Today -100: May 22, 1919: Live and Never Die

Hawker & Grieve’s plane is still missing.

Jews in New York hold parades and a meeting at Madison Square Garden, many in the audience being Jewish members of the military in uniform, calling for an end to pogroms in Poland and for Poland to be banned from the League of Nations if it doesn’t knock it off.

23 members of a negro cult called Live and Never Die, about which I haven’t been able to find out much of anything, are on hunger strike in jail and are refusing to discuss the murder of one of its members, apparently in a fight for control of the cult. Fortunately, the hunger strike, now in its 4th day, isn’t dangerous because they can never die, apparently, it’s right there in the name. Two years from now Live and Never Die’s leader D.D. Murphy will be shot dead by police, which is just confusing.

The House of Representatives passes the women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution 304-89, the opposition consisting of New England Republicans, Southern Democrats, and douchebags.

The Allies promise Admiral Kolchak

that they will recognize his regime as the sole legitimate Russian government when he has established stability with an elected Assembly, free speech, etc. In other words, never.

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Today -100: May 21, 1919: The butler did it

Hawker & Grieve’s plane is still missing.

Woodrow Wilson sends his State of the Union Address (I think that’s what this is; they didn’t call them that yet) to Congress by cable, which is a first. An uninteresting first, but a first. Nothing particularly interesting in the address, either, although his sojourn in Europe does seem to have him spelling labour with a u.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Richard von Krebs, who killed a New Jersey farmer and his wife in 1914, was committed as criminally insane, and escaped in 1917. Since then he has been working for prominent New Yorkers including a lawyer, who says he’s an excellent butler. Krebs was evidently once Theodore Roosevelt’s father’s butler and, when young, an under-servant in Kaiser Wilhelm’s household. And he once gave testimony that convicted two men of a murder they did not commit (which was discovered before they could be executed). Anyway, they’ve re-captured him.

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Today -100: May 20, 1919: Of Sopwiths, committees on committees, and irony

Now it’s the Sopwith piloted by Brits Harry Hawker and Mackenzie Grieve which goes missing. Unlike the US planes, they doesn’t have friendly warships trailing along to rescue them if they get in trouble. Which they have.

The 66th Congress meets, and refuses to seat Victor Berger, Socialist of Wisconsin. The Republican majority in the Senate is only 2, and is having trouble keeping Progressive Republicans in line, which is playing out in a dispute over which Progressives will sit on the Committee on Committees, the ones the Progressives chose or the ones Henry Cabot Lodge chose for them.

The Presbyterians endorse the League of Nations.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Oh no, their greatest weakness!

For some reason the Allies have decided not to publish the peace terms in full.

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Today -100: May 19, 1919: Do not go home and tell the people the war is over

More planes join the trans-Atlantic race.

The US Navy’s NC-1 seaplane, which had to be abandoned, is not salvageable, and the NC-3 disappears in the fog and is out of communication, the fate of its crew unknown. Which just leaves the NC-4.

Henry Morgenthau, the former US ambassador to Turkey who helped expose the Armenian Genocide, says in a speech to soldiers that the US will be involved in another European war in 15 or 20 years. That’s just crazy talk. “Do not go home and tell the people the war is over,” he tells them.

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Today -100: May 18, 1919: I think there will be a great fight over the treaty

Those Daring Young Men in Their Flying Machines Update: The US Navy’s NC-1 is ditched at sea, its crew picked up by a steamship, and the NC-3 is missing in the fog, but the NC-4 makes it to the Azores.

The Berlin City Council orders all paintings, busts, lithographs of the Hohenzollerns removed from all city buildings, schools, etc.

Finland asks permission from the Allies to invade and capture Petrograd, please and thank you.

W. E. Kellar, who was tarred and feathered and run out of Luling, Texas (home of the annual Watermelon Thump and birthplace of Star Trek actor Michael Dorn, sez Wikipedia) in 1918 for being insufficiently supportive of the war, wins $50,000 in damages from 11 Lulinghoovians.

The wife of Dr. George David Scott of NYC is suing for divorce on the grounds that he “offended her susceptibilities and inflicted mental anguish” on her by talking German to her. He denies this.

Sen. Warren G. Harding (R-Ohio), asked what the new Republican Congress will do, says it will repeal Wilson’s extraordinary war powers, stop the trend toward government ownership, reduce taxes and cut government spending, restore railroads to private hands, protective tariffs, and, of course, “I think there will be a great fight over the treaty.”

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Today -100: May 17, 1919: Of revolutions and flushing

The NYT has information from “a particularly reliable source,” a source “absolutely above suspicion,” that the German government decided to foment a Bolshevik revolution in Belgium, because reasons.

Residents of the Murray Hill neighborhood of Flushing, Queens are angry that the local postmaster is negotiating to sell a piece of land to developers who intend to build a negro-only apartment building.

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Today -100: May 16, 1919: Of aeroplanes, libel, and the devil’s work

The trans-Atlantic race is more interesting to the NYT than the prospects of the treaty to end World War I.

Henry Ford’s libel suit against the Chicago Tribune will evidently try to prove that the paper’s campaign for military preparedness in the period before US entry into WW I was actually intended to help Germany by getting the US into a war with Mexico instead of Germany.

Mathias Erzberger, head of the German Armistice Commission, calls the peace terms “the devil’s work” and says that under them Germany would have less freedom than Egypt.

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Today -100: May 15, 1919: Of blimps and war guilt

Did I mention that blimps are entering the race to the first trans-Atlantic aerial crossing? Well, now I have.

The Germans are giving the Allies notes objecting to various parts of the peace terms. They are, for example, perfectly willing to pay reparations but not to acknowledge sole war guilt.

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Today -100: May 14, 1919: Of mocking religion, making America safe, anarchists, making Poles, and ceasefires

Headline of the Day -100: 

Oh noez! Reuters says that in Ekaterinodar Bolsheviks performed a mock marriage between an old priest and a horse, with the church choir forced to sing.

New NAACP slogan: “To Make America Safe for Americans.”

Henry Ford’s libel suit against the Chicago Tribune has begun, or at least a rather drawn-out jury-selection process. The editorial he’s suing over was titled “Ford Is an Anarchist.” Because nothing says anarchism like an automobile factory assembly line. 

Ethnic Germans in Upper Silesia are demanding the German government send them arms so they can resist “those who would make them Polish.”

NYC Mayor John Hylan denies ordering cops to keep his commute path clear of traffic, and calls on the police commissioner to cut down on reckless driving.

Lenin rejects the offer of a commission to feed Russia, which would feed Russia – in exchange for a ceasefire. So does the White regime. See, and you didn’t think they could agree on anything.

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Today -100: May 13, 1919: Of goats, monstrous documents, and air strikes

24 cops are ordered deployed to keep other cars from getting in the way of NYC Mayor John Hylan’s morning and evening commute as he crosses the Williamsburg or Manhattan Bridge (he lives in Brooklyn, like the hipster he is). Evidently a sugar truck failed to get out of hizzoner’s way as fast as he thought it should. Hylan is also on a crusade to get goats out of Flatbush or at least make their owners keep them on a leash.

Austrian Foreign Minister Otto Bauer says the “small German Austria” intended by the Peace Conference (which just finalized Austria’s future borders) can’t survive without merging with Germany.

And over 80% of the population of the Austrian state of Voralberg vote to join Switzerland. Won’t happen.

German Prez Friedrich Ebert tells the AP: “Germany has seized and unfurled a new banner on which are inscribed President Wilson’s 14 Points, which the president apparently has deserted.” He calls the peace terms a “monstrous document” without precedent (Brest-Litovsk, anyone?).

Some Afghan tribes invaded British India, which responds by dropping bombs on Afghanistan from airplanes, as is the custom. Secretary of War Chuchill’s idea, no doubt.

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Today -100: May 12, 1919: Of treaties, plebiscites, invasions, and drownings

The Spartacists in Berlin demand the German government sign the peace terms, which makes them pretty much the only Germans doing so.

Denmark is annoyed at the provision in the peace terms for plebiscites in northern and southern Schleswig, worried that the southern province, which is lousy with Germans, might want to join with Denmark. (Spoiler Alert: it won’t)

Finland is preparing to invade Russia.

Rumors say that Russian government troops are in mutiny and that they drowned a bunch of commissars, including Trotsky’s secretary.

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Today -100: May 11, 1919: Anyone for tennis?

I’m officially bored with the trans-Atlantic aeroplane race.

A shooting in a Charleston, South Carolina pool room leads to several hours of clashes between local blacks and white sailors, in which at least 6 are killed.

German President Friedrich Ebert says the peace terms suck and would “deliver German labor to foreign capitalism for the indignity of wage slavery and the permanent fettering of the young German republic by the Entente’s imperialism” in this “peace of violence.” Germany’s counter-offer will be a proposal for “a peace of right on the basis of a lasting peace of the nations.”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur is named superintendent of West Point.

BREAKING: Czar Nicholas and all the Romanovs are still alive!

Yugoslavia sends a memorandum to the Peace Conference laying out the historical, ethnological, strategic, and economic reasons why Dalmatia – and all of Dalmatia – should totally go to Yugoslavia.

The American Legion objects to Wilson’s pardons of conscientious objectors and demands the deporation of aliens who evaded the draft.

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I love that “Irrational Lawn Tennis Association” typo nearly as much as the mellifluous phrase “tennis with Teutons.” The US tennis association is following similar moves by the British and French associations.

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Today -100: May 10, 1919: If these are the peace terms, then America can go to hell!

Germans are especially upset about being forced to give up Upper Silesia to Poland and to allow the kaiser to be put on trial. Gen. Ludendorff’s only remark to the press: “If these are the peace terms, then America can go to hell!” The German government calls for the suspension of public amusements and of all plays except those that “correspond to the seriousness of these grievous days.” Newspapers are referring to the treaty as “an instrument of robbery,” “a peace of annihilation,” and “the graveside of right.” All of which would be excellent names for rock bands. Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann says the government “must discuss this document of hatred and madness with sobriety.”

Belgium, which should know better than to remind people of its record as a colonial power when it’s trying to play on world sympathy, formally objects to the League of Nations mandate for German East Africa (Tanzania) going to Britain rather than, say, Belgium.

The British military occupy Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The current lord mayor since 1917 is Sínn Feiner Laurence O’Neill and he’s been holding SF meetings there.

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Today -100: May 9, 1919: Stunned

Headline of the Day -100: 

A Lawrence, Mass. trolley is dynamited, presumably to prevent scabs being brought in during a mill strike.

The race to be the first plane to cross the Atlantic has begun, finally, with two US Navy hydroplanes making the first leg, from Long Island to Halifax. Unfortunately, three planes started that journey, and no one knows where the third one is...

Oh, okay, it just had engine failure and had to make a water landing. Everyone’s fine.

Woodrow Wilson commutes the sentences of 50+ people who have spent more than a year in prison under the Espionage Act.

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Today -100: May 8, 1919: Such a confession in my mouth would be a lie

Headline of the Day -100:

The peace terms for Germany have been agreed upon. It’s the longest treaty ever. Germany will lose its colonies – Togoland, South West Africa, Tanganyika, Kamerun, German Samoa, etc –  1 million square miles and 15 million people, as well as Alsace-Lorraine. Saarland and Danzig will be internationalized, with a plebiscite in the former in a few years. It will lose territory to Poland, Denmark and Belgium (which feels short-changed). The German army will be restricted to 100,000 men, with no conscription, and the navy similarly reduced. Reparations including $5 billion or so in cash. Germany to agree to a trial of the kaiser. The NYT says, “It is a terrible punishment the German people and their mad rulers have brought upon themselves. Not only is their military power to be destroyed, but the military spirit will be crushed out of them by the stern but necessary conditions the nations impose. How great will be their moral and spiritual suffering we cannot know, for the world has its doubts about the German conscience.”

China won’t sign, in protest against Japan being awarded Germany’s rights in Shantung/Shandong. Japan orders China to ban a “national disgrace” meeting planned in Beijing.

Italy agrees to take over Fiume as a League of Nations mandate until 1923, at which time they’ll annex it fully. This is not precisely what will happen.

The US (following Britain and maybe France, I forget) recognizes Finland.

New York State bans the red flag.

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Cruel aggressions would be a good name for a rock band. This is during the ceremony at which the peace terms are handed to the German delegates (although “cruel aggressions” doesn’t appear in the words quoted in the article). One of these delegates, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantazau, which is a name to conjure with, objects to the war-guilt clause: “It is demanded from us that we shall confess ourselves to be the only ones guilty in the war. Such a confession in my mouth would be a lie.” Without denying German responsibility for the war and the way in which it was fought, he points out other factors in the start of the war: the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, 50 years of imperialism by all European states, Russian mobilization, public opinion in all the countries that went to war etc. As to war crimes, they “may not be excusable, but they are committed in the struggle for victory and in the defense of national existence, and passions are aroused which make the conscience of people blunt.” He also wants Germany to be allowed to join the League of Nations. 

The French have a plane, the Farman Goliath, capable of carrying 25 passengers.

L. Frank Baum, author of 14 Oz books among others, dies at 62. What a world, what a world.

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Today -100: May 7, 1919: Of fiumes, 20-year armistices, and calm

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, finding that after the Italian delegates stormed out of the peace talks the other Allies are just going ahead with arrangements to sign the peace treaty with Germany, is hastily returning to Paris, without having received any promise about Fiume.

The latest objection to the peace terms comes from Marshal Foch, who says France shouldn’t sign because French security requires holding the Rhineland in perpetuity instead of just 15 years. He will famously grumble, “This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years,” which is just crazy talk.

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Because nothing says “calm” like people being hunted down and summarily shot. Hundreds killed, thousands arrested.

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Today -100: May 6, 1919: The very essence of the Hun spirit

The trans-Atlantic airplane race, though still waiting for better weather, has its first casualties, US Navy Ensign Hugh Adams and Chief Machinist's Mate Harold “Top” Corey in a plane crash over Rockaway Beach Naval Air Station. Another one of the planes is damaged by a fire on the ground.

At the National Conference on Lynching in Carnegie Hall, former NY governor & former Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes calls lynching “the very essence of the Hun spirit.”

A moonshiner kills two revenooers in Oklahoma, as was the custom.

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Today -100: May 5, 1919: Crushed

Headline of the Day -100: 

Gustav Landauer, the anarchist Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction in the Bavarian Soviet Republic (and director Mike Nichols’ grandfather), is arrested, beaten, and shot dead by government troops.

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Today -100: May 4, 1919: Of soviet republics, the fall of Petrograd, stuff you shouldn’t send in the mails, and driving tests

The Allies are questioning whether the German envoys sent to sign the peace treaty will have the authority to speak for renegade Bavaria. To me, it sounds like they’re calling for the violent suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic (already in progress) as a condition for peace.

Rudolf Egelhofer, the 23-year-old commander of the Bavarian “Red Army,” is summarily executed in reprisal for the Reds’ execution of several hostages.

The German deputation to the Peace Conference will be fenced in to keep them wandering around Paris, after 2 German newspaper correspondents were found to have (gasp) gone to the theater.

Petrograd, according to “information believed to be trustworthy” by the ever-gullible NYT, has been captured by the Finns.

In response to the mail bombs, the federal and city authorities in New York claim to be investigating 2,000 radical agitators present in the city. Many are non-citizens and may be deported.

Speaking of mail bombs, a hand grenade is found in the post office in Boston, but it was safe (as safe as a live hand grenade can be anyway) and probably just some soldier’s souvenir.

The Auto Club lobbies NY Gov. Al Smith to veto a bill that would require driving tests only for drivers in New York City.

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Today -100: May 3, 1919: Of May day affrays, corsets, and vicious and corporate interests

Paris police claim 428 cops were injured on May Day. They also claim that the crowds were largely led by Russians and Spaniards.

4 radicals arrested in Boston on May Day are sentenced to 2 months for “taking part in an affray.” One of the arrested is William Sidis, 21, who entered Harvard at 11 and graduated at 16.

Some young boys steal hand grenades, phosphorus bombs, mortar shells – you know, souvenirs – from the evidently poorly guarded Army ammunition boxes in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where they were part of an exhibition of trench warfare in support of a victory bond drive. Authorities are on the lookout for, you know, explosions.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue is pondering whether corsets are a luxury, subject to luxury tax, or underwear and thus an untaxed necessity.

Los Angeles Mayor Frederick Woodman is acquitted of taking bribes to protect gambling, booze and brothels. Woodman blames the prosecution on “vicious and corporate interests” who want to “prostitute” the city, which is maybe not the best word choice under the circumstances.

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Today -100: May 2, 1919: May Day

May Day “riots” in Cleveland (a protest against the imprisonment of Eugene Debs) are suppressed by the police and military, including what must be the first use of tanks against US civilians (could have been worse: the US Army stationed machine-gun companies outside the city, but didn’t use them). One civilian is shot dead by a cop. It all kicked off when an army lieutenant ordered a soldier marching in the socialist May Day parade to stop carrying a red flag and the soldier refused. Soldiers and others destroy Socialist headquarters.

Police in Boston violently break up an unauthorized May Day parade. Ditto Detroit. Soldiers and sailors attack meetings in New York City.

Rather more May Day violence in Paris, much of it by the police. I don’t think any of the US police forces used actual sabers in crowd control.

China is pissed that the Peace Conference is giving the former German rights in Kiao-Chau and Shantung (Shandong) to Japan. Japan says it will totally give Shantung back... some time. Obviously, it would be an insult to Japan’s honor to demand an actual deadline, Japan says. It should be noted that the country being treated as the spoils of war, China, was on the Allied side.

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Today -100: May 1, 1919: We want Wilson’s Fourteen Points

Yesterday’s mail-bomb to former senator Thomas Hardwick is followed by 36 more, to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson, miscellaneous district attorneys and immigration officials, and others. The government thinks it’s Wobblies, based on the chosen targets. All the bombs are detected (some because they had insufficient postage) and made safe in the post office system.

The US Army occupying forces in Germany refuse a permit to the SPD for a May Day parade because there might be criticism of the peace terms, such as a banner saying “We want Wilson’s Fourteen Points.” The newspapers are censored in their discussions of the peace talks to prevent any criticism of the Allies.

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Today -100: April 30, 1919: It is just one of those outrages that beggar description

A bomb is mailed to the home of former senator Thomas Hardwick (D-Georgia). Hardwick says he has no idea who the “miscreant” is. “It is just one of those outrages that beggar description,” he says, ungrammatically. It will turn out to have been retaliation for his sponsorship of last year’s immigration law aimed at deporting anarchists. The bomb blows the hands off Harding’s black maid and burns his wife badly.

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando gets a vote of confidence from the Chamber of Deputies, 382-40 with the Socialists opposing. He says the Italian delegation can now return to the Peace Conference with increased authority. Evidently this is a rebuttal to Wilson’s attempt to appeal to the Italian people.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, soon to take over as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, contradicts Wilson’s policy, saying Italy should have Fiume.

German troops have surrounded Munich.

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Today -100: April 29, 1919: Of supreme offenses against international morality

The Peace Conference decides, for now, that former kaiser Wilhelm should be tried by a special tribunal made up of 5 judges from 5 countries, for “a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.” Countries whose nationals were the subject of criminal acts can try German soldiers by military court, and Germany is supposed to hand them over, as well as any evidence asked for.

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Today -100: April 28, 1919: Of jollies

The Italian people used to like Woodrow Wilson. Now they don’t.

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I should think it would. Actually, this is a Lt. Allington Jolly, testing an experimental plane, the Christmas Bullet, named after its inept designer, William Christmas, who once claimed to have designed a plane perfect for a secret mission to enter Germany and kidnap the kaiser. This is the second Christmas Bullet; the first also crashed on its first flight, in January, killing another pilot, one Cuthbert Mills; this post has now reached its quota of silly names. The Bullet’s wings aren’t braced because they’re designed to “flap.” Instead, they tended to just come off. Christmas later billed the government $100,000 for the design – and got it.

Speaking of killing jolly, the Salvation Army plans to buy out a bunch of bars and keep them open as soft-drink-serving bars after prohibition, keeping them as “abodes of comfort and cheer.”

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Today -100: April 27, 1919: The Italian people have often known hunger, but never dishonor

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando does the balcony-speech thing in Rome, telling the crowd that even if the Allies retaliate against his pulling out of the Peace Conference by withholding food aid, “The Italian people have often known hunger, but never dishonor.”

John Tildsley, Associate Superintendent in charge of NYC high schools, says there are lots of socialist teachers and they should all be fired and all prospective teachers interrogated about their political views.

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Today -100: April 26, 1919: Of walk-outs, the abolition of slavery, and dead Indians

The Italians leave the Peace Conference, but claim it’s just to fulfill PM Vittorio Orlando’s promise to brief Parliament. Which would explain why he’s returning home, but not why the rest of the delegation is.

Headline of the Day -100: 

And why is this editorial headline the Headline of the Day -100? Because they’re finally spelling it Lenin rather than Lenine. Trotsky is still Trotzky, though. Baby steps.

An anonymous Russian, in a totally not made-up at all interview in the Journal Epoca explains the totally not made-up compulsory marriage (aka “communization of women”) law: “Abolition of celibacy has been adopted simply as a means toward class equality.”

The NYT, in what I believe is only its second article on the subject, reports that 4.9 million Indians died of the Spanish Flu. It’s actually a lot more than that, so maybe there’ll be a third article some day (also, the Amritsar Massacre was nearly 2 weeks ago, although I think this isn’t a NYT thing so much as a British censorship thing).

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Today -100: April 25, 1919: The world is tired of war only for the time being

Major Gen. Leonard Wood says the idea that the League of Nations will prevent wars is “idle twaddle and a dream of mollycoddles”. Idle twaddle is the worst kind of twaddle. “The world is tired of war only for the time being,” he says, depressingly.

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando frames his decision to quit/threaten to quit the Peace Conference as a response to Woodrow Wilson’s public statement on Fiume, not because of his rejection of Italy annexing the city, oh no, but his temerity in appealing to the Italian people over the heads of its government, “treating the Italian people as if they were a barbarous people without a democratic government.” Well, give it two or three years.

Orlando reveals his plans for when he goes to Rome after storming out of the peace conference: “I shall show myself to the crowd, as it is my duty, and it shall express its feelings.” Italy plans to just go ahead and occupy Dalmatia and other areas promised it in the secret 1915 Treaty of London (the one Wilson says was superseded by the 14 Points). They’re kind of glossing over the fact that Fiume wasn’t mentioned in the Treaty of London.

Herbert Hoover, head of the Inter-Allied Relief Organization, threatens to stop food relief to Germany if strikes and other disorder continues.

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Today -100: April 24, 1919: Fiuming

The Italian delegation to the Peace Conference (which includes PM Vittorio Orlando

and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino) says it’s pulling out of the conference because of Woodrow Wilson’s opposition to Italy annexing Fiume. “Walking out, we say! Don’t try to stop us! We’re totally leaving...” They’re especially pissed (they say) that Wilson chose to issue a public statement rather than, you know, talk to them (which was precisely the objection senators had the last time Wilson was in the US, when he made a pro-League speech before briefing them. Wilson does not learn). And just when the Italians were totally about to make “the last supreme effort toward conciliation”. Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George call their bluff, threatening to make a separate peace if the Italians (who have a special train prepared and everything) carry out their threat.

A letter from a Mrs Adele Woodward of the National Juvenile Motion Picture League threatens that if movies don’t clean up their act, the “great public conscience, which has so recently adopted prohibition, is now turning its attention to all saloon substitutes – the spotlight is now directed on the pictures of crime and vulgarity which have for so many years been an insult to the intellect of adults and a menace to the welfare of children and young people.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

In rumored red revolt news, 1) Switzerland supposedly foiled a plot by Lenin, who sent “General instructions for a revolution in Switzerland,” and 2) Turkey is unreliably rumored to have turned soviet.

Maryland Gov. Emerson Harrington sends troops to protect a jail from mobs rumored to be planning to lynch Isaiah Fountain, a black prisoner (alleged crime unmentioned) who has just been recaptured after an escape.

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Today -100: April 23, 1919: Firm for Fiume

Headline of the Day -100: 

Iowa gives the presidential vote to women.

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The Times is really going big on these tabloid-y headlines lately. Romanian troops have invaded Hungary to help overthrow the Hungarian Soviet Republic.

The NYT prematurely proclaims the fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich.

Germany is supposedly making secret preparations for a plebiscite on the peace terms, which the government thinks is a nifty way of avoiding responsibility for signing them.

The nationalization of Russian women, who must register at the Bureau of Free Love, is suspended in one northern Russian... okay, was anyone actually buying this “nationalization of women” bullshit?

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Today -100: April 22, 1919: Of Fiume and hearty welcomes

Germany is grumbling that it won’t sign the peace treaty without negotiations.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) says Germany has signed a treaty with Lenin’s government for the two countries to aid each other, Russia feeding Germany, Germany sending military instructors, etc. Obvious horseshit.

And the city of Vienna is taken back by the government. The communist takeover seems to have been premature, encouraged by Hungarian leader Béla Kun on his visit last week. Either that or the government is just blaming Hungarian “outside agitators.”

Things are coming to a head at the peace conference over Fiume, claimed by both Yugoslavia and Italy.  Fiume, a small town which only has an Italian majority if you don’t count the suburbs, is fast becoming a right-wing nationalist fetish object.

Italy would also like to absorb the Southern Tyrol. The Tyrolese National Council tells Woodrow Wilson that they want to be an independent country instead.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 21, 1919: Of songs, ideal anarchists, and caged envoys

A bunch of soldiers and sailors invade a concert of the Master Bakers’ – bakers! bakers! bakers with a k! – Association in New York City and demand that German songs on the program be omitted, or else. The German songs are dropped.

The city of Vienna is taken over by soldiers’ councils.

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Self-described “Ideal anarchists” take over the Wittelsbach Palace, using the former king of Bavaria’s bed chambers as a council room and his bathroom as their anteroom. No word on what they use as a bathroom.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: April 20, 1919: Of sullen attitudes, frequent shootings of a casual nature, and moral fibre

India: “The people are reported to be maintaining a sullen attitude.” Possibly because the British keep shooting them.

Mobs of unemployed people set fire to the Austrian parliament buildings in Vienna. The fires are put out. “As the evening wore on, there were frequent shootings of a casual nature, but the city bore to a great extent its accustomed aspect of the night life which it has taken on during the last few weeks.”

It is now legal in the state of New York (subject to local regulations or bans) to show movies, play baseball (after 2 p.m.) or fish on Sundays. Gov. Al Smith, signing the legislation, says of watching baseball, “It is in no sense deteriorating to the moral fibre of the witness.”

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Today -100: April 19, 1919: Do not get the idea that we are lying awake nights, trying to do you an injustice

The India Office reports that on the 13th a mob in Amritsar ignored the ban on public meetings, there was some shooting and there were 200 casualties and I guess that’s all they have to say about that.

“Reds” try, but fail, to storm the Austrian Parliament building.

Ousted Bavarian PM Johannes Hoffmann calls for military intervention by the German federal government to retake Munich. They are on their way, bringing artillery. The communists in Munich are blocking roads and emplacing their own artillery in preparation for a siege.

Rep. Joseph Cannon, the former Speaker of the House, addresses – and by addresses I mean condescends to – Puerto Rico’s Insular Legislature, asking it “Why are you worrying about statehood and independence? You will get either or both just as soon as you are ready. Do not get the idea that we are lying awake nights, trying to do you an injustice.”

The French Black Sea Fleet stationed off Sevastopol mutinies, the sailors insisting that no war against Russia had been declared and they should have been demobilized by now, since the actual war was over, and the food sucks.  After a few days, the French Navy will agree to their demands and the warships are withdrawn.

Now Playing:

About some misguided lefties who buy an island and establish a socialist utopia.

The utopia degenerates into a dictatorship and yadda yadda yadda. The film is based on a novel by Thomas Dixon, whose novels were also the basis for Birth of a Nation. Watch it... if you dare!



Secretary of Labor William Wilson is outraged by the advice in Moving Picture World to distributors that they advertise “Bolshevism on Trial” by such stunts as “put up red flags about town and hire soldiers to tear them down if necessary”.

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Today -100: April 18, 1919: Of censorship and ufas

The US Navy has stopped censoring cables to parts of Europe and Latin America and the Far East. Britain, which controls much of cable traffic, bans coded messages, which pisses off businesses which don’t want their secrets leaked.

Bolsheviks kill several hundred prisoners in Ufa.

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Today -100: April 17, 1919: Belgium does not seek revenge

British Prime Minister Lloyd George returns from the peace talks to make a speech to Parliament challenging his enemies, i.e., the Northcliffe-owned newspapers. He insists on being left alone to negotiate peace, which is really really complicated (“Before I went to the Peace Conference, I had never heard of Teschen, but it very nearly produced an angry conflict between two allied states [Poland & Czechoslovakia]”), without any more obnoxious telegrams from Parliament. He reassures MPs that he’s not planning military intervention in Russia - “a volcano which is still in furious eruption.” Actually, he spends quite a while justifying non-intervention, mostly on the grounds that it won’t work anyway because you know what those Russians are like.

The French parliament votes 334-166 to allow the government to continue to leave it in the dark about what’s going on at the peace talks.

The India Office says that “all is quiet at Amritsar, Lahore, and Bombay.” How long are they going to pretend that the Amritsar Massacre didn’t happen? The stacks of corpses should be kind of a giveaway.

The Iowa Legislature ignores the Judiciary Committee’s recommendation to impeach Gov. William Harding for soliciting a $5,000 bribe in return for pardoning a convicted rapist, instead censuring him.

If you’re wondering what happened to the race to be the first to cross the Atlantic by air: bad weather. Everybody’s just sitting around, waiting for it to clear up.

New Zealand’s prohibition referendum was initially announced as having passed, but it loses once the votes of soldiers abroad are counted.

The Big Four had got it into their heads that the former kaiser should be tried by Belgium. Belgium says no. “Belgium does not seek revenge,” they say, “It wants only justice.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

How will that man from Nantucket cope?

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Today -100: April 16, 1919: Of riots, commissioners, and communization of women

An article entitled “India Riots Widespread,” which blames the passive resistance movement because of course it does, refers in passing to “a few casualties at Amritsar”.

Mrs. F.H. Wilder, a women’s suffrage and temperance activist, is elected commissioner of police in Fargo.

Munich is again captured by the communists, according to a source who also says they ordered the communization of all women, including wives, so take that for what it’s worth. Oh, and Bavarian Soviet Republic Foreign Minister Franz Lipp has been put in a lunatic asylum (again), supposedly.

I have found an its/it’s error in the New York Times.

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Today -100: April 15, 1919: Of hunger strikers, red orgies, race riots, and five and dimes

Britain releases 89 hunger-striking Irish political prisoners, most of whom were unconvicted, either awaiting trial by court-martial or interned without trial under the Defence of the Realm Act. They were originally supposed to be released temporarily so they could see doctors and then return to prison after six weeks (under the Cat and Mouse Act passed in 1913 to deal with suffragette hunger-strikers), but they refused to promise to come back. Well, so did the suffragettes back in the day, for all the good that did them, but the Irish have the threat of a general strike behind them, so they’re released unconditionally.

Headline of the Day -100: 

There’s a race riot in Millen, Georgia. A couple of cops and 5 blacks killed, one of them taken from the jail and lynched, black churches burned, etc. No explanation for the events is given in the article.

F.W. Woolworth, the five-and-dime man, died last week. He died unexpectedly and before he could sign a new will, so under a 30-year-old will his millions will go to his “demented” wife.

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Today -100: April 14, 1919: Of crimes against humanity, red rules, wine, and pension protests

Turkey executes Kemal Bey, the governor of Diarbekr, by public hanging for his role in the Armenian Genocide, making him the first person executed for crimes against humanity.

Armenians are being killed by mobs in Cairo and Alexandria, for some reason. Armenians are killed, Egyptians are shot by British troops, British troops are killed, rinse and repeat.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Harsh but not entirely unfair. But the Bavarian Soviet Republic really doomed itself when it ordered all cafés to close at 6 pm, an order soon rescinded after popular outrage.

Headline of the Day -100:  

A Franco-American League for the Protection of Individual Liberty will be formed to fight prohibition, because wine.

Gustav Neuring, Saxony’s war minister, is killed by a mob of veterans outraged over proposed cuts to their pensions. They storm the ministry in Dresden, drag Neuring out, throw him in the Elbe, and shoot him as he tries to get out. The government claims, as was the custom, that Russian agents were behind the incident.

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Today -100: April 13, 1919: There could be no question of undue severity

Pilot Harry Hawker and his navigator, Lt. Commander Mackenzie Grieve (Hawker & Grieve, couldn’t make it up), start their trans-Atlantic plane crossing. Or they would do if their Sopwith would start, which it doesn’t. They were trying to start earlier than planned, since another team (with a Martinsyde biplane) arrived in Newfoundland to make its own attempt at the £10,000 prize. They’re getting a little desperate and are planning to ditch the Sopwith’s undercarriage, including the landing gear, 100 miles into the voyage in order to reduce weight, which means they won’t so much arrive at their destination as crash.

The Iowa Legislature is considering impeaching Gov. William Harding for soliciting a $5,000 bribe in return for pardoning a convicted rapist. Harding is otherwise most famous for having banned, during the war, the public speaking of any language other than English, including in sermons and on the telephone.

Japan, currently violently putting down pro-independence protests in Korea, fails again to get racial equality included in the League of Nations covenant. Chief opposition came from Britain, which is violently putting down protests in Egypt, and...

In Amritsar in the Punjab on this day (it will take a while for the NYT to hear about it), Gen. Reginald Dyer orders soldiers (Indian, Ghurka soldiers, it should be noted) to fire on a crowd protesting the deportation of a couple of local activists. They fire continuously for 10 minutes, killing somewhere between 379 (the official figure) and 1,000 Indians. The crowd struggled to escape through a narrow passageway, so many of those shot were shot in the back, and others were trampled to death. It would have been worse if Dyer could have gotten his armored vehicles with mounted machine guns through those narrow  streets. Martial law will be proclaimed and 18 Punjabis publicly hanged. Others will be publicly flogged – on a country club tennis court, no less – and others made to crawl through a major street – “fancy punishments,” as the British called it.

Dyer will explain to an investigation next year that he was punishing the crowd for gathering in defiance of his proclamation against public meetings: “It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd; but one of producing a sufficient moral effect, from a military point of view, not only on those who were present but more specially throughout the Punjab. There could be no question of undue severity.” He will further explain, “I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself”. He will be allowed to resign, and on his return to England will be presented a £26,317 fund raised by the Daily Mail. In 1940 Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the lieutenant-governor of the Punjub during the massacre, will be assassinated by one its survivors. Kim Wagner’s book Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre is out now (April 13) but not as I am writing this post.  Judging by his 2016 article in Past and Present on the massacre, which I read for this post, I suspect the book is pretty good. There’s a tv documentary on Britain’s Channel 4 tonight, called The Massacre That Shook the Empire, and there was a radio documentary earlier this week on BBC Radio 4, which can be listened to anywhere in the world for about 25 days.

Belgium grants women’s suffrage for local elections, and for national elections for widows and mothers of soldiers killed during the war or executed by the Germans, or who were themselves political prisoners under the occupation.  Women will get full suffrage in 1948.

As expected, the crackdown in New York on doctor & pharmacist drug-pushers has resulted in hundreds of junkies flooding the clinics, which are asking for 500 women volunteers (why women?) to help out. Health Commissioner Royal Copeland suggests that there should be some means of identifying addicts to prevent them double-dipping on prescriptions – branding them, for example, with nitrate of silver.

Communists overthrow the Bavarian Soviet Republic, setting up a Council and storming the Munich police stations. There are now three competing governments in Bavaria, and it’s all a bit confusing.

Italian armistice officials steal a bunch of art from Austria, mostly paintings taken from Venice to Vienna in 1816 and 1838. Viennese newspapers are complaining about this “Bilderkrieg” (picture war).

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Today -100: April 12, 1919: No viva

At Paris, the Powers are discussing conditions under which they could provide food to Russia. Pres. Wilson proposes offering food on the condition that a cease-fire is called. France objects to anything that might suggest recognition of the Bolshevik government and doesn’t want the Whites forced into a cease-fire even if the Bolsheviks agree to one.

Woodrow Wilson gets agreement on an amendment to the League of Nations covenant recognizing the Monroe Doctrine, which it calls a “regional understanding.” Mexico will soon point out that it doesn’t recognize or approve of the Monroe Doctrine.

Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, returns from visiting the Peace Conference as part of a labor delegation. He says the revolution in Germany wasn’t real, and the same people are still in power, which you can tell because unlike in earlier, real, revolutions, no one in the previous regime has been guillotined.

The NYT notes that the Bavarian Soviet Republic’s foreign minister, Franz Lipp (who they call Lapp) was confined to a madhouse more than once. That’s just the sort of rumor that the NYT falls for, but in this case it’s true. At one point Lipp will complain – in a letter to Lenin, no less – about the deposed government having taken the key to the foreign ministry toilet with them when they left. Also at some point he’ll declare war on Switzerland. Meanwhile, right-wingers in Munich are telling everyone that the soviet republic is the fault of the Jews.

Mexican troops lure rebel leader Emiliano Zapata into a trap – a general pretended he was ready to defect to Zapata; there was even a fake battle staged to prove the sincerity of his defection – and kill him. They take pictures of the body – which you can find on line if you’re into that sort of thing – to prove it.

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Today -100: April 11, 1919: If blood is spilled it will be on the heads of the Communist maniacs

370 Members of Parliament send a telegram to Lloyd George, demanding he present Germany with a bill for the total cost of the war. He responds threatening to call a general election. The French Senate passes a similar resolution demanding Germany be made to pay through its collective anus.

German Defense Minister Gustav Noske threatens to use force to return Bavaria to “order.” “If blood is spilled it will be on the heads of the Communist maniacs.”

The Council of Four decide to put ex-kaiser Wilhelm on trial before a special tribunal for violation of international morality and for breaking treaties.

US troops in Archangel refuse to fight the Bolsheviks, because they’re expecting to be relieved when warmer weather makes sea navigation possible, around June 1st, and anyway the Great War is over and the US isn’t supposed to be at war with Russia and we don’t wanna. Their officers eventually talk them around, telling them they were fighting defensively to save their own lives.

Secretary of State Robert Lansing warns California that yet more anti-Japanese legislation (a bill to prevent Japanese leasing agricultural land is under consideration, joining the existing ban on ownership) would be “particularly unfortunate” at this time. And, surprisingly, this time the Lege plays nice (the leasing ban will be passed by a ballot initiative in 1920).

A day after British soldiers shot protesters in Amritsar, India, a British missionary, Marcella Sherwood, is stripped and beaten by a mob. Gen. Reginald Dyer will order that everyone using the street on which this happened (including residents with no other way to get to their homes) will crawl its length on their hands and knees. He will later explain, “Some Indians crawl face downwards in front of their gods. I wanted them to know that a British woman is as sacred as a Hindu god and therefore they have to crawl in front of her, too.”

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