Today -100: November 14, 1917: The bourgeoisie has endeavored to separate the army from the revolution

China rejects the recent US-Japan agreement recognizing Japan’s “special interests” in China and the “open door” for US trade in China. China says agreements between other nations are not binding on it.

Paul Painlevé resigns as French prime minister after 9 weeks, after losing a confidence motion. There is some push-back against the new inter-allied war council.

There are contradictory reports about the clashes between Bolshevik-controlled military forces and Kerensky’s. Trotsky is declaring victory, as was the custom: “The bourgeoisie has endeavored to separate the army from the revolution. Kerensky has attempted to break it by the violence of Cossackdom. Both efforts have failed. ... The opposition to Kerensky is the opposition to the landlords, the bourgeois, and Kornilov. The opposition to Kerensky is also the affirmation of the people’s right to peace, free life, the land, bread and power.”

Speaking of bread and power, Food Administrator Herbert Hoover bans the destruction of stale bread.

The newly enfranchised women of New York are now demanding the right to sit on juries. They’ll get it at, er, some point, but it won’t be mandatory as it is for men until the mid-1970s.

NYC Associate Superintendent of Schools John Tildlsey, after holding his own little inquisition for De Witt Clinton High School (Bronx) teachers, has suspended 3 and transferred 8 for “holding views which are subversive of discipline in the schools and which undermine good citizenship,” i.e., not being completely gung ho about the war. One of the teachers who was cross-examined (the article doesn’t say if he’s one of the ones disciplined) says that one question he was asked was “Don’t you believe that Jewish students, especially the Russians, need to be disciplined out of their individualistic tendencies?” They were also asked their views of the Bolsheviks, whether teachers should inculcate instinctive obedience to superiors like they do in Germany, etc.

Feds and local police raid an IWW meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, and arrest 50 delegates.

Woodrow Wilsons personal secretary Joseph Tumulty denies persistent rumors that he has been arrested and imprisoned as a spy.

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Today -100: November 13, 1917: We are making all our statements now by means of cannon

In a speech in Paris, British Prime Minister Lloyd George says of the recent creation of an inter-allied council staff to oversee more central coordination of the militaries of Britain, France, and Italy, that the Italian disaster necessitated acting quickly without bringing in Russia (!) and the US, which will hopefully join soon. “Disaster,” by the way, is the word he uses to describe Italy’s military near-collapse. He also says the council is necessary because of past “blunders.” Actually, “incredible blunders.”

The military forces of Kerensky and the Bolsheviks clash.

Trotsky replies to an AP interview request: “we are making all our statements now by means of cannon. I have nothing to say otherwise.”

Judge Mallowney of D.C. police court suspends the sentences of the 41 suffragist White House picketers. So with this unexpected free time (so to speak), they go back and picket the White House again, although Woodrow Wilson is actually....

...in Buffalo, speaking at the American Federation of Labor annual convention, where he attacks pacifists: “I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not.”

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Today -100: November 12, 1917: Of speedy wars, collapsing revolutions, wholesome truths, queens, explosives, salutes, and political prisoners

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Bolshevik revolution is “approaching collapse,” reports the NYT. Troops loyal to Kerensky are approaching Petrograd.

Supposedly, new self-appointed Russian foreign minister Leon Trotsky shows up at the Foreign Office and is met with obstruction – not being shown the secret treaties, being told there was no French interpreter available for him to send a telegram, etc – and “the typewriter girls of the Ministry assailed him with some wholesome truths about his origin, his aims, and his activities generally.” Assuming this has any basis in reality, “his origin” almost certainly means his Jewishness.

Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s last monarch, deposed by a US-backed coup in 1893, dies.

The Bureau of Mines plans to thwart bomb plots by arresting anyone in possession of explosives without a license.

There is some debate over whether white soldiers in the US Army can refuse to salute black officers.

The 41 suffragists currently out on bail, and 50 of their closest friends, force  their way into the yard of the prison where Alice Paul and Rose Winslow are being forcibly fed, and are able to talk with Paul and get some instruction about how to deal with prison when they’re sentenced. Demand political prisoner status immediately, she says. She complains that they’re force-feeding her 3 times a day where the British prison authorities only did it twice a day.

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Today -100: November 11, 1917: The Maximalists are in no way representative of the whole of Russia

41 suffragist picketers are arrested in front of the White House.

Kerensky resurfaces, in the town of Luga, 85 miles from the capital.

A temporary cabinet is named, with Lenin as prime minister and Trotsky foreign minister.

The Russian Embassy in Washington refuses to recognize the Bolshevik regime. Ambassador Boris Bakhmeteff, who will continue to pretend to be Russia’s ambassador until 1922 and will never see Russia again, says “The Petrograd events are a revolt of a party against a national government. The Maximalists are in no way representative of the whole of Russia.”

A mob of “Knights of Liberty” in Tulsa seize 17 IWW members from the police and flog and tar & feather them. The cops were already going to “persuade” them to leave town, as was the custom.

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Today -100: November 10, 1917: We offer a just peace, but we cannot accept unjust terms

Political parties in New York respond to the passage of women’s suffrage by hurriedly recruiting women. Tammany Hall is trying to figure out which ones to bribe with jobs, as was the custom. And the state will have to double the number of election districts.

The State Department thinks the Bolshevik Revolution can’t possibly last. The great hope among the Allies is that “some strong man” – not a Bolshevik – will emerge to take control of Russia.

Lenin says he will propose a 3-month armistice, during which time elected representatives of each country – not diplomats – can work out a peace. “We offer a just peace, but we cannot accept unjust terms.”

The arrest of all members of the Kerensky government is ordered on the grounds of complicity with Gen. Kornilov’s revolt, which is ridiculous.

The prison doctor where the suffragette White House picketers are being held says they weren’t force-fed, they “merely want to advertise themselves by saying they have been fed forcibly.” He is lying.

Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration wants cranberries dropped from Thanksgiving dinner, as they require too much sugar.

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Today -100: November 9, 1917: Now we have a revolution

The Bolsheviks seize the Winter Palace. It’s all pretty bloodless so far. The Petrograd Soviet promises an immediate “democratic peace” and the redistribution of land. The military death penalty is re-abolished. “Now we have a revolution,” Lenin says, “The peasants and workers control the government. This is only a preliminary step toward a similar revolution everywhere.” But does this mean anything outside Petrograd? Will the rest of the country and the military follow? Will Kerensky (currently nowhere to be found) establish a competing government in Moscow?

Headline of the Day -100: 

This is the Balfour Declaration. Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour writes to Lord Walter Rothschild to pass on to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland that the UK now supports “a national home for the Jewish people” “in Palestine.” Which is all quite vague, and intentionally so. A home doesn’t necessarily mean a state, and “in Palestine” doesn’t necessarily mean all of Palestine. Balfour says this shouldn’t “prejudice the civil or religious rights” of non-Jews in Palestine.

Hunger-striking suffragist prisoners Alice Paul and Rose Winslow are forcibly fed.

In Montgomery, Alabama, a black soldier from the Ohio National Guard brushes against a white woman on a crowded street car. For this infraction, he is kidnapped by a bunch of white men and taken away in a car towards an unknown fate. More soldiers from his battalion (so also black) rush off in pursuit in carjacked automobiles, and....  the NYT never runs a follow-up, so who knows.

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Today -100: November 8, 1917: What’s the Russian for “It’s on, bitches”?

Headlines of the Day, on opposite columns of the front page:

I just found the juxtaposition funny, for some reason.

So yeah, the October/November Revolution has begun. Kerensky outlaws the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet and deploys guards he thinks he can trust from the officers’ training schools and Cossacks and the Women’s Battalion of Death. The Preliminary Parliament votes, 123-102, to work with the government but rejects a resolution for the suppression of the Bolsheviks.

Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the NY State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, is not at all bitter about losing the referendum: “when radicalism and socialism prevail, woman suffrage will carry.” She also blames pacifism and says New York men will “rue the day.” Rue the day, I tell you!

Another classical music performance canceled. I hadn’t realized this was going to be such a thing. This time it’s two Pittsburgh performances by violinist/composer Fritz Kreisler (you can hear him on YouTube). Kreisler used to be a lieutenant in the Austrian Army, invalided out in 1914, so there’s public outrage by people who haven’t noticed that the US is not at war with Austria.

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Today -100: November 7, 1917: There is no Hohenzollern here

Ohio: a prohibition referendum narrowly loses, for the 3rd time, and women’s suffrage loses 57-43.

Prohibition very narrowly loses in Iowa but wins 3 to 1 in New Mexico. There are now 27 dry states.

Women’s suffrage loses in Maine 65-35, but wins in New York (54-46). The NYT blames the reversal from 1915 on low turnout as people are too concerned with the war to make the world safe for democracy to bother voting. Or something.

NYC Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel is defeated, winning 23% of the vote, not much more than the Socialist Morris Hillquit (22%), while Judge John Hylan gets 46%. Hylan’s plurality is the largest in New York history. Tammany Hall sweeps the municipal elections, and Al Smith (future presidential candidate) is the new president of the Board of Aldermen. The city also elects 7 socialists to the state Assembly.

A sampling of editorials is entitled “Papers in Other Cities Do Not Like New York Election Result.” The Washington Post, for example, says the high socialist vote “confirms fears of a bad situation in which soapbox orators hold an unfortunate power in molding the views of the unthinking Americans.”

Gov. Charles Whitman says that, contrary to everything Mitchel said before the election, Germany should not be encouraged by the Hylan victory. “The people of New York State are patriotic. There is no Hohenzollern here.”

Suffragette Alice Paul goes on hunger strike in the District prison, demanding better food for the suffragist picketer/prisoners. They’ve been getting salt pork and cabbage. (In fact, the issue is that the suffragists are not being allowed to buy outside food like other prisoners).

Leon Trotsky, president of  the Petrograd Soldiers’ and Workers’ Soviet, asks the Petrograd Garrison to ignore orders from the government unless approved by the Soviet’s Revolutionary Military Committee.

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Today -100: November 6, 1917: Of special interests, symphonies, operators, acute perils, and masses

Secretary of State Robert Lansing signs an agreement recognizing Japan’s “special interests” in China, while Japan recognizes the “open door” for US trade in China.

Baltimore bars the Boston Symphony from playing because of the danger of disorder from idiots, including former governor Edwin Warfield.

New York Telephone has an ad in the Times asking customers not to dial the operator to ask for election results. They’ve provided this service in the past but there’s a war on, you know.

Hungary is refusing to send grain to Austria. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is not going well.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Radical... pacifists. Trotsky predicted the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet would come into power Sunday (which was 2 days ago).

Newsdealers are refusing to handle periodicals that the Post Office has barred from the mails, fearing prosecution. It is only illegal to sell the particular issues which the PO deems un-mailable, but dealers are barring every issue of any magazine, such as The Masses, that has been censored. They are probably right to be cautious, because they can be prosecuted for carrying something which is later declared seditious.

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Today -100: November 5, 1917: Of POWs and chain letters

NYC mayoral candidate John Hylan claims that the Mitchel campaign tried to pressure a government employee, a photographer, into saying that he’d seen Hylan at the Friends of Peace convention in 1915, but that man denies the story. It’s all very fishy.

The first US prisoners of war are captured during the first clash between US and German soldiers.

The government claims to have discovered a German plot to clog the US mails through the use of chain letters, aka the “peace prayer” chain.

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Today -100: November 4, 1917: Of over-the-top New Yorkers, zones, and savings

NYC Mayor John Purroy Mitchel says he will definitely be re-elected because “the real Americans of this city will go over the top against the forces of disloyalty.”

“Over the top,” by the way, is a very new phrase, referring to going over the top of the trenches at the start of a battle.

Question of the Day:

“In the Zone,” one of his sailor one-acts, opens, his first professional production.

A Lithuanian carpenter is arrested carrying a bomb onto a Navy troop transport ship in a NY shipyard.

A. Mitchell Palmer, the future attorney general and dickwad who currently rejoices in the title Alien Property Custodian, says that while the government will be seizing German companies’ property in the US, individuals’ postal savings accounts won’t be touched.

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Today -100: November 3, 1917: Of fires, muck, masses, quitters, and women’s reasons

There is evidently a German “uprising” in southern Brazil. Which seems to just mean a railway strike.

The US government says that since the US entered the war, fires have destroyed $25 million worth of food, most of those fires started by German spies or sympathizers, because German spies are responsible for everything bad that happens now.

Theodore Roosevelt demands that Boston Symphony conductor Karl Muck be deported for refusing to play the Star-Spangled Banner. Muck offers his resignation, which has not yet been accepted, and plays the tune.

A Circuit Court upholds the banning of The Masses from the mails, which evidently means that just producing the magazine is now illegal, through logic that seems ridiculously faulty. The court also says that the crime of obstructing enlistment in the military does not require that the magazine directly advise people not to enlist, but that it prints absolutely anything that could be interpreted by those inclined to so interpret it as impeding, hindering, restraining or putting an obstacle in the way of recruitment, including the “natural and reasonable effect of the publication”.

The Washington Post publishes some of that AP interview with Kerensky mentioned here yesterday under the title “Russia Quits War; Blames English for Not Sending Fleet.” The Russian embassy is now scrambling to reassure everyone that Russia is not in fact quitting the war.

The Russian government has decided not to abandon Petrograd after all (Germany has stopped what had looked like an all-out attempt to capture the capital in favor of a push to knock Italy out of the war).


Two ads, NYT, page 11:

The NYT is also opposed to the women’s suffrage amendment.

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Today -100: November 2, 1917: Yellow calls to yellow

The Bolsheviks do badly in Russian municipal elections, 7% in the big cities, less in small towns. And they abandon plans for a demonstration in Petrograd. So the government is pretty sure the Bolshies are on the decline.

Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky tells the Associated Press that Russia is “worn out” and everyone else should just carry on with the war while Russia has a bit of a lie-down. He also complains that the German navy is in the Baltic and where the hell is the British navy?

NYC Mayor John Purroy Mitchel releases a poster of the letterhead of the Friends of Peace listing John Hylan as an honorary vice president. Hylan calls it a forgery, and again states that a lot of people were once listed as hon veeps without their permission, including several in the Mitchel campaign and administration, and anyway that was before the US entered the war, as was the endorsement of Hylan by the Hearst-owned German-language Deutsches Journal in 1915 that Mitchel is now citing as proof of treason or something. Mitchel says the result of this election will be seen in Germany, and if German soldiers read that “the Kaiser wins in New York,” they will be encouraged and strengthened, and “the American in the trench a hundred yards away may pay with his life as the penalty for disloyalty at home. The time has come to choose between the seditious and the loyal, between enemies and friends, between traitors and Americans.”

Theodore Roosevelt on Socialist mayoral candidate Morris Hillquit: “Yellow calls to yellow, and that is all there is in that campaign.”

By the way, look who else is running, for the #2 position in city government.

In Britain, the Pankhursts’ Women’s Social and Political Union changes its name to the Woman’s Party with a platform of a little bit of feminism and a lot of screw-Germany-into-the-ground-forever.

The Metropolitan Opera decides to leave Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde out of the new season. In London German operas have been performed only in English translation since the start of the war. Tomorrow the Met will announce the exclusion of all German-language opera. It was the Met that originally brought Parsifal to the US and which gave the first performance of the complete Ring Cycle in the Western Hemisphere. German operas still under copyright, like Strauss’s Rosenkavelier, would actually be illegal to perform under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

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Today -100: November 1, 1917: Of perjury, rallies, and unserious music

NYC mayoral race: John Hylan denies Mayor John Mitchel’s charge that he is a member of the Society of Friends of Peace. So Mitchel now demands he repeat that under oath subject to perjury. And, er, how would he even do that?

Socialist New York mayoral candidate Morris Hillquit holds a rally filling Madison Square Garden. The government sends stenographers as a subtle warning to watch what he says.

Henry Higginson, the founder and chief patron of the Boston Symphony, threatens to shut it down if there continues to be pressure from the public and the government  to play the Star-Spangled Banner, which he considers inappropriate for a program of serious symphonic music. The clamor, which was stirred up by the Providence Journal, will continue until the symphony’s conductor, Dr. Karl Muck, a German-born Swiss citizen, is interned in March.

A new issue of the Wipers Times is out.

From the diary of Lieut. Samuel Pepys: “On the Thursday of last week we did take up our residence in a new part of the trench. Tis a noisome place, and I am disgusted of it. The mud is of a terrifying stickiness, and I am feared for my breeches, which cost me one guinea at the Hope Brothers’ establishment in Cheapside. Also I have spoiled my new coat on the barbed wire, which has grieved me, as it was of a good shape and fitting. ... As I must take a party out for the sandbagging, to bed at 7 of the clock, after a poor dinner, the Macconnochie being but of medium quality and not too hot.”

And a poem:

Sentry! What of the night?
The sentry’s answer I will not repeat.
Though short in words, ‘twas with feeling replete,
It covered all he thought and more,
It covered all he’d thought before,
It covered all he might think yet
In years to come. For he was wet
And had no rum.

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Today -100: October 31, 1917: Of cults of dishonesty, pure camouflage, and Schutzengrabenvernichtaungautomobile

The first American to be wounded in the trenches is a lieutenant in the Signal Corps, which is all the Army is saying about him.

Kaiser Wilhelm names Georg von Hertling, the Bavarian prime minister as the new German chancellor. Although a member of the (Catholic) Zentrum party, he’s more hard right than, um, zentrist, especially on the war, annexations and so forth. He is 74 and won’t have much authority as government functions are increasingly coming under the control of Hindenburg and Ludendorff.

Continuing his high-minded campaign for re-election, New York City Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel accuses Judge John Hylan of aiding and abetting pro-German propaganda, of associating with paid agents of Germany and with men denounced by the government as disloyal. He calls Hylan’s campaign a “German attack from within” by which “the Hohenzollern has determined to seize, control, and corrupt the government of New York City,” and calls on voters to prove “that New York is still an American city.” I especially enjoy his continual attempts to portray Hylan as evading his questions, questions which tend to be unanswerable: “Judge Hylan has refused to explain what action of his has attracted to his support the disloyal and seditious elements in this city.” Oh, and Mitchel says Hylan and Hearst are in a “cult of disloyalty.”

Hylan, who the NYT always refers to as the Tammany candidate (there’s an editorial entitled “The Hylan Plot Exposed”), calls the accusations of un-Americanism from Mitchel, Roosevelt etc a “fake issue” to distract from Mitchel’s siding with big business and special privilege.

Socialist candidate Morris Hillquit agrees that the issue of patriotism in this campaign is “pure camouflage.” And he responds to Roosevelt’s calling him an agent of Prussianized autocracy by calling Roosevelt “the most demoralizing influence in the political life of our country”. He says TR supports the war not to spread democracy but as a business proposition for the profit of the rich commercial classes.

There’s also a Republican candidate somewhere, but he doesn’t and won’t amount to much (Mitchel was elected as an R in 1913 but lost the primary this year and is now that annoying New York oddity, a “Fusion” candidate). He claims the newspapers are conspiring to kill his candidacy by not reporting on it. That, the NYT reports, probably just to be sarcastic.

German soprano Frieda Hempel is refused a license for a concert in Providence, Rhode Island until she promises to sing The Star-Spangled Banner.

The Germans have a word for tanks: Schutzengrabenvernichtaungautomobile. It won’t be in use for long (assuming anyone really uses it now: “Franz, look out, there’s a Schutzengrabenvernichtaungautomobile coming...!”) When Germany starts producing its own tanks next year they’ll be called Sturmpanzerwagen. Whether that gets shortened to panzer during or after this war I do not know. Anyone?

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Today -100: October 30, 1917: An experience of this kind shakes one's faith in the doctrine of non-resistance

The US Army takes its first German prisoner of war, who dies of his wounds, but only after supposedly telling his captors that German soldiers are all tired of the war, and only the officers want to continue.

The US government is discussing how to come to the aid of Italy and prevent it collapsing under the Teutonic onslaught, but anything it does will likely involve fighting Austrian troops and the US hasn’t declared war on Austria yet, so it may have to do that.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Before commencing, they read out “In the name of the poor women and children of Belgium this man should be whipped.” “This man” is Herbert Bigelow, head of the People’s Church of Cincinnati, who is told not to return to the city, but afterwards, when he’s in the hospital recovering, somebody claiming to be one of the whipping party calls to say he can return, if he behaves himself. Bigelow says “An experience of this kind shakes one's faith in the doctrine of non-resistance. It has converted me, at least temporarily, to the gospel of preparedness.” Bigelow will be elected to Congress from Ohio in 1936.

Theodore Roosevelt speaks in support of NYC Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel’s re-election, saying a man who votes for anyone else “will have the poor satisfaction of feeling that he has voted in a way that will give comfort to the Prussianized Germany that we are fighting at this moment.” Also, “We are to decide whether we have got a country, or whether we have simply got a polyglot boarding house!” He accuses Socialist candidate Morris Hillquit of the crime of not having bought a Liberty Loan bond.

Broadway theatres and stores beg the Fuel Administrator to allow them to continue running their signs at night. The electricity they’re using is just surplus, they say.

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Today -100: October 29, 1917: Of peace mandates, caporetti, and fraternization

Socialist candidate for NYC mayor Morris Hillquit says his victory would be a mandate for peace.

German and Austrian troops push into northern Italy (the Battle of Caporetto). Some units of the Italian army surrender without a fight, as was the custom. The official report calls them cowards, although the Germans were using poison gas and Italian soldiers were given woefully inadequate gas masks. On the German side, a Lt. Erwin Rommel did especially well.

Vittorio Orlando will form a new Italian government.

Russian artillery is turned on Russian soldiers fraternizing with the German enemy.

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Today -100: October 28, 1917: This is the time to support Woman Suffrage

The Austrian Socialist Party convention demands that the government proclaim the principle of no annexations and no indemnities, giving up its pretensions to control Serbia and Poland.

US troops finally arrive in the trenches in France, sneaking in at night. And the first US artillery shell of the war has been fired, by a red-headed gunner, the NYT informs us.

20,000 women march down New York’s 5th Avenue in support of women’s suffrage. They’re really pushing the theme of women’s war contributions as a reason for suffrage. One banner  says “Our sons are fighting for democracy. In the name of democracy give us the vote.” Others (see below) quote Woodrow Wilson’s support. Other banners reject the National Woman’s Party’s picketing of the White House. There are several black women (which has been an issue of contention in suffrage parades before, though not I think this time).

That’s Carrie Chapman Catt center front.

Note the large poster for Liberty Bonds on the bank at the left.

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Today -100: October 27, 1917: Congaing off to war. Yeah I went there.

Brazil declares war on Germany.

Speaker of the House Champ Clark retracts his accusation that New York bankers (he can’t remember if he accused “a ring of New York financiers” or “a ring of New York men,” but of course he meant “a ring of Jews”) were sabotaging the Liberty Loan.

The US will allow pianist Ignace Paderewski



to raise a Polish Legion to fight in the war, although it’s unclear under whose authority they’d fight. Pretty sure it never happened. Paderewski will be prime minister of Poland in 1919.

The NYT – quel surprise! – opposes next month’s women’s suffrage referendum: “is not the anti-suffrage majority better entitled to be saved from the ballot than the suffrage minority to get the ballot?” But the Times is pretty sure “there is a sort of popular impatience with woman suffrage at this time.”

There will be a suffragist parade on 5th Avenue Saturday. The anti association warns shops along the route not to decorate for the parade.

The Indiana Supreme Court invalidates the law giving women the municipal vote. It rules that since the state constitution defines voters as male, the Legislature didn’t have the authority to give votes to women. Carrie Chapman Catt points out that it’s almost impossible to amend the Indiana constitution, so the only path forward is at the federal level.

The Italian government loses a vote of confidence and resigns.

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Today -100: October 26, 1917: Of New York traitors, war hogs, turnips, and yellow perils

Speaker of the House “Champ” Clark claims that “a ring of New York financiers” is sabotaging the Liberty Loan so the next one will have to pay higher interest. He doesn’t name names or reveal his source. The NYT demands the federal DA make him appear and offer proof.

Despite the alleged sabotage, the Loan has raised close to $5 billion.

Woodrow Wilson gives a speech on women’s suffrage that offers stronger support than he has previously.

Everett Wheeler, the chairman of the Association Opposed to Political Suffrage for Women, writes to Wilson to complain that prominent suffragists Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt are campaigning for the women’s suffrage referendum in New York, despite being on the Women’s Advisory Committee of the Council of National Defense. He wants an executive order banning women people in public service from engaging in politics.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Headline of the Day -100: 

Or vice versa. Also, the government decrees that women’s skirts must be shorter and tighter to... to conserve material, yeah, that’s the ticket.

Headline of the Day -100: 

In other words, they’re trying to fuck soldiers. This will become a grave concern for some people, including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

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Today -100: October 25, 1917: Only by German bayonets

Kerensky complains to the Preliminary Parliament that the army “seems to have lost the sense of duty and honor”. He blames the Bolsheviks for undermining morale. Minister of War Verkhovski plans to introduce legislation allowing for collective punishment of entire regiments, reducing the food rations of demoralized units because that’ll help. “It seems to be possible to end anarchy only by German bayonets,” he says.

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Today -100: October 24, 1917: A thing no government can permit is organisation for rebellion

The US Secret Service claims to have thwarted a German plot to start another rising in Ireland next Easter. Which the SS nipped in the bud by arresting... three men. Which doesn’t really sound like a large rising, as risings go. One of the men is “General” Liam Mellowes, who led a division during the Easter Rising and then escaped to the US. He will be executed in 1922 during the Irish Civil War.

In Parliament, Lloyd George says “a thing no government can permit is organisation for rebellion.” John Redmond of the Irish Nationalists says the Irish Executive is trying to undermine the Irish convention (which is currently meeting to work out Ireland’s future) through petty harassments like banning Swedish gymnastic exercises and arresting Boy Scouts for drilling.

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Today -100: October 23, 1917: We must settle this once for all

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George says that any peace enacted now would just be an armed truce preparatory to an even bigger war: “all the best scientific brains in the lands, stimulated by national rivalry, national hatred, national hopes, devoting their energies for ten, twenty, thirty years to magnifying destructive powers. We must settle this once for all.” He notes that air power and submarines – “the infernal weapons of the deep” – are in their infancy. After 30 years of development, their use “would mean the death of civilisation.”

There will be a women’s suffrage parade Saturday in New York City to support next month’s referendum. Since one of the banners will evidently scold the suffragists who’ve been picketing the White House, the National Woman’s Party (whose chair Alice Paul has been sentenced along with Dr. Caroline Spencer to 7 months for their picketing) will skip the parade and hold a protest meeting outside the New York Woman’s Suffrage Party hq instead.

NY Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, speaking to a bunch of Methodist Episcopal ministers, denies the Hearst papers’ claims that he dances the tango. This “greatly pleased the ministers”.

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Today -100: October 22, 1917: The revolution and the people are in danger

Theodore Roosevelt admits that he is blind in one eye, the result of a boxing mishap when he was, um, president of the United States.

At the opening of the Preliminary Parliament in Petrograd, PM Kerensky praises the navy but says the army sucks. President of the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet Leon Trotsky addresses the body, attacking the government as bourgeois and retrograde. Before leading a walk-out, he says “I am leaving to tell the workers, soldiers and peasants that the revolution and the people are in danger.”

Arthur Conan Doyle’s His Last Bow comes out, the second Sherlock Holmes book published during the war, consisting of stories published before the war except for the title story, with the bees and the spies.

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Today -100: October 21, 1917: Of disrespect for law and order, and what 8¢ can buy you

NYC mayoral candidate John Hylan blames the student strikes and school-window-breakings on Mayor Mitchel for imposing the Gary system against the wishes of parents, although he finds the turmoil “deplorable” and “bound to develop in our children a disrespect for law and order”.

You’re In The Army Now:

And I’m sure it’s scrumptious.

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Today -100: October 20, 1917: Of untruths, moving to Moscow, and Chequers

Headline of the Day -100: 

In a lawsuit in 1908 against the Black Diamond Automobile Company of Brooklyn. Mayor Mitchel says Hylan used a dummy to sue the company while he was its lawyer.

The NYT claims that Bulgaria is trying to negotiate separately from its Teutonic allies, whom it worries will screw it at the peace conference. It’s certainly been left out of talks with Russia over prisoner exchanges.

The Russian government announces that it will move to Moscow. German troops are getting closer and closer to Petrograd, with zeppelins and everything.

Lloyd George takes possession of Chequers, the country mansion donated for the use of British prime ministers by Sir Arthur Lee. Because the idea was to give it to the office of prime minister rather than to Lloyd George personally, a law had to be enacted, which marks the first reference in British law to the office of prime minister.

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Today -100: October 19, 1917: Of mutinies, loan slackers, conspiracies, and funny-looking dogs – yeah, I said it, funny-looking

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: More alleged mutinies are reported in the German and Austrian navies.

The NYT is calling people who don’t buy enough war bonds (the Liberty Loan) “loan slackers.”

Mexican Gen. Obregon says Pancho Villa and his soldiers are completely surrounded. In other news, Mexico is still a thing, not that you’d know it from the Times (this story exists only because Obregon is in New York).

Protests against the Gary system continue in the Bronx, with parents now joining students in breaking school windows and throwing stones at cops, as was the custom.

11 socialists are acquitted in Grand Rapids for conspiracy against conscription, which amounts to just circulating literature supposedly inducing men not to register. The judge tells the jury that socialism is not on trial; the judge is full of shit.

A judge recognizes a man charged with manslaughter as one he himself prosecuted for murder 25 years before, so that was a nice reunion. This time the man, now a saloon owner, killed his bartender because “He made fun of my dog.”

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Today -100: October 18, 1917: The German agent pervades the land

A NYT editorial warns, “The German agent pervades the land.” With German-language papers now under strict censorship/ban by the Post Office, these agents’ principle weapon is spreading rumors about sunk transport ships, mutinies, etc.

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Today -100: October 17, 1917: Of Gary systems, Polands, candy, and picketers

NYC Mayor Mitchel’s introduction of the “Gary system” of education – rotating students to different rooms throughout the day for efficiency, increased vocational ed., etc – is meeting a little resistance, with 1,000 kids on the Upper East Side going on strike and smashing school windows. There is concern that the Gary system (as in Gary, Indiana) is too focused on shaping working-class children for the needs of capitalism, and there’s a religious thing, and a certain amount of hysteria.

Russia now says the peace agreement must include complete independence for Poland, not just autonomy under Russia.

Meanwhile, Germany finally installs its puppet Council of Regency in Poland, appointing the archbishop of Warsaw, the mayor of Warsaw (a prince), and some rich dude.

Headline of the Day -100: 

British Prime Minister Lloyd George withdraws his libel action against several newspapers which said that he left London after an air raid warning was given, after the papers retract.

4 of the suffragists who picketed the White House are sentenced to 6 months in the workhouse.

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Today -100: October 16, 1917: What better covering could any man have?

Mata Hari is executed by the French as a spy, on little evidence. What she actually did, and who she did it for (everyone? no one?) is still a confused question. She certainly did not tell the Germans about tanks, as the story claims.

The New York World has been running stories about NYC mayoral candidate John Hylan having, a few years ago, sued a company he was involved with for payment for his legal services and then, as lawyer for that company, failing to contest himself. Or something. Anyway, incumbent Boy-Mayor John Purroy Mitchel publicly demands that Tammany Boss Murphy say whether that’s the reason he chose Hylan, a singularly unimpressive campaigner with no governmental experience – because he knew he’d have something to hang over his head. Mitchel continues to paint Hylan as un-patriotic, but says all he has to do is denounce Murphy, Hearst, and, er, everyone else who supports him – the “whole galaxy of anti-Americanisms.” Mitchel tells a group of Italians, “It is said that in this campaign of loyalty I am wrapped up in the American flag, and if I am, what better covering could any man have?”

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Today -100: October 15, 1917: Let all remember that the Fatherland will not forgive criminal levity

Following the German occupation of Osel Island in the Gulf of Riga, Russian PM Kerensky calls on the navy to keep out the Germans, complains about the “attitude” of the Kronstadt fortress weakening Russian defenses, and calls for sacrifices. “Let all remember that the Fatherland will not forgive criminal levity.”

Criminal levity is the worst kind.

The Jewish Daily Forward gives in to Post Office censorship, will no longer publish any opinions about the war.

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Today -100: October 14, 1917: Of chancellors, improper letters, and draft boards

German newspapers agree that Chancellor Georg Michaelis is toast because of his inept handling of, well not the August naval mutiny itself (which the government is now saying was just on one ship), but the political ramifications. Which I think means the right is pissed that he didn’t make a more credible case blaming it on the socialists. The left in the Reichstag would also like a new chancellor, one named by the Reichstag rather than the kaiser.

Frank Haungs is arrested for sending an “improper” letter to First Lady Edith Wilson, under the name of his foreman at work.

Local draft boards, especially in New York City and Louisiana, have been drafting men with dependents for whom they are the sole support, and the Army will now release those men.

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Today -100: October 13, 1917: Of oratorical contests with petulant young men, marine ministers, soviets, and negro-less towns

Judge John F. Hylan, the more-or-less Democratic candidate for mayor of New York, refuses to debate incumbent Mayor John Purroy Mitchel: “No mere oratorical contest with this petulant young man, who is smarting under deserved and almost universal condemnation, will meet the situation or satisfy the people.” Hylan says he is fighting for democracy, just like the Allies in France.

German Minister of Marine Eduard von Capelle is fired (is he though?), ostensibly for the August mutinies, really for the failure of submarine warfare to defeat Britain.

Trotsky is elected president of the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, which passes a resolution refusing support to Kerensky’s new coalition government.

Two white men are convicted for killing a 17-year-old black man during the East St. Louis race riots and sentenced to 14 years.

Headline of the Day -100: 

At the army training camp Camp Funston. “The telegrams declare that Junction City has no negro population.”

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Today -100: October 12, 1917: Of tsars and lost provinces

Ex-Tsar Nicholas and family are moved to a monastery, still in Siberia, ostensibly because he’d been complaining about the crowds that came to gawk at him.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George says Britain will fight until France gets Alsace-Lorraine back. Is that what the tommies thought they’d been fighting for?

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Today -100: October 11, 1917: Of mutiny, lost provinces, and krennings

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The NYT reports that there was a mutiny on 4 or 5 German ships a few weeks ago, in which the captain of one of them was thrown into the sea and drowned. Kaiser Wilhelm ordered that 1 in 7 sailors be shot, but only 3 were executed after Chancellor Michaelis objected.

There are a couple of grains of truth in that. There was a fairly minor  rebellion in early August. No captain was drowned, but two sailors were executed, because the German Navy doesn’t recognize the concept of “fairly minor” mutinies. The government and right wing are using the incident as a stick to beat the opposition, blaming it, with no basis in fact, on the Independent Social Democrats (USPD); this is why we’re hearing about this now.

German Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann says the only thing that can’t be negotiated is Alsace-Lorraine.

Henry Krenning, the recently retired president of the Dorris Motor Car Company, is charged under the Espionage Act with making disparaging remarks about Woodrow Wilson at the theatre. Annoyingly, the nature of the remarks is unspecified, and there’s no follow-up.

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Today -100: October 10, 1917: Of licensed newspapers, supreme power, and negro divisions

Postmaster-General Burleson says that his new powers to “license” foreign-language newspapers won’t be used against criticism of the government... unless it impugns the motives of the government, because that encourages insubordination. “For instance, papers may not say that the government is controlled by Wall Street or munition manufacturers, or any other special interests.” (NYC mayoral candidate and actual next mayor John Hylan accuses City Hall of being run by a “combination of tax-eating, franchise grabbers, food-price jugglers, land sharks and city financial manipulators,” but I guess he couldn’t do that in a foreign-language newspaper). Also, no opposition to conscription or attacking the US’s allies will be allowed. Burleson says socialist papers won’t automatically be barred, unless they contain treason or sedition. But most of them do, he says.

Dateline Washington DC: “Russian diplomats here appear to be convinced now that the Bolsheviks have finally been overthrown and that Premier Kerensky is once more firmly established in the supreme power.”

The Army will create a new division composed of blacks from all over the country. This follows a long debate about the segregation of the... nah, just kidding, segregation’s just taken for granted.

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Today -100: October 9, 1917: Dead or alive

Charles Beard resigns from Columbia in protest at the expulsion of anti-war professors by “obscure and willful” trustees “who are reactionary and visionless in politics, narrow and medieval in religion" and who are destroying free expression at the nation’s largest university. The best-selling historian is not an opponent of the war like the fired profs.

Poolville, Texas raises a $1,246.50 reward for the capture of Kaiser Wilhelm.

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Today -100: October 8, 1917: Of forwards, brotherhood, and unlikely fights

Uruguay breaks off relations with Germany. Ditto Peru.

The postmaster general is threatening to ban the Jewish Daily Forward from the mails. The editor, Abraham Cohen, denies any pro-Germanism, saying that the government is actually going after every socialist newspaper in the country.

London mobs including soldiers set fire to the Brotherhood Church ahead of a pacifist meeting which was to be addressed by Bertrand Russell.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Probably not the most epic of battles.

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Today -100: October 7, 1917: God pity the man who would paralyze the arm of the American people in this conflict

Robert La Follette defends himself in a two-hour speech in the Senate, which had put aside plans to consider expelling him and then for some reason put it back on the table. Senator Bob makes a case for free speech and the right to criticize the president before the sceptical members. Sen. Joseph Robinson (D-Arkansas), for one, disagrees, saying La Follette should “apply to the kaiser for a seat in the German Bundesrat.”

And the House censures Rep. “Cotton Tom” Heflin (D-Alabama) for saying that fellow congresscritters had been bought off by Germany.

Edsel Ford’s application for exemption from the draft on the grounds that he is too busy helping his father run the Ford Motor Company is rejected. The decision will later be reversed. The controversy over this was probably the cause of his father’s narrow defeat when he ran for the Senate in 1918.

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Today -100: October 6, 1917: Of cabinets and theosophists

Kerensky forms forms a new cabinet, defying the Democratic Congress’s demand that the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) be excluded.

The Russian government declares a state of war in Turkestan, which is in revolt.

A.P. Warrington, president of the US branch of the Theosophical Society, says that death in the war is so noble it relieves all karma, so a dead soldier’s next reincarnation will be fantastic. He says theosophists should spread this good news to the survivors of dead soldiers, but “don’t be queer about it all.”

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Today -100: October 5, 1917: Of excess profits, mutiny in the workhouse, and Fake News

The new excess profits war tax will include an 8% tax on incomes over $6,000. This tax will not apply to members of Congress, who earn $7,500 a year. Both the tax and the exemption were snuck into the bill in secret during the reconciliation process, and most congresscritters, anxious as they were to begin their vacation, probably didn’t know they were there.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Or to put it another way, workhouse authorities induced black woman prisoners to attack the suffragists, who are being charged with... wait for it... “mutiny.”

The feds seize the German-language newspaper Freie Zeitung, raiding its New Jersey plant and arresting owners and editors. The 60-year-old paper is being accused of publishing false reports intended to interfere with US military success, whatever that means. The paper will be back in business tomorrow. The NYT notes, without quite saying that this is the reason for the raid, that on August 15 an article in the Zeitung noted that soldiers about to be sent to France shouted “Are we down-hearted? No!” and commented “If the boys are not downhearted in six months they may consider themselves lucky.”

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Today -100: October 4, 1917: We will give it all back to them and we will give it to them soon

New York Mayor John Purroy Mitchel attacks his opponent John Hylan for being backed by people not in sympathy with the war campaign. He attacks Boss Murphy and Tammany Hall, as was the custom, and the Hearst papers. Hylan himself is less interested in the war than in keeping the subway fare to 5¢, which is pretty much the beginning and end of his platform.

British Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill says the u-boat attack on Britain has been checked, even repulsed.

Prime Minister David Lloyd George, speaking in part of London recently bombed by German airplanes, says “We will give it all back to them and we will give it to them soon. We shall bomb Germany with compound interest.” Which seems like too much math to me.

The NYPD are cracking down on newsboys who shout sensational war-related headlines that aren’t true.

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Today -100: October 3, 1917: Of blockades and the draft

Britain will now join the US in blockading neutral countries Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

Mexico objects to US plans to draft Mexican nationals. One problem is that the citizenship laws of both countries lay claim to children born in the US to Mexican citizens.

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Today -100: October 2, 1917: Of academic freedom

Columbia University fires two professors, James McKeen Cattell (psychology) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana (English), the grandson of the poet, for pacifism.

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Today -100: October 1, 1917: Of special grievances, Lenin, and loyalty

Theodore Roosevelt says the US is not in the war to make the world safe for democracy, but “because we had a special grievance,” specifically, Germany’s attacks on ships.

“The Bolsheviks have abandoned the idea of having Nikolai Lenine, the radical pacifist agitator, appear as their representative in the Congress on account of the firm determination of the Government to discover and arrest him.”

The Chronicle Magazine sent a letter to people with German-sounding names in Who’s Who and the Social Register, asking them to express their undying loyalty to the US. It will print the responses it likes, and turn the ones it doesn’t like over to the Justice Dept. The letter says that anyone who doesn’t respond will be considered hostile to the United States.

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