Today -100: May 19, 1918: I am still optimistic enough to believe we shall have peace this year

German Chancellor Count von Hertling says “I am still optimistic enough to believe we shall have peace this year. I cherish firm confidence that further events in the west will bring us nearer a speedy end of the war.” SPOILER: He’s not wrong.

Germany will seize 3 million suits of clothes from anyone who has more than one, to supply war workers who are presently being supplied with paper clothes, which are proving less than satisfactory. Evening clothes and smoking jackets are exempt. The military will also be inspecting household fittings like doorknobs and sinks for copper, nickel, aluminum, etc that might be seized.

A new treaty has been signed between Italy and the remaining members of the Entente, replacing the secret 1915 treaty the Bolshevik government published, which contained a laundry list of territorial bribes to get Italy into the war. So Italy is giving up those demands, because at this stage that sort of thing just looks bad. Next year when the Treaty of Versailles is being negotiated, Italy will pretend this never happened and demand everything it thinks it has coming to it.

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Today -100: May 18, 1918: Of treasonable communication, effeminization, peace leagues, air mail, and compulsory reproduction

Throughout Ireland, Sinn Fein leaders (De Valera, Markievicz, etc), including all SF’s MPs, are arrested, as was the custom, for “treasonable communication with the German enemy,” and transported to England. This follows the recent capture of a man put ashore by a German u-boat, which I guess is the hook for this particular made-up Insidious German Plot. The proclamation from Lord Lieutenant Viscount John French also talks up voluntary enlistments in the army, suggesting that the British might be backing off trying to enforce conscription in Ireland.

Austria is at risk of losing the war and at risk of losing its autonomy to German dictation, so what are Austrian newspapers worried about? The “effeminization” of the army by the recruitment of women clerks and other auxiliary services.

Unclear on the concept:

For the second time in the 3-day history of US air mail, a plane fails to make its appointed rounds. Since mechanical difficulties forced it down, keeping it from making its connection, the plane doing the Philadelphia-NY leg takes off with just 4½ pounds of mail. Another air mail plane, leaving from DC, is forced to land at the Philadelphia Country Club, scattering people on the field and hitting a fence, because the pilot ran out of fuel after getting really lost (using road maps is turning out to be unsatisfactory).

A German government commission into the declining birth rate recommends punishing people who haven’t married by 21 and couples who haven’t produced children.

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Today -100: May 17, 1918: Phew

Germany finally responds to Uruguay’s repeated requests that it clarify whether the two countries are at war: No, they are not.

Mary Macarthur of the Women’s Trade Union League becomes the first woman adopted as a candidate for the British Parliament by one of the parties – Labour. For Stourbridge. She was a long-time women’s suffrage activist, a champion of working women, and opposes the war. Her husband is a Labour MP. She will not win.

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Today -100: May 16, 1918: Of air mail

The first air mail service anywhere (for a whopping 24¢) begins between New York and Washington via Philadelphia. It takes 200 minutes, despite the first pilot, after being seen off ceremoniously by the president and first lady, getting lost on the way to Philadelphia and having to land and breaking his propeller in the landing, so that his mail had to continue by truck, so only the Philadelphia-DC mail actually made it to its destination by air. Or, as the post office measures such things, close enough.

Hearst’s New York American and New York Evening Journal get an injunction against the town of Mount Vernon, NY’s plan to ban the Hearst press. It’s unclear (to me) whether German-language papers, also banned, are protected by the injunction.

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Today -100: May 15, 1918: Of Mitteleuropa, rationing, shared war burdens, and censorship

The Austrian and German kaisers met recently, and everyone thinks the purpose was to subordinate Austria to German, not just in the war (Germany wants Austria to send more troops against Italy), but in internal matters, and tie the countries together forever (“Mitteleuropa”). Also, it looks like Germany intends to keep parts of Poland it had promised to Austria.

Meat rationing begins in Paris. It’s going slowly because butchers are having difficulty cutting precisely the 200g of meat allowed per person.

The Germans have captured Rostov, cutting off northern Russia from the Caucasus. It’s almost like the Peace of Brest-Litovsk wasn’t a real peace. German control over Ukraine is tightening.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: This particular rumor, sent to Secretary of State Robert Lansing from the ambassador to Sweden, who got it from who knows where, says that Germany has demanded that Russia let it occupy Moscow and other major Russian cities.

Kaiser Wilhelm recognizes an independent Lithuania, if a Lithuania “allied to the German Empire by an eternal, steadfast alliance” can be called independent, which it cannot. Willy expects Lithuania to “participate in the war burdens of Germany, which secured her liberation.”

The city of Mount Vernon, New York, bans all German-language newspapers and also, just for the hell of it, the Hearst press, for the duration of the war.

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Today -100: May 14, 1918: Oh the huma... no, I guess not

German POWs are saying that Field Marshal Hindenburg is dead. He isn’t.

New York now has an “anti-loafing” law, requiring men aged 18 to 50 to have a job. Loitering in the streets, pool halls, saloons, etc will be considered prima facie evidence of loafing. Students and men out on strike are ok. Gov. Whitman admits that the law is of questionable constitutionality, but since New Jersey enacted its own anti-loafing law, “undesirable persons” have been coming to NY to escape it.

The US citizenship of Frederick Wusterbarth, the former postmaster of Clifton, New Jersey, is revoked because he said he wants Germany to win the war. The grounds are that he obtained citizenship fraudulently 36 years ago, swearing allegiance to his new country while retaining a superior allegiance to his old one. This involves the court taking his current feelings as proof of his state of mind 36 years ago (the court says that attachment to the US always grows over time, so he must have been even more disloyal back then), which is bad logic and even worse lawyering. There’s a lot of crappy lawyering aimed at dissent in 1918.

Jewish peddlers on the East Side of New York City, you know, the old-timey ones with the push-carts selling fish and whatnot, are now selling Thrift Stamps (the cheap version of War Stamps).

Infantry sergeant Ernst Flentje is court-martialed for saying that Woodrow Wilson is incompetent and that the US shouldn’t have entered the war. He is sentenced to 30 years.

Czech members of the Austrian House of Lords (Herrenhaus) demand an independent Czech state.

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Today -100: May 13, 1918: Of secret treaties and over there

A Swiss newspaper publishes what it claims is a secret treaty in which Russia “gives” Poland to Germany, promising, for example, to support Germany’s view at any peace conference that the Polish question is not an international one but one for Germany alone.

The Entente decides not to use the US army until it’s, you know, ready. In the meantime, they will use the minimal force necessary to hold off the Germans, as they use up their reserves.

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Today -100: May 12, 1918: Of huskies, meat, and insubordination

Headline of the Day -100: 

Fat shaming is NOT okay.

Headline of the Day -100. I do not know what is up with race-horse names. I passed a couple of days ago on naming “Cudgel Beats Omar Khayyam” as a headline of the day, but this....

“Bondage was intrusted to the apprentice rider, Rodriguez, and it looked as though the rider had him in difficulties in the early part of the race. While Mary Maud was racing the fleet Nutcracker into submission Bondage was in seventh place and in tight quarters.”

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany is telling its people that US military training camps are so rife with insubordination that after a wave of execution they’ve had to stop because they’d just be killing all the soldiers.

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Today -100: May 11, 1918: Teddy Roosevelt vs. the Post Office

Theodore Roosevelt responds to Postmaster-General Albert Burleson’s demand that he back up his claim that Burleson is selectively censoring newspapers for honest criticism while leaving traitorous papers alone. TR says the papers he had in mind as having been unfairly censored were Metropolitan Magazine (for which he writes), Collier’s Weekly, and the NY Tribune, and the ones which “excite hatred between the United States and England” are of course the Hearst press (by exciting hatred, he means supporting Irish independence).

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Today -100: May 10, 1918: Aviation is almost altogether a neurological problem

The House of Commons rejects Asquith’s motion to investigate Gen. Sir Frederick Barton Maurice’s charge that the government lied about the number of soldiers at the front, after Prime Minister Lloyd George gives a speech blaming any error on... Maurice’s department. Maurice will be forcibly retired from the Army as a punishment for going public.

Secretary of State Robert Lansing instructs US Ambassador to Russia David Francis to deny to Russia that the consul in Vladivostok interfered in Russia’s internal affairs. The consul in Vladivostok, of course, is totally interfering in Russia’s internal affairs.

A Lt. Col. Colin Russell tells the American Neurological Association convention that shell shock has been “mastered” and that he can sometimes cure it in a few minutes. With electric shocks, evidently. The Association’s president, Dr. T.H. Weisenburg, praises the Army for embracing neurology. “Aviation,” he says, “is almost altogether a neurological problem.”

German Chancellor Georg von Hertling, who is also prime minister of Prussia, threatens to dissolve the Prussian Diet if it rejects franchise reform.

Queen Marie of Romania says she will never recognize the peace treaty with Germany and will abdicate if it’s ratified. Marie is a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and is married to King Ferdinand, who may have other ideas.

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Today -100: May 9, 1918: If we hold, we win

Theodore Roosevelt accuses the Wilson Administration of enforcing the Espionage Act selectively, censoring newspapers that question the efficiency of its conduct of the war. Postmaster-General Albert Burleson demands TR name any periodicals censored for doing that.

British Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill says British and French troops will hold the lines through the summer while waiting for “our kith and kin from the United States” to arrive, but, like, no pressure or anything. Meanwhile, Germany will pour in its reserves, but Churchill thinks (correctly) there aren’t enough of them for Germany’s plan to work. “If we hold, we win. If we win, the cruel system which let loose these horrors on the world will perish amid the execrations of those who are its dupes or slaves.”

The Soviet government’s new ambassador to Germany, Adolph Joffe, refuses to meet the kaiser, but has had a nice dinner with German socialists. Too nice, according to starving Berliners, or at least the right-wing press.

The New York anti-suffragists give up on their goal of revoking women’s suffrage in NY and will now concentrate on telling women how they should vote (against socialism and pacifism). They have renamed themselves the Women Voters’ Anti-Suffrage Party (!). “A new duty has been imposed upon us. We neglect it at the nation’s peril. If we fail to vote, we are moral shirkers. ... We still hold the conviction that politics and bad for women and women are bad for politics.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Tobacco is now being rationed in France, and only men can get it.

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Today -100: May 8, 1918: Of censures, treaties, and pacifists

Nicaragua declares war on Germany, Austria, et al. 20 countries are now at war with Germany. Which seems like a lot until you realize one of them is Nicaragua.

Liberal former Prime Minister H.H. Asquith moves a resolution of censure on Liberal current Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s government relating to a letter by Gen. Sir Frederick Barton Maurice that appeared in the Times yesterday accusing Lloyd George of lying when he told Parliament a month ago that the number of troops on the Western Front was at an all-time high. The government will fall if it loses this vote, and Asquith is ready – ready, I tell you! – to take over again.

Romania signs the peace treaty forced on it by being, you know, defeated and occupied by Germany. Somehow, though, it will manage not to ratify it before the war ends.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Pastor Charles Wagner of Paris, a little unclear on the concept of “pacifist.”

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Today -100: May 7, 1918: Of peace plots, sneezing powder, and lords lieutenantses

There are rumors that Berlin has put out peace feelers, but

The NYT claims Germany is now firing shells filled with sneezing powder just before poison gas attacks to force soldiers to take off their gas masks. It’s like the worst Mack Sennett comedy ever.

Field Marshal Viscount John French is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a marked militarization of British rule in Ireland.

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Today -100: May 6, 1918: Of gravel, former tsarevitches, and imbeciles

Germany promises, after all, not to use gravel and sand transported through the Netherlands for military purposes.

Russia asks the US, UK, and France to explain their attitudes towards Russia and to explain their attempts to interfere in Russian internal matters, in particular their dealings with the breakaway Siberian autonomous government.

The Soviets move former Tsar Nicholas and some of his family from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg. His 13-year-old hemophilic son Alexis remains in Tobolsk.

Connecticut Gov. Marcus Holcomb (R) says 90% of his state’s population is loyal, 5% are disloyal, and 5% are “pacifists, who ought to be in the Lakeville Institution for Imbeciles.”

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Today -100: May 5, 1918: Of ballots, marxes, thimbles, sedition, and sauerkraut

The Prussian Diet agrees to introduce the secret ballot. And to make voting compulsory, which is just adding insult to the injury of its rejection of one man one vote.

The British home secretary bans a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth. There would have been resolutions against the capitalist war.

For its own celebration, the NYT Sunday Magazine has managed to find the one socialist, John Spargo, who thinks Marx would have supported the US entering this war.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The First Lady donates a gold thimble for American pilots. Which sounds like the start of a crappy fairy tale.

The Senate passes the Sedition Bill 48-26. 24 of the 26 no votes are Republicans. It provides for 20 years in prison or $10,000 fines for anyone who “makes or conveys false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies” or obstruct the sale of bonds or attempt to incite “insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, or shall obstruct recruiting or enlistment; or shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of Government of the United States, or its flag, or the uniform of its army or navy, or any language intended to bring the form of Government of the United States, or the Constitution, into contempt, scorn, contumely or disrepute” etc. An amendment to protect people “who speak the truth for good motives and for justifiable ends” is rejected on the urging of Attorney General Thomas Gregory. It gives the postmaster-general the power to stop any mail he personally considers seditious. At one point in the debate, Sen. Sherman waves a clipping from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which the president of the Missouri branch of the German-American Alliance predicts that Germany will win the war. Sherman says the paper should have been excluded from the mails, and Sen. King adds that any editor who prints such articles should be put in prison under this act.

In the ongoing discussion on the NYT letters page on what else sauerkraut might be called, one Matthew Craig of Brooklyn suggests sour slaw, to complement cold/cole slaw. He rejects the suggestion kapovsta, because what if we find ourselves at war with Russia some day?

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Today -100: May 4, 1918: Let the soldiers and munition workers hear

When the Prussian Diet rejected equal suffrage yesterday, one Socialist deputy exclaims “Let the soldiers and munition workers hear!”

Persia unilaterally annuls the many treaties imposed on it over the years, and repudiates the 1907 treaty between Russia and Britain establishing “spheres of influence” in the country, to which Persia, oddly enough, was not a party.

Now that it’s independent, Finland is looking for a king, as was the custom. Well, the German-oriented right-wing is. The rest would prefer a republic, but the right is currently in control and they’ve reached out to Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who’d probably appreciate the shorter title. AF is the former governor of German Togoland.

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Today -100: May 3, 1918: Buy freely. Buy quickly. Buy gladly.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Must be a definition of the word liberty with which I am not familiar. A new organization in northern California, the Knights have so treated 3 men in separate incidents in San Jose, Richmond and somewhere unnamed, for such crimes as failing to buy Liberty Bonds freely, quickly and gladly.

Headline of the Day -100:  

While Secretary of War Newton Baker is talking of a 3-million-man army, Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to give him the absolute authority to draft as many men as he wants, without limit. This would seem to violate Congress’s appropriations power, since those men would have to be paid.

The Prussian Diet, discussing reforming its ridiculous 3-tier voting system (1/3 of the seats elected by the taxpayers who pay the top 1/3 of the taxes, etc) rejects one man one vote and considers a system in which some people would get more than one vote, despite the kaiser having instructed them to implement an equal franchise and Chancellor Georg von Hertling recommending it as “a regrettable necessity.”

A German report of Kaiser Wilhelm’s visit to the front quotes him, “his eloquent eyes brimming with tears at the devastation all around,” saying “No word in our language can adequately describe it.” Insert your own Germancompoundnoun joke here. He says that if only the people at home who are questioning the war saw the destruction “done here by a ruthless foe who stops at nothing,” they would understand. In fact, he’s been thinking about bringing trainloads of home-dwellers out for that very purpose.

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Today -100: May 2, 1918: Of constructive criticism, cannons, geniuses, and kaiser pennies

Theodore Roosevelt offers “constructive criticism”: let’s declare war on Turkey and Bulgaria! Let’s do it now! Not to have already done it is a “criminal absurdity”!

Headline of the Day -100:

The army lets him play with the long-range cannons (not a eupemism).

Former race car driver, now pilot Lt. Eddie Rickenbacher shoots down a German plane for the first time. It won’t be the last.

In 1915 Theodore Dreiser’s novel The Genius was published, to an uninterested world. His publisher, John Lane, pulled the book after the new York Society for the Suppression of Vice threatened to prosecute them. Now, Dreiser and John Lane jointly ask the Court of Appeal to tell them whether the book is indecent or not (Dreiser wants $50,000 damages from John Lane for withdrawing it). (Update: the appellate court will respond “That ain’t our job.”)

Someone in Hoboken has been giving out pennies in which the Indian has been altered to look like Kaiser Wilhelm – spiky helmet, handlebar mustache, etc. Detectives and the Justice Dept are investigating.

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Today -100: May 1, 1918: Of teachers, armies, and bopps

The Minnesota State Safety Commission bans non-citizens from being teachers, not just in public schools but private and parochial schools and the University of Minnesota.

War Secretary Newton Baker wants to increase the US Army to 3 million men.

William Randolph Heart buys the Chicago Herald, will merge it with his Chicago Examiner.

Or possibly there’s no revolt in Petrograd at all!

German newspapers say reports of Gen. Kornilov’s death are wrong. No they aren’t.

The District Court in San Francisco sentences former German consul general Franz Bopp and vice consul Baron E.H. von Schack, already in prison on sabotage charges, to 2 more years, with various sentences for a bunch of others, including “Hindus,” for conspiring to foment revolution against British rule in India, which is illegal in the US somehow.

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Today -100: April 30, 1918: Of POWs, gravel, dictatorships, and possible wars

Germany threatens to seize Petrograd if Russia doesn’t release German prisoners of war. Well, the ones in good health. The ones they can’t send back to the front can stay where they are, I guess.

Germany refuses to let the Netherlands tell it what it can and can’t do with that sand and gravel.

The Senate votes 63-13 for a bill which Woodrow Wilson demanded giving him the power to reorganize executive bureaus as he sees fit to deal with the war (although not to create new ones, which was in the earlier version). Sen. Warren G. Harding (R-Ohio) warns of dictatorship.

Uruguay again asks Germany if they’re at war. It never got an answer last time.

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Today -100: April 29, 1918: Of counter-revolutions, money slackers, sand and gravel, and killer bears

The rumors from Russia (via Sweden) say that the supposed counter-revolutionary revolt there will put in place a government under 13-year-old Tsar Alexei Nikolaevich that will disavow the treaty with Germany and resume the war. Other rumors say it’s Germany behind the revolt. If there even is a revolt.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Money slackers.”

The Netherlands gives in to the German ultimatum, allowing Germany to transport sand and gravel through their country, but not in unlimited quantities and only if Germany pinky-swears not to use it for military purposes (they’ll be using it to maintain Belgian roads so tanks and such can drive through to the front; does that count, Holland?).

In the Bronx Zoo, Russian bear Ivan kills Japanese black bear Lillian in front of a few hundred spectators.

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Today -100: April 28, 1918: Of tsars, assassins, hung juries and noble hands, nonsinking ships, the Solomon of the Essex Market Court, and unexpected attacks of common sense

A counter-revolution supposedly breaks out in Petrograd. It names Alexei Nikolaevich, the 13-year-old hemophilic former tsarevich, as the new True Tsar of All the Russias.

Gavrilo Prinzip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, dies in prison of tuberculosis at 23.

There’s a hung jury in the prosecution of Max Eastman and others associated with The Masses. The prosecutor vows to try again, right after he prosecutes Irish radical Jeremiah O’Leary for The Bull. Incidentally, the judge in this case is Augustus Noble Hand, who 15 years later will rule that James Joyce’s Ulysses is not obscene.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Guys, so I got this idea for improving our ships. Now, hear me out. What if they were... NON-sinking?”

A New York magistrate settles a case where babies may – or may not – have been switched in a hospital maternity ward last September. He asks everyone in the courtroom to weigh in on which baby looked like which parents, and then ordered the mothers to swap babies. “Mr. Leoniff said at his home yesterday afternoon that he did not believe that he had obtained his own baby, but on the other hand was not sure that the other baby was his.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

The British food controller resigns because he worked so hard making sure people had food to eat that he forgot to eat. YOU HAD ONE JOB! He liked to boast that he could keep himself healthy on way less food than the rations he imposed on the nation. He was wrong and will die soon. And his daughter will try to take his seat in the House of Lords.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin was planning to come to the US to lobby Wilson against conscription being introduced into Ireland, but has cancelled. The NYT applauds this as “an unexpected attack of common sense.” It says Irish independence based on German support would be treason against “orderly freedom” and says Germany wants “a peace of annexations, national humiliation, and ruin”. Someone inform the Times that Ireland knows all about annexations, national humiliation and ruin. The paper threatens withdrawal of US support for Irish independence if the Irish choose to resist fighting Germany, so at least it realizes that British rule is a punishment.

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Today -100: April 27, 1918: Of enemy singers and breeders of spy work

Well this is annoying: some of the stories in this issue are only available to NYT subscribers. They’ll be the ones with “timesmachine” in the URL. Hopefully this won’t persist. (Update: it will. Fuck.)

The Metropolitan Opera fires 2 semi-principal singers and 18 of the chorus for being from Bad Countries.

Philadelphia Police Superintendent William Mills bans meetings conducted in German because they are “fertile ground for German propaganda and are breeders of spy work.”

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Today -100: April 26, 1918: Of tank battles, wool, drafts, and enemy languages

Now that Germany has tanks too, there is... wait for it... the first ever tank battle! Germany claims to have superior, faster tanks. Britain claims to have won this engagement.

Headline of the Day -100: 

But not in, like, a creepy way.

A bill before Congress to start drafting men who have turned 21 since last June reverses for this cohort the exemption in the original draft law for medical and divinity students (provided a college president/dean recommended it).

Newspaper dealers in Harlem will boycott “enemy-language” newspapers.

Woodrow Wilson is resisting another attempt in Congress to declare war on Turkey. Supposedly his reason is to prevent a massacre of Americans (and the closing of US colleges and missions in Turkey).

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Today -100: April 25, 1918: Of gas, liberty cabbage, and hangmen

Headline of the Day -100: 

Same.

Sauerkraut-mongers, whose product has not been selling well of late, are thinking about changing the name to “liberty cabbage.”

Hans Kordess, a German immigrant living in White Plains, New York, failed to register as an enemy alien. When the authorities caught up to him, he explained that it was because in Germany he was a town hangman and it’s illegal there to take his picture, so he assumed that was the case here too. It’s not.

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Today -100: April 24, 1918: Of conscription, quiet in the court, and gravel

Ireland’s one-day anti-conscription general strike passes off peacefully. It was observed almost 100% in Dublin and almost 0% in Northern Ireland.

The trial of 32 Indians in San Francisco for plotting revolution in India – I’m still not sure how that would violate US law – concludes with 29 convictions and 3 acquittals. Oh, also one defendant shoots another one to death in court and is then killed by a US marshal.

That German ultimatum to the Netherlands: they want to be able to send war material (and gravel) through Neth., using its canals and railroads. The US put Neth. in a bad position by seizing its ships and rejecting a plea not to use them in the war zone.

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Today -100: April 23, 1918: Of lynchings, gravel, disloyalists, and barons red

Romania will absorb Bessarabia (which used to be part of Russia).

A black man, Berry Noyes, accused of shooting a sheriff trying to arrest him for violating prohibition, is lynched in Lexington, Tennessee. Hanged and his body burned at the stake.

Germany has been trying to force the Netherlands into the war and to that end has been ramping up a dispute about gravel. Germany is said to have issued an ultimatum.

Woodrow Wilson writes to Congress to oppose a proposed law to try spies and disloyalists by court-martial, saying it’s unnecessary, unconstitutional, and would put us on the level of the fucking Germans. Sen. Chamberlain (D-Oregon) will withdraw it tomorrow.

German pilot Capt. Manfred von Richtofen, the Red Baron, is shot down and killed, possibly by another plane, possibly by ground fire, possibly by Snoopy. The Baron is officially credited with 80 aerial victories.

Guatemala declares war on Germany and the Germanettes.

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Today -100: April 22, 1918: Of conscription, dead generals, and horse

The British military takes over the Irish railroads, post office, and telephone, preparing to deal with the inevitable resistance to conscription. On Sunday (yesterday), Catholic priests and bishops administered the pledge (covenant, even) to resist conscription. Unions call a one-day general strike for tomorrow. Even saloons will close. And the electricity will be off in Dublin.

There are rumors that the anti-Bolshevik leaders Gen. Kornilov and Gen. Semyonov are dead. Yes on the former, hit by a shell, no on the latter.

French Minister of Provisions Victor Boret suggests saving on meat by having one meatless week per month. But you can eat horse, because it’s... classified as fruit, probably? Some of the horses being sold for food come from the British army.

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Today -100: April 21, 1918: Of cops, priests, brutal acts of tyranny and oppression, and symphonies

The federal government takes over the massively corrupt Philadelphia police dept in order to clean up vice to protect soldiers and sailors from themselves.

Today (Sunday) Catholic priests in Ireland will administer a pledge to resist conscription “by the most effective means at their disposal,” and while the priests are calling only for non-violent resistance, that wording is carefully phrased so as not to preclude other kinds of resistance.

55 Irish Nationalist MPs meet and agree to boycott Parliament and remain in Ireland to organize resistance. Conscription, they say, imposed “on a nation without its assent constitutes one of the most brutal acts of tyranny and oppression of which any Government can be guilty.”

Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (Classical) premiers in Petrograd, Prokofiev conducting.

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Today -100: April 20, 1918: Of ground, disloyalists, enemy aliens and spies

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Yup, looks like dirt alright,” he says.

In Collinsville, Oklahoma, a mob hangs one Henry Rheimer, though not to death, for refusing orders from a Committee of Defense Council to fly a US flag every day for the rest of the war. Hang a flag or get hanged, I guess. Also, his son is a conscientious objector.

By the way, the article about that uses the word “disloyalist,” which, while the OED dates it to 1885, seems to be new to the US.

Under a new extension of the Espionage Act,  enemy alien women will now be treated equally (yay!) with enemy alien men (boo!). Required to register with the police, banned from docks, wharves, the District of Columbia, etc.

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s according to Norman White of the Secret Service, testifying before the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Actually, 20,000 is just an estimate of the number of aliens who have failed to register. White also says Germans are selling heroin to soldiers and sailors. He complains that spies keep being released on bail and fleeing to Mexico, or just going to ground.

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Today -100: April 19, 1918: What have I not done to preserve the world from these horrors?

Kaiser Wilhelm recently visited the front and remarked to an officer, “What have I not done to preserve the world from these horrors?” The officer’s reply is not recorded.

The British have succeeded in bringing together the Irish Nationalist Party, Sinn Fein, the Catholic bishops, and a bunch of other normally squabbling Irish factions – in opposition to conscription being introduced into Ireland. Nationalist MPs will join in the boycott of the Westminster Parliament already practiced by Sinn Feiners.

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Today -100: April 18, 1918: Chuckling Germans are especially irritating

Count Stephan Burián is brought back as Austrian foreign minister.

Hackensack, NJ bans German-language newspapers “because they were a source of irritation, particularly when some German resident was observed to be chuckling at something he was reading.”

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Today -100: April 17, 1918: We have lost territory, but we have lost nothing vital

France executes Bolo Pacha for using German money to spread defeatist propaganda. He is said to have given a confession implicating former Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux, who was brought to Pacha’s cell for the two to confront each other, because the French justice system is weird.

The British government will introduce a Home Rule Bill for Ireland, hoping this will make the Irish more compliant with the imposition of conscription. Lloyd George threatens to resign if the House of Lords blocks the bill, which he hopes will “produce something like contentment in Ireland and good-will in America.”

Lloyd George says of the German offensive, “We have lost territory, but we have lost nothing vital.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

The German offensive is going strong, but the Allies evidently still feel confident enough to stop for a wank (or, as they were colloquially known, “whizz bangs”).

Some days this blog is a better source of history than other days.

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Today -100: April 16, 1918: Czernin out

Austrian Foreign Minister Count Ottokar Czernin resigns over the revelations of Emperor Charles’s free-lancing foreign policy last year behind Czernin’s back. The resignation may or may not have been forced on Austria by Germany, which hasn’t been happy with Czernin’s open discontent with a war policy increasingly based on German priorities, to the exclusion of Austria’s. And it’s not like they can demand that the emperor resign.

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Today -100: April 15, 1918: Of zitas, glass, and piano profiteering

Emperor Charles of Austria reportedly also made peace approaches to Italy, through relatives of his wife, the gloriously named Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma. Zita is the 17th (!) child of the former duke of Parma, deposed when Parma was incorporated into Italy at Unification. Zita’s also been writing to the pope.

Headline of the Day -100 (that’s Attorney General Gregory): 

Police in Harlem shoot at people throwing stuff at them during a riot precipitated by the refusal of a cop to arrest a white man for stealing newspapers from a black news-stand owner.

A Berlin court refuses to pursue a charge of “profiteering” against a piano dealer, saying it’s okay to profiteer on non-vital goods as much as you like.

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Today -100: April 14, 1918: Of lines, paper clothing, and mothers-in-law

Headline of the Day -100: 

Rude.

An exhibition opens in Berlin to introduce Germans to the delights of paper clothing.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Austria is claiming that the letter last year which France is saying acknowledged France’s claim to Alsace-Lorraine was actually written by the Duchess of Parma and anyway didn’t say what Clemenceau says it said, but rather said that the emperor would have supported French claims if they were just, which they totally weren’t.

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Today -100: April 13, 1918: Because if you’re at war, you’d kind of like to be told you’re at war

Field Marshal Haig issues an order to the troops fighting the German offensive that “Every position must be held to the last man.” The troops reply, “The last what now?”

The Prussian state Diet discusses Poland, which is never a good thing. There are demands for annexation of large parts of Poland, demands that Poland take responsibility for part of Germany’s war debt, etc.

Austrian Emperor Charles says French PM Clemenceau is just making shit up about him recognizing France’s claim to Alsace-Lorraine.

A German u-boat captured a Uruguayan military commission, so Uruguay asks Germany if they’re at war.

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Today -100: April 12, 1918: Of tones, just claims, and shock troops

Headline of the Day -100: 

They’re talking about his “gospel of force.”

France and Austria are disputing exactly what the diplomatic conversations a year ago consisted of. France releases a letter from Emperor Charles, using his brother-in-law Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma as intermediary (thus the “Sixtus Affair”), supporting France’s “just claims regarding Alsace-Lorraine.”

Special Assistant to the Secretary of War Emery Scott denies rumors that negro soldiers are being used as shock troops in France (you know what might allay that rumor? not segregating them into separate units), that they are abused by their officers, and that Germany has threatened to torture any captured negro soldier to death.

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Today -100: April 11, 1918: Of germs, moral fronts, red flags, and sedition

That would just leave “any.”

John Dillon, the new leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, says that extending conscription to Ireland, which Parliament just voted to do, will open up a new front in the war, in Ireland, a moral front in which Britain would be wrong. Asquith also speaks out against the move.

Russia adopts a new flag. It’s red.

The Senate passes the Sedition Bill, making it illegal to speak or act in support of Germany or its allies, or use willful and “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, contemptuous, or abusive” language about the US form of government, military, flag or uniform. The inclusion of the word “willful” was a softening of the bill.

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Today -100: April 10, 1918: Of conscription and new wars

British Prime Minister Lloyd George tells Parliament that conscription will be extended to all men up to 50, including ministers of religion, and will include Ireland for the first time. Irish MPs inform him that this will not go well.

Lenin says Russia may have to declare war on Japan for landing troops in Vladivostok.

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Today -100: April 9, 1918: Of insurance agents, lynchings, and insane proposals

The Justice Dept claims that German agents, disguised as insurance agents, book agents, and phonograph salesmen, have been roaming Harlem trying to get blacks not to enlist in the army. They’ve arrested one such insurance collector, Max Freudenheim, who was telling people that after Germany wins the war it will create a great negro state “somewhere in the world.”

At the coroner’s inquest into the lynching of Robert Prager for making disloyal remarks, the Collinsville, Illinois mayor admits that he let the mob into the City Hall where Prager was being held, claiming he thought the police had already moved Prager elsewhere.

The Dublin city government warns the British government against trying to impose conscription in Ireland, calling it as “insane proposal” which would be violently resisted.

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Today -100: April 8, 1918: Every lover of freedom and of law must play his part

Gen. Pershing says “Every dollar subscribed to the Liberty Loan is a dollar invested in American manhood.”

NOTE: It was all I could do to stop myself entitling this post “Of German bondage and American manhood,” and it will receive a lot fewer Google hits as a result.

Lloyd George warns India about the German menace to Asia: “if we are to prevent the menace spreading to the east and gradually engulfing the world, every lover of freedom and of law must play his part.” Because nothing says freedom and law like the British Fucking Empire.

Japan says it is invading Vladivostok because a Japanese soldier was conveniently murdered and no one is maintaining law & order there. Despite all the talk recently about such a move, the actual landing seems to have taken the Entente (and the US) by surprise, evidently just ordered by an admiral on the scene. The Russians (when can I start calling them Soviets?) say it’s an invasion aimed at the Soviet Republic and anyway who knows who even killed that soldier.

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Today -100: April 7, 1918: Force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit

In Baltimore, Pres. Wilson gives a rousing speech opening the third Liberty Loan campaign as well as marking the anniversary of the US entry into the war. There’s a military parade. The NYT singles out the negro regiments, who “marched well.” Here’s the ending of Wilson’s speech: “Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether right as America conceives it or dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one response possible from us: Force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust.”

Does anyone want to read a letter from a professor of biology at City College of NY entitled “How Vivisection Saves Soldiers”? Me neither.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Enlarging the page revealed that they improved form, not porn. I was wondering what the oarsmen did. Intertitle: “Hello, I’m Deke Everett Harumphington III from Princeton and this... is my oar.”

Another Smutty Headline of the Day -100: 

I don’t know what any of that means, but it all sounds unspeakably depraved.

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Today -100: April 6, 1918: If you are going to rob and strangle your neighbour it is better not to talk of your moderation

Wilson’s Cabinet discusses the lynching of Robert Prager in Illinois for allegedly making pro-German remarks. They decide (like the federal government always has re lynchings of blacks in the South) that the federal government can’t interfere, and anyway it’s Congress’s fault for not passing the pending bills against sedition fast enough.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Austrian Foreign Minister Count Czernin has gone public about Austria’s attempts last year to end the war. France & Britain have accused him of distorting his proposals and the seriousness of discussions. French PM Clemenceau, for example, says he only sent a rep to listen and not speak. British Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Lord Robert Cecil says “I prefer Prussian brutality to Austrian hypocrisy. If you are going to rob and strangle your neighbour it is better not to talk of your moderation.”

Worried about the dangers of bombardment of Paris by the German “super-gun,” the Paris police first ban matinee performances, then reverse themselves.

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Today -100: April 5, 1918: Of depressing sights, lynchings, liberty days, drills, and mass psychosis

Headline of the Day -100: 

Robert Prager, a German socialist, is lynched near Collinsville, Illinois for making disloyal remarks.

And in Athens, Illinois one John Rynders, who supposedly made pro-German remarks, is forced to kiss the flag, wear it around his neck, and swear allegiance. Also he will have to lead a Liberty Day parade, because irony.

I’m not sure I understand this “mob forces someone to swear allegiance” thing, but it’s becoming pretty common.

Male students aged 16 to 18 in New York state public schools will now be required to participate in military drills. Those who refuse will be expelled or not given diplomas.

A letter to the NYT from L. Pierce Clark, who is not identified in the paper but is presumably the shrink and plagiarist who in the 1920s will be president of the American Psychopathological Association and will write psycho-biographies of Napoleon and Lincoln, suggests that since it is “the popular belief that the German people are either suffering from a severe psychosis or they are racially defective,” these theories should be tested by studying captured German prisoners and figuring out how to reeducate the German people after the war to make them more “socially acceptable.” If they can’t be cured of Prussianism, they can be segregated from the rest of mankind.

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