Today -100: June 12, 1914: Advertisement of their acts is a thing they desire above all

The House Insular Affairs Committee has worked up a proposed constitution for the Philippines. Not surprisingly, it’s a “condensation” of the US Constitution. Members of the Congress will have to be literate in English or Spanish and own property.

The Senate passes Wilson’s bill to repeal the exemption of American ships from Panama Canal tolls, 50-35.

Headline of the Day -100: “Militants Blow up Coronation Chair.” In Westminster Abbey. The news reached Parliament while it was debating what should be done with the suffragettes who commit crimes. Home Secretary Reginald McKenna insists that government policies are working and should be given time. He claims that of 83 prisoners temporarily released from prison under the Cat & Mouse Act, 15 gave up militant activity, 20 are in hiding, and 6 have fled the country. And the number of women sent to prison has decreased since the Cat and Mouse Act (even he calls it that) was implemented, which he says shows its deterrent effect (arguably, it led to a shift from open militancy such as protests at the House of Commons which courted arrest to more violent secret acts which avoid it). McKenna asks the press to stop reporting on militant activities: “Advertisement of their acts is a thing they desire above all.” He talks up plans to go after the Women’s Social and Political Union’s subscribers in court, portraying them as “rich women paying their unfortunate victims to undergo all the horrors of hunger and thirst striking” (The WSPU will respond by asking pointedly if he’d be willing to undergo those horrors for £2 a week). He quotes an (unnamed) medical expert who says that the class of militants now entering prison shows a decline from earlier, that they are more “highly nervous,” even physically “degenerate,” in other words that cripples, epileptics and women with heart and lung disease, who can’t stand up to forcible feeding, are being deliberately employed. McKenna, not the brightest bulb, claims that all the militants are paid, but also says that if they weren’t forcibly fed they are such fanatics they would starve themselves to death, and for each one allowed to die, scores more would come forward for the honor of earning the crown of martyrdom.

The general strike in Italy is back on. Barricades, fighting, attacks on trains. Six warships have been sent to threaten Ancona.

Woodrow Wilson hasn’t decided if he’s going to campaign for any congressional candidates this fall.

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Today -100: June 11, 1914: I don’t want to watch spooners; it is a mean job

Evidently Woodrow Wilson accepted an invitation to a Catholic mass for next Thanksgiving. The Reformed Church Synod considered criticizing him for this but instead decided to set up a rival service and force him to choose. If that doesn’t say Thanksgiving, I don’t know what does.

A general strike fails in Italy and is called off.

Police seize Sylvia Pankhurst as she attempts a deputation to PM Asquith.

Bayonne’s lady policewoman Ruth McAdie resigns, tired of being given the duty of breaking up couples in the park: “I don’t want to watch spooners; it is a mean job.”

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Today -100: June 10, 1914: England all over

The US Cabinet decides to prevent any further arms shipments to Mexico from the US, such as the one that nearly derailed the Niagara talks. So a shipment of ammunition intended for Tampico has been ordered detained in Galveston, although no actual law allows for such an order. And gun-running via third countries (or pretending to be going to third countries but actually going to Mexico, as is the case with the liner Arcadia) can continue.

At the Niagara Falls conference, the American and Huerta delegates are drawing up their fantasy cabinet tables. They’ve now agreed that the new president must be a Constitutionalist, but not Carranza or Pancho Villa. So now the US and the bitter enemies of the Constitutionalists are choosing which Constitutionalists should best represent the Constitutionalists.

Starvation in besieged Mazatlan forces the Federal governor to permit any non-combatant who wishes to leave for the Constitutionalist lines to do so (knowing that many will be recruited by the rebels).

The Danish Parliament votes 102-6 for women’s suffrage (and to democratize elections for the upper house). But the Conservatives boycott the vote in the upper house, so there’s no quorum. Prime Minister Carl Theodor Zahle will advise the king to dissolve the upper house and call new elections.

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond gives his party’s official approval to the Nationalist volunteer movement.

A suffragette “destroys” George Romney’s “Portrait of a Boy” in the Birmingham Art Gallery.



George Bernard Shaw writes in The Evening Standard: “As we have neither conviction enough to starve the militants to death nor common sense enough to pledge ourselves to the inevitable reform, there is nothing to be done but wait until the women provoke a mob to lynch them and the Government hangs a satisfactory number of the mob in expiation. Then the women will get their votes after the last inch of mischief and suffering has been squeezed out of a situation which several civilized and reasonable countries already have disposed of without the slightest trouble. That is England all over.”

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Today -100: June 9, 1914: Of titled suffragettes, sieges, and unwanted Cohens

The (London) Standard publishes a list of the most socially eminent subscribers to the Women’s Social and Political Union (lists which were seized by the police in the raid a week or two back). They include a couple of princesses, various Ladies-with-a-capital-L, a bishop, and Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman doctor in England and the sister of the president of the non-militant National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The Standard accuses the princesses of being class traitors, because, it claims, the suffragettes had plans to burn Hampton Court Palace.

The Huerta Junta now claims it never intended to blockade Tampico, and won’t withdraw from the Niagara talks after all.

The US follows Huerta in accepting in principle the Niagara conference plan.

Under siege by the rebels, Mazatlan is starving.

NY state Attorney General Thomas Carmody directs district attorneys to prosecute summer resorts advertising that they don’t accommodate people of certain races, creeds, or colors.

The Supreme Court rules that Indians count as “mixed-race,” and thus allowed to sell lands on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota, if they have even a drop of white blood (the federal government was arguing that less than 50% does not count).

Rep. Fred Britten (R-Ill.) introduces a bill to make it illegal for cabinet secretaries to accept pay for giving lectures, as William Jennings Bryan has been doing. It would also ban the practice for members of Congress, but only when it’s in session.

Headline of the Day -100: “No Country Wants Cohen.” Poor Cohen. Nathan Cohen, who was born in Russia, arrived in the US from Brazil two years ago and went insane a year later, which was within the three-year period after arriving in which he could be legally deported for insanity. So he was shipped back to Brazil, which refused to let him land, then back to Ellis Island, then to Russia, which refused to let him land, saying he had no papers proving he was Russian, then back to Ellis Island, then to Brazil again, which still refused to let him land. Now he will evidently live the remainder of his life at Ellis Island, which I’m sure had excellent facilities for long-term care for the mentally ill, at the expense of the steamship company that originally brought him from Brazil.

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Today -100: June 8, 1914: No one wants to be prime minister of France

The US delegates at the Niagara conference tell the Mexicans that they intend to keep Tampico an open port, by which they mean open to arms shipped to the rebels from the US in violation of its promise to prevent such shipments. When the US said after the Constitutionalists captured Tampico that it would ensure Tampico remained an open port, they mostly meant oil being exported to the US rather than arms being imported, but hey an open port is an open port.

Constitutionalist governors will declare currency issued by banks invalid.

Yesterday (a Sunday) suffragist speakers in several parks London were attacked and their stands destroyed. The NYT says that they were saved from beatings or duckings by the police. Although in the past such attacks have been by youths and young men out for a bit of violent Sunday fun, tolerated by the police up to a certain point, the NYT is willing to accept the actions of a small number of thugs as “striking evidence that the public has been goaded by the militants beyond the limits of endurance,” while failing to accept the actions of a small number of militant women as striking evidence of anything larger.

British suffragists have been accusing Holloway Gaol of drugging hunger-striking prisoners, but so have they. A solicitor’s clerk is charged with smuggling an emetic to Grace Roe.

France: Delcassé turns down the invitation to form a government, citing health reasons. So does Paul Deschanel, citing being a manic pixie dream girl, no wait that’s Zooey, and so do Jean Dupuy and Paul Peytral. Next up: Alexandre Ribot. This will be the 72-year-old Ribot’s third time as prime minister, the previous times being in the ‘90s. I’d suggest he enjoy it while it lasts.

The Greek government denounces the Carnegie Peace Foundation’s commission’s report on atrocities during the Balkan Wars, especially something about Bulgarian atrocities being committed under “provocation.”

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Today -100: June 7, 1914: Of blockades, French governments, naval tutors, and sinking steamers

The Huerta Junta announces a blockade of Tampico, to prevent US ships (including, rather gloriously, the schooner Sunshine) landing arms for the rebels.

The mediators at Niagara Falls think that if the Constitutionalists will only agree to a suspension of hostilities, the fighting will never resume. The mediators at Niagara Falls are delusional idiots, and their delusional idiocy is reportedly shared by Woodrow Wilson, who thinks that if he just mansplains to the rebels that their goals can be achieved through this plan of pacification they’ll agree not to seize the power they’re on the brink of seizing.

Following the French parliamentary elections, President Poincaré offered the office of prime minister to René Viviani, but he proves unable to form a ministry. That’s okay, nothing important ever happens in June. Viviani’s efforts foundered on divisions over the length of compulsory military service, recently extended from 2 years to 3. Ironically, that issue will become moot very soon.

Next up at bat: Théophile Delcassé. The NYT assures us that Germany has forgiven him for his anti-German policies when he was foreign minister. (Spoiler alert: he won’t be prime minister either, but he will have a chance to be an anti-German foreign minister again).

Mother Jones is visiting Canada, after immigration officials’ decision to exclude her was overruled by Ottawa. British Columbia has its own coal strike...

The Italian royal family announces that for the first time the heir to the throne, Prince Humbert, will be a sailor instead of a soldier. This summer he will be put on board a man-of-war with a “naval tutor.” He is 9.

Headline of the Day -100 (NYT Sunday Magazine): “Making Life in Russia Intolerable for Jewish People.”

Naval and Not-At-All Scatological Headline of the Day -100: “Corinthian Sinks a Steamer.”

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It’s outrageous to say that limiting speech is necessary for democracy

Sen. Chuck Grassley condemns Pat Leahy’s proposed constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United ruling. “It’s outrageous to say that limiting speech is necessary for democracy,” Grassley says, noting that this would be the very first amendment to the original Bill of Rights. But Grassley was for amending the Bill of Rights before he was against it.

Grassley has repeatedly tried to get a constitutional amendment outlawing flag-burning.

Of course, Grassley doesn’t believe that the First Amendment was intended to cover “nonverbal speech.” Campaign donations, on the other hand...

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Today -100: June 6, 1914: I pray God it may not be necessary for our boys at Vera Cruz to use any more force

Britain has recently banned mixed-race boxing matches.

A Milan jury, evidently convinced by Vincenzo Perugia’s claim that he only stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in order to return it to Italy and certainly not for money, gives him only a one-year sentence.

The London Times ponders how suffragettes might be dealt with. They can’t be deported to an uninhabited island because they’d just come back. Flogging isn’t really on. The general public would be okay with letting the hunger strikers starve themselves to death, but under the current law prison authorities are legally liable for prisoners’ survival. The Times supports new legislation to remove that liability. Indeed, it rather licks its lips at the thought of suffragettes dying in prison.

The NYT mentions the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’s campaign to oppose Liberal candidates for parliament and back Labour ones as a means to achieve women’s suffrage. Which I mention because, while the NYT deplores the militant suffragettes and keeps insisting their tactics won’t achieve anything, this is their first mention of the non-militant NUWSS, which is far larger than the militant wing of the suffrage movement, in months, and even this mention is a parenthetical aside in an article headlined “Another Church Burned.” The London Times isn’t much better. Organize 100 quiet meetings and 1,000 quiet petitions and *crickets* but burn one church....

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond refuses to meet suffragists, saying previous meetings only led to unpleasantness – and if there’s one thing Irish politicians hate, it’s unpleasantness – and that the issue of suffrage should be decided by the Home Rule Parliament rather than in the Home Rule Bill. Of course that means a Home Rule Parliament elected exclusively by men.

Woodrow Wilson, speaking to graduates of Annapolis: “I pray God it may not be necessary for our boys at Vera Cruz to use any more force.” He calls the US army and navy “the instruments of civilization, not... instruments of aggression.”

The Mexican Federales will probably send gunboats to intercept the Antilla and its cargo of arms for the rebels. If that happens, they will probably be stopped by US warships. Also, another ship has left another US port with arms for the rebels, even though the US was supposed to be preventing that while talks are going on.

Speaking of gun-running, some Ulsterman with a yacht smuggles 3,000 rifles to the Ulster Volunteers, most of which are unloaded in Belfast “under the eyes of the police,” whatever that means.

Margaret Brown, aka “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” of Titanic fame, is running for the US Senate in Colorado.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first Tarzan book, Tarzan of the Apes, is published.

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Today -100: June 5, 1914: Mexico is entitled to clean up its own back yard

Carranza is taking his time in replying to a note from the ABC mediators, although his agent says, “Mexico is entitled to clean up its own back yard, and does not seek nor desire any interference from any quarter.”

Sylvia Pankhurst, distancing herself from the authoritarian leadership style of her mother and sister, plans to have the deputation to Asquith from her East London Federation of Suffragettes elected by mass meetings, with each meeting electing two women and one man.

Somehow I think that when the NYT calls Theodore Roosevelt “as wise as a whole zoological garden of serpents” for refusing to run for governor of New York, it’s not really a compliment.

Headline of the Day -100: “Albania’s King Not Saluted.” King (technically, still just a prince) William had luncheon aboard the Austrian dreadnought Tegethoff, but they skipped the usual 21-gun salute for fear it would damage talks with the insurgents (who still demanded that William be replaced by a Muslim prince).

Railroad people are testifying against young Sam Rayburn’s Anti-Trust Bill to curb the powers of railroad companies. The lawyer for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad says the bill would give the Interstate Commerce Commission dictatorial powers such as in the most tyrannical days of Venice and Russia.

An (unnamed) member of the British royal household is accused of cheating at cards at London clubs. The king has personally interviewed the accused and his accusers, after he’d invited the man to dinner after the Derby, which resulted in a boycott of the event by members of the Jockey Club, including various people with “duke” and “prince” in front of their names. The king has now tried to banish the man from England, but he refuses to go.

At Buckingham Palace during the running of the debutantes, or whatever they call it, Mary Blomfield (daughter of Lady Blomfield) starts to appeal to the king on the subject of suffrage or possibly forcible feeding before she’s tackled. And that was after the police, expecting such an attempt, carefully scrutinized everyone arriving at the palace. Royal garden parties will be canceled for the rest of the season.

The second half of that story is a description of what all the women who attended the Court were wearing, because of course it is.

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Today -100: June 4, 1914: Of bloody brats, crassness, antillas, morning canters, dunkards, and wet wobblies

Bernard Shaw got away with including the line “not bloody likely” in Pygmalion, but the Lord Chamberlain bans an entire play, “The Supplanters” by Irish unknown J. B. McCarthy, for including the phrase “bloody brats.”

The NYT finds the depiction of Red Indians in movies to be insulting to civilized Native Americans (who are now the majority of Native Americans, it says), although it praises “Hiawatha” (which the Internet Movie Database says was the first film with an all-Native American cast)(but as usual doesn’t say whether it’s one of the many silent films which have been lost, which would be useful information to include, IMDb) for its accurate depiction of Indian culture. That film and “L’inferno,” the first and quite possibly only film with an all Dante-scholar cast, prove that “The period of crassness in this new art is near its close.”

Although it was understood that no arms would be shipped from the US to either side in Mexico while the Niagara Falls talks were going on, the liner Antilla leaves New York for Tampico with 3 million rounds of ammunition (and two airplanes) for the rebels. William Jennings Bryan claims to know nothing about it, saying that orders to prevent such sailings were sent to Southern ports first and may not have reached NY yet. Totally believable.

A suffragette attacks an attendant who tries to stop her hacking at paintings with a hatchet at the Doré Gallery in London, evidently not having gotten the message about harming only property. Elsewhere, two suffragettes attack Dr. Forward, the medical officer of Holloway Gaol with a horse whip (or dogwhip, according to the London Times). And another cricket pavilion goes up in flames, as was the custom.

The British government is thinking about charging every contributor to Women’s Social and Political Union funds with conspiracy. The theory is that most of the arson and picketing and whatnot is performed these days by women on the WSPU payroll rather than volunteers as in the glory days, making the WSPU vulnerable to an attack on its finances. Also, it allows the government to portray the militants as well-paid mercenaries (they are, of course, neither).

Sylvia Pankhurst is threatening to hunger-strike on the steps of the House of Commons unless Prime Minister Asquith receives a deputation. This is potentially a significant escalation in tactics: all previous hunger strikes have taken place in prison.

That article on various suffragette doings ends with the Sentence of The Day -100: “The King has discontinued his morning canter in Rotten Row.”

Czar Nicholas is thinking about responding to the decline in foreign investments by gradually removing the restrictions on Jews participating in joint-stock companies.

The national conference of the German Baptist Church (“Dunkards”) in Frankfort, Indiana votes to discourage its members owning automobiles, “at least until such time as they become in general use or until we get more light on the subject.”

Headline of the Day -100: “500 Wait to Duck I.W.W. Men in River.” (The LA Times’s typically dickish headline for the same story: “They Despise Clean Water.”) To prevent the Wobblies holding a free speech demonstration in the Tarrytown, NY, Fountain Square, the locals have laid down a layer of tar one inch deep. The 500 Tarrytonians waited at the train station to give any arriving activists the traditional Tarrytown welcome of a bath in the Hudson, but none came.

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A careful balancing of weighty and diverse factors

Netanyahu is pushing a bill allowing the forcible feeding of Palestinian prisoners (there is a major hunger-strike among prisoners being held indefinitely without trial).

The government’s proposal says, “A decision on this sensitive question, which requires a careful balancing of weighty and diverse factors, should not be taken by administrative or medical officials responsible for the well-being of a prisoner on hunger strike, but should rather be made by a court of law at the appropriate level.” This is an outright admission that forcible feeding is intended not as a medical treatment, if a violent and involuntary medical treatment, but a punishment.

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Today -100: June 3, 1914: Of legal strikes, dynamite, political pacification, lepers, and mayflowers

The House of Representatives accepts an amendment to the anti-trust bill legalizing peaceful strikes, picketing, and boycotts.

Two suffragettes chain themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace. Others try to heckle Lloyd George in his Welsh constituency; when ejected from his outdoors meeting, they smash windows, as was the custom.

A bomb scare at the Department of Agriculture turns out to be a hoax perpetrated by the watchman who raised the alarm (and planted the very real dynamite), hoping for a reward and a better job.

Gen. Huerta informs the Niagara conference that he is willing to step down – when Mexico is “politically pacified.”

The talk of Paris is that opponents of President Raymond Poincaré are attempting to force him to resign by threatening to make public something about his wife’s personal life. I don’t know what Parisians knew, or thought they knew, at the time, and the NYT is being coy, but the Radicals, Caillaux’s supporters, were trying to track down rumors that she had bigamously married her second husband (Poincaré is her third), and had sent agents to America to look for her first husband, who they wrongly thought was still alive. In fact, they had definitely divorced. The real scandal, if the Radicals had but known it, was that while Raymond & Henriette had married in a civil ceremony in 1904, they had a secret religious ceremony in 1913, to please his parents, after her first husband died. Given Poincaré’s anti-clerical politics, that wouldn’t have looked good. France, huh?

The famous leper John Early is arrested for being a leper in Washington D.C., where he has been staying under an assumed name at the same hotel where Vice President Marshall and a bunch of senators live. He says he came to lobby on behalf of a federal leprosium (first problem: I don’t think that’s an actual word). In the two weeks since he escaped from his leper colony, he’s been to Toronto, Montreal and New York, where he took in a baseball double-header. (Update, if you can have an update to a 100-year-old story: the June 5th LA Times reports that Early’s efforts have resulted in the introduction of two bills in Congress for a national leprosarium [that’s the word; for fun, you can google the connection between James Carville and lepers]).

Although the Wilson administration had successfully suppressed the story in December, it comes out that a Navy assistant paymaster was fired for partying with two... ladies... on the presidential yacht, The Mayflower.

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Today -100: June 2, 1914: They do not seem to be aware of the fact that the Constitutionalists are conquerors

The ABC envoys tell the Constitutionalists that they’ll only be allowed to attend the Niagara conference if they have a cease-fire with the federales and agree to everything the negotiators have already decided.

The Constitutionalists respond to the conference’s proposed commission to run Mexico with a resounding, not to say contemptuous, no: “They do not seem to be aware of the fact that the Constitutionalists are conquerors, that they have inaugurated and carried almost to successful completion a revolution, and that this means the establishment of a government entitled to recognition by the rest of the world.”

The goal of the failed military mutiny against Huerta seems to have been to grab the dynamite stored at the Mexico City citadel, which Huerta intends to use to blow up city if it falls into the hands of the rebels. Swell.

Mexican government employees, told that they will be required to take up arms and go to the front, are fleeing Mexico City, hoping to get to Cuba or anywhere.

A private in the 19th Infantry, currently occupying Vera Cruz, marries a local girl. A couple of ensigns are punished for letting the couple use a Navy launch for the ceremony (so they could be married under the American flag).

The Free Speech League, an offshoot of the Wobblies, demands permits to speak in Tarrytown, NY. The village president says he will have none of the IWW’s brand of so-called free speech in Tarrytown. Leonard Abbott, president of the League, says they will fight to the finish. Tarrytown plans to turn firehoses on them, as was the custom. State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Thompkins says that the “guise of free speech” gives no men, “no professional agitators or mischief makers the right to encourage the vicious, idle, and lay to acts of violence. ... It gives no one the right to disturb the peace of the Sabbath day”.

British suffragettes burn a church in Wargrave built in 1538. The vicar, who I swear is named the Rev. Basil Batty, runs into the flames to rescue a few of the church’s ancient ornaments. A note is left: “Stop persecuting women.”

Congress agrees to exempt labor unions and farmers’ cooperatives from the new anti-trust bill, by a vote of 207-0.

Yet another French government resigns. Not for nothin’, but from the start of 1913 through the start of World War I, France had six foreign ministers.

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They’re heeeere!

The Church of England objects to a high speed rail plan because it would require the removal of three consecrated burial grounds.

Well, you certainly wouldn’t want to do that, you might be haunted by mildly perturbed Anglican ghosts, who start to mutter “Boo” under their breath but when you look at them turn away embarrassed and look around like it must have been some other incorporeal being and what is the world coming to these days.

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Today -100: June 1, 1914: Of tallying costs and playing football

The Colorado coal strike has a known death count of 66: 18 strikers, 10 mine guards, 19 scabs, 2 militiamen and various non-combatants, including the 12 children who died at Ludlow (historians estimate as high as 100). Costs from the strike include nearly $7 million for the union, millions for the coal companies, and $700,000 for the state militia. The strike is not over, but seems to be winding down.

Police in Tarrytown, NY, attack Wobblies & anarchists who came to denounce John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Afraid of attempts to pack their jails, a known IWW tactic, the police decide to “play football” with the activist instead of arresting them (after the first 15). “Playing football” means pretty much what it sounds like. The prisoners are charged with endangering the public health, blocking traffic and acting in a disorderly manner. Becky Edelson points out that the town doesn’t have any traffic to block.

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Today -100: May 31, 1914: Of surrenders, tango foot, black princes, paines, immigrants, and disgusted Germans

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Surrender of Wilson.” Woodrow Wilson gives a Memorial Day speech at Arlington Cemetery. He had turned down an invitation from the Grand Army of the Republic but came under criticism from GAR posts, especially when it was learned that he’d be unveiling a monument in Arlington to the Confederate dead next week. He receives a lukewarm reception. Only 126 Union soldiers from the Civil War made it.

American warships mark their territory Memorial Day in Vera Cruz, each ship firing 48 guns (that’s 1,152 all together), to which the French, German, British and Spanish warships respond in kind. How joyous the Mexicans must have found this!

A German doctor asserts the existence of a malady he calls “tango foot,” an affliction of the leg muscles caused by excessive dancing of the tango.

Headline of the Day -100: “Black Prince To Visit Us.” Prince Joseph Wolugembe of Uganda. And if you didn’t catch the subtle reference, he’s a gentleman of the negro persuasion.

Headline of the Day -100 (New York Times Sunday Magazine): “Paine’s Long Lost Remains Home By Parcel Post.” Actually just some hair and a wax cast of his face. The rest of Tom Paine... kind of went missing. It’s a long story.

Queen Mary’s servants are on strike. She keeps reducing their numbers and expecting them to accomplish the same work. They now have to get up at 5 a.m. instead of 6. When their afternoon break was reduced, they refused to work during that period.

The Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau will stop trying to redirect Jewish immigrants from New York City to Galveston. The problem was that Jewish immigrants didn’t want to go to Galveston and the immigration officials in Galveston were especially hostile to Jewish immigrants.

Headline of the Day -100: “Albania’s Ruler Disgusts Germans.” By his cowardice during the recent disturbances. Although I seem to remember reading just yesterday that Kaiser Wilhelm is afraid of elevators.

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Today -100: May 30, 1914: Of Irish empresses, beer, re-elections, and royal elevators

The ocean liner Empress of Ireland sinks in the Saint Lawrence River after colliding with a Norwegian coal ship in the fog (the captains of the two ships would each claim the other was at fault; the inquiry in Canada would blame the Norwegian while the inquiry in Norway blamed the Brit). Over 1,000 are lost and 465 rescued. The worst maritime disaster in Canadian history.

Unlike the Titanic, there were plenty of lifeboats, but the Empress went on her side so half of them couldn’t be used. Also it was nighttime and chaotic, and the ship went down quickly because passengers had left portholes open. And unlike the Titanic, the wireless brought rescue boats swiftly, but fog hampered the rescue.

167 of the dead were members of the Salvation Army on their way to a conference in London, including D.M. Rees, the head of the Salvation Army in Canada. Also dead: Laurence Irving, son of actor/manager Henry Irving and a not very successful actor-playwright, and his wife. The Empress’s captain, H.G. Kendall, who performed admirably in rescuing people from the water, was previously famous as the man who recognized a passenger as the fleeing murderer Dr. Crippen. This is not the first shipwreck Kendall survived, nor the last.

The Mexican rebels have seized the brewery in Monterrey and are selling beer to raise money for the war. I hear selling cookies door to door also works.

The Constitutionalists have finally sent a delegate, Juan Urquidi, to the Niagara Falls conference. The ABC mediators are now considering whether they want to allow into their talks someone who might bring a dose of reality to their fantasy “peace plan,” such as the sentiment expressed by Urquidi that the conference has no right to determine Mexico’s internal arrangements. The US is leaning towards allowing Urquidi to join in, because they’re sure that Carranza can be persuaded to accept the plan and give up his victory right before he grasps it.

The American occupation’s collector of the port of Vera Cruz imposes a $90,000 fine on the Bavaria, which delivered its cargo of ammunition to the Huertaists.

There may have been some sort of mutiny in Mexico City, in which Huerta’s home was attacked. Or not. All of Mexico is one giant rumor mill at this point.

Eleven-term Congresscritter Richard Bartholdt (R-Missouri) has set up a headquarters to campaign against being re-elected against his will.

Evidently Kaiser Wilhelm refuses to get into any elevator not in one of his palaces.

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Today -100: May 29, 1914: Of commissions, tea, and TeleVista

The Niagara conference will, after all, name a five-man commission to govern Mexico, which the US promises to give “moral support.” This will all be valid under the Mexican constitution, they say, because the man the conference picks as president (a member of the commission with no greater powers than the other four) will first be named foreign minister by Huerta, who will then resign so that he becomes president (there is currently no veep); he’ll then name the other four to his cabinet. (Actually, the rebels point out that this maneuver would only be constitutional if you recognize the legitimacy of Huerta in the first place, which they don’t and the US supposedly doesn’t either). Whoever this guy is will be someone sympathetic to the rebels, but not an active rebel. Since the representatives of Argentina, Brazil and Chile refuse to participate in naming members of the commission, the job will be left to... wait for it... the United States and the delegates representing Huerta, who is currently busy packing his bags and, I’d imagine, drinking heavily. I have difficulty believing that everybody at the conference really deluded themselves into believing that this plan has any chance of being accepted by the Constitutionalists.

Headline of the Day -100: “Huerta Takes Tea.” He also had a haircut, the story mentions. Why the tea and not the haircut was worth a headline on the front page, I do not know.

Misleading Headline of the Day -100: “Senators Would Accept Greece's Offer to Buy Mississippi and Idaho.” To be fair, that’s the sub-hed, but the NYT index page showed only that, leaving out the headline, which makes clear that we’re talking about battleships rather than states. That said, it’s hard to see the states of Mississippi or Idaho being anything but improved by being sold to the Greeks.

Two suffragettes break windows at Buckingham Palace. The Master of the Royal Household refuses to prosecute. They’re also badgering the Archbishop of Canterbury, who refused to give sanctuary to Annie Kenney. Kenney returns to Lambeth Palace and says she’ll stay (still on hunger strike, lying on the pavement) unless the archbish speaks to her. She’s arrested again.

Dr. Archibald Low, a British inventor, says he’s invented a method of “seeing by wire,” which he calls TeleVista (a letter to the Times offers “teleseme”). He’s thinking of it as a videophone but what he’s actually got is a very crude, very early television. Or you could say early internet, in that he can send pictures over a telephone wire. Low admits his invention isn’t commercially viable yet, which just shows he didn’t think about the porn possibilities. He will soon be distracted by the Great War into pursuing other lines of mad science, including wireless-guided rockets.

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Today -100: May 28, 1914: Of recruiting, ypirangas, and mice

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan tells a banquet of the National Foreign Trade Convention that the US government won’t necessarily interfere by force in other nations to protect American business interests. Yeah, right.

Huerta issues a decree allowing anyone to enter the militia with a rank dependent not on ability but on the number of recruits they bring in and equip: 100 recruits and you’re a major, 150 a lt. colonel, 200 a full colonel.

Huerta’s former interior minister Aureliano Urrutia has fled to Texas, a sure sign of desperation. He wants to become a US citizen. He says Huerta must resign and the US should establish a military protectorate over Mexico. The Constitutionalists claim, in a very detailed and highly unlikely story, that Urrutia, a doctor, once helped Huerta cut out the tongue of a senator, and is in the US on some secret mission.

The Ypiranga (and another German ship, the Bavaria) unload their cargo of rifles, machine guns and ammunition for the Huerta forces in Puerto Mexico, and there’s nothing the US can legally do about it.

Constitutionalists confiscate five coal mines owned by French and American firms.

Aaaaand Mrs. Pankhurst is out of prison again, like a militant yo-yo. She’s got them too scared to forcibly feed her when she goes on hunger strike.

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Longer than many Americans expected

Today Obama made a statement on Afghanistan. He plans to pull the last troops out a couple of weeks before leaving office, he says.



“The United States did not seek this fight.” And yet so many seemed really happy when we invaded Afghanistan. You know, you can accept Obama’s war of necessity/war of choice distinction or not, but after 12½ years, the “they started it” argument begins to wear thin, and it’s kind of our choice that it’s still going on.

“We went to war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies...” It’s interesting that he doesn’t use the word Taliban in this speech.

“...with the strong support of the American people and their representatives in Congress; with the international community and our NATO allies; and with the Afghan people, who welcomed the opportunity of a life free from the dark tyranny of extremism.” Really, the Afghan people supported the invasion and occupation. Was there a vote? A Gallup poll?



AND YEARS PAST THE TIME WHEN MOST AMERICANS THOUGHT WE’D ALREADY LEFT: “We have now been in Afghanistan longer than many Americans expected.”

THANK GOD IT DOESN’T HAVE FIJORDS OR WE’D BE THERE FOR-FUCKING-EVER: “We will no longer patrol Afghan cities or towns, mountains or valleys.”

IS IT? IS IT REALLY? “I think Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them.”

NOT A PERFECT PLACE, BUT A LOT MORE RUBBLEY AND CRATERY: “We have to recognize that Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one.”

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