Today -100: July 19, 1918: Of ways to stop German spies, censorship, and women’s suffrage

The Allied counter-offensive is doing rather well.

Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, on the other hand, is still quite dead, although his father is informed that Quentin’s flying companion is sure he landed safely.

Still, the New York Republican Party, currently holding its “unofficial convention” in Saratoga, is trying to get Roosevelt to run for governor and trying to ignore the existence of their unloved incumbent governor, Charles Whitman. TR gives a speech (this is before he was informed about Quentin’s death) against the Enemy Within: “A glorious way to stop the activity of the German spy [by which I’m pretty sure he means anyone at all critical of the war] is to shoot him where he is found.” He says that German- and Austrian-Americans should be drafted because during the Revolutionary War Americans of English birth fought for independence, and their cause didn’t have 1/10 the reasons as the current war, because Lusitania and shit.

Recruiting officers are told to stop illegally enlisting boys under the age of 18, as it’s just embarrassing for everyone when their parents show up and demand they be released. Documentation will be required in the future.

A NY state Supreme Court justice allows Mount Vernon to ban German-language newspapers and the Hearst press.

Hungary’s Diet rejects women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: July 18, 1918: Of best deaths, sawed-off shotguns, useless wars, amusing shells, and red hats

Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, son of the former president, is killed in aerial battle. He was 21. “The best of deaths,” the NYT calls it.

German newspapers are complaining over rumors that American troops have been issued sawed-off shotguns, which are apparently not “honorable,” presumably because no one’s bothered to train them to shoot. What next, they ask, tomahawks and scalping knives?

Headline of the Day -100: 

Oh, NOW he tells us.  Austrian Foreign Minister Count Burian says “we regard this war as senseless and purposeless bloodshed which might at any moment be ended by the re-emergence of feelings of humanity in our enemies.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

Émile-Joseph Duval, the manager of the newspaper Le Bonnet Rouge, is executed for allegedly taking money from Germany to publish defeatism. Another person associated with the paper, also arrested in 1917, the photographer Miguel Almereyda, the father of the great film-maker Jean Vigo, was mysteriously strangled in prison.

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Today -100: July 17, 1918: Our enemies want to paralyze us by an offensive of irritation and render us helpless

Baron Burian, the Austrian Foreign Minister, says Austria is ready to begin peace talks and is “prepared to discuss everything except our own territory.” It’s not the Central Powers who are annexationists,  he says (the terms that they imposed on Russia and Romania are a special case, or something), but the Entente countries that want to grab Alsace-Lorraine, Trieste, the Trentino and Germany’s colonies. He says, “Our enemies want to paralyze us by an offensive of irritation and render us helpless. They want to crush our very powerful organism in order to make weak parts one after the other serviceable to their own purposes.” Austrians, always bragging about their very powerful organisms.

The French Senate is trying former Interior Minister Louis-Jean Malvy for treason for allegedly giving information to Germany, which he didn’t.

Floyd Dell, managing editor of The Masses, whose first trial with Max Eastman and others connected to the paper for obstructing military recruitment ended in a mistrial, then, ironically, let himself be drafted before an intended retrial, has now been discharged from the army because he shouldn’t have been conscripted while an indictment hung over him. Spoiler Alert: The second trial will also end in a hung jury.

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Today -100: July 16, 1918: To hell with this blockheaded Hun

Haiti declares war on Germany, which is just adorable.

So too have some residents of Bismarck, North Dakota, who want that name changed. Someone painted out the city’s name at the railroad station and put up a sign saying “To hell with this blockheaded Hun. What did he ever do for us?”

Headline That’s Probably a Euphemism for Something of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: July 15, 1918: Of productive baseball, roofs, and war wounds

Individual draft boards are making conflicting rulings on whether baseball players are “productive.” Boston’s says that baseball’s recreational benefits are overestimated, although it excuses Braves catcher John Park Henry from getting a real job because it would be such a financial loss to himself and others (others being the team owners).

Man, the food situation in Germany is getting really bad:

Theodore Roosevelt is informed that his son Archie’s war wound is worse than first reported and will take 8 months to heal. It’s not a great week for the Roosevelt boys.

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Today -100: July 14, 1918: There must be no hugger-mugger peace

The German government has a contract with the Westmark Land Company to purchase estates in Alsace-Lorraine and settle them with people “who are reliable from a national standpoint.”

German Chancellor Georg von Hertling says Germany does not intend to annex Belgium, but only to use it as “a pawn for future negotiations.” (A few days later he’ll say he means he wants Germany’s colonies back).

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100:  

Um, you do you, Germans.

Lloyd George, while admitting that Britain decided its colonies and Dominions were going to war without consulting them, says the Dominions (i.e. the white colonies) will have a role in determining the peace terms. He adds, “There must be no hugger-mugger peace.” He says that Germany’s (he mostly means Prussia) past successful wars just encouraged it to more warfare, so this time it mustn’t get anything out of the war. “The god of brute force must this time forever be broken and burnt in its own furnace.” Probably best not to spend too long thinking about that sentence.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100:  

Flight Sgt James Baugham crashed in No Man’s Land and was shot at by both sides until he waved his handkerchief at the French. I told you it was disappointing.

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Today -100: July 13, 1918: Of neutralizing ointment & special underwear

The War Department insists that not only are its gas masks completely effective against mustard gas, but there’s a “neutralizing ointment” now. And special underwear.

That’s what it says: “special underwear.”

Finland’s German-propped-up government’s Senate votes to expel all the Jews, because they funded the Red Guards. The Jews say they were forced to give money to the Red Guards.

Henceforth, all US war contracts will ban the use of prison and child labor.

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Today -100: July 12, 1918: Of mustard, grocery shopping, violent pan-Germans, and zitas

US forces in Europe now have a supply of mustard gas, so they can begin setting German skin on fire, which is something they’ve been wanting to do.

Germany demands that neutral Holland supply it with 60,000 cows, 3,000 horses, 10,000 tons of cheese, 2 million eggs, etc. I think they’re planning a party.

Germany’s new foreign minister, replacing the ousted Richard von Kühlmann, is Adm. Paul von Hintze, described by the NYT as a “violent pan-German” (violent pan-Germans are the worst kind) shoved into office by Kaiser Wilhelm & the military rulers of Germany without any consultation with the Reichstag.

A Swedish lieutenant, who claims to have stayed at the hotel in which Grand Duke Michael was imprisoned, says he heard that the former tsarevitch died of fright when someone threw a bomb at the house the Romanovs were staying at. The NYT will publish any rumor from any rando who spent any time at all in Russia.

The NYT also purveys a story that Austria’s Empress Zita twice considered divorce, but the pope said no. Elsewhere in the paper, it is reported that Austria has been complaining about an Allied propaganda offensive against the royal couple. According to a British correspondent stationed in Geneva, “Exactly the same sort of stories which were circulated at the expense of Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution and about the Empress of Russia two years ago are now being repeated about Zita.” Soooooo... sex stuff? That is annoyingly vague. Yet another article suggests pro-Germans are starting these rumors against Zita to undermine her as she pushes for peace. That’s not implausible.

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Today -100: July 11, 1918: Of influenza, aerial combat, constitutions, interventions, and fairy wands

Kaiser Wilhelm has the Spanish flu!

Theodore Roosevelt’s son Quentin shoots down a German plane. Good for him.

An anti-Bolshevik Provisional Government for Siberia is formed.

A Russian constitution was adopted yesterday by the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets. There seems to be nothing about it in the NYT in the days and weeks ahead. Russia is declared a republic of the soviets of the workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ deputies. The “exploiters” are to have no political power including the vote, but all citizens have equal rights, however that’s supposed to work. Clergy can’t vote either. Private property is abolished and “He shall not eat who does not work.”

Woodrow Wilson is still working out how he wants to intervene in Russia. He is meeting “persons who are familiar with conditions in Russia.” Today:  Marie Botcharova of the Women’s Battalion of Death. I wonder what was said.

Headline That Raises More Questions Than It Answers of the Day -100:

Hey, I saved some pictures of 1918 Paul Nash paintings years ago and forgot to post them, so I’m two months late with We Are Making a New World, and I’m not sure about the exact dates of Void and Mule Track.

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Today -100: July 10, 1918: Of social revolutionaries and searching for the true assassins

Some of the people arrested by the Bolsheviks for alleged participation in this week’s revolt were Social Revolutionary party members of Kerensky’s old cabinet, including assistant war minister Boris Savinkov and interior minister Irakli Tseretelli. ...aaaaand a little more research suggests that none of these people were actually arrested.

With the killers of German ambassador to Russia Count Wilhelm von Mirbach uncaught, Germany is blaming England, based on no evidence (although some German papers are claiming that Mirbach was so well-loved in Russia that they must have been paid by foreigners, that’s just science).

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Today -100: July 9, 1918: It would appear that the government wishes to know the extreme limits of the people’s endurance

The Bolsheviks rather easily defeat a counter-revolution in Moscow, if something organized by the “Left Social-Revolutionary Party” can properly be called a counter-revolution, which was timed to coincide with the assassination of the German ambassador. Chief Moscow Military Commissar Semyon Aralov issues a communique: “I beg to announce that the mutiny was caused by a group of cheeky fools, and was suppressed without difficulty by the Moscow garrison.” The SRs are now fucked.

Trotsky has been calling for universal conscription, but says the bourgeois can’t be trusted with actual fighting, so it’ll be trench-digging for them. It’ll be fun to see how the government defines proletariat/bourg.

The Allies, including the US, are working out how to “help” or “aid” Russia, which is the way everyone’s referring to sending a “commission” and a bunch of soldiers, to help/aid the Russian people if not necessarily the de facto Russian government.  Other phrases used in this article to describe the proposed military intervention: “encourage the Russian people to re-establish their nationality,” “leaving to the Russian people to carry out the program of regeneration which the Allies will initiate and support,” “bring back Russia, economically and politically, into the sisterhood of nations,” “the peaceful penetration of Siberia”...

The Berlin potato ration, reduced last week from 7 pounds per person to 3, is again reduced, to 1, not that it matters since there are none available. Meatless weeks will begin in August. In the Reichstag, one deputy objects to any food being sent to Austria, and a socialist deputy says “It would appear that the government wishes to know the extreme limits of the people’s endurance.”

Field Marshal Hindenburg calls for 1 million more men. There aren’t 1 million more men available, so they’ll be drafting 16-year-olds, as well as prisoners, foreigners etc.

Edward Rumely, publisher of the New York Evening Mail, is arrested for perjury for telling the government his paper is American-owned. The government claims the German government really owns it.

Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels tells a YMCA rally at Carnegie Hall that the war is to make the world safe not just  for democracy but for Christian civilization.

Two trains crash into each other, head on, near Nashville, killing 101 or more people, which is a record still unbroken in the US. In part, this was due to the passenger cars being made of wood rather than steel. Most of the victims were black workers traveling to work at a gunpowder factory.

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Today -100: July 8, 1918: Of murmen, political maneuvers to provoke trouble, ardor, and draft evaders

The Murman Coast and its population of half-men-half-fish secedes from Russia to join the Entente.

Lenin condemns the assassination of German Ambassador Count Wilhelm von Mirbach, calling it “a political maneuver to provoke trouble.” For some reason he says the assassination involved a bomb, and yesterday’s report mentioned grenades. Nope, just ordinary garden-variety guns.

Headline of the Day -100: 

A gun battle between a sheriff and his deputies and some draft evaders in the woods of Arkansas leaves 3 dead, but 30 or so armed resisters escaped. The governor is sending troops and machine guns.

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Today -100: July 7, 1918: It’s like he wasn’t even paying attention to the stewardess

Headline of the Day -100: 

Not as salacious as they make it sound. NY’s former Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, training as a pilot, forgets to fasten his seat-belt and falls out of his plane. He was 38.

Prussia’s Diet’s lower house passes a half-hearted reform of the 3-tiered franchise system, giving equal votes to all men 25 and older but with residency requirements designed to suppress the working-class vote.

Count Wilhelm von Mirbach, the German ambassador to Russia, is assassinated at the German embassy in Moscow by two unknown men. They are, in fact, members of the Left Social Revolutionary Party, assisted, maybe? by Cheka chief Felix Dzerzhinsky, part of a Left SR plan to restart the war between Germany and Russia and seize power from the Bolsheviks. Yakov Blumkin, the chief assassin, will go on to do all sorts of exciting secret agent stuff before being executed on Stalin’s orders in 1929, as was the custom.

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Today -100: July 6, 1918: Of sultans, frogs, budgets, executions, dry virgins, and prayers

Mohammed V, Ottoman Sultan, dies at 73. One could be forgiven for having forgotten that Turkey still has a sultan. There are rumors that he was murdered, as was the custom. Next up: Mohammed VI, Five’s brother.

Yarn of the Day -100:

At the battle of the Chemin des Dames (May 27), Mr Prince says, the croaking of millions of mating frogs covered up the sound of the Germans moving into position, then made it impossible for the French to gauge the position of their machine guns. This story seems to be true.

Philipp Scheidemann, leader of the German Social Democratic Party, says the SPD won’t vote for any more budgets until the government states its peace terms.

Headline of the Day -100:  

3 black soldiers who supposedly sexually assaulted a white 17-year-old. Everyone is ordered to watch. Is that the case when white soldiers are executed?

Rep. Jeanette Rankin of Montana announces that she will run for Senate. The article doesn’t say, but I believe this is because her chances for re-election to the House dropped significantly when the state Legislature finally got off its ass and divided the state into two congressional districts – when she was elected last time, everyone could vote for 2 people for the 2 at-large seats, which helped her.

Headline of the Day -100:  

There’s a joke in there somewhere.

The US Senate passes a resolution asking Pres. Wilson to call on the American people to observe a prayer every day at noon for the rest of the war.

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Today -100: July 5, 1918: Of strange trappings and primitive authority, crappy Christmases, and gas

Headline of the Day -100: 

At a 4th of July thing, he says we must eliminate “governments clothed with strange trappings and the primitive authority of an age that is altogether alien and hostile to our own.”

The National Council of Defense has suggested that gifts not be given this Christmas, just cards and letters, because there’s a war on. The National Retail Dry Goods Association is not best pleased.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 4, 1918: Of big armies, pogroms, pitchforks, and sox

The US Army now has more than 2 million men.

Austria: there are anti-Semitic riots in several Galician towns. And the state (ok, duchy) of Styria is under martial law due to mutiny and desertion.

Sen. (and former governor) Benjamin Tillman (D-SC) dies at 70. Pitchfork Ben (the nickname is from an election speech in 1894 in which he promised to stick a pitchfork in Pres. Cleveland’s “fat old ribs”) is best remembered as a virulently racist piece of shit.

Sports Headline of the Day -100:

In fact, he plans to play a game in the Delaware River Shipbuilding League. The Sox are threatening an injunction. I believe what’s going on here is that he has acquired, or will acquire, a no-show factory job to keep him out of the draft.

It’s July 4th and I did a baseball story. I feel so cheap.

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Today -100: July 3, 1918: Of influenza and polar bears

Passengers on a ship arriving from Spain are fumigated. “Spanish” flu, you know.

The Ausburg Abendzeitung reports what it says are the terms agreed between the Central Powers on the future of Poland. Its borders will be set by the German military according to military necessity. Its army will be restricted to 90,000. Most favored nation status for Germany & Austria for 50 years. In any locality where there are 10 German children a German school will be established. An elective monarchy. Any change in the constitution requires approval by the Central Powers.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: July 2, 1918: Of secret fictional treaties, supreme representatives, and adoptions

Russia denies the rumor that there’s a secret treaty with Germany giving Poland to Germany.

Headline of the Day -100: 

France recognizes the Czech National Council as the “supreme representative of the future Czechoslovak Government” in a letter to Edvard Beneš.

Vice President Thomas Marshall and wife Lois “adopt” a baby from parents who can’t afford his medical treatment. He will die at 3.

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Today -100: July 1, 1918: Of buried princes and opposing the cause of the United States by words

Four-time Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs is arrested for making a speech the government didn’t like. There are believed to be 10 charges against him under the Espionage Act, including “opposing the cause of the United States by words.” The “cause” of the United States evidently doesn’t include free speech. Simultaneously, the Socialist Party in Indiana’s 5th congressional district nominates Debs for Congress (Debs will decline).

Kaiser Wilhelm tells his forces not to bombard the Mont des Cats monastery because its prior is the only person who knows where Prince Max of Hesse (d.1914) is buried and he won’t say where until Belgium is evacuated.

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Today -100: June 30, 1918: A series of tubes

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: German newspapers have been down-playing the size of the US army in Europe. Some are saying the US build-up is actually directed against... Mexico. Which did after all just increase taxes on US oil companies. They’re also saying that Theodore Roosevelt will lead an army of US, Japanese and Chinese soldiers into Siberia.

Woodrow Wilson vetoes the Post Office appropriation bill because it includes funding for the pneumatic tube systems in New York and other large cities, which Wilson says he wants killed because they are “obsolete” and because “I have no whimsy in may soul.”

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Today -100: June 29, 1918: So who’s the new worst woman on earth?

Headline of the Day -100: 

Yup, Moscow taken (by Kornilov and Kaledine with German support) and new czar named are definitely things that totally happened. Also, Lenin and Trotsky have totally fled. Grand Duke Nicholas, by the way, is totally the new czar. This all according to German sources, although scepticism is expressed by “a well-known Russian diplomat.” Way to fact-check, 1918 New York Times. Or indeed the Wolff news bureau in Berlin, which says Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch is leading the anti-Bolshevik movement but won’t take the throne until confirmed by an All-Russian assembly. Actually Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch was killed a couple of weeks ago without ever having escaped his imprisonment, much less led anything, but this news hasn’t leaked out yet.

Pan-Germans have plans to “solve” Alsace-Lorraine by ending its regional government and attaching it to Prussia. In the meantime, the army has told the A-L parliament that it can’t discuss autonomy, even in closed session. Evidently there’s a list of subjects it’s not allowed to talk about.

When the war started, most Parisian renters just stopped paying rent because no one had any money. This was especially hard on landlords, and it would take a heart of stone to read about landlords reduced to working as scrub women for their own tenants without laughing. Anyway, under a new law, on July 15th renters in Paris are supposed to start paying rent again (although back rent is still up in the air). 

Lizzie Halliday, the “worst woman on earth,” dies. In her time, she married 6 or 7 older men, stole from some of them, killed or tried to kill others of them as well as several other people (including a nurse in the asylum to which she was ultimately committed), and burned a bunch of shit down. The NYT gives her death count as 5 but it’s certainly higher, possibly including a first husband in Belfast before she emigrated.

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Today -100: June 28, 1918: Of Spanish flu, abysses of annihilation, and pushes

The US War Dept says there is no influenza in the army. The US War Dept is so wrong.

More false reports that Czar Nicholas is dead, this time shot after a trial. And that the ex-tsarevich is also dead.

The British Labour Party’s annual convention has a surprise guest:  Alexander Kerensky. He says the Russian people won’t recognize the Brest-Litovsk Treaty “which has hurled Russia into the abyss of annihilation.” He doesn’t think too much of the Bolshevik government either. He wants military intervention by the Allies, but all of them.  Next stop: America. (Update: all right, France, then Britain again, then America).

German soldiers are being told that there will be another One Last Big Push in August. It is unclear whether this is really a thing, or something to keep morale up.

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Today -100: June 27, 1918: Of train crashes, flu, and the fall of New York

A troop train (empty) crashes into a circus train (quite full) near Gary, Indiana, killing 85 people, because the engineer fell asleep. Naturally, the feds are investigating whether he was drugged by a German agent. The engineer is being charged with involuntary manslaughter.

German Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann told the Reichstag a couple of days ago that Russia was most responsible for starting the war, followed by France, followed by England (I don’t believe Germany and Austria, or Serbia if it comes to that, even made his list). This has pissed off the Pan-Germans no end, because it’s obvious that perfidious Albion is the most responsible, that’s just science. Also, Kühlmann suggested that the war would end with negotiations, not a triumphant military victory.

“Spanish influenza” is “raging” in the German army. This may be the first reference to Spanish Flu in the NYT.

German POWs say they were told that Germany had landed troops in the US and captured New York City.

Just to be clear, that didn’t happen.

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Today -100: June 26, 1918: Mark your calendar

The NYT reports (on the front page) that a Danish newspaper quotes a Russian newspaper which has it for a fact that ex-Czar Nicholas has been murdered by Red Guards because Czech troops in Siberia were planning to free him. No.

Evidently Germany has been telling its soldiers that the war will end on July 18th. Which could be a problem if it isn’t and soldiers refuse to continue fighting on the 19th.

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Today -100: June 25, 1918: Of strikes, cabinets, and Irish battalions

Factory workers in Vienna strike for peace.

The Austrian cabinet has resigned, but the emperor may not accept.

Arthur Lynch, Irish Nationalist MP for West Clare, is now a colonel and will raise an Irish battalion. He has experience in this, having raised an Irish unit during the Boer War to fight on the Boer side (where he was also a colonel). The British later tried him for treason and sentenced him to death, and now he’s an MP, which must be quite the emotional rollercoaster.

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Today -100: June 24, 1918: Of cold negroes and Russian propagandists

Headline of the Day -100: 

The NYT suggests sending Russian volunteers presently in the US into Russia to organize anti-German propaganda. Not anti-Bolshevik propaganda, it says, just anti-German. They can speak to the Russians on their own terms, and would be better than newspapers, which the Russians mostly can’t read.

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Today -100: June 23, 1918: We shall see whether I can build anything but automobiles, tractors, and ships

Germany will seize restaurants’ & hotels’ tablecloths and napkins, because there’s a war on.

The mayor (burgomaster) of Vienna appeals to Germany’s Gen. Ludendorff for food aid. Ludendorff says no.

Henry Ford unveils what I can only assume is his campaign slogan for his Senate race: “We shall see whether I can build anything but automobiles, tractors, and ships.”

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Today -100: June 22, 1918: Of non-productive baseball, manhood, and anarchists

The US Army clarifies which professions are considered “non-productive” and thus subject to the draft, and yes it does seem that professional baseball players are non-productive. Clerks and store salesmen are non-productive, but store managers and traveling salesmen are not.

Court Case of the Day -100:

William Bergh regains custody of his 3 sons because his wife taught them to play with dolls and teddy bears. Bergh told the court, “Her conduct, while intended to be motherly, has been such as to absolutely disqualify them from developing into manhood.”

The House votes unanimously to allow deportation without hearing of “anarchists.”

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Today -100: June 21, 1918: Think of the white bread you may win for all

The NYT advances a theory that the Hindenburg offensive failed because some of the troops were diverted by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria so he could share in the glory.

The AP is calling the (failed) Austrian drive against Italy a “hunger offensive,” citing a regimental commander’s address, found on a POW: “Soldiers, remember the spoils we got last Fall from the Italians: the sheep, cows, steers, warehouses full of good clothes and grocery stores full of wines, canned gods [sic!], flour and sugar. Think of your family. Think of the white bread you may win for all.” Italians are claiming they can get Austrian troops to surrender by promising them a meal.

The Temps (Paris) claims that the peace treaty with Romania gives Germany/Austria the right to purchase all of Romania’s oil and agriculture and for all Romanian males 14 to 60 to do forced labor for Germany.

Earl Curzon, a member of the British War Cabinet, says the alleged Sinn Fein plot Changes Everything, and the government will now drop Home Rule because going ahead under these circumstances “would almost amount to a crime.” Another reason he gives is the Irish Catholic clergy’s opposition to conscription, which puts them in opposition to imperial supremacy. I’m not sure I follow the logic. Curzon says the Sinn Feiners won’t be put on trial because that would expose how the government discovered their treasonous conspiracy, which totally exists and isn’t a made-up excuse to ditch the government’s promises to the Irish people.

Rioting in Vienna in response to the reduced bread ration. Bakeries are broken into (the Viennese love their bakeries) and the emperor’s Hofburg Palace stoned.

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Today -100: June 20, 1918: Hungry and clamoring

Headline of the Day -100:

I can’t figure out if “Hungry Austrians” is an intentional play on Austro-Hungarians or not. Anyway, Vienna City Council protests against the bread ration being cut in half. The Austrian prime minister has been telling people that the short rationing won’t be for long because Germany will send food soon. Germany is telling everyone it has no food to send. The conquest of Ukraine has not turned out to be the opening of a cornucopia that was promised.

The price of bread in Germany is being increased to 5 pfennigs a pound (increased from what, the NYT fails to say; 1918 NYT sucks at this sort of thing).

Hungry-Austrian Emperor Charles really wants the Austrian army to get sole credit for accomplishing... something, anything... in the offensive against Italy, and is therefore holding off on asking Germany to help now that it’s gone pear-shaped.

Former Bulgarian prime minister Aleksandar Malinov is given that job again. In 1915 he opposed Bulgaria entering the war on Germany’s side, so it is (correctly) suspected that he has been appointed now in order to extricate the country from the war. The pro-German prime minister Vasil Radoslavov, who resigned last week, was widely blamed for the failure to extract more territory from Romania in the peace treaty.

The US will allow Mexicans into the country to work to deal with labor shortages, without the usual head tax and literacy test. Some of their wages will only be available to them when/if they leave the country at the end of the war, although I’m guessing, based on what I know happened with later bracero programs, that they never actually saw that money.

In response to the Supreme Court decision invalidating the Keating-Owen child labor law, Sen. William Kenyon (R-Iowa), who was one of its co-sponsors, introduces a bill to bar child-labor employers from using the US mails.

Germany has heard, whether correctly or incorrectly I do not know, that 10,000 Germans have been expelled from China and interned in Australia. It is threatening to take 10,000 French people hostage until the Germans are returned to China.

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Today -100: June 19, 1918: Wherein is revealed what is in question

Just as Allied politicians have increasingly been describing their war goal as destroying the world-view “Prussianism,” Kaiser Wilhelm in a speech on the 30th anniversary of his ascending the imperial throne speaks about a conflict between the German and Anglo-Saxon weltanschauungen: “Either German principles of right, freedom, honor, and morality must be upheld, or Anglo-Saxon principles with their idolatry of mammon must be victorious. ... we shall gain victory – the victory of the German standpoint. That is what is in question.” The Anglo-Saxons intend, he says, to reduce all other races to their slaves.

(Note: the NYT has screwed up the skip on that story. The rest is on the second page here.)

Edward Cornplanter, Chief of the Senecas, dies, killed by flu (the pandemic, which by the way hasn’t been noticed by the NYT yet) along with much of his family; “although educated, [he] believed in a restoration of pagan customs.”

Kenelm Chase Winslow, in prison for strangling his girlfriend, asks for clemency so he can join the army. NY Gov. Whitman refuses, saying the army is no place for murderers. All right, he says criminals, but still.

The Soviet Central Committee ousts every non-Bolshevik party and demands a similar purge by local soviets. Evidently the Social Revolutionaries, Kadets, Mensheviks, etc are all organizing a revolt against the workers and peasants in conjunction with the counter-revolutionaries.

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Today -100: June 18, 1918: Not everyone wants to shoot people, apparently

Austria is supposedly putting all its Slavic troops at the front of the front, with Tyrolese troops behind them, to prevent mass desertions.

Secretary of War Newton Baker approves sentences of up to 20 years imposed on 12 privates who refuse to fight against Germany and Austria, where they have relatives. He also wants them deported after the war.

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Today -100: June 17, 1918: Of gas duels, cooties, and debseses

Headline of the Day -100: 

Is this the first US use of gas warfare?

Headline of the Day -100: 

In which the NYT’s war correspondent describes the de-lousing of American soldiers in France (conditions in the trenches during the Great War gave the English language the words “cooties” and “lousy”). Don’t know what “grough” is; possibly a typo for grouch.

Eugene Debs, in a speech in Canton, Ohio which will get him imprisoned, says the war is a cover for Junkerism in the US and for plunder in Europe.

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Today -100: June 16, 1918: Hammer, meet child factory worker

The Supreme Court rules 5-4 in Hammer v. Dagenhart that the Keating-Owen Act of 1916 banning products from interstate commerce if they are produced by child labor (13 years and under, or by 14-16 year olds if they worked more than 8 hours a day) is unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment. There’s some bad legal logic at play here, since the Court does allow the banning of interstate commerce in booze or gambling or prostitution but says that these products are inherently immoral whereas cotton, the product at issue in this case, is not, even if produced by children. The Court will reverse this decision in 1941.

Headline of the Day -100: 

As opposed to the generals of every other army?

The Senate votes to ban D.C. schools teaching German.

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Today -100: June 15, 1918: Of nickel-plated cars, meatless Bavarians, and ambassadors

Former Michigan Governor Chase Osborn (R) says Henry Ford’s candidacy for the US Senate might be illegal, although he’s not clear on what grounds – something to do with his Peace Ship in 1915? Osborn says Ford is dangerous because of his wealth and former pacifism, doesn’t pay his workers enough, took out “hysterical advertising” in support of Wilson’s re-election, and when Osborn was governor Ford offered him a free nickel-plated car. “His offer was in bad taste, and I was disgusted with him and have had no use for him since that episode.” In other words, Osborn will also be running for the Senate seat.

Bavaria will implement meatless weeks.

The US Justice Department arrests Cornelius Lehane, the “ambassador” of the self-proclaimed Irish Republic for circulating treasonable literature. Treasonable to whom is not immediately clear.

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Today -100: June 14, 1918: Better at gas!

Carl Alsberg, head of the Bureau of Chemistry, tells the Senate Agriculture Committee that the Allies are now better at gas warfare than the Germans. The US will start making mustard gas soon.

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Today -100: June 13, 1918: Of secret treaties, lynchings, and Fords

Despite Wilson’s 14 Points’ call for “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at”, the Senate, at Wilson’s urging, defeats Borah’s amendment for treaties to be negotiated in public, 50-23.

Speaking of secret treaties, another one surfaces, in which Austria and Ukraine divided up Galicia, which violates promises Austria & Germany made to the Poles.

Germany formally protests the lynching of Robert Prager in Illinois in April. In the Reichstag, Privy Councilor Simons says the lynching is the fault of the US government, which “permitted hatred of Germans to be fanned among the American people.” They’re not impressed by the US federal government claim that it can’t intervene in Illinois’ affairs. (Actually, the US claims this protest hasn’t reached it.)

The Michigan Democratic Party endorses Henry Ford, a Republican, for US Senate. Evidently Woodrow Wilson asked them to, and asked Ford to run.

Woodrow Wilson is said to still oppose military intervention in Russia. He thinks the Russian people wouldn’t like it.

A long-time reader has pointed out the Tumblr page “This Day in WW I” (also available as a Twitter feed) Pictures! Lots of pictures!

And I can’t remember if I’ve recommended “My Year In 1918” or only chatted with her in our respective comments sections.

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Today -100: June 12, 1918: This is a time when kings must stick together

US troops capture Belleau Wood, and very proud of themselves they are too.

Headline of the Day -100: 

How many people in 1918 read “negroes with tanks” over breakfast and shit themselves?

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Evidently, “The German mother thinks only of her own son. To the American mother every son is her son in a patriotic sense.”

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Pitiless suppression is the worst kind. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has gone past the point where it can pretend that the centrifugal forces of nationalism are not gaining strength, thus the impotent threats.

A letter from February from Emperor Charles of Austria to Romania’s King Ferdinand, before the latter signed a peace deal, leaks out. “This is a time when kings must stick together,” Chuck wrote.

France bans the mailing outside of the country of newspapers with classified ads, because they might contain secret codes.

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Today -100: June 11, 1918: We have got to whip the Germans, and we have got to whip them right

Sen. William King (D-Utah) introduces a resolution in favor of military intervention in Russia to expel German troops and “overcome and neutralize German propaganda in Russia”.

William Howard Taft tells the commencement of Delaware College (which has just decided to eliminate the study of German) that the US must “go into Russia and make an eastern front” because “We have got to whip the Germans, and we have got to whip them right”.

The War Dept thinks it can reduce the time to train new soldiers by weeks through films. Anyone know if those films are still around?

The Supreme Court rules that courts can order newspapers not to print articles which “embarrass the administration of justice,” which near as I can tell means anything about a court case that the judge doesn’t like. In effect, this extends the jurisdiction of a judge over contempt of court from actual disruption of a courtroom to the reporting of issues before the court, in this case a dispute over the streetcar franchise in Toledo. The lower court insisted, and the Supremes agree, that the newspaper “interfered and obstructed” the court by suggesting that if the court made the wrong decision it would create suspicions about its integrity and fairness.

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Today -100: June 10, 1918: Of drilling

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Today -100: June 9, 1918: Of sinister influences, stateless people, Czechs, letters home, ACD and ghosts, and bombardments

Rep. Clarence Miller (R-Minnesota) denounces the Non-Partisan League and its candidate for governor of Minnesota, former congresscritter Charles Lindbergh. He says the League is a “sinister influence,” run by socialists and anarchists and pro-Germans (by which he means people opposed to the war).

Vienna’s Jewish community protests the peace treaty with Romania allowing it to refuse to naturalize Jewish residents, thus creating a new category of “stateless” persons.

Britain recognizes the “Czechoslovak National Council” as a provisional government for the (non-existent) Czech state. France, Italy and Russia had already done this.

The War Department issues an order to soldiers to write to their mothers.

The Sunday NYT Book Review reviews Arthur Conan Doyle’s The New Revelation, his declaration that spiritualism is totally real and even scientific.

Headline of the Day -100:

Frank Wedekind died in March, but the news has just reached the US. The German playwright wrote Spring Awakening (1906) and Pandora’s Box (1904), which was filmed under the same name by G.W. Pabst with Louise Brooks in 1929.

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Today -100: June 8, 1918: Nothing more ominous than a German laughing

Headline of the Day -100: 

And in other war propaganda news:

But did they laugh?

Rep. Henry Rainey (D-Ill), the speaker of the House in the 1930s, asserts darkly that a German – well, naturalized US citizen Charles Engelhard Sr. – controls 80% of the US’s platinum supply, and “modern wars cannot be fought without platinum.”

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Today -100: June 7, 1918: So there’s a department?

British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is visiting the US, drumming up support for the war and talking shit about the Bolsheviks. She spent a few days in Russia last year, between the two revolutions, and is therefore an expert. She says that women of Russia are all now considered public property, forced to register at 18 with the free love department, and so on.

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Today -100: June 6, 1918: Force is the one way to end Prussianism

Headline of the Day -100: 

Boy, the French, it’s just sex sex sex with them.

Secretary of State Robert Lansing, speaking at Columbia U., says the 2 greatest obstacles to be overcome in the war are unconstructive criticism (which is “unpatriotic and un-American”) and suggestions of peace that allow “Prussianism” to continue.  “Force is the one way to end Prussianism, for it is the only thing which the Prussian respects.”

Priv. Philip Grossner is court-martialed for making “disloyal remarks” and sentenced to 30 years.

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