Today -100: May 23, 1917: Of censorship, deserters, dissolving empires, black empire menaces, and lynchings

The Republican caucus votes to oppose press censorship being reintroduced in the Espionage Bill’s reconciliation process. Pres. Wilson, however, demands censorship.

Russian War Minister Kerensky orders an operation that captures 30 army deserters. Since the Revolution, soldiers have been deserting with impunity.

Finland would like to be independent of Russia now, please and thank you.

And Hungary, whose equivocal commitment to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was based in part on a fear of Russian territorial acquisitiveness which is now assuaged by the Russian Revolution, is also thinking seriously about independence.

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South African Gen. Jan Smuts says Germany wants a large empire (citing a captured map) in central and southern Africa so that it can use Africa’s “huge population” to create “the most powerful army the world had ever known,” a black army that would threaten South Africa and of course “the whole of the civilized world.” He hopes that the future League of Nations will ban the military training of African colonial populations (perhaps unaware of the role of Senegalese Tirailleurs, among others, in the French Army).

Wisconsin Governor Emanuel Philipp vetoes a bill for a referendum on prohibition.

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She did, however, decline an offer to apply the match herself. Southern ladies do not do such things themselves, they have baying mobs for that.

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Today -100: May 22, 1917: Lenin always did love a good balcony

The US steamship Mongolia, which last month sunk a u-boat, limps back into port after a shell explodes (or something like that) during target practice, killing a couple of nurses who were on their way to the war. Evidently there have been two other such incidents on the commercial vessels which Pres. Wilson ordered armed, suggesting the Navy is supplying them with defective ammunition. The St. Louis found, when practicing targeting by shooting at glaciers, that 14 of 48 shells fired were duds.

Atlanta, or at any rate 73 blocks of it, burns down. The fire started in “an obscure negro section” of the city. Dynamite is used (ineffectively) in a 10-hour struggle to put the fire out.

A Russian court orders Lenin and his followers to vacate the expropriated palace of ballet dancer (and former mistress of Tsar Nicholas II) Mathilde Kschessinskaya, who skedaddled for Paris. Presumably the government wants him out because he’s been using the balcony to make incendiary speeches.

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The NYT scoffs at a new California law requiring windows in hotel rooms.

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Today -100: May 21, 1917: Of Belgians, compulsory labor, and anti-coup coups

Germany is deporting Belgian officials who oppose the splitting of Belgium into Flemish & Walloon units.

Theodore Roosevelt gives up on leading troops into battle, but takes credit for the US sending troops to France earlier than Wilson had planned.

West Virginia enacts a law requiring able-bodied men aged 16 to 60 to work at least 36 hours a week or be forced to work for city or county governments.

Costa Rica has uncovered a plot to reverse the coup that put Federico Tinoco into power in January. Tinoco is portraying the plot as instigated and funded by Germans in the United States.

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Today -100: May 20, 1917: Eat Plenty, Wisely, and Without Waste

The new Russian Cabinet declares against a separate peace and for a peace without annexations or indemnities, based on national self-determination. Aleksandr Kerensky, promoted from Justice Minister to War Minister, says he will enforce discipline in the army. Good luck with that, Alex.

Pres. Wilson asks Congress for extensive powers over food production and appoints Herbert Hoover as his Food Administrator, rejecting the titles “food dictator” or “food controller.” Hoover has a motto and everything: “Eat Plenty, Wisely, and Without Waste. Also, Pineapple on Pizza is Just Wrong.”

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Today -100: May 19, 1917: The business now at hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific directness and precision

Pres. Wilson sets June 5th as Registration Day, when 10 million men aged 21 to 30 are required to register for the draft. They will be chosen and sent (in a few months) to train in 32, um, concentration camps. Man, Hitler just ruined that phrase for everyone, didn’t he?

Fun fact: the term concentration camp was coined by the British during the Boer War for the places they stuck Boer women and children, some of whom starved to death.

But Roosevelt won’t be going, the White House says. Wilson dismisses the argument that TR would rally morale, saying “The business now at hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific directness [or definiteness; the story uses both in different places] and precision.” Dude should totally write motivational posters.

Sinn Fein says it will boycott the proposed Irish convention and ignore any constitution it comes up with.

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Today -100: May 18, 1917: When was this ever denied to any man?

The Army Draft bill passes the Senate 65 to 8. The amendment allowing Roosevelt’s volunteer divisions is put back in after a debate in which William Stone (D-Missouri) attacks TR’s temperament and military competence, noting that he led the Rough Riders into a hole from which they had to be rescued... by a negro regiment. TR is defended by his former running mate Hiram Johnson, who says “This privilege is asked by a man who is in the twilight of life [He’s 58!], so that he may lay down his life for his country. ... When was this ever denied to any man?” Ominously, the Senate rejects a clause that would have ended conscription when the war is over. The good news: Registration Day will be a holiday! With parades and speeches and mandatory signing up for possible death and everything!

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Army commanders complain that the soldiers have heard the phrase “peace without annexations” and are interpreting it as a reason not to engage in offensive warfare. Which seems like as good an excuse as any, actually.

There’s some agitation in Russia for the publication of secret treaties.

The Irish Nationalist Party rejects Lloyd George’s nice offer of Home Rule plus partition. They do accept the “well if you don’t like my idea just hold a convention of Irish people” part, but of course the Ulsterites reject that. As will Sinn Fein.

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I’m not a beer drinker, but I understand they have a lot to answer for here. Kennedy Jones, the Daily Mail editor who was just appointed director-general of Food Economy, explains (to people who wonder why they should ration their bread intake while others are drinking beer) that barley will no longer be malted. He says science proves that beer is nutritious and “beer has been, for centuries, a part of the daily diet of our working classes” and men who work at heavy manual labor “must drink considerable malty liquid. ... It is a scientific fact.” Can’t argue with science.

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Today -100: May 17, 1917: He is the very model...

New York Gov. Charles Whitman offers Theodore Roosevelt the rank of major general in the state militia.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George proposes Home Rule for Ireland that excludes Northern Ireland for at least 5 years. Or alternately, the Irish might hold a convention and work it out for themselves. Basically, he wants this issue out of the way because of its effect on the US.

US destroyers join the British fleet on anti-u-boat patrol.

The Senate holds a closed-door session on war appropriations, during which the Wilson administration is assailed for failing to explain much of anything about how it plans to spend all that money. Every single detail of the closed-door session leaks to the press, as is the custom.

Wilson gives up on getting Congress to pass a censorship law. For now.

Germany seems to be considering a compromise on the future of Alsace-Lorraine, but not the one you’d think. They might split it between Prussia and Bavaria. Evidently this is a bribe to get the Catholic Zentrum party, which is strong in heavily Catholic Bavaria, to continue supporting Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg.

In solidarity with the food economy being practiced by his subjects, the food served by King George V has been reduced to “the utmost simplicity” and guests must cut their own bread. And no toast.

CUT THEIR OWN BREAD!

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Today -100: May 16, 1917: A program of conquest helps us as little as a program of reconciliation to win victory and the war

Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg tells the Reichstag that he rejects demands that he express Germany’s war aims coming from both the left (no annexations or indemnities) and the right (big-ass annexations and indemnities). To declare what Germany is fighting for, he says, “would not serve the country’s interests.” He says if he renounced annexations, the enemy could continue to fight without risk. And he has the kaiser on his side, so suck it.

He does make an exception for Russia, which he tells that there is a No Annexations deal to be made which “excludes every thought of oppression and which would leave behind no sting and no discord.”

The Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet agrees to join a coalition government. Meanwhile, several commanding generals have resigned over the new policy allowing soldiers to vote on whether to obey orders. The Petrograd Soviet’s main strategy seems to be encouraging Socialists in Germany and Austria to prevent their armies being used as “the executioners of Russian liberty.”

The Turks are supposedly deporting the Jewish population of Jaffa. During Passover, no less.

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You’d think he’d have more important things to do than stand in an intersection in a yellow rain jacket and wave cars through, but...

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Today -100: May 15, 1917: Of espionage, choates, and purely destructive

The Senate passes the Espionage Bill, with the censorship (and prohibition) provisions stripped out.

Famous lawyer (and former US ambassador to Britain) Joseph Choate, dies.

The NYT calls the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet “a purely destructive force.” In general, the Times is soooo over the Russian Revolution.

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Today -100: May 14, 1917: Ours is not a true democracy

Carrie Chapman Catt points out that the US can’t talk about making the world safe for democracy until it gives all women the vote: “There is nothing more illogical than to insist that men have the divine right to rule over women and say at the same time that kings haven’t divine right to rule over men.”

Gen. Lavr Kornilov reportedly resigns as commander of the Petrograd Military District, unwilling to continue to tolerate the interference of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet. I know he didn’t resign at this time, so I guess he’ll change his mind.

Germany allows (and indeed encourages) another 280 Russian “agitators” to return to Russia from exile in Switzerland, including future secretary of the Comintern Angelica Balabanov.

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Today -100: May 13, 1917: This is no war for mere spontaneous impulse

The House is delaying the conscription bill, in part to try to force Theodore Roosevelt’s volunteer divisions into it. That amendment is sponsored in the Senate by Warren G. Harding, by the way. Says former Speaker of the House Uncle Joe Cannon, “I want Theodore Roosevelt to carry the heart of America to the trenches of France”. Walter Chandler (R-NY) says “Roosevelt will fight, and everybody knows it. He is the fighter of the age”.

At a Red Cross event, Woodrow Wilson says, “This is no war for amateurs.” I wonder who he could mean? “This is no war for mere spontaneous impulse. It means grim business on every side of it.” But he finds a bright side too: it will heal the last division between North and South, “and when effort and suffering and sacrifice have completed the union, men will no longer speak of any lines either of race or association cutting athwart the great body of the nation.”

Rep. J. Thomas Heflin (D-Land of Cotton) suggests that ships could survive a u-boat torpedo if bales of cotton were placed along the sides so if the ship is holed it will still float. And when the submarine surfaces to check out the damage, you could just shoot it.

It is quite possible that Rep. Heflin is 6 years old.

The Virgin Mary appears to 10-year-old Lúcia Santos and her younger cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto in Fátima, Portugal, tells them secrets and promises to appear again. A Felliniesque carnival will grow up around the subsequent appearances. There will be an official cult and everything. And today, Pope Francis is going to canonize the girls, unjustly spurning the girls in Cottingley who just about the same time took pictures of fairies that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thought were real.

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Today -100: May 12, 1917: Of strikes and Romanovs

The British gov warns munitions workers not to strike and that anyone inciting strikes is liable to imprisonment for life.

The Russian provisional government reportedly had plans to deport the czar and his family, but they were vetoed by the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, which want to make sure all of the Romanov’s money is seized.

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Today -100: May 11, 1917: Of separate peaces and peaces that pay, concentration camps, and conscription

The US will not make a separate peace with Germany. This needed to be made explicit because the US has no formal alliance with the Allies.

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The French were never going to be onboard for a No Annexations, No Indemnity peace deal given their demand for the return of the lost territories of Alsace-Lorraine, but they’d also like to make Germany pay for the French cost of fighting the war. They might also take the Saar. This from a report by the Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, which also says that “the towns and villages destroyed by a criminal race of barbarians shall be rebuilt by German hands.” Which sounds rather like slave labor.

The US government rented a property from the Kanauga Club in North Carolina for use as a concentration camp – yes, that’s the term they’re using – for interned Germans, but there’s some dispute over whether the club manager had the authority to rent it out, so the government has to postpone sending the first contingent of prisoners from Ellis Island.

The War Department says there is no possibility that the local draft boards will practice favoritism. None at all. Spoiler Alert: they will totally practice favoritism. Especially in the South. But in truth, class favoritism is built into the law. People can be exempted from service because they are more “valuable” at home, and many boards determined this by how much money people earned. People with religious objections to war will be required to perform jobs the president deems noncombatant.

Joseph McGuiness is elected to the British Parliament at the South Longford by-election. He is a Sinn Fein activist currently in jail for his participation in the Easter Rising.

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Today -100: May 10, 1917: The woman who wastes a crust wastes a bullet

The British Food Ministry issues some slogans:

Former ambassador to Mexico Henry Lane Wilson wins his libel suit against Harper’s Weekly for correctly reporting about his complicity in the Huerta coup and murder of Pres. Madero. He is awarded six (6) cents.

Herbert Hoover wants prohibition introduced as a war measure to conserve grain. He visits Pres. Wilson to talk food policy, but tells reporters he doesn’t want to be a food dictator. “The man who accepts such a position will die on the barbed wire of the first entrenchments.”

Only 30 of 20,000 NYC teachers refuse to sign the loyalty oath.

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Today -100: May 9, 1917: Of state gags, u-boats, and non-revolutions

Secretary of State Robert Lansing prohibits State Department officials talking to reporters. The State Dept cites as examples of confidential news that has leaked without authorization a telegram quoting the German consul in Mexico claiming that the US ambassador was hissed in the Mexican Assembly.

Theodore Roosevelt is now giving speeches demanding to be allowed to raise a division and go to France. He says 9 out of 10 of those opposing him do so because they think he’ll do too good a job, whatever that means. We’d have so much winning we’d get tired of winning, I guess.

There have been a lot of rumors that the US has a secret plan to defeat German u-boats. Possibly involving an invention, possibly from Thomas Edison.

The NYT thinks there’s a revolution going on in Bolivia. There isn’t.

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Today -100: May 8, 1917: Of food and dancing in wartime

Herbert Hoover, the new head of the American Food Commission, testifies to the House Ag Committee but insists some of it remain secret because reasons. Hoover does not support government fixing the price of agricultural goods.

War is Hell:

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Today -100: May 7, 1917: Of volunteers, powerful masses, Birth Control The Motion Picture, potatoes, secret treaties, and lynchings

200,000 men have volunteered to join Theodore Roosevelt if he is allowed to raise his own army (he won’t be).

William Howard Taft says the war is the fault of the German and Austrian monarchies and if the two kaisers abdicated there would be peace in two weeks.

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The NYC Commissioner of Licenses George Bell bans Margaret Sanger’s film Birth Control. IMDB has no information on it, but I see that Jennifer Laurence has bought rights to do a biopic, which is, um...

You know it’s truly war when the lawn of the Wisconsin governor’s Executive Mansion is plowed up and potatoes planted. Says Gov. Emanuel Philipp, “we shall not ask others to work on the farms producing crops unless we do our share also.” Because the governor will totally by planting those potatoes himself.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Hamburg Fremdenblatt says it has unearthed a secret treaty between Britain and the US to prevent Germany ever having colonies again. Germany’s surplus population, deprived of this safety valve, will be sent to regions controlled by the US & UK, where they will be “absorbed” like Germans have been in the US.

We haven’t had a lynching for a while. Now we have Arizona’s last ever lynching, that of Starr Daley (presumably white since they don’t give his race), who shot a man and raped his wife. He is arrested and a mob chases the sheriff’s car 40 miles from Phoenix before running it off the road and grabbing Daley, who they take back to the scene of his crime and hang. Supposedly he gives the mob instructions in how to tie a noose. A coroner’s jury rules it a justifiable homicide by unknown parties, as was the custom.

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Today -100: May 6, 1917: Of governors, soviets, suicides, and steam airplanes

The new German “governor” of Belgium, Baron Ludwig von Falkenhausen, takes up his post. His nephew will hold the same post when Germany again occupies Belgium in the Second World War.

Everything is fine in Russia again: the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet passes a vote of confidence in the government (by a narrow majority). The Duma will soon be re-convened for the first time since the February Revolution.

Eldon Jacob Crull, who lost the primary race for Congress to Jeanette Rankin, commits suicide.

Abner Doble of the Abner Doble Motor Vehicle Company says the future of airplanes is steam power (guess how his cars are powered). One (1) steam-powered airplane will successfully fly in 1933, but that’s it.

To summarize, the names in this post are: Ludwig von Falkenhausen, Eldon Crull, and Abner Doble.

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Today -100: May 5, 1917: Making some sacrifices like the rest of us

The censorship bill passes the House. Somehow the amendment requiring that publishing prohibited information could only be prosecuted if there was intent to harm the US has disappeared. The stupidest thing said during the debate was probably Edwin Webb (D-NC)’s “The newspaper ought to be required to make some sacrifices like the rest of us.”

The Russian provisional government’s note to the Allies promising to continue with the war provokes demonstrations by “the easily aroused crowds of Petrograd” in a struggle for power between the provisional government and the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, which feels that the government should have asked permission before sending the note.

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A Brooklyn man slapped a Bronx man for saying that Americans would only enlist if you got them drunk first.

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Today -100: May 4, 1917: Of food powers, war aims, and the Jews of Palestine

President Wilson sends a bill to Congress giving the president the power to control food production, distribution and prices during wartime. Also fuel, clothing, etc. And the power to seize factories, mines, etc. And to limit the use of grain for liquor. Not that Wilson wants to use all these powers, he says, he just wants the threat.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg will soon say more about Germany’s war aims. He is under attack for this from the right, who are calling him weak because being specific about terms for peace is something the Socialists want. The Socialists have been pushing No Annexations, No Indemnity. The right, while evidently having given up on annexing, say, parts of Belgium and France (specifically the parts with coal under them), still strongly demand that Germany’s enemies pay indemnities so Germany doesn’t wind up in debt or have its taxes put up.

The Ottoman governor of Palestine allegedly threatened to exterminate all Jews there.

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Today -100: May 3, 1917: Sagacious pigs are the worst kind

Assistant Treasury Secretary Byron Rufus Newton attacks recent price increases for flags. As much as double. Which he calls a penalty on patriotism imposed by “a few opportunists and sagacious pigs.” Newton has asked the attorney general if something can be done.

Posters go up in Berlin offering a $750 reward for anyone turning in “spies” spreading discontent. Why, they might even be disguised as good-natured old men or soldiers in uniform.

In the House of Lords, the archbishop of Canterbury objects to the bombing of the German city of Freiburg in retaliation for a German attack on a hospital ship. The only support for the attack comes from Lords Curzon and Milner, who are both former colonial governors.

A New York Supreme Court justice bans The Awakening of Spring, an old play by Frank Wedekind of Pandora’s Box fame. He thinks it’s too sexy and shit.

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Today -100: May 2, 1917: Only madmen or enemies of national liberty are capable of such revolting acts

There were street riots in Petrograd on Monday, with a little bomb-throwing, as was the custom. Someone assassinates Gen. Kashtalinski, who generaled in the Russo-Japanese War. The Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet condemns the disorder: “Only madmen or enemies of national liberty are capable of such revolting acts, which might compromise the Russian Revolution.” But Tuesday was nice, with big May Day celebrations.

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Venustiano Carranza exchanges the title of First Leader of Mexico for Presidente. His first official act is pardoning the leader of a strike.

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Today -100: May 1, 1917: Of flags

The French commission to the US is really pushing for the US to dispatch troops as soon as possible. They think the sight of American flag will seriously demoralize the Germans.

The Germans are being reassured by their government and newspapers that the US will only send money to the Allies, not troops. But what about flags?

The NYT says the Russian government was right to let “the German agent” Lenin give speeches which lost him sympathy instead of making a martyr of him by imprisoning him.

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Today -100: April 30, 1917: Of non-neutrals, offensives, commissions, and processions

Police in Berlin ordered American citizens to report to police stations every day, not leave the city without permission, and to observe a curfew. But the Foreign Office says Americans are being treated as non-neutrals rather than as enemies because Germany hasn’t recognized the American declaration of war. I didn’t know you could just do that.

Robert Nivelle didn’t last very long as commander-in-chief of the French Army. Following the failure of the Nivelle Offensive, he is replaced by Philippe Pétain, or rather he is left in his post but Pétain is given the newly re-created post of chief of staff so the power can be shifted to him without the government having to admit that Nivelle’s appointment was a mistake. The offensive will be abandoned in a week or so.

Following the British commission’s visit to the US last week, there’s a French one this week, headed by former prime minister René Viviani and Marshal Joseph Joffre, who says he’d like to see US troops sent to the front sooner than the US plans, one unit at a time as they become ready.

Austrian socialists and unions will hold a general strike on May Day.

Carrie Chapman Catt of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association writes to chambers of commerce throughout the US urging that women who replace men at work during the war be paid equal wages. SPOILER ALERT: they won’t be.

In Petrograd, an anti-pacifist, anti-Lenin procession consisting of wounded soldiers (suggesting that they are acting under orders) is addressed by US Ambassador David Francis, who says Americans were thrilled at news of the Russian Revolution. He also rejects Lenin’s idea of a separate peace.

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Today -100: April 29, 1917: Of separate peaces, conscription, and small nationalities

Austria has been putting out peace feelers towards Russia, suggesting that it has given up its plans to carve out Russia’s Polish territories. This is pissing off the German press, because it means that Austria and Germany may no longer have shared war aims.

Conscription (“selective service”) passes the House 397-24 and the Senate 81-8. Both houses vote to double the current pay of enlisted men. The Senate version would draft men aged 21 to 27, the House version 21 to 40. States will be responsible for providing a number of soldiers proportionate to their population. No sign-up bonus will be allowed, no paying for substitutes as in the Civil War.

200 members of Congress cable Prime Minister Lloyd George, asking him to “settle the Irish problem” in accordance with Woodrow Wilson’s principle of waging war “for the world-wide safety of democracy and of small nationalities.” They don’t mention, oh I don’t know, India, which to be fair is a fucking huge nationality.

Guatemala breaks relations with Germany.

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Today -100: April 28, 1917: Of suspicious, surly, dangerous neighbors, conscription, and olde timey pasttimes

British Prime Minister Lloyd George says getting the Irish to support the war is essential to winning it quickly. “We must convert Ireland from a suspicious, surly, dangerous neighbour to a cheerful, loyal comrade.” Well if that doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will.

Congress is still working on conscription. Opposition to it is fading for no obvious reason. The House rejects an amendment authorizing Pres. Wilson to accept Theodore Roosevelt’s request to be allowed to raise a volunteer regiment to be sent immediately (if not sooner) to France. Actually, there’s nothing stopping Wilson doing this now if he wants; this amendment is TR’s attempt to do an end run around the opposition of Wilson and the War Department to his plan.

The New York State Senate passes a bill banning the past-time practiced at your classier recreational resorts of paying to throw baseballs at the heads of negroes.

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Today -100: April 27, 1917: The world cannot exist half democratic and half autocratic

A German newspaper says Woodrow Wilson’s reported support for a Jewish state in Palestine (which if true I’ve missed) is “an English war aim against Turkey,” aimed at creating a land bridge between the British territories of Egypt and India.

Former senator, secretary of state and secretary of war Elihu Root, who will soon leave for Russia as part of a commission to coordinate war efforts, tells the American Society of International Law that the war against Germany is the great peace movement. “The world cannot exist half democratic and half autocratic. It must be all democratic or all Prussian.”

Woodrow Wilson writes the editor of the New York Evening Journal to deny any intention to use the broad powers of the Espionage Bill to suppress criticism. He almost sounds sincere. Well, until he adds a few adjectives, saying he wouldn’t want to lose “the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.” “Unless it’s by that fucker Eugene Debs,” he doesn’t add, it’s just kind of implied, but then Wilson’s tolerance for patriotic and intelligent criticism of himself was never very high and declined steadily during the war.

Again, the Espionage Act is still in force and it’s the law Obama used to go after leakers. Or, as Glenn Greenwald would point out, to selectively go after only those leakers who damaged the White House politically.

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Today -100: April 26, 1917: Some Americans have at last begun to hit

The US steamship Mongolia sinks a German u-boat. Theodore Roosevelt, on hearing the news: “Thank heaven, some Americans have at last begun to hit.”

In Congress, Speaker of the House “Champ” Clark speaks for an hour against conscription: “So far as Missourians are concerned, there is precious little difference between a conscript and a convict.” And it’s unnecessary because “There is not a scintilla of evidence that we are a race of cowards or mollycoddles.”

The Espionage Bill has been altered in Congress to make it a little less of a threat to the First Amendment. It would now outlaw collecting military information only if done with the intention of injuring the United States.

Russian peasants are seizing land.

Lenin has split from the Social Democrats and formed a Communist party.

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Today -100: April 25, 1917: The disgrace of a draft

Speaker of the House “Champ” Clark says he doesn’t think conscription will pass. “I am for letting the flower and youth of this country volunteer before we fasten the disgrace of a draft upon them.”

The NYC Mayor’s Recruiting Committee asks the police to protect recruiting posters, which are being torn down and defaced.

Earlier this month Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia’s plane was shot down and he was shot and captured as he tried to get back to his lines. The French are claiming that when he was dying he asked for his wife to be allowed to visit him and the French and British authorities gave permission but Germany refused it – in handwriting Freddy recognized as that of his second cousin Kaiser Wilhelm. He raged, the French say, that the kaiser wouldn’t let the princess leave Germany because she would tell the truth about the hunger and discontent in Germany, even in the Imperial court.

Lenin leads a march on the American Embassy in Petrograd in protest at the death of anarchist Thomas Mooney, who is not in fact dead but in prison for the bombing of a preparedness parade in San Francisco last year, which he did not do.

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Today -100: April 24, 1917: Of turkeys, plots, and glass bullets

Turkey breaks diplomatic relations with the United States because the US is now at war with its ally, though it refrains from declaring war at this time (and indeed for the rest of the war). US Ambassador Abram Elkus is too sick (with typhus) to leave Ankara at the moment.

The NYT hears from “sources intimately familiar with Central American men and affairs” that the Germans plotted to start revolutions in Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador and create a united country under Julián Irías of Nicaragua, and maybe get Colombia to join in with the promise of getting Panama back. But the plot was thwarted last December by “countermeasures.” Yeah, no.

Germany is using glass bullets on the Russian front. Yeah, no.

(I made a late addition to yesterday's post: Buster Keaton's first movie).

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Today -100: April 23, 1917: Of commissions and war-mad pastors

A British “commission” headed by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour arrives in the US for consultations.

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The Rev. Dr. Robert Berry of the Armour Villa Park Chapel in Yonkers decides that God wants all Prussians killed. Including his wife. Especially his wife.

Now playing: The Fatty Arbuckle movie “The Butcher Boy,” featuring one Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton in his first role.

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Today -100: April 22, 1917: Of khaki, neutrality, and German food talk

Sen. Frank Kellogg (R-Minnesota) pressures Canada into ending its advertisements in US newspapers for farm laborers which promised high wages (and escape from the US draft) if they came to Canada.

Before the war, Germany led the world in chemical-based industries like dyes. US companies have had to step in, which is just as well now that it’s going to war, as the only pre-war source of khaki dye was German.

Spain has a new government, and it will maintain the country’s neutrality too.

Greece’s King Constantine is cajoling/threatening the Allies: he’ll allow the formation of a pro-Entente government only if they agree to let him keep being king and not invade Greece. If not, he’ll take Greece into the war on the other side.

Argentina threatens that if Germany doesn’t take responsibility for sinking a sailing ship, it will break off relations and arm its ships.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 21, 1917: Of reasonable censorship and outrageous monarchies

After days of pissing off every newspaper in the country by persisting with provisions in the Espionage Bill so broad and so vague as to put every reporter covering military matters in jeopardy of prosecution, the White House backs off a bit, and the bill is altered so that the president’s regulations must be “reasonable.” And rules against gathering information or asking questions about national defenses are removed. The bill now specifically says public discussion and criticism of government policies won’t be illegal. So that’s good.

H.G. Wells writes to the London Times suggesting it is time to dump the monarchy and establish a republic to set a good example for other countries, He is especially thinking of Greece, joining the chorus of Allies trying to get rid of King Constantine. “A King has always been an outrage upon the ancient Republican traditions of Athens,” Wells says. The Times does not agree with Wells’s support of republicanism in Britain, nor will it publish George Bernard Shaw’s letter noting that “The fundamental case against monarchy is that it rests on a basis of idolatry that can no longer be maintained.”

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Today -100: April 20, 1917: It is a marvel you were not lynched

Congressional Democrats will block consideration of prohibition (for the duration of the war) in the extra session, unless Wilson declares it a war measure.

Woodrow Wilson explains to Congress the need for selective service: there are all sorts of patriotic service, and the military “was by no means the only part, and perhaps, all things considered, not the most vital part.” If people are allowed to volunteer for the military, they may be taking themselves away from other tasks which the country needs.

Meanwhile, reserve officers and officer candidates are expected to train – for three months – without pay.

Those men who hurriedly got married to avoid the draft will be drafted anyway if they married after the declaration of war, the War Department says.

Since the US declared war, the NYT has been full of stories, possibly true but not very well sourced, about how Germans are all starving and the German army, or at the very least its morale, is close to collapse.

The NYT is now spelling Lenin “Lenine.” In a reprint from the London Daily Chronicle which says Russians are indignant at his accepting passage from Germany (the famous closed carriage) on his trip from Switzerland to Russia. It says he has no supporters, even among Social Democrats.

The New York Yacht Club drops Kaiser Wilhelm and his brother Prince Heinrich of Prussia as honorary members.

This may not be his actual birth-name, but someone who wrote an anti-war pamphlet entitled “War At Any Price - A Sacrifice of Greed” and signs himself “Shiloh the Theocrat – One With Infinite Authority and Power,” is arrested for distributing that pamphlet at a patriotic parade in New York and sentenced to 6 months for disorderly conduct, which conduct seems to consist entirely of handing out his pamphlet. The magistrate tells him “It is a marvel you were not lynched. And if you had been you would have been receiving your just deserts.”

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Today -100: April 19, 1917: Of loyal obedience and patriotic service, selective service, churches, and lenses

NY Mayor John Purroy Mitchel says any teacher who doesn’t sign a pledge to teach children the duty of “loyal obedience and patriotic service” should be fired.

The House Military Committee decides to merely “authorize” the president to implement conscription if he thinks a voluntary system of recruitment won’t work, which is of course Congress’s way of avoiding taking blame for a potentially unpopular decision. They know damned well Wilson has no intention of even trying a voluntary system.

Meanwhile, Theodore Roosevelt, realizing that the War Department has been stalling and evading his request to lead a division to France immediately if not sooner (Rough Riders II: This Time It’s Personal), has been secretly lobbying Congress to end-run the White House veto. TR has also been offered a commission in the New York National Guard. He says he might accept if the other thing falls through.

Congress passes a bill allowing Allied countries to recruit their citizens living in the United States. There is some push-back over fears that those countries would use coercion, including from new congresscritter Fiorello La Guardia, who is worried about Italians, pointing out that Italy doesn’t recognize the American naturalizations of Italian citizens.

Anti-German rioting in Brazil, with buildings burned in Porto Alegre.

Emperor Karl of Austria promises God that if He grants Austria an early peace, he will build a really nice church for Him.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“I SAID watch where you step, I dropped my contact lens!”

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Today -100: April 18, 1917: Of selective service, war ag, and dangerous magazines

Pres. Wilson consults with members of Congress about selective service. And by “consult,” I mean demand his own way in every detail, shooting down the idea of trying a volunteer military before implementing conscription.

The Pennsylvania Legislature defeats a women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution.

White House staff are being encouraged to grow food on a vacant bit of government-owned land opposite the White House (where a new Justice Dept building was supposed to be built, but it’s been delayed) to set an example.

The British government has banned the export of copies of The Nation magazine (the British magazine of that name, not the American one) because of “dangerous” articles that could be used in German propaganda. In Parliament, Bonar Law refuses to explain which articles caused the ban or what the objectionable material was, although it was probably an article in the March 3rd issue which said that the Germans were performing well on the Western Front and in their submarine warfare. Churchill notes that Lloyd George himself has made more pessimistic assessments of the military situation than anything the Nation published.

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Today -100: April 17, 1917: Of allegiance, cadavers, and soviets

Woodrow Wilson issues a proclamation telling people not to commit treason, including aliens who, he says, owe “allegiance” to the United States. Do they, though?

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Times of London and the Daily Mail report that Germany is producing glycerine by boiling down the corpses of dead soldiers.  British Military Intelligence propagandists are responsible for planting this particular story. The basis for it is that glycerine was generated in Kadaververwertungsanstalt, which the Northcliffe papers choose to translate as Corpse-Exploitation Establishment, pretending that the “kadavers” in question are human rather than horse (the word for human cadavers is leichman).

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies demands that it retain the power of oversight and control over the provisional government because only it can counteract any counter-revolutionary moves.

Raimes & Co., whatever they might be, tries to screw over Fritz Schultz, Jr., Company Inc., whatever that might be, arguing that the latter’s lawsuits demanding payment from the former for goods received be thrown out because it’s an Enemy Corporation now. The judge says Germans can still sue.

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Today -100: April 16, 1917: We must all speak, act, and serve together

Woodrow Wilson issues a proclamation about what he expects everyone to do to win “the grim and terrible war for democracy and human rights” (hey, the war finally has a name!) He continues to portray this as some sort of violent social work: “There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting for.” He says “we must devote ourselves to the service without regard to profit or material advantage”. Spoiler Alert: US manufacturing is going to get a buttload of profit and material advantage out of the war.

He issues marching orders to every segment of society: “Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measure rests the fate of the war and the fate of the nations.” “there shall be no unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food supply by those who handle it on its way to the consumer.” He asks middlemen to make no “unusual profits” and “suggests” to merchants the motto “small profits and quick service.” He asks housewives to practice strict economy. “This is the time for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and extravagance.”

He concludes, “We must all speak, act, and serve together.”

Carranza, speaking  at the opening of the first Mexican Congress in 3 years, says that Mexico won’t abandon its neutrality.

Ludwig Zamenhof, creator of the alt-language Esperanto, dies. Zamenhof was a Polish Jew who thought a universal language would end war so, um, yeah. Ripozu en paco, Dr. Zamenhof.

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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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