Today -100: February 18, 1918: Will you co-operate or will you obstruct?

Soldiers maraud through the streets of Petrograd, looting and robbing.

Pres. Wilson ends a shipyard strike by telegramming the head of the union (with whom he refused to meet) the question “Will you co-operate or will you obstruct?” and telling him that the strike gives aid and comfort to the enemy. He says the government will decide on their demands.

John Reed won’t be consul for Russia in New York after all, I’m not sure why. Evidently the idea of the appointment was to protect Reed’s notes from being censored by US authorities.

Attorney General Thomas Gregory says 500,000 (or possibly 300,000; the article has both figures) American volunteers are helping fight espionage. “I give this information to be set at rest the German spy hysteria that fills the nation.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: February 17, 1918: Of hostages and cholms

The German press is claiming that Russia is rounding up German nationals to use as hostages and that Russian troops are not demobilizing as was promised.

The German-Ukraine peace agreement gives Ukraine some of Poland’s territory (Cholm). The Polish “cabinet,” puppet government though it is, resigns in protest.

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Today -100: February 16, 1918: Camarade république

Russian Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky says that Russia has indeed withdrawn from the war, and from its alliance with the Entente. Trotsky’s idea seems to be No War, No Peace, in which there is no fighting but also no humiliating peace treaty. But will Germany abide by that?

Spoiler Alert: No.

Russia has blocked news reports to London (and presumably elsewhere) for a week, except for official announcements. No one’s sure exactly why.

A mob in Mount Olive, Illinois, rounds up alleged pro-Germans, beats them up, and forces one of them to kiss every star in the flag. If that doesn’t teach them to love America, I don’t know what will.

France is smuggling instructions on how to surrender to German soldiers – in sausages. The codeword is “camarade république.”

Vernon Castle, the dancer played by Fred Astaire in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), dies in an aviation accident; he was a captain in the Royal Flying Corps killed while training another pilot in Fort Worth, where there have been a bunch of crashes recently.

The Canadian government says women’s suffrage will be in place by the next election.

Headline of the Day -100: Lunatic right-wing Member of Parliament Noel Pemberton Billing publishes an article in his journal Vigilante implying that dancer Maud Allan, currently appearing in a private production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome (private because Wilde’s plays are still banned in Britain), is a lesbian who is associated with pro-German homosexual conspirators or something. The article is titled “The Cult of the Clitoris,” because of course it is. Pemberton Billing has previously claimed that there are 47,000 perverts in Britain being blackmailed by German agents. This article says that if the police seize the names of ticket-holders, they’ll have identified many of the 47,000. He says the wives of many men in high office (he implies former prime minister Asquith’s wife Margot is one) reveal state secrets in a state of lesbian ecstasy. Allan will sue Billing for libel but will lose. Allan’s lawyers will say that the term “cult of the clitoris” could only mean lesbian, while Pemberton Billing will claim that only a lesbian would even know the word. An expert medical witness Dr. Serrell Cooke will say that clitoris is a Greek term which “has nothing to do with ordinary language; nobody but a medical man, or people interested in that kind of thing would understand the term”. You know, perverts. When “unduly excited or overdeveloped, [the clitoris] possessed the most dreadful influence on any woman.” Pemberton Billing says the public could not be corrupted by his use of the term because the word was known only to doctors – and people who were already corrupted. I’m barely scratching the surface of the craziness of the trial: Bosie! sex murders!

The case will be the first ever discussion of lesbianism in the British popular press (the judge, who is called Justice Darling because of course he is, begged the press, in vain, not to report the details) and the first appearance of the word clitoris in the London Times.

Oh, and Maud Allan actually was totally a lesbian.

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Today -100: February 15, 1918: Of rows and living color

Headline of the Day -100: 

Last week at Brest-Litovsk.

Leon Forrest Douglass, an inventor responsible for numerous innovations, past and future, in photography and phonography, including the Victrola, exhibits a device for making motion pictures... in color! His test film features bathing girls and Indian scenes, forest fires, waterfalls, and other metaphors.

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Today -100: February 14, 1918: Idle no more

Idle Mondays are suspended. I guess because the weather has been better than expected?

German newspapers are rather confused about whether the war with Russia is actually over.

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Today -100: February 13, 1918: It is no use crying peace when there is no peace

Headline of the Day -100: 

Headline of the Day -100:  

Yup.

Lloyd George says the recent speeches by German Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling and Austrian Foreign Minister Count Czernin show no prospect of peace: “it is no use crying peace when there is no peace.”

Lithuania declares itself independent of Russia.

A black man is lynched in Estill Springs, Tennessee, burned at the stake after being tortured with hot irons into a confession or, as they call it in Tennessee, due process.

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Today -100: February 12, 1918: One party in Germany is apparently willing and able to send millions of men to their death to prevent what all the world now sees to be just

Germany announces that peace has been made with Russia, whose army will now stand down, or would if it were still standing up. The NYT, which is not at all pleased with Mr. Trotsky, calls this an “unconditional surrender.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

And wet in cheerful trenches.

Woodrow Wilson addresses Congress in a speech framed as a response to German Chancellor Georg von Hertling’s own speech last month, you know, a tweet war. Wilson says the US won’t “recognize” the Brest-Litovsk peace deal. How does that even work? Can you tell 2 countries, No, we’ve decided that you’re still at war. Anyway, the US also won’t recognize any other separate peace because “All parties to this war must join in the settlement of every issue anywhere involved in it, because what we are seeking is a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain, and every item of it must be submitted to the common judgment whether it be right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a bargain between sovereigns.” He says the principles of the 14 Points (still not called that) are “already everywhere accepted as imperative except among the spokesmen of the military and annexationist party of Germany. ...The tragical circumstance is that one party in Germany is apparently willing and able to send millions of men to their death to prevent what all the world now sees to be just.” Wilson also suggests that Austria’s interests are not the same as those of the German “military and annexationist party.” So, really, the US is at war with, like, just 6 or 7 guys.

He concludes, “The power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any selfish interest of our own. It springs out of freedom and is for the service of freedom.” And Wilson actually believed this shit.

Speaking of delusions of grandeur, Kaiser Wilhelm thinks that “Our Lord God wishes us to have peace, but a peace wherein the world will strive to do what is right and good.” “The Lord pointed out to us by a hard school the path by which we should go. The world, however, at the same time has not been on the right path. We Germans, who still have ideals, should work to bring about better times.” “We desire to live in friendship with neighboring peoples, but the victory of German arms must first be recognized.”

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Today -100: February 11, 1918: Of ultimata and ghost-writing

German newspapers claim that the Romanian government responded to a German ultimatum for peace talks within 4 days by resigning. Not true. Well, the ultimatum part probably is.

Mark Twain’s daughter Clara is suing to prevent publication of a book said to be written by her dead father from beyond the grave and helpfully brought to the public by two mediums working with Prof. James Hyslop, a psychical researcher whose day job is psychology professor at Columbia. Hyslop himself will continue “writing” books for years after his death, published by his research assistant, and Name of the Day -100, Gertrude O. Tubby.

Incidentally, the British Library and the Library of Congress list this sort of book alongside books by the living author. So the last-written book by Shakespeare (spirit) in the British Library was written in 1920.

To one of God's who writes this down for me, who cannot reach the world from my stage today except it be through her, do I offer here more than a tribute of gratitude, a soul's praises.
No harp could play a spirit's tune were it not strung for the purpose through spirit's application. Ay, my fingers, mind as well, made this one perfect concert pitch before we e'er began my work for me. To hold a wire and pipe a lay were easy for one of earth's composers. But ye'll know the truth some day from spirit where I do now play hereon, of spirit's compositions. 

Not to be hyper-critical, but being dead 300 years did not improve his writing skills.

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Today -100: February 10, 1918: Peace!

The Ukraine signs a peace agreement with the Central Powers. Boy that “independence” thing didn’t last very long. Ukrainian wheat could alleviate the food situation in Germany and Austria.

Glad I caught my typo “Central Posers.”

Mayors from towns in the Rhineland travel to Berlin to ask Hindenburg & Ludendorff to stop ordering air raids on enemy open towns that will bring reprisals on their towns. Hindenburg tells them the damage from air raids is exaggerated by both sides, he will continue the aerial war, and they should go fuck themselves.

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Today -100: February 9, 1918: Of German agents, Wobblies, and meat

The Petit Parisien publishes papers, which were not at all forged by anyone’s secret service but were “brought to France by a prominent scientist, who obtained them from a Russian revolutionary paper,” showing that Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, etc were funded by the Germans.

55 IWWers are indicted in Sacramento for hindering the prosecution of the war. And accused Wobblies in Chicago file suit for the return of their dynamite, which they say was illegally seized in a raid on their hq in September.

A lunch is held at the Natural History Museum to demonstrate to local food administrators that whale meat is a perfectly acceptable substitute for the meats Americans are now being told to conserve (humpback is the best eatin’, evidently). The head chef of Delmonico’s explains the many ways in which whale can be prepared.

Sen. Reed Smoot has an alternative suggestion: a monthly national fast day.

Brits are now restricted to a ration of one pound of meat a week. Which is more than Germans are getting. Neither country seems to be considering whale meat.

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Today -100: February 8, 1918: Fungus among us

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: February 7, 1918: We might as well abdicate

The SS Tuscania, carrying 2,013 US soldiers to Europe, is sunk by a German u-boat. 200+ crew and passengers are killed.

7 Berlin newspapers – conservative papers for once – are suppressed for publishing details of the court-martial of Independent Socialist Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Dittmann. Evidently it was supposed to be a secret.

The Brest-Litovsk talks seem to have broken down again, this time over the German wish to include reps from the regime in Poland. Trotsky says he’s ready to recognize Polish independence, but military occupation makes recognition of the puppets impossible. Also, a state without boundaries or a king is neither a state nor a kingdom.

The Russian government is not in contact with its negotiators because the telegraph wire from Brest has been “accidentally” damaged by the Germans. So Lenin “accidentally” damages the line between Petrograd and Berlin used by the Austro-German delegation.

King George V says the US’s entry into the war has “united practically the whole civilised world in a league of nations against unscrupulous aggression”.  Unscrupulous aggression is the worst kind.

Woodrow Wilson is pushing a bill to allow him to “co-ordinate and consolidate” all governmental activities as a war measure, disregarding the laws organizing government agencies and creating or shutting agencies without further congressional input. “We might as well abdicate,” say some senators.

Theodore Roosevelt has surgery for an abscess on his... well, the NYT says thigh. It is not his thigh. You do not want to know where it really was. Also a fistula. Also more abscesses in his ears, one of which will never work again.

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Today -100: February 6, 1918: This work is the work of Satan

Britain: The Representation of the People Act passes into law. It tinkers with the electoral system in all sorts of ways: changing registration requirements, expanding the suffrage (men in the military as young as 19, women over 30 for Parliament, people receiving poor relief, adult sons living with their parents, etc), reducing it (convicted conscientious objectors), redistributing seats, proportional representation (the alternative vote system) here and there, etc. The big news is of course women’s suffrage.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany claims that Polish forces have seized the Russian military’s commander in chief, Ensign Nikolai Krylenko and the entire general staff. They haven’t.

9 Germans and 2 Americans are convicted in federal court in New York for attempting to blow up a British ship. At one point during the trial the jury’s foreman became faint and it was agreed that he might benefit from a stimulating beverage, so the DA went to the courtroom next door where someone was being tried for selling alcohol to soldiers, and grabbed Exhibit A, some of the good stuff, which stimulated the foreman sufficiently for the trial to continue, which it did, quickly before any of the other jurors became suddenly faint. The defendants only get 18 months, the maximum possible at the time the crime was committed, although the law has been toughened up since the war started.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Bolshevik government decrees the separation of church and state and seizes all church property. Congregations can continue using churches, except I guess where they can’t. When the government seizes Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Petrograd, Patriarch Tikhon issues an anathema threatening to excommunicate the Bolsheviks, which, yeah.

In a story dated more than 2 weeks ago, a newspaper editor says he told Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg that there will be no food in Germany by May. Hindenburg replied that by April he will be in Paris.

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Today -100: February 5, 1918: Of strikes, matzoh, and upholstered seats

The German military breaks the strikes. A military court-martial sentences Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Dittmann (Independent Social Democrats - USPD) to 5 years for treason.

The Manischewitz Company (I think) asks Food Dictator Herbert Hoover to lift the restrictions on flour to meet Jews’ Passover matzoh requirements.

Glad I caught my typo “Good Dictator.”

A reporter catches up to Rep. Fiorello La Guardia, currently serving in France, and informs him of the petition got up in December to unseat him because he is in the military rather than doing his job in Washington. Evidently he’s just now hearing about it. He says “if any signers of the petition will take my seat in a Caproni biplane, I shall be glad to resume my upholstered seat in the House.”

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Today -100: February 4, 1918: Of strikers’ choices and hymns of hate

Headline of the Day -100: 

After a proper court-martial, of course; they’re not animals.

Strikers are actually shot in St. Louis. 3 street-car workers. Shot by whom the NYT does not say. And the police raid the local IWW hq on general principles (this is not an IWW strike).

The US government informs the 20,000 speakers it’s using to explain the war to the masses that they should avoid giving “hymns of hate.” The government says soldiers are too busy to hate the enemy and the best soldiers are “good sports.”

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Today -100: February 3, 1918: Of reason in Ulster, the spirit of 1776, and red armies

A couple of weeks ago, Sir Edward Carson resigned from the British War Cabinet. He explains that this was because the Irish Convention might break down and he didn’t want to be bound to support whatever action the British government took in response. He always wants to hold the treason card, does Sir Edward. He suggests that any agreement is likely to be a surrender and Northern Ireland wouldn’t be unreasonable to resist: “Ulster alone in Ireland has shown any reason at all.” Because when you think pure, dispassionate reason, you think Northern Fucking Ireland.

A Federal District judge in Los Angeles rules that the movie “The Spirit of 1776” can be seized by the government because its scenes of British atrocities during the War of Independence (which was evidently fought because King George III wanted to make his half-Native-American mistress Queen of America, or something; also, King George is seen beating up Benjamin Franklin) would create dissension between the people of the US and Britain, which is evidently illegal now. The film’s author Robert Goldstein will soon be sentenced to 10 years under the Espionage Act solely for writing this screenplay. The film is now lost.

The Espionage Act is also being used to ban a Sinn Fein newspaper from the mails.

Name of the Day -100: the Chicago chief censor, who seized “The Spirit of 1776” when it played there last May, is one Metallus Lucullus Cicero Funkhouser.

Germany declares martial law in 7 striking factories in Berlin.

With peace talks going badly, Russia gingerly works at re-establishing a military, consisting only of people who volunteer and support the ideals of the Revolution. A Red... Army, if you will.

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Today -100: February 2, 1918: Of prisoners of war, strikes, grand dukes and ex-czars

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: American soldiers claim to have captured German military documents ordering that American POWs should be kept for 4 days in cages without food, standing at all times.

The German military is cracking down on the strike movement, conscripting strike leaders, censoring news of the strikes, banning meetings, and threatening to fire on any “disorders.” Needless to say, Chancellor Herdling refuses to meet with representatives of the workers. The London Daily Mail thinks the whole thing is a plot by the German government to stimulate copycat strikes in Britain and France, at which point Germany will pounce, POUNCE I tell you!

Some deputies in the Baden Landtag ask the Grand Duke of Baden to kindly pay some fucking taxes because there’s a war on. He says no. Must be nice to be a grand duke.

Not so nice to no longer be a czar. A New York state Supreme Court judge rules that Nicholas Romanov can be sued now that he is just an ordinary person. The Maritime Transportation Company is suing him for breach of contract.

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Today -100: February 1, 1918: The real terror has yet to come

At Brest-Litovsk, Germany has been holding parallel talks with a delegation from the Ukraine Rada (parliament). Now there will also be a delegation from Ukrainian Bolshevik soviets. The problem for Russia is that it’s trying to split Austria from Germany and come to a separate peace, but the Austrian section of the eastern front is not with Russia but with now-sort-of-independent Ukraine, so if Austria comes to an arrangement with Ukraine, it doesn’t have to deal with Russia at all.

Did Lenin really boast “the real terror has yet to come”?

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Today -100: January 31, 1918: We have left the imperialistic war and shall never return to it

Russia sends journalist John Reed back to New York to act as consul for Russia. Although in his absence, Reed was indicted under the Espionage Act...

Trotsky addresses the All-Russian Assembly of Soviets, before returning to Brest-Litovsk: “The bourgeois governments can sign any kind of peace. The government of the Soviets cannot.” “We have left the imperialistic war and shall never return to it.”

The new New York Mayor John Hylan is opposed to the police clubbing people.

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Today -100: January 30, 1918: Blasphemy in the sight of blood-covered Europe

Russia and Romania are conducting a, to coin a phrase, cold war over Bessarabia, whose regional council declares independence from Russia. Russia breaks relations with Romania.

Russian Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky tells the Congress of the Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Delegates that Germany “thought Russia needed peace at any price. They were mistaken... We still insist on a democratic peace.” Unless, you know, Russia is exhausted, then it will totally give in to an undemocratic peace. He also indicates that a separate peace is entirely possible: “To call a separate peace a disgrace is blasphemy in the sight of blood-covered Europe.”

Germany responds to strikes by arresting of Independent Socialist leaders and newspaper editors and barring Social Democratic Party leader Philipp Scheidemann from speaking at a meeting scheduled for next week in Leipzig.

Germany warns the US that it is expanding the zone of its naval blockade, enforced by u-boat operations, to the Azores and Cape Verde Islands.

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Today -100: January 29, 1918: Of civil wars, not ladylike but strong telegrams, unlikely Bolsheviks, and bread

The full-scale civil war everyone knew was coming in Finland has arrived, with Russians aiding the Red side. The Finnish ambassador complains and is told that Russia, “true to its principles, is in duty bound to support the proletariat in Finland in its battle against the Finnish Bourgeoisie.” Well, when you put it that way...

The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage meets and agrees to push for a new referendum in NY to rescind women’s suffrage. The NYSAOWS president, Mrs. (Alice) James Walcott Wadsworth, is not present, but its secretary suggests that a good candidate for governor would be Sen. James Walcott Wadsworth. Speakers are worried by the prospect of immigrant women voting. Henry Wise Wood says that when Bolshevism fails in Russia and autocracy returns, all the Bolsheviks will flee to the US, and vote. The meeting resolves to send telegrams – “not ladylike, but strong” – to members of the Legislature to defeat the federal amendment.

Doubtful Headline of the Day -100: 

That’s Edward Ross, professor of sociology at U Wisc-Madison, who’s been touring Russia and says the revolution is swell. Ross is a famous opponent of Chinese immigration (for which view he was forced to resign from Stanford), a eugenicist and, somehow, a future head of the ACLU.

Bread rationing is introduced in Paris.

We’re all picturing a Parisian on a bicycle with a beret and a Gauloise carrying HALF a baguette, right?

Thought so.

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Today -100: January 28, 1918: Of black storks, ruling by force, and happy independence day, Ukrainia!

Dr. Harry Haiselden of the German-American Hospital in Chicago allows yet another baby with birth defects to die, because “it... would have been a burden to itself and its parents.” I think the pronoun you’re looking for is “she,” doctor. This is at least the 5th time he’s done this, one of which resulted in a 1915 coroner’s trial in which he was acquitted. He then gave lectures on eugenics and even acted in a movie about the case, “The Black Stork” aka “Are You Fit to Be Married,” playing a eugenicist doctor named Dr. Dickey (!).

Ukraine’s parliament (Rada) votes 508-4 for complete independence for Ukraine.

German Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann accuses the Bolsheviks of “ruling by force.” And your point is?

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Today -100: January 27, 1918: Of the Marseillaise, separate peaces, wheatless days, and Tarzan of the Apes

German Social Democratic Party leader Philipp Scheidemann responds to Chancellor Georg von Hertling’s speech, saying Germany’s leaders will be “hurled from power” if peace is not made with Russia. He says they wasted the opportunity for peace arising from the February Russian Revolution by escalating u-boat warfare and bringing in the US. He notes that unlimited submarine warfare was supposed to end the war in 6 months, but, you know, didn’t. However, he insists that Germany will keep Alsace-Lorraine.

Meetings held by the annexationist Pan-German Fatherland Party’s have lately been broken up by peace supporters. In Munich the pan-Germans tried to over-awe the disrupters with a rousing round of Deutschland Uber Alles, only to be drowned out by the Marseillaise.  That’s in Germany, not Casablanca.

Supposedly Austria has told Russia it’s willing to come to a peace agreement separate from Germany.

Food Dictator Herbert Hoover calls for 2 wheatless days a week, 2 porkless days, 1 wheatless and 1 meatless meal per day, and “Victory bread” which will be 20% non-wheat (corn, sawdust, that sort of thing).

Happy 59th birthday, Kaiser Wilhelm!

Now playing: The first Tarzan movie, starring Elmo Lincoln and Enid Markey.

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Today -100: January 26, 1918: Of the unbroken joy of battle

German Chancellor Georg von Hertling responds to Wilson’s 14 Points speech and Lloyd George’s speech in an address to the Reichstag. He complains that Wilson and LG “speak with respect of Germany’s position, but their conception, ever afresh, finds expression as if we were the guilty who must do penance and promise improvement.” He says the army is in a great position right now and “in the officers and the men lives unbroken the joy of battle.” And Germany won’t give up Alsace-Lorraine, because it’s German! German! German! My favorite part of the speech is when he deals with Wilson’s 13th point, on Poland, saying that no one ever cared about Poland when Russia was “crushing her national characteristics,” but Germany and Austria-Hungary “liberated” Poland and can safely be trusted to come to an agreement on Poland’s future.

A deserter from the Germany Navy says there have been several recent revolts in the Navy, especially on mine-sweepers. He says a motorboat used its machine guns to break up one such mutiny, killing 44 sailors.

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Today -100: January 25, 1918: Of treason, candy, and price increases

The Russian negotiators reject German demands that Russia give up Courland and the Baltic provinces.

The German socialist newspaper Vorwärts is suspended, as was the custom. This time it’s for reporting on the strikes in Austria. Also the Tageblatt, for the same reason. German military censors are only allowing the German public to be told that the strikes are because of food rations, rather than for peace and against German negotiating tactics that are prolonging the war.

The first US treason trial of the war begins. Paul C.H. Hennig, a naturalized US citizen from Germany, who worked in a Brooklyn torpedo-manufacturer and is accused of tampering with their gyroscopes. He says it’s a conspiracy by workers under him who resented his Germanic discipline.

Headline of the Day -100: 

As if the torpedoes weren’t bad enough. Navy canteens will no longer sell

candy, because impurities (possibly glass) have been found in some, whether from enemy agents or because the Navy bought from the lowest bidder is unclear.

From tomorrow, all New York newspapers currently selling for 1¢ will sell for 2¢. Other cities did this a while ago.

The cost to you to read this blog will therefore also double. There’s a war on, you know.

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Today -100: January 24, 1918: Teddy’s back

Headline of the Day -100: 

Well, not really. Some Republican guests at TR’s son-in-law’s house seem to accept the “Colonel’s” leadership for 1920. One topic of discussion: whether it is patriotic to publicly criticize Wilson’s management of the war. I leave it to the reader to guess on what side of that argument Roosevelt falls.

TR wants Republicans to push for 1) compulsory military service, forever, 2) a War Cabinet and a Munitions director, 3) wartime measures such as control of the railroads expiring when the war ends.

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Today -100: January 23, 1918: Of peace strikes and anthracite pools

Maxim Litvinov, the former revolutionary exile from Russia who is now serving as unofficial ambassador to Britain (because Britain doesn’t recognize the Bolshevik government), attends the annual Labour Party congress in Nottingham. He calls for revolution in Britain to end the war.

There’s a big peace strike in Austria. Some of this is standard dissatisfaction with the endless war, some of it is resentment that expansionist Germans are running the Brest-Litovsk negotiations with complete disregard for Austria.

Headline of the Day -100: 

He’ll stick to plain ol’ water.

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Today -100: January 22, 1918: No longer necessary in a socialist state

The Romanovs are to be tried for treason. With lawyers and everything.

Idle Monday yesterday not only shut down factories but offices in skyscrapers whose elevators were not operating.

Woodrow Wilson denies that there is any inefficiency in the military establishment and says he will fight the moves in Congress to correct that inefficiency, such as creating a Director of Munitions and a streamlined War Cabinet.

Wilson “desires and enjoins” members of the military to follow the sabbath.

The decree dissolving the Russian Constituent Assembly issued by the Executive of the Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Delegates says that after the February Revolution, the Congress “perceived the illusion of an understanding with the bourgeoisie and its deceptive parliamentary organization”. Lenin says, “The Constituent Assembly is the highest expression of the political ideals of bourgeois society, which are no longer necessary in a socialist state.”

The Supreme Court rules that Puerto Rico is not a territory of the United States and the Constitution does not apply there.

The NY Philharmonic will no longer play music by living German composers. Beethoven is still okay, but sucks to be you, Strauss.

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Today -100: January 21, 1918: At 4:00 this morning the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by sailors

The conscription authorities in the UK accidentally discover a female factory worker “masquerading in male attire,” one Ellen Harriet Capon (!), or Charles Brian Capon as she’s been calling herself. She says she did it in order to earn more money, although she was also dating a woman, so make of that what you will. That phrase, “masquerading in male attire,” is actually what Capon is charged with, because that’s actually a crime (I think the police court just called her a naughty girl and let her off, and she went back to work).

Lenin dissolves the Constituent Assembly, invoking authority that he pulls out of his ass, as was the custom. His decree reads in part: “At 4:00 this morning the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by sailors. Today a decree dissolving the Assembly will be published.”

The US War Dept will run psych evaluations on all soldiers.

Italy is pissed off at a speech by British Prime Minister Lloyd George in which he mentioned Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, but did he mention Italian territorial aspirations? No he did not.

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Today -100: January 20, 1918: Of constituent assemblies, idle Mondays, and peace talks

The Russian Constituent Assembly meets and elects Viktor Chernov of the Social Revolutionary (SR) Party chair rather than the Bolshevik candidate. Chernov tells a reporter he doesn’t think the Bolsheviks will dissolve the Assembly. The Bolsheviks and Left SRs pull out after the Assembly refuses to give the Lenin government veto power. Armed sailors posted by the Bolsheviks loom threateningly and occasionally tell the delegates to go home.

Fuel Administrator Garfield agrees to allow theatres, cinemas, pool halls, bowling alleys and other places of amusement where booze is not sold to remain open on Idle Mondays – but they have to close on Tuesdays.

The Best-Litovsk peace talks are suspended, again. Germany is willing to commit to referenda in Poland, Lithuania and Courland about whether they want to be absorbed into Germany, within a year after the end of the war, but won’t commit to not occupying those areas militarily while the referenda are conducted.

Would you like to read an article in the Sunday NYT Magazine section entitled “Vivisection’s Many War Achievements”? Yeah, me neither.

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Today -100: January 19, 1918: Of free passage, gas masks, and income taxes

Russia (actually the Revolutionary Committee of the 9th Army) gives an ultimatum to Romania demanding free passage through Jassy.

The US army is (according to the Providence Journal, so who knows if it’s true) sending back 200,000 gas masks because they’re “useless.” Soldiers are borrowing British and French gas masks, which smell respectively of... nah I’m not doing that joke. (Update: tomorrow the government will deny this story, but admits 20,000 gas masks were replaced by better ones.)

Headline of the Day -100: 

Rude.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: January 18, 1918: Of the disappointing American spirit, and kings

The Senate passes a resolution asking for the delay of Fuel Administrator Harry Garfield’s order to shut industries east of the Mississippi for the next 5 days and the following 10 Mondays to save on coal. So he signs the order while they’re still voting (Dems block a vote in the House).  Garfield says he doesn’t think employers will stop their workers’ wages during the idle days or “I shall be disappointed in the American spirit.” US Steel says it will disappoint Garfield in the American spirit.

Lenin orders the arrest of King Ferdinand of Romania. This follows the arrest a couple of days ago of the Romanian ambassador, from which Russia had to back down after the concerted opposition of all the other ambassadors in Petrograd. The story about the inciting incident keeps changing: the arrest by Romania of Austrian officers who wanted to fraternize with Russians during the current cease-fire, or the capture by Romania of Bolshevik irregulars doing god knows what.

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Today -100: January 17, 1918: Of idle Mondays, Armenias, and assassination attempts

Fuel Administrator Harry Augustus Garfield responds to the coal shortage (really more a distribution problem than a supply problem) by ordering non-essential industries east of the Mississippi to close for 5 days and then for every one of the following 10 Mondays. No one is happy about this. Some congresscritters are wondering from where Garfield thinks the legal authority for this order derives. Garfield, who is the son of Pres. James Garfield and president of Williams College but is basically unknown, issued this far-reaching order with no advance notice.

It’s not just factories either, and Broadway theatres are pissed off, as, presumably, are the people whose jobs will be shut down on Monday but won’t be able to take advantage of the day off.

The Hungarian Cabinet resigns after Emperor Charles refuses their request for a separate Hungarian army.

Russia supports a free Armenia, including territory now held by both Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

A break (or even a coup) between German military and political leaders is averted, reports say, by a compromise in which there will be no annexations in the east that might screw up a peace with Russia but Hindenburg retains full authority to grab whatever land he wants in the West. Provided he wins the war, of course.

Someone shoots at Lenin’s car in Petrograd, breaking the windshield.

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Today -100: January 16, 1918: Of religious maniacs, Polish Jews, and the tango

Russia arrests the Romanian ambassador and his staff, for reasons they will not disclose. The other ambassadors are worried/pissed off.

According to “news” that has reached Geneva, the former Czar Nicholas now “seeks only oblivion and silence” while Mrs. Czar “has become a religious maniac.” Become?

Officials from the Polish puppet regime meet with Jewish leaders, who are demanding that special laws and taxes applying only to Jews be abolished as they have been in Russia. The officials reply that instead, they might want to get all the Jews the hell out of Poland.

Supposedly, former French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux was arrested because US Secretary of State Lansing informed France that Caillaux was in contact with the German Foreign Office when he visited Argentina in 1915. Also supposedly, the documents found in his bank deposit box in Italy show that in 1916 he was planning, if he became prime minister again, to order the arrests of several politicians and soldiers, including current Prime Minister Clemenceau. Also, everybody’s making a big deal about a supposed order by German censors for the press not to mention Caillaux at all.

The Vatican bans the tango.

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Today -100: January 15, 1918: Of treason, annexations, and juries of one’s socialist peers

France’s former Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux is arrested (the police held off for a day when they found he was having a dinner party, because France). Evidently... something... was found in a bank vault in Italy under his wife’s maiden name.

The NYT thinks the German military establishment is about to force out Foreign Secretary Richard von Kühlmann and Chancellor Georg von Hertling. The military is grumbling at the possibility that peace talks won’t result in Germany annexing major territory and placing other areas (the Baltics, the Ukraine) under German “influence.”

Russo-German peace talks break down as Germany refuses to remove its troops from Lithuania, Courland, Riga, etc.

The US Supreme Court affirms that aliens in the US are subject to the draft. In another case, it rules that socialists were not tried unconstitutionally because jury members from other political parties were prejudiced against them. The Court says, hey we’re okay with black people being tried by all-white juries, so...

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Today -100: January 14, 1918: Of curtseying to Bolshevist authority and cussing out mules

At the Brest-Litovsk conference, the Germans complain that while the talks were recessed, Russians officials were talking about their hopes for a revolution in Germany. The Germans say they’ve very politely refrained from talking about internal conditions in Russia. Go ahead and talk, Trotsky responds.

Izvestia says Wilson’s 14 Points speech is “a great victory in the great struggle for democratic peace”. Pravda, on the other hand, calls Wilson a representative of capitalism and says the 14P are a mask for the old war formulas and for “plundering under the mask of self-definition of nations”; “the American Bourse found it necessary not only to reckon with the Bolshevist authority, but to make its curtsey to it.”

US Army muleteers are ordered to stop cussing out lazy mules.

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Today -100: January 13, 1918: Wilson is seeking a way out of war

German newspapers are interpreting Wilson’s 14 Points speech in different ways. The Frankfurter Zietung, for example, thinks it shows that Wilson realizes the Allies can't win the  war; “Wilson is seeking a way out of war, although he is doing it in a manner not yet quite acceptable to us.” The paper seems to think the US has given up on getting Alsace-Lorraine back for France, which is very much not what Wilson said.

Russia gives in to Germany’s refusal to remove the peace talks from occupied Brest-Litovsk to a neutral country (which many think was a Germany ploy to force a break in talks). The armistice is extended a month.

Lithuania declares independence. Well, a bunch of Lithuanians in Stockholm declare independence anyway. They have rather expansive ideas about what constitutes Lithuania, including areas presently part of Germany such as Königsberg (Kaliningrad), the capital of East Prussia, as well as all of Russian Lithuania. They point out that they have names in Lithuanian for the territories they’re claiming, and if that doesn’t prove they rightfully belong to Lithuania then they just don’t know what more proof you need.

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Today -100: January 12, 1918: Morally dished

Germany withdraws its Christmas offer of a peace without annexations or indemnities, since only Russia was willing to talk to them about it.

Former NYC Boy-Mayor John Purroy Mitchel joins the Army Aviation Service. Don’t forget to fasten your seatbelt, Mr. Boy-Mayor!

Spoiler Alert: He will totally forget to fasten his seatbelt.

Food Czar Herbert Hoover calls for still more food savings in the US so meat exports to France, Britain and Italy can be doubled. While he’s not proposing rationing, he does plan to send out thousands of agents to prosecute hoarders – regular consumers as well as wholesalers.

On Feb. 4, the US will start registering all Germans in the Southern District of New York, which means photographing and fingerprinting all males 14 and older.

Christabel Pankhurst says women’s suffrage will be used in Britain for “disciplining democracy.” Kinky!

Mary Kilbreth, acting president of the New York Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, says “representative government has been wrecked” by Congress’s vote for the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and a “woman autocracy” established. She hopes the American people won’t “tamely submit to the yoke.” Kinky! Anti-suffragist women will have to use their ballots to elect men who have not yet lost “all the male instincts of domination and sovereignty.” JUST. SO. KINKY!

George Bernard Shaw writes a letter to the Daily Chronicle about the recent proliferation of statements (from Wilson, Lloyd George, etc) about war aims: “The bidding for peace took a long time to start, but now that it is started it is bewilderingly brisk. It seems only yesterday that to have any war aims at all was denounced as the blackest pro-German treason. Victory, a smashing, triumphant victory, without any ulterior object whatever except ‘the crushing of Prussian militarism,’ (the same thing in other words,) was the whole aspiration of the pugnacious patriot.” It suited Germany’s rulers that “we should keep declaring that we were out to crush them. That was precisely what they had been telling the German people”. But with the Russian Revolution there is a new situation “in which it was extremely important to all belligerents that they should appear in the character of grievously molested Quakers, reluctantly forced to defend their countries against imperialist aggression.  To take up the pacifist position in the moral tug-of-war that goes on between Governments in their appeals to the conscience of civilization the Germans suddenly let go the rope, and we sat down with a crash. We were morally dished.” Wilson backed down from demanding a complete democratization of Prussia and set out the 14 Points (which no one is calling that yet , by the way), and “any sort of definite war aims must seem so clear and reasonable in contrast with the crude ravings they replace, that we are for the moment cheated into believing that the Germans must think them as moderate as they seem to us.” Shaw declines to “join the ranks of those kindly people who cry peace when there is no peace.” Rather, “When both sides become convinced that neither of them can both win and survive the effort, then it will be time to talk of peace.”

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Today -100: January 11, 1918: A question of evolution

The House of Representatives votes 274 to 136 in favor of the women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution, which is exactly the 2/3 vote required. All very dramatic. Democrats were 104 to 102 in favor, Republicans 165 to 33 in favor. A proposal for a 7-year deadline for ratification, such as the one attached to the prohibition amendment, fails. The opening speech is made by the first and only woman congresscritter, Jeanette Rankin (R-Montana). “We are facing a question of evolution,” she says. She argues that during the war, when American soldiers are dying for lack of a woolen shirt, women, who unlike men think in terms of human needs, might have something to contribute.

The House of Lords, which is usually firmly against evolution, rejects Lord Loreburn’s amendment to remove women’s suffrage from the Representation of the People Bill by an astonishing 134 to 71, despite warnings from Lord Curzon that it would lead to socialism and disturb home life and that in a future war men might resist being conscripted by the female vote. The Lord Chancellor added that pacifists might work on politically inexperienced women and force an inconclusive peace. Every bishop and archbishop who voted supported the women’s suffrage provision.

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Today -100: January 10, 1918: Of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, ex-villages, and mutinies

Woodrow Wilson reverses his previous position that women’s suffrage should be determined at the state rather than the federal level, and comes out in support of the federal constitutional amendment “as an act of right of justice.” He was evidently influenced in part by the granting of suffrage to women in Britain. And by the fact that the Republican Party came out in favor of it first. The NYT, anti assholes to the end, accuses the Democrats of chicken-heartedness.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Gen. Hindenburg is reported by Matin to have ordered the destruction of 130 French villages behind the Western front.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Boy is that headline over-selling the story. The crew of the Portuguese battleship Vasco de Gama mutinies and fires on a fort, which fires back, the government retakes the ship, the end.

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Today -100: January 9, 1918: Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s not polite to point?

Woodrow Wilson, as is his wont, calls Congress into session with almost no advance warning so he can make a speech at them. This is the 14 Points speech, in which he lays out the basis for peace and the post-war rearrangement of the map of Europe. These are:

1. Open peace treaties established by open diplomacy with no secret bits.
2. Freedom of navigation of the seas.
3. Free and equal trade conditions (Republicans are not so thrilled with the free trade bit).
4. Reduction of armaments.
5. Adjustment of colonial claims, with consideration of the interests of the colonial populations (guess who gets to decide what those interests are? not the colonial populations, that’s for sure).
6. Withdrawal of occupation troops from Russia.
7. The restoration of Belgium.
8. And France, to which Alsace-Lorraine will be returned.
9. Enlargement of Italy along lines of nationality.
10. “Autonomous development” of the peoples of the Austrian Empire (he’s being a bit vague on whether this means breaking up the Empire).
11. Restoration of Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro.
12. More autonomous development, this time for the peoples of the Ottoman Empire, which Wilson rather more clearly intends to break up.
13. An independent Poland.
14. A League of Nations.

This is the first time Wilson has publicly supported France and Italy’s aspirations to reclaim territories lost in the 19th century to Germany and Austria respectively.

George Creel, head the Committee on Public Information, decides that his remit now includes propagandizing abroad. Without asking the State Department, he sends Vira Boarman Whitehouse to Europe to spread the good news about the US’s war aims. Whitehouse’s previous experience in publicity was for the women’s suffrage movement in New York.

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Today -100: January 8, 1918: Of self-determination, soldiers & suffrage, and conscription

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) says a lasting peace can only be based on the principle of self-determination, putting them at odds with the increasingly aggressive annexationists (encouraged by Hindenburg and Ludendorff).

Since soldiers voted by mail in November’s elections, it is possible to see how they voted in aggregate. Soldiers from New York voted 26,664 in favor of the women’s suffrage referendum and 15,760 against. Soldiers from New York City voted 17,428 for and 8,323 against.

The US Supreme Court rules in 7 cases that conscription is constitutional, saying that governmental power isn’t real without sanction, that is, sanction against non-consenting US citizens. “[T]he very conception of a just Government and its duty to the citizen includes the reciprocal obligation of the citizen to render military service in case of need and the right to compel it.” That’s... really weak logic. The problem is that the Constitution only gives the federal government the power to raise an army, it doesn’t say how, and World War I was the only the second time conscription was used. The 14th Amendment, which some lawyers argued invalidates the draft, on the contrary, the Court says, “broadened the national scope of the Government by causing citizenship of the United States to be paramount and dominant.” That... in no way follows. The Court doesn’t even bother making up more crap arguments about why the 13th Amendment’s ban on involuntary servitude doesn’t apply, saying the argument that it does is just “refuted by its mere statement.”

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Today -100: January 7, 1918: Of Frankensteins, Yugoslavs coming in, and bank accounts

NYT correspondent Harold Williams, who admits “I do not understand the Bolsheviki” but is sure that German secret agents created the Russian Bolshevik movement, or something, says of the peace negotiations, “The Germans, having created a Frankenstein for their own purposes, seem to be considerably perplexed by his antics.” And back then a NYT reader who wanted to say “ACTUALLY, Frankenstein was the MONSTER” would have to dip a pen in an inkwell, write it down on stationary, and mail it in. Who says civilization hasn’t progressed?

Headline of the Day -100: 

British Prime Minister Lloyd George gave a speech a couple of days ago, which I skipped, sorry, in which he added to the Allied war aims the breaking off from the Austrian Empire of any nationalities who wanted to do so, especially Poland, but also areas with large Italian and Romanian populations who might want to be annexed by Italy and Romania. Now the “Southern Slavs” (Croats, Slovenians and the like) are asking, Hey, what about us?

Russia and Ukraine have come to some sort of armistice deal.

Foreign Minister Trotsky forbids banks releasing funds deposited by foreign embassies until their home countries hand over deposits made by the Tsarist government in banks in those countries.

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Today -100: January 6, 1918: Of peace talks, spelling, and electric chairs

For some reason, Russia is trying very hard to have the peace talks transferred from Brest-Litovsk to Stockholm, and Germany is resisting very hard.

A decree orders the adoption of phonetic spelling of Russian next week, eliminating 3 vowels and a consonant.

Headline of the Day -100: 

These are in fact electric WHEELchairs for wounded soldiers.

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Today -100: January 5, 1918: We can quietly wait and see how the incident will pass off

German Chancellor Georg von Hertling tells the Reichstag that Germany will refuse Russia’s request that it withdraw its troops from occupied territories in the east before holding referenda on whether they’d care to be annexed by Germany. “We can quietly wait and see how the incident will pass off.”

Rep. Jeannette Rankin introduces a resolution in favor of Irish independence, and another for equal wages for women and men.

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Today -100: January 4, 1918: Of peace talks, ambassadors, and rice

Izvestia publishes, and denounces, Germany’s negotiating terms. Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky also denounces them. But everyone knows that Russia is in no shape to resume the war, so it is, as they say in Russian, fucked.

Trotsky is naming new ambassadors. The ones he names for Britain, Switzerland and Sweden were all political exiles under the tsar.

Ukraine demands that the Russian Bolsheviks withdraw their troops within 24 hours and say whether or not Russia and Ukraine are at war now.

There’s a war on, you know:

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