Today -100: September 18, 1918: Of strikes and Spanish Flu

A few days ago Pres. Wilson sent a note to striking machinists in gun & ammo factories in Bridgeport, Connecticut telling them to get back to work, or else. They now vote to do so but their employers refuse to let them, so Wilson sends a letter to them which, while taking the same scolding tone as his letter to the strikers, does not threaten the factory owners with being drafted.

The NYC Board of Health now requires doctors to report all cases of influenza and pneumonia.

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Today -100: September 17, 1918: Of peace talks, blackmail, Spanish flu, burning words, and ideal husbands

The US rejects Austria’s call for non-binding peace talks, saying everyone already knows the US’s position so there’s nothing to talk about. British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour calls it a cynical attempt to divide the Allies. German newspapers are all insisting that the Austrian feelers were made entirely on its own initiative. Presumably if there had been a positive response Germany would be taking the credit.

A janitor is arrested for attempting to blackmail J.P. Morgan Jr. and his daughters. He sent letters claiming to have infected them with a horrid but slow-acting disease which had already killed J.P. Sr and would kill them too within 3 years unless they paid $20,000 for the antidote. Thorn, the janitor, will be sentenced to 15 months in Leavenworth.

Camp Upton on Long Island is shut down – no one in, no one out – because of an influenza outbreak.

Woodrow Wilson tells a group of Democratic women that he will urge the passage of the women’s suffrage amendment. Later, members of the National Woman’s Party, finding this inadequate and Wilson complicit in the Senate’s foot-dragging on the amendment, burn his words in front of the Lafayette monument.

Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband” has its New York premiere, a quarter century after it was written.

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Today -100: September 16, 1918: Of peace talks, Germany’s hired tools & pressed trousers, flu, and the dangers of gaslessness

Austria invites all belligerent nations to send delegates to hold talks. Behind closed doors and non-binding, you know, just talkin’, on the principle that statements directed by the powers at each other have tended, by their public nature, to “strike a higher tone and stubbornly to adhere to extreme standpoints.” While the formal invitation hasn’t yet wended its way to the US, officially anyway, the reception is already not perhaps what Austria had hoped.

Germany generously proposes to restore Belgium’s independence (after the war), if it will remain neutral until then, restore commercial treaties with Germany, do something about the Flemish, and, astonishingly, lobby for Germany to get its colonies back.

The NYT editorializes on the forged documents it’s been publishing, “proving” that the October Revolution was “a counter-revolution, plotted by Germany and carried out by Germany’s hired tools... Nowhere does it appear that any German officer ever commanded Lenine or Trotzky to press his trousers for him; but the correspondence, as a whole, proves that if any such order had been given they would have regarded it as comprehended within the terms on which they entered the German service.” The Bolshies even supposedly changed the results of elections to the Soviet on the orders of the German General Staff.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George’s Spanish Flu relapses. Traffic is diverted from around the hotel where he’s staying so he can get some sleep.

Point:

Counterpoint: 

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Today -100: September 15, 1918: Could I have my way there would be no soldiers

Camp Devens, Mass. is hit badly by Spanish Flu. Ditto Camp Lee, Virginia, whose commandant has banned any gatherings including religious services but claims the situation is not serious.

Eugene Debs is sentenced to 10 years. He tells the judge, “I believe the soldier has no more sympathetic friend than I am. Could I have my way there would be no soldiers.”

The War Department says it will not accept deaf-mutes as pilots. A rumor’s been going around that deafness gives you special ability to sense motion (don’t know what muteness has to do with anything). The rumor is said to have been started by German agents because reasons.

The NYT prints (and will for days to come) documents handed out by the Committee on Public Information (the Creel Committee) purporting to be communications between Germany and Russian Bolshevik leaders, proving conclusively that Lenin, Trotsky etc are paid German agents. The Creel Committee will publish the documents (known as the Sisson Documents) as a pamphlet, despite doubts about their authenticity. They are forgeries.

In Detroit, 3 arrested Russians confess to a secret Bolshevik plot to enroll 20,000 Russian Bolsheviks in Detroit to impede the war effort and start a revolution.

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Today -100: September 14, 1918: Where do we go from here?

Pres. Wilson sends a letter to the union of striking machinists in Bridgeport, Connecticut who refuse to accept a National War Labor Board ruling. He calls their strike “disloyalty and dishonor” and threatens to revoke their draft exemptions. Simultaneously, to prove his even-handedness between management & labor, Wilson orders the take-over of Smith & Wesson after its refusal to accept the Board’s order that it stop (for the duration of the war) making workers sign contracts not to join a union.

Surgeon General Rupert Blue admits that there was a Spanish flu outbreak at Fort Morgan, Alabama in August. The last influenza pandemic was in 1889-90, so Blue offers information on how to handle it to doctors who have never seen one. He has concluded that quarantines are useless against the disease. The Navy is banning sailors from Boston because of the spread of flu there.

Headline of the Day -100:

And we’re gonna keep printing these rumors in the hope that eventually it might be true.

The public is informed of Lloyd George’s influenza.

Journalist John Reed, in a lecture, says Russia wouldn’t have signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty if the US had promised it food and ammunition, and Lenin & Trotsky had sent Woodrow Wilson a cable to that effect 6 days before signing but received no reply. The anonymous but presumably governmental response to this claim is that that cable was just another sneaky attempt to get the US to recognize the Bolshevik government. Reed also accuses Britain of being behind the attempted assassination of Lenin. He will, of course, be arrested for this speech.

Headline of the Day -100:  

“The battle's done and we kind of won, So we sound our vict’ry cheer...”

Oh all right, here’s the actual song.

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Today -100: September 13, 1918: This must be the last war

Eugene Debs is convicted of violating the Espionage Act, specifically inciting insubordination, mutiny etc in the military, obstructing recruitment, and language intended to incite resistance to the US and promote the cause of the enemy. He is acquitted of “opposition to the cause of the United States.”

NYC Health Commissioner Royal Copeland says that despite passengers arriving on ships with the Spanish flu, there is no danger of it spreading. But anybody to whom it does spread should just lie down for, like, 3 days.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George gives a speech in Manchester promising (this is essentially the start of his election campaign) promising to improve the health of the nation: “You cannot maintain an A1 Empire with a C3 population.” And then...

Yup, that’s the Spanish flu. He may have to lie down for considerably more than 3 days. With a respirator.

Elsewhere in the speech, LG is quite optimistic about the war, which “must be the last war”: “Nothing but heart failure on the part of the British nation can prevent our achieving a real victory.” He supports a League of Nations – but only after the complete and utter defeat of Germany, otherwise it would be “a league of fox and geese – one fox and many geese. The geese would greatly diminish in numbers.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

That’s a lot of drug fiends.

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Today -100: September 12, 1918: Of dead Romanovs, deserters, flaming cities, slacker raids, and possible kings

The Daily Express (London) says that former Russian Tsarina Alexandra and her daughters are definitely dead. Still no official Russian announcement.

The NYT claims that a couple of weeks ago 25,000 German soldiers on leave in Berlin simply refused to return to the front, so soldiers are now banned from taking leave in Berlin. Also, the Germans are supposedly building a huge trench system along the Dutch-Belgian border to prevent German troops deserting to the Netherlands when/if Belgium is evacuated.

In other rumors, Petrograd is “in flames” and there are indiscriminate massacres (conducted by whom is not clear) on the streets, and Germany is using women pilots in its fighters.

Eugene Debs refuses to present any evidence or argument in his defense beyond pointing out that there is such a thing as the First Amendment. He will find out that there is not. He also points out that Abraham Lincoln opposed the Mexican-American War. The DA says there wasn’t an Espionage Act back then.

US Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory defends the “slacker raids,” the dragnets looking for draft-dodgers, but admits that the use of the military in those raids was contrary to his instructions.

Yet another German princeling, Friedrich Karl of Hesse, says that yes, he’d like to be king of Finland. He’s currently touring the country campaigning for the job. He is married to Kaiser Wilhelm’s sister.

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Today -100: September 11, 1918: Of retaliations, ears, indirection & insinuation, new blows, executions, and hangmen

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda, Fake News, and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Trotsky is said to have threatened, in a cable to White Gen. Mikhail Alekseyev, to shoot one officer for every Bolshevik killed by the White Guard or Czech Legion, to which Alekseyev allegedly responded that if they did that, he would retaliate against Jews. The Jews respond, “Hey, what?”

German soldiers are said to be afraid of US black soldiers because they’ve heard that they cut the ears off prisoners.

The Eugene Debs trial continues. Evidently his crime is not that he directly said bad things, but that he imparted an anti-war message “by indirection and insinuation.”

Headline That Sounds Dirty But Isn’t of the Day -100:

Some of the most recently announced executions in Russia include tsarist ministers of interior and of justice.

Luxembourg is pissed that Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde’s sister Antonia is engaged to Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht, who commands the German Sixth Army and is evidently known as “Luxembourg’s Hangman.”

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Today -100: September 10, 1918: Of Jews, red terrors, and trials

Lev Kamenev is named temporary replacement for Lenin. The NYT points out that the 3 now holding the top positions in Russia (Stalin isn’t on their radar yet), Kamenev, Trotsky, and Yakov Sverdlov, the chair of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, are all Jews (well, they all have at least one Jewish parent, if that counts).

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Bolsheviks are openly using the term Red Terror as a, like, good thing.

Eugene Debs’ trial begins in Cleveland. 7 members of the audience are arrested for applauding his lawyer’s opening speech. 

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Today -100: September 9, 1918: I would much rather be a man in jail than a coward outside of it

Fanya Kaplan, who shot Lenin, is executed.

NYT Index Typo of the Day:

And boy, if you don’t have “delight in war” any more, what can you have delight in?

The NYT complains that German newspapers exaggerate the number of Germans who are lynched in the US.

Police raid the Socialist State Convention in Detroit, ostensibly looking for draft evaders. Addressing the convention, presumably before the raid, Eugene Debs says of his forthcoming trial, “I would much rather be a man in jail than a coward outside of it,” adding “but being a man outside of jail would be even better, ammiright?”

Pennsylvania anthracite coal miners meet and agree to respond to the fuel administrator’s refusal to increase their wages with a general strike. They demand to be drafted, since they can’t support their families through mining.

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Today -100: September 8, 1918: Of Junker trickery, gum, and dead Lenins

Headline of the Day -100: 

Oh no, not moderate ideas!

Novelist Gertrude Atherton writes to the NYT imploring Herbert Hoover to ban chewing gum from being sent to US soldiers in Europe. She fears that the French are already picking up the horrid habit.

“Travelers” arriving in Sweden from Moscow say Lenin is definitely dead.

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Today -100: September 7, 1918: Why does the enemy incite colored people against the German soldiers?

Xu Shichang is elected president of China.  He will spend the next 4 years trying to balance various warlords off against each other.

Columbia, NYU, City College of NY, along with many other colleges, plan to cease to be academic institutions and exist purely for military training.

The Food Administration orders all breweries to shut down on December 1st.

The NYT interviews Maj. Gen. William Luther Sibert, the Director of Chemical Warfare – and wow, you’d think they’d use a euphemism but no, it’s just straight-up Director of Chemical Warfare – bragging about mustard gas and the quality of American gas masks.

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg issues an address to the German people saying that Entente planes have been dropping pamphlets containing “most insane rumors,” such as that Germany is losing the war. “Why,” asks Mr. von H, “does the enemy incite colored people against the German soldiers? Because he wants to annihilate us.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: September 6, 1918: Of roundups, dead Romanovs, pacifists, Zionists, and daddies

Some senators are pissed at the “slacker roundups,” pointing out that fewer than 1% of those arrested were actual draft dodgers. They’re asking who is responsible for soldiers and sailors being used to seize Americans off the streets of American cities.

Headline of the Day -100:

It’s on page 13, which is what you do when you don’t really believe the rumor but you’re printing it anyway because what the hell.

An Italian military court sentences Giovanni Fassina, a Socialist member of the Milan City Council who refused to be drafted, to be shot – in the back, which is just, like, sarcastic. It sounds like he’s in Switzerland and was tried in absentia.

Pres. Wilson sends a Rosh Hashanah greeting to Rabbi Stephen Wise praising Chaim Weizmann’s Zionist commission. The Rabbis’ National Committee of New York protests, saying Zionism poses a religious and political problem for Jews and would lead to divided allegiances for American Jews.

Now playing: John Hobble’s play “Daddies” at the Belasco Theatre. The NYT reviewer says “The sentimental comedy of the war orphan has arrived.” Evidently it’s sort of a Three Men and a Baby thing about a club of anti-marriage bachelors who find themselves in charge of war orphans through various hilarious mixups, and one of the orphans is twins and one is a 17-year-old French girl one of them eventually marries, I guess? And one agrees to marry, sight unseen, the French mother of the baby he’s been caring for. Sounds kind of terrible, but it will run and run and be made into a movie in 1924.

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Today -100: September 5, 1918: Of censorship, German fear propaganda, places of refuge, and bad headaches and worse grouches

Gen. Pershing evidently got French authorities to suspend the Socialist newspaper L’Heure for some reason.

A couple of Post Office workers, a sailor and a random woman are killed by a bomb presumably planted by member(s) of the IWW in the Chicago Post Office Building where the trial of the Wobbly leaders was held last week. Big Bill Haywood says it must have been “German fear propaganda” because no Wobbly would do such a thing.

The British embassy in Petrograd is attacked by Soviet troops. A British soldier, the alliterative Captain Cromie, is killed, but only after himself shooting down 3 Russian soldiers, according to the story the Brits will be putting out. Embassy staff are arrested on suspicion of plotting with counter-revolutionaries, which they are totally doing. Britain demands satisfaction – satisfaction, I say! – or it will ensure that members of the Soviet government are treated as international outlaws and “no place of refuge shall be left to them.”

Another ship arrives in NY from Europe after a mid-Atlantic outbreak of Spanish Flu. 2 dead, both Italian steerage passengers, 23 other cases, including one non-steerage passenger, a Claude Almyr, Wales of the Locomobile Company of Bridgeport, CT, who says this version of influenza is much worse than other diseases: “It gives its victims a bad headache and a worse grouch.”

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Today -100: September 4, 1918: Of round-ups domestic and foreign, primaries, and governments clothed with proper authority

Another mass roundup of suspected “slackers” inconveniences 20,000 young men in New York City, 12,000 in New Jersey, 27,000 in Chicago, etc. This will, as usual, be a colossal waste of time and manpower, yielding just a handful of actual draft evaders, while men who didn’t happen to have their documents on them (some because they’re too old to be eligible for the draft and thus have no documents) are held overnight while trying to get someone to bring documents.

In response to the assassination attempt on Lenin, thousands of arrests are made, focusing on the Social Revolutionary (SR) Party, and an order is issued that everyone found with a gun will be instantly executed and every active opponent of the Soviet government will be placed in a concentration camp and their property seized. Non-residents of Moscow and Petrograd are ordered to leave those cities.

New York gubernatorial primaries: it’ll be Charles Whitman, going for a 3rd term, for the R’s, and Al Smith for the D’s.

The US recognizes Czechoslovakia as a nation, and Tomáš Masaryk’s Czechoslovak National Council as its de facto government, “clothed with proper authority to direct the political and military affairs of the Czechoslovaks.” It does not explain who it was who so clothed them. Masaryk is currently in the US, and his wife is American.

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Today -100: September 3, 1918: Nature abhors anarchy

Evidently Lenin’s not dead after all. The NYT editorializes, dickishly: “The shooting of Nikolai Lenine, like the shooting of Nikolai Romanoff, was a thing that was bound to come. If he is not dead of his wounds, as reported, it is probable that he will be shot again. ... Nature abhors anarchy, and has its own way of curing it”.

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Today -100: September 2, 1918: Of horses and carriages and paid agents, political tools/plain fanatics

Important Correction: Pres. and Mrs. Wilson did not walk to church to observe Motorless Sunday, they rode in a horse-drawn carriage.

Headline of the Day -100: 

His premature obit begins, “Nickolai Lenine, the man who brought Russia to the verge of ruin, and then delivered her to the Germans in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk... Paid agent, political tool or plain fanatic there is no doubt of the man’s ability or the strong impression he made upon those with whom he came in contact.”

The assassin, Fanya Kaplan, “a young girl belonging to the intellectual class,” has been arrested.

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Today -100: September 1, 1918: Of assassinations, fruit pits, and some of the best men in the community

Lenin is shot twice by Fanya Kaplan (sometimes called Dora Kaplan), a Jewish member of the banned Social Revolutionary (SR) Party and former prisoner for her part as a 16-year-old in a plot to assassinate a Tsarist official. Lenin is pretty badly injured and will never fully recover.

Also assassinated: Moisei Uritsky, the head of the Cheka in Petrograd, by a former military cadet.

The London police strike ends swiftly with a nice raise and sort-of recognition of their union.

Since the administration asked the American people not to drive on Sundays, Pres. Wilson has to walk to church.

The War Dept asks people to save their fruit pits and nut shells to make into charcoal for gas masks.

The Ku Klux Klan revived in 1915. I believe this is the first time the NYT has mentioned it. Some Kluxers grab a strike organizer in Mobile, Alabama from the police. He hasn’t been seen since. They also seem to have kidnapped another unionist in Birmingham, Alabama. The article’s tone is supportive of these activities: “Wherever it is organized it is made up of some of the best men in the community.” (Voiceover: It isn’t.)

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Today -100: August 31, 1918: When once war is declared that right ceases

In Chicago, Big Bill Haywood and 14 other IWW leaders are sentenced to 20 years in prison, with 5- and 10-year sentences for other Wobblies. Plus fines. Judge Landis: “When the country is at peace it is a legal right of free speech to oppose going to war and to oppose even preparation for war. But when once war is declared that right ceases.”

War is Hell: Germany has run out of tobacco leaf, so its cigar factories will have to close.

London cops go on strike. An unnamed “high Scotland Yard official” accuses them of mutinying in the face of the enemy.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Sounds smelly.

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Today -100: August 30, 1918: May she prosper and grow conservative

Another day, another self-declared Russian “government,” this one formed by members of the old Constituent Assembly at Samara and consisting of three Tsarist-era generals led by Mikhail Alekseyev, acting as a Directorate.

Rep. Jeanette Rankin fails in the Montana Republican primary for US Senate and the NYT dances on her political grave, accusing her of “kootooing to or consorting with Sinn Feiners, the Non-Partisan League, the I.W.W.” “Miss Rankin should never have gone into politics. Her judgment is feebly developed in comparison with her sentimentality. May she prosper and grow conservative!”

British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, touring the US, says American women should be employed making planes and poisoning themselves in munitions factories like their British counterparts, because #feminism.

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Today -100: August 29, 1918: If you can’t trust a certain Erbs, conductor of a Swedish band, who can you trust?

The Horvath Dictatorship in Eastern Siberia collapses after, like, an hour when the Entente tells him no.

Where is the (dead) former tsarina Alexandra now? According to the Daily Mail, citing a pseudonymous source in Sweden, who in turn cites “the authority of a certain Erbs, conductor of a Swedish band,” Alexandra and her daughters are alive and well and living in Crimea and were in fact never in Siberia, that was just a Bolshevik lie. Also, A. Certain Erbs thinks Tsar Nicholas is not reallly dead.

In yet another example of the NYT quoting pretty much anyone, James Keeley, the former owner of The Chicago Herald, says Germany is even now picking out a new tsar for Russia.

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Today -100: August 28, 1918: Of essential work, dictators, border skirmishes, and Sunday drives

The Senate unanimously passes the bill expanding the draft to ages 18-45 years (it was 21-31), and includes a “work or fight” amendment drafting anyone not employed in “essential” work. Strikers who obey arbitration decisions of the War Labor Board are exempted.

Speaking of essential work, the LAPD decide that movie extras are not performing it, and raid the movie studios to arrest extras.

Henry Ford wins the Democratic nomination for US Senate from Michigan, but not (at least in the early results) the Republican nomination. He says if he does get both he’ll flip a coin.

Former South Carolina governor Coleman Blease (remember him?) loses the primary for US Senate.

Gen. Dimitri Horvath declares himself dictator in Siberia.

A bunch of US soldiers are killed, and a lot more Mexicans on the border at Nogales, Arizona after a Mexican customs official tried to smuggle someone across the border. No idea what this is all about or who the Mexicans might be. (Update: it seems the shooting was started by a US private firing across the border and hitting a Mexican soldier. He claims the Mexicans were about to shoot).

The Fuel Administration asks everyone to stop driving or motor-boating on Sundays.

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Today -100: August 27, 1918: Of speed-ups and whistling

Headline of the Day -100: 

He could always run it at 24 frames per second.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: August 26, 1918: A dog’s death for a dog

The federal District Court in NY rules that the Lusitania was an unarmed merchant ship with absolutely no explosives on board, so Germany’s torpedoing it was a violation of the rules of war and “an inexpressibly cowardly attack.” I don’t know if they actually believed that there were no explosives on board, which was not true and it wasn’t really a secret, but the court uses that finding to throw out the case of survivors against the Cunard Line.

Headline of the Day -100:

The Daily Mail (London) quotes an unnamed Russian prince who escaped Russia as saying that Tsarevitch Alexei was executed by Bolsheviks who told him “We killed your father – a dog’s death for a dog.” No explanation for how this alleged prince witnessed that and lived to tell the tale, but this is the first report that Alexei died of something other than “exposure.”

Dr. P. H. Howard of Cincinnati, investigating conditions in France on behalf of the Salvation Army, claims that the Germans crucified a US sergeant. He also rather gleefully describes a fight he saw in which “our boys” “knocked the hell out of” some Germans. “There isn’t enough of that picked Prussian Guard today to make a respectable link sausage for a cannibal”.

The Entente issues a statement in the bit of Russia they’ve invaded, denying Lenin’s branding of them as brigands. Rather, they say, they were invited by the “legitimate Government,” meaning the breakaway White “Government of the North,” with “the complete and unanimous agreement on the part of the population.” And they’re not here to interfere with the internal affairs of Russia, the statement says (after endorsing one self-proclaimed regime while declaring another illegitimate).

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: August 25, 1918: Herbert Hoover is already sweet enough

A Peruvian army garrison mutinies, demanding that Peru declare war on Germany.

The Senate releases to the public the evidence that led a sub-committee to condemn the Army aircraft program as inefficient, slow and wasteful, including closed-door testimony in which Secretary of War Newton Baker admitted having no idea if any US-made planes are actually being used in France (they aren’t).

German poison gas bombs are also really bad for linens, and the NYT is ON IT!

Headline of the Day -100: 

The story’s not of particular interest, but I’ve been meaning to point out the increasing use of “Reds” as a way to describe the current government of Russia without according it any legitimacy.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: August 24, 1918: Of criminal military systems, and u-boats

British Foreign Under-Secretary Lord Robert Cecil says Germany is totally unfit ever to have colonies, unlike, ahem. He also says a League of Nations can only succeed if there’s victory first and if Germany acknowledges “that her whole military system is criminal.”

The German gov is now permitting newspapers to stop claiming that there are only a few US soldiers in Europe. They’re offsetting this move towards honesty by exaggerating the extent of u-boat activity off the US’s eastern coast. Evidently the subs are totally ready to bombard every coastal city.

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Today -100: August 23, 1918: Always the last to know

Headline of the Day -100: 

Three weeks ago, but the State Dept is only just finding out now.

Headline of the Day -100: 

For instance, according to this story, Germans interrupted a movie to deport every male in the audience to Germany, claiming they were unemployed.

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Today -100: August 22, 1918: Good riddance to bad racist

Henry Ford says he will give back all the profits which he personally makes from war contracts.

Lenin tells the pope he can’t let the Romanovs out of the country like the pope asked, because Moscow is out of communications with the place where they are now. Which is hell. Because they’re dead. But he doesn’t tell the pope that.

Sen. James Vardaman loses the primary for re-election. The  NYT rejoices in the Mississippi Dems’ rejection of the “duper and idol of the ‘hillbillies,’ the astute player on ignorance, passion, and ‘poor white’ prejudice, the ‘White Chief,’ the upholder of the ‘White South’...”, the “egoist-pacifist” who opposed US entry into World War I, which for the Times is a much bigger crime than his long-time support for lynching and the disenfranchisement of black people. The former governor will not hold office again. The University of Miss. announced in 2017 that it would change the name of Vardaman Hall but doesn’t seem to have actually done it. Mississippi also has a town called Vardaman, the “sweet potato capital of the world.”

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Today -100: August 21, 1918: But how about three tons of eloquence?

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau thinks the war will be over by the end of 1919.

Gabriele d'Annunzio declines to attend a celebration in Rome of his pamphlet air-drop on Vienna. “Three tons of explosives dropped on the enemy are more effective than three ounces of eloquence.”

23 suffragists imprisoned after protesting across from the White House are released after a 6-day hunger strike. They were in for the crime of holding a demonstration without a permit. Their release and the fact that tomorrow they will be issued a permit for their next demo strongly suggest that the Wilson Administration is worried about the optics internationally of imprisoning people demanding the vote.

Some fishermen whose boats were destroyed by u-boats near Nantucket say they chatted with a German officer who boarded their ship, I guess before sinking it, and he showed them a Broadway theater ticket stub from 2 days before because u-boat crews totally went on leave in Manhattan like all the time, that was just one of the perks.

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Today -100: August 20, 1918: Of waning red power, cheap drugs, u-boat dangers, and Hinky Dinky Parley Voo

Headline of the Day -100: 

Two “German agents” are arrested for selling drugs “at surprisingly low prices” to soldiers in an obvious plot to “debauch” them.

Woodrow Wilson has been on vacation in Manchester, Massachusetts, with the sea and the golf and whatnot. He’s been guarded by torpedo boats and submarine chasers just in case a u-boat tries to assassinate him, which is totally a thing that could really happen.

Gen. Pershing orders soldiers not to fuck French prostitutes. (Spoiler Alert: American soldiers will totally fuck French prostitutes.)

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Today -100: August 19, 1918: Of premature obituaries, influenza, race riots, newspaper boycotts, and barrymores

The NYT reports on the assassination (no details beyond that one word are provided) in Petrograd of Jewish lawyer and advocate of the rights of Russian Jews Henri Sliosberg. In 1902 he was asked by Foreign Minister Count Witte if the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was real. He said no. Anyway, he’s not really dead so here’s another NYT obituary of him, from 1937.

NY Port health officers will start checking incoming ships for cases of Spanish flu, but won’t quarantine ships with just “a few cases.”

2 black soldiers are killed during a “race riot” at Camp Merritt in New Jersey. The cause is unknown at this time. Will the NYT investigate? What do you think?

Kaiser Wilhelm says the Allied bombing of Frankfort violates international law.

80 Brooklyn newsdealers decide to stop selling Hearst newspapers and magazines, although this is supposedly not for political reasons (as it definitely is in Mt Vernon and other cities) but because Hearst agents have been pressuring them to take more papers than they want and if they don’t, stand near the offending newsstand selling papers. Alternately, the dealers might be trying to use Hearst’s present unpopularity to force a reduction in the wholesale price they pay.

Now Playing: Our Mrs. McChesney, starring Ethel Barrymore. The NYT is not impressed: “what one sees of her at the Strand is simply what is left after she is deprived of all of her voice, most of her personality, and much of her art.” And now even that is gone; it’s a lost film. Sigh.

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Today -100: August 18, 1918: Boy, that Entente, quite an imagination, huh?

A Chicago jury convicts 100 members of the IWW for hindering the war effort and violating the Espionage Act. Every single defendant. Which suggests they didn’t put a lot of thought into working out who did what. That and the fact that they deliberated for an hour after a complex 4+-month trial.

Austria denounces the British recognition of Czechoslovakia, saying that the Czech National Council “is a committee of private persons who have no mandate from the Czechoslovak people and still less from the Czechoslovak ‘nation,’ which exists only in the imagination of the Entente.”

Poet Joyce Kilmer is killed in the Second Battle of Marne, at 31. The trees are in mourning.

A ship arrives in New York, this time from the Netherlands, after a voyage in which 200 passengers got sick with the Spanish flu and 5 died, all of the latter East Indians, which I take to mean Indonesians. The dead were buried at sea.

The Germans have adopted parachutes for their planes.

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Today -100: August 17, 1918: Blanked in Boston

No aliens will be allowed to leave the US without permission from September 15.

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Today -100: August 16, 1918: Of quarantines, diaries, and dicks

US troops arrive at Vladivostok.

Dr. Leland Cofer, health officer for the Port of New York, says there is no need to establish a quarantine for the Spanish flu or other “minor communicable diseases,” and anyway that would just clog up the workings of the port and there’s a war on, you know.

Another passenger from the Norwegian ship dies.

The Soviets have started publishing excerpts from dead former Czar Nicholas’s diaries. He ascribed the February Revolution to “treason and cowardice.”

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Today -100: August 15, 1918: No need for our people to worry over the matter

Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo calls for an 80% tax on war profits to raise the revenues needed to fight the war in 1919.

Port health officers now admit that that Norwegian ship’s passengers did have influenza, but President of the NYC Board of Health Royal S. Copeland, doing his best Mayor-Vaughan-refusing-to-close-Amity-beaches imitation, says there’s not the slightest chance of a Spanish flu epidemic in New York. Only malnourished people like German soldiers get it, so “No need for our people to worry over the matter.” So that’s okay then.

Copeland, by the way, is a homeopathist.

The War and Navy Offices’ commissions on training camps issues a warning asking girls not to talk with men in uniform unless they’ve been formally introduced.

Germany supposedly demands that Finland send troops into Murmansk within 2 weeks, or else.

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Today -100: August 14, 1918: Of triumvirates, flu, and Czechoslovakias

The Second Soviet Congress names Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev a triumvirate with sole executive power during the present emergency.

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A Norwegian ship arrives after a voyage in which pretty much everyone got sick, 4 died, 1 died after docking, and 9 are still quite sick. Doctors claim it isn’t Spanish flu, it’s pneumonia, and didn’t quarantine the sick. Did they not know that severe influenza leads to pneumonia? I guess not.

The article explains that “flue” is the British abbreviation of influenza. 

Britain formally recognizes Czechoslovakia as a nation and more importantly as a nation with an army. France and Italy have already recognized it, the US has not.

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Today -100: August 13, 1918: Of mustard gas, assassinations, raincoats and pamphlets

The US Navy claims that a German u-boat launched a mustard gas attack on a North Carolina lighthouse. The crew of the lighthouse all survived but some chickens died. This all seems unlikely (u-boats are operating in that area, though).

The Germans in Ukraine publicly hang Boris Donskoy of the Left Social Revolutionaries for assassinating Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn with a bomb in Kiev.

Berlin papers claim that the Bolshevik government is preparing to flee Moscow for Kronstadt and that Lenin & Trotsky have already done so.

US Ambassador to Russia David Francis (well, the NYT calls him ambassador but the US doesn’t recognize the Bolshevik government so he’s not actually an ambassador any more) and the other Allied ambassadors refuse the Bolsheviks’ demand that they move to Moscow. Francis is going instead to Archangel.

Prussia bans the entry into Germany of Jewish workers from the East.

Corporations and people involved in making shoddy raincoats for US troops are indicted under the Sabotage Act.

Viennese authorities order the populace to turn in all the pamphlets dropped by d'Annunzio et al, or else.

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Today -100: August 12, 1918: Of refuges, tsarinas, and intolerable distractions

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The pope is urging Russia to free the (dead) former Tsarina Alexandra and her (dead) daughters.

The Women Voters' Anti-Suffrage Party of NY writes Pres. Wilson to complain about his switch from opposition to support of a federal women’s suffrage Amendment, which they call an “intolerable distraction.” They point out that the last 10 times states have held referenda on the subject, women’s suffrage won over (all-male) electorates only once, in “the Socialist-pacifist triumph in New York State.” They deny that a federal amendment is “a measure of democracy” or a war measure. Indeed, the fighting strength of countries like Russia is undermined by socialism and women’s suffrage is part of that, somehow.

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Today -100: August 11, 1918: Of pushes, inventions, and illusions

The Allies continue to push the Germans back quite successfully. The Germans blame fog.

The British Munitions Ministry has been receiving helpful advice from the public, such as: freeze the clouds and mount artillery on them, train cormorants to pick apart the mortar on the Krupp’s weapons factories, use giant magnets mounted on balloons to grab German rifles, mount scythes on planes as protection, set Zeppelins on fire with heat rays, capture German soldiers with cement... And, of course, snake catapults.

The Sunday NYT Book Review section reviews Sigmund Freud’s Reflections on War and Death, a translation of a 1915 book in which he explains how the war stripped people of their illusions that humans never die, or something.

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Today -100: August 10, 1918: We didn't come except for the joy of the daring

Italian poet/playwright/proto-fascist/pilot Capt. Gabriele d'Annunzio leads 9 planes (8?) on a 700-mile mission to drop 50,000 pamphlets on Vienna, which he wrote himself but didn’t bother to get translated. In them he informs the Viennese, “On this August morning, while the fourth year of your desperate convulsion comes to an end and luminously begins the year of our full power, suddenly there appears the three-color wing as an indication of the destiny that is turning. ... On the wind of victory that rises from freedom's rivers, we didn't come except for the joy of the daring, we didn't come except to prove what we could venture and do whenever we want, in an hour of our choice.” In other words, we can bomb Vienna if we want to.

R. H. Bruce Lockhart, acting consul general in Moscow, and members of his staff are arrested by the Soviet authorities. The British claim it is in reprisal for the landing at Archangel. In fact, Lockhart and Sidney “Ace of Spies” Reilly (not arrested) had been plotting a coup against the Soviet regime and the assassination of Lenin.

The British at Archangel, Murmansk and Vladivostok put out a declaration that the Allies have only invaded “as friends to help you save yourselves from dismemberment and destruction at the hands of Germany” and they don’t intend to impose a government on Russia (hah!). “Our one desire is to see Russia strong and free, and then to retire to watch the Russian people work out their own destinies.”

The US Food Administration lifts restrictions on beef consumption, including rationing to households and limits in restaurants.

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Today -100: August 9, 1918: Of wars, governments of norths, women MPs or not, and old old old soldiers

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda, Fake News and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: A German paper says Russia has declared war on England. Which isn’t precisely true but will lead to a particularly snotty NYT editorial tomorrow.

A “Government of the North” is formed by the Whites in Archangel. Very Game-of-Thronesey.

Britain’s law officers rule that women can’t be elected to Parliament.

Speaker of the House Champ Clark says if he had his druthers the draft age would be raised to 68 (his age) and he’d go to France and serve under his son.

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Today -100: August 8, 1918: Of suffragists, trying to get my stupid word processor to show ă’s, and arch zeppelin raiders

The NYT suggests that suffragist protesters shouldn’t be sent to the workhouse, where they just disrupt discipline, but to the psychiatrist, presumably for committal.

The Romanian parliament votes unanimously to prosecute Ion Brătianu, who was prime minister from 1914 until January of this year, and four members of his cabinet, for bringing Romania into the war.

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Führer der Luftschiffe (or, to translate his title into Steampunk, Arch Zeppelin Raider) Peter Strasser is shot down in what will turn out to be the last zeppelin raid on Britain of the war.

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Today -100: August 7, 1918: Notwithstanding the fact that the people are opposed to any new war

Former French Interior Minister (1914-17) Louis Malvy, who was tried by the Senate, initially for treason although that charge was later withdrawn, is found guilty of negligence (having “ignored, violated and betrayed his duty”) for not cracking down hard enough on pacifists. They blame him for the 1917 army mutinies because of course they do. Malvy is sentenced to 5 years’ banishment, which he will spend in Spain. When he returns, he’ll be re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies and will even be interior minister again, in 1926.

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They’re especially good with bayonets, apparently.

Suffragist (National Woman’s Party) protests outside the White House resume, as do arrests of suffragists protesting outside the White House, including Alice Paul. The demo is aimed at pressuring Pres. Wilson to force the suffrage amendment, which he supports, through the Senate. “The women were applauded when they attempted to speak. The crowd also applauded when they were arrested. There was no cheering.”

Lenin threatens to declare war on Japan, because of that whole invading Siberia thing, “notwithstanding the fact that the people are opposed to any new war.”

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Today -100: August 6, 1918: Of archangels, Big Bertha and Big Rubber Men

So when we were told that Woodrow Wilson had just decided to send troops into Russia, US troops were actually already in Archangel. According to the AP, “The Participation of the Americans in the landing has been greeted enthusiastically in Northern Russia. The people consider that the United States is absolutely without selfish interests as regards Russia, and look upon the Americans as a guarantee of the friendliness of the Allies toward the country.” One of those friendly invasions you hear so much about.

Paris is again being bombarded by the long-range run “Big Bertha,” which I hadn’t realized (or more likely had forgotten) was a French rather than a German coinage.

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This is the Great Army Raincoat Scandal of 1918, not a particularly lame Captain America comic book story. I’m as disappointed as you are.

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Today -100: August 5, 1918: Of fats

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Well that’s just hurtful.

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