Today -100: November 5, 1914: Subordinate to our rules and desires

This is the 5th anniversary of my first Today -100 post.

Headline I Really Didn’t Want to Click On of the Day -100:  “Wants Cat Skins for War.”

Okay, now I really want Germany to lose.

Headline of the Day -100:  “PICK OFF RUSSIAN OFFICERS.; German Soldiers Then Have to Stand Revengeful Bayonet Charges.”  Another London Standard propaganda story, the gist of which is that Russian soldiers love their officers and that Germans hate hand-to-hand fighting, preferring to take pot-shots from a distance, because they’re cowards.

Headline of the Day -100:  “French Officers Swordless.”  Not a euphemism.  Because of that pot-shot thing, they’re trying to be less conspicuous.  Their new uniforms will be indistinguishable from those of the grunts (poilus, to use the French term coming into use right about now).  Officers are also ordered to lead from the rear, because they’re so much more valuable than the poilus.

Mrs. Arthur Dodge of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage says the elections show that women’s suffrage is doomed.  In addition to losing 5 of the 7 state referenda, none of the 18 anti-suffrage members of Congress targeted by the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage lost their seats.

Turkey breaks off relations with Britain, France, Russia and Serbia.  Russia invades Armenia.  The London Daily Chronicle says “The campaign in this wild, mountainous Armenian region will mean considerable hardship at this season of the year, but it will certainly be a most picturesque episode of the great war.”  So that's okay then.

Gen. Paul von Hindenburg says “The war will not end until all the nations who are fighting against us have become subordinate to our rules and desires.”

Woodrow Wilson warns the people of the part of Arkansas into which he’s sending federal troops against “doing, countenancing, encouraging, or taking any part in such unlawful obstructions, combinations, and assemblages” and says they should return to their homes.

The British government pays Orville Wright £15,000 to settle his patent-infringement case and to cover any future use of airplane-related patents.

Walter Lanfersieck, executive secretary of the Socialist Party, is happy with the election results.  One Socialist congressman, several state legislators and city council members.  But with the general collapse of the Progressive Party, “There is now no place for honest Progressives to go but to the Socialist Party.”

The German minister of war bans the use of Boy Scouts in the field.  They have been used up to now to bring food, ammunition and such to the troops.

NYC Mayor Mitchel (a Democrat) says the poor showing of Democrats in the state’s elections shows that Tammany’s Boss Murphy must go.  Boss Murphy disagrees.

Elsewhere in fixing-the-blame news, the White House says congressional election losses were down to the changes made in tariffs.

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Today -100: November 4, 1914: The Suez Canal is threatened by camels?

Election results:

Women’s suffrage was on the ballot in 7 states yesterday, passing only in Nevada and Montana, bringing the number of suffrage states to 12 (plus Alaska), but losing by a 56% no vote in South Dakota (that initiative included a provision allowing foreigners who intended to become citizens to vote), 55% in North Dakota, 64% in Missouri, I dunno in Nebraska, and 60% in Ohio, whose constitution defined voters as white male until 1923.  Jane Addams thinks the bad suffrage showing is the result of the European war causing men to lapse into primeval instincts.  “Persuasion has no place in the psychology of men who are contemplating resort to force.” Ain’t it the truth.

The 8-hour day and/or the 48-hour week fails everywhere they’re on the ballot (California, Oregon, Washington).  Prohibition wins in Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, but loses in California and Ohio.  There are now 14 dry states.  Arizona narrowly fails to abolish the death penalty (putting 15 prisoners who had been reprieved pending the vote back on death row), votes to require that 80% of employees at companies employing more than five workers be U.S. citizens, and limits railroad fares to 3¢ per mile.  California bans poll taxes and prize fighting but rejects a proposition allowing only property-owners to vote on bond measures.  Oregon will require voters to be American citizens and abolishes the death penalty by a narrow vote (which will be overturned in 1920).  Washington state votes 79% against foreigners being allowed to own land.

These were the first US Senate elections under the 17th Amendment.  Democrats picked up 3 seats, giving them 56 of the 96 seats.  New senators include Warren G. Harding for Ohio and Charles Curtis (Hoover’s vice president) for Kansas.

The House of Representatives: Democrats also continue to hold a majority in the House, with 230 seats, down from 290.  The R’s have 196.  Former Speaker of the House Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon (R), who lost his Illinois seat in 1912, returns, as does Nicholas Longworth (aka Mr. Alice Roosevelt).  Charles Randall, a Prohibition Party member (and formerly a Republican, a Democrat, and a Progressive, not necessarily in that order), wins a congressional seat from California’s 9th district (Los Angeles County) in a tight three-way race, defeating an incumbent Republican 30.9% to 30.3%.  He will serve three terms, the only Prohibition Party congresscritter ever.  Meyer London, a labor attorney, is elected for New York’s 12th district (Manhattan) as a Socialist.  London is a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, and that’s his real name.  He will serve two terms before being defeated by Henry Goldfogle, the Democrat he defeated this time.  He admits he can’t pass any legislation, but he hopes to call Congress’s attention to the study of social problems and labor legislation.  Good luck with that.  “The business of socialism,” he will say at a celebration held in Madison Square Garden, “is to give intelligence to discontent.”  He says he will show Congress “what the east side of New York is and what the east side Jew is.”  Both Randall & London will vote against entry into World War I.  Victor Berger, the former one-term Socialist congresscritter from Milwaukee, loses a bid to return in the district he lost last election.

Charles Whitman is elected governor of New York in a Republican landslide that gives the party both houses of the legislature and all the statewide offices.  Voters were presumably turned off by the intra-Democratic fighting that culminated in last year’s impeachment of Gov. Sulzer and the victory of Tammany corruption.  Sulzer ran this time under the American Party and the Prohibition Party banners, coming a distant third but he calls himself “vindicated” by Glynn’s defeat).  Even New York City didn’t give many votes to Democratic Gov. Glynn.  The anti-Catholic campaign against him didn’t help, but neither did a series of corruption scandals and Tammany appointments.

California re-elects Hiram Johnson as governor.  In 1910 he was elected as a Republican, this time he ran as a Progressive, winning just shy of 50%, with Republican John Fredericks getting 29% and Democrat J.B. Curtin 12.5%.

Supposedly Austria is sounding out Russia about making a peace separate from Germany.

Japanese sailors have requested permission to make a raid on Kaio-Chau to capture the German governor, but they’ve been turned down.  The request was written in the sailors’ own blood; no word on what bodily fluid the rejection was written in.

French newspapers are speculating that Germany, which unlike France is fighting on two fronts, must be running out of munitions.

The Turkish ambassador, about to leave Russia as the two countries start their war, refuses to pay the embassy’s Russian employees the back wages he owes them and makes a smart-ass jibe about paying them in Odessa when Turkey captures it. A clerk clobbers him, as is only fitting and proper.

Headline of the Day -100:  “SUEZ CANAL IS THREATENED.; German Officers with a Camel Corps ;- Agitators Sent to Egypt.”  The canal is threatened by camels, because of course it is.

Woodrow Wilson sends federal troops to Arkansas to see that a federal judge’s orders are enforced – something about bankrupt mines, mines being blown up, and miners rescuing other miners from the cops.  Yes, the troops will have machine guns, as was the custom.

Carranza rejects the convention’s attempt to replace him, claiming that the resignation he sent them was a “telegraphic error.”  Fuckin’ autocorrect, amiright?  So Mexico now has two rival presidents, as was the custom.

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Today -100: November 3, 1914: Did you know one of those could be closed?

Montenegro declares war on Turkey.  No one notices.

Headline of the Day -100:  “North Sea Closed by British Order.”  Supposedly Britain is laying mines in the North Sea purely in retaliation for Germany laying mines off the coast of Ireland along the shipping route between Liverpool and the US, but a naval blockade of Germany is an obvious, indeed inevitable tactic given Britain’s naval superiority.  (Update: This must be a response to the sinking of the super-dreadnought Audacious by a submerged mine a week ago, which the public hasn’t been told about yet).

The Mexican convention accepts Carranza’s resignation and elects Gen. Eulalio Gutiérrez president for a term of... 20 days, but Carranza says he never officially resigned, because his conditions (the retirement of Villa and Zapata as commanders) were not met.

The Turkish government has asked if it’s too late to apologize for starting a war with Russia and blowing all that shit up (some people in government are less intent on war than others, the others being primarily Young Turks).  Russia isn’t really saying, but the minimum conditions would be the removal of all German officers from the Turkish army and navy and the dismantling of two cruisers Germany transferred to Turkey.  The grand vizier has apologized for Turkey’s actions, while blaming the Russian navy for starting it.  I’m not sure what that means – Russian ships fired on the Turkish ships which came to bombard Odessa?

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Some random Englishwoman reports that since the start of the war Kaiser Wilhelm’s hair has turned white.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Pooh-Poohs Invasion Talk.”  Britain does, because what other country would “pooh pooh” something?

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Coercing young people

OK, clearly I’m not writing that long post about the decline of respect for the concept of free speech, but I do want to mention something Obama said at the UN in September: “Their [the Islamic State] propaganda has coerced young people to travel abroad to fight their wars, and turned students – young people full of potential – into suicide bombers.” And Obama wasn’t even talking about person-to-person propaganda in mosques, say, he was talking about the internet. Free speech, even hortative speech, is not “coercion.”

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Today -100: November 2, 1914: You should have seen the one that got away

Turkey invades Egypt.

The NYT ponders why Europeans are apprehensive about the use of dark-skinned troops in the Great War.  The problem, it thinks, may be that “the ‘savages’ show themselves practically equal to us in the very things for which we admire ourselves most”.

The Netherlands say that several hundred German troops – out of uniform – tried to cross the border.

Britain says that since Germany is holding French and Belgian civilians (males liable for military service in France and Belgium) as POWs, Britain will start doing the same to enemy nations’ reservists found on neutral ships.

A Dutch trawler catches a German u-boat in its fishing nets.

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Today -100: November 1, 1914: Of fancy prices, occupations, and the eight hour penalty

Theodore Roosevelt criticizes the anti-Catholic attacks on NY Gov. Martin Glynn, saying that Progressives treat everybody alike, whether they’re Catholics, Protestants, or Jews, just as long as they’re not black.  OK, he didn’t say the last bit, but c’mon.

The French and British armies are buying so many American horses, at “fancy prices,” that the US army is getting worried about running short for its own needs and thinking about banning further exports.

The US is not only not withdrawing from Vera Cruz, but is considering expanding its intervention in Mexico.  It’s currently moving army & navy officers to Vera Cruz and the border.  Meanwhile, Carranza says that he won’t do the things the US has demanded he not do as a condition of withdrawing from Vera Cruz, like not double-charging duties already collected by the Americans and not arresting customs officials who worked for the US, but that these are matters of Mexican sovereignty, not to be decided by ultimata from foreign nations – he doesn’t want to set a bad precedent for Mexican sovereignty.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Allies Giving One More Chance to Turkey to Keep Out of the War.”  They ask Turkey for an explanation of the bombardment of Sevastopol, which was evidently too subtle for them to understand.  Actually, there is speculation that the German officers running the Turkish military might have acted under orders from Germany rather than Turkey, and they’re giving Turkey a chance to back down (and fire all the Germans).  Turkey is being informed that it won’t just be fighting Russia, but France and Britain as well.

The LA Times prepares for Tuesday’s elections with its usual calm, measured, unbiased attitude.  Headlines today include “HOW GOVERNOR JOHNSON HAS SOAKED THE STATE.: Amazing Official Record of Extravagance and Boss Politics that Have Cost the People of California Millions of Dollars--Indictments that Have Stood the Test of Challenge--Not Mere Accusations, but Facts” and “Girls Oppose Vicious Law” (orange and lemon farmers send “girl” packers into the city to urge voters to reject what the LAT calls “the Socialist universal eight hour penalty”).  The Times also has an editorial against Prop. 3, the 8-hour day, and Prop. 45, the 6-day week: “It is a part of the punishment of a convict in a penitentiary that he cannot choose his own time for work or rest. ... It is designed to rank the working men and women of this State with thieves and assassins in that it prescribes the number of hours in which they will be permitted to work... It makes of them slaves and the slavery is not any the more tolerable because a law instead of a man is the master.”

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Today -100: October 31, 1914: I am going somewhere where I think I can get more votes

The new British First Sea Lord, replacing Prince Louis of Battenberg, is Adm. Jacky Fisher, who previously held the job before retiring at age 70.  Now 73, he has been in the Navy since he was 12, which means he actually served during the Crimean War, when it was all wooden sailing ships.

Woodrow Wilson has some advice for the voters of New York: “an American citizen should never vote as a sectarian but always as an American citizen.”  In other words, he’s criticizing the anti-Catholic campaign against Gov. Glynn waged by the secretive but well-funded Guardians of Liberty.  Some of the people endorsed by the Guardians have repudiated them, but not Whitman.  (Update: Do NYT reporters ever talk to each other? Another article this issue has Whitman doing just that, although very belatedly).

Suffragists hold a meeting at Carnegie Hall.  Gov. Glynn drops by but doesn’t make a speech: “I am going somewhere where I think I can get more votes.”  Which kind of makes their point.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Russia Welcomes Turkey As An Enemy.”  The whole of the Balkans is now in play.  Neither side has declared war yet, and the Turkish ambassador to Russia claims to believe that Turkish military actions in the Crimea must be some sort of mistake, perhaps naval commanders – which means Germans on secondment – acting on their own.

A German newspaper in German-occupied Russian Poland quotes a supposed proclamation from Kaiser Wilhelm who calls a “miracle” his “decision to wage war with Russia and restore to Poland her saints and annex her most cultured land to Germany,” which he’s doing because the Virgin Mary came to him in a dream.  I don’t know if this story is real: the only Google hits for it are 3 contemporaneous news stories.

Meanwhile, Russia is allowing Poles to form legions under Polish commanders.  “Proclamations have been posted in all Polish towns and villages exhorting the people to join the legions and expel the enemy.”  I’ll bet the Russians are very careful to specify that when they say “the enemy” they mean Germans, to avoid any wacky but understandable mix-ups.

Today’s dead prince rumor: Prince Heinrich of Reuß.  You’d think that would be easy to fact-check on Wikipedia, but turns out there were two German micro-principalities named Reuß, ruled by two branches of the same family who evidently both named every one of their boys Heinrich and probably some of the girls as well and there’s also some weird numbering system, so if this article is about the one I think it is, it’s Heinrich XXXIV, son of Heinrich XXVIII (!) and he wasn’t killed but lived until 1956.  And yes, this will all be on the quiz.

Belgium is fighting the Germans with water, flooding the Yser River valley.

Rumors say the Allies have retaken Lille.

Germany warns Britain that if it doesn’t release German civilians from internment, Germany will do the same to British civilians in Germany.

Germany denies yesterday’s rumor that it made peace offers through the German Social Democratic Party.

Halloween 1914 Story: Britain claims German spies have been disguising themselves as Boy Scouts and Scout Masters.

The Lusitania is late.

It was just delayed by bad weather.

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Today -100: October 30, 1914: Turkey has pronounced her own doom

Turkey starts war against Russia (without declaring war), attacking the Crimea and the Caucasus, making it the 10th combatant (if you don’t include Canada, South Africa, Togo and other colonies).  The London Times says: “By her foolish yielding to the instigations of Germany, Turkey has pronounced her own doom.”  Doom, I tell you!

Oh, let’s name the 10 warring countries, in case those of you playing the home game have forgotten any of them (Montenegro, you’ve forgotten Montenegro, admit you’ve totally forgotten Montenegro): Austria, Serbia, Germany, Russia, France, Montenegro, Belgium, Britain, Japan, Turkey.

Speaking of Canada, some Canadians along the border fear an invasion by Germans and Austrians living in the US.

Germany is said to be building new submarines four times as large as existing ones, able to remain at sea without resupply for 40 days.

The Comte de Chambrun, once the French military attaché in Washington but now an artillery officer, has had what he calls “the great pleasure” of having to bombard his own château, which the Germans are occupying.

A “League of Honour” is formed in Britain for educated girls to show lower-class ones how to be nice to soldiers – but not, um, too nice.

A politician asks Gen. Joffre what his plans are: “I’ll just keep nibbling at them for the time being.”

IWW activist Becky Edelstein is tried for making speeches against John D. Rockefeller.  She tells the jury that she has the right of free speech, and that whatever they do she will “come back here and harass John D. Rockefeller.”  She is acquitted.

Alice Paul, head of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, says no California woman should vote for a Democrat for any office because Wilson and congressional leaders haven’t supported the women’s suffrage amendment.

The Mexican convention continues. Zapata’s delegates have finally arrived.  They demand the break-up of the large landed estates.  “The convention for several minutes was in confusion.  The delegates reached for their revolvers, but finally yielded to the becalming speeches of their colleagues.”

Prince Louis of Battenberg resigns as First Sea Lord, in response to a xenophobic press campaign against him (he was born in Austria and raised abroad in Germany and Italy, but has served in the British Navy for 45 years, since he was 14).  The Battenbergs will change their name to Mountbatten later in the war in an attempt to avoid more of this sort of thing.

Woodrow Wilson asks his attorney general if he has the power to close the mines in Colorado (the White House will deny this story). Gov. Ammons says it’s perfectly safe to withdraw the federal troops, as the state national guard (now even more heavily infiltrated by mine-company guards) is perfectly capable of keeping order.

US business is booming because of the literal booming in Europe.  Belligerent nations have placed orders for 2.2 million pairs of shoes in New England.  The hob-nailed boots the French army wants have to be made by hand.  Also tinned meat, lots of tinned meat.  And 20,000 horses.

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Today -100: October 29, 1914: All enthusiasm is dead

Gavril Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is sentenced to 20 years (lenient because of his age, which is also 20 years), while 4 of his convicted co-conspirators are sentenced to death, 1 to life, and the rest for terms ranging from 3 years to 20 years.  Several were acquitted. 

Wilson issues the annual presidential Thanksgiving proclamation, which mostly talks about the European war (one could be excused for thinking the proclamation is aimed more at next week’s election than Thanksgiving).  “It has been vouchsafed to us to remain at peace, with honor,” he says.  “Our crops will feed all those who need food; the self possession of our people amidst the serious anxieties and difficulties and the steadiness and resourcefulness of our businessmen will serve other Nations as well as our own.”  So... we’re giving thanks for the war because it’s good for business?

Kodak says it has developed a color film process easy enough for ordinary photographers to use.  But the photos can’t be printed, they can only be seen as transparencies.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany is explaining (in placards in Belgium) its recent retreat: Paris has cholera, so it’s just healthier for German troops to winter in Germany instead of capturing Paris.  Totally believable.

The NYT continues to reprint reports from the eminently unbiased London Standard: “An evil spirit seems to have rendered the Austrian Army impotent from the very commencement of hostilities.”  It says that the wounded are so many that every hospital, barracks and school in Vienna have been converted into wards, as well as many theaters, museums and offices.  “Convalescent soldiers wander like vagabonds through the streets, clothed in uniforms and still bandaged, begging alms.”  The public are indifferent: “All enthusiasm is dead.”

Le Petit Parisien interviews a 12-year-old soldier.

Woodrow Wilson meets Mother Jones, who asks him not to keep the federal troops in Colorado, and says if the mineowners continue to reject Wilson’s proposed settlement he should just close the mines.

Belgian troops are finally winning against Germany.  OK, it’s in a battle between the Belgian Congo and German Tanganyika, but it still counts, sort of.

Prince Maurice of Battenberg, a grandson of Queen Victoria and the brother of Queen Victoria of Spain, is killed in action in France, at 23.  Er, fighting on the British side, despite the German-sounding title.

When Greece saw Italy invading and occupying Albania’s capital, it looked like such fun that it has invaded southern Albania.  Like Italy, Greece claims not to be acquiring territory but acting purely out of humanitarian motives.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Bomb Angers the Swiss.”

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Today -100: October 28, 1914: Please advise your government and my family that I died a traitor

Portugal has not entered the European war, although it frequently threatens to do so, but Germany goes ahead and invades its colony Angola anyway.  Probably preemptively, since the British navy is currently sailing Portuguese troops out to reinforce Angola and Moçambique.

NY Gov. Martin Glynn suspends the warden of Sing Sing, Thomas McCormick, for showing favoritism to prisoner David Sullivan, who was president of the Union Bank of Brooklyn until he wiped it out.  The warden made Sullivan his chauffeur, which gave Sullivan the opportunity to meet with his secretary and conduct business in Yonkers.  McCormick explained that he chose Sullivan, rather than any of the qualified chauffeurs who graced Sing Sing’s cells, because “he had the appearance of a gentleman”.  McCormick claims he bought the car with his own funds, expecting to be reimbursed by the state later, but the money actually came from Sullivan.  (I wonder what happens to the car now that McCormick has been suspended, shortly to be fired.)

Italy says it is occupying Avlona, the capital of Albania, but only for sanitary reasons.  Given the civil war or disorder or whatever you want to call the current situation in Albania, it’s getting a little stinky.

Pancho Villa has supposedly thwarted a plot to assassinate him, paid for by Gen. Pablo Gonzales, a supporter of Carranza.  The would-be assassin confessed, in front of a US consular agent: “Mr. Consul, please advise your government and my family that I died a traitor.”  Villa has him executed.

Russia and France are both considering giving soldiers steel breastplates, which they ultimately won’t do, because it’s a stupid idea.

No sooner has one rebellion ended in South Africa then another begins, led by Generals Christiaan De Wet and Christiaan Frederick Beyers.  The latter resigned as commandant-general of the South African army when war was declared on Germany.

Carranza submits his resignation – conditional on Villa and Zapata leaving public life altogether.

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Today -100: October 27, 1914: The woman’s movement and war cannot flourish together

Prinzip and the other 23 alleged conspirators are convicted of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  The verdict was read over the sound of Serbian artillery.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Kaiser All Intent on War.”  What was your first clue?

Headline of the Day -100:  “Germans Suffocated in Great Forest Fire.”  Set by Russian troops, in Poland near the Vistula.

South African forces defeat Salmon Maritz’s rebellion.  Maritz is wounded and flees into German Southwest Africa.  He will return to South Africa in 1923, receiving no punishment (the sentences of his men who were captured will be commuted after just two years).  He will go on to form a small anti-Semitic fascist organization in the 1930s.  As one does.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Sends Kaiser Pictures of His Looted Chateau.” The French chateau of Jefferson Davis Cohn, publisher and horse-breeder, was commandeered by German troops during the Battle of the Marne.  Cohn is outraged that it was looted and vandalized, his tapestries and horses stolen, and the wine cellar drunk up.  He has sent photos of the damage to the kaiser, with whom, he says, he has drunk beer and whose sister he once hosted at this very chateau.

In other expatriate-owned-castles-in-France news, Gen. von Bülow is threatening to burn down a castle near Rheims owned by Prince Albert of Monaco unless he pays a fine which was imposed on a nearby village for what Albert calls “some insignificant mischief,” whatever that means. (Update: a later story says they are accused of scattering glass on the road.  The prince says he’s willing to pay... after the end of the war, if his château is intact.)

Headline of the Day -100:  “COURT SITS IN OVERALLS.”  The Mississippi Supreme Court.  Also cotton shirts.  In honor of Cotton Day, which supports the “wear cotton clothes” movement.

The Association of American Women of German Descent holds its first meeting at the Hotel Astor.  The speakers (the 3 official speakers quoted are all male) deplore the American press’s bias against Germany.  A Mrs Gerard Bancker of the Federation of Women’s Clubs interjects that American women should be neutral, just like the president asked, and anyway Germans are cutting the hands off Belgian children, her sister saw it.  She is hissed down.  The poet Hanns Heinz Ewers attributes American hostility to Germany to a misunderstanding of the term “pan-Germanism,” which he helpfully explains before reciting his poem “Tremble, Ye Britons.”  Ewers will be interned from 1918 to 1921. I had no idea the US interned Germans so long after the end of the war.

Another British suffragist arrives in New York. Christabel Pankhurst’s old colleague Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence will also speak at Carnegie Hall.  Her view of the war is quite different from Christabel’s: “The whole woman’s movement must be turned to the destruction of this monster, war. ... The woman’s movement and war cannot flourish together.”

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Today -100: October 26, 1914: Of delegates, doctrines, and man-killing devices

The 1916 Republican Convention will have many fewer delegates from the South, where the R’s don’t have any voters anyway.

There has been some silly discussion in the NYT lately over whether Germany has acknowledged the Monroe Doctrine or, on the contrary, might try to annex South America if it wins the European war.  Not helpful: Ambassador to the US and Mexico Count von Bernstorff says that Canada’s participation in the war exempts it from the Monroe Doctrine and therefore it would be perfectly proper for Germany to invade it.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Edison Won’t Invent Man-Killing Devices.”  Well, not on purpose anyway.

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Today -100: October 25, 1914: Of too much man-governed countries

Congress adjourns, Southern congresscritters temporarily giving up on their filibusters over cotton.  Hoke Smith of Georgia has been particularly anxious to secure higher prices, having made a campaign promise that cotton would sell at 12¢ a pound; cotton farmers have been sending him bales of cotton and billing him at that price.

British Secretary of War Lord Kitchener asks the public to refrain from buying drinks for members of the military.

Columbia undergrads are suddenly interested in European history, for some reason.

Women may not yet have the vote in New York, but they can and are running as candidates for the 1915 constitutional convention.

Former impeached NY Gov. William Sulzer’s American Party, which is basically just him, has a rather simple, not to say simplistic platform: 1) Beat the bosses. 2) Stop the stealing.  3) Get the grafters.  Etc.  He is also running as the candidate of the Prohibition Party, whose candidate for lieutenant governor is Charles Welch, the grape juice king.

In South Africa, rebel leader Lt. Col. Salomon Maritz offers to surrender if his followers are pardoned and the German soldiers with him are allowed to return to South-West Africa.  South Africa ignores him.

Christabel Pankhurst gives a speech at Carnegie Hall.  She contorts herself to present her support of the war as analogous to the now suspended militant suffrage movement, or as an extension of it: “Now, I am a militant. That is not to say that I prefer war to peace; but it is to say that when people want to govern me by physical force and not by the moral force of justice, then I am prepared to defy their physical force to the very death.”  (Or give orders from Paris, as the case may be.)  “I maintain that we are fighting for democratic government. We are fighting for the right of the different peoples of the world to govern themselves. And I maintain that the victory of the Allies will, as a matter of fact, be a victory for the German people themselves.”  And I’m sure they’ll be properly grateful.

“When the women of the world are enfranchised, then indeed we may hope to see the reign of universal peace.”  An odd claim from a woman making a pro-war speech.

She genders the war (which is hardly unique to her), calling Belgium “the suffragette country” for its resistance to the mighty German Empire, which she portrays as “a male nation, a country in which the counsels of women emphatically do not prevail,” and if it succeeds, “then you will have the peace-loving nations always on the defensive, always compelled to be arming and preparing to meet the armed aggression of that too much man-governed country in which women are not free.”

My favorite line, about Germany’s claim to need more land: “We cannot be bullied by birth-rates.”

People in America, she says, have asked her why Britain was so unprepared for war.  “Some of us think that the British Government would have been better employed in preparing to defend the country against the German enemy than in fighting so hard against the Suffragettes. If, instead of searching our Suffragette literature for alleged illegalities, the British Government had been reading more carefully the enlightening works of General von Bernhardi; if, instead of watching the offices of the W.S.P.U., they had paid more attention to spies and to the fortresses disguised as factories which Germany was erecting in our midst”.

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Today -100: October 24, 1914: Yet you’re still alive

Headline of the Day -100:  “GERMAN WOMEN SPIES MEET DEATH BRAVELY; Allies Shoot Many Suspects Whose Accent Betrays Their Teutonic Origin.”  Which doesn’t really sound like they’re shooting actual spies.  “So many spies have been caught in France recently that the possession of papers apparently in good order avails a man or woman nothing once an accusation has been made or suspicion aroused.  It is asserted that no German tongue can ever pronounce certain French words without betraying itself.”  Um, right.

There are demands in India that the British do more to protect Indian shipping from German attacks.  The Times of India calls for convoys and “alludes to the possible effect on the crude native mind of the [cruiser] Emden’s successes, which will seem to their humble intelligences an indication of German success in the naval war.”

Carranza says he’s willing to resign as chief executive, provided Pancho Villa doesn’t come to power - or get any of the credit for Carranza leaving.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Kaiser Wilhelm supposedly rebukes one of his generals, who retreated from the Marne, for not going down fighting: “You fell back, and yet you’re still alive.”

Haiti now has two people claiming to be president, Orestes Zamor and Davilmar Théodore.  Which are both fantastic names.

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Today -100: October 23, 1914: Got it by a mile

Former Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz is reported dead.  He isn’t.

The round-up and internment of German- and Austrian-born men in Britain is, not surprisingly, creating hardship among the wives and children left behind.  So it’s up to the US embassy, which is responsible for looking after those countries’ interests in Britain, to deal with them, dispersing funds from the German and Austrian governments.

Italy invades Albania.

The Constitutionalist military Convention names a cabinet, or five cabinet members anyway, but Carranza may ignore them.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Lille a Ruined City.”

In the NY governor’s race, District Attorney Charles Whitman accuses Gov. Martin Glynn of putting a convicted forger on the payroll in the Audit Bureau of the State Controller’s office on behalf of Tammany Hall, one Thomas Torpy.  Whitman’s campaign is very prosecutorial, talking about rooting out the various Tammany crooks, with as little discussion of actual governance issues as he can get away with.

Here is Whitman’s campaign song:

    Who is, who is, who is he?
    He is, he is, he is he
    He is in it, I should smile
    Whitman’s got it by a mile.

The NYT claims that the whispering campaign against Gov. Glynn for his religion (he’s the first Catholic governor of NY) is strictly a rural business – they’d never think of asking a man’s religion in the Big Apple.

In the first income tax returns, just 44 people declare themselves to have an income over $1 million, 91 between $500,000 and $1 million, out of 357,598 tax returns filed.  The income tax produced much less revenue than expected, and the Internal Revenue Bureau will start going after the tax dodgers – they estimate there are 140,000 of them.

Now the fun begins: guessing who the 44 plutocrats are.

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Today -100: October 22, 1914: Mud, mud, inglorious mud

With artillery playing a dominant role in the Great War, armies are finding an obstacle: mud. All that tromping of armies, with their horses and motor vehicles, has turned roads to shit.  Add rain and you’ve got mud, which bogs down the movement of artillery.

NY Gov. Martin Glynn, running for re-election, bravely comes out in favor of playgrounds.

Germany makes more complaints about France violating the rules of war: killing or mutilating wounded German soldiers, sniping at ambulances, etc.

Headline of the Day -100:  “German Ban Put on Hostile Poets; Outer Darkness for D’Annunzio and Maeterlinck as Lacking ‘Particular Genius.’”

Congress rejects a measure to support the cotton industry, whose exports have been hit badly by the war.

Italy is threatening to occupy Albania.

Russia ends the exemption of high school and university students from conscription.

A rather brief insurrection is suppressed in Portugal.

Another dead prince: Maximilian of Hesse-Kassel, the kaiser’s nephew, just before his 20th birthday. The Daily News (London) says his body was stripped and just left there and that he was shot in the back, possibly by his own men.

The US protests the British seizure of an American oil ship, the John D. Rockefeller.

Britain will intern all unnaturalized German- and Austrian-born males age 17-45, evidently in response to last week’s anti-German riots.  Hundreds of arrests of “enemy aliens” have been made.

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Today -100: October 21, 1914: The Germans want to conquer what now?

Le Matin says that 35 French army cooks tricked 140 Germans into surrendering by pretending to surround them.

Tageblatt (presumably the German newspaper rather than the Luxembourger one) says that when the French took 3 German envoys prisoner, the kaiser threatened to kill 300 POWs unless they were released, which they were.

The NYT has “certain information” from “an authoritative source” that Germany is building 200 extra-large airplanes, each capable of carrying 1,000 pounds of bombs to drop on London.  The bombs will still have to be dropped by hand.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Villa Threatens to Seize Chiefs.”  While the Constitutionalist’s Convention of Military Chiefs meets to work out Mexico’s future, Pancho Villa moves troops worryingly close to where it’s being held.

Actual dead prince: Wolrad of Waldeck and Pyrmont, 22, killed in action in Belgium.

At the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, former Pres. Taft calls for making US treaties the supreme law of the land.  At present, the federal government can’t force states to abide by treaties, for example California’s discrimination against Japanese.

The upper house of the Prussian Diet debates German hat fashions (or maybe it’s just a meeting in the Diet building?)  One speaker (all of whom are unnamed, dammit) says it is the job of those who cannot fight to prepare for the consequences of war and the newly awakened German national feeling as it affects, you know, ladies’ hats.  “He predicted that the first consequences of the war would be a tendency to simplicity and a suppression of individuality.  Other speakers did not seem satisfied with this and declared that Germany must make fashions capable of conquering the international market.”

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Today -100: October 20, 1914: Of oaths, Latin, and riots

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: new Austrian soldiers are said to have to take an oath to the German kaiser as well as the Austrian emperor.  Seems unlikely.

The Haitian government has fled as rebels take Cape Haytien.  US Marines land, as was the custom.

Charles Taft, son of the former president, takes first prize in Latin in his Yale entrance exams, and if that doesn’t set you up to be... (checks Wikipedia)... mayor of Cincinnati, nothing does.

More anti-German riots in the London ‘burb Deptford. “The Prosecutor said that he regretted the necessity of appearing against citizens the object of whose attack had been German shopkeepers, but he explained that great damage had been done to English property as well.”  So do be more careful next time, rioters.

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Today -100: October 19, 1914: Hasn’t been kissed in forty years

Evidently there used to be a ban in international law on dropping explosives from balloons etc, but this expired in 1905.

France has recaptured Armentières.

In a letter to House Majority Leader Oscar Underwood, Woodrow Wilson expresses confidence about the November elections: “The voters of the United States have never failed to reward real service.”  He don’t know us very well, do he?

Anti-German riots in London, with attacks on bakeries, butcher shops, saloons etc owned by Germans.

The new Constitutionalist governor of Chiapas, Mexico bans confession, restricts mass to once a week, and orders priests to wear non-clerical clothes.

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Today -100: October 18, 1914: Of assassinations, murder, war taxes, and the World League for the Peace of Righteousness

Gen. Uribe-Uribe, the head of the Liberal Party in Colombia, is assassinated. With an axe.

The German Social Democratic Party newspaper Vorwärts is banned again.

France is expropriating German-owned businesses, including a department store.

The insurance industry newspaper The Spectator says that the murder rate in the US is increasing. 6,500 last year.

Rumor of the Day: The airplane flown by British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey’s brother is shot down and he is taken prisoner by the Germans.  I couldn’t confirm that Grey actually had any brothers still alive (following the unfortunate lion and buffalo incidents).

The “war tax” passes the US Senate, with no Republicans voting in favor, and a minor revolt amongst the cotton Southern Democrats.

Theodore Roosevelt has an article in the Sunday NYT about how silly Woodrow Wilson’s arbitration treaties are, and what would really preserve the peace is a tribunal of the great powers, a World League for the Peace of Righteousness, all pledged to militarily back the decision of a world court.

Major Clarence Wiener offers to leave Harvard University $10 million in his will if they fire psych professor Hugo Münsterberg, a prominent advocate of Germany’s position in the war.  Wiener is remembered at Harvard for a rather brief undergraduate career and for once getting drunk and shooting a stuffed lion he kept in his rooms.  Münsterberg offers his resignation but Harvard refuses to accept it.  Also, they correctly disbelieve that Wiener actually has $10 million (he’s also not really a major) despite his invention of an expandable boot-tree.  Wiener in fact left nothing but debts when he hanged himself in 1932.

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