Today -100: March 26, 1919: Of natural results, seditionaries, exiles, and vampires

Count Károlyi explains his government’s resignation: “What has happened is a natural result of the blindness and ill-will with which it was sought to assassinate Hungary” (meaning the independence of nationalities like the Czechs previously subjected to Hungarian rule within the Austro-Hungarian Empire). He says Hungary can only be saved by the Internationale. The organization, not the song.

Hungarian Rumors of the Day -100: “It is said that rumors that Hungary has declared war on Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia are extremely doubtful.” Rumors that former prime minister Sándor Wekerle has been arrested are actually true.

The Spanish government responds to a general strike in Barcelona by declaring martial law throughout Spain.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Which isn’t as fun a headline as Honor Butt Seditionary would have been. This is W.F. Dunn, fined £5,000 for sedition, who wins the Democratic primary for mayor of Butte. He will lose the general election.

British Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill says all of Egypt is in revolt and asks soldiers about to be demobilized to stay on. He’s resisting efforts in Parliament to end conscription.

Austria’s former emperor Charles has finally gone into exile, in Switzerland. However he still hasn’t abdicated or renounced the throne for his family.

A Palm Beach hotel is considering a plan for Prohibition: airplanes ferrying patrons to Nassau to drink.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100:  

Sadly, not actual vampires (but you knew that; vampires do not show up on film, that’s just science). A Newark police judge wants to photograph arrested prostitutes (I assume that’s who we’re talking about) for, er, identification purposes, yeah that’s it, identification purposes.

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Today -100: March 25, 1919: Of plane trips, cunning plans, and Danzig

US Navy seaplanes will join the race to be the first plane to cross the Atlantic, although they presumably won’t be competing for the Daily Mail’s £10,000 prize.

US and British authorities think Hungary’s adoption of Bolshevism is actually just a ploy to get out of onerous peace terms by threatening Europe with anarchy and chaos, probably concocted in a conspiracy with Germany and Austria and maybe Russia, because they’re all sneaky like that.

The Austrian Central Workers’ Soviet declines the Hungarian communists’ suggestion that they create a soviet-style government in Austria, pointing out that Austria at present relies on the Allies for food.

German Chancellor Friedrich Ebert says Germany won’t sign a peace treaty that gives Danzig to Poland.

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Today -100: March 24, 1919: Of soviet republics, French sufferings, and covenant lies

Last week the Allies occupied much of Hungary with French, Czech and Romanian troops to prevent a Bolshevik republic being established. So Count Károlyi’s government resigns and Béla Kun, who was a political prisoner literally a day ago, declares the establishment of the “Hungarian Soviet Republic,” which in turn declares a dictatorship of the proletariat exercised through workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ soviets, and which may or may not have declared war on the Entente (presumably with Russian help). Kun will be Hungary’s new foreign minister (commissar) but is actually in charge. The government suggests that Austrian and German workers also break off relations with the Paris Peace Conference. Also, there’s a newspaper compositors’ strike, so there are no newspapers being printed in Budapest, which doesn’t help the confusion.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The NYT complains that many of the objections to the League of Nations covenant, such as the claim of Sen. Philander Knox (a former secretary of state, no less) that the League’s Executive Council could order the US into a war against its will: “Its assailants pervert its meaning, strangely, monstrously, and rail at the document for what it does not say, was never intended to say.”

An ad for the Christian Herald asks

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Today -100: March 23, 1919: Of emperors, fascists, subways, and straw

Austria again tells former Emperor Charles that he should leave the country, and he again ignores them.

Benito Mussolini founds the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento.

Staten Island demands a subway connection to Manhattan. Manhattan does not demand a subway connection to Staten Island.

Geneva puts in its bid to host the League of Nations headquarters, offering a nice château, the Palais d'Egmont, and a park and everything.

Fashion Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: March 22, 1919: Such a thing is to be expected at the beginning of a campaign

50 pro-League of Nations Democratic state legislators in Missouri challenge anti-League of Nations U.S. Sen. James Reed (also D): they’ll resign and run for re-election on their views on the League if he does the same. Reed calls this “some more of their stuff to embarrass me.”

The State Department warns a US syndicate that owns a large swathe of land in Baja California, including harbors, not to go ahead with plans to sell it to the Japanese.

Italy threatens to pull out of the Peace Conference unless it gets the city of Fiume instead of Yugoslavia.

Los Angeles Mayor Frederick Woodman is indicted for taking a bribe from “negro politicians” George S. Brown and George Henderson (also indicted) for protection for gambling, booze and brothels. Woodman says “Such a thing is to be expected at the beginning of a campaign” (the mayoral primary is in May).

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Today -100: March 21, 1919: Of noses, divorces, and suffrage

Headline of the Day -100:

A Chicago Tribune reporter gets close enough to his subject to overhear the aforementioned royal schnozz-honking, but not close enough to ask Willy any questions. He's nevertheless determined to somehow get a story out of the incident. He does raise the possibility that Willy isn’t being allowed to give interviews less for what he might say than because a reporter might break the illusions his entourage are cultivating in the Will-ster that Germany is going to call him back to the throne at any moment.

The 1916 US census shows that 9% of marriages are now ending in divorce. The lowest divorce rates are in South Carolina (which has had no legal provision for divorce since 1878, which sounds like an interesting story), DC, North Carolina and... New York. The highest rates are in Nevada, Montana and Oregon.

The Vermont legislature fails to override Gov. Percival Clement’s veto of a bill allowing women to vote for president.

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Today -100: March 20, 1919: Of bourgeois disinfection, stiffness sickness, and enlightened rule from the outside

Russia Rumor of the Day -100: a Menshevik revolution in Petrograd.

Oh lord, here’s another one: typhoid fever is rampant in Petrograd, but the Bolsheviks forbid disinfection as “bourgeois.”

Starvation in Vienna has given rise to a “stiffness sickness.” Also, they’re eating their dogs.

A NYT editorial on the independence movements in Egypt and Korea says “Whether a people has the divine right to misgovern itself is a matter on which opinions will be held according to political theory; but in the present situation of a closely interrelated world a people which wants to rule itself may justifiably be asked to give some proof that it knows how to do it.” Of recently freed nations, the Czechs and the Poles seem to be able to run efficient governments, the Times says, but it’s less sure about the Ukrainians. And it’s pretty sure the Egyptian lower classes don’t want to be ruled by the Egyptian nationalists. Since self-rule  might lead to anarchy, the “world interest... may at present best be served by a continuance of enlightened rule from the outside, with gradual progress toward native self-government.”

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Today -100: March 19, 1919: Of plane trips and immoderate demands which cannot possibly be entertained

More pilots are hoping to be the first to cross the Atlantic and win a £10,000 prize offered by the Daily Mail. The excellently named Harry Hawker’s Sopwith is being shipped to Newfoundland for the flight. Hawker thinks the flight should take 19½ hours and his plane can stay in the air for 25 hours at 100 mph (and can theoretically float), so he should be fine.

There has been nationalist rioting in Egypt. Early in the year, some nationalist leaders asked to be allowed to go to London to make a case to the government for Egyptian autonomy. The Egyptian Prime Minister Hussein Rushdi Pasha and the education minister said they wanted to go too. The British told them no useful purpose would be served by nationalists coming to “advance immoderate demands which not possibly be entertained,” but the ministers could come. Instead, they resigned. Things escalated and the colonial authorities have exiled 4 nationalist leaders to Malta.

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Today -100: March 18, 1919: Of plane trips, covenants, pretzels, and dead trees

French Lt. Jean-Pierre Fontan will attempt the first trans-Atlantic flight, starting in Dakar, Senegal and heading for Brazil, 1,700 miles away, by way of the Cape Verde Islands and the St. Paul Rocks.

And two-way wireless telephonic communication between two airplanes has been made for I guess the first time.

The Peace Conference plans to ignore Japan’s call for a provision in the League of Nations Covenant against racial equality, even if this means Japan doesn’t join the League. In all the fuss over this, the provision on religious equality also gets dropped. Sorry, Jews.

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Bit of a linguistic mistake, really. They just had a hankering for some pretzels.

The lower house of the West Virginia Legislature passes a resolution against the US joining the League of Nations.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Some of the logs are made into souvenirs to commemorate the momentous occasion.

False death reports in today’s paper: 

1) German Gen. Friedrich Sixt von Armin (1851-1936), supposedly beaten to death by peasants after he shot at them while they were gathering firewood on his property.

2) The last emperor of Korea (1874-1926), deposed by the Japanese, who supposedly committed suicide when the Japanese tried to marry off his son to a Japanese princess.

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Today -100: March 17, 1919: Of Zapatas and Spartacists

Mexican government troops push Zapata’s forces out of the state of Morelos.

The NYT, while still claiming without providing any evidence that Russia was behind the German Spartacist movement, notes that the atrocity stories spread about the Spartacists, which are now known to have been false and disseminated by knowingly the military, has caused a backlash in popular opinion against the military’s lethal reign of terror. Summary executions are still going on.

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Today -100: March 16, 1919: Of food

Germany has agreed to the take-it-or-leave-it offer by which it will receive food in exchange for giving up merchant ships as well as future production of potash, coal etc. While Britain still denies that its continuing blockade of Germany, preventing the importation of food, is somehow linked to starvation, the recent announcement that infant mortality has doubled has given rise to some embarrassment among the blockading countries, even France, a little.

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Today -100: March 15, 1919: Of disputed islands, garbled dispatches, lynchings, and trained dogs

The Peace Conference commission working on Italian-Greek border issues says the Dodecanese islands should properly go to Greece because their population is mostly Greek but that the 1915 treaty bribing Italy into the war still holds. US delegates objected that all such secret treaties became invalid when Wilson’s 14 Points were adopted.

The US delegation is also opposing German-Austrian Anschluss, which the NYT notes violates the US’s supposed commitment to national self-determination, but it adds that it was never clear if that principle was meant to apply to enemy nationalities.

The German military executes 220 rebels. With machine guns.

Japanese Ambassador to the US Viscount Ishii calls for the League of Nations constitution to include a ban on racial discrimination, although he does hasten to reassure the US that Japan will continue its agreement to restrict emigration. He doesn’t mention the current violent Japanese crackdown on Koreans who’d like to have their country back, and I doubt anyone bothers to ask him about it.

Richard Brenne, the editor of a German-language newspaper in Cleveland, is acquitted of the crime of garbling war dispatches.

A black man, Bud Johnson, is burned to death by a lynch mob in Castleberry, Florida for supposedly attacking a white woman.

The Belgian who during the occupation accepted Germany’s offer to be Chief Secretary of the Flemish Separatist Ministry is sentenced to 15 years hard labor.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Evidently when the Germans were occupying Belgium, they fined the owner of a fox terrier which was disrespectful to the Germans. Its owner, a hotelier, had taught it to crawl on its belly when asked what the Germans would have to do when the war is over.

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Today -100: March 14, 1919: This stolen property would burn in their hands

German troops continue to use artillery and mine-throwers against Spartacist positions in the capital city, and are summarily executing prisoners.

German newspapers are angry at the proposed peace terms, including the Rhineland buffer state and Danzig being given to Poland. Of the latter, the Lokal-Anzeiger says, “This stolen property would burn in their hands.”

Wireless signals are sent from Britain to Australia, without a relay, 12,000 miles.

Authorities claim that the raid in New York City on Russian anarchists/Bolsheviks/whatever proved that there are at least 6,000 Russians in the US “closely banded together and solemnly pledged to the destruction of all government.” 4 of the 164 arrested were released, but will be picked up again if courts determine that the possession of the Little Red Book is grounds for deportation, which the US is currently arguing it should be in another case.

The NY Senate passes a bill, unanimously, to ban display of “the red flag of anarchy.”

The Ringling Brothers’ Circus and Barnum & Bailey announce a merger. The Ringling Brothers have owned B & B since 1907, but have run them as separate shows up until now.

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Today -100: March 13, 1919: Of peasant workers, peace signings, and Beethoven

New York police raid the hq of the Union of Russian Peasant Workers of America and arrest 200 suspected radicals (164 or 187 according to later reports, which is a lot of peasant workers for, you know, New York City).

Whenever the peace treaty is to be signed, France will bar the German delegates from Paris, because that would mean providing protection for them, which France does not care to do.

The Society of Friends of Music cancels a concert tribute to the military after the secretaries of war and the navy withdraw their patronage because people objected to its inclusion of Beethoven, for fuck’s sake.

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Today -100: March 12, 1919: Of kaiser-hanging, king-drowning, and trillions

The Peace Conference is debating whether ex-kaiser Willy Hohenzollern can be put on trial for starting the war. The US thinks he can’t be. Others realize that war is not actually a crime under international law. They may still go after some of Germany’s wartime military and political leaders for war crimes.

The former King Wilhelm of Württemberg nearly drowns, the NYT exaggerates, probably, in a scuffle when some German sailors seize his yacht on Lake Constance to use as a fishing boat.

Postmaster General Albert Burleson tells the Senate committee investigating Bolshevism that the IWW is carrying on a widespread propaganda effort mostly through the foreign-language press. He also says the Wobblies are really all Bolshevists, as do other witnesses who don’t understand Bolshevism or anarchism but are happy to lump all their ideological enemies together. Not a lot of subtlety in a Red Scare.

The NYT on the peace terms being worked out (which seem to consist mostly of reducing, then reducing again the size military Germany is permitted and the things it’s allowed to have – no u-boats, tanks, airplanes, etc): “The consideration of reparations has introduced the word ‘trillion’ in recognizing money, probably for the first time in any single financial operation, for, although millions and billions often have been used in war finance, no sum has yet been reached touching a trillion.”

The evidently-famous novelist Amelia Barr dies at 87. She turned to novel-writing in her 50’s, churning out 80 of them, including Jan Vedder’s Wife, She Loved a Sailor, The Maid of Maiden Lane, and The Strawberry Handkerchief.

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Today -100: March 11, 1919: Of operettas, espionage, and quarters

NYC Mayor Hylan forces the Lexington Avenue Theatre to “indefinitely postpone” the performance of the German operetta Der Vogelhändler, by threatening the theater’s license if there’s disorder. The theater may now go bankrupt, having hired a lot of singers. Its president bitterly notes that Wilson often said that the war was not against the German people, but it was... against German opera, maybe? At intervals during the day groups of soldiers or sailors show up to stop the opera, then go away again when cops tell them it has been stopped, although one group moves on to another theater they hear is performing a German-language play but leave apologetically when they find out it’s actually Yiddish.

The Supreme Court affirms Eugene Debs’s 10-year sentence under the Espionage Act, Oliver Wendell Holmes claiming that the Act does not unconstitutionally interfere with the exercise of free speech, while affirming his Schenck majority opinion that “a person may be convicted of a conspiracy to obstruct recruiting by words of persuasion.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Atrocities that did not occur. So soldiers are just killing people on the streets of the capital now. Not that the Spartacists are non-violent, but are they throwing students into the river? cutting army officers’ hands off? killing 60 detectives? dropping bombs from airplanes? did a woman Spartacist really confess to killing 20 people? Or all the other things the German papers (including SPD ones) are claiming? As in 1914, fake atrocity propaganda is being used to justify real counter-atrocities.

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Today -100: March 10, 1919: An act of local madness

The US Secret Service claims to have discovered a wartime German-Bolshevik plot for Germany and Russia to attack Poland simultaneously.

France blocks a deal whereby Germany would give up merchant ships in exchange for food, because it doesn’t want any German funding going to food that could go toward reparations. France’s idea was that the US should send food to Germany but not get paid until after all Germany’s reparations are paid. Eventually they gave in to a less dickish plan, by which the ships will bring American soldiers back to the US and then bring US food to Germany on the return trip.

More protests against the performance of a German operetta, Carl Zeller’s inoffensive Der Vogelhändler, with soldiers and sailors threatening that if Mayor Hylan doesn’t stop it, they will do so by force. Gov. Al Smith has already informed them that he can’t help because there is no law against performances in German. An obvious oversight. Big-time actor John Drew (uncle of the Barrymores) says “This season of German operetta is either an act of local madness, or else the inspiration of the whining German Government, half imperial and entirely hypocritical.”

The North Dakota Legislature, both houses of which are controlled by the Non-Partisan League, passed laws for state control of utilities, a state bank, state grain elevators and flour mills, financed by fairly progressive taxation.

Article in today’s NYT by historian Erez Manela on how Wilson failed Egyptian and other colonial peoples.

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Today -100: March 9, 1919: They are getting away with this German opera stuff

Headline of the Day -100: 

There have been growing protests over the scheduled performance of German opera – in German! – at the Lexington Avenue Theatre in New York. Der Rosenkavalier and the like. Now soldiers and sailors are threatening to wreck the theatre. Mayor Hylan refuses to intervene to prevent the opera. A marine says, “They told us not to fraternize with the Boches along the Rhine and here we get back to New York to find they are getting away with this German opera stuff.”

The Supreme War Council gives Herbert Hoover control of the railroads in all of the former Austrian Empire so he can get food relief through. Italy has been told to stop blockading food to Yugoslavia.

German troops crush the Spartacist strike in Berlin, using artillery, machine guns, gas and airplanes. You know, crowd control. Also, some of the unions have their demands met, so it’s very much carrots and artillery. Minister of Defense Gustav Noske issues an order for everyone caught fighting the government with a weapon to be immediately executed, responding to false rumors that Spartacists killed a bunch of cops.

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Today -100: March 8, 1919: Of mandates, ships, and pogroms

German government troops and Freikorps fight “reds” on the streets of Berlin, with many dead.

Albania, which is asking the Peace Conference for territories currently held by Greece, Serbia and Montenegro, says it’s willing for the United States to exercise a League of Nations mandate over the disputed territories for a year, I guess to organize plebiscites. There is zero chance of this happening.

“President Wilson is not in favor of taking the German Navy to sea and sinking it.” Meanwhile, negotiations break down over what to do with German merchant ships sequestered abroad during the war. The Allies suggest taking the ships in exchange for some food for Germany, which Germany rejects because it would only be a couple of weeks’ worth of food. France, you will be surprised to hear, is being particularly unhelpful in resolving the situation and allowing Germans to, you know, eat.

Reports of more pogroms of Jews in Eastern Galicia and the Ukraine.

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Today -100: March 7, 1919: Of leagues and machine guns

Senators William Borah, James Reed and Charles Thomas open their campaign against the League of Nations. Borah calls for a national plebiscite. He says the League would protect the territorial integrity even of countries that don’t, I guess, deserve it, including if “Trotsky brings Russia into the League.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Swell.

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Today -100: March 6, 1919: There are giants in the sky

Austrian Foreign Minister Otto Bauer is negotiating terms for the union of Austria and Germany.

The German government claims the Spartacists tried to seize Königsberg in order to clear a route for Soviet Russian armies coming to their aid, but were thwarted by government troops.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The baseball team, not actual giants. They might travel on aeroplanes to Philadelphia to open the season.

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Today -100: March 5, 1919: His gluttony for the limelight is well known. Delicious, delicious limelight.

Giving a pro-League of Nations speech at the Met, Woodrow Wilson says criticism means nothing to him, because “there is no medium that will transmit them,” whatever that means. Demonstrating that spirit of flexibility and compromise for which he is known, Wilson wonders how the critics of the League “can live, and not live in the atmosphere of the world... and I cannot particularly imagine how they can be Americans and set up a doctrine of careful selfishness thought out in the last detail.” After being played onto the stage with “Over There,” he promises not to come back from France until the peace talks are over, over there.

The 65th Congress comes to an end, not having finished much of its business thanks to a filibuster by Senators Lawrence Sherman (R-Ill.), Joseph France (R-Maryland), and Robert La Follette (R-Wisc.). Lost bills include the General Deficiency Bill to pay old bills and fund the government’s control of the railroads; army and navy appropriations; repeal of daylight savings; a 4-year ban on immigration; prohibition enforcement; and a revised women’s suffrage constitutional amendment. Pres. Wilson says he won’t call a special session, because he’ll be back in France until June and “it is not in the interest of the right conduct of public affairs” for Congress to work while he’s not around to (cough) cooperate with them. Or, as Sen. George Moses (R-New Hampshire) puts it, “His gluttony for the limelight is well known” and his “dogged refusal to summon Congress, save when and as he pleases, is... due to his desire to monopolize the center of the international stage, and to close the only national forum available here for the voicing of opposition to the proposed constitution of the League of Nations.” It’s funny because it’s true.

Spartacists seize the police hq in Berlin. The general strike’s demands include recognition of workers’ and soldiers’ councils (or soviets, if you will), reversal of the re-establishment of the military hierarchy, disbandment of the Freikorps, the creation of a Red Guard under the soviets, the release of all political prisoners, and trial by revolutionary tribunal of various Hohenzollerns and generals and whatnot.

Headline of the Day -100:

A Jewish delegation meets Polish President Józef Piłsudski and Prime Minister Paderewski to ask them to stop the pogroms. They both decline to do anything. Piłsudski says the Jews are hostile to Poland. Asked for proof of this, he says there is none but that’s the general feeling.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: March 4, 1919: A most fatal error for any people

British Prime Minister Lloyd George warns small nations (he doesn’t specify which small nations, but he has to have at least Belgium and Yugoslavia in mind) not to emulate the faults of large empires by annexing lands not their own: “This is a most fatal error for any people, great or small.”

Ignoring that advice, of course, is France. The current version of the Peace Conference’s map of the proposed French-German border is interesting. France will re-annex Alsace-Lorraine without the complication of asking its inhabitants their wishes. The Rhineland and the northern Saar region of Germany, important for coal and steel and, consequently, for providing raw material for the German military machine, are inconveniently too German in population for France to get away with annexing them, so it’s been suggested that they be made sort of neutral – “sterilized” is the word they’re using – with France taking their coal and steel while the inhabitants would be neither French nor German and would be represented in neither parliament but would also not be conscripted into either army.

37 Republican senators from the incoming Senate sign a resolution against the US joining the League of Nations unless certain changes are made. Signers include Henry Cabot Lodge, William Borah, Warren Harding, Hiram Johnson, and Reed Smoot. They didn’t ask Democratic senators to sign and indeed actively refused one or two who wanted to, so this is clearly more about the 1920 elections than the League. They also want a peace treaty signed before there is any consideration of the League. Considering the widespread belief that the continuance of the wartime blockade of Germany is starving that country into Bolshevism, this doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable.

British Secretary of War Winston Churchill asks Parliament to maintain an army of 2.5 million, since they might wind up having to occupy Germany if it doesn’t agree to the terms handed it.

The Supreme Court upholds (in Schenck v. United States) the convictions of socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer under the Espionage Act for calling for resistance to conscription. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writes that during wartime things that people might be permitted to speak “are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and no court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” The NYT misses the famous line in the ruling that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger”.

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Today -100: March 3, 1919: Every strike brings us a step nearer to the abyss

The NYT reports “The possible fall of the German Government,” beset as it is by strikes and soviets and Spartacists. The government issues a manifesto: “Every strike brings us a step nearer to the abyss. Only work can save us.”

Woodrow Wilson meets American Zionist leaders and expresses support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Peace talks between Poland and the Ukraine fail.

Former French Prime Minister René Viviani says Paris is too close to the border, and since they can’t move Paris, they should move the border, that’s just science.

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Today -100: March 2, 1919: Of republics, dynamiters, and statehoods

A Soviet republic is declared in Brunswick.

Headline of the Day -100: 

No answer having been forthcoming to the request Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner Félix Córdova Dávila made to Congress last month to say whether Puerto Rico can ever become a state, the island’s Legislature repeats the question. Puerto Rico’s Union and Republican parties agree that if it isn’t, they should work for independence.

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Today -100: March 1, 1919: Of mobilizations, train accidents, and writing history books

The Netherlands is mobilizing its army to fight off any attempt by Belgium to annex Dutch territory.

In 1917, 9,567 people were killed on railroads and 70,970 injured.

At a White House dinner for members of the DNC, Woodrow Wilson says he’s looking forward to writing some history books after March 3, 1921. In other words, he’s not running for a 3rd term.

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Today -100: February 28, 1919: Of strikes, palmers and whipples, and feeble kaisers

German troops crush Spartacist strikes in the Ruhr coal region.

Woodrow Wilson nominates Alexander Mitchell Palmer, the Alien Property Custodian and a former congresscritter from Pennsylvania, to be attorney general. He beats out Sherman Whipple, which is surely the name of a cartoon character.

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Today -100: February 27, 1919: Of promiscuous shooting, rioting, and parks

Spartacist uprising in Saxony, with a general strike. And in Düsseldorf armed Spartacists seize the ballots for the city council elections and burn them, then engage in “a little promiscuous shooting,” as was the custom.

Socialist journalist John Reed goes on trial in Philadelphia for inciting to riot and rioting. Last May he tried to give a speech that the police didn’t want him to give, which seems to be the extent of his “rioting.” Also on trial is William Kogerman, who allegedly tried to bite a cop who was arresting him, which he denies. (They will be acquitted).

Among other legislation passed at the end of the 65th Congress’s term, but not mentioned in this article, is one establishing the Grand Canyon as a national park.

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Today -100: February 26, 1919: Repent! Repent!

Willy Hohenzollern thinks Germany “will soon repent of having overthrown the monarchy.” Spoiler Alert: Germany will not repent of having overthrown the monarchy.

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Today -100: February 25, 1919: Good morrow, my little soldiers

Boston police arrest 22 members of the National Woman’s Party who planned to burn Woodrow Wilson’s speeches on Boston Common during the welcome parade. The charge is loitering.

In his speech at Mechanics Hall, Boston, Wilson says abandoning the peace treaty would be breaking the promises the US made to new nations Poland, Armenia, Czechoslovakia etc. “I have no more doubt of the verdict of America in this matter than I have of the blood that is in me.” And about that blood: “I have fighting blood in me.”

Prince Leopold is arrested for possibly being behind the assassination of Bavarian PM Kurt Eisner. And they’re looking for the former Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. A bunch of aristos have also been arrested.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Good morrow, my little soldiers,” he addresses them. “Good morrow, comrade,” they reply.

Full-page ad on page 7:

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Today -100: February 24, 1919: Of non-lynchings, non-civil wars, fog, and money

The NYT reports the lynching by an angry Budapest mob of Communist leader Béla Kun. This is not true.

On his return home from the peace talks, Woodrow Wilson’s ship almost runs aground in the fog, in what is definitely not a metaphor of any kind. And the Secret Service raids a couple of places looking for two Spanish anarchists allegedly planning to assassinate Wilson and for the bomb they allegedly planned to throw at him. They arrest 14 men, which may or may not include the two they’re looking for, and find zero bombs.

German Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann told the National Assembly in Weimar that civil war has broken out in Munich. The government quickly disavows this.

Poland plans to introduce its own currency in a few months, pegged to the French franc.

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Today -100: February 23, 1919: 60% dead

The assassination of Bavarian Chancellor Kurt Eisner is followed, as was the custom, by an uprising in Munich and the declaration of a Bavarian Soviet Republic. AP says Eisner’s assassin has been lynched; he hasn’t. NYT: “It is predicted that the killing of Eisner will be avenged in a most frightful manner.”

A revolt breaks out in Budapest. Communists attack the Social Democratic Party’s official newspaper Népszava (People’s Word) and take over the telegraph office and train station. The NYT thinks that Germans and Russians are behind it.

Sing Sing prison had 106 cases of Spanish Flu, nearly 10% of the prison’s population, and 14 cases of flu-related pneumonia, but not a single death. They used quinine and “physic.”

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Today -100: February 22, 1919: Another day, another assassination

Kurt Eisner, the radical Bavarian Chancellor, who was actually on his way to the state Diet to resign, is shot dead by Count Anton von Arco auf Valley, who hated Eisner on political as well as anti-Semitic grounds despite his own Jewish heritage on his mother’s side. Arco-Valley shouts “Down with the revolution, long live the kaiser!” He will be tried before a sympathetic right-wing judge by a sympathetic right-wing prosecutor who will praise his “enthusiasm.” He will serve 5 years (some of it in a cell that Hitler got right after him) (right now he’s in the same cell Eisner occupied a year ago).

While announcing Eisner’s death to the Diet, Interior Minister Erhard Auer, a rightist, is himself shot and wounded by someone in the public gallery. Spartacists seize Munich police hq, but government forces recapture it.

The Central Federated Union of New York votes to strike on July 1 if beer is cut off on that date. No beer, no work.

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Today -100: February 21, 1919: They are exceedingly clumsy

The assassin’s bullet that hit French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau penetrated his lungs and is inoperable (nevertheless, he’s up and walking around and will live another decade). The Tiger says, “My adversaries are really poor shots.  They are exceedingly clumsy.”

Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and some of his men are helping bring troops to Archangel, with reindeer and sledges and what not.

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Victor Berger, Socialist member of Congress from Wisconsin, and his fellow defendants are sentenced to 20 years for violation of the Espionage Act and obstructing the war.

The French province Champagne demands that the Peace Conference prevent the name of that eponymous beverage being used by bubbly originating from any other region. You know, along with peace and disarmament and the League of Nations. 

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Today -100: February 20, 1919: Insulting his house is just going TOO FAR

Anarchist Émile Cottin attempts to assassinate French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 77, hitting him with 1 (the NYT incorrectly says 3) of 7 shots. Clemenceau will make endless jokes about Cottin’s bad marksmanship. Cottin is immediately surrounded by women, who hit him with umbrellas, as was the custom, and is already giving interviews with the press. He says Clemenceau is the enemy of humanity and is preparing for another war (it’s funny because it’s true). He also says Clemenceau’s house is ugly (it’s now the Musée Clemenceau in the 16th arrondissement and yeah, kinda). Some time after his release from prison, Cottin will go to Spain to fight in the Civil War, where he will be killed in battle.

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Today -100: February 19, 1919: Nor does she represent anything but agitation

The NY Legislature confirms Frances Perkins as a state industrial commissioner. Sen. George Thompson (R), leading the opposition, says Perkins “does not represent women, nor does she represent anything but agitation” and complains that she didn’t take her husband’s last name.

The Costa Rican army is evidently preparing to invade Nicaragua. The US blames German propaganda for stirring up trouble, because of course it does.

At least 75 German (mostly Prussian) army officers have applied for commissions in the US Army. The army tells them, Dudes, we’re technically still at war.

The armistice, however, is renewed, this time for an indefinite period, but with the Allies giving themselves the right to abrogate it on just 3 days’ notice. The Germans aren’t happy about Gen. Foch being allowed to interpret armistice terms any way he chooses or the provision that German troops should stop attacking Poles. The German cabinet strongly considered not signing the armistice and just seeing what happened.

Sweden tells former head of the German Army Erich Ludendorff, who’s been living there in exile since the Revolution, to leave.

The US Army occupies Luxembourg City to prevent a revolution in what the NYT calls “this little toy nation.”

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Today -100: February 18, 1919: Oh, You Black Death

An IWW strike among Butte, Montana copper miners protesting a wage cut (from $5.75 a day down to $4.75) fails.

A large crowd watches the 369th Infantry march up 5th Avenue, the first New York regiment to return from Europe. The 369th is a black unit, or “blutdurstig schwarzemänner” (bloodthirsty black men) as the Germans called them, so it’s nice to see them greeted with candy, coins and cigarettes (the 3 c’s). Cheers are especially loud for Sgt Henry Johnson, who fended off a German attack with his bolo knife after his gun jammed. “Oh, You Black Death,” the spectators shout affectionately.

The War Office announces that US troops will be withdrawn soon from northern Russia (soon being when the weather is better).

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South Carolina is the most illiterate state.

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Today -100: February 17, 1919: Of retaliation and riffraff

A Le Journal reporter who “escaped” from Petrograd says that 4 Russian grand dukes were shot without trial in retaliation for the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

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The Senate committee investigating Russian Bolshevism hears from the American former manager of a factory in Russia, who is testifying incognito. He claims that factory workers are not Bolsheviks and that the government is “made up of the riffraff of the industrial and the peasant world.” There are many delightful 1919 words that have sadly slipped out of modern usage, and then there are words like “riffraff” that can just go fuck themselves. Mr. Anonymous brags about having armed his workers to resist government demands that his factory pay its taxes.

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Today -100: February 16, 1919: If it is an unjust peace, 70,000,000 people in their hearts will never forgive or forget

New German Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann warns: “The Entente is able to force any kind of peace on Germany, but if it is an unjust peace, 70,000,000 people in their hearts will never forgive or forget.” Also, he wants to annex Austria.

German Foreign Minister Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau (what a name!) says “Germany cannot enter a League of Nations without colonies.” He accepts the internationalization of colonies (the mandate system), but only so long as all colonial powers also do so and Germany receives a proportional share of colonial products.

Some Republican senators do not like the draft League of Nations constitution, which they see as violating the Monroe Doctrine and surrendering US independence. Wilson has asked the Senate not to start discussing the League until he gets back to the US and has a chance to talk down to them about it, but they may go ahead anyway (they will become especially pissed off at Wilson tomorrow when they hear that he’s planning to land in Boston and make pro-League speeches before talking to the Sen. Foreign Relations Committee).

Immigration Commissioner Richard Campbell bans immigrants who withdrew their declarations of intent to naturalize in order to avoid the draft from ever becoming citizens.

NYT political cartoons are soooo subtle:

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Today -100: February 15, 1919: Definitely

The draft constitution of the League of Nations has been agreed upon. Woodrow Wilson says “It is a union which cannot be resisted, and, I dare say, one which no nation will attempt to resist.” “It is definite as a guarantee of peace. It is definite as a guarantee against aggression. It is definite against renewal of such a cataclysm as has just shaken civilization.”

New York’s Republican Legislature is working on enforcement legislation for the 18th Amendment. It’s thinking of continuing to allow the manufacture and sale of beer and light wines, defying the Anti-Saloon League, which had its own stronger draft bill.

The royalist revolt in Portugal has failed.

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Today -100: February 14, 1919: Of armistices and food terms

The Allies add yet more terms to the next armistice renewal: Germany must halt military activity against the Poles in Posen and reduce its total military to 20 or 25 divisions.

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Today -100: February 13, 1919: Of island, armies, and assassinations

The Peace Conference hasn’t decided where the League of Nations should meet, but thinks it should be an internationalized territory, maybe Constantinople or some island.

The US and Britain object to France’s call for a League of Nations army because their countries are constitutionally prohibited from committing to a war in advance.

The Secret Service claims to have foiled an IWW plot to assassinate Pres. Wilson. 20 Wobblies due to be released from prison decided on the plan and drew lots, with the alliterative and delightfully named Pietro Pierre winning the honor.

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Today -100: February 12, 1919: No beer, no work

The French  propose that the League of Nations have its own military to enforce its decisions. Léon Bourgeois, the French delegate, says this army should be stationed in... France, which is, after all, at the center of the universe. The out-of-the-blue amendment threatens to derail talks and thwart Wilson’s hopes to have the League done and dusted before he returns home.

The NYT names the Seattle anarchists being deported and their supposed crimes, which mostly consist of “preaching of doctrine of unlawful destruction of property.”

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The Central Federated Union’s affiliated unions in New York will vote on a “No Beer, No Work” strike against prohibition. The union points out that many of the legislatures that voted for ratification did so either without consulting the voters or disregarding referenda that went against prohibition.

The German National Assembly at Weimar elects Friedrich Ebert president. A provisional constitution is approved, despite Independent Socialist objections to its use of the word “empire” instead of “republic” and the lack of an unequivocal ban on secret treaties.

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Today -100: February 11, 1919: Of suffrage and general strikes

The Senate votes 55-29 for the women’s suffrage amend to the Constitution, 1 short of the necessary 2/3. The blame falls on Southern Democrats.

British planes are dropping bombs on Bolshevik forces in the north of Russia.

The US delegation to the Peace Conference is threatening to demand that the conference be moved from France to some neutral country because of relentless French propaganda for imposing crushing peace terms on Germany as well as censorship (an American statement was censored a day or two ago but we’re not sure what was censored because it was, you know, censored).

The Seattle general strike is called off.

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Today -100: February 10, 1919: He preaches democracy abroad and thwarts democracy here

With a Senate vote on the women’s suffrage amendment scheduled for this week, National Woman’s Party members demonstrate in front of the White House, burn Wilson in effigy for not doing enough to pressure senators, and wave banners with mottos like “He preaches democracy abroad and thwarts democracy here.” 40+ are arrested.

The US begins deportations of 54 of what the Chicago Tribune calls “a motley company of I.W.W. troublemakers, bearded labor fanatics, and red flag supporters,” grabbed up in Seattle to smother the general strike, then put on a train for the Atlantic coast and points east (presumably Russia for most of them). This was ordered by Immigration Commissioner Anthony Caminetti, who has the authority to expel anarchists or IWW members, whether or not they have broken any law. IWW men attempt to rescue the prisoners in Butte, Montana, but are foiled when the authorities get advance word and play switcheroo with train cars.

Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson says “The general strike has failed. ... The revolution has failed. The attempt to establish a Soviet Government and control and operate all enterprises and industries has collapsed.”

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The French are claiming that the reason two trains crashed into each other was that one of them was one of those turned over by Germany as part of the armistice deal and it had a bomb in it.

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Today -100: February 9, 1919: Of calm Seattle and Jews voting

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Because nothing says “calm” like “troops with machine guns.” Also, the unions were pretty serious about preventing any un-calm themselves. The Citizens’ Committee says that business interests consider the general strike a “rebellion against the government” and not a real strike. Sure they do.

The Japanese delegation to the Peace Conference tells the Chinese delegation to shut up. China is planning to show the conference the secret treaties by which Japan “leased” Jiaozhou, which China wants back. Japan would prefer those secret treaties to remain secret and that China not say anything at the talks which Japan hasn’t approved first. China, however, is still under the impression that it’s an independent country.

Poland grants Jews the vote. Yay.

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