Today -100: July 12, 1916: Of polio and occupied Ireland

New York polio death toll = 270. The Department of Health is investigating pretty much everything dirty in the city, for instance closing 50 soda fountains. There are scattered cases in New Jersey, and Montclair orders children entering the city to undergo 3 weeks’ quarantine.

Charles Evans Hughes’s Campaign Committee balances Republicans and Progressives, leaving the Republican Old Guard in a small minority.

In the House of Lords, Lord Lansdowne explains the British government’s plans for ruling Ireland until the new Lloyd George agreement can be voted on and/or sabotaged by Parliament. The details of the plan are obviously less important than the 40,000 troops Lansdowne says will be needed to occupy Ireland to keep the natives in line.

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Today -100: July 11, 1916: What makes Mexico suspicious of us is that she does not believe as yet that we want to serve her

The House of Representatives passes an emergency spending bill to cover the $300m in new spending for “preparedness” and Mexico. Income tax rates will be doubled, and there will be a surtax on high incomes, an inheritance tax, and a tax on munitions profits.

Woodrow Wilson tells the World’s Salesmanship Congress that “What makes Mexico suspicious of us is that she does not believe as yet that we want to serve her. She believes we want to possess her.” That pronoun ain’t helping.

Headline of the Day -100:

14 more polio deaths in NYC yesterday. Health Commissioner Haven Emerson says there is no reason for panicky alarm. That adjective ain’t helping.

Britain threatens the Netherlands with a cutoff of its cotton imports if it doesn’t end all exports of manufactured goods to other neutral countries, since goods that have been ostensibly exported to Switzerland and Romania have tended to find their way to Germany.

Prince Edward Albert, the future Edward VIII, is rumored, one assumes falsely, to be seeking the hand in marriage of Princess Yolanda of Italy. Who is 15, barely.

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Today -100: July 10, 1916: Of polio, Rough Riders II, submarines, and Bull Moose

New York children were kept away from churches and Sunday school yesterday. NYC polio death toll = 225. They’re also doing a lot of street-cleaning, because they have no idea how polio is spread.

Theodore Roosevelt offers the nation a division of 20,000 volunteers to be used in a war with Mexico. He would be a major general. He also expects to be able to hand-pick soldiers from the regular army. And he’ll make Seth Bullock (you know, from Deadwood) an officer.

A giant German submarine, Deutschland, is coming into port in Baltimore. It’s a civilian sub, and it may be the first sub to cross the Atlantic. This voyage is a proof-of-concept for using submarines to break the British blockade. It’s carrying dyestuffs and mail, including official dispatches for the German embassy but, contrary to rumors, no message from Kaiser Wilhelm to Pres. Wilson. The voyage of the Deutschland will be celebrated in Germany for puttin’ one over on the Brits, and the publicity campaign will include a book by the captain,

but the sub made only more trip to the US, and its sister boat, the Bremen, will vanish mysteriously in September on its way to Virginia.

The Colorado Progressive Party decides not to endorse Hughes or to dissolve itself like so many other state branches have.

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Today -100: July 9, 1916: Sadly, no actual goulash is fired from actual cannons

Germany is considering responding to Britain’s tightened economic blockade by cutting the rations of the 2 million British POWs it holds.

The traveling kitchens the German government is (inadequately) deploying to deal with the effects of that blockade are called “goulash cannons.”

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Today -100: July 8, 1916: Of negotiations, conscription, and polio

The US accepts Carranza’s proposal for negotiations, which is a face-saving delaying tactic for everyone, a way for Carranza to back down from his demand for US troops to leave his country. The talks will drag on for months, accomplishing nothing. Pershing’s troops won’t leave Mexico, which not surprisingly is Mexico’s prerequisite for agreement on anything else, but neither will they actively roam the countryside attempting to track down stray remnants of Villa’s band.

The ambassador to the US from the Belgian government-in-exile protests that Germany is conscripting Belgians who have lived for a period of time in Germany into the German Army to fight against Belgians, violating the Hague Convention.

The death toll in the New York polio epidemic is now 187. Children under 16 are banned from libraries and park sandboxes. People are being dragged into court on charges of having no lids on their garbage cans. Stray dogs and cats are being killed. In other words, they’re attacking anything and everything (immigrants! poor people! ethnic food!) that might conceivably transmit the disease. Health Commissioner Haven Emerson says the best prevention is soap and water, sunlight and fresh air, because why not.

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Today -100: July 7, 1916: Must not make Captain Picard joke, must not make Captain Picard joke, must not make Captain Picard joke...

Lloyd George is appointed Secretary for War, replacing the drowned Lord Kitchener. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey is made an earl, because evidently one of the 4 top jobs is supposed to be held by a member of the House of Lords, and Kitchener was that one. (Update: Grey will choose to be a viscount instead, because there’s already an Earl Grey.)

Charles Evans Hughes meets with suffragist and anti-suffrage delegations for 30 minutes each. Both express themselves satisfied with what he told them.

Married men and men with dependent parents will be allowed to leave the National Guards if they want. It was either that or pay actual money to support their families, and we can’t have that.

The Army’s man in charge of censoring news reports of the Mexican campaign: Douglas MacArthur.

The NAACP starts a $10,000 anti-lynching fund.

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Today -100: July 6, 1916: We have from the beginning had no other motives than those based upon our right and our duty

The NYT has an editorial,

that captures American condescension towards Mexico in all its glory. Carranza’s greatest failing, it seems, was to underestimate the wonderfulness of the United States: “We have from the beginning had no other motives than those based upon our right and our duty. That Carranza should have so profoundly misunderstood us is perhaps not so strange – the Mexicans are not only suspicious of others, but they often seem to be incapable of understanding their own shortcomings.” Lucky they have you then.

Lloyd George’s plan for Home Rule is to take the MPs currently representing Ireland (excluding the 6 Ulster counties) and call them a Home Rule House of Commons. They’d do double duty in the Dublin and Westminster parliaments, which should be fine because the one in Dublin won’t be allowed to do much of anything anyway. Amusingly, this plan would mean that one Home Rule MP would be rabid anti-Home Ruler Sir Edward Carson, MP for Trinity College, Dublin (a seat elected by graduates of the university). There will also be a Senate, packed with Ulster Unionists. This arrangement will be a temporary one, expiring one year after the war ends.

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Today -100: July 5, 1916: I don’t think Hallmark makes a thank-you card for that one

Chicago fires 68 teachers who are members of a union.

As the polio epidemic continues, wealthy New Yorkers are sending their children out of the city. There is no treatment for polio, so the patients just have to ride it out and hope for the best.

Prince Wilhelm of Germany, 2nd in line to the throne, is enrolled in the German Army as a lieutenant of the First Guard Infantry. On his tenth birthday.

Willy will still be wearing that uniform (well, probably a larger version) when he was, um, will be (Jesus with the verb tenses already!) killed in action in Belgium in 1940.

Carranza finally responds to Washington’s demand of June 25th that he make clear his attitude towards the US military presence in his country. Carranza’s note is reportedly mild enough in tone to reduce the possibility of a Mexican-American war.

On the 4th of July Woodrow Wilson dedicates the new American Federation of Labor building, though being Woodrow Wilson he says something pompous about having, as president, to serve all classes and not favor any one class, so he’s dedicating the building to common counsel and a common understanding. Mabel Vernon of Nevada, a women’s suffrage organizer, interrupts to ask why he opposes a national suffrage amendment. The police throw her out. Wilson and Vernon’s paths will cross again.

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Today -100: July 4, 1916: Of Wall Street witches, guardsmen and candy, polio, unchecked lawlessness, and bats

Hetty Green, the Witch of Wall Street and the richest woman in the world, dies
 at 81. She inherited a fortune (some of it quite possibly by forging a will), invested well in bonds and railroads and whatnot, and was legendarily, epically cheap. She leaves an estate worth upwards of $100,000,000.

US national guards are moving towards the Mexican border. Pennsylvania guardsmen arrive in Kansas starving, because they weren’t provided enough food for the train trip, while New York troops heading for Texas are being overfed by hospitable Southerners on the route. “At every stop since leaving Indianapolis a royal reception has been accorded the men, said reception too often consisting of too much candy, ice cream, and cake.”

There’s a polio (“infantile paralysis”) epidemic in New York City, with 72 new cases and 23 deaths in a 48-hour period. There will be a lot more. Movie theaters are ordered to admit no children under 16. Licenses have been revoked for Fourth of July celebrations in Brooklyn, where the outbreaks are most numerous. This polio epidemic will be followed by smaller, related outbreaks in succeeding summers, including the one in 1921 in which Franklin Roosevelt contracted it.

A Royal Commission into the Easter Rising blames former Chief Secretary for Ireland Augustine Birrell. It says the “main cause of the rebellion appears to be that lawlessness was allowed to grow up unchecked,” what with the volunteer forces of both sides openly drilling and so on.

Baseball news: Ty Cobb is suspended and fined for throwing his bat into the stands after striking out.

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Today -100: July 3, 1916: What’s the Russian for “too little, too late?”

The Russian Duma passes a bill giving equal civil rights to peasants.

Supposedly, Carranza has refused to accept Pancho Villa’s surrender. Total bullshit, I’m pretty sure.

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Today -100: July 2, 1916: Of evacuations, offensives, and peasant women

Secretary of State Lansing asks Congress for $300,000 more to evacuate Americans from Mexico. He seems to think they should all leave the country. The US Army has been commandeering munitions intended for the Europeans, including 250 machine guns (price: $450,000), and may take their barbed wire as well.

The French and British offensive along the Somme River captures 5 towns.

Headline of the Day -100:

They’re resisting preliminary steps, like surveying, for land re-division, suspecting that petty officials will use it to screw them over. They’ve been rioting wherever anything is tried.

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Today -100: July 1, 1916: A day of downs and ups

The Battle of the Somme begins. This is the big one, the offensive that will end the war, according to the British generals. They are so convinced that a one-week bombardment (1.6 million shells!) would cut the German barbed wire, destroy their positions, and demoralize the German soldiers who survived into instant surrender, that the British soldiers were ordered to advance at a walking pace towards the German trenches and they were weighed down with 60 or 70 pounds of equipment, including shovels so they could rebuild the trenches they’d be capturing and bury all the dead Germans. And after that, on to Berlin. The French generals were more sceptical about the plan.

In fact, the Somme offensive was so ambitious, conducted along an 18-mile front, that British artillery was too spread out to do that sort of damage (also a lot of the shells, mostly imported from the US, failed to go off). Also, the German trenches, some of the oldest of the war, were very well constructed – German trenches were always the best, French the worst. So the wire wasn’t cut, the positions weren’t destroyed, and the German soldiers sat out the bombardment relatively safe deep underground and are therefore well-positioned to use machine guns to take out wave after wave of soldiers, who did not stroll all the way across No Man’s Land or in many cases make it past their own trenches. For the British Army, July 1, 1916 was the bloodiest day of this or any other war, with almost 20,000 killed out of 120,000 casualties, 3% of the casualties suffered by the British for the whole war on just this day. Compare that to the 21,000 killed in the whole of the Boer War. German casualties were less than a tenth of that.

Gen. Douglas Haig, whose baby this was, wrote in his diary on July 2 (to be fair, the early reports he was receiving were innaccurate): “A day of downs and ups. I visit two casualty-clearing stations. They were very pleased at my visit, the wounded were in wonderful spirits. Reported today that total casualties are estimated at over 40,000. This cannot be considered severe in view of numbers engaged and the length of front of attack.”

The Battle of the Somme lasted nearly 5 months. British positions advanced, at most, 8 miles.

Carranza comments that Americans, including those in the Punitive Expedition, have killed 48 Mexicans despite the supposed lack of a state of war between the two countries.

Mexico denies a report in an Italian newspaper that Mexico and Germany signed an alliance.

Four more of the Columbus raiders are executed in New Mexico.

British sources (so take it for what it’s worth) say there are riots all over Germany in response to the imprisonment of Karl Liebknecht.

Sir Roger Casement appeals his conviction. King George revokes his knighthood.

This is an official film, The Battle of the Somme, released in Britain in August. Most of it’s real, although the brief scene of the soldiers going over the top is probably a re-enactment.

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Today -100: June 30, 1916: If ever a man deserved capital punishment, it is he

Mexico releases the 10th Cavalry prisoners.

What do you think this obviously deeply racist NYT reporter would be saying about the black soldiers if he weren’t doing the rah rah nationalism thing? He uses the phrase “big buck negro” in the next paragraph.

There’s an unconfirmed report that Pancho Villa is still alive.

Headline of the Day -100:  

There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.

Sir Roger Casement makes a statement in court, objecting to the whole concept of being tried in England by an English jury under an English statute (the 1351 Treason Act). He is of course found guilty by the English jury and sentenced to English death. The Daily Telegraph says (but then it would, wouldn’t it?), “If ever a man deserved capital punishment, it is he.” The Daily Express, coming close to hinting at Casement’s homosexuality, says “The Irish have a genius for the canonization of martyrs, but even they will hardly find ground for admiration in the career of this clever, educated, and rather sordid and extremely degenerate traitor.”

The Berliner Tageblatt newspaper reappears, after running afoul of the censors for saying that corporations want to see the war go on indefinitely for the sake of their profits. The editor had to sign a promise not to disturb “the uniformity of patriotic enthusiasm.”

Germany is extending meat rationing to the entire Reich.

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Today -100: June 29, 1916: Of spillsburys, courts-martial, and German gold

The Carranza government orders the release of the American prisoners. That’s 23 negro soldiers and their Mormon scout Lem Spillsbury, which is more or less the name you’d expect for a Mormon scout, I guess. Although the US is also still demanding Carranza’s active consent to the US Punitive Expedition roaming the Mexican countryside, the Mexican-American War II: Electric Bugaloo (is that how you spell bugaloo? I’ll be damned if I’m gonna look it up) seems for now to have been averted. To mixed reaction in Juarez, according to the NYT’s ever-condescending correspondent:

All foreigners living in Juarez are being disarmed, in retaliation for the disarming of Mexicans in El Paso.

Karl Liebknecht is sentenced by court-martial to 30 months in prison and dismissal from the army (which, as a member of the Reichstag he shouldn’t have been drafted into anyway, but then neither should he be tried when he has parliamentary immunity, so whatevs). The charges were attempted high treason, gross insubordination and resistance to the authorities for his speech at a May Day rally. The trial was held in secret, with newspapers banned from printing any details except the verdict.

Sir Roger Casement’s lawyer faints during his closing speech at Sir Roger’s treason trial. He was able to call no witnesses, because they’re all in Germany, where the treason allegedly took place. He claimed that the Irish brigade Casement was recruiting from POWs was only intended to fight for Irish Home Rule, not to assist Germany. Casement, making a statement, denies taking any “German gold.”

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Today -100: June 28, 1916: Of treason and rough riders

More Mexican soldiers are arriving at the border. The worry in the US is that they’ll invade the US through El Paso while the US Army is elsewhere.

Mexico is recruiting for its army, just like the US is. Including from its jails. A circular promises that the Mexican Army will capture Washington D.C.

Spoiler Alert: It won’t.

At his trial, Sir Roger Casement’s lawyers try to have his treason indictment quashed because the alleged treason took place... outside the country. Is that even against the law?

In event of war, Theodore Roosevelt plans to ask the War Department to be allowed to field his own Rough-Riders-type unit and organize it according to his own notions, with horses and airplanes and everything. He’s already started recruiting.

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Today -100: June 27, 1916: It is the acme of idiocy to inquire of a man what his purpose is after he shoots you in the face

The Progressive Party’s National Committee, after a long, bitter debate, endorses Charles Evans Hughes for president, following the instructions of Theodore Roosevelt. A motion to instead run Victor Murdock, newspaperman and former Republican congresscritter for Kansas, is defeated 2 to 1. And that’s pretty much it for the Progressive Party. You were fun while you lasted, Bull Moosers, not least because you were called Bull Moosers.

The US demands Mexico release the prisoners it captured at Carrizal, or else. The US also wants permission for its troops to remain in Mexico, doing whatever the hell they want.

Thousands of Carranza soldiers arrive at the Arizona border.

The US Navy tells ships to ignore Mexican lighthouses, which are either out or doing something unspecified but sneaky (there’s never any follow-up, so I have no idea what this is about).

Capt. Lewis S. Morey, the sole American survivor (other than those captives) of the Carrizal fight, himself wounded in the shoulder, reports that the men of the 10th Cavalry faced death with smiles on their lips and singing, although sadly he does not say what they were singing. That may all be true, who knows, but when a white captain is saying it about his negro subordinates, it sounds a little, well...

Morey is repeating the story that the Mexicans started the fighting.

The House and Senate are still negotiating the Militia Bill, and yes they probably will screw over the families of members of the militia sent to war in Mexico. Sen. William Stone (D-Missouri) says supporting the dependent sons of militiamen would just make them “degenerate.”

Speaking of war, they’ve decided not to. Specifically, they’ve removed the phrase “in the opinion of Congress an emergency now exists,” which could have been taken as acknowledging a state of war, and we can’t do that. Sen. Lawrence Sherman (R-Illinois) disagrees: “It is the acme of idiocy to inquire of a man what his purpose is after he shoots you in the face.”

The British Cabinet might break up over Irish Home Rule. Lord Selborne has resigned as president of the Board of Agriculture, and others may follow. Or they may not.

Ernest Shackleton is unable to reach his men on Elephant Island. Too much ice. He thinks/hopes they can survive on “short rations, supplemented by penguins” until he can get his hands on an icebreaker.

The 8th Earl of Sandwich dies at 76. His book “My Experiences in Spiritual Healing,” in which he claimed to be able to cure disease through prayer and the laying on of hands, came out just last year. Awkward. It was the 4th earl who could cure hunger through the laying on of meat between two slices of bread.

A note about the NYT -100’s fidelity to the facts: the earl was born in 1839, so they just went ahead and said he was 77. They always do this. Always.

The Cleveland Indians become the first baseball team to wear numbers so fans can identify the players.

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Today -100: June 26, 1916: Change of food and water causes more deaths than bullets

Germany’s food dictator threatens to ban all meat consumption starting in September.

Col. Terribery of the NY National Guard announces the standards for new recruits: they must be at least 5’4” and weigh 128 to 195 pounds (max 165 for mounteds). No four-eyes, no “excessive nervousness.” No one with bad molars (the British Army had a dental-health standard for recruits, but dropped it in early 1915 – insert your own joke here). And there’ll be a negro regiment, which will be a first for New York.

Ad of the Day -100:

According to Drugs.com, it’s sodium bicarbonate.

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Today -100: June 25, 1916: Mexico has long been an international nuisance

The Wilson administration is rather annoyed at not being able to formulate a Mexican policy (i.e., go to war) because of Gen. Pershing’s delay in sending a full report on exactly what happened at Carrizal (i.e., who really started the shooting between Mexican and US forces). The delay is in part because US soldiers are still making their way back in dribs and drabs. But the US is demanding the immediate release of captured US soldiers.

Gen. Jacinto Treviño, the Carrancista chief in Chihuahua State, says in a telegram to some random Mexican that at Carrizal he was only following Carranza’s orders. The US will take this as an admission that if there’s a war, the Mexicans started it.

The threat of impending war has brought Mexicans together, with some of Pancho Villa’s generals and men flocking to join Carranza’s army.

The US Senate Military Committee drops the $1 million the House appropriated for the families of National Guardsmen drafted into federal service. Instead, any guardsman with a wife and/or children may ask to be discharged. The Committee also removes the House’s 3-year limit on the terms of service, leaving it as “the period of the emergency.”

William Howard Taft says the duty to invade Mexico is clear – “Mexico has long been an international nuisance.” But, as he was told when he president, it will take 250,000 soldiers, we’ll need to capture every major city and port and then deal with guerilla warfare and it will all take two or three years.

This is surprising: a Sunday NYT Magazine article on the rather obscure late artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

The Mag also examines why so few French Canadians are joining the army. Evidently it’s because public schools in Quebec are not taught in French.

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Today -100: June 24, 1916: Of emergencies, ammunition, home rule, and dicks

The House of Representatives passes a resolution authorizing the president to draft state militias into the US military and allowing them to be used out of the country in Mexico, to meet what Woodrow Wilson is calling an “emergency” and is pointedly not calling a “war.” The House also appropriates $1 million for the families of men in the National Guard (the families of men in the regular Army can suck it, evidently).

If there is a full-scale war with Mexico, there may well be an ammunition shortage, because US munition-makers have all recalibrated their machinery to supply the European market with ammo of a different caliber than that used in US Army rifles. US Army ammunition is made by government arsenals, whose capacity is fairly limited.

A convention of Irish Nationalists from Northern Ireland, held in Belfast, agrees by a vote of 475 to 265 to John Redmond’s demand (backed up by a threat to resign as leader of the party) that they accept Lloyd George’s proposal to implement Home Rule but “temporarily” exclude 6 Ulster provinces. Lloyd George, always a sneaky fuck, let the Nats think that the exclusion was for the duration of the war only while telling the Unionists that it wasn’t and that there would be a whole new set of negotiations after the war, which they could obstruct to their hearts’ content. Sir Edward Carson and the Unionists have already accepted the proposals, even though they entail a Home Rule Parliament in Dublin.

Disconcerting Headline of the Day -100:

That’s William Dick and his new bride, Madeleine Force Astor, widow of John Jacob Astor IV, who went down with the Titanic.

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Today -100: June 23, 1916: Elk?

The Allies force Greece to demobilize its military. The resignation of the Cabinet yesterday also seems to be in response to Allied demands. Parliament will be dissolved and new elections called. The Entente also demands the firing of the Athens chief of police; he’s taking a leave of absence.

Carranza troops evacuate Juarez, expecting the US to occupy it if there’s a war, which would give the US Army access to the railroads, which they have not been allowed to use to supply the Punitive Expedition.

The NYT has heard rumors about Germany trying to influence Carranza into a war with the US, but doesn’t believe them.

Headline of the Day -100:

The Arabs are revolting.

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Today -100: June 22, 1916: The Battle of Carrizal

The 10th Cavalry (a negro unit) are attacked at Carrizal, Chihuahua, where they mistakenly thought they might find Pancho Villa, by Carrancista troops. Or at least that’s the American version. They lose the engagement, with 16 dead and 24 captured, though there are more Mexican casualties, including Gen. Félix Gómez. The first Pres. Wilson hears of this is literally hearing newsies yell “Extry!” and buying a newspaper.

There are several conflicting stories about how the fighting started. In one, the Mexicans ambushed the Americans under a flag of truce. In another, Gen. Gómez sent out a captain with a message ordering the Americans not to enter the town, but after hearing the message, they shot at the captain instead, injuring him and killing a private. I believe there’s a proverb about this sort of behaviour. A variant is that as the Mexican couriers approached, the Americans deployed in a skirmish line, making Gómez believe that they planned to attack, so he ordered his men to open fire.

Behind the scenes, Gen. Pershing is so pissed that he asks permission to seize the city of Chihuahua and the railroads, but Wilson tells him no. Hey, Wilson really did “keep us out of war.” Although he also took us to the brink of it. (Note that the 1916 Democratic election slogan is “He kept us out of war,” not as it is often misquoted “He kept us out of the war.” The slogan covers both Mexico and Europe).

Companies are being urged to continue the pay of employees who are off with the national guards, and many are, making up the difference between militia pay and regular wages or even paying full wages. But pacifist Henry Ford says no, and will treat any such workers as having quit. (Ford will deny this.)

The mayor of El Paso, Texas has Pancho Villa’s wife (as well as her sister, her sister’s 5-year-old child, and the child’s nanny) seized and deported to Mexico. Didn’t know mayors could do that.

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Today -100: June 21, 1916: Of discourteous tones and tempers

The NYT publishes a report about life on the British submarine E-9, interesting perhaps because written by Rudyard Kipling.

The US note is finally sent to Carranza, and it is as abrasive, not to say insulting, as advertised. It complains about Carranza’s “discourteous tone and temper,” then discourteously refuses to withdraw troops and indeed promises to send more, while discourteously castigating the First Chief for failing to control anarchy in Mexico, for giving shelter to bandits who invade the US, for being “unable or possibly considered it inadvisable to apprehend and punish” the Villaistas responsible for the Columbus, New Mexico raid, and worst of all, for maligning the innocent motives behind the US invasion. It warns of “the gravest consequences” if Mexico treats this as a declaration of war. Many now expect a war. Everyone’s quite excited.

The US arrests a German banker from Mexican City suspected of doing the German government’s nefarious business in Mexico.

Supposedly there were food riots in Munich in which 25,000 people, no less, took part.

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Today -100: June 20, 1916: I.M. Laughter, we hardly knew ye

The US government has been leaking for days that it is about to respond to Carranza’s demand for US troops to leave Mexico by telling him to stuff it. Now, Carranza issues an order to the military not to let any more US soldiers cross the border. He denies that the US incursion is aimed purely at bandits.

The governors of two Mexican states, Sinaloa and Yucatan, order Americans to leave in what the NYT is describing as declarations of war, though without quotes it’s hard to tell how seriously to take that.

One person who doesn’t know how seriously to take it is the commander of the gunboat USS Annapolis, who decides to send some bluejackets ashore in Mazatlán to ask what “declaration of war” means. Mexican soldiers shoot at their boat and arrest two crew members but release them after “an explanation” (the explanation may have been their commander threatening to bombard the city). Only one American is reported injured, Boatswain’s Mate I.M. Laughter. Well, that’s what it says, I.M. Laughter.

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Today -100: June 19, 1916: Go to your homes and be good Mexicans

Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, former German Army chief of staff and nephew of the famous strategist, drops dead at a funeral service in the Reichstag held for Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz, who died in Baghdad in April.

Pres. Wilson calls out almost every remaining state militiaman for duty guarding the Mexican border, freeing the regular army to invade in case of an all-out war.

Carranza tries to tamp down anti-American demonstrations, calling on his people to “Go to your homes and be good Mexicans, remembering also that I will do my utmost to preserve the dignity of the Mexican nation. If we are forced to resort to arms I will lead you in person.”

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Today -100: June 18, 1916: Of trails of blood, bananas, pirates of public opinion, follies, and the hidden crimes of society

Mexico demands that the latest bunch of US troops to cross the border be withdrawn or they will be attacked. The soldiers are pursuing the bandits I mentioned 2 days ago. “A trail of blood followed last night by the cavalry led to the body of a Mexican peon. His only possessions were two bullet holes, a rifle, and some ammunition.”

Headline of the Day -100:

We’ve all been there.

The Maine Progressive Party dissolves and its candidates step down, a week ahead of primaries.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Wolfgang Kapp (you may know him from the Kapp Putsch of 1920), who German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg called one of the “pirates of public opinion” in the Reichstag because of a pamphlet he wrote attacking the chancellor, tried to challenge him to a duel, but B-H said he was too busy, what with the war and everything.

Now playing on Broadway: Marion Davies in the Ziefeld Follies.

Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney Harry Lewis gets summonses issued for the president of Universal Film Exchange and for the manager of the Rialto Theatre because he objects to “Where Are My Children?”, a Tyrone Power Sr. movie about a district attorney whose crusade against abortion finds connections to it in... his... own... house! Lewis says “I am bitterly opposed to both plays and films that portray the sex relations and also exhibit the hidden crimes of society for the curious mind of the young.” 

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Today -100: June 17, 1916: A jumble of words

The Democratic Party platform includes this atrocity of a sentence, straight from the pen of Woodrow Wilson himself: “The Democratic party, therefore, recognizes the assertion and triumphant demonstration of the indivisibility and coherent strength of the nation as the supreme issue of this day in which the whole world faces the crisis of manifold change.”

The only contention over the platform (indeed, the only plank actually debated on the floor of the convention) was about the women’s suffrage plank. The debate was heckled and cheered by women in the galleries, and suffragists wrote down the names and votes of delegates, leading the NYT, perhaps inevitably, to make snide Madame Defarge references. The convention votes to “recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of the country by the States on the same terms as to men” after a speech by Sen. Thomas Walsh of Montana pragmatically reminding them that women vote in 12 states now and could really fuck up their shit in November, or words to that effect. Carrie Chapman Catt is not happy about the failure to support a federal constitutional amendment, saying the D’s “thought to hoodwink the women by a jumble of words”.

The man in charge of the Mexican Army in the north, Gen. Jacinto Trevino, warns Gen. Pershing that any movement of US troops further into Mexico will be considered an act of war. All males in Juarez have been ordered to report for military duty in preparation for that war. Mexico is already pissed off at the harsh language reportedly in the unsent US response to Carranza’s demand that its troops be withdrawn and is now also miffed at the Democratic platform, which justifies the occupation and its continuation while congratulating Wilson on his “resistance” to calls to just conquer Mexico, “notwithstanding the provocation to that course has been great, and should be resorted to, if at all, only as a last resort.” If at all!

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Today -100: June 16, 1916: I join the American people in thanking God that we have a president who does not want the nation to fight

The Democrat Convention nominates Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Marshall, earlier than planned. The delegates realized that there wasn’t enough business to keep the convention busy for all 4 days for which it was scheduled to run in order to keep the money rolling in to St Louis hotels and bars and prostitutes. They threatened to go home before the nominations and the organizers gave in and moved the noms up, deleting a day of boring speeches from the schedule.

William Jennings Bryan is attending as a reporter, but the delegates demand he be allowed to give a speech. Funnily enough, he has one all prepared. He praises Wilson effusively, saying “I join the American people in thanking God that we have a president who does not want the nation to fight.” He applauds the Federal Reserve Act for breaking the hold of Wall Street not only on the business of the nation but its politics, setting the nation free.

Pope Benedict bans dancing at all Catholic entertainments. Priests are banned from attending any dances.

The Bishop of Brooklyn says he’ll order phones removed from all Church buildings if another instance of phone-tapping occurs.

Mexican bandits raid across the border, attacking a US cavalry encampment, killing 3 soldiers but losing rather more themselves.

Laredo, Texas businessmen force the editor of El Progreso across the border into Mexico, not to return under penalty of death.

Rumors that Jews in Russia are encouraging desertion from the army lead Prime Minister Boris Stürmer to order governors to “keep strict watch over” Jews. “You must very carefully observe what the Jews talk and how they behave in railroad carriages”; “In case of the least suspicion, a Jew should be tried by court-martial” and if there is no evidence, exile them to Siberia anyway.

A mail train is blown up by a bomb mailed to the governor of Utah.

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Today -100: June 15, 1916: Do what we wish in the interest of foreign sentiment or we will wreak our vengeance

Lloyd George is offered the late Lord Kitchener’s job as Secretary of War, but asks for a few days to think it over.

Women suffragists line the roads leading to the St. Louis Coliseum in silent reminder to the delegates to the Democratic Convention that, hey, there are women in this country too.

The Democrats choose a campaign slogan for 1916: America First.

In a not-so-veiled allusion to German-American support for Hughes, Woodrow Wilson says, in a Flag Day speech at the Washington Monument, “There is disloyalty active in the United States and it must be absolutely crushed.” He accuses these unnamed people of “a species of political blackmail, saying ‘Do what we wish in the interest of foreign sentiment or we will wreak our vengeance at the polls.’”

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Today -100: June 14, 1916: My attitude is one of undiluted Americanism

Charles Evans Hughes, finally in campaign mode, says, “My attitude is one of undiluted Americanism, and anybody who supports me is supporting an out-and-out American and an out-and-out American policy and absolutely nothing else.”

With all the talk this year of “Americanism,” a term I don’t think I came across at all for 1915, and which will be ubiquitous for a long while (the Ku Klux Klan of the ‘20s loved it), Wilson has named today, Flag Day, as a federal holiday for the first time (it’s the anniversary of the adoption of the first American flag in 1777).

Sen. Charles Thomas (D-Colorado) introduces a resolution for a constitutional amendment banning members of the Supreme Court running for public office while on the bench – or two years afterwards. Subtle.

The NYT suggests that the Democratic Convention won’t be that interesting:

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Reading that, I wonder if that’s the first time someone heard a murder telephonically, but I can’t think of any way to look it up.

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A survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade, not of knitted headwear.

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Today -100: June 13, 1916: Of beards, train wrecks, and lawless aggression

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It’s not just Theodore Roosevelt who won’t run as a Progressive. Frank Hanly, who won the party’s primary for governor in Indiana (he was governor 1905-9), says he won’t run because the party failed to come out for prohibition. Hanly will run for president this year as the candidate of the Prohibition Party.

Metaphor of the Day -100: Some of the Republican convention delegates are in a literal train-wreck, including the governor and the former governor of Kentucky and the mayor of Louisville. They’re all okay.

Pres. Wilson sends 1,600 more troops to the border with Mexico. A draft of the Democratic Party platform written by Wilson no longer pretends that the Punitive Expedition is aimed only at Pancho Villa but says its purpose is also to protect “American citizens against lawless aggression” (there have been anti-American demonstrations in Chihuahua and Vera Cruz).

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Today -100: June 12, 1916: Slow news day -100

The Italian cabinet resigns after failing a vote of confidence.

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Today -100: June 11, 1916: I have not desired the nomination

The negotiations between Republican and Bull Moose leaders on fielding a joint presidential ticket fail, mostly because the R’s refuse to suggest a candidate. As the conference reached its inevitable conclusion, Roosevelt (phoning from Oyster Bay) suggests Henry Cabot Lodge, but it comes to nothing.

So the two conventions go about their separate business. The Progressives nominate Theodore Roosevelt and John M. Parker. Two minutes later across town, the Republicans nominate Charles Evans Hughes and Charles Fairbanks.

Hughes accepts by a telegram which begins “I have not desired the nomination.” Oh, NOW you tell us. He comes out for “Americanism” and preparedness and against Wilson’s policies in Mexico, in terms designed to satisfy Roosevelt (if such a thing is possible).

Roosevelt declines the nomination of the party he created and says he’s retiring from politics. Actually, he’s suspending his campaign – a “conditional refusal to run” in his words – leaving open the possibility of jumping back in if Hughes isn’t up to his expectations, but also preventing the Progs naming a replacement. Bull Moose party leaders refrain from reading TR’s telegram until right before the convention adjourns, to prevent rioting.

Roosevelt’s now unrunning mate John Parker will run instead for governor of Louisiana and lose, then run again in 1920 and win (as a Democrat). He is different from other Southern politicians in that the only lynching he is known to have personally participated in was of whites (Italian immigrants), which makes a refreshing change of pace.

Former Vice President Charles Fairbanks accepts the vice presidential nomination with all the enthusiasm it deserves, saying he had told the Indiana delegation to withdraw his name if anyone nominated him, but his message arrived too late so now “I feel it is my duty, under the circumstances” to accept.

Beards, they both have beards. That won’t happen again.

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According to Frank Rash of Kentucky at the National Association of Manufacturers’ convention.

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Today -100: June 10, 1916: Shit or get off the pot already, Hughes

The Republican Convention holds its first two ballots, and then halts pending negotiations with the Bull Moosers, the idea being that they had to assess the support for various candidates before possibly negotiating a joint GOP-Moose candidate. Charles Evans Hughes comes in first in both, although he still – still! – hasn’t declared his candidacy or said whether he’d accept the nomination, much less resigned from the Supreme Court. Nor has he sent a message of any kind to the convention.

The Allies have decided that they don’t trust Greece to maintain its neutrality, so they take over the port of Saloniki and ban Greek ships from it.

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Today -100: June 9, 1916: We believe in American policies at home and abroad

Delegates of the Republican and Progressive parties meet to try to find a presidential candidate acceptable to both, without success so far. Progressive Party leaders are hard put to calm their convention down and keep it from jumping the gun and just nominating Roosevelt, but they manage it.

Roosevelt issues a threat, in the form of a telegram to ex-Sen. William Jackson, saying that there’s a good chance that if the R’s nominate Hughes without his repudiating the support of “the professional German-Americans” (i.e., the German-American Alliance, which said that Hughes would be acceptable to them but TR or Elihu Root would not), the people will reject the R’s, and may even support a third-party candidate.

The Republican platform heavily emphasizes “Americanism,” which means whatever anyone wants it to mean, of course, but it includes no dual allegiances – This means you, German-Americans! This probably doesn’t mean you, Anglo-Americans! It says, “We believe in American policies at home and abroad.” The US should enforce the rights of Americans “at home and abroad, by land and sea,” unlike that weakling Wilson. “The present Administration has destroyed our influence abroad and humiliated us in our own eyes.”

While calling for a super-strong military, compulsory military training is rejected.

National prohibition is rejected without discussion or a vote.

The plank on women’s suffrage supports it as a “matter of justice,” but recognizes “the right of each State to settle this question for itself.” At the word “but,” the women in the audience stopped cheering. Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, who had encouraged them to cheer, laughed at this practical joke.

Mainstream Republicans want Charles Fairbanks to be Charles Evans Hughes’ running mate. Fairbanks, who is technically still running for president, says he doesn’t want the job again. Fairbanks was veep in Roosevelt’s second term, though he supported Taft in 1912, which would make things a touch awkward if TR gets the nomination this year.

The NYT editorializes that Supreme Court justices should never run for higher office, as it taints the court and their own judgement. Which is a fair point. But then they say that the fact that the German-American Alliance would boast Hughes as their own candidate is a reason not to nominate him, because it would cause racial division (the Germans being a race), which is a silly point.

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Today -100: June 8, 1916: Of wabbling warfare, unperturbed hugheses, little rooms, and hooge villages

I really want to know who the NYT correspondent at the Republican Convention is, because I’m really enjoying his prose: “Somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 graven images gathered together in the Coliseum at 11 o’clock this morning and viewed each other with cold, unwinking eyes and chilled steel faces for something like three hours, then dispersed. During those three hours they demonstrated convincingly the hitherto unrealized powers of the human race in the matter of not getting excited.” Sen. Warren G. Harding of Ohio is the temporary chairman and gave a temporary speech. The correspondent makes fun of his arm gestures. Harding does his favorite thing, alliteration, although nothing like that of his speech at the 1912 convention. He accuses D’s of “the mistaken policy of watchful waiting and wabbling warfare.”

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The Progressive Party is also holding a convention in Chicago. There are 93 minutes of cheering for Theodore Roosevelt (who isn’t even there, although he was listening by telephone), a record in party convention history, although it took floor managers with whips and cattle-prods to produce it, the whole convention being nothing more than cover while Bull Moose leaders negotiate with Republican leaders behind closed doors in a little room. “But when the call came for a prolonged and triumphant shout of coming victory, the triumphant note was lacking. The delegates were thinking of that little room. Yet it was a throng eager to be enthusiastic. No men ever worked more loyally, diligently, and doggedly to be enthusiastic for a longer time than any group of men before them. Even before the major demonstration began the delegates were plainly waiting for the minute that would certainly come and sweep them into the old delirium. In little groups they stood about the floor watching for the spark to fall. They had not forgotten the fervor of four years ago. They remembered it poignantly, hoping it would come again. The leaders had set the stage for that fervor, but they only staged a memory.” That said, the Michigan delegation sang “This is Teddy, we declare / Sure it’s Teddy; he’s a bear,” so there’s that.

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Was Donald Trump’s grandfather a German army officer?

NYPD Police Commissioner Arthur Woods admits that the police tap unions’ phones.

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Today -100: June 7, 1916: Of guilty but insane captains, dead kitcheners and dead emperors, and inscrutable hugheses

Capt. John Bowen-Colthurst is court-martialed for murder for the extra-judicial execution of Frank Sheehy-Skeffington and two others in Dublin during the Easter Rising. He’s going for an insanity defense, which will succeed. He will be found “guilty but insane,” confined to a loony bin for a year, make a miraculous recovery and be released. He will then emigrate to Canada, where he will receive a full military pension until his death in 1965.

Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, the not-hugely-competent British war secretary, dies when the ship he is taking to Russia hits a German mine and sinks. This leads, naturally, to more cries for all Germans to be interned, because someone must have told the Germans Kitchener’s travel plans. Which they didn’t, although the secret might have been better kept. The British government had encouraged Kitchener to leave the country on a nice long trip, less to confer with the Russians over munitions than from a desire to get The Recruiting Poster That Walked Like a Man away from his office so it could be run properly.

Theodore Roosevelt eulogizes Kitchener as “one of the great figures in that work of spreading civilization which has been the greatest permanent achievement of the civilized powers of the world during recent decades.” You know, conquering Sudan, ruling over the dusky natives in Egypt and India – spreading civilization.

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The Republican leaders agree on planks to be submitted to the National Convention: 1) military preparedness, including universal military training at schools. 2) “Americanism.” No hyphenated allegiances. 3) Fill more federal government jobs through the civil service. 4) No independence for the Philippines for a long, long time. 5) Protective tariffs. 6) Cheaper government. 7) Expansion of the merchant marine. The platform may matter this year more than these things usually do, since the leading candidate, Justice Hughes, has been, as the Times says, inscrutable.

Two suffrage meetings are held in Chicago to pressure the Republicans into adopting a women’s suffrage plank, but the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association rejects the Congressional Union’s demand for a federal constitutional amendment, because the state-by-state method is working so well. In other news, Iowa voters reject a women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution.

US marines in the Dominican Republic and Haiti kill 7 and 11 rebels respectively. Which is worth 3 paragraphs on page 8.

Chinese President, Then Emperor, Then President Again Yuan Shikai dies. Officials are denying that he committed suicide, just like last week they denied he’d been poisoned.

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Today -100: June 6, 1916: A silence louder than all the brass bands in Chicago

The delegates to the Republican National Convention are arriving in Chicago, and the main problem is how to deal with the fact that the leading candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, won’t express his opinions on any issues. “Not since the invention of silence, one might say, has there been a silence so tremendously potent, a silence so creative and so destructive. ... It is a silence which shrieks, a silence louder than all the brass bands in Chicago.” Hughes is the only candidate who might unite the party’s factions, but the Progressives really want him to answer a few simple questions first, and this he will not do.

So where is the 1916 anti-Donald Trump? At the graduation ceremony of the National Cathedral School (an Episcopalian girls’ school), giving a mostly typical graduation-ceremony-type speech, except for something about the American flag meaning “undivided allegiance” and “America first.” Which is more significant than it might sound, since German-American objections to Roosevelt and Root have led to concern-trolling calls that candidates like Hughes must reject being German puppets, or something. Anyway, Hughes promised to be at this event months ago – one of the grads is his daughter Catherine.

Coming today to a theater near you: “The Fall of a Nation,” written and directed by the Very Racist Reverend Thomas Dixon Jr, author of the novels that D.W. Griffith adapted as The Birth of a Nation. It’s a sci-fi flick about how pacifists and military unpreparedness cause the US to be invaded and conquered by Germany (unnamed but, according to tomorrow’s NYT review, “a country of incredible efficiency whose commanding officers are given to mustaches strangely like the Kaiser’s”). A band of irregular women fighters ride to the rescue, just like the Ku Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation, presumably. The movie is now lost. It was the first feature-length movie, the NYT says, with a musical score specifically composed for it, by Victor Herbert of “Naughty Marietta” fame. The NYT says the film is “marked by a few points that offend against good taste and several points that outrage the intelligence, but many stretches of the film are finely spectacular and it is full of battlefields and such pictures of avenging cavalry sweeping along moon-lit country roads as the movies always do particularly well.”

Ida Rauh (a lawyer, sculptor and theater-manager and Max Eastman’s wife) is arrested along with Bolton Hall (a lawyer, not a general-assembly building), for distributing birth control pamphlets.

The Supreme Court rules that the 1914 Harrison Act banning possession of opium applies only to dealers, not users of the drug.

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