Today -100: March 18, 1918: Of questionable councils, gallantry, and dull and unsociable Czars

The hilariously unrepresentative puppet “Courland National Council” (Courland is the part of Latvia forcibly extracted from Russia by Germany, which is pretending Courland’s an independent duchy now) asks Kaiser Wilhelm if he’d like to be Duke of Courland. He doesn’t say yes, possibly because he’s planning absorb more of the Baltics and structure their governance along different lines, but he does effuse “My heart is deeply moved and is filled with thanks to god that it has been granted to me to save German blood and German kultur from perishing. God bless your land, upon which German fidelity, German courage, and German perseverance have made their impress.” Sure uses the word “German” a lot, almost like he didn’t recognize “Latvian” as a thing.

The deputies and senators of Belgium send a protest to German Chancellor Georg von Hertling against Germany basing its plans to split Flanders from Belgium on a mysterious self-proclaimed Council of Flanders which “has come into being no one knows how or by whose will” (although the Council has recently gotten itself re-elected in a public meeting called with one day’s notice to which anyone could come. You know, democracy).

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But mostly with machine guns. Gallant machine guns.

Ex-Czar Nicholas is becoming dull and unsociable. He wants to return to Crimea (where he has a palace) and practice horticulture.

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Today -100: March 17, 1918: Hey, Lenin: No Backsies!

The House and Senate vote for daylight saving.

Lenin hints that Russia will break the Brest-Litovsk treaty if circumstances change.

The lower house of the Austrian Parliament is adjourned after a fight between Czech and German deputies, the former complaining that Prague has been without food for days, “including potatoes,” and a German saying that Bohemia was failing to send enough food to German Austria because the Czechs are allies of the British.

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Today -100: March 16, 1918: Peace-ish

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets ratifies the peace treaty 453 to 30. Germany says it will appoint commissions to oversee Russian ministries, with the power of veto, to make sure the provisions of the treaty are enacted. Pretty sure that wasn’t in the treaty.

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Today -100: March 15, 1918: Who invades what now?

Woodrow Wilson appeals to high school boys to do farm work over the summer.

A meeting on January 6 in Prague attended by all the Czech deputies in the Austrian Reichsrat and the Diets of Bohemia, Silesia and Moravia, and other prominent Czechs adopt a declaration for an independent Czech state. Austria ruthlessly suppressed news of this, which is why the NYT is only hearing about it now.

Tibet invades China.

Sinister Plot of the Day -100: 

A detective asks a magistrate for arrest warrants for all the actors appearing in a play by drama critic Alan Dale, “The Madonna of the Future,” which is about a pregnant unmarried woman who does not wish to get married (“cope with the perpetual man”) (eventually she changes her mind). Chief Magistrate McAdoo will investigate. The play has been running since January and is actually about to close. Update: After reading the play, McAdoo will say that the heroine “repeatedly and tiresomely states over and over again that the doctrines advanced by her are unconventional and, in the sense usually accepted by ordinary people, immoral. She says that her highest ideal of maternity is that of the cow, which might suggest that the proper place for this play would be a stable instead of the stage, committing the dialogue to learned veterinarians.” Everyone’s a critic.

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Today -100: March 14, 1918: Of rectification, brotherhoods, conscription, garfields, and naked opera

Austria wants to “rectify” its border with Romania. I’m sure that sounds scarier in the original German.

German troops rectify invade Odessa.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George on food rationing: “I tell you what rationing means. It means that a nation in the furnace of war is becoming more of a brotherhood.”

The US and Britain have negotiated an agreement on conscripting each other’s nationals. US nationals in the UK won’t be conscripted into the British military if they’re older than the US age limit of 31, while Brits in the US can be conscripted up to 40, the British limit. Informally, British subjects born in Ireland will not be conscripted in the US because there is no draft in Ireland, although the Irish already drafted won’t be released.

Lucretia Rudolph Garfield, widow of the president assassinated in 1881, dies at 85.

New York Mayor John Hylan objects to nude dancing at the Met (no idea what this is about) and orders Police Commissioner Enright to ensure that “the good people who attend the Metropolitan Opera House do not have their morals corrupted.”

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Today -100: March 13, 1918: Of prohibition, POWs, and inebriates

The NY State Assembly defeats the Prohibitionists’ demand that it ratify the federal prohibition amendment without holding a referendum.

The Rhode Island State Senate defeats ratification but may also authorize a referendum.

Russia’s recently resigned foreign minister, Leon Trotsky, is named president of the Petrograd Military Revolution Committee. Which means he’ll be staying behind while the government moves to Moscow. [Actually, he’ll be People’s Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs].

Austria is reported to be isolating its prisoners of war who are coming home following the Brest-Litovsk treaty, afraid they’ve caught the Bolshevism bug and might spread it back home.

Pehr Svinhufvud, head of state of Finland, runs for his life after escaping the Red Guards, going to Berlin.

The secretary of NYC’s Board of Inebriety resigns. In other news, New York has a “Board of Inebriety.”

Speaking of inebriety, so many Irishmen are in the army that the NY St. Patrick’s Day parade has been forced to allow... women... to march. In other news, the parade this year will not feature the “Fighting 69th.”

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Today -100: March 12, 1918: As an American I had a legal right to keep my seat

Woodrow Wilson writes to the Russian people to tell them how sorry he is about the way Germany is treating them and promising that the US will “avail itself of every opportunity to secure for Russia once more complete sovereignty and independence in her own affairs and full restoration to her great role in the life of Europe and the modern world.” The timing of the message is presumed to intend to reassure Russia about the Japanese intervention in Siberia.

Rep. Henry De Flood (D-Virginia) introduces a bill to bar states from letting enemy aliens who have taken out their first naturalization papers but are not yet US citizens vote, as 10 states do.

A revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession opens on Broadway. Members of the police attend but do not arrest anyone, as they did at the NY premiere in 1905, when they arrested, well, everyone, right in the middle of the performance on the opening (and also closing) night. This version, like the 1905, stars Mary Shaw (no relation).

A Chicago lawyer is arrested in a theatre for failing to rise for the Star Spangled Banner, because he was tired and “As an American I had a legal right to keep my seat.” The judge disagrees and fines him $50 and tells him he’s lucky he wasn’t beaten up. The article neglects to say what the actual legal charge was.

Oh the humanity:

D.W. Griffith’s war movie Hearts of the World, starring the Gish sisters, premieres in Los Angeles.

I haven’t seen it, but it sounds like the same melodrama plot as Birth of a Nation, with German would-be rapists instead of black ones and French troops riding to the rescue instead of Kluxers.

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Today -100: March 11, 1918: Yes, this WAS the only thing that happened that day

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: March 10, 1918: Only Lenin is left

Leon Trotsky resigns as Russian foreign minister. Ensign Nikolai Krylenko is also out as military Commander in Chief. The NYT, maintaining its track record of perfect precognition regarding Russia, says “only Lenine is left, and he not for long.”

A new anti-Bolshevik White movement pops up, headed by Prince Georgi Lvov (currently in China), who was prime minister after the February Revolution, and Admiral Alexander Kolchak (“The Night Stalker”), former commander of the Black Sea Fleet. They plan to ride into power, in Siberia at least, with the backing of the Japanese.

In Newark, an Austrian is jailed for 10 days for saying “To hell with the United States.” The judge also threatens him with being hanged from a lamppost “if your kind is not careful.”

New Jersey Gov. Walter Edge orders all law officers to enforce the Anti-Loafing Act requiring all men aged 18 to 50 to have some sort of employment, even if they’re too rich to need to work.

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Today -100: March 9, 1918: Of princes and grand duchesses, spring planting, and dead soldiers

Finland’s “government” asks Kaiser Wilhelm to appoint his #5 son Prince Oskar as Finland’s king.

On the other hand, Germany keeps sending princes to occupied Luxemburg to woo Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde, but she keeps refusing to marry them.

Russia issues the demobilization order to its army required under the Brest-Litovsk agreement, but simultaneously orders the arming of the entire people. The treaty needs to be ratified by the All-Russian Assembly of Soviets next week, which isn’t a slam dunk.

Congress passes a bill allowing furloughs for soldiers still in training camps in the US for spring planting.

The US Dept of War has decided to stop releasing the addresses or any other details beyond the names of dead soldiers. The Committee on Public Information, considering it of no use to anyone to give newspapers just a list of names, declines to pass the information on. It points out that some soldiers have the same names as other soldiers, so without an address...

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Today -100: March 8, 1918: A war between Odin and Christ

Some of the German army is still advancing into Russia. Perhaps they haven’t gotten the word that they’re not supposed to? They are 68 miles from Petrograd.

Former secretary of state, secretary of war, and senator Elihu Root tells a Carnegie Hall meeting that “This is not a war for Serbia, for Alsace-Lorraine, for Poland, even for Belgium. It is a war between Odin and Christ.” You mean, Wotan, dummy, the US didn’t declare war on the Vikings.

Ford Motor Company will make tanks. Little baby tanks.

The chief of the military police in Hoboken, New Jersey says he will use the unlimited power which he claims to have to clean up vice in the city and suppress prostitution, arresting any woman found out at night and trying them by military tribunal. He’s also going after chop suey restaurants for some reason.

The Post Office bars Metropolitan Magazine from the mails (a little late, it’s already gone out), evidently because of an article by William Hard, “Is America Honest?” which suggests that the US treatment of Puerto Rico makes it hypocritical for Wilson to criticize, say, Germany. Fun fact: Theodore Roosevelt is a well-paid regular contributor to Metropolitan. (Update: the PO will claim it didn’t bar the magazine from the mails, merely told the local postmaster to exercise pre-censorship over future issues).

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And in 3 days the first case of Spanish Flu in the US will show up at the army hospital in Fort Riley, Kansas.

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Today -100: March 7, 1918: Of burning home fires, the cooperation of God, admirable qualities of the Irish character, and moving

Lena Guilbert Ford, who wrote the lyrics for “Keep the Home Fires Burning” (1914) dies in a fire in her home in London, started by a German bomb falling on it, because Germans are nothing if not literal. Her son is also killed. They are the first US citizens killed in a London air raid.

The Wisconsin State Assembly joins the state Senate in censuring Sen. Robert La Follette’s attitude toward the war.

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Romania signs a preliminary peace treaty with the Central Powers. It will give up territory, Germany will control its railroads, German goods will enter Romania tariff-free but not vice versa, etc.

Irish Nationalist Party leader John Redmond dies. The NYT says he “had the admirable qualities of the Irish character without its defects,” unlike certain other Irishmen it could name.

The Russian government will move to Moscow. It’s almost like they don’t trust the Germans not to break the peace treaty.

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Today -100: March 6, 1918: Of Romanian farts, women voters, and malingers

Headline of the Day -100: 

Oh, PART. I totally misread that.

Evidently the US won’t be silently consenting to Japan invading Siberia and occupying Vladivostok after all, but will weakly object because it violates the 14 Points.

Democrats win 4 special congressional elections in New York, giving them a small majority in Congress. Women vote in the state for the first time (the NYT is especially impressed, or something, by the presence of baby buggies at polling stations), and there’s even a woman candidate in the 21st District, Mamie Colvin for the Prohibition Party.

Woodrow Wilson orders the removal from the manual for medical advisory boards implementing the draft of these words: “The foreign born, and especially Jews, are more apt to malinger than the native born.” The sentence was included by “inadvertence.”

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Today -100: March 5, 1918: Of occupations, inbred courtesy, pickets, enemy aliens, and booty. Big booty.

Germany says it will occupy all of Finland “temporarily.” Sweden is not best pleased.

The British Parliament votes £25,000 for the widow of Maj. Gen. Frederick Stanley Maude, the commander of the Mesopotamian campaign who conquered Baghdad. The cause of his death in November, according to Lloyd George, was courtesy: he was too polite to refuse a cup of something or other when visiting natives in a cholera-ridden region of Iraq. Guess what he died from. Courtesy, that’s right, inbred courtesy. LG calls him “the gentlest conqueror who ever entered a city’s gates.”

The DC Court of Appeals rules that it was not illegal for suffragists to picket the White House. Their convictions are reversed and they will be suing for damages.

The House passes a bill to subject female enemy aliens to the same restrictions (registration, residency restrictions, other things beginning with R) as males.

The Allies will indeed ask Japan to occupy Vladivostok, except for the US, which nevertheless has no objections. Japan won’t be asked to promise not to annex territory, because that would just be insulting.

Howard Heinz, the federal food administrator for Pennsylvania and I’m pretty sure one of the baked beans Heinzes, says “We will not be a strictly free people until 10,000 German propagandists in this state have been hanged to telegraph poles and shot full of holes.” He blames rumors spread by German agents for food conservation not being more effective.

Germany has arrested and deported a bunch of Belgian judges, including some on the Court of Appeal in Brussels, which protests by suspending its activities. The judges protested German attempts to break Flanders off of Belgium. Germany bans all discussion of politics throughout Belgium.

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Today -100: March 4, 1918: Of Brest-Litvosk, porkless Tuesdays, and suffragettes for senate

The Brest-Litovsk treaty is signed, and Germany finally stops its military actions against Russia, which included planes dropping bombs on Petrograd. Turkey will get back all the territory it lost to Russia in 4 wars over the last 90 years, including Russian Armenia, presumably because Turkey is running out of Armenians to massacre.

Food Administrator Herbert Hoover is now asking Americans to abstain from beef and pork only on Tuesday. But everyone should eat less bread. So no sandwiches, I guess.

Anne Martin announces that she is running for the US Senate for Nevada as an independent. A former professor of history in the University of Nevada, Martin led the successful women’s suffrage campaign in the state in 1914 and has since fought for the national amendment. She was one of the White House picketers last year and was sentenced to the workhouse. She will be the first woman to run for the Senate and receive 18% of the vote, not bad for an indy.

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Today -100: March 3, 1918: We could not refuse our help

Germany captures Kiev. Or “liberated” it, as they put it.

Austria will also send troops into Ukraine. Because Ukraine asked it to, or so Austria says. “We could not refuse our help,” says Prime Minister Ernst Seidler. That would have just been rude.

Labor Secretary William Wilson orders immigration officials in the Northwest to start deporting foreign anarchists (i.e., IWW members), whether or not they’ve actually done anything.

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Today -100: March 2, 1918: Of peace talks, barbed wire, Broadway lights, and kats

A rather unclear message from Brest-Litovsk leads the Russian government to believe that the Germans have broken off peace talks. At any rate, Germany plans to keep invading right up to the signing of the peace treaty. Petrograd prepares for a siege.

The Allies ask Japan to invade Russia to secure Allied interests – protecting weapons stores in Vladivostok, that sort of thing – and certainly not to help overthrow the Bolshevik government, furthest thing from our minds.

The Cologne Gazette “reports” that New York City is now completely surrounded by 1,000 km of barbed wire fencing and that Hoboken is now empty because all the Germans have been forced out.

Austria will start drafting 17-year-olds.

Broadway theaters are allowed to turn their lights on again, the warmer weather having mitigated the coal shortage.

I’d forgotten about the new literacy requirement for immigrants, passed over Pres. Wilson’s veto. Roberto Piccinini of the Bronx has his citizenship blocked because he spelled cat with a K.

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Today -100: March 1, 1918: Of the Wigwam and evolution

Women can now join Tammany (the NY County Democratic Committee) as equal members.

Prof. Frederic Wood Jones, anatomy prof and physical anthropologist, gives a lecture at King’s College, London, in which he claims that humans are not descended from hominoid apes, but diverged substantially earlier, which is here presented as “Man Was Ancestor of Apes,” which is not what Jones is saying, but he’s still quite wrong.

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Today -100: February 28, 1918: Of cholms and pogroms, deserters, and rabbits

Russian troops are refusing to fight.

Foreign Minister Trotsky refuses to return to Brest-Litovsk to sign the capitulation to Germany, Zinoviev is sent instead (a later report will say that the Germans said they won’t negotiate with Trotsky anymore).

Polish protests against Cholm being given to Ukraine turn into anti-Jewish riots in Cracow, as was the custom.

Secretary of War Newton Baker rejects a general’s recommendation that deserters from army training camps in the US be executed. In fact, no deserters will be executed by the US this war even in Europe. 35 soldiers were executed during the war, all for non-military offenses like rape and murder of civilians.

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Today -100: February 27, 1918: Undertaken in the name of humanity

Germany, evidently not taking Russia’s “We fucking surrender already” as an answer (and not responding to the official surrender), has refused an armistice and is still advancing in Russia. Russians are resisting. The government calls on the people to defend Petrograd from the “imperialist assassins” and “cursed minions of Wilhelm and the German Kaledine, together with the White Guard, [who] are advancing against and shooting the Soviets, reconstituting the power of the landlords, bankers, and capitalists, and preparing for the restoration of the monarchy.”

Imperialist Assassin and German Chancellor Georg von Hertling addresses the Reichstag of Cursed Minions. He claims to agree with Wilson’s 14 Points, more or less (one example of less: Alsace-Lorraine). He rejects Wilson’s positing of Germany as “an antagonism between an autocratic government and a mass of people without rights.” Why, in Germany, “princes and Governments are the highest members of the nation as a whole,” whose decisions are guided only by the welfare of the whole. He says Germany’s warfare has always been defensive in aim, even where it is aggressive in action. For example, the current attack on Russia is only “to safeguard the fruits of our peace with Ukraine. Aims of conquest were in no way a determining factor.” And any further military operations “are solely taking place at the urgent appeals and representations of the populations for protection against atrocities and devastation by Red Guards and other hands. They have, therefore, been undertaken in the name of humanity.”

The British send troops into County Clare, as was the custom. Sinn Feiners and lawless types generally have been stealing cattle, cutting telegraph wires, seizing farms, etc.

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Today -100: February 26, 1918: He was in favor of revolutionary phrases before he was against them

Lenin writes in Pravda that the only people who think it was possible to refuse the German terms are “those who are intoxicated by revolutionary phrases. ... Only a blind man or men infatuated by phrases can fail to see that the policy of a revolution war without an army is water in the bourgeois mill.” He talks a lot about “phrases” and the men who love them. He means Trotsky.

The Wisconsin State Senate votes 26-3 to condemn Sen. Robert La Follette’s failure to support the war, and all others who “have failed to see the righteousness of our nation’s cause”.

Japan will send troops into Siberia to aid the Cossacks against the Bolsheviks. It will change that rationale to something a little less blatant in the days ahead.

An earthquake in China earlier this month is reported to have killed 10,000. Think there’ll be a follow-up to today -100’s 3-paragraph story? (Spoiler Alert: Nope, at least not by March 4).

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Not a metaphor!

And a new issue of The B.E.F. Times (formerly the The Wipers Times) is out.

The British trench paper suggests suggests that “there is so much that might be improved, and so many little inconveniences which might be done away with, if there were a better understanding on both sides.” It offers some ground rules for shelling:

1. No shelling will take place between the hours of 11 pm and 7 am.
2. Parties wishing to shell will notify their opponents of the exact hour and place to be shelled by sending over a dud T.M. [trench mortar] at a stipulated spot with a note inside.
3. Any sheller sending his obus [shell] into any H.Q. or dug-out will forfeit two turns.
4. A shellee on being struck by his opponent will immediately retire from the contest. ...
7. Unlimited whisky to be supplied at the 19th hole by the losing side.

Fake ad from Souvenir Manufacturing Company (“To please your best girl, it is clear, You must procure a souvenir.”)

German shoulder straps: 1s each or 10s a dozen
Ditto, Bloodstained: 1/6 each of 15s a dozen
Shell holes, complete: 50s each
Duckboards – English: 5s each
Ditto German: 10s each
Iron crosses: 6d a gross
Our specialty: bullets carefully fixed in bibles (for maiden aunts)

And Royal Pinolia Coy advertises products to preserve manly beauty such as “Our patent bomb-tongs... No more broken nails.”

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Today -100: February 25, 1918: They’ll keep doing it until they get it right

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Which seems to have been done by Lenin and Trotsky on their own authority, without the Central Executive voting on it.

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That’s J. Howard Shoemaker, the national amateur pocket billiards champion, not the King of the Shoemakers, as you may have first thought.

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Today -100: February 24, 1918: Peace?

Germany makes a new generous peace offer to Russia. Well, generous to themselves. Large sections of Russia (160,000 square miles, pop. 18 to 25 million) will no longer be Russia. The “fate” of those lands will be defined by Germany and Austria “in agreement with their populations.” The Russian army and navy to be completely demobilized. Russia has to make peace with Ukraine. Russian troops to leave Ukraine and Finland. Russia has to stop its revolutionary propaganda against Germany, Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria and their institutions. A 3 billion ruble indemnity. Russia has 48 hours to comply.

The NYT has an article about how former French prime minister Joseph Caillaux, currently in serious risk of being railroaded into prison, has been protected up until now by atheistic Masons.

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Today -100: February 23, 1918: The people’s terrorism must be opposed to the advancing enemy

Lenin calls on the Russian people to resist the German advance, since Germany seems to be disregarding their surrender. “The people’s terrorism must be opposed to the advancing enemy.” Everyone will be required to dig ditches – especially the bourgeois. However, the Bolsheviks (especially Trotsky) still seem to believe that German working-class soldiers won’t obey orders to march against their Russian brothers, which is just adorable. Lenin tells Bolsheviks that he can’t fight the Germans and counter-revolutionaries at the same time, and chooses the latter.

51 US military aviators have died in training or in “unauthorized flights” since June. Secretary of War Newton Baker says this is a small percentage of the men training, so it’s no big deal.

And Navy Sec Josephus Daniels wants Congress to abolish extra pay for naval aviators, which was put in place before the US entered the war because they couldn’t get life insurance, and now everyone in the military gets death benefits from the government, such as they are. Also, Daniels says, increased pay is no longer necessary to attract pilots because now you can just draft the poor sods.

South Dakota’s State Council of Defense orders all educational institutions in the state, including universities to stop teaching German. Later in the year, it will extend this to private schools, public gatherings, and churches.

Bridget Quinn of Conifer, Pennsylvania writes to Secretary of War Baker to offer her hair, and that of her little daughter, to be made into “rope of some kind” for the war. He says thanks but no thanks, as he’s already sold the war to buy her some fancy combs.

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Today -100: February 22, 1918: Of babbling masses of human protoplasm, incarnations of sentiments of order-loving peoples, franchises, and tiny negroes

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Taft says Russia is now “a babbling mass of human protoplasm.” Dude.

Prince Leopold of Bavaria, the commander of Austro-German forces on the Eastern front, tells his troops: “Russia is sick and is trying to contaminate all the countries in the world with a moral infection. We must fight against the disorder inoculated by Trotsky and defend outraged liberty. Germany is fortunate in being the incarnation of the sentiments of other order-loving peoples.”

The Prussian Diet’s Franchise Committee, which is supposed to be reforming Prussia’s retrograde 3-tier voting system, rejects equal suffrage in favor of giving some people extra votes based on guilds and professions, because it’s evidently still the 17th century.

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Today -100: February 21, 1918: Thinking men lose hope

Trotsky accepts Germany’s terms.

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To quote Thelma Ritter, that has everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end.

Britain says it won’t recognize any peace deal made between Germany and Russia involving Poland without consultation with some actual Poles.

Austria, which has no such qualms, has either given the province of Cholm to Poland, or given it to Ukraine because of “race principles,” depending on which article in today’s paper you read. The Polish members of the Austrian parliament have been kicking up quite a fuss since the treaty with Ukraine was signed at Brest-Litovsk.

Evidently part of that peace deal required Ukraine to supply a certain amount of grain to the Central Powers or lose all the concessions made to it.

German Field Marshal August von Mackensen orders occupied Romania to form a new cabinet within 48 hours, including no member hostile to Germany or Austria. Pretty much every single Romanian is hostile to Germany and especially Austria, so this may be a little tricky.

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Today -100: February 20, 1918: Of war, debt, and anarchists

Russia protests that Germany’s military activities are in violation of the December 15th treaty’s requirement of 7 days’ notice, but says it is now ready to sign a peace treaty after all.

19 ambassadors in Petrograd object to the Bolshevik repudiation of Russia’s national debt.

Russia releases another secret agreement, a 1904 pact between various European countries to cooperate in suppressing the anarchist movement. Russia’s then-Foreign Minister Count Vladimir Lamsdorf defined anarchists as including any revolutionary in Russia, especially Jews and the secret Jewish Masonic conspiracy.

The Don Cossack government gives up power to the local workers’ and soldiers’ soviet. Gen. Alexey Kaledin, hetman of the Cossacks, who began the Russian counter-revolution by defecting from the Russian army, takes it well, shooting himself in the head.

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Today -100: February 19, 1918: Of Kiev, dentists, old privates, divorces, and lynchings

Dispatches from Russia have been restored, and the NYT is playing catch-up. Anyway, Kiev was captured by Bolsheviks on the 8th after days of fighting between the forces of the Ukrainian Republic, which was negotiating peace with Germany, and Russian-backed local reds.

Arthur Newton Davis of Piqua, Ohio leaves Germany. He was Kaiser Wilhelm’s personal dentist. He says the kaiser thinks the US contribution to the war will be small because he is being told that so many US transport ships have been sunk that only 30,000 soldiers have arrived in France.

Germany resumes military operations in Russia. Germany is playing up stories of anarchy and crime in Livonia and the Baltics, which are surely crying out for some good old-fashioned German order.

Russia claims to have intercepted a message from Gen. Dowbor-Muśnicki of the Polish 1st Corps, which broke away from the Russian army some time back, offering complete obedience to Germany. That seems unlikely, but the Poles don’t have a lot of room for maneuver (when do they ever?).

A Canadian private is sent home because he’s 73 years old (he does get to meet the king first).

A black man is lynched near Fayetteville, Georgia.

The Bolsheviks have simplified the divorce process. Many people are now getting divorced.

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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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