Today -100: December 2, 1917: Wikileaks 1917

Russia releases another secret treaty, in which, as a price for Italy entering the war on the Allied side, it would get various bits of the Austrian Empire and control of Albania’s foreign policy if the Allies decided on an independent Albania instead of dividing it among Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro. And if France and Britain take some of Germany’s African colonies, Italy gets some too. Italy undertook to try to prevent the pope working to end the war. Russia also reveals the territorial bribes offered Greece (which didn’t bite). American officials are pretending to believe that the documents might be forgeries and that Italy, to whose aid the US is planning to go, was not massively bribed to enter the war. Which it totally was.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany is said to be sending germ-infested balloons into the American trenches.

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Today -100: December 1, 1917: Of measles, ensigns, and knitting

US army camps in the South have been fighting measles outbreaks.

Russian military Supreme Commander Nikolai Krylenko is having trouble getting the Russian military to accept his supreme commanderness, possibly because he’s just an ensign. He orders the arrest of generals and the disbandment of soldiers’ committees which don’t recognize his authority.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Netherlands adopts universal male suffrage and proportional representation and allows women to be elected to public office, though there is no women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: November 30, 1917: Of coalitions and negotiations

The Bolsheviks are having difficulty establishing control. Doing less well than expected in the Constituent Assembly elections, they will be forced into a coalition government, at least temporarily.

German Chancellor Georg von Hertling says he’s willing to negotiate peace with the Bolsheviks, as soon as they send negotiators.

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Today -100: November 29, 1917: Anarchists and Wobblies and food riots, oh my!

The commissioner of immigration claims that Italian anarchists, allied with the IWW, planned to start food riots, starting with Boston.

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Today -100: November 28, 1917: They tried to terrorize and suppress us. They could not, and so freed us.

Germany says that if Norway joins the war, it will feel obligated to occupy Denmark on general principles.

The War Dept says the bodies of American soldiers killed in Europe will not be brought home until after the war.

Someone’s spreading rumors that Lenin is being advised by a bunch of German staff officers.

The NYT points to the recent increase in government surveillance of enemy aliens as a good reason not to declare war on Austria-Hungary, thereby increasing the number of enemy aliens who must be expensively surveilled.

22 of the hunger-striking suffragettes are ordered released before their terms have been served, including Alice Paul, who says “We are put out of jail as we were put into jail, at the whim of the Government. They tried to terrorize and suppress us. They could not, and so freed us.” Suffrage prisoners who did not hunger strike have not been released.

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Today -100: November 27, 1917: Of nobles, despotism not liberty, and raiders

Russia abolishes the nobility.

The NYT complains that the Bolshevik regime is establishing “Despotism, Not Liberty,” although its Burkean conception of liberty suggests it takes 5 or 6 centuries to establish.

The foreign ambassadors to Russia (i.e., those from the Allies) have a meeting and decide to simply ignore Trotsky’s note proposing an armistice. They also decide that if Russia begins separate peace negotiations, they will leave the country and treat it as a declaration of war on Russia’s former allies.

Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, who headed the semi-private Jameson Raid intended to start a war with the Boer republics so they could be absorbed into South Africa, as did happen a couple of years later with the Boer War, dies at 64.

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Today -100: November 26, 1917: The armistice will be attained by revolutionary methods

Lenin: “Our party never said it would give peace immediately. We said we would make an immediate proposal for peace, and would publish the secret treaties. That we have done, and now begin the revolutionary struggle for peace. Victory is assured. The armistice will be attained by revolutionary methods.”

Speaking of secret treaties, it seems France planned on taking back not just Alsace and Lorraine, but the left bank of the Rhine as well.

Kerensky, still in hiding, resigns.

Self-proclaimed Supreme Commander Gen. Nikolay Dukhonin refuses to give up the post to Bolshevik-appointed Nikolai Krylenko, who is a 32-year-old ensign.

Dr. Elsie Inglis dies. A long-time suffrage activist, early in the war Inglis formed the Scottish Women’s Hospitals Units and sent women-only-staffed hospitals to the front in places like Serbia, France and Russia after the War Office turned down her offer to provide (and fund) hospitals (“My good lady, go home and sit still” was the exact phrase). The Red Cross also turned her down, but Serbia didn’t. She was taken prisoner for three months in 1915 when her hospital was overrun. She has died at 53 of cancer.

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Today -100: November 25, 1917: Of secrets, dishonorable peaces, and diplomacy

Trotsky, putting on his Julian Assange wig, releases to the newspapers some of the secret correspondence of the Allies. Included are the discussions of Russia’s demand to be allowed to annex the Dardanelles and Constantinople. The Allies agreed that Russia would determine Germany’s new eastern borders and Britain and France its western ones.

French newspaper La Victoire accuses former PM and finance minister Joseph Caillaux of being behind the campaign for a dishonorable peace. Editor Gustave Hervé challenges Caillaux to sue him, and Caillaux does. A reminder that the last time a newspaper editor libeled Caillaux, his wife shot him dead (and got away with it).

The German government refuses to receive a Bolshevik delegation, saying it will only negotiate with reps of the defunct constitutional government. Also, their condition for talks is that Russian troops withdraw 100 km, while German troops don’t. Interestingly, the Bolshevik government seems to have made no peace offer to Austria.

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Today -100: November 24, 1917: We rely on the Germany army and the working classes to make a continuation of the war impossible

Supposedly, German agents are pretending to accidentally drop fake letters home from US soldiers in Europe on the floors of saloons, hotels, theaters etc, the letters saying how awful conditions are and that the army is censoring the high casualty rate. My favorite bit in the one letter quoted in the article is the PS: “Am in Chemin des Dames hospital left arm shot off to shoulder don’t tell mother tare off this part.”

Russia begins to reduce the size of its army.

And requires people living in residences renting for more than 2,400 rubles a year to provide the army with one blanket and one article of clothing.

Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky says his offer of an armistice (which has now been officially presented) is not a call for a separate peace with Germany. He says the offer will be welcomed by the proletariat of all warring nations, making continuation of the war impossible even if their governments reject it. “We rely on the Germany army and the working classes to make a continuation of the war impossible.”

In Red Lodge, Montana, the “Liberty Committee” horsewhip the secretary of the Finnish IWW Propaganda League and hang two members, but not to death, because liberty, I guess.

I believe I’ve spotted the first mention in the NYT of Nationalities Commissar Josef Stalin. They spell it Slatin, because of course they do.

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Today -100: November 23, 1917: It can commit acts of violence, treason, and cowardice, but it cannot govern

Nebraska Gov. Keith Neville resigns so he can be a colonel and go to war. (Except that didn’t happen. Did he change his mind?)

Lenin fires the head of the army, Gen. Nikolay Dukhonin, after Dukhonin refuses an order to offer an armistice to all belligerents on both sides.

The Russian ambassador to France, Vasily Maklakov, also rejects the idea, saying the Bolshevik regime “lacks both legal title and recognition by the country. It can commit acts of violence, treason, and cowardice, but it cannot govern.” (Insert your own Trump joke here)

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Today -100: November 22, 1917: Of broken lines, conshies, and leagues of nationses

The Hindenburg Line is broken! British tanks make a big difference.

The British House of Commons votes an amendment to the Representation of the People Act (which will enfranchise some women, among other things) disenfranchising conscientious objectors.

Prime Minister Clemenceau expresses doubt about the idea of a League of Nations, because it would have to include Germany and no.

Ban Johnson, president of the American League (baseball) plans to ask the government to exempt most baseball players from the draft.

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Today -100: November 21, 1917: Our State should not be taxed to educate useless or worthless children

Massachusetts Gov. Samuel McCall (R) refuses an extradition request from West Virginia for a black man accused of an assault on a white girl, because there’s a “grave danger” he’d be convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.

Memphis Mayor H.H. Litty bans a proposed Woman’s Party meeting when he hears they intend to support the White House picketers.

Pres. Wilson blocks supply shipments to Russia, not knowing who’ll wind up getting their hands on them.

The New York State Woman Suffrage Party holds Victory Night at the Metropolitan Opera House during its 49th annual convention. The Party will respond to receiving women’s suffrage in New York by reorganizing itself along congressional-district lines and punishing every New York politician who opposed women’s suffrage in the past [update: no, this plank will be rejected] or who won’t commit themselves to the federal women’s suffrage amendment. Gov. Charles Whitman, who didn’t know about that, makes a speech recommending that women not vote for any politician just because he supported women’s suffrage or vote against one “merely” because he opposed it.

50+ Wobblies are arrested in the Kansas oilfields. On what charges, is not revealed.

NY District Superintendent of Schools Joseph Wade, supporting the witch hunt against teachers, says that in Germany, teachers who said anything disloyal were fired, jailed or even executed. He says this admiringly. “There must not remain in our schools a single discontented teachers. There is a spirit of restlessness that will grow up among our children unless those above them are absolutely loyal and continue teaching obedience to authority.” Any disloyal students 16 or over should be expelled; “Our State should not be taxed to educate useless or worthless children.” The teachers’ union is supporting the De Witt Clinton High School teachers, saying (if I read this correctly) that what is being done to them is what the ed. system does to students, “crushing out all manhood and womanhood in the process of making us spiritless automata”. And your point is?

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Today -100: November 20, 1917: Of masses, war dinners, teachers, and enemy aliens

A federal grand jury indicts 7 members of the staff of The Masses, including Max Eastman and John Reed,  under the Espionage Act for knowingly distributed unmailable material and for conspiring to cause “Insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of [military] duty”. Reed (who is in Russia) is charged for writing an article, “Knit a Straitjacket for Your Soldier Boy,” and Arthur Young and Henry Glinterkamp are indicted for drawings, Glinterkamp for a cartoon of Death taking the measurements of a draftee for his coffin.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Hey, that’s what we call it in my house too!

The specific charges against the De Witt Clinton High School (Bronx) teachers who were suspended or transferred are made public. Thomas Mufson evidently thought it was proper to be neutral during a discussion of anarchism, A. Henry Schneer said patriotism should not be discussed in school, and Samuel Schmalhausen has a funny name and also doesn’t think it’s his job to inculcate an instinctive respect for the president and other government officials and did I mention he has a funny name? At the hearing, a faculty member complained that (this quote is from the newspaper, not necessarily the verbatim words of Isaac A. Dotey, who also has a funny name) “the pupils had of late consulted their own individual opinion, and that this had been subversive of discipline.”

Pres. Wilson bans enemy aliens (Germans only for now; the US is not at war with Austria or Turkey) from the District of Columbia, the Panama Canal Zone, within 3 miles of navigable streams or 100 yards of docks, piers, canals, railroad terminals, etc. Enemy aliens must register and must get government permission to travel or change jobs. They are not allowed to fly in airplanes or balloons. Within a few hours, before the news could reasonably be expected to have been disseminated, soldiers are sent into River Street in Hoboken (which also has a funny name). They grab 200 suspected Germans out of stores, rooming houses, saloons, and just off the streets. Before being sent to Ellis Island, some are held on an army transport ship. Which then mysteriously bursts into flame.

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Today -100: November 19, 1917: Of temporary supreme commanders, farms, and free men

Russia: Gen. Nikolay Dukhonin proclaims himself temporary Supreme Commander of the military “in view of my ignorance of the place of residence of the Chief Commander [Kerensky]”. The job will indeed be temporary.

Sen. Warren G. Harding suggests that every returning soldier should be given a farm if he wants one. He thinks cities are bad and tiny farms, like in France, are good.

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau celebrates his new job by restoring the name of his newspaper to L’Homme Libre. He had changed it to L’Homme Enchainé when he fell afoul of the censors early in the war.

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Today -100: November 18, 1917: Of Rodins, pork, disloyal/doubtful teachers, courts-martial, apartments, and Polish primes

French sculptor Auguste Rodin dies at 77. Which reminds me I still haven’t gotten around to seeing the movie “Camille Claudel 1915.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

The NYT editorial page strongly supports firing all “disloyal or doubtful” teachers.

The first US Army court-martial execution of the war, a soldier who raped and murdered a woman in France. Evidently, Gen. Pershing can give the go-ahead to a firing squad without any reference to President Wilson.

Six high-rise, high-class apartment buildings (elevators, telephone service, etc) in Harlem have been taken over by a black real estate company and are now being rented to black people (the previous white tenants are all leaving). Blacks have been moving into Harlem for a few years, but this is their first successful entry into the upper end of the real estate market.

Prof. Jan Kucharzewski is appointed prime minister of Poland.

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Today -100: November 17, 1917: Of thrift, operas, shams, political prisoners, fake sailors, and axes

Headline of the Day -100: 

TOTALLY worth it. The government is literally demanding the money out of children’s piggy banks. The new war taxes on, say, movie tickets, mean that things that used to cost a dime or a quarter now cost a penny or two more, so the government wants those pennies out of the piggy banks and back in circulation so it doesn’t have to mint new ones.

A bomb fails to go off at the Chicago Grand Opera during a production of Meyerbeer’s Dinorah. There is a flash and a smell of sulphur, which starts a panic until the orchestra starts up the Star-Spangled Banner, which as we know has magical powers against pipe bombs. It is suspected, naturally, that this is retaliation for the company’s ban on German opera.

At Princeton, Theodore Roosevelt says unless we break up Austria and Turkey and free their subject races, all the talk of making the world safe for democracy is a “sham.” He’s still bitching that the US didn’t declare war immediately after the sinking of the Lusitania.

The women suffragist prisoners are refusing to wear prison clothes and trying to make demands, and are being roughly handled, manacled to prison bars, put in cells with detoxing men, and any other humiliation the guards can imagine.

Kerensky seems to have fled again. Dressed as a sailor. After his little band of Cossacks made a deal with the Bolsheviks to turn him over.

The British ambassador to Russia refuses to see Foreign Minister Trotsky.

The German Independent Socialists ask for an immediate session of the Reichstag to consider Lenin’s peace offer.

Three Austrian nationals in Virginia, Minnesota are killed with an axe for buying Liberty Loans and giving money to the American Red Cross (we know this because the killer left a note).

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Today -100: November 16, 1917: Of tigers

French President Poincaré asks Georges Clemenceau to form a new government. “The Tiger” is 76 years old. A doctor, journalist, former political exile in the US during the Second Empire, Clemenceau has moved over the years from fierce radicalism to fierce not-radicalism, and has been highly critical of the government’s insufficiently ferocious prosecution of the war, to the extent that his newspapers were suspended several times early in the war.

There are now 32 suffragist hunger strikers in the Occoquan Workhouse.

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Today -100: November 15, 1917: Of underwear. And other stuff.

The outside world has no idea what is going on in Russia, but boy are there a lot of contradictory rumors.

As Central forces move into Italy, Venice is evacuated. Including all the art, such as the symbol of Venice, the bronze horses of San Marco.

A warrant is issued for Robert Pettigrew, the former US senator from South Dakota and congresscritter from the Dakota Territory, for violating the Espionage Act by giving a newspaper interview in which he said the war was a capitalist scheme and suggesting men evade the draft. The government will eventually drop the charges, perhaps after hearing he’d hired Clarence Darrow.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Soldiers, who are being issued undershirts and underpants and may not want to go back to the traditional one-piece “union suit” with the little flap on the butt.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim dies. The NYT doesn’t notice.

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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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