Today -100: April 15, 1917: Wherein is explained what Jesus thought of peace at any price, or something

The House of Representatives unanimously passes the Seven Billion Dollar Bill to finance the war, though Socialist Meyer London only votes “present.” It includes a $3 billion loan to the Allies. The bonds will be tax-free.

Woodrow Wilson creates a Committee on Public Information, i.e. censorship and propaganda. It will be run by George Creel, a journalist, editor, joke writer, etc., who helped run Wilson’s re-election campaign. It’s considered important that censorship be run by (authoritarian) civilians rather than the military.

This is as good a time as any to mention the introduction, some time this month, of this poster,

based on Britain’s similarly posed Lord Kitchener posters. It was created by an illustrator named James Montgomery Flagg, if you can believe it. He based Uncle Sam on... himself.

The New England Methodist Conference comes out  in favor of the war: “Peace at any price is as far from our sanction as it is, we believe, from the New Testament of Our Lord.” It also calls for prohibition as a war measure.

Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels rejects an offer from businessmen Benjamin and Anderson Gratz of $5,000 as a reward for the first US merchant ship to sink an enemy sub. Daniels thinks “money rewards for such bravery is not in keeping with the spirit of our day.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest son (19) joins the Canadian Aviation Corps, which will train him as a pilot for service in the US version. But maybe not well enough (spoiler alert). Quentin’s older brother Archie graduates Harvard and gets married.

The NYT mentions Lenin again, chiefly as a supporter of peace.

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Today -100: April 14, 1917: Of internment, less intelligent workers, and rubber men

Bolivia breaks diplomatic relations with Germany, because why not.

Since the US won’t intern all German citizens here, Germany won’t intern US citizens there.

The NYT mentions Lenin. For the first time? In a piece from the London Daily Chronicle, which says the Lenin crowd’s agitation “has had a bad effect on the less intelligent workers”.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Wartime Story of the Day -100: a chauffeur in NYC tries to get out of a speeding ticket by claiming his passenger is an Army lieutenant carrying vital dispatches. (He isn’t).

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Today -100: April 13, 1917: Of women’s suffrage, disaffection, and the simple life

Women get the vote in Nova Scotia.

Congress is working on the Wilson Admin’s Espionage Bill, but some are worried about the vagueness of some of the provisions, in particular the criminalizing of speeches or writings causing “disaffection” in the military, which could criminalize anyone, including reporters, asking questions about the national defense.

It should be noted that this is the law that Obama used to aggressively prosecute leakers.

Pres. Wilson is telling congresscritters who are offering to resign to join the military not to.

First Lady Edith Wilson and the wives of the vice president and Cabinet members start a “simple life” movement to cut down unnecessary spending and entertaining, so their energy and resources can be channeled into killing fucking Germans, or something.

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Today -100: April 12, 1917: Of degenerate brains, conscription, and corn bread

Brazil breaks diplomatic relations with Germany.

Eddystone Ammunition Corp officials are still insisting that the explosion at their explosives plant was not an accident or the result of their negligence, but “the result of a diabolical plot conceived in the degenerate brain of a demon in human guise.”

Men who are married or have parents or children as dependents are ordered to quit the National Guard.

The White House not only wants conscription, it doesn’t want volunteers, even though the machinery of conscription will take months to set up. Rep. Daniel Anthony (R-Kansas) asks Secretary of War Newton Baker if he wouldn’t rather have volunteers beginning training within 30 days rather than wait 6 months for conscripts. Evidently he wouldn’t.

Herbert Hoover is appointed chairman of the new Food Board in the US. His first official act is to ask Americans to eat corn bread, so wheat can be shipped to Europe.

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Today -100: April 11, 1917: Save some carnage and death for us, huh, Europeans?

The US plans to slow-walk its entry into the war, not sending any soldiers over until 1 million are trained. In theory they could send the (not very large) existing army over now, but those soldiers are needed to train the incoming soldiers for like a year or so.

The announced plans to conscript unmarried 19-to-25-year-old men has predictably led  to a sharp increase in marriages among 19-to-25-year-old men.

Theodore Roosevelt meets with Woodrow Wilson and asks permission to raise his own division. Wilson stalls him. TR will try to get Congress to over-ride the War Department.

I’m not sure if “drafted” in this story means actual conscription, but the government plans to “draft” Native Americans in Oklahoma for farm labor to free up farmers to be soldiers, and will pull them out of school to do so.

An explosion in the Eddystone Ammunition Corp shell factory in Chester, Pennsylvania kills 130+ workers, the vast majority of them young women. The company says it’s absolutely not their fault that their high-explosive powder went boom, it must be German saboteurs.

The Russian Provisional Government is confiscating all of Tsar Nicholas’s stuff.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The First National Registration Society wants everyone in the US fingerprinted. Which is not ominous at all (although many of the Eddystone factory bodies will never be identified, so they may have a point).

The Society for the Suppression of Vice, the late Anthony Comstock’s outfit, seizes the May issue of Pearson’s and orders the editor and publisher into court because of an article, written by the editor, Frank Harris, “calculated to corrupt the morals of youth.” The article is part of the series “The Night Court Inquisition” investigating abuses in the New York City women’s night court, where people can be imprisoned for prostitution and other vice crimes on the word of a single corrupt cop. It will be announced two days from now that the court will be abolished. Journalism works.

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Today -100: April 10, 1917: Who ya gonna call? Divorce lawyers!

The US takes advantage of Austria breaking off relations to seize its interned merchant ships.

Woodrow Wilson is facing opposition in Congress to conscription. Many congresscritters think a volunteer military would be perfectly adequate. The administration’s argument is for “selective service,” a newly coined term meaning that every adult male is liable for service, but the government gets to select who it wants. In an all-volunteer service, as Britain found out early in the war, you get a lot of farmers, miners, factory workers etc joining up who would be more useful staying in their jobs.

The NYT thinks the US entering the war will not take the form of a formal alliance with the Entente nations, just a “gentleman’s agreement” on coordination. One obstacle to alliance: despite Wilson having constantly asked the Allies to spell out their war aims, they have failed so far to do so.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Philipp Scheidemann, head of the German Social Democratic Party, is rumored to be on a secret mission to Russia to convince his fellow socialists there to make a separate peace.

Josephine Cahane applies for her marriage to Benjamin Cahane to be annulled because her husband is afraid of ghosts and hid the fact until the day of their wedding when he insisted on going to a cemetery (as you do). Afraid of his (unspecified) cruelty, she took an apartment overlooking a graveyard: “When he tried to abuse me I told him to look into the cemetery and see the ghosts. It had the desired effect.”

A new issue of the Wipers Times, aka the B.E.F. Times, is out.

Excerpt from “–th Infantry Brigade Intelligence Summary. No. 30”

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Today -100: April 9, 1917: Of sticking to Germany, vexing workmen, sedition, and Prussian reform

Austria breaks diplomatic relations with the United States.

Two suspected Germans are arrested in Corona, Alabama for attempting to induce negro miners to quit their jobs and come to Mexico. Two black men are also arrested for treason in Ashford, Alabama for urging blacks to revolt and “stick to Germany.”

Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, promises that unions won’t strike or press any demands of any kind during the war. He does not explain why union members should continue paying dues.

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The Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet is functioning as an alternative source of authority in Petrograd, which is very vexing to the administration. And the workers are not producing supplies for the soldiers because they’re so busy attending meetings.

Francis Widmar, the editor of the anarchist newspaper New Era, is arrested in Paterson, New Jersey, along with his printer, for sedition for putting out a pamphlet calling for a general strike against war.

Under pressure from Socialists at home and the example of the Russian Revolution abroad, Kaiser Wilhelm promises some constitutional reforms in Germany and Prussia – after the war is won. He commits to ending the three-tier franchise system and introducing the secret ballot in Prussia, but fails to mention universal suffrage or equal suffrage, leaving the way for some people to have more than one vote.

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Today -100: April 8, 1917: Rise up! rise up, crusaders, to meet the hosts of Hell!

Orders are issued to militia sentries to shoot anyone who ignores orders to halt. Two men are indeed shot by the New Jersey National Guard, and a marine guarding a lighting plant on Long Island shoots up an automobile, killing a 12-year-old Boy Scout.

The crews of seized German ships, being held as prisoners of war on Ellis Island, discover to their horror that there is no booze.

Cuba declares war on Germany.

And so, I guess, do the Boy Scouts:

The Secret Service is investigating German-language and other anti-war newspapers.

Aleksandr Kerensky suggests Germans overthrow the Hohenzollerns if they want peace.

With the one-year anniversary of the Easter Rising coming up, the British ban all meetings and processions in Dublin.

Atrocious Doggerel of the Day -100:

Etcetera.

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Today -100: April 7, 1917: It’s War!!

Woodrow Wilson signs the war declaration, and it’s away we go. (Yes, Congress alone has the authority to declare war, but they wanted to do it in a form he’d also have to sign). The only actual acts of war seem to be the seizure of 91 German-owned ships, many of whose crews sabotaged them as soon as they heard about the declaration of war, and an order to arrest 60+ alleged spies. This is done without a court order under the president’s powers derived from the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, one of the Alien and Sedition Acts. FDR used it to intern Japanese-Americans.

The war proclamation warns non-naturalized Germans in the US to preserve the peace and says that if they do they won’t be rounded up. Oh, and they can’t have guns or radios or aircraft or ciphers or invisible writing materials or come within a half-mile of any fort, navy ship, munitions factory etc etc or write anything attacking the government or any of its policies. It will be pointed out that this half-mile radius includes the heart of Manhattan surrounding the state arsenal on 35th.

William Jennings Bryan, 57, asks Wilson to enroll him as a private.

Pro-war suffragist leaders forgive Jeanette Rankin for voting against the war. There is some debate about whether she cried after or while announcing her vote.

The Tobacco Merchants’ Association objects to a provision in the Chamberlain Military Bill banning the sale of tobacco at army and navy training facilities, contrasting it with the benevolent policy of European nations which “encourage” and even supply tobacco to their soldiers.

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Today -100: April 6, 1917: It’s War!

At 3:12 a.m. today, Congress voted 373 to 50 to declare war on Germany (“that a state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government which has been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared”). The war formally begins at the more civilized hour of noon. (Update: wait, no, it only goes to the Senate at noon.)

Jeanette Rankin (R-Montana) utters the first words spoken in Congress by a female member: “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.”

The no votes largely came from the Midwest, with its many ethnic Germans. 9 of the 50 are from Wisconsin. And 4 from Mississippi for some reason. 32 were Republican, 16 Democrat, 1 Socialist and 1 independent.

Clarence Miller (R-Minnesota), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, claims during the debate that there is a paragraph of the Zimmermann Telegram, not previously made public, in which Germany offers to establish a submarine base in Mexico, and supply Mexico with unlimited weaponry and German reservists from the US. He even reads it out, ending with “Arrange to attack all along the border.” This is a lie, and is immediately contradicted by Secretary of State Lansing. Miller refuses to accept that, saying he “got it from a man who is in a position to know.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100:

Funny thing is, that headline is not wrong.

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Today -100: April 5, 1917: Freedom is the messiah

Headline of the Day -100: 

Count Michael Borzatovsky, recently arrived from Russia, in his room in Baltimore. Was he shot by a German spy? Did he accidentally shoot himself getting undressed?

The latter.

Russia repeals all laws that discriminate on the basis of religion. Rabbi David Philipson of Cincinnati says this solves the Jewish problem and eliminates the need for Zionism. “Freedom is the messiah,” he says.

The US Senate continues to debate going to war, increasingly testily. George Norris (R-Nebraska) says declaring war would “put the dollar mark on the American flag.”  Sen. James Reed (D-Missouri) accuses him of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Sen. James Vardaman (D-Mississippi), who opposes entry, complains about the atmosphere in the Capitol, “supercharged with the spirit of prejudice, hate and love. ... Self-assumed superiority of mind, intolerance and bigotry are attributes of little minds”. That’s James Fucking Vardaman, possibly the biggest racist in the Senate.

The New York Legislature creates a state police force. Its purpose seems to be to break strikes so the National Guard doesn’t have to and more people will be willing to join the Guard.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Morning Post (London) reports that it’s heard from German bankers that Kaiser Wilhelm is sick and will totally die soon.

Two countries with very different approaches to rationing:

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Today -100: April 4, 1917: International nuisances are the worst kind

Former President Taft says if the US is invaded, it will be through Mexico. He considers Carranza “not the most reliable person imaginable” and Mexico “an international nuisance.”

The US is not at war with Germany yet, because Robert La Follette is filibustering it. The NYT says “There is, of course, but one explanation of Mr. La Follette’s conduct; which one it is we have not the least idea.”

The NY State Senate is holding contempt hearings into New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, for accusing Minority Leader Robert Wagner of “working in the interest of Germany”. Mitchel, who denies their jurisdiction over him but attending the hearing out of, um, politeness, says he never meant to accuse Wagner of treason.

Municipal elections in Chicago are won decisively by the Democrats, reversing the results of 1915. And Springfield votes itself dry, along with five other Illinois towns; one dry town goes wet.

The Kaiserin (Mrs. The Kaiser Wilhelm) will sell some of her jewels in the Netherlands to give the cash to charity. The fate of the Romanovs is having a salubrious influence on the other royals of Europe.

Frederick Pethick-Lawrence runs for Parliament in the South Aberdeen by-election on behalf of the anti-war Union of Democratic Control on a platform of peace by negotiation. He loses 10 to 1. P-L, who went to jail for the suffragist cause before the war, will eventually be elected as a Labour MP, rising to the Cabinet under Attlee and before that official leader of the opposition during World War II, meaning he was head of the few Labour MPs who didn’t join the Coalition and was the guy who stood across from Churchill at Prime Minister’s Questions.

100,000 political prisoners are leaving Siberia. By sledge, mostly. Blacksmiths have been busy removing people’s shackles.

There is a record demand for flags. Flag companies can’t keep up.

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Today -100: April 3, 1917: The world must be made safe for democracy

Woodrow Wilson addresses Congress.

He twice calls them “gentlemen of the Congress.” Dude, Representative Rankin is sitting right there.

The bulk of his justification for going to war is based on submarine warfare. The Zimmermann telegram gets a single sentence, and of course there’s the “make the world safe for democracy” thing, but mostly it’s about making war to vindicate the United States’s god-given right to sell stuff, including munitions, to one side in a war. “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.” Interestingly, he doesn’t mention the Lusitania.

He expresses surprise that Germany actually meant to implement unrestricted submarine warfare when it said it was going to implement unrestricted submarine warfare: “I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations.” He explains how his previous idea for responding to this, putting guns and Navy gunners on commercial ships, proved insufficient:

But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all.

That’s Woodrow Wilson for you: trying to make entering a brutal war sound like an exercise in logic. Indeed, “We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.” So with that said,

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it

It’s not clear how far he intends to go in “accepting the status of belligerent.” He talks about sending massive quantities of resources to the Entente and cooperating with them in unspecified ways. Also, “the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country”, and increasing the military immediately to 500,000 men by conscription. But is he sending them to the trenches of Western Europe? Unclear at this point.

But there’s good news for Germans: “We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war.” But we will have to kill quite a few of them. #SorryNotSorry.

There’s a sentence in the address I can’t for the life of me figure out: “Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest.”

He explains why Germany must be violently democratized: “A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. ... Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.” [the copy of the speech I linked to says “Only free peonies...” Which is a very different sort of war.]

He asks, “Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?”

Saint Woodrow calls for a gentle, humanitarian bloodbath: “The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.”

He says Austria, while adhering to Germany’s u-boat policy, “has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas,” so he won’t be asking for a declaration of war on them at this time (that will come in December).

“It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.”

---

And as if having war declared on them isn’t enough:

Speaking of armed neutrality, a u-boat sinks the armed US steamship Aztec off the French coast.

Since Congress is back in special session, the suffragettes of the Congressional Union resume their picketing of the White House. “The women want to take their part in the responsibilities of government,” Alice Paul says.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Lenin arrives at the Finland (railroad) Station in Petrograd.

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Today -100: April 2, 1917: Unimpressed

The NYT’s Berlin correspondent reports: “Everybody knows that within a few days America will declare war against Germany, but no one seems particularly impressed by it.” He also says there is little American news in the German newspapers, and what there is is mostly extracts from French newspapers, which are more propaganda than fact. Germans are far more concerned with the prospects for constitutional reform in both Prussia and Germany.

A mob in Baltimore break up a meeting of the American League Against Militarism and are in turn violently attacked by the cops.

Czar Nicholas’s entourage is imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress because of a supposed plot amongst various grand dukes & grand duchesses to proclaim Grand Duke Nicholas as the new tsar.

Polish members of the Russian Duma resign, because Poland is independent now, right?

Vermont, tired for some reason of elopers coming to their state to marry, passes a law requiring couples from other places than where their license is issued to wait 5 days before the ceremony. There’s an exemption for soldiers.

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Today -100: April 1, 1917: History is now marching with seven-league boots

Some Socialist deputies in the German Reichstag are openly calling for a republic. SPD deputies just voted against the budget (with its new taxes), which is something they used to do before the war. They’re also not happy that the military is ordering newspapers not to print anything favorable about the Russian Revolution. Georg Ledebour tells the Reichstag, “We regard a republic as a coming inevitable development in Germany. History is now marching with seven-league boots.”

Sheboygan, Wisconsin will hold a referendum tomorrow on whether the US should go to war. Women will have the vote. (Results:  4,177 to 17 against; non-German-Americans boycotted the vote.)

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Providence Journal, a key cog in the British disinformation wars, claims that German u-boats have been dropping off mail in the US, thousands of letters which a New York banker with “Austrian affiliations” has re-mailed all over the country. With sabotage/espionage instructions, is the implication.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Well, Chicagoans are famously a full-size people.

The US purchase of the Danish West Indies is complete, 50 years and one day after the purchase of Alaska for 1/3 the price. So how does that work? Denmark is getting a piece of paper it can exchange for $25 million in gold, which it will keep in New York banks for the time being, the trans-Atlantic crossing being a trifle risky lately. The three islands will now be called the Virgin Islands of the United States of America. I must have missed when that decision was made.

The New York Legislature will make another attempt to require driving licenses for operators of motor vehicles in New York City. There won’t be a driving test or anything like that, but those convicted of reckless driving can have their license revoked.

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Today -100: March 31, 1917: Let the spy hunts begin!

NYC high school principals are ordered to hold a “patriotic meeting” on April 2nd. But the School Board is running into difficulties in implementing its plan to fire pacifist teachers: that wouldn’t actually be legal. Yet. The Board is now asking the Legislature for a law requiring an oath of allegiance, on pain of dismissal.

German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann defends the eponymous telegram, saying the offer of alliance was to be made to Mexico only in the event of a US-German war. Which isn’t quite true, since he sent a second telegram two days after Wilson broke off diplomatic relations, telling the ambassador to Mexico to make the approach immediately. Since British Naval Intelligence hadn’t made this telegram public (or, indeed, told the Americans about it), Zimmermann thinks, wrongly, that it wasn’t intercepted. He says Carranza was never actually approached, which is a lie.

The Reichstag votes to appoint a committee to investigate whether to democratize the constitution a bit. Making the cabinet responsible to the Reichstag rather than to the kaiser, that sort of thing. Of course this is a stalling action, but the Russian Revolution has created pressure, not only from German lefties, but from the fact that the war now looks more like a bunch of parliamentary democracies, more or less, fighting a bunch of, well, not democracies.

The Russian government says the Polish people should decide on their own form of government in an independent state, although it still talks about that Polish state being “bound to Russia by a free military union.” Germany, meanwhile, finding very few Poles joining the puppet military of its puppet Polish kingdom, is planning to start conscripting them.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: March 30, 1917: If this action warrants an increase of bloodshed, we shall not have to bear the burden of responsibility for it

The British Parliament is working on a bill to let the military re-examine men previously rejected for service as unfit, as well as men discharged for wounds, to use them behind the lines. Winston Churchill suggests taking married men in their 40s rather than convalescents.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg tells the Reichstag that Germany does not want war with the United States. He says that if Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare – which was adopted entirely in self-defense – leads the US to declare war, “if this action warrants an increase of bloodshed, we shall not have to bear the burden of responsibility for it.”

Russia: women will be allowed to take any governmental job.

Neutral Spain is put under martial law to prevent a general strike. The economy is in a shambles in part because Germany has sunk a lot of Spain’s shipping. There is also tension over the fact that the majority of the population is neutralist or pro-Allies while the government, army, and clergy are pro-German.

Lloyd George tells a deputation of suffragists (which the London Times describes as “picturesque”) that he realizes that the minimum age of 30 or 35 being proposed for women voters is illogical and without justification, but they should just shut up and accept it because reasons. Emmeline Pankhurst says sure because reasons.

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Today -100: March 29, 1917: No one can now contend that we are yielding to violence what we refused to concede to argument

Albert Staub, head of the Atlanta branch of the American Red Cross, calls for a purge of “disloyal” members because SOMEONE poisoned a batch of bandages and put ground glass in dressings in New Jersey. (Update: Staub will deny ever having said anything about poison).

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George declares himself in favor of women’s suffrage. Actually, NYT, he always claimed in the past to be in favor, even while plotting to undermine it. Rather more remarkable is former prime minister Asquith’s announcing his conversion, claiming that his previous vehement opposition was always based on “expediency” but that women’s war work has proved them worthy etc etc and “we have had no recurrence of that detestable campaign which disfigured the annals of political agitation in this country, and no one can now contend that we are yielding to violence what we refused to concede to argument.” Lloyd George also goes on and on about women munition workers. Parliament votes in favor of the Speakers’s Conference’s recommendations for changing the franchise, which include reducing the residency requirement, a complicated experiment in proportional representation in a few constituencies, and other provisions. Women’s franchise will be on unequal terms, with a minimum age that hasn’t been settled on yet, probably 30 or 35.

The Nebraska State Senate votes down partial women’s suffrage.

Headline of the Day -100: 

By “invading,” the NYT means “are looking for work.” Long Island businessmen are not happy about it.

German Food Dictator Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe says the state needs to seize the entire food supply of Germany.

Germany is threatening to intern American relief workers in Belgium for 4 weeks before letting them go home, to keep them revealing military news.

The witch hunt begins: Alexander Fichlander, a school principal in Brooklyn, is rejected for promotion because he’s a pacifist who refused to sign the loyalty pledge. George Wingate, a Civil War general who is on the Board of Education, leads the charge against Fichlander and wants to fire any teacher who expresses pacifist views, even if only outside the schoolhouse. Oh, and maybe make them take a loyalty oath.

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Today -100: March 28, 1917: Of cobblers, Canadian concentration camps, literacy, and tango pirates

Alexis Korvanov, a former Russian general and political exile who has been working as a cobbler in New York, sails for home. I don’t think he’ll do did much when he gets there.

While the NYT doesn’t give the name of the ship Korvanov sailed on, it might well have been the Kristianiafjord, whose more famous passenger is Leon Trotsky. Certainly the date is right. The Kristianiafjord will dock in Halifax, where Canadian authorities will detain him for a month alongside interned German POWs, as he later described in the chapter of his memoirs entitled “In a Concentration Camp.” He spent the month trying – with some success – to convert the Germans to revolutionary socialism.

Forced by the law Congress passed over Wilson’s veto to make prospective immigrants take a literacy test, the Labor Department says it will use the Bible, not for religious reasons but because it has been translated into every language, including Klingon.

Former President Taft calls the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanovs “the first great triumph of this war.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: March 27, 1917: Of Russian Jews, declarations of war, Belgiums, and crying czars

Russia will grant full equality to Jews, eliminating educational, residential and other restrictions. Which also means that the passports issued by the US to American Jews will now be honored. Under Taft, the US abrogated its treaty with Russia over this issue.

The Wilson administration is debating whether to ask Congress, at its special session next week, to declare war rather than have it declare that a state of war is already in existence. Evidently in all US history, Congress has only ever done the latter. By directly declaring war, rather than saying that the war began, for example, with the sinking of the Housatonic on February 3rd, the US can later demand compensation for the ships sunk right up to the time the US declared war.

Secretary of War Newton Baker says Germans in this country won’t be interned. If they behave.

Germany will start administering Belgium as two separate countries.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: March 26, 1917: Of spy fever, redeployments, and of course polo

A Swedish man is arrested for sketching the Brooklyn Bridge. And a guest at the Hotel Majestic in New York is investigated by the police after a guest becomes suspicious that he is operating an illicit wireless transmitter. He is in fact testing electrical medical equipment before demonstrating it to doctors, which is his job.

Germany has been withdrawing troops from positions on the Western Front in order to mount a major offensive against Russia.

The head of the Polo Association says polo should not be stopped if war is declared.

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Today -100: March 25, 1917: Everyone hates a finicky war

Woodrow Wilson orders the US ambassador to Belgium to leave Belgium along with all other consular officials and the Commission for Relief, since the Germans are sinking all the ships bringing relief supplies anyway.

Theodore Roosevelt says he can raise a division of soldiers and have it in France in 4 or 5 months. And then he went off to “hunt devilfish.”

Headline of the Day -100:

The Russian Provisional Government fires Grand Duke Nicholas as army commander-in-chief.

In the German Reichstag, socialist (SPD) deputy Fritz Kunert blames Kaiser Wilhelm and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg for starting the war and says he’d be proud if Germany made such progress as Russia has.

The US rejects Germany’s proposed protocols interpreting the 1799 and 1828 US-Prussia treaties in ways that would allow all German nationals in the US (well over a million of them) to go about their business with no restrictions in the event of a war.

If war is declared, Princeton will immediately suspend all athletics. But they probably won’t shut down the whole university for the duration (or let in women).

Headline of the Day -100: 

Something about paprika, right?

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Today -100: March 24, 1917: Of recognition, safe czars and nervous kaisers, and humanity and good neighborship

Now that the US has broken the ice, Britain, France and Italy recognize the new Russian government.

Russia will abolish the flogging and chaining of prison inmates.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The British press reports, no doubt on the best authority, that Kaiser Wilhelm has had a nervous breakdown.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Fight fiercely, Harvard.

Germany will reduce the bread ration by one-fourth. The meat ration, however, will be increased (they’re killing animals to save on fodder).

Having sunk a bunch of Dutch ships, Germany offers, “on considerations of humanity and good neighborship,” to pay indemnities for the dead crew members and to help shipowners buy German ships after the war. The Netherlands tells them to go fuck themselves. It is also likely to ban US merchant ships when Wilson puts cannons on them.

The Nivelle Offensive is going well. For now.

The Justice Dept is taking a census of all Germans in El Paso, with an eye towards internment.

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Today -100: March 23, 1917: And we’ve been friends ever since

The US recognizes the new Russian government, the first country to do so.

Russia says it will end the death penalty “in the near future.” Also, there will be women’s suffrage.

A u-boat sinks an oil tanker owned by Standard of New Jersey, the Healdton, off the Netherlands, its destination. No warning given. 7 Americans dead.

New York City’s Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel accuses State Senate minority leader (and future US senator) Robert Wagner of “working in the interest of Germany.” Wagner – and yes that is a German name – is not best pleased. This is part of a fight over how much the US government will pay the Rockaway-Pacific Corp (a subsidiary of Southern Pacific Railroad) for land on Rockaway Point which it intends to fortify.

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Today -100: March 22, 1917: Taking a man’s part

Woodrow Wilson calls Congress into an extra session for April 2nd, earlier than he’d previously announced, presumably to ask it to declare war on Germany.

It is expected that the US will not just independently start fighting Germany, but will operate in conjunction with the Entente nations, perhaps in a formal alliance, perhaps not. Okay, that may sound obvious, now, but the US hadn’t made a military alliance with another country since the War of Independence, and not getting into “entangling alliances” or interfering in Europe was kind of important to the US’s national self-image, the Monroe Doctrine and all that.

They’re talking about not being able to field an army for a year or so (although Theodore Roosevelt, naturally, wants to send an expeditionary force of whatever size as soon as possible), without anyone suggesting that the war might be over by then.

Henry Stimson, Taft’s secretary of war, demands that the US take “a man’s part” in the European war.

Lots of men, not just those in the military, are practicing military drilling, and would like the government to provide them with some rifles to play with. 600 had been drilling on Governors Island (Manhattan) with broomsticks, but have recently upgraded to wooden rifles.

Czar Nicholas and Mrs. Czar are under arrest.

New French Prime Minister Alexandre Ribot says “We are resolved to wage with the utmost vigor and to a victorious end the terrible war into which we were drawn by inexcusable aggression.” He will do so, he says, by giving a totally free hand to Gen. Robert Nivelle. This should go well.

Headline of the Day -100: 

I believe you mean “differently abled.”

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Today -100: March 21, 1917: Feeble war but war

Wilson’s Cabinet meets. They are virtually unanimous in favor of war, some of their penises fully erect in anticipation. Wilson is still hesitating, saying he abhors both Germany’s militarism on land and Britain’s militarism at sea.

Republican leaders give speeches at the Union League Club about the international situation, all saying the same thing. Charles Evans Hughes: “Germany is now making war upon the United States, making war with a ruthless barbarity.” (Ruthless barbarity is the worst kind of barbarity). Theodore Roosevelt: “Germany is making war upon us and we are not striking in self-defense. Armed neutrality under these circumstances is feeble war, but it is war.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: March 20, 1917: Any American citizen who is now pro-German is a traitor to this country

The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote upholds the Adamson 8-Hour Act regulating railroad work conditions, including the enforcement of compulsory arbitration on RR companies and workers. Which gives the unions their 8-hour-day victory but introduces the worrying principle that the right to strike in such an industry is limited by the public interest. Some of the ruling seems to be railroad-specific, so Congress might not have quite so many powers over an industry whose functioning was not a vital “public service” affecting interstate commerce.

Theodore Roosevelt, you will be surprised to hear, wants war with Germany. “Any American citizen who is now pro-German is a traitor to this country”. He doesn’t like pacifists either, or armed neutrality, which “is only another name for timid war”. “Germany is already at war with us. The only question for us to decide is whether we shall make war nobly or ignobly.”

75-year-old Alexandre Ribot is the new French prime minister (again).

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George will move a parliamentary motion of congratulations to the Russian Duma for the new revolutionary government, which was formed, he says, “for the express purpose of carrying on the War with increased vigour.” He is heckled throughout by Irish MPs.

Russia announces home rule for Finland.

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Today -100: March 19, 1917: They are war itself

Germany sinks the City of Memphis. A ship, not the actual city. An American ship. Also the Illinois and Vigilancia.

The NYT declaims: “By the repeated acts of Germany a state of war exists between that country and the United States. No declaration has preceded it. The acts of Germany are not to be looked upon merely as a provocation to war, they are war itself.”

Pres. Wilson has not resubmitted his Cabinet members for re-confirmation by the Senate for his second term, as previous presidents have done as a matter of custom if not law.

The new Russian foreign minister, Pavel Milyukov, instructs Russian diplomats to tell anyone who’ll listen that Russia intends to stay in the war until the bitter, bitter end. He also explains to them, tsarist holdovers as they all are, that the Revolution was a good thing.

Maj. Gen. Frederick Maude issues a proclamation to the people of Baghdad, which British forces captured last week, saying they’ve come not as conquerors but as liberators, so that’s good.

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Today -100: March 18, 1917: Gracious! What does all this mean?

Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich did not abdicate after all. But he says he will only accept the czarship if offered by an elected body representing the will of the people. Don’t hold your breath, Mike.

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand and his cabinet, the third during this war, resign. Mostly caused by disagreements over military strategy.

The railroad unions postpone their strike 48 hours (although by the time that order is received in some places, the workers are already striking). The Supreme Court may issue their ruling on the constitutionality of the Adamson 8-Hour Act during that period, which matters to the owners but not so much to the unions, which say that their demands are the same regardless.

A dispute between a teacher, Marie Siebert, and a 14-year-old student, Harry Roper, at Central High School in D.C., goes public. She hangs a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm in her classroom, and he keeps turning it to the wall.

There were 3,541,738 motor vehicles registered in the US at the end of 1916, up more than a million from 1915.

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Today -100: March 17, 1917: How do you say “Buh bye” in Russian?

Czar Nicholas formally abdicates, not in favor of his son (he also abdicates his son), but his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. Who then abdicates after nearly 15 hours. The Romanov dynasty is now over, after three centuries of “the greats,” “the terribles,” and “she fucked a what?”s.

The new Russian government (specifically the new Justice Minister, Alexander Kerensky) promises universal suffrage, amnesty for all political prisoners, freedom of speech and the press, abolition of religious & national restrictions (Jews can be lawyers now), etc.

Woodrow Wilson sends representatives to appeal to the “patriotism” of railroad companies and unions to avert a strike over the former’s refusal to obey the Adamson 8-Hour Act.

Tomorrow -100 is Sunday, and churches will be asking parishioners to sign pledges of loyalty to the president.

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Today -100: March 16, 1917: Revolution

Headline of the Day -100:

From a confluence of bread rioting, strikes, military mutinies, some of it the results of plots, some of it not, and a regime that had lost all legitimacy through its inability to feed its population, prosecute the war effectively or keep its soldiers supplied with food, clothing, and ammunition, plus the suspected pro-German sympathies of various members of government and the incompetence and/or batshit craziness of others (plus the influence on the tsarina of the late Rasputin).

Czar Nicholas II finally resolves the whole tsar/czar dilemma by becoming just plain Nick, abdicating in the face of a revolution about which the world outside Russia has heard so few concrete details. In theory, he will go into exile, leaving behind his 12-year-old hemophilic son Alexei as the new tsar, with his brother the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich acting as regent. Or, you know, not.

The NYT is reporting that Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov (a follower of Rasputin, who Protopopov thinks is still giving him advice from beyond the grave) has been killed, which he hasn’t. He has, in fact, turned himself in to the Duma in order to escape being killed by the revolutionary mob. The Bolsheviks will execute him (the syphilis probably would have done for him fairly soon anyway).

The new prime minister appointed by the Duma to head the provisional government is Prince Georgii Lvov, who is associated with the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets).

The British government is said to be pleased at the overthrow of the weak tsar and the ouster of various allegedly pro-German officials, and expects that Russia will now fight Germany much more effectively. Andrew Bonar Law tells Parliament that Russian discontent was not caused by opposition to the war but to it not being carried out “with that efficiency and energy which the people had expected.”

The NYT also welcomes “The New Birth of Russia”: “The Russian people, through trusted leaders in the Duma and men of loyalty and enlightenment outside the Duma, have assumed the direction of affairs in the Empire.” They say the Revolution is mainly aimed at “Germanophile treason and conspiracy,” because everything is about German “plots” for the NYT now.

The Russian ambassador to the US, George Bakhmeteff, can shed no light on events in Russia (a country he will not, I believe, ever see again).

An Alien Registration Bill is introduced in the New York Legislature permitting the governor to require aliens from a country with which the US is or might soon be at war to register and requiring hotels, boarding houses etc to tell the police about any alien guests.

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Today -100: March 15, 1917: Of quasi-civilization, loyalty censuses, algonquins, conscienceless rascals, and boy scouts

China breaks diplomatic relations with Germany and seizes German ships.

Hubert Lyautey resigns as French minister of war after 3 months in the job. He refused to discuss the production of war planes, even in a closed session of the Chamber of Deputies, and deputies shouted at him until he resigned, or something like that. Lyautey had been the colonial governor of Morocco, where he “brought the Moroccans into a state of quasi-civilization,” which it turns out wasn’t really the best background for running a modern war.

New Yorkers are signing pledges of support for the president in the present crisis in a highly organized “loyalty census.”

A German u-boat sinks the American steamship Algonquin. It fired without warning, but all the crew escaped, no doubt while making lacerating witty comments about the experience and not spilling even a drop of their martinis.

The NYT has no news about anything that might be happening in Russia, and is reduced to quoting a Swedish engineer just returned home from Petrograd who says that reports of outbreaks are exaggerated. Phew.

Netherlands, scared of its large neighbor, sentences the editor of the Amsterdam Telegraaf for endangering the Netherlands’ neutrality by writing “In Central Europe there is a group of conscienceless rascals which caused this war.”

Germany says it is halting the deportations of Belgians to Germany.

The Boy Scouts will not take part in actual military operations in event of war, says the National Council of the Boy Scouts after, presumably, considering it.

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