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Today -100: February 4, 1916: I recognize no Collector

The Canadian Parliament Building in Ottawa is on fire. Naturally everyone thinks it was caused by a bomb. A German bomb. It wasn’t. The chief Liberal whip Frederick Forsyth Pardee is missing (he’s fine), several MPs were burned, and some of the building’s workers are dead.

Newport News, Virginia: All of the SS Appam’s crew and passengers have now left the ship, despite objections by their German captors and by the British ship’s owners, who would have preferred their employees to maintain a presence on the ship to support their claim that it doesn’t belong to the Germans because they brought it to a neutral port. My favorite moment: Lt Berg, in command of the German prize crew, asks the British vice consul, who wants to board, by whose authority he comes. “By that of the United States Collector of Customs.” “I recognize no Collector.”

Some of the British sailors aboard the Appam were from other ships attacked by the Möwe. One of them, First Engineer Gow of the Dromonby, has now survived three close encounters with the Germans, having previously been on two ships that were sunk. “I’ve had almost enough of this business of trying to make a living on the seas.”

Also on board the Appam: someone’s pet leopard, which he’s trying to get returned to him.

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Today -100: February 3, 1916: Of child labor and Philippines independence

The House passes a bill to ban interstate shipping of products produced by child labor (that is, children under 14 in factories, 16 in mines, or 16 if they work at night or more than 8 hours a day). The chief opposition comes from Southerners, since cotton mills are a major employer of minors. The Keating-Owen Act will become law, only to be overturned in 1918 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that, while the interstate commerce clause allows Congress to regulate inherently immoral products like liquor and whores, cotton is not immoral and Congress doesn’t have the power to overrule states with crappy child labor laws.

The Senate votes 41 to 41 for independence for the Philippines in 1921. VP Marshall casts the deciding vote in favor.

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Today -100: February 2, 1916: Of appams, le suffrage des morts, trains, and busy intersections

A British steamship, the SS Appam, which was captured off the coast of Africa by a German cruiser while making a run from Dakar to Liverpool and is now under the command of a small German prize crew, arrives at Hampton Roads, Virginia, where they’ve brought it because they couldn’t take it back to Germany through the British blockade. (Ah, perhaps there were only 22 Germans because they expected to be interned for the duration of the war in the US. The Appam’s crew won’t be interned because they were not combatants. International law is weird). They’re hoping the US will recognize their claim that the Appam is now an auxiliary of the German navy, subject to internment, because if it’s ruled a prize of war it will be ordered to leave, at which point the British navy could easily recapture it. In fact, the case will wend through the courts and the Supreme Court will rule in 1917 (before the US entry into the war) that belligerents had no right to just deposit spoils of war in US ports, beyond the time necessary to make them seaworthy. The Appam’s passengers include Sir Edward Meriwether, the governor of British Sierra Leone.

Britain denies that it’s secretly negotiating a separate peace with Germany. It’s funny how often one country or another has to deny having any interest in peace.

Right-wing French journalist Maurice Barrès calls for votes for women. Actually, he calls for widows and mothers of dead soldiers to get the vote to represent them, which he calls “le suffrage des morts.”

Headline of the Day -100:

In Grinnell, Iowa, Woodrow Wilson stops his train from backing over five girls.

Supposedly, one of the Montenegrin generals who signed the surrender has been assassinated.

The Fifth Avenue Association claims that the intersection of 5th Ave and 42nd Street in NYC is the busiest highway crossing in the world, surpassing Charing Cross in London. They counted 1,149 vehicles going south in a one-hour period (in the afternoon). The Association says that 92% of 5th Ave’s vehicles are now motorized as opposed to horse-propelled.

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Today -100: February 1, 1916: Loyalty is first

The Packard Motor Car Company announces that in future only American citizens (or foreigners who are in the process of applying for citizenship) will receive promotions to positions of responsibility and trust. “Loyalty is first” is the Packard motto.

At one of his “preparedness” talks, in Chicago, Woodrow Wilson says the army currently “is not large enough even for the ordinary duties of peace.” The navy is great, though.

The number of automobiles in New York City has increased to 60,000 from 40,000 in the previous registration year.

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Today -100: January 31, 1916: Of air duels, trapped Jews, micawbers, canals, and lepers and canaries

Headline of the Day -100:

An article in the Philadelphia Public Ledger written by William Bullitt (who would be FDR’s ambassador to the Soviet Union and France) blames the collapse of Henry Ford’s peace mission on Rosika Schwimmer’s autocratic attempts to dictate to the disparate group.

The NYT suggests that Brandeis was nominated so he could be the deciding vote in several anti-trust cases scheduled to reach the Supreme Court.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Headline of the Day -100:  

You don’t get many literary insults in politics these days. “A policy of milk and water in one nation,” TR says, “encourages a policy of blood and iron in another nation.”

A Woman’s Congress in Yucatan demands the vote for women in Mexico. Which they will get. In 1953.

There has been some discussion in the NYT letters page about the “canals” of Mars, following a report from Lowell Observatory claiming to have spotted vegetation sprouting alongside the canals. But, ask the letters, are the canals mere optical illusions? How could they, simply as an engineering feat, have been expanded as rapidly as astronomer Percival Lowell observed? Today, 

Waldemar Kaempffert of Scientific American, a supporter of the existence of canals on Mars, points out that in Mars’ lower gravity, a Martian canal-digger could haul as much dirt as an elephant on Earth. 

Magdalena McLean, a 17-year-old Jersey City girl, is ordered confined in a hospital because of leprosy. Which she actually prefers to being locked up in one room by her parents, as she has been since her symptoms appeared 5 years ago. The mayor visited her and sent her some canaries.

Ad of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: January 30, 1916: The world is on fire and there is tinder everywhere

Belgium protests the doubling of Germany’s punitive taxes on it.

Woodrow Wilson, giving a Preparedness speech in Cleveland, says that everyone who comes to the White House say they are counting on him to keep the US out of war and in the next breath say that they’re counting on him to maintain the honor of the United States. But, he asks, “Have you reflected that a time might come when I could not do both?” “The world is on fire and there is tinder everywhere. ... The whole influence of passion is abroad in the world, and it is not strange that men are red in such circumstances.” Thus the need to be prepared militarily. “Congress cannot know what to do unless the nation knows what to do. That is the reason I have come to you. Doo bee doo bee doo.” He may not have actually said the last bit.

Senators are moving away from the initial hostility many of them expressed for Supreme Court nominee Louis Brandeis. But questions remain. One progressive Republican wants to know Brandeis’s attitude toward the federal control of water power sites. The Senate Judiciary Committee asks the White House for the usual list of people who recommended Brandeis, only to be told that there is no such list.

Rube Goldberg, the most popular cartoonist in the US, now earns 50,000 a year from his cartoons alone, the most popular being “Boob McNutt,” which is also his porn name. He also makes movies. Not porn movies. Although a Rube Goldberg porno might be... interesting.

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Today -100: January 29, 1916: A radical upon the bench of the Supreme Court is not easily imaginable

Woodrow Wilson nominates Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, much to everyone’s surprise and some people’s horror. Brandeis is known as something of an economic radical, believing in the regulation of corporations. He had several discussions with Wilson on the subject in 1912. His most recent book is Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It. He also supports a “living law,” responsive to changes in society. And of course he’s a Jew and there’s never been one of those on the Court before.

The NYT is hostile to Brandeis because he believes in social justice and shit, and the Court is no place for people who believe in things: “A radical upon the bench of the Supreme Court is not easily imaginable.”

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Today -100: January 28, 1916: We can no longer be a provincial nation

The NYT has a gossipy piece on the supposed new heads of German intelligence in the US, replacing the departed von Papen and Boy-Ed. It doesn’t name the new guys, but gives lots of little clues: one is an officer of the same rank as von Papen but in a different branch, one is “almost as well known” as the former spies, and the two “often gather at a certain restaurant not far from Times Square. The restaurant was recently opened and is run by a foreigner, who came to this country from France – although he is not a Frenchman – several months ago.”

Woodrow Wilson gives the first speech on his tour for his preparedness plans. “We can no longer be a provincial nation,” he says.

Headline of the Day -100:

They (the Congressional Union) “force” him to do so by showing up without an appointment at the Waldorf and refusing to go away until they see him. He tells them, “It may be, ladies, that my mind works slowly.” Yes it may, it really may. “I have always felt that those things were most solidly built that were built piece by piece,” i.e., state by state. One of the suffragists points out that he isn’t pushing preparedness on a state-by-state basis.

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Today -100: January 27, 1916: I would totally see a movie called Monks vs. Pirates

Montenegro seems to have surrendered again. They’ll keep doing it until they get it right.

The British Parliament votes not to expand the blockade of Germany after Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey suggests that they might not want to piss off neutral nations like the US.

Headline of the Day -100:

“All the monasteries on the holy mountain were fortified in the Middle Ages in order to resist pirates.”

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Today -100: January 26, 1916: Of German reactions, German princes, the German language, and champs

The US and Germany are still negotiating over the Lusitania. The US is insisting that Germany admit that the attack was illegal, which would entail legal liability for the Americans killed. Germany wants to pretend it is settling with the US out of the goodness of its Teutonic heart, as an act of grace, rather than as a matter of legal right.

Headline of the Day -100:

Wow! How do they?

Oh.

Germany is trying to negotiate a separate peace with Serbia, promising it more territory and the thing it must surely have wanted all along, a German prince on its throne (Wilhelm’s second son, Eitel Friedrich).

Germany asks its new ally Bulgaria to make German classes compulsory for all schoolchildren.

A Champ Clark Presidential Campaign Committee appears in New York City although Clark, the Democratic Speaker of the House, is not running against Wilson. Almost the entire committee seem to be German-Americans...

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Today -100: January 25, 1916: Outfokkering the Fokkers

In seeming response to the US’s demands on Carranza regarding the train attack, Mexican Gen. Gabriel Gavira, commandant of the garrison at Juarez, presents the US military with a demand for the punishment of a US soldier who wounded a Mexican civilian. Mexico also wants American cattle thieves arrested.

Headline of the Day -100:

Austria says it has captured Scutari, Albania.

A meeting at Carnegie Hall endorses the creation of a Jewish Congress (the American Jewish Congress, est. 1918) to demand equal rights for Jews, especially in Europe after the war, and to represent Jews at the peace conference. Says chairman Louis Brandeis, “The Jewish problem can be solved only as the problem of the whole Jewish people.” Note that this is what Brandeis is doing publicly in the period between the death of Justice Lamar and the nomination of his successor.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, performing Sheherazade and Afternoon of a Faun at the Met. After the staging of the latter is altered slightly to meet Chief Magistrate McAdoo’s demands, Diaghilev proclaims, “America is saved!”

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Today -100: January 24, 1916: There is no good in being up in the air alone

Dublin police raid the house of Countess Constance Markievicz, the suffragette and Irish nationalist (she married into the Polish title) who in 1918 will be the first woman elected to Parliament, although she will not take her seat. Um, spoiler alert. The police seize a printing press they claim was used to print pro-German literature.

There’s a colorful parliamentary by-election campaign in the Mile End district of London. With the general election postponed, this is about all there is for gauging British public opinion. The contest is between Warwick Brookes and Pemberton Billing, two men with four very English last names between them. Billing is running as an independent on a platform of stopping the zeppelin bombings of London. He makes his speeches from an airplane towed around behind an automobile. Another campaigning innovation: showing movies of himself flying planes. Billing’s been involved in various aviation-related business ventures for years and just resigned from the Royal Naval Air Service to run for Parliament, saying “There is no good in being up in the air alone. I must get into Parliament and impress upon it the necessity of more equipment.” He won’t get in this time but will soon. He will also be responsible for the first appearance of the word “clitoris” in the London Times; check back in two years for more on that.

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Today -100: January 23, 1916: Of terse houses

Thomas Edison evidently never told the Navy about the danger of his battery causing a hydrogen explosion on a submarine. Still, Edison’s people (represented at the hearing by Chief Engineer Miller Hutchison, inventor of both the hearing aid and the car horn) blame the commander of the E-2 sub, which did, in fact, explode, for failing to keep the blowers on at full speed while the batteries were being discharged.

Wilson’s emissary, Col. House (who is not a real colonel) (or a real house), is in Europe. He holds a very informative press conference in Paris. Will he see any French statesmen? “Probably.” Will he see any German ones when he visits Berlin? “I hope so.” Has he noticed any change in public sentiment in Britain or France since his last visit? “I cannot say.”

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Today -100: January 22, 1916: There seems to have been a studied attempt to do everything in an unpleasant manner

Headline of the Day -100: 

So effective power in Montenegro has shifted to Gen. Martinovitch.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“There seems to have been a studied attempt to do everything in an unpleasant manner.”

Carranza announces plans to move the capital from Mexico City to Dolores Hidalgo, which they’ll bulldoze and rebuild in grand style, as befits... nah, it’ll never happen.

Pancho Villa supposedly has taken time out from his busy schedule of fleeing government troops to get married again, bigamously.

5 negroes are seized from jail in Sylvester, Georgia by 40 or 50 men and lynched. The lynchers tricked their way into the jail by bringing a tied-up negro (a random black guy they grabbed off the street? unclear) and saying they wanted to put their prisoner in jail. Also unclear is whether the lynched men had anything other than skin color in common with the man the mob had intended to kill, a suspect in the murder of a sheriff. He was not actually in the jail, the sheriff having moved him as a precaution against just such an event. But he didn’t take the precaution of not opening the door of the jail to random groups of strangers with tied-up negroes.

A newly built Mormon church in Buck Valley, Pennsylvania is dynamited.

Yuan Shikai postpones his coronation as emperor of China because of the uprisings against him.

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Today -100: January 21, 1916: And I, a queen, could do nothing to help you

The Montenegro-Austria war is back on. In fact, Montenegro is now denying that it was ever formally negotiating for peace. The Montenegrin government is now in Albania.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“And I, a queen, could do nothing to help you!” she reportedly exclaimed before the swoon. Such a drama, um, queen.

The House Military Affairs Committee is discussing whether New York and San Francisco are vulnerable to bombardment from enemy ships. Gen. Weaver, Chief of Coast Artillery, says those cities need artillery, but he would, wouldn’t he?

At an anti-war meeting in Washington DC, Oswald Villard (William Lloyd Garrison’s grandson) says that Woodrow Wilson’s newfound support of military preparedness is based on nothing more than boosting his popularity for re-election. The meeting is sponsored by the, swear to God, Anti-Preparedness Committee.

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Today -100: January 20, 1916: They have deliberately thrown away every advantage they ever had of Greek sympathy

Montenegro pulls out of surrender talks with Austria over the latter’s unacceptable terms. King Nikola is going into exile in Italy. It’ll be a few days before the Austrian terms are made public. They include complete disarmament of everyone in Montenegro, conscription of all men 16 to 50 into the Austrian army, and surrender of the Serbian soldiers who escaped into Montenegro.

King Constantine of Greece again sends for an Associated Press reporter, to complain about Allied treatment of his country in occupying territory, blowing up the Demir-Hissar Bridge, etc. He says the only rationale for occupying Corfu was to house Serbian troops Italy was unwilling to take because of fear of cholera. “They have deliberately thrown away every advantage they ever had of Greek sympathy.” He says he thinks the war will end in a draw.

Fresh off removing the ban on mixed-race boxing, the NY State Athletic Commission is asked to ban non-Irish boxers adopting Irish names.

Woodrow Wilson will soon tour the country making speeches in support of his (military) preparedness plans. William Jennings Bryan announces he will stump against the plans, possibly trailing Wilson on his itinerary.

Carranza declares Pancho Villa (and others) outlaws; any citizen is empowered to kill them “without any formality of the law.” In Mexico, I think this means the firing squad don’t have to wear tuxedos.

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Today -100: January 19, 1916: The Charlie nickel

King Nikola of Montenegro hands his sword to German Gen. Herlees. Not all of the army is following the king’s surrender, though, and a couple of Montenegrin generals have joined the Serbs. Nikola doesn’t know it yet, but he’s done as king.

British papers are peddling the story that Nikola always had a secret deal with Austria, and that if Italy had sent troops to rescue Montenegro, they’d have been marching into a trap. Italian papers are likewise pointing out that shipments of food and munitions Italy had sent Montenegro were left on the dock, as if the Montenegrens knew they weren’t really going to be fighting Austria.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: the NYT publishes a report from Berlin, and a denial of that report from London, that Britain and France have issued an ultimatum to Greece to expel Central Power ambassadors within 48 hours.

Headline of the Day -100:

A couple of Pancho Villa’s lieutenants (or generals, as the case may be) are publicly executed in Juarez and their corpses displayed at the train station, as was the custom. They will also go on a posthumous roadtrip and be publicly displayed in Chihuahua. This is necessary, Carranza’s people say, to convince the US that they’d really caught and killed Gen. José Rodriguez, the man they claim was responsible for the train massacre.

A young woman believed to be an escaped novice from St. Joseph’s Convent in Philadelphia is arrested in Baltimore, on the convent’s request. Not sure what grounds there are to arrest a 23-year-old adult woman for leaving a convent.

Vending machine and telephone and nickelodeon and subway interests are trying to stop the sale of nickel-shaped coins, sold for a penny each, that can be used in their machines. The fake coins were supposedly intended as novelty items – they have an elastic cord, so you give it to someone, then it whips back to you, ZOINK!, hours of hilarity – and were only subsequently discovered to have more nefarious purposes.

Oh, the face on the coins? Charlie Chaplin.

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Today -100: January 18, 1916: Of surrenders, conscription, and rubber

OK, this time Montenegro definitely surrenders.

Or does it?

The British Parliament, working on the conscription bill, rejects moves to include Ireland. Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond says using force would endanger Ireland’s loyalty, as demonstrated by the success of recruiting in Ireland (he doesn’t mention that that’s true only in Northern Ireland). This argument applies throughout the United Kingdom, surely?

Also rejected: an attempt to include married men. However, the only marriages which will count are those performed before November 2, the day Asquith promised not to conscript married men.

A plot to smuggle raw rubber from the United States to Germany on board passenger ships using women as rubber mules ends with 3 Germans and an American pleading guilty and paying fines.

There was recently a bit of fuss (which I didn’t mention here) over an Italian merchant ship, the Verdi, which arrived in New York harbor armed with cannon, and was permitted to leave port in the same condition. Now Austria says that any armed ships will be sunk by its submarines without warning.

The US wants Carranza’s army to hunt down the train massacrers, but not enough to let them cross through US territory to Chihuahua.

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Today -100: January 17, 1916: Of boxing and profiteering

The New York State Athletic Commission had the NY deputy attorney general investigate whether its rule banning mixed boxing matches between white and black boxers was constitutional. He says it isn’t, so they’ll have to rescind the rule.

Germany plans to impose a special tax on war profits – after the war.

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Today -100: January 16, 1916: Of surrenders, batteries, outlaws, and peaceniks

Montenegro denies having surrendered.

A US Navy submarine explodes at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, killing 4. The Navy thinks it’s the fault of Thomas Edison, or at least of his battery, which emits hydrogen but supposedly not in enough quantity to do this sort of damage when it ignites and explodes. The Edison battery was supposed to be safer than those using chlorine, which have killed quite a few sailors over the years.

Carranza says the men responsible for the slaughter of 17 Americans during a train robbery will be declared outlaws, which means anyone can shoot them on sight and collect a bounty.

Speaking of outlaws, Emmeline Pankhurst arrives in the US and, just like on her last visit in 1913, is stopped at Ellis Island because of her criminal record. In 1913, Pres. Wilson intervened. Immigration officials say that’s not a precedent. They’ll let her in anyway after a bit more harrumphing. She’s here to appeal for relief funds for Serbia and is accompanied by the former Serbian foreign minister. Asked about women’s suffrage, she says British women are now so busy making munitions and bandages and whatnot that there’s no time to think of political problems.

Most of Henry Ford’s peace party is now coming home. They didn’t bring about peace.

A Mormon colony in Chihuahua, where the train massacre occurred, refuses to leave Mexico, “where they still have property.” And multiple wives, but the NYT doesn’t mention that part for some reason.

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Today -100: January 15, 1916: Of check books, memorable instances of sacrifice, usury, and the church very militant indeed

As I mentioned, when military attaché (and future German chancellor) Franz von Papen returned from the US to Germany via the UK under safe passage, the British took the opportunity to seize all his papers. Including, if the British are to be believed, his check book, showing his payments to secret agents for blowing up bridges and the like, because he totally paid them with checks and kept the stubs, even knowing he’d be traveling through an enemy port. The German ambassador, Victor Meldrew Count von Bernstorff, responds: “I don’t believe it.”

“Further than that the Ambassador declined to be quoted for publication.”

Russian Czar Nicholas issues an imperial order to the military. Evidently he wants them to win the war. “The year 1915 has passed, and it was filled with memorable instances of sacrifice by my glorious forces.” If there were any instances of them actually winning any battles in 1915, they’re evidently not so memorable.

Rep. William Howard (D-Georgia) wants Congress to investigate bank interest rates, which he says illegally reach as much as 50% per year, especially in the South and on loans to farmers.

The letters columns of British newspapers have been full of discussions of whether Church of England priests should be allowed to join the military. The Archbishop of Canterbury says no because they’re in God’s service, but of course the British public has been told over and over, including by priests from the pulpit, that this is a holy, righteous war. A thousand London curates have petitioned to be allowed to join up (although not necessarily in a lethal capacity).

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Today -100: January 14, 1916: The evil day will surely come unless our government abandons its attitude of criminal fatuity

Montenegro surrenders to Austria. The country had been hoping for assistance from Italy, which never came.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Nothing says workplace safety like your bosses having to “deny reign of terror.”

The Carranza military has captured the Villa generals supposedly responsible for the train massacre.

Pres. Wilson tells congresscritters that he’s against military intervention in Mexico, and anyway the massacred American mining party had been warned against entering that part of Mexico. They plan to introduce resolutions authorizing him to send the army into Mexico anyway.

Theodore Roosevelt, of course, wants to invade. He adds that thanks to Wilson’s wimpy policies on Mexico and Germany, if the US does not “do our duty in Mexico,” the US’s rep is now so low that one of the European countries will seize Mexico after the European war ends: “Thanks to this administration, our people may have ahead of them a most evil day of reckoning, when the warring powers are again free to turn their attention to us. I believe that the evil day will surely come unless our government abandons its attitude of criminal fatuity as regards both preparedness and international duty.”

Rep. James Slayden of Texas says the border states will only be satisfied when the murderers are put to death. (Indeed, there is some worry that Texas vigilantes will cross into Mexico lookin’ for a little payback, as is the custom).

Ousted Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta dies in El Paso from “intestinal trouble” (i.e., he drank himself to death).

German Social Democratic Party MPs expel Karl Liebknecht.

A Canadian court convicts a man of sedition for giving a speech in which he called King George a puppet and said that the recruiting slogan “your king and country need you” should be “your king and country bleed you.” Anyway, the man’s name, very pleasingly, is Wilfrid Gribble.

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Today -100: January 13, 1916: Of bandits, conscription, blockades, corfus, Goethe censorship, and explosions

Following that attack on the train in Mexico, many in the US Congress demand military intervention. And Secretary of State Robert Lansing has written a jolly stiff letter to Carranza’s consul. The letter refers to the bandits as “operating under the direction of General Villa,” although I don’t know that that’s been established yet. (Update: the train’s conductor claims to recognize a couple of them). The note also says that they were “murdered because they were Americans, and were killed in accordance with the general policy publicly announced recently by Villa.” Americans on the train were indeed specifically singled out for murder. Lansing demands that those responsible be captured and punished and that (American-owned) mines in Chihuahua be protected by Mexican troops.

Conscription passes the Second Reading in Parliament 431-39.  Many of the Labour MPs who voted against it in the First Reading changed their minds after being given assurances that it won’t be a stepping-stone to general conscription (it will) or industrial conscription (miners are especially worried about being turned into slaves). Conscription is generally popular with the British public.

Britain is about to step up its naval blockade of Germany. Lord Northcliffe’s papers have been complaining that many Germans aren’t even starving. To the extent that the blockade has been less than total until now, it’s because Britain has been careful not to tread too heavily on the toes of neutrals like the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, not to mention the US. An especial target: Sweden. And the US, really, since a lot of cotton and other American goods transit to Germany through Sweden.

The French occupy Corfu. Yeah, France isn’t at war with Greece, but 1) it’ll be a good place for the evacuated Serbian army, 2) Kaiser Wilhelm has a vacation home (ok, “summer palace”) there, so fuck you Willy. (The palace, Achilleion Castle, also looks like a good place to put the evacuated Serbian army). Greece plans a “vigorous protest” but won’t otherwise do anything about it.

One Don Collins of Garden City, New York is arrested as the head of a gang who posed as United States marshals and extorted bribes from wealthy men not to “arrest” them for violations of the Mann White Slave Act (traveling with their mistresses, some of whom were working for the gang, across state lines). The ring was uncovered because the cops busted them for their sideline: stealing nickels from public phones.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Not Goethe!

Explosions at the Du Pont gunpowder plants in Delaware and New Jersey, making five explosions this week in the company’s factories. The company says they are “unavoidable accidents” caused by the rapid expansion of the company since the start of the European war. “It is also true that some of the operatives have not been at the business long enough to acquire the experience of many of the older men.” One good way to become an older man: not work in an explosives factory.

An Italian newspaper says that Austria and Germany have named a new king of conquered Serbia: the illegitimate son of King Milan. Probably nonsense.

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