Today -100: November 19, 1916: Of civilian fighters, energetic mouths, and Manx cats

The Entente objects to the Central Powers’ declaration of a Polish state on Russian Polish territory, saying that military occupation during war does not give the occupier the legal right to dispose of territory.

Romania denies German claims that its civilians are fighting the German invading army. Don’t know if it’s true, but it does sound like Germany is pre-justifying any massacres of civilians, using the same excuse no one believed in Belgium.

Germany denies that its plans to conscript people into civilian war work will include housemaids. You have to draw the line somewhere.

The NYT Sunday Magazine has an article about Jeanette Rankin. You can tell it’s written by a university professor and not a Times reporter by the fact that it doesn’t mention her hair color and “energetic mouth” until the 5th paragraph.

Rankin’s Democratic opponent Harry Mitchell says he won’t challenge Rankin’s election (some are threatening to do so on the grounds that women can’t be members of Congress) and he will refuse to take the seat if her election is overturned.

Headline of the Day -100:

A Mr. Wilberforce Wiggins, a merchant in Liverpool, was late to lunch with some friends. As a joke he explained that he had received an order from the Indian Government for 1,000 Manx cats at £5 each, to be used as presents for native princes, as wasn’t the custom. He was overheard by hotel staff who immediately got into the Manx cat business and before you know it there were 1,200 cats at the docks, many of whom escaped, and Wiggins felt it expedient to leave the country for New York. And I don’t believe a word of it.

“Wilberforce Wiggins,” indeed.

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Oh bother

Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel? That's the wackiest idea I've heard all day, and I've heard about plans for a Winnie the Pooh live-action movie. But then again, it's Trump we're talking about, so it could wind up that Winnie the Pooh gets named ambassador and Huckabee will get his head stuck in a honey pot.

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What Alabama has wrought

Looking back over posts from 2000, I’m reminded that Trump has many more options for government positions than Bush did in 2000 before the Republican Hegemony. For example, with the balance in the Senate close then as now, Republican senators from states with Democratic governors were unavailable, so, to quote myself, “no Dick Lugar in DOD, no Richard Shelby at CIA and, thank God, no Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as Attorney General.”

Does anyone know who called Sessions a white-supremacist Keebler’s elf? Because I’m planning to steal that.

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Pryor convictions

Well, the nice thing about having an old blog is that if Republican shits are going to keep resurfacing, I can just reprint old posts.

William Pryor, 11th Circuit judge, recess-appointed by GeeDubya, is showing up as a contender for the Supreme Court. Here’s what I wrote about him in 2003:

Bush’s judicial appointees are getting wackier. For example, William Pryor, Alabama’s attorney general, nominated to the 11th Circuit. Pryor thinks Roe v Wade is "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history." He indicted Barnes & Noble for selling art books (which he considered child pornography). He says he became a lawyer so he could fight the ACLU. He is against the separation of church & state, supports prayer in public schools and has said “God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians ... to save our country and save our courts.” He supported Ala.’s ban on sex toys and practice of tying prisoners to “hitching posts,” supports executing the retarded, endorsed a bill to let anti-abortion lawyers represent the state against minors trying to get judicial overrides of parental notification.

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Today -100: November 18, 1916: Of co-regents, legions, silver, and munitions of life

Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph will name his heir apparent, Archduke Karl, as co-regent next month on the 68th anniversary of his reign, if Frank Joey lives that long, which he won’t.

Huh, it seems there’s a little catch to the Teutonic promise to create a new Polish state on Russian territory: there have to be sufficient volunteers for the Polish Legion (who have to swear allegiance to Kaiser Wilhelm and Emperor Franz Joseph). If there aren’t enough volunteers, there will be conscription. If there is resistance to conscription, or the soldiers prove “unsatisfactory,” the promise of independence will be null and void.

Headline of the Day -100:

Belgium is in a panic over German orders for all men over 17 to report for inspection. They suspect that hundreds of thousands will be deported to Germany. The city officials of Tournai refuse to give the Germans a list of male inhabitants and the city is fined, and will be fined every day until they comply.

The Dutch parliament votes to allow women to be elected to it.

Carranza orders that taxes be paid in silver, so the state will get some of the silver that people have been hoarding, and everybody else will be stuck with crappy Mexican paper money.

Winston Churchill predicts that before the war is over, the British government will take over all shipping, conscript everyone for universal service, and ration food while setting prices. “We need a great organization for producing munitions of life just as we do for munitions of death.”

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Today -100: November 17, 1916: Of Cubist patriotism

Germany gives legal recognition to Judaism in Poland.

Headline of the Day -100:

Pres. Wilson orders 6,000 national guards withdrawn from the Mexican border.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: November 16, 1916: Of eight hours, progressives, controlled food, and dictated labor

Railroad companies, acting in collusion as was the custom, file identical lawsuits in various federal courts to stop the Adamson Eight-Hour Act from going into effect.

The Progressive Party in the Russian Duma withdraws from the majority coalition.

Britain will get  a Food Controller. “Boil that some more, it still has some taste” is a thing he’ll say, probably.

Germany, which already had a food dictator, will now also get a labor dictator, Maj. Gen. Wilhelm Groener. He’ll be able to draft civilians into jobs, though only male civilians (physically unfit for the military, too old for the military).

Germany is also getting Polish workers, sent by the puppet Polish National Provisional Government, because nothing says Polish independence like slave labor in Germany.

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Today -100: November 15, 1916: Of censuses and middlemen

The German occupation authorities in Belgium are taking a census of all unemployed people, presumably in preparation for forcibly removing them to Germany to work.

Woodrow Wilson blames high food prices on middlemen.

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Today -100: November 14, 1916: Put that bloody cigarette out!

The author H.H. Munro (Saki) is shot dead by a German sniper. I’ve been reading his short stories lately. Clever and amusing use of language; his character “Reginald” is like the bastard son of Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest by Saki’s fellow homosexualist Oscar Wilde. Munro’s last words were reportedly “Put that bloody cigarette out!”, addressed, rather too late, to a fellow soldier who was attracting the attention of the sniper. Munro was 45, and yes he was above the age limit to have volunteered for the trenches, but volunteer he did.

The Russian Duma reopens. Alexander Kerensky calls the government “cowards” and “hired assassins” under the control of “the contemptible Grishka Rasputin” and demands that they be removed. Kadet (Constitutional Democratic) Party leader Pavel Milyukov lists many failures of the government, asking over and over “Is this stupidity or treason?” Boris Stürmer and the rest of the government walk out (I’m not sure at what point in the proceedings they did so). Milyukov then sensibly retreats to the British Embassy to hide out until the February Revolution. The the government starts censoring Duma speeches.

Margaret Sanger reopens her birth control clinic.

Dr. Percival Lowell, the astronomer who proved that there is life on Mars, dies of mysterious ray-gun wounds a stroke.

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Today -100: November 13, 1916: I won’t discuss pipe dreams

Theodore Roosevelt refuses to answer questions about running for president in 1920: “I won’t discuss pipe dreams.”

The American Union Against Militarism attributes Wilson’s reelection to “the fighting pacifist sentiment in the United States.”

Under Allied pressure, Greek King Constantine agrees to let military officers and government officials resign and join Venizelos’s self-declared provisional government.

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Today -100: November 12, 1916: A blessing both for the workers and the nation

Headline of the Day -100:

Headline/Douchebag of the Day -100:  

“I have ordered measures to encourage the voluntary going of unemployed Belgian laborers to Germany and to evacuate the congenitally idle who refuse suitable work at good wages,” says the governor-general who’s been systematically looting Belgium’s raw materials and factories for two years now while diverting its power supplies and railroads but who seems to think unemployment is entirely the fault of the British because everything is always entirely the fault of the British. He says the deportations are “a blessing both for the workers and the nation.”

The German kaiser and the nearly dead Austro-Hungarian emperor issue a proclamation to the Poles of the occupied Polish bits of Russia saying they’re totally a country although for the time being we’ll “keep the administration of your new State still in our hands,” but bit by bit we’ll give you new institutions. “Of these the Polish Army is the most important.” Of course it is.

It’s almost like this whole “restoration of Poland” thing is a ploy to get Poles to fight for Germany and Austria. They’ve already set up a “Polish Legion.”

Herman Bernstein, editor of The American Hebrew worries about the treatment of the 3 million Jews in a new Poland, as well he might.

Speaking of shiny new nation-states, the Arabs – well, some Arabs – declare a Kingdom of Arabia. They’ve asked for US recognition, but the US has no idea who they are or how to get in touch with them.

For the first time, the Electoral College will include women, three of them, all from California.

An anti-war meeting in Cardiff, Wales, at which future prime minister Ramsay MacDonald is one of the principal speakers, is broken up by some pro-war types including another Labour MP, Charles Butt Stanton, the jackass elected to Keir Hardie’s seat after he died. When questions are asked in Parliament,  Stanton says that “they threaten us in Merthyr with another of their pro-German meetings, and... we will not tolerate it, whatever the consequences”. The home secretary will say that Cardiff’s constable asked him to ban the meeting under the Defence of the Realm Acts, but he declined to do so.

Japan and Brazil come to a trade arrangement which will include settling 5,000 Japanese a year in Brazil to work on the coffee plantations (and elsewhere, but mostly coffee). Many thousands of Japanese will emigrate to Brazil and Peru and be treated as second-class citizens for decades to come. Fun fact: during World War II the US got Peru to forcibly send many of its Japanese citizens to the US where they were interned alongside Japanese-Americans (and pressured Brazil to establish its own internment program). When the US compensated former internees in the 1980s, it excluded this group because they were “illegal aliens.” 

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Today -100: November 11, 1916: Benedict Arnold or Judas Iscariot? Make up your mind

There will be no Nobel peace prize this year. Can’t think why.

Congresswoman-elect Jeannette Rankin says “I knew the women would stand by me.” The NYT informs us that “Miss Rankin makes her own clothes and hats, and she is also an excellent cook.”

As a war measure, evening dress is now banned from Paris opera houses.

While Charles Evans Hughes isn’t ready to concede the election, he is telling his supporters to stop making accusations of election fraud.

The LAT continues to blame Governor/Senator-elect Hiram Johnson for Hughes’ defeat in California, suggesting that since Johnson won his election by 200,000 votes and “his political machine has elected enough of its mercenaries to assure the control of the next Legislature,” it isn’t possible for a fellow Republican to lose for president in the state without some sort of ballot fraud, and there should be a recount. The paper thinks that the deal that “regular” Republicans made to support Johnson if Progressives supported Hughes was somehow binding on the electorate. It also claims that the Johnson machine used RNC money to support Wilson, as recounted in this article.

I especially like the little “Iscariot.”

The LAT also has an editorial.

They’re sure the indignation over this treachery will rebound on Johnson at some point.

Hiram Johnson will continue as US senator from California until his death in 1945.

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Today -100: November 10, 1916: Politics has not been purified

The NYT says that Wilson has won California, North Dakota and New Mexico, and therefore the presidency. By their count, if he hadn’t done so well in San Francisco, with a very strong female and Progressive vote, he would have lost the election. And if Hughes had just gone to shake Hiram Johnson’s hand when they were in the same damn hotel... The LA Times says Wilson got the women’s vote because he “kept us out of war,” although the LAT being the LAT...

Mrs. Arthur Dodge, president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, says that the election results prove that sex solidarity is a myth. “The woman in politics and the woman trying to get into politics have contributed nothing to politics, but increased election costs, more expensive and spectacular stunts, more bitter partisanship and bigger bluffs than the men have made. The dignity, power, and status of woman in public life have not been elevated. Politics has not been purified.”

It is certainly true that suffrage states, largely in the West, went for Wilson rather than Hughes, even though the suffrage organizations mostly supported Hughes.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg tells the Reichstag that after the war Germany would accept an international league to enforce the peace. By which he means an organization to prevent “aggressive coalitions” aimed at Germany.

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I dunno

I stop blogging about current events and look what you people do.

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Today -100: November 9, 1916: That’s the Chicago way

The presidential election results are not in. Wilson goes golfing, Hughes goes driving. People are still placing bets.

After all that fuss about which candidate the German-American “hyphenate” vote was supporting, and all the accusations of pandering back and forth, it seems that the German vote was pretty evenly divided.

The feds arrested a bunch of people in Chicago on election day for selling their votes, but are now releasing them because evidently that’s not illegal.

Canada makes it illegal for anyone to have a copy of one of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, which have not been friendly to the Allies and have said embarrassing things about British rule in Ireland. The papers have already been banned from using the mails and telegraph cables in Britain and France.

Belgium protests what it says is Germany’s forcible deportation last month of 15,000 Belgian men to work in Germany. In cattle cars, no less. France is also protesting about the removal of civilians from cities in occupied northern France for forced farm labor. Because this happened in April, Germany says that France is only protesting now to stir up hatred for the Germans. Way to grab the moral high ground, Germany. It also puts the blame, as always, on the British blockade, which necessitated slave labor, obvs.

It’ll take a while to make the papers, but there is a massive explosion today at the Russian port of Archangel, the main entry of Allied military supplies to Russia. Several ships are destroyed as well as much of the port and a couple of barracks, killing upwards of 650 men. The Germans will claim to have accomplished this by a u-boat hitting the steamer Baron Driesen, while the commercial attaché of the Russian Embassy in the US will claim that it was a bomb placed on a ship in New York to cover up thefts on the docks, but you don’t really need to look for sinister explanations for munitions ships blowing up.

Well, you don’t need to, but it is good clean fun.

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Today -100: November 8, 1916: Election results

Headline of the Day -100:

In truth, the presidential race is too close to call. Indeed, Hughes won’t concede for two weeks. 

But of course we know better than the Times, because we are magical gods from the future. Wilson actually got 49% of the popular vote and Hughes 46%. Eugene Debs is for once not running for president, so there’s a weaker Socialist vote than usual, 3% for Allan Benson. Wilson loses the entire North East except for New Hampshire, which he wins by 52 votes. He fails to win New Jersey, where he was governor. Hughes does very well in the Midwest, but Wilson takes Ohio. Wilson is strong in the South, of course, and the West and, decisively for this election, wins California, barely. Hughes will for the rest of his life blame that loss on that one time he was in the same hotel as Gov. Hiram Johnson and failed to go say hello. Wilson will wind up with 277 electoral votes to Hughes’s 254.

House of Representatives: R’s gain 20 seats, to 216. D’s lose 16 seats, to 214, but there are 3 Progressives, one Socialist (Meyer London of NY) and 1 Prohibitionist (Charles Randall of California), which in practice will mean a shaky working majority for the D’s.

Senate: R’s gain 2 seats, but D’s still hold a 54-42 majority.

California’s Progressive governor Hiram Johnson is elected to the US Senate, easily defeating George S. Patton, the father of the face-slapping general. Patton is a Democrat but is to the right of Johnson on most issues.

New York Governor Charles Whitman (R) is reelected. Republican Walter E. Edge is elected governor of New Jersey. His campaign manager was none other than “Nucky” Johnson, sort of played by Steve Buscemi in Boardwalk Empire. John Cornwell is elected governor of West Virginia, the only Democrat elected to statewide office. Thomas Campbell (R) is elected governor of Arizona – or is he? More on that later.

State referenda:

Women’s suffrage is defeated in South Dakota by 52% of the voters and in West Virginia by 72%.

Florida voters reject a constitutional amendment aimed at eliminating the few remaining black voters by restricting voting to those who could pass a literacy test (including being able to “interpret” as well as read the constitution) and who own $500 in property, with a grandfather clause exempting those whose ancestors could vote in 1867, before the 15th Amendment. This was placed on the ballot by the state legislature before last year’s Supreme Court ruling invalidating Oklahoma’s grandfather clause.

Oregon voters narrowly reject a measure to remove the clauses in the state constitution discriminating against voting by negroes and mulattoes. These provisions will be removed from the constitution (also the one against “chinamen”) by a referendum in 1927.

Oregon also rejects a measure banning compulsory vaccination.

The Single Tax (on land, excluding buildings) loses in California 69% to 31%. As does prohibition, by 55%. San Francisco bans picketing.

Arizona voters pass the strongest form of prohibition in the nation, making it illegal even to possess alcohol. They abolish the death penalty by a very narrow majority, but fail to abolish the state senate.

Prohibition passes in Idaho by 72%, Nebraska by 55%, South Dakota by 55%, Montana by 58%, and Michigan. It fails in California by 55% and Maryland by 65%. North Dakota passes a measure defining bootlegging; so that’s actually a legal term. Oregon bans the importation of booze from outside the state. The majority of states are now dry. Typically, cities vote against prohibition, rural areas for it.

Women in Illinois vote for president for the first time. Jane Addams says “I believe that every voting woman in Chicago is feeling moved and thrilled by the experience”. Since women in Illinois have the right to vote for some offices but not others, there are separate ballots so we have something we don’t in any other state: a breakdown by sex of how women voted for president. Not much different from men, as it happens (Hughes easily wins the state, even Chicago). This leads the NYT to write a dickish editorial about how this proves that there’s no reason for women’s suffrage. It also prints a letter from Everett Pepperrell Wheeler, one-time failed candidate for governor of New York, about how it’s only fair to leave women’s suffrage to the states. Indeed, he says, the one time the federal government tried to intervene in the suffrage (the 15th Amendment), “It is now agreed by both whites and blacks that this was a great mistake and that it would have been far better to leave the regulation of this subject to each Southern State.”

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Today -100: November 7, 1916: Serene

Today is election day, and the final betting on the presidential race is at even money. Edward Doheny, the oil baron who will be deeply involved in the Teapot Dome scandal, is said to have bet upwards of $200,000 on Wilson at 8 to 10.

Headline of the Day -100:

Cardinal James Gibbons, not the arboreal anthropoid apes. A rumor is being spread that when he met the cardinal last year, Pres. Wilson called him “Mr. Gibbons.” This is denied by presidential secretary Tumulty, by a monsignor, and by Cardinal Gibbons himself. Mr. Bobo, a gibbon in the Bronx Zoo, also denies that Pres. Wilson called him by anything other than his proper title.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: November 6, 1916: Poland has been given back to Western civilization

Germany and Austria proclaim the restoration of Poland, or at least the parts of Poland held by Russia since 1815, as a nation. They still plan to hold on to the parts of Poland they grabbed during the Partition, although Austria is talking about “autonomy” for Galicia. And not now, of course, after the war. Also there’ll be a king to be named later, presumably a lesser Hohenzollern or Habsburg, and borders also to be determined later. But right now there’ll be a “Polish Legion,” if any Poles care to volunteer to fight for the Teutonic powers. According to the (German) Overseas News Agency, “The Poles are free from Russian oppression; no more to be trodden under the heels of the Cossack. ... Poland has been given back to Western civilization.” So that’ll be nice.

Headline of the Day -100:

Arriving to help a shingle-weavers’ strike (evidently shingles are woven, or used to be). During the strike, Sheriff Donald McRae decided to expel all IWW members from Everett. The IWW decided to fight for free speech, arrived by ship and were met by Sheriff McRae and the same mob of vigilantes that had been terrorizing strikers. A shoot-out ensues, with most of the guns fired by the vigilantes. At least 5 Wobblies are killed, and 2 of the deputized vigilantes (possibly accidentally by fellow deputies – there was a certain amount of alcohol involved). The IWW’s Thomas Tracy will be tried for murder but acquitted. 73 other Wobblies will be held for months and then released without trial after Tracy’s acquittal

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Today -100: November 5, 1916: The Republican Party offers the people masters

Charles Evans Hughes gives his final speech before the election, in Madison Square Garden, and he gives his audience what he knows they want: tariffs! He warns of economic disaster if American industry is not protected from a European resurgence after the war.

Woodrow Wilson responds that the industries that used to have the highest tariff protections paid the lowest wages and had the worst working conditions. He says employers are trying to coerce their workers to vote Republican. “The Republican Party offers the people masters. We offer them comrades and leaders.”

All the news about the possible election of the first woman member of Congress that’s fit to print, apparently:

In general, NYT coverage of elections other than the presidential has been just abysmal this year.

Update: Oops, there’s more: 

I should explain the Congressman (sic) at Large thing. You know how reapportionment is supposed to work? Well, sometimes it doesn’t work that way. Montana gained a second member of Congress after the 1910 census, but for the 3 elections since then the Legislature hasn’t bothered to divide the state into two congressional districts, so both seats are at-large and voters will have two votes. This is confusing for the parties, which don’t really know how to strategize for that sort of election campaign rather than a straight two-person fight. Disarray among the D’s, a national upsurge in Republican sentiment, and the votes of women (granted in Montana in 1914), will assist Rankin in winning this election. Or maybe Montana voters have the same red-hair fixation as the NYT. 

Incidentally, Rankin’s hair was actually light brown.

Rankin was a long-time activist for women’s suffrage. She told the Montana Legislature in 1911 (the first time a woman had ever addressed that body): “It is beautiful and right that a mother should nurse her child through typhoid fever, but it is also beautiful and right that she should have a voice in regulating the milk supply from which typhoid resulted.”

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Today -100: November 4, 1916: Of uniforms and betting

There will be an inspection, or more accurately a count, of uniforms of the New Jersey National Guard. Someone got upset that girls were seen wearing the uniforms on Halloween and wants to find out how they got them.

The betting odds remain 10:7 in favor of Hughes.

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Today -100: November 3, 1916: I am appealing to all good citizens to save the country from ruin

Greece’s King Constantine orders the army to fight Venizelos’s forces, which are now being openly backed by the Allies.

Charles Evans Hughes denies that it is unpatriotic to discuss foreign policy, especially when Wilson’s sucks so hard.

Theodore Roosevelt tells a Cleveland rally, “I am here in no partisan sense. I am appealing to all good citizens to save the country from ruin.”

The betting odds are still 10:7 in favor of Hughes.

The State Dept says that Americans who take an oath of allegiance to a foreign state, i.e. join their militaries, are automatically expatriated. It is denying passports to Americans going to Europe to fight.

It’s also asking the French to rename its American Aviation Corps (Escadrille Américaine), which was created earlier this year. France will change the name to the Lafayette Escadrille.

Hirohito is installed as Crown Prince of Japan and heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. He gets a sacred sword and everything. And he’s now a captain in the army and a lieutenant in the navy. He’s 15.

The Berlin authorities are eliminating all but two types of sausage. And before you ask, they are blood sausage and liverwurst.

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Today -100: November 2, 1916: So far as every other nation is concerned we must be absolutely a unit

Woodrow Wilson complains about (unnamed) people who use foreign policy for political advantage. You know: people who criticize him. Doesn’t like that at all. “Variety of opinion among ourselves there may be... but so far as every other nation is concerned we must be absolutely a unit.” He refers to people who “make play with the loss of the lives of American citizens even in order that they may create a domestic political advantage,” presumably meaning the recent sinking of the British steamship Marina, in which 6 American members of the crew died.

The odds being offered on the election are now 10:7 in favor of Hughes.

Headline of the Day -100:

Yes, food. Britain will require that all food for British and Canadian POWs in Germany go through England so it can be checked for secret messages. The delay involved means that foods likely to spoil can no longer be sent. This censorship does not apply to officers, only NCOs and privates.

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Today -100: November 1, 1916: Of race favoritism, dimes, and twiddles

A Republican National Publicity Committee ad in today’s NYT:

Headline of the Day -100:  

This doesn’t refer to blacks, who are discriminated against in the segregated army, but to Jews. The problem arises from Cavalry Capt. Le Roy Eltinge’s book Psychology of War (1915), which says of the Jew: “For centuries he has been without a country. He doesn’t know what patriotism means. ... He has not been a soldier for over 2,000 years. ... The soldier’s lot is hard physical work. This the Jew despises. He does not have any of the qualities of a good soldier”. The War Dept orders him to delete all direct references to Jews, so that bit is changed to: “Another large proportion of our population is made up from those who, through they have no particular home on the earth from which to inherit their ideas, have peculiarities of physique and of mind that make them foreign in tastes and mental attitudes to all other classes of our population.” Evidently that’s not offensive because it doesn’t spell out the people to whom it’s obviously referring.

Can’t help but notice that the paragraph preceding that one is about the negro: “By association we know something of what he will do, but as we think with a different kind of brain we do not perceive the why of his acts. In other words, we will not be able to get the best out of him as a soldier because we do not understand how to touch the mainsprings of his character.” Eltinge also elaborates on the respective martial characteristics of the southern European and Anglo-Saxon races.

The new 10¢ coin, the Mercury dime, is out. People are lining up at the Sub-Treasury office and speculators are paying high prices for them because they might be recalled to be replaced because these have the designer’s initials, which the Treasury considers impermissible advertising. To be honest, the only reason I’m including this story is to mention that the Chief Clerk of the Sub-Treasury office in New York is named Wesley S. Twiddle.

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Today -100: October 31, 1916: Numerical superiority and danger exist only for the weak

Erich Ludendorff, head of the German army, pooh poohs the vast Russian army: “Numerical superiority and danger exist only for the weak. Who objects against fate ought better to object against himself. A firm will commands fate. There is no blind fate.” Worst... fortune cookie fortunes... ever. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg adds that France is “exterminating lives by their method of fighting. All their tenacity will be of no avail, for in the end there will be none of them left.”

Woodrow Wilson denies that there was ever any proposed “postscript” to his note to Germany about the Lusitania, telling them to ignore its warnings.

The British say that German flying ace Oswald Boelcke was shot down by a Brit. He wasn’t.

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Today -100: October 30, 1916: Aces high, then not so high

The killingest German flying ace Oswald Boelcke dies after a collision with another German plane the day after downing his 40th Allied plane. He was 25.

Charles Evans Hughes puts out a statement of “My Conception of the Presidency.” A lot of it is about preparing for the trade war that will inevitably follow the end of the European war. He wants to wage this war with tariffs and government cooperation with business, while the Wilson administration, he says, treats “the business men of this country as though they were suspicious characters. ... In four years it has put this country further on the road to class war than has been accomplished in a generation before.”

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Today -100: October 29, 1916: Proud mothers of a nation of heroes or mothers of a race of degenerates?

Australian voters reject a referendum proposal to bring in conscription, despite the government, in a Texas-level attempt at voter suppression, authorizing polling officers to question young male voters about whether they’d registered for the possible draft like they were supposed to do. Before the vote, Prime Minister Billy Hughes says that Germany would never dare put issues like this to the vote, and notes that Australian women are voting – “Will the women of Australia be the proud mothers of a nation of heroes, or stand dishonored as the mothers of a race of degenerates?” The latter, evidently. Hughes’s Labor Party is so divided on the issue that in a couple of weeks it will expel him.

With the US presidential race well into the traditional last-minute-sliming stage, Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge are accusing Woodrow Wilson of appending a postscript to one of his notes to Germany about the Lusitania telling them not to take its strong anti-Lusitania-sinking language seriously. According to the story, he had to delete it because members of the Cabinet threatened to resign.

Headline That Sounds Dirty But Really Isn’t of the Day -100:

Louis Marshall Ream, heir to the Ream millions, had his marriage to a chorus girl annulled, but she gets a NY Supreme Court justice to un-annul it.

Headline That Sounds Dirty But Really Isn’t of the Day -100:

A horse, as it happens. A horse named Bondage. Bondage was ridden by Ball and beat Tragedy at the Potomac Handicap. There are probably less pleasant ways to arrange the words “bondage,” “ball,” “handicap” and “tragedy” in a sentence.

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Today -100: October 28, 1916: Who is responsible for the Armenian Genocide? The answer might surprise you.

I mentioned that Margaret Sanger opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Astonishingly, it took 10 full days for it to be raided. Sanger, her assistant, and her sister are all arrested. Emma Goldman is also arrested, in a separate incident, for giving out birth control information.

Ernest von Koerber is appointed the new prime minister of Austria, replacing the assassinated Count Karl von Stürgkh.

The ban on street lights in Halifax, Nova Scotia is ended, with no more explanation than was given for the ban.

Remember that thing about black voters supposedly being imported into northern states to vote Republican? The Justice Dept is now ordering US attorneys (at least the one in Louisville) to track black people moving from the South to the North and take down their names, origins and destination. I’m not sure how they’re supposed to do this.

Germany says it will start holding captains of merchant ships from Allied countries as prisoners of war, claiming that they are fair game because they’re under orders from their governments to spy.

Turkish Foreign Minister Halil Bey says the Armenians have only themselves to blame for the, you know, genocide.

In other news, Turkish Foreign Minister Halil Bey can go fuck himself.

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Today -100: October 27, 1916: The business of neutrality is over

Music is broadcast over the wireless, from the laboratory of the Columbia Graphophone Company. It was heard, apart from a few interruptions by the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s storm warning broadcasts, at the Hotel Astor, which is like two whole miles away.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt responds to Charles Evans Hughes’s remark that “we must pay less attention to punctuation and more to targets” by accusing him of “casting a veiled aspersion” on the Navy. But what about the veiled aspersion he cast on punctuation, Franklin? WHAT ABOUT THE PUNCTUATION?

Speaking of punctuation...

Headline of the Day -100:

Ack, “old-time”! They’re everywhere! 

Other lines from Roosevelt’s speech: “I am being held up to the American people as a bloodthirsty being, when, as a matter of fact, I am a peaceful literary man.” “If a person lets the idea get abroad that slapping his face is a safe and healthy amusement he is liable to have a lot of trouble.”

Woodrow Wilson says this is the last war that the US can keep out of, that wars are now fought on such a scale that “the business of neutrality is over.” In future wars. Not this one. We can totally keep out of this one.

An attempt by the pro-German “American Independence Conference” to line up German priests, Catholic and Lutheran, against Hughes in the Midwest did not go well, and now Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee Sebastian Gebhard Messmer bans priests having anything at all to do with politics.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The US War Department issues a statement that it has information that “enemies of the Administration’s policy toward Mexico” have arranged for an attack at a border point sometime before the election in order to influence voters to vote against Wilson. Some hours later they clarify that they didn’t mean Republicans, they meant Mexican politicians opposed to Carranza.

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Today -100: October 26, 1916: Not too proud to get kicked

Between Norway banning German u-boats from its territorial waters and German u-boats sinking a lot of Norwegian ships recently – a lot – the two countries seem to be close to war.

I’m not sure if Roosevelt is making more speeches on Hughes’s behalf than Hughes is making, or if Hughes’s speeches are just so dull that they’re not being covered, but from the newspaper coverage you’d think Roosevelt was running for president. His speeches are certainly much more anti-Wilson than they are pro-Hughes, who he barely mentions. In a speech in Nebraska, TR says that a man who is “too proud to fight” is not too proud to get kicked, and the same is true of nations. More than two years into the Great War, with literally millions of people dead, and Americans still sound like they’re talking about a school-yard scrap. And again Roosevelt blames Wilson’s too-proud-to-fightism for the Lusitania and the deaths of Americans in the Mexican civil war.

The presidential race is neck and neck:

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Today -100: October 25, 1916: Let him not vote for me

Henry Ford will pay female employees on an equal basis, following an “inspiring” conversation with Woodrow Wilson.

Headline of the Day -100:

Or indeed, anyone “whose allegiance to our flag is not single and complete.”

On the other hand:

Not helping the “Wilson Kept Us Out of War” meme, two US officers are killed in the Dominican Republic, you know, the country Wilson invaded (one of several countries Wilson has invaded).

Hughes refuses to take any position on prohibition.

The Sun accuses Woodrow Wilson of using the word “very” too often, which it says is a sign of femininity.

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Today -100: October 24, 1916: At least when he dodged the draft, he did it en pointe

The London Times says the British government is considering changing the election laws to allow proxy votes for military personnel on active service.

Charles Evans Hughes’s story is that when he met Jeremiah O’Leary and the other pro-Germans, he had never heard of O’Leary before.

Republicans counter-charge that it’s actually the D’s who are going after the hyphen vote, that they are in fact putting out campaign literature in... gasp... German.

Theodore Roosevelt says that Wilson not firing Secretary of War Newton Baker shows that Wilson “in his heart believes that Washington was no better than Villa or Carranza”.

Women voters are expected to tip the balance in the presidential election in Illinois, but neither party knows how to deal with that.

Russia demands that the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, currently touring the US, return to join the army, or be declared a deserter (actually, he was declared a deserter in 1911 for not doing 3 years of military service). In 1915 Austria interned him as an enemy alien, and he was released only after promising not to bear arms.

The mayor of Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein bans the peeling of potatoes. 3 months in jail or a fine. They take food shortages seriously in Eckernförde. Also potatoes.

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Today -100: October 23, 1916: Of secret racial organizations, comparative rebels, and assassins

The Allies are now demanding that Greece remove all its troops from Thessaly and hand over to the Allies those troops’ military supplies.

The DNC accuses Charles Evans Hughes of making a secret deal with Irish- and German-Americans. Hughes admits having met with the American Independence Conference (which the DNC calls a “secret racial organization... a weapon of vengeance and force against Anglo-Saxon influence”), but says there was no deal.

The Daughters of the American Revolution demand the resignation of Secretary of War Newton Baker for supposedly saying that Pancho Villa’s followers are just like George Washington’s soldiers at Valley Forge, who were also big ol’ thieves (which Baker denies saying).

Friedrich Adler says he assassinated Austrian Prime Minister Count Karl von Stürgkh because he refused to recall the parliament, which hasn’t met since several months before the war began. Austrian authorities are already trying to portray him as a lunatic, because they’d really prefer to commit him rather than let him speak at a trial.

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Today -100: October 22, 1916: Everyone is justified to use force when the laws are destroyed

Count Karl von Stürgkh, the authoritarian minister-president (prime minister) of Austria (but not of Hungary) since 1911, is assassinated in a Viennese restaurant by Friedrich Adler, 37, son of Victor Adler, the founder of the Austrian Social Democratic Party. Friedrich, a publisher, was upset that his anti-war writings were censored. At his trial, he will say that his act of killing was exactly the same as the war which Stürgkh waged without the permission or consent of the Austrian people; “Everyone is justified to use force when the laws are destroyed,” Adler says. After a delayed trial he will be sentenced to death but the emperor will commute his sentence and then release him altogether, which is a little odd if you consider that this whole stupid war started because of an Austrian assassination.

Adler was also a physicist and a friend of Albert Einstein. Freddy will stay active in Socialist politics, fleeing Austria in 1938. He’ll then live in exile the rest of his life, first in New York and then Switzerland, dying in 1960 at 80. His father’s political career doesn’t seem to have been affected: he became foreign minister in the last days of the war, and died of a heart attack on the last day.

Stürgkh will be replaced by a series of short-lived minister-presidents, five over the next two years.

If it’s Sunday, it must be the Sunday New York Times Magazine’s special English Authors Prettying Up the War issue. There’s H.G. Wells’s “Italy’s Picturesque Mountain War” and Rudyard Kipling writing about British destroyers in the North Sea looking for German u-boats, which is just like fox-hunting, he says. Just like it.

Congressional elections in Mexico tomorrow. Only Constitutionalists are eligible for office. And no secret ballot.

German soldiers have been given a letter they’re supposed to mail to their relatives, asking them not to send any depressing news from home because it would just be a “drag” on the army – “many a letter speaks of discouragement, a feeling to which we would remain foreign; we at the front ignore the meaning of the word discouragement.” The German Army is especially annoyed that letters from home describing the hardships of daily life have been found on POWs and published by the Allies.

The letter makes interesting reading, although the translation comes from the London Times, which has been known to be less than trustworthy in this regard – in 1917 it will accuse Germany of rendering soldiers’ corpses to produce glycerine based on a deliberate mistranslation. Anyway, the letter refers in passing to “the hypocrisy of the United States, who is merely playing the ignoble role of moneylender.”

Theodore Roosevelt gets in a debate/shouting match with hecklers in Gallup, New Mexico about the 8-hour day, Mexico, etc. And then there was this exchange, which I’m a little confused by:

“Didn’t yet let the Japs sit beside our children in the schools of California?” 

“Ha! I sent the battle fleet [the “Great White Fleet”’s round-the-world tour of 1907-9] around the world to protect just such men as you against the Japs.”

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Today -100: October 21, 1916: Of chief inspectors, u-boats, blackouts, and legions

A French officer has been appointed “chief inspector” to the Greek Interior Ministry. He will have approval over all orders to police.

Hindenburg yesterday, and Ludendorf today, ask Germans who are agitating loudly for unrestricted submarine warfare to knock it off.

The Canadian military orders a nighttime blackout for Halifax, Nova Scotia, for some mysterious reason. Fear of zeppelin raids? They’re not saying.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Allies are claiming that the Central Powers’ Polish Legion has mutinied and most of its members imprisoned.

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Today -100: October 20, 1916: Of banners, Standards, quarantines, and klucks

Members of the National Women’s Party picket a Woodrow Wilson speech in Chicago, but the crowd tears up their banners (“Wilson is against women,” “Wilson prevented the passage of suffrage amendment”, etc).

Inside, Wilson says that the function of women will be “the element of mediation, or comprehending and drawing all the elements together. It is the power of sympathy, as contrasted with the power of contests.”

In another Chicago speech (or possibly the same one? not worth going back to check), he tells immigrants not to be so... foreign. He says the US can help in the settlement of the Great War because Americans come from all stocks and can “interpret the thought of the world [and...] the needs of the future.” I’m not sure if he realizes that he’s assigning the US the same place in the world as he assigned to women in politics.

The Bayonne Standard Oil strike breaks up when American-born workers desert their immigrant (mostly Poles) compatriots.  Standard offered nothing, but will “investigate” any grievances – except those involving pay.

The Harvard football team is quarantined (well, confined to campus) after a half-back comes down with suspected polio.

German Field Marshal Alexander von Kluck retires, at 70, to the doubtless disappointment of British soldiers, who sang songs about him.

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Today -100: October 19, 1916: Of inconsistent principles and polio

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond introduces a resolution in Parliament declaring that the treatment of Ireland is “inconsistent with the principles wherefor the Allies are fighting in Europe”. He demands immediate Home Rule, the ending of martial law, and the release of prisoners from the Easter Rising (500 still held without trial).

As there were “only” two polio deaths in New York yesterday, the health commissioner has decided the epidemic is over and will stop issuing daily reports.

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Today -100: October 18, 1916: A surrender can’t be repealed

A heckler asks Charles Evans Hughes if he would repeal the Adamson Act, the law which established the 8-hour day in the railroad sector. Hughes says a surrender can’t be repealed. He says if he’d been faced with a threatened rail strike as Wilson was, he’d have appointed a commission so impartial and so fair that neither side would have gone against its recommendations. Oh, Charles Evans, you’re just too pure for this wicked world.

Woodrow Wilson fails to get the belligerents to agree a plan to allow relief supplies into Poland.

The Justice Dept is investigating claims that Republicans are “colonizing” Southern negroes into Illinois and Indiana to register to vote, although Illinois law requires one year of residence to register. However, the article also notes that many of them are taking meat-packing jobs formerly held by immigrants who have returned to Europe to fight, so maybe this is just normal economic migration and racist D’s then, like racist R’s now, just automatically equate black people voting with voter fraud.

Under some sort of deal with Germany, Switzerland bans exports of munitions to the Allies if those munitions are made using German coal or steel.

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Today -100: October 17, 1916: Of provisional governments, lynchings & laudings, operatic menaces, newsprint, and obedient wives

The Allies recognize Eleftherios Venizelos’s “Provisional Government,” although possibly only in Crete?

The NYT has its first picture of a tank.

Two black men are lynched in Paducah, Kentucky. One is accused of attacking a white woman, the other supposedly “lauded” the first’s attack.

Headline of the Day -100:  

There’s a newsprint shortage in the US, so the FTC asks big-city newspapers to cut down the size of their Sunday papers, so as not to put smaller newspapers out of business.

The Episcopalians refuse to remove the word “obey” from the marriage vow for women.

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Today -100: October 16, 1916: Babies vs. dogs

Princeton University is under quarantine after a freshman dies of polio.

Margaret Sanger opens a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brooklyn.

Norway has banned armed submarines from its ports and Germany’s afraid other neutrals will follow suit.

The train of pro-Hughes women continues its campaign tour. In Medford, Oregon, Democratic women planned to bring stray dogs to greet them, but Republican women arranged to bring babies to the train station, because politics.

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