Today -100: April 10, 1919: Of heroin, legions, germs, and war cripples

The feds arrest 6 doctors and 4 pharmacists in New York City who were trading in heroin, writing hundreds of thousands of prescriptions (yes, prescriptions for heroin). Now they’re worried about the 800 drug fiends, many of them discharged soldiers and sailors, about to go into withdrawal. They’re opening a clinic to sell those doctors’ patients heroin at cost. Health Commissioner Royal Copeland thinks prohibition is going to lead to a great rise in drug addiction.

The NYT editorial page welcomes the creation of the organization Teddy Roosevelt Jr. is pushing, the American Legion, as long as it remains non-partisan.

A doctor in Vienna claims to have discovered a hunger germ.

The Allies evacuate Odessa.

British troops in Cairo fire on a “mob,” killing 9.

At the Paris Peace talks, the Big Four decide not to execute former kaiser Wilhelm. The US basically vetoed the wishes of France and Britain, which evidently brought up the executions of Charles I, Mary Queen of Scots, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as positive examples of why you should always behead tyrants (and their wives). He could still be put on trial, although the US opposes this too because a trial wouldn’t be based on any existing international law.

Among the nefarious plots the NYT ascribes to German “Reds”: inciting war cripples to demonstrate in Berlin for higher pensions despite demonstrations being banned.

The Revenue Bureau will train 800 new agents to enforce prohibition, in addition to the existing 2,293 revenooers.

Éamon de Valera (who escaped from prison in February) addresses the Sinn Féin Convention in Dublin, asking Ireland to support Woodrow Wilson’s principles even if Wilson doesn’t.

A Federal District Court judge rules that Japanese who served in the US military can’t become US citizens.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 9, 1919: Of riots, assassins, and soviet republics

Riots in Delhi in recent days have resulted in 8 deaths. The NYT does not care to investigate the causes of the unrest.

Speaking of riots: Headline of the Day -100 (L.A. Times): 

Sponsored in the California State Senate by J.M. Inman, who also has bills lined up to prevent Japanese from leasing agricultural land (they are already banned from owning land in California) and something about picture brides (mail-order brides).

French Prime Minister Clemenceau gets Pres. Poincaré to commute the death sentence on his would-be assassin Émile Cottin, which is nice of him. Clemenceau sees no reason to renege on his anti-capital punishment views now, although he will be rather annoyed when Cottin is released after only 5 years in prison.

The German government will not recognize the Bavarian Soviet Republic, saying it was established in violation of the state constitution. 

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 8, 1919: Of landtags, fraternization, and Sunday ball

The Revolutionary Council of Bavaria declares the Landtag dissolved and places power in the hand of peoples’ commissions. And it declares a national holiday, because yay. It says ti will refuse to work with the “despicable” central German government. Deposed Premier Johannes Hoffmann says he’s still in charge, although fleeing Munich in terror doesn’t really scream “I’m still in charge.”

The British military in Bonn, trying to discourage “fraternization,” posts the names of German women who have been seen with British soldiers.

The New York Legislature passes a bill allowing baseball on Sundays, subject to local option.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 7, 1919: Of pigeons

Headline of the Day -100: 

Sounds like a heart-warming animated film, possibly from the National Film Board of Canada. Actually a carrier pigeon sent from an adrift Navy hydroplane who shows up in some guy’s room in the Blenheim Hotel in Atlantic City (as was the custom). Once Ensign Finch (!) is rescued, he calls the Blenheim and tells him “give that bird the biggest spread the hotel can stand!”

And somehow that’s the only thing I found noteworthy in today -100’s paper.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 6, 1919: Of expulsions, minimum wages, disorderly natives, and aerial fudds

The Allies order Austria to expel the representatives of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Austria does the, I guess, next best thing, and banishes the Hapsburgs. And frees Russian and Finnish prisoners of war and interned civilians. They still had prisoners of war?

Hungary establishes a minimum wage of $7,200 a year for intellectual workers, $5,000 for merchants, industrial workers and traders, and $3,300 for workers. The Allies have sent an envoy to investigate conditions in Hungary and what better person than Jan Smuts, a general from that well-known egalitarian utopia, South Africa?

A Bavarian Soviet/Council Republic is proclaimed in Munich. Like all good socialist states, it is headed by a poet-playwright, 25-year-old Ernst Toller. Two months ago, after Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner was assassinated, the Social Democrats unilaterally declared themselves in charge but have been unable to make it stick and are either running into exile or about to do so.

Another day, another article from someone sure the Romanovs are alive.

The director of Military Aeronautics bans the shooting of wild fowl with machine guns from airplanes, because he hates fun.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 5, 1919: Almost independent

A delegation arrives in Washington from the Philippines headed by Manuel Quezon, president of the Philippines Senate, demanding complete independence. Pres. Wilson sends a note agreeing with that goal and says “The Philippine Islands are almost independent”.

Woodrow Wilson has influenza. Or just a bad cold. Or a stroke.

The Daily Mail (UK) says Trotsky has ordered the Russian Baltic fleet to attack the Allies.

Hungarian “dictator” Béla Kun arrives in Munich, obviously to convert Bavaria into a soviet republic.

The federal government abandons its indictments against John Reed and other socialist leaders & editors under the Espionage Act. The Justice Dept is now reviewing many other ongoing Espionage Act prosecutions with an eye to seeing if there’s any point in pursuing them.

Lt. Surugue musters out of the French army. He’s 80. And yes, they did send him to the front.

The NYT claims that in January Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg signed a “formal secret treaty of alliance” between the Spartacists and the Russian Bolsheviks. It must be true: an “absolutely reliable source” told them so.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 4, 1919: Of hurt Japanese pride and wild & crazy guys

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Gilbert Hitchcock (D-Nebraska) says Japan is just being silly at the Peace Conference in insisting on racial equality. Japan as a nation, he says, already has equal treatment, but all nations have a right to discriminate in their domestic affairs, such as immigration, interracial marriage laws, banning certain races from owning property, etc. “These discriminations may hurt Japanese pride, but they do not affect the interests of Japan as a nation.” And such discriminations are necessary to preserve racial purity and industrial standards. Japan is free to do the same, he offers.

New York Mayor John Hylan asks the Board of Aldermen to do something to stop seditious meetings of aliens speaking in funny foreign languages. Specifically, the “wild, crazy people who in every land, deluding themselves and others that they are apostles of liberty, preach murder and destruction as a quick remedy for all the economic shortcomings of the human race.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 3, 1919: Clemenceau really likes that coat I guess

Sen. Warren G. Harding (R-Ohio) complains about the delay in settling the peace treaty. He says what the world needs is a clear interpretation of international law which the nations will enforce. “Under such an arrangement there would never be another world war unless some madman of the future again undertakes the domination of the world.” And what’re the odds of that happening, huh huh?

French Premier Georges Clemenceau says that the cost of clothing is so high that he won’t bother to replace the overcoat that would-be assassin Emile Cottin shot holes in. And he intervened in some behind-the-scenes way to get his coat back, even though it was being held as evidence against Cottin.

The German government refuses Bavaria’s demand for separate representation at the Peace Conference.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 2, 1919: Of anti-saloon territories, food aid, pictures, and walkin’ Taft

Chicago Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson (R) is re-elected despite efforts to paint him as anti-patriotic. His 3 opponents split the vote against him. An oddly phrased proposition asking “Shall Chicago become anti-saloon territory?” passes by a wide margin as a protest vote against national Prohibition.

The first shipments of outside food arrive in Germany. If I read the article correctly, it only took two months of negotiations over the details.

The Justice Department claims to have broken up a plot by an alleged agent of Trotsky, William Wyciss, to seize federal munitions and blow up factories in Pittsburgh.

The Prussian Minister of Religion and Education informs schools they may no longer hang pictures of former kaiser Wilhelm or the crown prince.

Former president William Howard Taft finds himself in Detroit without any change, so he has to walk 1½ miles to City Hall to ask the mayor to cash a check for him.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 1, 1919: Of scaffolds and in-demand pacifiers

Eugene Debs’s latest appeal of his conviction and request for a new trial is turned down by the Supreme Court. He expects Indiana coal miners to strike until he’s released.

At a shiplaunching in Harriman, Pennsylvania, a scaffolding collapses, killing up to 40 people.

British Secretary of War Winston Churchill’s Military Bill passes its Third Reading, with high spending and continued conscription. Churchill says it’s necessary because Germany and Austria are in chaos and will either fall into anarchy or ally with the Russian Bolsheviks against small European states. British generals and soldiers, he says, are more in demand in various countries throughout the world as law-givers and pacifiers than those of any other country.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 31, 1919: Of debses, vaccines, and corridors

Toledo, Ohio officials bar Eugene Debs from giving his scheduled speech at Memorial Hall. The excluded crowd storms the Hall, although Debs is actually sick in bed in Cleveland at the time. 75 are arrested but later released.

The Prussian state government says that in distributing food received from abroad, it will prioritize industrial regions – except those with ongoing general strikes.

The vaccine against the Spanish Flu that New York cops were forced to get has incapacitated something like 1,200 of them. And is presumably also of no use against Spanish Flu.

Supposedly some time ago Japan offered France to wipe out Bolshevism in Russia in return for French Indochina.

The Allies are demanding that Polish troops be allowed to transit through Danzig, but Germany is resisting because it thinks they’ll actually try to claim the port for Poland.

This seems like as good a time as any to show you the only piece of Nazi propaganda I own. It decries the Danzig Corridor and the envelope it was sent in has a “Freie Staat Danzig” stamp. It was mailed from Germany on August 15, 1939 (and arrived after the war started) to a business in Brooklyn at which a relative of mine was employed, presumably because they had a NY phone book and the business had a German (actually German-Jewish) name.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 30, 1919: No man is more innocent of this war than I

Headline of the Day -100: 

Former kaiser Wilhelm II says he’d rather kill himself than be put on trial, because it would be sooooo undignified. He admits to some youthful mistakes, but the war was totally the fault of the Russians. “I have made mistakes, but no man is more innocent of this war than I.”

Gen. Edmund Allenby tells Egyptian notables that he intends to use repression to bring order to Egypt (as is the custom), and it’s up to them to reduce the suffering he’ll be inflicting on the Egyptian people.

The end of the war prevented the adoption of physicist Robert Goddard’s new weapon, a rocket with a 200-mile range (Goddard was working on a bunch of things that could have been used in the war, including an early version of the bazooka).

A sign the war is over: the baking of fresh pastry is now permitted in France.

Supposedly the Allies have demanded the resignation of the new Hungarian soviet government and new elections supervised by Allied troops.

Raoul Villain, belatedly tried for murdering French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès just before the war began, is acquitted. His lawyer asked for the acquittal “In the name of victory, which is now filling our hearts with joy.”

20 Sinn Féin prisoners escape from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, including J. J. Walsh, who was elected to the British Parliament in the  general election. They had a rope ladder.

Speaking of death-defying feats, the combined Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey, the “world’s first super-circus,” opens in Madison Square Garden. All the elephants, aerialists, bears riding bicycles, horseback riders, freaks, and, presumably, clowns, you can stand, although the NYT fails to say anything about the clowns.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 29, 1919: It is the unquestionable right of every enlightened people to govern themselves

Headlines of the Day -100: 

Gen. Charles Mangin has been summoned to meet Clemenceau, and rumor says it’s to lead Allied forces against the Bolsheviks. However the US and Britain think the French plan wouldn’t work and would be a bit too much like a, you know, war, to go over well back home.

The peace deal, it turns out, isn’t quite as close as everyone thought. France decides to up its demands, and now wants to annex the Saar Valley. The US and Britain earlier rejected this demand, but France is reformulating it as not an annexation per se but, given the Saar’s many coal mines, part of Germany’s reparations. The US and Britain are not impressed by this logic.

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, pointing out that the Espionage Act will become inoperative when peace is declared (Spoiler Alert: he’s wrong there because the Espionage Act is still in effect), says there will need to be new legislation to deal with “dangerous alien enemies,” 2,000 of whom are currently interned (in a program overseen by J. Edgar Hoover).

The NYT Irish reporter interviews escaped prisoner and Sinn Féin leader Éamon de Valera. “It is the unquestionable right of every enlightened people to govern themselves.” I could really do without that “enlightened.” He’s pretty sure there won’t be any Irish civil war after independence, so that’s okay then.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sure, why not, whatever.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 28, 1919: Of covenants, vital policies, brightened Germans, and assassinations

The draft of the League of Nations covenant is finished. They finally figured out that they can’t come back to it after the peace treaty is signed, since the treaty will require Germany to turn over its colonies to become League of Nations mandates, so there has to be a League of Nations, that’s just science.

The US delegation is still sounding everyone out about possibly proposing an amendment in support of the Monroe Doctrine, which many back home are demanding, though the people demanding it are mostly just trying to torpedo the US joining the League.

And the Japanese are still pressing their anti-racial-discrimination amendment. Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes comes out strongly in favor of racial discrimination, which he calls “a policy vital to the existence and ideals of Australia.” Points for racist honesty, I guess. “If the League is able to compel a State to amend its immigration, naturalization, and franchise laws, there remains to the State only the shadow of sovereignty.” He says the people of the US Pacific Coast probably feel the same way (i.e., support the Asian immigration ban).

Headline of the Day -100:

Same.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. asks a group of parents of soldiers and sailors to stop their campaign to nominate him for vice president in 1920 (for some reason he doesn’t just remind them that he’s 31, too young to run).

Albanian Provisional Vice President Prênk Bib Doda, a long-time fighter for Albanian independence, who the NYT says is “on friendly terms with Italy,” is ambushed and killed on the highway by what the Times thinks is a band loyal to Provisional President Essad Pasha, but which was actually paid by Italy.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 27, 1919: Of leagues, blockades, disorders, and pickles

The National American Woman’s Suffrage Association forms a non-partisan league of women voters, but can’t decide on a name for it. It will be bi-cameral, with a House of Voters representing the states that already have women’s suffrage, and a House of Delegates for the rest.

Italy lifts its blockade of the Adriatic.

France really wants the Allies to send troops, maybe 500,000 of them, to Hungary to repress Bolshevism there.

Hungarian Rumors of the Day -100: Count Károlyi has been 1) arrested, or 2) assassinated. No and no.

The New York Legislature creates a committee to investigate Bolshevism in the state.

The plan now is to combine all the peace treaties to end the Great War into a single treaty. Which is a little tricky since the US never declared war on Bulgaria and Turkey. They’re looking for a loophole.

Chicago Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson (R) has been using libel lawsuits to cow opposition to him in next month’s mayoral election, including a $500,000 suit against the Chicago Tribune for publishing comments against him made by various people. The Trib responds by pointing out all Thompson’s “seditious” (i.e., anti-war) statements, his refusal to invite the French and British missions to Chicago, calling Chicago the “sixth German city of the world” and so on. Thompson files a new suit against officers of the Robert M. Sweitzer Non-Partisan League for its statements about him (Sweitzer is the Democratic candidate for mayor).

Headline of the Day -100: 

Yeah, NYT, definitely prioritize the property damage over the 69 dead Egyptians. It says, “The disorders in Cairo were checked with the least possible employment of force.”

An Australian has entered the race for the Daily Mail’s £10,000 prize for the first trans-Atlantic flight. I assume he’s a plucky underdog because his name is Sydney Pickles. A British dirigible may also compete, if it can be finished in time.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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: 

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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:

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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”.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.