Today -100: July 18, 1919: Of kuns, fucking Alabama, and corsets

Béla Kun is ousted in Hungary, the NYT reports prematurely, citing “reliable sources.”

The other allies are putting the peace treaty arrangements into effect in Germany, hampered by the failure of the US to do its share while the Senate decides whether to ratify the treaty. There are 23 commissions called for in the treaty to administer it, and the US can’t name delegates to them. The US peace commissioners are no longer voting on policy matters.

Woodrow Wilson holds his first three conferences with senators, all of whom (without disclosing what was said in the meetings) say they have not changed their minds about the peace treaty.

The Alabama State Senate rejects the women’s suffrage amendment to the US Constitution, 19-13.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: July 17, 1919: Of saws, concentrated growls, vons, centres, and carrier pigeons

Headline of the Day -100: 

Former House speaker Champ Clark calls the policy of Senate Republicans “one concentrated growl.”

Pres. Wilson will invite 15 key Republican senators to the White House to try to persuade them to support the League of Nations. He will talk to them individually, not in a group.

Birkenfeld, pop. 45,000, declares itself a republic, independent of (Allied-occupied) Oldenburg.

The German National Assembly rejects a Socialist proposal to do away with ranks of nobility. However, there will be no special privileges associated with the “von.”

British Secretary of War Winston Churchill, who in his political career has already switched parties once (from Tory to Liberal), suggests that a Centre Party be formed from the moderates of all parties, a sort of continuance of the wartime Coalition, but to fight Bolshevism and keep Lloyd George in power.

The carrier pigeon that escaped from the R34 dirigible shows up on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. He’s kind of tired.

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Today -100: July 16, 1919: Of murderers, ultimata, secret treaties, and mail

Headline of the Day -100: 

From the never-ending libel case by Ford against the Chicago Tribune.

There’s a rumor that French Gen. Franchet d’Esperey gave an ultimatum to Béla Kun, leftie leader of Hungary, demanding he and his government resign in favor of a freely elected one, or face invasion and occupation. Kun probably realizes that d’Eesperey simply does not have nearly enough troops at his disposal for that.

The US Senate asks Pres. Wilson for a copy of a treaty allegedly signed between Germany and Japan last October for a separate peace.

Mail service between the US and Germany is ordered resumed.

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Today -100: July 15, 1919: Of booze, dirigibles, and java

The attempts to repeal wartime prohibition or loosen the definition of intoxicating beverages are defeated in Congress.

Britain is sending forth another dirigible, the R33, which will visit India by way of France, Switzerland, Rome, and Cairo.

The latest suggested location for former kaiser Wilhelm’s exile: Java (Indonesia).

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Today -100: July 14, 1919: We want breakfast

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Wets” think they can repeal wartime prohibition, which is still in effect until demobilization is complete. Or if that fails, remove the definition of “intoxicating,” leaving it to the courts.

Sen. Elihu Root thinks the Senate can ratify the peace treaty after unilaterally adding reservations, without the Peace Conference  having to act on them. Really?

The British dirigible R34 ends its round-trip trans-Atlantic crossing, arriving at Pulham, England after a 75-hour trip from Long Island, a day of which was spent lost in the fog. “We want breakfast,” Major Scott says. He predicts there will soon be regular airship service between Europe and America. During the trip, one of the carrier pigeons escaped.

The Allies are considering headquartering the League of Nations in an internationalized part of Belgium in a new city, Geopolis, which would be built on some part of the Front. Which I guess would have the advantage of having literal buried unexploded mines alongside the metaphorical ones.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Dr. H.A. Zettel, a St Paul, Minnesota electropath, challenges Dr. H.W. Hill of the Minnesota Public Health Association to a duel... with germs. They will each expose themselves to typhoid, smallpox, bubonic plague, etc. Zettel, who does not believe in the germ theory, will protect himself from these diseases using only sanitation, pure air, and clean food and drink, while Hill will use vaccines. Whichever one survives will be a pallbearer at the other’s funeral. Sadly, they will not go through with it.

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Today -100: July 13, 1919: Of innocent policemen, daylight saving, the Three Pashas, horses, and prohibitionists

Irish Unionist leader Edward Carson tells Americans to butt out of Northern Irish affairs (totally missing the irony of a Unionist complaining about outside interference in Ireland). He blames them for stirring up Sinn Féin and thereby encouraging “the campaign of assassination of innocent policemen”. He also complains that nationalist Count Plunkett is allowed into the Carlton Club.

Pres. Wilson vetoes the Agriculture Bill because it repeals daylight saving. He also vetoes the Sundry Civil Bill because it only appropriates $6 million to rehabilitate disabled military men and he wants $8 million.

A Turkish court martial condemns Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha (no relation), the leaders of the previous government that messed up the war so badly and killed so many Armenians, to death. In absentia – they all fled into exile at the end of the war. Some lesser officials are given lesser sentences. Over the next couple of years Armenians will assassinate Talaat and Djemal in retaliation for the genocide.

John “Chick” Owens, a black vaudeville actor, is stabbed to death by a man who tried to bum a cigarette and was offered only the makings.

Édouard de Billy, France’s deputy high commissioner to the United States, slated to be the next ambassador to the US, falls off his horse in the Bois de Boulogne and breaks his neck. Silly de Billy.

Hashtag of the Day -100:

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Today -100: July 12, 1919: Of corn

Sen. George Moses (R-New Hampshire) will offer a resolution inviting Pres. Wilson to come to the Senate every day at 10 am to discuss the treaty. He admits this is intended to prevent Wilson stumping the country on behalf of the League of Nations.

The Allies will end the blockade of Germany today.

The Corn Products Refining Company of Argo, Illinois will, as a result of its recent bloody strike, fire all its foreign-language-speaking workers.

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Today -100: July 11, 1919: Of new roles and new responsibilities, amendments, and herring

Woodrow Wilson goes to the Senate to deliver the peace treaty. When he finishes speaking, explaining that the US now has “a new role and a new responsibility” in the world because God or destiny or something, the Republicans mostly fail to applaud. It’s almost like they don’t want a new role and a new responsibility.

They may try to amend the treaty. Wilson says that would take a 2/3 vote of the Senate, but Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge says a majority can amend it, the 2/3 is only for final ratification.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: July 10, 1919: Of travel bans, treaties, deportations, and elks

Rep. Philip Campbell (R-Kansas) introduces a bill preventing the president from leaving the country or indeed performing duties (such as signing bills) anywhere other than in D.C.

The German National Assembly votes 208-115, with 99 abstentions, to ratify the peace treaty.

The NYT thinks Woodrow Wilson is going to invade Mexico or something. To protect foreigners and restore law and order. Or, to put that another way, the Carranza government is trying to tax the US oil companies operating in Mexico.

64 Bisbee, Arizona men are charged with kidnapping and assault for the Bisbee Deporation almost exactly two years ago, in which 1,100 alleged IWW members and strikers were rounded up, put on a train, and dumped in the desert. The men named include the president of the Bank of Bisbee, a couple of city councilmen, the sheriff at the time, various mining company officials, a butcher, etc. I don’t think anything will come of this.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, not the large mammal of the deer family.

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Today -100: July 9, 1919: Of reservations, irritated Germans, and woodies

A majority of senators are now pledged to vote for the peace treaty & League of Nations covenant only with reservations.

Headline of the Day -100:

Some are more than irritated: German officers are committing suicide at a 38% higher rate than before the trial was announced.

Hindenburg is the latest to offer himself as substitute for Wilhelm at the trial. The NYT sees echoes of The Mikado.

Chief Secretary for Ireland Ian Macpherson outlaws Sínn Féin in County Tipperary, meaning membership is now a criminal offense. The government cites an alleged SF proclamation a few months ago declaring all cops in the South Riding of Tipperary to have forfeited their lives, ditto magistrates and anyone else upholding British rule. Also, snitches will totally get stitches. Éamon de Valera says the document is probably a fake. He does admit that the Republican Government has issued a call to ostracize the armed constabulary, you know, socially.

R. C. “Woody” Faulkner of California, a man who looks like Woodrow Wilson, decides on a visit to New York to dress like him, then gets upset when a crowd follows him down 42nd Street. He now vows never to impersonate the president again and says he wouldn’t want to be president “if that is the way you are treated.”

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Today -100: July 8, 1919: Of plots, Mars, and garbage trucks

An alleged anarchist plot to blow up Rome is thwarted. Phew.

Astronomy Professor David Peck Todd of Amherst will join a balloon attempt to reach a record altitude, from which point he plans to communicate with Mars. This is by no means his first attempt to, um, get high and talk to Mars. He once hiked up the Andes, but found that even that wasn’t high enough for his instruments. There is no follow-up story, so I think the ascent didn’t come off. Todd has been trying to communicate with the Martians for years; his family will have him committed in 1922.

The Queens borough president wants motorized garbage trucks to replace horses & carts. Cart & truck owners just formed a union and demanded higher rates.

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Today -100: July 7, 1919: The Allies can only have my dead body

The British dirigible R34 arrives at Long Island. It was storms all the way across the Atlantic. Major Pritchard parachutes from the airship for no apparent reason.

The former German crown prince, on his possible extradition from the Netherlands: “The Allies can only have my dead body. I will myself decide on my life or death.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Article 246 of the Treaty of Versailles requires the Germans to turn over said skull, formerly belonging to Chief Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga (1855-98) of the Hehe in German East Africa. However, the Germans say they can’t find it. Maybe it’s in a museum somewhere, maybe it’s still in Tanganyika (the skull was probably found, in a German museum, in 1954). (Most of what this article says about the chief is wrong).

The fee for the executioner at Sing Sing is doubled, to $100 per inmate fried.

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Today -100: July 6, 1919: Of dirigibles, substitutes, champs, and big hats

The R34 dirigible now crossing the Atlantic radios that it’s running out of gasoline (it met greater headwinds than anticipated) and will have to make a stop at Boston. The US Navy is sending out ships in case it needs to be towed in.

Some of ex-kaiser Wilhelm’s sons (all but the oldest) offer to serve any sentence on behalf of their father. The tribunal will have the authority to pass a death sentence.

Jack Dempsey, the new heavy-weight champeen, says he will only defend his crown against white challengers.

London hat manufacturers are wondering why men are ordering larger hats than before the war. Some have consulted pathologists who believe it is the result of constant gunfire – the heads of men with shell shock have gotten bigger, that’s totally a thing. Or they might just be getting hats that cover more of their heads, like the helmets they’ve gotten used to.

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Today -100: July 5, 1919: Of dempseys, communist republics, coups, and lynchings

Evidently there was no “Red” revolution or bombing campaign on the 4th. The Justice Department must be so disappointed.

Jack Dempsey wins the heavyweight bout against Jess Willard.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Returning soldiers set up a communist republic on the Cook Island of Mauke. Supposedly.

Military coup in Peru, deposing President José Pardo a month and a half before his term would have been over anyway, but the last election was... questionable.

The Tuskegee Institute finds that in the first 6 months of 1919 there were 28 lynchings. 25 of the lynchees were black, 3 white, 27 male.

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Today -100: July 4, 1919: Of police power, fireworks, treaties, fraternization, and bunny punches

Headline of the Day -100: 

In New York and elsewhere, cops are guarding government buildings, churches, the Stock Exchange, and members of the Lusk Committee, etc.  Just in case.

Fireworks are illegal under wartime explosives laws, but Congress failed to appropriate anything for enforcement this year, so have at it.

Romanian Prime Minister Ion Brătianu resigns, both as prime minister and as Romania’s chief negotiator at the peace conference, because he objects to provisions of the Austrian peace treaty which allow big powers to interfere to protect minority populations in smaller states.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George tells Parliament that former kaiser Wilhelm will be put on trial before an international tribunal in London. Also u-boat commanders.

France releases the texts of new Franco-US and Anglo-French treaties committing the US and Britain to defend France against German aggression. Woodrow Wilson had asked them not to make the treaty public until the US Senate authorized publication, as was the custom. France promised not to, and then did it anyway, because France.

140 US army soldiers & officers up to the rank of major have applied to marry German women (and one German woman has applied on behalf of her fiancé, who’s too shy to apply himself), but evidently the anti-fraternization rule everyone thought had expired with the signing of the peace treaty is still in effect until the treaty is ratified.

Missouri ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment. 11 states down, 25 to go.

The meeting determining the rules for the Dempsey-Willard bout rejects Dempsey’s demand to ban the “bunny punch,” in which the neck is hit with a fist. Which is about as dangerous as it sounds. Unless performed by a bunny.

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Today -100: July 3, 1919: Radicals do love a picnic

Prohibition: the good ship Waco is launched with a bottle of ginger ale.

The NYPD orders Carnegie Hall to cancel a July 4th meeting by anti-Bolshevik Russian groups, claiming there might be a response from Reds. Or at least the cops say that since it’s a holiday they’ll be too busy to protect the Hall if a riot breaks out. There are also dark rumors afoot that there will be another spate of bombings on the 4th, but Elizabeth Gurley Flynn says most of the radicals she knows will be at a picnic.

Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, doctor, minister, and former president of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, dies at 72.

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Today -100: July 2, 1919: Of dirigibles, nancies, and hoovers

The British dirigible R34 begins an attempt at a trans-Atlantic crossing. There’s only one engineer (I’m not sure how large the crew is – one larger than they realize, it will turn out when they find that a crew member they’d decided to leave behind to save weight had snuck aboard), so he’ll have to be awake the entire trip, but he says he’s flow 108 hours without sleep before, which oddly is the exact time this voyage will turn out to take, so that’s lucky.

A US Navy dirigible blows up on landing near Baltimore.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The city in north-east France, not a person named Nancy.

Poland is officially a country now (again), recognized by the peace treaty, which includes a provision that Poland has to be nicer to its Jews (Spoiler Alert: it won’t be especially nice to its Jews).

Herbert Hoover will retire from his roles as US Grain Administrator and European food dictator extraordinaire. He will donate his wartime papers to Stanford University, forming the basis of what is now the Hoover Institute, which I’m told also has a very large collection of ‘70s hardcore porn.

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Today -100: July 1, 1919: Of prohibition, war brides, non-partisans, and prince-priests

“Wartime” prohibition goes into effect. The Justice Dept is still waiting for the district courts to rule on whether beer which is less than 2.75% alcohol is intoxicating and therefore banned.

Pres. Wilson, on the voyage home, signs a couple of bills at sea, which is evidently a first. Not a very interesting first, but a first nonetheless.

Wilson agrees to let some French war brides of US soldiers travel to the US on his ship.

An American pilot dropping pamphlets informing residents of the Rhineland of the signing of the peace treaty crashes and dies.

North Dakota voters pass 7 referenda sponsored by the Non-Partisan League, including state-run banks, grain elevators, and newspapers.

Ex-kaiser Wilhelm pays taxes for the first time in his life, Amsterdam municipal income tax.

In Brest, a drunken American naval officer tears down a French flag. The incident escalates into a full-fledged brawl between French civilians and American military, leaving 2 of the latter fatally wounded.

Prince Georg of Bavaria enters a monastery. He was married before the war, to an archduchess and everything, but they separated during the honeymoon and the marriage was annulled due to non-consumation.

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Today -100: June 30, 1919: Of taxes, pilots, firemen, and fraternization

Germany is going to have to drastically raise taxes to pay all those reparations.

The Peace Conference adopts minimum standards for international aerial navigation: pilots must be 19 and have a license and be medically examined and come from good families and have no mental, moral or physical defect, must “possess heart, lungs, kidneys, and nervous system capable of withstanding the effects of altitude and also the effects of prolonged flight,” not be color-blind, etc.

Peace Conference talks with Turkey are at an impasse, and the Turkish delegates are told to go home.

Former German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg offers to be put on trial in place of ex-kaiser Wilhelm, saying he takes responsibility for Germany’s actions during the war (until July 1917 anyway).

Chicago firemen threaten to go on strike – on the Fourth of July. The cops also want a raise.

The ban on fraternization between US soldiers and civilians in occupied Germany is lifted. 20 soldiers immediately announce their hitherto secret engagements.

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Today -100: June 29, 1919: Peace-ish

The peace is signed, the Great War is over. Now it only needs a proper name...

The signing yesterday was on the 5th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and was conducted in the same hall in Versailles where the French were forced to sign their own abject surrender after the Franco-Prussian War. The Chinese refuse to sign. Jan Smuts, representing South Africa, signs but adds a protest that it is too hard on Germany. Lloyd George signs with a fountain pen, which is a first in diplomatic history. Not a very interesting first, but a first nonetheless.

Wilson begins his voyage home.

Woodrow Wilson says he’ll lift the “wartime” prohibition, but not before it goes into effect in 2 days, only when demobilization is complete. He blames the terms of the law for tying his hands.

The government is going on a deportation binge, 15 in the last week, 18 upcoming, including editors of two anarchist newspapers. It’s claiming that late in the war foreign agitators were smuggled into the US by Germany. They’re a mixed bag of Spaniards, English, Italians, and the occasional Scandinavian. None are Russian. None are accused of actually doing anything violent.

Almost all the US forces pull out of Archangel, ending the hot war against the Bolshevik government.

A Brooklyn magistrate rules that teachers can slap students in the face.

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Today -100: June 28, 1919: What’s black and white and red all over?

Headlines of the Day -100:

• REDS SPREADING GERMAN REVOLT
• Evidence Before Lusk Committee Shows Reds Prepared to Meet Militia
• REDS DRIVEN FROM ODESSA AND KHERSON
• REDS FEEL, "HOUR HAS COME."; German Situation Becoming More Critical, Swiss Hear
• Revolution in Italy Plotted with the Aid of Teuton Reds
• REVOLT IN BUDAPEST; BELA KUN SHOT AT; Outbreak Following Split in Soviet Cabinet Put Down by Red Guards

Lotta “Reds,” is what I’m saying.

Asked if Hungarians actually want Communism, Béla Kun says “The majority is passive, but the minority is active.”

German Foreign Minister Hermann Müller and Colonial Minister Johannes Bell arrive in Versailles for the treaty signing. They had to leave Germany in secret so they wouldn’t be assassinated, which probably isn’t the greatest portent.

There was a rumor that the former German crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm had returned to Germany. He hadn’t.

Troops arrive in Hamburg to put down the “red revolt.” Threatening to court-martial and execute anyone found with arms. The Commission of Twelve, whatever that might be, says the riots are actually just protests against adulterated food.

NY state Attorney General Charles Newton plans to revoke the charter of the Rand School of Social Science. Amongst the evidence cited against them from the papers seized in that raid is a plan to organize among the negroes by such insidious means as: “1. Condemn all acts of injustice to the negro. 2. Socialists must stress lynchings in the South and condemn them.” State Sen. Lusk says the plans to spread Bolshevist propaganda among Southern blacks is the greatest menace discovered. The NYT will agree (6/30/19) that the worst thing the Rand School is guilty of is trying to “undermine the loyalty of the negroes”, who are “ill prepared by education or experience for judging the value of these doctrines.” “White Southerners must have quite clear-cut opinions as to the propriety of inculcating their colored neighbors with the tenets of Bolshevism.”

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Today -100: June 27, 1919: Nobody can keep the inevitable from happening

Wartime prohibition (as opposed to 18th Amendment prohibition) will go into effect on the 30th (because the war isn’t officially over), but Congress hasn’t passed enforcement legislation. So they’re thinking of writing legislation that will provide enforcement for it and the 18th when it goes into effect. This is being spearheaded by chair of the House Judiciary Committee Andrew Volstead (R-Minn.). Fun fact about Volstead: he sat in Congress 20 years and is also famous for... no, there’s only one thing he’s famous for.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Supposedly Communists & Spartacists use food riots as cover to seize City Hall. Also, a crowd invade a preserved meat factory and discover the remains of dogs, cats, and rats. The owner & foreman are then forced to eat their own repulsive product.

John Hartfield, a black man, is lynched in Ellisville, Mississippi for an alleged sexual assault. A posse chased him for days, during which time Gov. Theodore Gilmore Bilbo, a huuuuge racist, declared himself “utterly powerless” to intervene because the state has no troops and “excitement is at such a high pitch throughout South Mississippi that any armed attempt to interfere would doubtless result in the deaths of hundreds of persons. The negro has confessed, says he is ready to die, and nobody can keep the inevitable from happening.” Well not with that attitude, mister. Hartfield is hanged from a gum tree, shot while he strangles, and his body burned.

Germany has finally found people willing to sign the peace treaty: Foreign Minister Hermann Müller and Colonial Minister Johannes Bell.

Turkey’s position at the peace talks seems to be that Turkey has no responsibility for the war and was actually entered into the war against its will by a German admiral and any massacres of Armenians are the responsibility of the previous government and anyway lots of Muslims were also slaughtered, so Turkey should be allowed to keep all its territory. The Allies’ reply displays some slight scepticism about this viewpoint and says that peoples should be held responsible for the actions of their government, even ones that installed themselves by a coup. It “wishes well to the Turkish people and admires their excellent qualities. But it cannot admit that among those qualities are to be counted capacity to rule over alien races.”

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Today -100: June 26, 1919: As far as it is possible

The Allies give an ultimatum to Hungary to remove its troops from Czechoslovakia by the 28th. At that time, Romanian troops will leave Hungary.

German President Ebert, Chancellor Bauer & the current government issue a proclamation asking the German people to carry out the peace treaty, “as far as it is possible to carry it out.”

That’s if they can get someone to go to France to sign it. Foreign Minister Hermann Müller refuses. Hindenburg resigns as head of the army.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis is going to Palestine.

A Coney Island magistrate reprimands the police for arresting a woman for wearing a bathing suit underneath a skirt and sweater.

Éamon de Valera wrote Georges Clemenceau last month informing him that Ireland would not be bound by the peace treaty, since the British have no authority to sign on Ireland’s behalf. He did offer to send an Irish delegation, including himself, to sign.

Massachusetts ratifies the women’s suffrage amendment, 185-47 in the House, 34-5 in the Senate.

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Today -100: June 25, 1919: It will be used for the Irish Republic

With the new Bauer government in Germany shaky and not expected to survive long and German emissaries to the Peace Conference mostly having left, there’s some question over when the treaty might be signed by Germany, and by whom. Edgar Haniel von Haimhausen is the highest-ranking diplomat remaining at Versailles, but he’s just the delegation’s secretary and the Allies don’t think he has high enough rank. Which is okay, because his wife has told him if he signs he needn’t bother coming home.

Éamon de Valera’s goal in the US, he says, is not just to get the US to recognize the Irish Republic, but to raise part of a £1 million loan. What will all that dosh be spent on? “It will be used for the Irish Republic.” See, the State Dept (quoted in yesterday’s paper) said that de Valera, escaped jailbird tho’ he is, won’t be detained as long as he doesn’t raise money in the US for a military force in violation of the Neutrality Acts. So with that “used for the Irish Republic” thing he’s carefully not saying that is the purpose nor denying that it is. (Also, de Valera was born in the US and may or not be a citizen).

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Today -100: June 24, 1919: The Government of the German Republic declares that it is ready to accept and sign the peace conditions imposed

Éamon de Valera, Sinn Féin’s putative president of Ireland and escaped British prisoner, is in New York.  Staying at the Waldorf, no less. On his fund-raising tour of the US, he’s spoken with several US senators and a cardinal or two.

The Canadian government, eager to blame the general strike in Winnipeg on foreign agitators, says it will put foreigners who take part in demonstrations in internment camps.

One of the planes of the “Flying Circus,” on an exhibition tour to encourage recruiting for the Air Service, lands on Franklin Field, Boston, more specifically it lands on some children on Franklin Field, killing at least 2 of them.

The German National Assembly authorizes the government to sign the peace treaty without reservations, after the Allies refused a request for a delay of just 48 hours The German government graciously informs the peace conference: “It appears to the Government of the German Republic, in consternation at the last communication of the allied and associated Governments, that these Governments have decided to wrest from Germany by force acceptance of the peace conditions, even those, which, without presenting any material significance, aim at divesting the German people of their honor. ... Yielding to superior force, and without renouncing in the meantime its own view of the unheard of injustice of the peace conditions, the Government of the German Republic declares that it is ready to accept and sign the peace conditions imposed.”

A couple of Republican senators (Walter Edge and Albert Fall) each offer resolutions to simply declare the war over. The idea is that the US can take its time ratifying the treaty – or not – and so be able to resume trade with the former enemy nations like the signatories of the treaty.

An English postal inspector gets a divorce based on a letter a waiter wrote to his wife, which he opened.

Britain says it will court-martial Admiral Ludwig von Reuter for scuttling the German fleet, thus violating the armistice.

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Today -100: June 23, 1919: The time for discussion is past

The German National Assembly votes 237 to 138 to sign the peace treaty. However, the government plans to reject the war guilt part of the treaty and the try-the-kaiser provision and say that since the reparations exceed its ability to pay, Germany won’t accept responsibility for fulfilling them. The Allies respond: “the time for discussion is past” and no qualifications are acceptable.

Marshal Ferdinand Foch is preparing for a possible invasion of Germany in case it refuses to sign. He’s drawn up a proclamation telling Germans not to resist the occupation and hand over weapons, warning that any house from which civilians shoot at Allied troops will be burned down, as was the custom. The NYT correspondent points out a problem if it comes down to a shootin’ war on German territory: will US soldiers be able to identify German soldiers, when pretty much everyone in Germany wears uniforms, from cops and telephone operators to messengers and street-car conductors?

Romania grants citizenship to Jews born in Romania. Or if they served in the military during the Balkan Wars or WW1.

Admiral Ludwig von Reuter says he scuttled the interned ships because he thought the armistice had been terminated, and the kaiser’s wartime orders were for no German ship to be surrendered. The NYT calls the scuttling “a characteristic piece of German treachery”.

British troops in Surrey have been refusing to salute or obey orders, and are especially displeased at orders to go to France. Troops with, yes, machine guns, are sent in to subdue them.

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Today -100: June 22, 1919: Scuttled

Since the Armistice, much of the Germany Navy has been interned at Scapa Flow, Scotland, while the Allies argue about what to do with them. With the signing of the peace treaty imminent, rather than turn the ships over,  Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, using a pre-arranged flag signal, orders the ships scuttled. Which is a fun word to say. Try it now: scuttled scuttled scuttled. 10 battleships, 5 battle cruisers, 5 light cruisers, and 32 torpedo boats are sunk, all without benefit of explosives. Just one capital ship survives. The German sailors then take to life boats. As they approach shore, the British order them to surrender and fire on those that don’t, killing 9, who are the last dead of World War I (unless you count all the people blown up by unexploded ordinance for decades to come).

Winnipeg is placed under martial law after the Royal Northwest Mounted Police shoot into a crowd of strikers, killing 2. Troops with machine guns are stationed throughout the city. Sort of a theme of 1919: the willingness of authorities in many countries to deploy machine guns for crowd control.

The Lusk Committee of the NY Legislature orders raids on the socialist-founded Rand School of Social Science and the offices of the local IWW and of John Reed’s Left Wing Socialists and seize tons of documents . They’re also searching for seditious books and pamphlets.

A new German cabinet forms, with Gustav Bauer (Social Democratic Party) as chancellor. Funny that there’s still a colonial minister.

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Today -100: June 21, 1919: The Huns of the East have come

Headline of the Day -100: 

Literally the Antichrist.  “The Bolsheviki, it is said, are opposing the movement by means of an active propaganda.”

Pres. Wilson will appoint a commission to investigate the pogroms in Poland, headed by Henry Morgenthau, who as ambassador to Turkey did so much to investigate and make public the Armenian Genocide. 2 other members of the 7-person commission will be Jews-to-be-named-later.

German Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann and his cabinet resign because no one wants to take responsibility for Germany signing the peace terms, even though pretty much everyone grudgingly accepts that there is no alternative. The Reichstag is considering putting the thing to a referendum.

Sen. James Phelan (D-California) tells the House Immigration Committee that the US should ban all Japanese immigration. “The Huns of the East have come. Already they have spread over California and are stripping the state of its Americanism.” Also they’re taking over Mexico. They “must be eliminated entirely like a swarm of locusts.” The problem, he says, is that they want to become landowners and work for themselves (just like locusts!), so they take the means of livelihood from whites, who naturally become Bolsheviks and Wobblies, that’s just science.

F.E. Morris of the National Safety Council says that during the 19 months the US was in the war, 56,000 soldiers died while in the US 226,000 people were killed in accidents. Morris has also discovered that women get into accidents getting off street cars at much higher rates than men because they do so backwards, which he explains with some nonsense about women being right-handed and men more ambidextrous.

Catholic priests in Loreto, Italy, go on strike for higher wages.

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Today -100: June 20, 1919: Of ruins, confidence, brutality, and brass & machine guns

Headline of the Day -100: 

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando 

loses a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies, 259-78. I’m not sure to what extent this is about disappointment over the peace terms and how much about internal matters, namely the high cost of living. (The NYT suggests tomorrow that Orlando took up the annexationists’ maximal territorial demands in order to distract from economic conditions, which just lead to disappointment when he failed to get the Allies to agree to all his demands.)

Headline of the Day -100:  

The lower house of the Ohio Legislature passes a resolution asking Governor James Cox to block the Jack Dempsey-Jess Willard heavyweight world champion boxing match, saying such matches are “brutal in their nature and not conducive to good morals.” I assume their real reason it that they all put money on Willard before seeing how fat he’s gotten.

A strike at brass factories in Waterbury, Connecticut leads to violence between picketers and scabs and fights with the cops, one of whom is probably fatally wounded. Machine guns are set up on roofs, but not used on the strikers, yet.

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Today -100: June 19, 1919: Of rejections, noisy incidents, canals, and censorship

The German delegates to the peace conference recommend that Germany reject the terms.

French Prime Minister Clemenceau apologizes to the German delegates for “some noisy incidents” at Versailles, by which he means a crowd throwing stones at the delegates’ cars, hitting one or two in the head. The prefect of the Seine and the police commissioner have been fired.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is considering a new treaty with Colombia, giving it $25m in compensation for stealing Panama, but not apologizing for stealing Panama.

US postal censorship will end this week.

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Today -100: June 18, 1919: Of hotbeds of war, ignored Ireland, and pastor piles

The Austrian delegation to the peace talks presents a memorandum complaining about the peace terms and saying that the creation of all those new Balkan states just creates “another hotbed of war.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Secretary of State Lansing will pass the Senate’s resolution on Ireland along to the conference without comment.

The Illinois Legislature ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment, again. There was some sort of error in the text the first time.

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s Sgt. Alvin York’s pastor, accompanying him on a visit to Nashville, who says the show was not what he expected and “that was no place for Pastor Pile,” because of course Sgt. York’s pastor is called “Pastor Pile.”

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Today -100: June 17, 1919: Of suffrage, armies, and pointed toes

Both houses of the New York Legislature ratify the women’s suffrage amendment, with no opposing votes.

Ohio and Kansas also ratify.

The US troops that invaded Mexico are already back in the US, with a few prisoners and claims to have killed 50 of Pancho Villa’s men, with one US dead.

Secretary of War Newton Baker asks Congress to fund a 500,000-man Army instead of the 300,000 they voted for. Army Chief of Staff Gen. March says 500,000 would require conscription; Baker disagrees, provided soldiers are given education, entertainment, and girls. Baker says the Army needs to buttress the Mexican border and break down all the military installations it built in France, requiring a lot of warm bodies.

Also, the US is currently moving forces into place to, potentially, invade Costa Rica to crush the revolution there.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: June 16, 1919: Of alcocks, knoxes, and burning cars

Alcock and Brown successfully cross the Atlantic in a non-stop flight, sometimes upside down. 1,980 miles in 16 hours, 12 minutes, Newfoundland to Ireland.

Republicans in the Senate are pushing the Knox Resolution (sponsored by Philander Knox, Taft’s secretary of state), which demands that the treaty be rewritten so that the US and other nations can join the League of Nations at some later date or, you know, not. Others point out that the League is so woven into the treaty that the treaty falls apart without it.

US troops cross into Mexico to go after Pancho Villa’s followers, whose bullets crossed the border into El Paso during a firefight with Federal forces.

The US Army has lots of cars in France, and would prefer to sell them to French people rather than ship them home. But the French government says no as part of its protectionist policy. So the Army is burning them.

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Today -100: June 15, 1919: Of long flights, deadlines, and Charlie Chaplin sunnyside up

In yet another attempt at yet another aviation milestone, Capt. John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Brown begin an attempt to make a non-stop cross-Atlantic flight in a Vickers-Vimy biplane.

The Allies complete their reply to Germany’s objections to peace treaty terms with minor modifications (for example, Germany will be admitted to the League of Nations, after it fulfills every single requirement of the treaty). Germany will now have 5 days to sign or be invaded and blockaded again. Incidentally, the Big Five haven’t bothered informing other allies of the changes they’ve made. The changes we know about include changing the occupation authority in the Rhine from a military one to a civilian commission, with one member appointed by each Big Power.

Gen. Leonard Wood, the commander of the Central Department, says if ex-soldiers don’t get jobs, they’ll go Bolshevik, and you wouldn’t like them when they’re Bolshevik. There is a federal employment agency for discharged soldiers, but industry is lobbying to shut it down, because capitalism. The Re-Employment Bureau for Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines’ NYC branch says that some returning military folks are upset at not getting their old jobs back, because those were given to pacifists and aliens, and some aren’t getting their old salaries, because the women who filled their jobs during the war did the same work just as well for less money.

Now Playing:

Not the best Chaplin, not the worst. Also opening today, and also playing at the Strand: Fatty Arbuckle’s A Desert Hero (a lost film).

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Today -100: June 14, 1919: Of ignored Turks, dissatisfied Berlin, and parlor coal diggers

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Turkish delegation to the peace conference arrived a couple of days ago, and nobody is talking to them.

Headline of the Day -100:  

By some minor changes to the peace terms.

Secretary of Labor William Wilson tells the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor that the IWW and Bolsheviks are not significant among “real” wage workers but only among “parlor coal diggers.” American workers, he says, don’t want a dictatorship of the proletariat.

The AFL convention votes to allow blacks into international unions, but if any unions continue to discriminate against negroes, the AFL will grant separate charters to negro organizations.

Race riots continue in Cardiff, Wales between locals and non-white workers (blacks, Arabs) brought in during the war.

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Today -100: June 13, 1919: Of red raids, white bread, and ruined children

Just as the NY Legislature begins its investigation into Teh Reds, cops and, for some reason, private detectives raid the Russian Soviet Bureau. Papers are removed and people questioned, and the chair of the investigating committee, Sen. Clayton Lusk (it will soon become known as the Lusk Committee), has come to the conclusion that the Russian Soviet Bureau is issuing propaganda intended to justify the Russian Soviet form of government. Gasp horrors.

Speaking of soviet forms of government, one is rumored to be proclaimed in Austria this coming Sunday. So something to look forward to.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Headline of the Day -100:  

According to an unnamed Swiss schoolteacher who has recently left Russia, children are now subjected to a regime of “unlimited indulgence of idleness and pleasure,” with no school books or homework, lots of dancing, illiterate teachers, and co-education (which, since religious education is banned, will obviously lead to moral depravity in a primitive country like Russia, she says).

In New York, high school students will be asked questions about the war. They can choose 4 questions to answer from 6 about battles, people, why the US entered the war, etc. But there’s a deeply suspicious question which is the only one mandatory for everyone to answer:

Accompanying this are these instructions to teachers: “call the Principal’s attention to any papers which show an especially intimate knowledge of this subject, those particularly which indicate that the pupils have been submitted to systematic training along this line. We are desirous of finding out to what extent Bolshevist ideas have been impressed upon the students of our high schools.”  The teachers’ union will object to this test, possibly believing that the administration is trying to fire teachers who may have taught radical ideas to their classes.

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Today -100: June 12, 1919: Of treaties and royal suicides

The Senate investigation of the leak of the draft peace treaty points the finger at employees of J.P. Morgan. Republicans deny Gilbert Hitchcock’s (D-Neb.) charge that senators who’d been shown copies were “receiving stolen goods.”

Crown Prince Carol of Romania, 25, attempts suicide by, um, shooting himself in the leg, in reaction to his parents forcing him to divorce the commoner he married against their wishes last year.

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Today -100: June 11, 1919: Of unions, women’s suffrage, undying fires, and jazz credit

The Negro Workers’ Advisory Committee, which represents black labor, welfare, religious etc groups in the Chicago area (?), asks the AFL to get international unions to stop banning black members. And 2,000 members of the Richmond branch of the Virginia Federation of Labor withdraw (unclear if that means they quit as individuals or seceded as a body) in protest at a black man being seated as a member of the Executive Committee. 

Illinois ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment, the first state to do so, followed later in the day by Michigan. Gov. Al Smith has called the NY Legislature into a special session. Assembly Speaker Thaddeus Sweet complains that it’s an unnecessary expense, which is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect someone named Thaddeus Sweet to say.

The US tells Costa Rica not to invade Nicaragua.

An ad for H.G. Wells’s new novel The Undying Fire quotes a New York Sun review, “It may stand out as a landmark of our time a century from today.” Nope.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Literal cats. One senses that Le Matin does not appreciate jazz music.

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Today -100: June 10, 1919: Of treaties, suffrage, and pickle deluges

Woodrow Wilson refused to provide the Senate a copy of the draft treaty, so Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) starts to read out the leaked version, which he was given by the Chicago Tribune. Dems object (Marcus Smith of Arizona calls the illicit acquisition of the treaty a “crime against humanity”). Several hours of debate ensue, but finally the document is put into the Senate record.

Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge passes the federal women’s suffrage Amendment to the General Court, with his personal recommendation that they ratify it.

The hopes for an independent Rhineland are fading (and French support falling away).

Liechtenstein threatens to cut communications with the peace conference (which would also cut Paris-Vienna communications) if it doesn’t get a response to its request to join the League of Nations.

Headline of the Day -100:

A low-flying airplane panics horses pulling a pickle wagon...

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