Today -100: March 16, 1914: Of rangers, streetcars, war scares, and llamas

Suffrage graffiti appears all over Birmingham Cathedral, including on the Burne-Jones stained-glass windows.

Oh, there are only 15 Texas Rangers total. Anyway, they’re all now stationed on the Mexican border.

A wildcat strike hits Terra Haute, Ind. streetcars, literally, with some cars wrecked.

The Russian cabinet explains to leaders of the Duma the need to increase the military by 460,000 men.

Headline of the Day -100: “PLEASED WITH WAR SCARE.; German Chauvinists Congratulate Themselves on Its Success.” Jingo newspapers think the scare they, um, scared up has intimidated Russia.

Headline of the Day -100 (yes, there’s a second headline of the day -100 because shut up): “Llama for Bryan Ordered Deported.” A gift to the secretary of state from the mayor of Buenos Aires, the curly-haired llama has foot-and-mouth disease. Since it would be destroyed if sent back, it will be sent on to London,

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Weakness is despised

John McCain, in an op-ed in the NYT, says Putin’s “world is a brutish, cynical place, where power is worshiped, weakness is despised, and all rivalries are zero-sum.” John McCain, the king – nay, the tsar! – of self-awareness strikes again.

Showing his usual prescience, McCain thinks Putin will be overthrown by a popular uprising, if only Obama stands up to him.

I especially liked this line: “His Russia is not a great power on par with America. It is a gas station run by a corrupt, autocratic regime.” Again with the self-awareness.

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Today -100: March 15, 1914: Mrs. Pankhurst is persecuting the Government without mercy

The NYT calls for a new trial for Leo Frank. It doesn’t mention, no one ever mentions, that one of the reasons why he was railroaded and why there was such an outcry against him was that he is Jewish. Evidently in Atlanta they hated Jews more than they hated black men who killed 14-year-old girls.

A day after the Daily Mail crows that the militant suffragette movement in Britain is dying out, suffragettes break the windows of Home Secretary Reginald McKenna’s home. All cabinet ministers’ houses have police protection these days, so they’re all arrested. One tells the court: “It is a lucky thing for you we do not shoot.”

Emmeline Pankhurst is released from prison into a nursing home, after a hunger and thirst strike. She was not forcibly fed. Sylvia Pankhurst, also hunger-striking, gets out of prison the same day.

The NYT says “All the suffragists condemn the Government in heated terms. Mrs. Pankhurst is released because she threatens to starve herself to death, and the harridans insist that the Government is persecuting Mrs. Pankhurst. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Pankhurst is persecuting the Government without mercy.”

Kaiser Wilhelm orders all military officers to prevent their wives riding horses except side saddle.

Austria-Hungary, worried about the strength of its military, bans the emigration of men aged 17 to 36.

Theodore Roosevelt sends a dispatch from his Amazonian adventures.

Predictable Headline of the Day -100: “Ulster, Immovable, Demands Even More.” Ulster Unionists won’t accept an exclusion from Home Rule that is less than permanent, and want the entire province excluded, including the counties in which Protestants are in the minority (5 of the 9 counties of Northern Ireland). Arms smuggling and drilling continue apace, as is the custom.

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill gives a speech about Northern Ireland in Bradford, and the NYT leaves out the important bits, the bits that Ulsterites took as a declaration of war:

If Ulstermen extend the hand of friendship, it will be clasped by Liberals and by their Nationalist countrymen in all good faith and in all good will; but if there is no wish for peace; if every concession that is made is spurned and exploited; if every effort to meet their views is only to be used as a means of breaking down Home Rule and of barring the way to the rest of Ireland; if the Government and Parliament of this great country and greater Empire are to be exposed to menace and brutality; if all the loose, wanton, and reckless chatter we have been forced to listen to these many months is in the end to disclose a sinister and revolutionary purpose; then I can only say to you, Let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof.

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Today -100: March 14, 1914: Of dances not conducive to propriety, happy hoboes, crazed explorers, refugees, monopolies, and frank witnesses

Italian troops kill 263 natives in still-unpacified Libya, as was the custom.

The Massachusetts Legislature rejects a bill to ban the tango and other dances “not conducive to propriety.”

Happy Headline of the Day -100: “Hobo Army Happy.” Yolo County ordered the unemployed men to leave, but it lacks sufficient police to enforce the order. The unemployed non-marchers are currently being fed by Sacramento unions while Sacramento, Yolo, Placer and Nevada counties debate what to do about them. The governor of Nevada says he’ll stop them at the border. “So Kelley’s men continue to fish, eat, and bask in the sunshine.”

Crazed Headline of the Day -100: “Crazed by the Antarctic.” Sydney Jeffreys, the wireless operator on ill-fated Mawson expedition, driven crazy by memories of the cold and starvation and whatnot, wanders off into the Australian bush to die but is found before he succeeds. He’s now in a nice warm lunatic asylum.

The US bills the Mexican government $100,000 for the care and feeding of Mexican refugees. Huerta is disinclined to pay. Meanwhile, lawyers for 3,600 Mexican soldiers interned at Fort Bliss are filing habeas writs claiming that while the Hague treaty requires soldiers escaping a war into a third country to be held for the duration of that war, this does not apply to civil wars.

Supposedly, King George has told Prime Minister Asquith that while his government does indeed have an electoral mandate for Home Rule (contrary to the position of the Tories), it lacks one to coerce Northern Ireland. He bases this on Asquith’s off-hand remark during the last elections that he didn’t contemplate the possibility of Ulster resistance. This royal intervention (if the story is true) was responsible for Asquith’s offer of referenda in the nine NI counties on a temporary opt-out.

Pres. Wilson decides not to protest on behalf of Standard Oil (as the Taft Administration did) against German moves to establish a state oil monopoly (it would still import about the same amount of American oil, just not necessarily as much from Standard).

Another witness in the Leo Frank case comes forward. She heard screams, presumably those of Mary Phagan being murdered, but the solicitor-general couldn’t get her to change her story to say that they occurred at the time his theory of the case called for, rather than at a time when Frank had an alibi, and he never called her as a witness.

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Today -100: March 13, 1914: Ton Jo

The NY state Senate rejects a bill to make insanity and confinement to an institution for more than a decade a legal cause for divorce.

Sacramento and three surrounding counties come to an agreement for dealing with the “hobo army” of the unemployed. If they agree to be dispersed in groups no larger than 50, their rail fare will be paid (up to 50 miles). They will not be permitted to march in a group, and if they refuse, well...

Mary Richardson is sentenced to six months for slashing the Rokeby Venus (“malicious damage to a picture”), although of course she will hunger strike. This is the maximum sentence for damaging a work of art in a public museum; had it been privately owned she could have gotten two years. Had it been a window she could have gotten 18 months.

Pres. Wilson’s daughter Eleanor Wilson is engaged to Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo. She’s 24, he’s 50 and even in 1914 they knew that was icky.

Danish political parties come to an agreement on a suffrage bill removing property qualifications and giving the vote to women.

The front page of Le Figaro features a photograph of a 13-year-old letter written by Finance Minister (and former prime minister) Joseph Caillaux to his future first wife while she was still married to her first husband, although Le Fig doesn’t disclose to whom the letter was written or that it was supplied to the paper by the bitter former Madame Caillaux, who he divorced a few years back to marry a woman he also lured away from her husband, because he was just that French and that studly.



The letter, signed Ton Jo (your Jo), includes some political tittle-tattle about Caillaux (who was finance minister then too) sabotaging a tax bill he publicly supported; the date of the letter is not shown in the reproduction in order to mislead readers into thinking that it was a recent letter about current tax debates. Le Fig’s editor Gaston Calmette was a bit of a dick and has been pursuing a vendetta against Caillaux for some time.

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Today -100: March 12, 1914: Did you ever hear of a woman losing an argument with a man?

Pres. Wilson is moving two more infantry regiments to the border, mostly to prevent Texas Gov. Colquist invading Mexico. Colquist, who is sending more Texas Rangers to the border, gives a speech in which he says “I defy any authority on the face of the earth, Washington included, to prevent me from protecting our citizens along the border.” I suppose a US-Texas war would be entirely out of the question? Because that would be awesome.

The Colorado Democratic Party has to remove Gertrude Lee as chair of the party’s state Central Committee, because Democratic party rules don’t allow a woman to run a campaign – and this in a state with women’s suffrage. Mrs. Lee was quoted by the LA Times last week: “There is no reason why a woman should not be as good a campaigner as a man. Did you ever hear of a woman losing an argument with a man?”

Sacramento police forbid the supplying of food to the encampment of the unemployed marchers. Surrounding counties are threatening to meet them with armed force if Sac County decides to move them on once again. Plans to disperse them in small groups are thwarted because the railroads refuse to carry them since the practice of moving undesirables on to other counties, as has been happening for days, is illegal under California law. Gov. Hiram Johnson insists there is no unemployment problem but rather a problem of men who prefer vagrancy and will not work.

Following the Rokeby Venus incident yesterday, all the big museums in London are closed. London businesses dependent on the tourist trade are worried. Fat American tourists are moving on to Paris.

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson has a counter-offer: he’ll call an Ulster convention to consider Asquith’s plan, provided that the period for which counties can vote to exclude themselves from Home Rule is extended from six years to forever.

23 lawsuits arising from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire are settled with the building’s insurance company for $75 each, if you’re wondering what a dead seamstress was worth.

Gen. Scott refuses to allow the lawyers working on habeas corpus petitions for Mexicans being held in Fort Bliss into the fort to sign up clients.

The NYC Board of Education says that “most imbeciles and all idiots can in no way derive any lasting benefits from attendance at the public school. Their mental condition cannot be improved either by the course of study or discipline. The only practical and humane solution is institutional care.” It suggests the appointment of a state commission to investigate a “permanent solution” that might include involuntary sterilization and compulsory segregation.

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Today -100: March 11, 1914: You can get another picture, but you cannot get a life

In the National Gallery in London, Suffragette Mary Richardson slashes Velasquez’s Vensus at Her Mirror (aka the Rokeby Venus)

in protest at the treatment of Emmeline Pankhurst. She tells the cops who arrest her: “You can get another picture, but you cannot get a life, as they are killing Mrs. Pankhurst.” And in a statement sent to the WSPU she said, “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history.” In court, she tells the judge, “You must surely see that you cannot administer the dead letter of the law against the spirit of the new letter as manifest in the Suffragette!” Richardson claimed in her 1953 memoirs that she got permission for this action from Christabel Pankhurst. She explained, “I had to draw the parallel between the public’s indifference to Mrs. Pankhurst’s slow destruction and the destruction of some financially valuable object.” Certainly the act shocked a British grown jaded by mere arson.

The National Gallery will be closed until further notice.

(The painting, which took multiple serious-looking cuts, has been pretty much fully restored.)

Meanwhile, Mrs Pankhurst is removed from Glasgow to London, with a large number of cops necessary to thwart plans to rescue her by suffragettes in London, and suffragettes who rode to London on the same train.

The NYT says that the British government is getting what it deserves for its earlier “foolish tolerance” – arrests, imprisonments, forcible feeding, the Cat & Mouse Act, you know, tolerance – of the “harridans called militants.”

The London Times, due to the grave political situation (Ireland, not women’s suffrage), is temporarily reducing its price to 1p.

It seems that Clemente Vergara’s body was recovered from Mexico not through a sneak invasion by the Texas Rangers but through the power of bribery. Also, initial reports that Vergara’s hand was burned were wrong.

Germany demands an increase to three cardinals in the Catholic Church.

The German stock exchange drops due to rumors of a war between Russia and Germany.

The Colorado militia invades the tent city of striking miners near Ludlow. All strikers without wives or children are ordered to leave. The union says the colony is on land leased by the union.


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Today -100: March 10, 1914: Texas has not committed an act of aggression against Mexico

Texas Gov. Oscar Branch Colquitt says that Wilson’s Mexico policy is “a crime against civilization.” Texas governors, always so subtle. He blames Wilson’s “namby-pamby policy” for the outrages against American citizens. He again denies that the Texas Rangers crossed into Mexico: “Texas has not committed an act of aggression against Mexico... but Mexico, by reason of the conditions existing in that country, is constantly committing acts of aggression against the citizens of Texas.” He says each state has the right of self-defense.

Sen. Albert Fall (R-New Mexico) gives the names of 79 Americans he says have been killed in Mexico and calls for military intervention in Mexico, but says “we do not war upon the Mexican nation or people... it is not our purpose to acquire territory, upset their laws or overturn their constitution; and with an invitation to the masses of the Mexican people to cooperate with us...” We’ll be greeted as liberators! “...we should immediately direct the use of the land and naval forces of this Government for the protection of our citizens and other foreigners in Mexico and lend their assistance to the restoration of order and maintenance of peace in that unhappy country.” In other words, Senator Fall owns property in Mexico.

The NYT calls bullshit: “‘Intervention’ in the Southwest has always meant annexation.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Streams of Water Rout 1,500 Hoboes.” Sacramento decides to deal with the unemployed army by driving them out of the capital with beatings and water cannon (except for the leaders, who are arrested) and keeping them from returning by lining the bridge over the Sac River with cops with shoot-to-kill orders.

NY Gov. Glynn plans to deal with the unemployed movement in NYC by removing the unemployed from the city and putting them to work as farm laborers. Their wives can be maids. Problem solved.

The National Civic Federation responds to the IWW threat by setting up a committee chaired by Alton Parker, the Democratic candidate for president in 1904, “to study the scope and limits of the rights of free speech and assembly both from the standpoints of the individual and of public order and welfare.” The NYT thinks the IWW’s ideas are outside of Constitutional protection.

Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested in Glasgow at a public meeting. Suffragists resist with pails of water, guns firing blanks, and small bombs. Also, the platform on which Mrs P was speaking was protected by barbed wire cunningly concealed by floral decoration. She will be moved to London.

NY State Supreme Court Justice Chester denies former Gov. Sulzer’s application to be paid his post-impeachment salary. Because it would have prejudiced this case, poor Bill hasn’t drawn his salary as a member of the Assembly.

British Prime Minister Asquith offers concessions on Ulster: before Home Rule goes into effect, there will be referenda in each of the nine counties in Northern Ireland (note: present-day NI consists of 6 of those counties) on whether to exclude the county from Home Rule for six years. Sir Edward Carson calls this plan “a sentence of death with a stay of execution.”

But that’s not the only important issue being addressed by Parliament: the House of Commons is considering a Plumage Bill, which would ban the importation and sale of the plumage of wild birds.

Foreshadowy Headline of the Day -100: “Mrs. Wilson Still Ill.”

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Today -100: March 9, 1914: Of bodies

The body of Clemente Vergara, the American rancher killed by Mexican federal soldiers, is returned to the US by persons unknown, supposedly. The Texas governor’s office absolutely denies the rumor that the Texas Rangers crossed into Mexico to retrieve it. I have no idea whether to believe him. Vergara’s body has three bullet wounds, a broken skull, and charred fingers (so he was tortured before being killed).

The Italian cabinet resigns.

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Today -100: March 8, 1914: Of two-by-four know-it-alls, vodka, unemployed armies, monks, and hearing voices

In Congress, Rep. Asbury Lever (D-SC) quoted unfavorably a remark he’d overheard in his hotel dining room by “one of those two-by-four know-it-alls” that only farmers and criminals can get money from the government. As it happened, the very same two-by-four know-it-all was in the gallery at that moment and sent him a note saying he’d be at the Shoreham Hotel if Lever wanted to challenge him to a duel or have lunch with him. Lever has called the hotel three times without finding the two-by-four know-it-all in, but it is unknown which offer he desired to take up.

Czar Nicholas goes to war against vodka (spoiler alert: vodka will win; vodka always wins), ordering the end of the ceremony at the end of every army parade in which commanders toast the imperial family in front of the troops. The czar would like to reduce the state’s financial dependence on its vodka monopoly (one-third of state revenue), but is facing opposition from his cabinet.

Despite the case against him having fallen apart since his trial, Leo Frank is re-sentenced to be hanged on April 17th. His 30th birthday.

The unemployed army demand that California Gov. Hiram Johnson provide them food and transportation to the state border. He refuses, but offers them work. They say they’ll finish their march to Washington first.

There’s a Supreme Court case about a guy, Augustine Wirth, who quit the Benedictine monks in 1897, got fairly wealthy writing books, and died in 1907. The Benedictines are claiming that his estate should go to them rather than to his heirs because he took a vow of poverty.

Headline of the Day -100: “Helen Keller Hears Voice.” The high notes of an opera singer singing Die Walküre.

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Today -100: March 7, 1914: Of drunks, the unemployed, and extraditions

The Special Commission on drunkenness appointed by the Massachusetts Legislature says that prohibition is a bad idea and that drunks should receive medical treatment rather than prison sentences.

Here’s how California cities have decided to deal with the army of the unemployed that intended to make its way to D.C.: Contra Costa County (Richmond, I assume) is sending them north to Benicia, which plans to ship them to the Sacramento area...

Suffragettes camp out for 40 hours on the doorstep of Ulster Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson in an attempt to extract a promise from him that no deal on Ulster would be acceptable that did not include women’s suffrage. Carson has stayed inside for two days, claiming to have a cold.

Texas Gov. Oscar Branch Colquitt decides to send extradition requests for the Federal soldiers who killed Clemente Vergara to both the Federals and Constitutionalists who claim authority in the states of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. The extradition would only be for horse theft, since the shooting took place on the Mexican side of the border.

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Today -100: March 6, 1914: Of watchful waiting, unemployed marchers, lèse-majesté, and hollow legs

Pres. Wilson asks Congress to repeal the act which exempts American ships from the Panama Canal toll.

Brazil declares a state of siege in major cities. Because of an insurrection, not because of Theodore Roosevelt.

Secretary of State Bryan convinces the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to shelve a resolution asking the administration for an account of Mexican outrages against Americans. However, the New Jersey Legislature is considering a resolution declaring that Wilson’s “watchful waiting” policy just encourages barbaric practices.

Huerta suggests that his regime and the US could work together to suppress disorder in Mexico, and the US could start by reimposing the ban on arms shipments. The Wilson administration plans to ignore this note.

The lower house of the Austrian Parliament, which was suspended five weeks ago after “violent obstruction” by Czech deputies, resumes its session and is immediately suspended due to more of the same.

An intended march by 2,000 unemployed men from San Francisco to Washington DC ends abruptly in Oakland, when cops with rifles round them up and put them on streetcars to Richmond, for some reason, I guess just passing the problem along, where they rioted until dispersed by more violent cops.

New York cops break up an IWW meeting in Seward Park. The NYPD announces that all future IWW meetings in public places will be dealt with similarly, though meetings in hired halls may proceed unmolested.

The Suffragette says that the Women’s Social and Political Union now wants a Tory government, because at least then Liberal and Labour politicians would condemn trickery and torture. The WSPU has taken to heckling Labour Party leader Ramsay MacDonald at every public meeting at which he speaks.

More alibi witnesses turn up for Leo Frank. The detective accused of suborning perjury says he’ll whip anyone who says so, which presumably means the 15-year-old who recanted his testimony yesterday.

In Germany, Hans Leuss is sentenced to six months in a closed-door trial for writing an article saying that the crown prince’s telegram of congratulations to the colonel responsible for the military clashes with civilians in Zabern, Alsace meant that it would be a misfortune if he became king.

Headline of the Day -100 (L.A. Times): “Hollow Legs Convict Him.” Chair legs, as it turns out, not human ones. Something to do (the article is unclear) with spiritualists tricking people at a seance.

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Today -100: March 5, 1914: Of perjury, church invasions, battlin’ governors, department stores, and bentons

Another of the witnesses against Leo Frank, a 15-year-old newsboy, recants his testimony, saying he was coerced into lying by the detective and DA.

NYPD arrest 190 IWW church invaders in St Alphonsus Church (Catholic). They asked Father Hanley if they could stay there – No – if he’d give them money – No – food – No – work – No. He later complained that they were wearing hats.

Headline of the Day -100: “Blease Near a Fist Fight.” South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease goes to the Legislature to make some remarks about an inquiry into something or other, tries to start a fight with a rep. who pointed out that he had no right to just come in and speak. The governor went as far as to take his coat off but sadly there were no fisticuffs. That’s our Coley!

The Italian Chamber of Deputies passes a budget for the colony of Libya, which I only mention because I believe it’s the first time I’ve seen the name Libya used, although until the 1920s Italy treated Libya as the two provinces of Tripoli and Cyrenaica, as they had been under the Ottomans.

Gordon Selfridge spends $1,250,000 on the shop next to his, to turn Selfridge’s in London into a mega-store, as depicted in that not-very-interesting tv series.

The commission that was supposed to examine the body of William Benton gives up, convinced that the rebels are using delaying tactics endlessly while the corpse deteriorates.

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Today -100: March 4, 1914: Of rangers, women’s suffrage, women cops, war plans, nipped plans, and Americans abroad

Texas Gov. Oscar Branch Colquitt sends an open letter to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, asking to be allowed to send the Texas Rangers into Mexico. Since the Mexican government has failed to rein in its marauders, it’s up to us, he says. Actually, it’s not clear to me what the T-Rangers are supposed to do when they catch up to bandits. Drag them back over the border for trial? Or just kill them on foreign soil, which seems to be suggested by his approving references to times in the past when the Rangers ranged across the Rio Grande “in pursuit of bandits, marauders, and inflicted chastisement to them on Mexican soil.”

Congress is considering a women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution. Arguing against, Sen. Nathan Philemon Bryan (D-Fla.) makes the states’ rights argument that California has no more right to say whether negro women can vote in Florida than Florida has to say that Japanese can vote in California. Suffragist witnesses warn of dire consequences which will be inflicted on the Democratic Party by the 4 million women in suffrage states if Democrats block this. And Dr. Mary Walker insists that women already have a constitutional right to vote. Margery Dorman of the Wage-Earners’ Anti-Suffrage League of NY, which I’ve never heard of, says that women’s participation in the world of paid work is only “transitory and accidental” and they lack the experience to cope with government’s problems.

Chicago Police Chief James Gleason removes policewomen who had been sent to deal with a strike by waitresses at a downtown restaurant. He says that evidently women will resist arrest when the cop is female.

The Cologne Gazette claims that Russia is secretly planning for a war with Germany. The plans may not be complete until 1917. (This is not entirely inaccurate: Russia was working, not secretly because how could you, on extending its railroad network to the German border, facilitating troop movements in event of war, and the German military did therefore consider 1917 a sort of deadline, if they were going to have a war with Russia. Ironically, the absence of those rail lines in 1914 meant that it would take a long time to mobilize the Russian army, so they had to make the decision to start mobilizing early if they didn’t want to be over-run if a war started, and when they did so, there were threats and ultimata...)

Confusing Headline of the Day -100: “NIP PLOT TO BRING STRONG OPIUM HERE; Customs Inspectors Find Chinamen Had Arranged to Smuggle in Persian Drug.” At first I thought the NYT had gotten its racist epithets mixed up, but it’s “nip” as in put a stop to. I should have known the NYT would never gets its racist epithets mixed up.

Austria-Hungary sentences 32 Ruthenians to prison for inciting rebellion, by which is meant trying to convert Ruthenians to Russian Orthodox Christianity.

Theodore Roosevelt is not making a good impression in Brazil. Despite receiving lavish hospitality, including Brazil’s president turning over Guanabara Palace and its servants to him for a week, he sent bills for every speech he gave, including one for $3,000 for a short lecture to the Rio Historical and Geographical Society. Also, he kept talking about the Monroe Doctrine.

(Update: or possibly that was all made up??)

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Constant training exercises and the International Fallout of Doom

Obama is interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg News.

On Israel-Palestinian negotiations: “There comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices. Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time?” It’s been 47 years, and he thinks that Israel is discomfited by the thought of permanent occupation?

“Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?” Well, Netanyahu again today demanded that Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state,” so um, yeah.

Asked whether Iran takes seriously Obama’s threats over their nuclear program: “We have a high degree of confidence that when they look at 35,000 U.S. military personnel in the region that are engaged in constant training exercises under the direction of a president who already has shown himself willing to take military action in the past, that they should take my statements seriously. And the American people should as well, and the Israelis should as well, and the Saudis should as well.” Constant training exercises, people! Be afraid, be very afraid!

Okay, nobody believes the US is going to invade Iran, so this is just another case of Obama, as Gene Weingarten put it on Twitter, rattling Nerf sabres. But he did just threaten to invade Iran unless he gets his way so, um, that happened.

He says he opposes Congressional attempts to impose new sanctions on Iran because there are always little pauses in negotiations: “Even in the old Westerns or gangster movies, right, everyone puts their gun down just for a second. You sit down, you have a conversation; if the conversation doesn’t go well, you leave the room and everybody knows what’s going to happen and everybody gets ready. But you don’t start shooting in the middle of the room during the course of negotiations.” Nothing says negotiating in good faith like references to Gunfight at the O.K. Corral fantasies.

On Israeli settlement activity: “The U.S. commitment to Israel’s security is not subject to periodic policy differences.” Wow, good poker face there, Barack.

So what can he threaten Israel with? “if you see no peace deal and continued aggressive settlement construction -- and we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time -- if Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.” So he’s threatening Israel with... international fallout. Is that anything like the “costs” he’s threatening Russia with? And notice he’s saying he’ll still try to manage that international fallout and protect Israel from the consequences of doing things he doesn’t want it to do.

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I’d make them salute the flag if we had to blow up the whole place

Sometimes the present and one-century-ago align themselves thematically with perfect precision, and sometimes they annoy me by being just slightly off. This is one of those times.

In honor of John Kerry’s repeated statements yesterday against Russia’s “trumped-up excuses” in “behaving in a 19th-century fashion” in Crimea, I bring you an early preview of my post scheduled for April 15, covering the start of the US occupation of Vera Cruz on that date in 1914:

In response to the Mexican Federal regime’s refusal to fire a 21-gun salute to the US flag, as ordered by Adm. Mayo, to apologize for the insult of having briefly detained some American sailors who were wandering around a war zone in uniform, Pres. Wilson is sending the entire North Atlantic fleet to Tampico. Or, to put it another way, Admiral Badger is being sent to back up Admiral Mayo.

Any wariness in Congress about military intervention has evaporated: “No Senator questioned the right of the United States to occupy Tampico or Vera Cruz as a step to enforce respect for the uniform, and all agreed that a firm course must be followed from now on. Many Senators of long experience and conservative judgment expressed the view that the ordering of the fleet to Tampico meant armed intervention, but this belief did not seem to lessen their satisfaction. ... There was little inclination to comment on the fact that stronger measures seemed to be in contemplation to enforce a matter of etiquette than were adopted as a result of the murdering of American and foreign residents in Mexico.” Sen. Chilton (D-West Virginia): “I’d make them salute the flag if we had to blow up the whole place.”

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Today -100: March 3, 1914: Everything in this world belongs to us, and we’re going to take it

The Industrial Workers of the World are organizing the unemployed in New York City (which is experiencing storms and very cold weather) to occupy churches. Local IWW leader Frank Tannenbaum tells workers not to accept charity, because they built this city and own a share of it: “Everything in this world belongs to us, and we’re going to take it.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Eminent Britons Threaten Revolt.” Revolt against Home Rule, if it is passed without there having been an election first. The eminent ones include Viscount Milner, Lord Balfour, Rudyard Kipling, etc.

Emmeline Pankhurst sent the king a letter demanding that he meet a deputation. Norah Dacre-Fox says that if he refuses, they will go anyway.

The Philippine Assembly passes a resolution asking the US Congress to make provision for Filipino independence this session.

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Today -100: March 2, 1914: Of bentons, hatpins, clippers, and burning nuts

Gen. Carranza, who has been very quiet up til now about the murder/execution of British rancher William Benton, decides to scuttle Pancho Villa’s agreement for a US-UK commission to examine the body. It certainly looks like Carranza and Villa are conspiring in a cover-up here, but relations between the two have recently deteriorated sharply after Carranza finally realized that no one really thinks of him as the leader of the Constitutionalist movement any more, or thinks about him much at all, given Villa’s constant self-promotion and military successes. Carranza says he won’t report to the US on the death of Benton, but only to Britain. The problem here, and he knows it, is that the UK recognized the Huerta Junta. The British ambassador to Mexico rather haughtily asks why he should be asking the rebels and not the government about the killing. Oo, oo, I know, I know, call on me: because the rebels did it and because they did it in Juarez, where the Federals have no authority whatsoever. Do try to keep up, Sir Lionel.

In a letter to the NYT, suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch gives another great reason why women’s suffrage is necessary: hat pins. The Paris police have been trying to stop the proliferation of stabby hat pins with no success. Blatch says this is “another painful illustration of the fact that men cannot discipline women.” Men also haven’t been able to get women to stop wearing slit skirts or feathers in their hats. Women will only be civilized (her word) if they are ruled by “the wise and good of their own sex.”

The US will recognize the coup government in Haiti.

Travel in 1914 wasn’t all state-of-the-art zeppelins and monoplanes and jalopies: a clipper ship gets caught in storms and takes 162 days to make the voyage from San Francisco to New York. It had a cargo of barley, so totally worth it.

Headline of the Day -100: “Firemen Sickened by Burning Nuts.”

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Today -100: March 1, 1914: Of income taxes, dead ranchers, outrageous, un-called for, ill-advised and dictatorial legislation, honours, and ominous fainting

The first returns for the new income tax are due. The government is expecting a lot of errors. Evidently it’s the government which then determines how much tax is due.

Woodrow Wilson’s presidential salary is exempt from the income tax.

The NYT says a secret report (from whom, it does not say, but presumably some part of the US government)(a day later the Times explains that “the report was prepared in an authoritative way” and “the testimony obtained in it is of a very direct sort,” which isn’t much more informative) has determined that William Benton was shot by a pistol in Pancho Villa’s hq in Juarez and not by firing squad after a trial, and that he was, according to his friends, unarmed at the time.

The Mexican government now claims that it didn’t hang American citizen Clemente Vergara after all, he escaped and joined the rebels. Um, no, he didn’t.

South Carolina Coleman Blease vetoes a bill which he calls “outrageous, un-called for, ill-advised and dictatorial”; he says that rather than sign it “I would resign and go into eternal oblivion.” It’s for medical inspection of schoolchildren in Richland County.

The Portuguese prime minister says there isn’t a revolution going on.

The British House of Lords is considering whether to reform the honors – excuse me, honours – system to make it a bit less dependent on contributions to political parties. So some feminist suggests another reform: not giving honors – excuse me, honours – exclusively to men. In a discussion of this in The Gentlewoman, Viscountess Hawarden says that since the honors – excuse me, honours – would be awarded by men, they would probably go only to young, pretty women. Lady Gainsborough thinks the husband of an honoree – excuse me, honouree – “could not be expected to look with favour on a title, conferred after marriage, independently of him.”

First Lady Ellen Wilson faints.

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A clear violence

Obama made a statement on Ukraine. The transcipt’s been corrected in the version at the link, but the earlier one on the RSS feed had this Freudian typo: “It would be a clear (violence) of Russia’s commitment to respect the independence and sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, and of international laws.”

Obama is threatening that there will be “costs” for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine (well, he says for any military intervention, which suggests he’s not willing to say that what’s going on in Crimea is a military intervention – come to think of it, when is he going to come to a decision on whether there was a coup in Egypt last year?). Oo, “costs.” I love it when Obama talks vaguely tough.

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