Today -100: February 16, 1915: Germany cannot be allowed to adopt a system of open piracy and murder

Russia orders Jews in Poland to evacuate to at least 50 miles from the front, following the discovery of a concrete base for heavy guns at a factory that before the war employed only Jews.

German Socialist leaders meet and decide not to support any peace movement until Germans, you know, win. On at least one front.

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill tells Parliament that he plans to choke off Germany’s food supply in retaliation for its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, which he calls “piracy and murder” in, no doubt, Churchillian tones. He also reports that 5,500 British sailors have been lost, mostly to U-boat attacks.

Actually, although I think Churchill wouldn’t have known this when he spoke, Germany just floated a proposal to modify its U-boat plans if Britain stops attacking its food supply. But it also claims that British civilian merchant shops are preparing to fight, that they’re being equipped with naval guns and plan to ram U-boats. [Update: just noticed that typo, which is so awesome that I’m leaving it in]. This not only makes them fair game, but makes boarding them to ascertain their civilian status too risky. As the German ambassador to the US says, “Germany has been compelled to resort to this kind of warfare by the murderous ways of British naval warfare, which aims at the destruction of legitimate neutral trade and at the starvation of the German people.” I doubt the neutral countries will be any more impressed by this game of “But they started it” (Churchill is pretending that choking off Germany’s food supply is a new policy) than they were by the “But they mobilized first/they went to war first” claims of last September.

Sarah Bernhardt corrects the story from a couple of days ago, saying “It is next Monday that the surgeon will amputate my leg, and after that I shall be happy again.”

The House of Representatives passes a child labor bill, banning children from mines and quarries until 16 and factories until 14 (or working more than 8 hours a day or 6 days a week until 16). Farm work is still okay at any age. Actually, child labor isn’t quite banned, but products of child labor can no longer be sold across state lines.

A jury summons is mistakenly sent to A.E. Wicke of Brooklyn, who is actually Antoinette Wicke. She is a feminist and would love to serve, but of course women are not allowed on juries (in fact, even when they were, jury duty wasn’t mandatory for women in NY state until the US Supreme Court struck down discriminatory jury-duty laws in several states in 1975).

I just don’t understand the selection process for the front page of the NYT. That story is on the front page, right below Greece breaking diplomatic relations with Turkey and right above “Girl, Yawning, Sprains Jaw.”

Austria is drawing up a census of church bells, because it may want to melt them down for the copper.

China has rejected all of Japan’s demands re railroads and treaty ports and Manchuria and whatnot.

The US claims that an attack by a mob in Panama on American soldiers, in which shots were fired by both sides, was due to the “carnival spirit entirely.”

Ottawa has a second night of air raid scares. The first one may have been caused by children sending up fire balloons, but they’re taking no chances.

The Germans are worried about possible British submarines in the Baltic and asking how they got there. One theory is that they followed in the wake of a German warship (which would know where the mines are), but my favorite theory is that the subs were shipped in pieces and assembled in Kronstadt.

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Today -100: February 15, 1915: Why should Germany and the United States wage war on each other?

Headline of the Day -100: “Bernhardt Loses a Limb.” To be specific: the actor Sarah Bernhardt and her right leg, respectively. Also, it’s not true. Yet.

Headline of the Day -100: “Snow Entombs Thousands.” On the Eastern Front, where it’s evidently quite cold.

Invention of the Day -100: The sardine cannon (a sardine can filled with dynamite which launches a re-filled shell case into the enemy trenches).

Ottawa has an air raid scare. Some planes – or possibly UFOs - were spotted crossing the border from New York. They failed to make an appearance in Ottawa, but everyone in Ottawa was pretty excited for, you know, Canadians.

The German government has made public the letter from the United States protesting its declaration of submarine warfare, and the public is pretty relieved that its terms weren’t particularly strong. Now US Ambassador to Germany James Gerard gives an interview with a German newspaper, in which he asks, “Why should Germany and the United States wage war on each other? There is not the slightest question of a conflict between them; their interests oppose each other nowhere in the world.” He also points out that the two countries are in completely separate continents, so really, how could you even fight a war?

France exempts fathers with six children from the draft.

Racist Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times):

Albanians invade Serbia, although it is not clear if Albania is even an actual country right now, its sort-of leader Essad Pasha being either president of an independent Albania or commander of the Ottoman army in the province of Albania, depending on who he’s talking to.

Headline of the Day -100:

Not a euphemism.

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Today -100: February 14, 1915: When a woman gets this bee in her bonnet she loses all sense of proportion

The Lusitania leaves Liverpool for New York, flying the British flag. 200 Americans who had tickets of the Lusitania canceled them and took an American ship home instead.

Carranza executes four Syrians he believed were spies from Pancho Villa.

Syrians?

Carranza expelled the Spanish ambassador for giving refuge to a Spaniard who worked for Villa. Spain has decided not to make a big deal about it.

Gen. Obregon levies a tax of $250,000 on the Catholic clergy in Mexico.

The Germans have supposedly expelled all foreigners from Upper Alsace and are now evacuating all civilians. Actually, they may just be fleeing into Switzerland, it’s not clear.

A French POW writes to Kaiser Wilhelm asking permission to return to France to visit his dying mother, promising to return. The kaiser lets him go, and he does return after the funeral.

The Bishop of Oxford, Charles Gore, bans prayers being offered for animals doing war work.

Pancho Villa captures Guadalajara.

The race difficulties in Gallup, New Mexico, have been, in the words of the LA Times, “amicably settled by the town authorities by compromise.” Every negro won’t be ordered out of town after all: “those blacks who are acceptable to the authorities will be allowed to remain”. So that’s all right then.

There are dozens of letters in the NYT today (the whole of pages 83-8) responding to its anti-suffrage editorial of February 7th. The majority are opposed to it, and some refer to how out-of-date, even medieval, it sounded. The Times, however, in a new editorial, says, “when in this age of mushiness and confusion, so many weakly yield to the allurements of all the new cults, it is, we take it, a tribute to courage to be called old-fogeyish.”

No it isn’t.

So what did some of the letters say?

In hers, Alice Stone Blackwell claims that suffragist Washington State has a low death rate, proving that women are not neglecting their homes and failing to properly nourish their husbands.

On the other hand, Caroline Holmes of the Guidon Club, Opposed to Woman Suffrage, which I’ve never heard of, says suffrage in Colorado has failed “to produce even a reasonably governed state”.

A Mrs. Minnie Lincoln Hansel of Cranford, New Jersey, says suffragists are just women who have never found themselves; “Happiness or freedom of soul is a state of mind purely and is rather to be found in simple duties well performed, in the love of united family relations, and more likely in an atmosphere pungent with the smell of baking bread or fragrant with the odors of flowers wafted from quiet garden paths than from the heights of a soapbox amid the clatter of cobblestones.”

Mrs. Arthur Dodge (Artie, as I call her), president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, says that the majority of women are not prepared to renounce their current status as a “privileged sex before the law.”

Everett Pepperrell Wheeler, chairman of the NY State Men’s Association Opposed to Political Suffrage for Women, says that “when a woman gets this bee in her bonnet she loses all sense of proportion... We pity them from the bottom of our hearts.”

Mrs. George Douglas Miller, president of the Albany branch of the Anti society, thinks the feeling of the average woman on this subject is conveyed by a Michigan woman she claims to have met who voted once but won’t do it again, because when she got home the bread she was baking had gone sour.

Lovell Oldham says women are far less tolerant than men of other opinions than their own.

George Foster Peabody (banker/philanthropist/inventor of the Peabody Award) wonders where the “political genius” that the NYT thinks is only possible in a male-controlled political system actually is.

Alva Belmont points out that the societal catastrophes the NYT predicts in the event of women’s suffrage are the exact same ones it predicted for the legal recognition of married mothers as parents (women would become unsexed, neglect their homes, chivalry would be destroyed, etc). Alice Dewey points out that similar arguments were used against college education for women.

Christina Morton thanks the Times for proving by its editorial that there is no valid argument against women’s suffrage.

Margaret Aldrich, chair of the Women’s Suffrage Party, points out that the “needless political muddle” and “social and political turmoil” that the NYT predicts would result from women’s suffrage is rather amply evidenced just at present in the male-run nations of Europe. On the other hand J. Howard Cowperthwait thinks that if Britain had had women’s suffrage, it would have been less prepared for the war and maybe not even joined in.

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Today -100: February 13, 1915: Of air raids, shell shock, cruises, gallups, and economical kings

The largest ever aerial raid, 34 planes in all, is sent by Britain against the Germans in Belgium, aimed at disrupting facilities required for the U-boats used in the German blockade of Britain. Some of the planes are shot up, but no pilots are killed, though Flight Commander Claude Grahame-White has to be fished out of the sea. Whether the bombing did much damage is a question, but the British seem to think this was a great psychological victory. There will be a lot of self-proclaimed psychological victories in this war.

The Daily Mail (UK) warns its readers against the unwarranted wave of anticipation that the war will be over soon.

First known use in print of the term “shell shock,” in an article in The Lancet by British army doctor Charles Myers.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Russia claims (again) that Austria intends to re-create the Polish monarchy and name Archduke Charles Stephen, a grossadmiral in the Austrian Navy, king. Austria seems to think the one thing Poles really need to make them loyal is a Hapsburg king. To be fair, they seem to be thinking along the lines of a semi-autonomous kingdom within the Empire, like Hungary (and with more Polish territory, seized from Russia - all of which is currently moot, since it’s the Russian troops who are occupying Austrian Galicia). Austria may also be trying to head off Kaiser Wilhelm picking one of his relatives for the (non-existent) throne. In fact, it will be a couple of years before Austria half-heartedly names a Polish king.

Sir Roger Casement says he has proof that the British government is trying to kill and/or capture him. Some plot to bribe his manservant. Also, his pension as a former diplomat has been suspended.

With the impending German threat to shipping, a lot of Americans are booking passage home on the Lusitania. There’s a quote from a Cunard official about the threat not being “sufficient reason for the cancellation of passengers.” I’m not sure what that means, but it might mean that the company won’t refund tickets held by people too scared to sail. The article says “the chances of a submarine being either able or likely to attack the Lusitania on the coming voyage were as one in a million”; for a start, the Lusi is just too fast for a sub to catch it. It will, however, likely take a different route than usual - and fly an American flag again.

Placards appear in Gallup, New Mexico, warning negroes to leave town, following an incident where a white woman accused a black man of whatever. Half the negro population has fled.

Headline of the Day -100: “King George Economizes.” Well, he cuts the salary of the head chef at Buckingham Palace in half, if that counts as the king economizing. That said, the head chef’s salary was £2,500 a year, which was rather a lot, certainly a lot more, even after being cut in half, than that of Flight Commander Claude Grahame-White, whose daily pay is 25 shillings (£1¼).

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Today -100: February 12, 1915: We are a tongue-tied brood at the best

The Pancho Villa-appointed governor in southern Baja California ousts all of Carranza’s appointees (judges, customs officials, etc) and declares the currency issued by the Carranza governor void, criminalizing acceptance of it.

In Parliament, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey is asked whether the Allies will make public their peace terms. Nope.

Kaiser Wilhelm, on the other hand, is quite willing to make his peace terms clear, telling his troops in Poland that Germany will not rest until the enemy is beaten to the ground. “He emphasized this statement with a crack of his riding whip.” As was the custom.

Britain more or less says it will start seizing all food shipped to Germany.

A German submarine shells a British steamship, the Laertes, in the North Sea, refusing to stop shelling the ship even when it raised a Dutch flag (which it was not entitled to use).

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Artillery Duel Worst of War.” Everyone’s a critic.

The Republican Majority Leader in the NY Legislature, Harold J. Hinman, opposes a bill for widows’ pensions, which just “encourages the relatives of poor widows to cast their burden upon the state.”

Rudyard Kipling gives a speech at a recruitment meeting for military bands. Why, a few fifes and drums spur troops to march at least five extra miles and “can swing a battalion back to quarters happy and composed in its mind, no matter how wet or tired its body may be.” “We are a tongue-tied brood at the best. The bands can declare on our behalf without shame and without shyness something of what we all feel and help us to reach a hand toward the men who have risen up to save us.”

There was a lot of obfuscation about who tried to assassinate Pancho Villa last month, but it was his long-time deputy and companion Rodolfo Fierro, who was upset by Villa criticizing him for losing all but six of his command in a battle and tried to kill him. Villa of course had him immediately executed.

The German ambassador to the US tells a New York German-language newspaper that this war will totally do away with anti-Semitism in Germany. Also, some of the kaiser’s best friends are Jews.

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Today -100: February 11, 1915: There is a certain feeling between the races

Another British ship, the Cunard Line’s Orduna, has also been flying an American flag, before the Lusitania did it.

The Wilson administration has sent letters to Britain, asking about this use of false flags, and to Germany, asking how it plans to ascertain which commercial ships with the flags of neutral countries are actually legitimately entitled to those flags before, you know, sinking them.

A Swiss newspaper reports that last September Germany secretly offered peace to France. France would acknowledge the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium in exchange for acquiring Strassburg and a bit of Belgian land north of Calais. The offer was made through former prime minister Joseph Caillaux, who has since, entirely coincidentally, been sent to Brazil.

French senator/mayor of Lyon (and future prime minister) Édouard Herriot proposes proxy marriages for soldiers to, ahem, “regularize their domestic relations.”

Judge Jackson of L.A. makes permanent the injunction allowing the showing of “The Clansman,” and tells the negroes in his courtroom that while he didn’t approve of the movie himself, they should just shut up about it: “There is a certain feeling between the races and there always will be as long as both live in this country,” but the movie won’t affect the position of the colored people either way.

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Today -100: February 10, 1915: Of strict accountability, things you find in coffins, annoying shells, and selling munitions for fun and profit

Woodrow Wilson sends Germany a secret note saying that if they start sinking ships without warning, the US will hold them to “a strict accountability,” whatever that means.

The Russian Duma convenes for the first time in six months. It approves of the war, in case anyone was wondering. Prime Minister Goremykin says the war has brought the Russian people closer together and brought about a rapprochement between the Russian and Polish people, who don’t mind at all a war being fought on their soil. He talks about all the land Russia is planning to seize from Austria and Turkey in Galicia and the Black Sea region. Foreign Minister Sazonov denies that there have been any pogroms against the Jews, which he says is just German propaganda to stir up the Americans.

Woodrow Wilson claims that Col. House is not in Europe as any sort of peace envoy. No, he always takes a European vacation this time of year, war or no war, just like Chevy Chase.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: the London Times claims that relatives of German soldiers killed in Belgium are being allowed to go to Belgium to find their dead and bring them back in coffins, which they are also filling up with loot. “On Jan. 30 one of these coffins fell off a truck. The lid came off and silver teapots and trays fell out.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Luxembourg’s 20-year-old monarch, the Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde, has refused to leave her palace since the Germans occupied her country, in case she might be forced to meet some of them. She even refused an invitation to visit Kaiser Wilhelm on his birthday, though she did send kind wishes. (This article suggests she was more opposed to the occupation than was actually the case, a stance which led to her being forced to resign after the war and become a nun).

Former Pres. Taft makes public a letter he wrote declining to support a bill to forbid the export of arms to nations at war. He makes an interesting case that such a policy would give an advantage to the more militaristic and heavily armed countries and incentivize the sort of arms race we saw in Europe before this war broke out.

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Today -100: February 9, 1915: A difficult Birth

Philip Snowden, a British Labour MP and future chancellor of the Exchequer, who only just got back to Britain after being caught in Australia when the war broke out and coming back by way of the United States, writes that he discovered in the US that pro-Allied Americans are not particularly pro-British, but believe in the democratic principles Britain is supposedly fighting for. But if the US ever attempts to enter the war, he says, it will have a serious problem with its German immigrant population. And the Irish in the US aren’t particularly fond of the English either, you’ll be surprised to hear.

Germany explains that its declaration of a watery war zone around Britain doesn’t mean it will sink every neutral ship, just those carrying contraband. Of course the definition of “contraband” is elastic, and the British have already stretched it quite a bit in their blockade of Germany.

A Turkish newspaper says a jihad has been declared in Afghanistan, so that’ll end well.

Sen. Robert La Follette proposes a resolution directing President Wilson to attempt to convene a peace conference to end the European war.

The US State Dept is refusing to answer any questions about the Lusitania’s use of the American flag.

“The Clansman,” still not named “The Birth of a Nation,” opens in LA, despite the efforts of the City Council which, after hearing protests from the NAACP  that “The Negro is made to look hideous”– just proving the line in the movie, “Dem free-niggers f’um de N’of am sho’ crazy” –  asked the censors not to allow it and then ordered the police chief not to allow it. The first matinee was cancelled, but D.W. Griffith got an injunction and the show went on, pending a further hearing. The LAT reviewer thinks it’s the best motion picture ever made but that 3 hours is too long for any movie.

Well, I watched the movie – the things I do for this blog – but found I don’t have much to say about it. As a movie, it was innovative then, making many realize for the first time that film was capable of being its own art form, not a bastardized version of theater or photography but capable of representing the world in a way entirely its own. The furious ride of the avenging Klansmen startled audiences; some screamed as the horses seemed to be coming right at them – that’s how new the conventions and capabilities of cinema were to people. Now, of course, we have Jar Jar Binks, so we’re pretty jaded to that shit.

As a piece of propaganda for white supremacy, it doesn’t seem as particularly effective. It no doubt reinforced the stereotypes of racists, but it’s hard to see it making many converts. For example, the scene in which Ben Cameron, a former Confederate soldier, refuses to shake the hand of a mulatto only works if you’re already inclined to view a dark-skinned gentleman extending a hand as an act of uppity presumption and a violation of the natural order of things. Otherwise, Cameron just looks dickish, standing there with folded arms.

I had a similar reaction to the famous scene in which Gus (Walter Long) chases Flora (Mae Marsh), who throws herself off a cliff to preserve her purity, as was the custom. I know what the scene is supposed to be conveying, but to me it looks like Flora became needlessly hysterical when a black man spoke to her on the street (well, a white man in black face, I guess that would be kind of creepy). Here’s a 9-minute clip of that scene (the most frequently censored scene of the movie).

A better-quality version can be viewed here.

And just for the hell of it, here’s Walter Long in the ’30s without the black face.

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Today -100: February 8, 1915: Now let us ray

It is reported that it was the British admiralty which ordered the Lusitania to raise an American flag, although they will deny it and I’m not actually sure whose decision it was. (If you’re wondering, as I was, how a British ship happened to have an American flag, it’s because it’s customary to fly the flag of your destination on the foremast and your national flag on your taffrail.)

Japan is threatening military action against China if it doesn’t give in to a long list of sovereignty-damaging demands that include turning over all German concessions to it, extending the lease on Port Arthur and on several railroads to 99 years, access to ports and rivers, not making such leases to other nations without Japan’s permission, South Manchuria and East Mongolia opened up to Japanese colonists, Japanese “advisers” for the Chinese administration, police, and military, etc etc.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: A French prisoner of war has supposedly been sentenced to two years for defacing a portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm – specifically, gouging out its eyes.

One thing the Mexican turmoil won’t be allowed to disrupt: prize fighting. Jack Johnson, still in exile from the US, evading arrest for the crime of having sex with the (white) woman he married, has been assured by Pancho Villa that he’ll be able to reach Juarez to fight Jess Willard next month.

Turkey hands back the British consul they seized after storming the Italian consulate in Hodeida in Arabia (now Yemen) two months ago, and have “rendered honors” to the Italian flag, and that evidently settles that incident.

Headline of the Day -100:

We’ve all been there.


Proquest L.A. Times Typo of the Day -100: “Pope Rays for Peace.”

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Today -100: February 7, 1915: Of false flags, politically undisciplined children, bread, women’s suffrage, and casting Birth of a Nation

The Lusitania arrives in Liverpool. The British ship is flying an American flag because of fears of German submarines. Captain Daniel Dow (not the one who would be in command of the Lusitania in May) claims he has a right to do this because the ship was carrying neutral mail and neutral passengers. Evidently there is no actual rule of international or US law against such a ruse de guerre, although it is not considered “quite the proper thing”. Also, the Lusitania is recognizable and well-known, hard to mistake for another ship.

Headline of the Day -100:

The steamship, not the king.

The German Governor-General of Belgium, Gen. Moritz von Bissing, says that the Belgians are “politically undisciplined children” who keep expecting to be liberated.

Germany denies reports that it asked Bulgaria to attack Romania if Romania went to war with Austria.

Berlin will start rationing bread.

The New York Legislature has voted to put the issue of women’s suffrage before the male electorate in November, and the NYT could not be more pleased at the prospect: “The proposed amendment... should be voted down by such a majority of the voters as to deprive the advocates of an objectionable and unreasonable derangement of the political and social structure of any further hope of success in this State. ... The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human reason, it flouts the teachings of experience and the admonitions of common sense. ... Without the counsel and guidance of men no woman ever ruled a State wisely and well. The defect is innate and one for which a cure is both impossible and not to be desired. That they lack the genius for politics is no more to their discredit than man’s unhandiness in housewifery and in the care of infants... men vote according to judgments founded on observation and knowledge acquired in the pursuit of their daily business. Women would inevitably attempt to decide such matters empirically or emotionally. ... Either women must work as men work, or they will never be qualified to vote as men vote.” “Is it worth while to take women out of the school where she fits herself to her high natural duties to put her under a tuition against which her body and mind and soul would be in perpetual revolt? Of course, the most fanatical advocate of votes for women would never preach a doctrine so monstrous.” And the vote would “coarsen” women, and so on and so forth. The editors conclude, “it is just as well that the matter should be decided now by all the men of the State. They are facing a grave crisis.” They think that women’s rights can be decided by all the men, isn’t that adorable?

The LA Times has an article about the casting of Birth of a Nation: the difficulties finding someone who looked like Abraham Lincoln who could also act, the red tape to get the National Guard to fill out the war scenes, the problem in getting enough negroes, some of whom came all the way from the South. This is evidently the first movie to film night battles and to use real explosives in the war scenes, and real Civil War cannons, borrowed from the Presidio. The battlefield was two miles long, with the cosplayers directed by telephone.

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Today -100: February 6, 1915: Of blockades, pirates, more Mexican presidents, and prohibition

Alfred von Tirpitz, head of the German navy (and what a head),

seems to think that neutral countries should not only accept but positively welcome Germany’s blockade of the British Isles, “as England’s tyranny on the seas of the world would only be smashed in this way.” He says Britain itself assents to the legitimacy of Germany’s blockade by its own blockade of the North Sea. He’s got a point. Two points, actually.

He accuses Britain of putting the flags of neutral countries on its commercial ships.

The British Army now has 3,000,000 men.

Headline of the Day -100: “Roused by Russian Threat. Germany Protests Against Treatment of Bomb Droppers as Pirates.”

Congress passes a naval appropriations bill. Showing no sign of alarm about the changed international circumstances in the year since the last such bill, it votes to remove from the bill 5 submarines, a badly needed new hospital ship, half the aeronautics budget, etc.

A “peace conference” of Mexicans is about to begin in San Antonio, right-wingers I think, which will name yet another provisional president. Evidently there will be peace only when every single Mexican is president.

The Arkansas Legislature votes to make Arkansas dry. The 16th prohibition state.

The Free Speech League is raising funds to defend artist William Sanger, awaiting trial on a complaint brought by Anthony Comstock, for distributing his wife Margaret Sanger’s birth control pamphlet “Family Limitation.” Comstock has already driven Margaret Sanger out of the country.

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Today -100: February 5, 1915: Of watery war zones, Mexican presidents, sabotage, and literacy tests

Possibly in response to Winston Churchill crowing about Britannia ruling the waves, Germany announces it will consider all water around Britain a war zone. I believe this is the first time (of several) that Germany announced unlimited submarine warfare. American steamship companies think it’s a bluff – a word many of them use.

Pancho Villa says he only became military dictator “to preserve order and permit peaceful pursuits” and because he couldn’t find Provisional President of the Week Garza. He says he’ll totally retire when all this is over.

Carranza threatens to expel the Spanish ambassador if he doesn’t hand over a Spaniard hiding in the embassy who Carranza says has been working with Villa.

The US isn’t quite sure what to do about Canada/Britain’s request for the extradition of Werner Horn (the “von” in his name in earlier reports was either a mistake or self-aggrandizement) for his attempt to blow up the Vanceboro bridge. In a holding action, he is sentenced to 30 days in jail for the damage he caused on the US side of the border (the explosion blew out some windows). After the 30 days, he will be charged with transporting explosives on a passenger train (on the way to the bridge) and serve 18 months in US federal prison. After the war, he’ll be extradited to Canada and put in prison. In 1921 he’ll be adjudged insane and deported to Germany.

Germany is arresting the parents of young Belgian men who escape the country to join the army.

French socialists meet to condemn Sébastian Faure’s peace campaign and to support continuing the war until victory and the crushing of German imperialism.

Congress fails, barely, to overturn Wilson’s veto of the immigration bill.

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Today -100: February 4, 1915: In charge

Pancho Villa has declared himself “in charge of the presidency of Mexico,” which is probably different from declaring himself president, but not by much.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Supposedly the entire town council of Radnitz (Radnice, as the Czechs call it) has been arrested for failing to attend a mass for Kaiser Wilhelm’s birthday.

The German Social-Democratic Party is distancing itself from Karl Liebknecht’s anti-war position.

There’s been a sort of military coup in Portugal.

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Today -100: February 3, 1915: The sea is free

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill says “For the first time in history England can say, ‘The sea is free.’” And they can say it with glee while climbing a tree.

There is a debate between German newspapers over whether the Belgians should be allowed to starve, with one writer calling for a “gospel of frightfulness,” which probably doesn’t sound better in the original German.

A Werner von Horn, supposedly a captain in the German reserves but caught on the wrong side of the Atlantic when the war started (on a coffee plantation in Guatemala), tries to blow up the Canadian Pacific Railroad bridge connecting Maine to New Brunswick, although without doing much damage. Captured in Vanceboro, Maine, mostly because he was the only stranger in town and you know Mainers and strangers, he is claiming that it was an act of war and that neutral US cannot hand him over to belligerent Canada (did I just really write “belligerent Canada”?). The funny thing there is that it would only be a legitimate act of war – maybe – if he was acting under orders. He was, his handler was the military attaché at the German embassy in Washington, but that’s not the story he’s giving out, which is that he was acting entirely on his own initiative, with help from some unnamed co-conspirators including a mysterious Irishman who passed him the dynamite.

Mexico: Carranza is distributing land to Zapatistas who turn in their weapons.

Austria says any Transylvanians or others found serving as volunteers with the Russians will be shot.

France will allow the pope’s prayer for peace to be read in churches after all.

The Cuban congress passes the amnesty bill over the president’s veto (and US objections), freeing the former governor of Havana Province, in prison for a year for killing the chief of the national police after a police raid on a club Gov. Asbert owned.

Headline of the Day -100:

It’s a great headline, but don’t bother to click on the link, you will be sorely disappointed.

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Today -100: February 2, 1915: Of peace prayers, the illusion that the woman always is the victim, ships, executions, and not-so-fatal wars

Pope Benedict orders prayers for peace to be said in all Catholic churches. The French government says it will prosecute any clergy who try it.

The Supreme Court decides that the Mann Act, aka the White Slave Act of 1910, which criminalizes transporting a woman across state lines for the purpose of prostitution, could be used to prosecute prostitutes, for example “a professional prostitute, as well able to look out for herself as was the man,” in Oliver Wendell Holmes’s words, who travels across state lines to blackmail a john. This would require, says Holmes, abandoning “the illusion that the woman always is the victim.”

French newspapers are indignant, as was the custom, that a German u-boat sank the British steamer Tokomaru in the English Channel without giving warning.

I guess I should mention the Ship Purchase Bill, currently experiencing fierce opposition in the Senate. Wilson’s idea, the bill would, among other things, allow the US to purchase German and Austrian ships interned at US ports (there are 66 of them). Whether the British Navy would respect the new American flags on these ships is an entirely different matter.

But what about the sailors on those 66 German and Austrian ships interned in the US? Well, they’re interned too. At the start, their employers put them on reduced shore pay. By December, when it was obvious they weren’t getting back to sea any time soon, their pay was reduced to 2/3 for married men and 1/3 for single men. The men refused to accept this, so the steamship companies fired them, but neither could they release them into the US, so the men are now their “guests” and are complaining about the food.

Carranza’s brother Gen. Jesus Carranza, captured a couple of weeks ago by Gutiérrez’s forces, is executed. I must have missed the fair trial they promised him.

Headline of the Day -100 (Los Angeles Fucking Times):

Given the advances in medicine, and the humanitarianism that results in prisoners being taken alive rather than massacred.

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Today -100: February 1, 1915: Of perverts, wires, liquid air bombs, sore throats, the aristocrats, and bullet ownership

Leo Frank’s prosecutor, Solicitor Hugh Dorsey (the future governor of Georgia), says that if the Supreme Court reverses Frank’s conviction, he will go to the Grand Jury to have him indicted on charges of “criminal assault or being a pervert.” Dorsey has just failed to win a conviction of several detectives from the Burns Agency for supposedly bribing a witness to say he heard Conley, the real killer of Mary Phagan, confess.

Headline of the Day -100: “300 Dead Hung on Wires.” German soldiers on Allied barbed wire. Although the “official” story of a British or possibly French soldier who single-handedly recaptured a house from 8 German soldiers, bayoneting four and taking the rest prisoner “while he continued to suck at his clay pipe” seems like it might possibly be slightly exaggerated.

Headline of the Day -100: “GERMAN 'LIQUID AIR' BOMBS WORK HAVOC; Look Like Champagne Bottles and Are More Deadly Than Melinite.” Also, chemical weapons were just used by the Germans on a fairly large scale, not very effectively, but that hasn’t made the paper yet. Something to look forward to.

Kaiser Wilhelm has left the front because his throat is sore. I’m sure the soldiers left in the war zone are very concerned for his health.

The British Army now includes 8 dukes, 10 marquises, 61 earls, 22 viscounts and 77 barons.

The German Juristic Magazine discusses the question of who owns a bullet after it has been used to shoot an enemy soldier. Does the state the first soldier works for give up its right of ownership when it fires the bullet away? Does the soldier who has been shot possess the bullet in his body merely temporarily as an agent of his state? Evidently German jurists have been debating this since the Balkan War, when a soldier and the surgeon who removed a bullet from him both wanted to keep it. This may be the most German thing I’ve ever heard.

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Today -100: January 31, 1915: Of elusive cars, relief, curfews, race feeling, and motorcycle accessories

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Sunday NYT Magazine has an article about an “elusive gray car” on the Yorkshire coast, which totally exists and which is totally sending signals to German U-boats, or something.

German newspapers claim that Russia is arresting socialists.

Pancho Villa is said to have been shot and wounded by his bodyguard.

The Rockefeller Foundation is withdrawing from relief work in Belgium, leaving it to the Commission for Relief in Belgium (which is headed by Herbert Hoover and is doing an impressive job of feeding an entire country). Since October, it has brought $1 million of food and supplies to Belgium in four steamship cargoes.

The mayor of an (unnamed) French town near Nancy is suspended for shooting at a German airplane, because a civilian acting as a combatant violates the rules of war and could lead to retaliation.

The war finally hits home in Berlin, where a 3 a.m. curfew is imposed, “for reasons of discipline, public order, and safety.” Haven’t they heard that life is a cabaret?

Rev. Charles Edward Locke, a Methodist pastor and author of Is the Negro Making Good?, objects to the film “The Clansman,” which is to air soon at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles, because it might arouse race feeling. Says Rev. Locke, “It exhibits the negro character in such perfidy and diabolism as to do a crying injustice to a large portion of our fellow-citizens”. The censors order several cuts. The movie in question will, of course, be released under the title “The Birth of a Nation.”

Yes, yes it does.

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Today -100: January 30, 1915: Of weekend trippers, bootblacks, and false teeth

British Prime Minister Asquith’s wife Margot is stopped by French soldiers on the way to the front with some other guests. They were supposed to be having a nice weekend at a villa behind the lines of a war zone, as you do. Instead, they weren’t allowed to go on or return, ostensibly because French supply trucks were coming through, really because Gen. Joffre is getting annoyed with all the weekend tourists. It used to be a nice war zone until people started discovering it on Yelp, and now it’s all crowded and noisy and you can’t park...

Headline of the Day -100: “Wants Japanese in Poland.” Past and future prime minister of France and past, current, and future dick Georges Clemenceau wants 150,000 Japanese soldiers brought in to fight the Germans.

Russian troops have pushed through Austrian Poland into Hungary. Austria-Hungary had kinda hoped to keep the fighting confined to Poland.

The NYT doesn’t seem to have taken to heart Serbia’s request to be called Serbia rather than Servia.

A negro bootblack in Glendale, CA is sent to prison for 6 months and fined $250 for giving a white woman a suggestive note – or an extra 250 days if he can’t pay the fine, which obviously he can’t.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Teeth in Court, Can’t Chew.” A dentist sued for non-payment for a set of false teeth ($20 + car fare), which hurt, then they were sandpapered but now they they fell out, then the dentist fixed them with powder which made the guy sick so that he couldn’t eat or chew tobacco, etc. The court ruled in favor of the dentist, who then left town while the old guy’s teeth were still locked up in the evidence room, and... maybe you had to be there.

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Today -100: January 29, 1915: Of zeppelins, valkyries, duels, birthdays, and fertilizerers

Carranza recaptures Mexico City.

Russia will put a captured zeppelin crew on trial for bombing an undefended town.

The opera house in occupied Lille gives a performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm’s birthday. The French locals are invited but refuse to go.

Peru’s foreign minister resigns in order, I guess, to fight a duel, in which he is seriously wounded. The NYT doesn’t feel a need to find out the cause of the duel, or to follow up the story.

The French War Office announces: “On the heights of the Meuse, opposite the French position at Eparges, German soldiers during the celebration yesterday of Kaiser Wilhelm’s birthday began singing the Marseillaise to the accompaniment of fifes and drums. A violent fire from the French troops silenced them.” So probably no present either.

Headline of the Day -100: “Offer Strikers More Pay.” This is the New Jersey fertilizer plant where deputy sheriffs shot up strikers, killing five. The NYT seems to have conveniently forgotten that the fertilizerers are striking against a pay cut, so the “more pay” being offered by the company is actually a 10% pay cut rather than the 20% pay cut. The union rejects the offer.

Fertilizerers is the word for people who work in a fertilizer factory, right?

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Today -100: January 28, 1915: Of vetoes, cakes, canals, and long letters

The German occupiers sentence the wife of the Greek consul at Liège, Belgium to 3 years for helping Belgians escape.

Woodrow Wilson will veto the immigration bill because of the literacy provision, just as Taft did two years ago. He believes it would prevent entry of political refugees and others who would make good American citizens.

Kaiser Wilhelm claims to be setting an example by eating the same adulterated crap he’s forcing on his people. No cakes or whipped cream. And it’s his birthday too.

I’d totally forgotten that Italy still had a formal alliance with Germany and Austria, which didn’t kick in when those two countries went to war because it’s a purely defensive alliance. Anyway, as Italy is evidently now making preparations to go to war with Austria, Germany threatens to renounce the Triple Alliance and consider Italy an enemy if it doesn’t stop.

Turkish troops begin an attempt to seize the Suez Canal. It’s not going too well.

Mexico’s Provisional President Garza’s presidency gets more provisional as he flees Mexico City to establish a new capital at Cuernavaca.

British literary dude Edmund Gosse sent a letter to his friend, British literary dude Compton Mackenzie (neither of whose names is spelled correctly in the NYT) in Italy, only to have the censor complain that it was too long and threatening not to deliver such lengthy missives in the future.

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