Today -100: May 11, 1915: There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight

Woodrow Wilson gives a speech in Convention Hall in Philadelphia to an audience of newly naturalized citizens, finally speaking about the Lusitania. Sort of, because he doesn’t actually utter the word Lusitania, but talks instead about how the US’s nature as a nation of immigrants gives it a special place in the world: “Americans must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in the world. ... America must have this consciousness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the nations of mankind. The example of America must be a special example. The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.” He tells the new citizens that they can’t think of themselves by their former nationalities. “My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred.”

An inquest held in Ireland into five of the Lusitania deaths rules the u-boat captain and crew guilty of willful murder. Also Kaiser Wilhelm. And the German government. At the inquest, Capt. Turner is asked whether the Admiralty had informed him of the sinking of another ship in the same patch of sea a couple of days before (by the same u-boat, as it happens). No, it did not. He refuses to say what instructions he had from the Admiralty, which obviously needed to be kept secret, but we know that they did order him to go as fast as he could and to zigzag, and he did neither.

The German ambassador to the US, Count von Bernstorff, offers Germany’s “deep regret that the events of the war had led to the loss of so many American lives”. Which, as apologies go, is a step up from “I’m sorry you were offended,” barely.

The German Foreign Office’s dispatch to Bernstorff was even worse, putting the blame on the British for attempting to starve Germany, forcing it to retaliate by sinking passenger liners.

A letter to the NYT explains:

British Tory party leader Andrew Bonar Law calls the sinking “simply murder, most foul, most unnatural.”

In Parliament, Winston Churchill says the Royal Navy doesn’t have the resources to escort every passenger ship. What, not even one carrying the largest number of passengers since the war began?

Leo Frank’s execution day is set for June 22nd.

Headline of the Day -100:

A Brooklyn judge lets Nicola Chiangone, charged with stealing jewelry from his fiancé, who he then jilted, go free so long as he marries her: “I have seen the girl since then and I have also seen you. I am going to leave your punishment to her. You are going to get all that is coming to you from her – that is, after you marry her. ... I am going to let you marry this woman, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Stock prices briefly crash due to a rumor that Pres. Wilson had been assassinated.

He wasn’t.

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Today -100: May 10, 1915: Of bayonets, calm consideration, and lynchings

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The London Times reports that some Canadian soldiers wounded at Ypres say that they heard (you know, from a guy who heard it from a guy) that German soldiers crucified a Canadian officer with bayonets – lots and lots of bayonets. This made-up story will spread through the Canadian ranks like a cute-kitten video.

Once again, the contrasting temperament of the two presidents is on view.

Although maybe less to Wilson’s credit than I first thought. He still hasn’t spoken to Bryan or any cabinet member about the Lusi, because he’d rather not be distracted by other people’s views while formulating his own.

China has given in to almost all of Japan’s demands, shelving for now a couple of them, including the opening of China to Shintoist missionaries and requiring China to buy the majority of its arms from Japan. The Japanese Embassy in the US explains that Japan’s ultimatum was intended to “strengthen the friendly relations subsisting between Japan and China, and thus to insure permanent peace in the Orient.” It says that Japan should occupy Shantung province because China isn’t strong enough to prevent Germany taking it back.

A mob in Noble, Oklahoma lynches B.E. Ward, a doctor who stabbed his wife. Ward was white.

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Today -100: May 9, 1915: The fortune of war

Headline of the Day -100:

The NYT reports that at least 50 New Yorkers in first class cabins on the Lusitania are dead.

Most of the first-class passengers died “due to the calmness they displayed in the face of danger.” They thought the ship wouldn’t go under so fast and didn’t rush for the lifeboats.

Capt. William Turner: “Well, it is the fortune of war.”

Woodrow Wilson has made no statement, but went golfing and driving after getting the news yesterday, in an attempt, the NYT speculates, to set an example of calm. In fact, he’s keeping his out-of-town appointments, is not calling a Cabinet meeting, and hasn’t even spoken with Secretary of State Bryan.

Bryan’s one rather unfortunate public statement is that “This is no time to rock the boat.”

German newspapers hail the sinking of the unarmed passenger vessel as a great triumph.

An article quoting various British people on the sinking sees the word “dastardly” utilized four times by my count. You don’t see the word dastardly much any more. I think cartoons ruined it for us. Also, “despicable.”

In a case of unfortunate timing, a concert to benefit the German Red Cross was held at the Met yesterday. At the Opera House’s insistence, though, German bunting was not hung from the building, the song Deutschland über Alles was not performed, and committee chairman Theodor Sutro was forbidden from making a speech expressing sympathy for the Lusitania victims. The Vanderbilts are heavy contributors to the Met.

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Today -100: May 8, 1915: Of averted wars, doctors, and lepers

Cockeyed Headline of the Day -100: 

I’m not sure how much credit Japan should get for “averting” a war it was threatening.

Actually, I’m quite sure: none, it should get no credit.

The Tennessee Legislature passes a law requiring people applying for medical licenses to have gone to medical school. The only state still not requiring medical education of its doctors is Massachusetts.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: May 7, 1915: The Lusitania

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Cunard liner Lusitania is sunk off the coast of Ireland by the German submarine U-20, which gave no warning. 1,198 die, of whom 128 were Americans. 761 are rescued. The Lusitania was fast enough to outrun any u-boat (thus that “Safety in Speed” ad I posted on the 1st), or it would have been had it not slowed due to fog and the captain being an idiot and ignoring orders to go full-speed and to zigzag near Britain.

The newspapers are reporting that the Lusi was hit by two torpedoes. In fact it was (probably) just one, but that torpedo set off a much larger explosion, possibly because it hit a boiler just right or possibly because of all the munitions in the cargo hold. Which is already public knowledge: the Chicago Tribune reports [p.3] that “most” of the cargo consisted of munitions. Also cheese. 5,470 cases of ammunition and 217,157 pounds of cheese. There seems to have been more contraband, possibly explosives, than was admitted at the time, and the Germans may have doctored the logbooks of U-20’s Capt. Walther Schwieger to cover up a second torpedo, as both sides were anxious to blame the other for the ship going under so quickly (18 minutes, compared with the Titanic, which took well over two hours), with so few people able to make it off. So it all remains a mystery.

The ship quickly tilted to one side, so half the lifeboats were useless, as were some of the rest due to lax maintenance and a badly trained crew (all the experienced ones having joined the Navy) who didn’t really knew how to launch them.  Lifeboat drills for the passengers would also have been helpful, but there were none. A Royal Navy escort for a ship entering waters where three ships had been torpedoed in recent days would also have been good. There’s a lot of blame to go around.

The cruiser Juno was sent out to pick up survivors, but was recalled when it was nearly there, in fact when it was visible to screaming passengers on life boats, after someone belatedly realized it could be torpedoed too. Some of the survivors were rescued by the tugboat Stormcock, which is also the name of Thor’s penis.

What strikes me about accounts of the evacuation and the hours in the sea awaiting rescue is how many of the passengers and crew murdered each other for places on the lifeboats and on floating wreckage. Beat each other to death, threatened each other with guns, drowned each other.

Among the dead:

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, son of Cornelius. A professional rich fuck, Vanderbilt was heading to England to inspect his stables (he was a “sportsman,” i.e. fox-hunter and coacher), who died (with his valet) after giving his life-vest to a woman with a baby, despite not being able to swim. Between the fox-hunting thing and the saving-the-mother thing, you don’t know what to think of him now, do you?

Theater dudes Charles Frohman, Broadway producer (including the first American production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest), and Charles Klein, actor-playwright, who were going to check out the war plays in London to see which ones they wanted to bring to Broadway. Frohman died quoting Peter Pan (which he had produced – Maude Adams, the play’s star, will be forced this week to deny that she and Frohman were married), “Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life,” at least according to stage and screen actress Rita Jolivet, who survived (although her brother-in-law, George Vernon, drowned, which will lead his grieving widow to kill herself in July).

Justus Miles Forman, 39, novelist and playwright, trying to bring his war play The Hyphen (an attack on German-Americans who still feel loyalty to Germany) to London.

Sir Hugh Lane, 39, an art collector who founded the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin and may or may not have had some Monets and Rembrandts with him.

Elbert Hubbard, writer and publisher, founder of the Roycroft Press and of the Roycroft Arts & Crafts Movement community in East Aurora, New York, author of Jesus Was An Anarchist, etc. Hubbard had been convicted in 1913 of sending objectionable material through the mails, specifically this joke in his magazine The Philistine:

The bride of a year entered a drugstore.  The clerk approached.  “Do you exchange goods?,” she asked.  “Oh, Certainly!  If anything you buy here is not satisfactory we will exchange it.”  “Well,” was the reply; “here is one of those whirling-spray [some sort of contraceptive] affairs I bought of you, and if you please, I want you to take it back and give me a bottle of Mellin’s [baby] Food, instead.”  And outside the storm raged piteously, and the across the moor a jay-bird called to his mate, “Cuckoo, cuckoo!”

For that joke he was fined $100 and lost his rights of citizenship, so when he wanted to go to Europe to report on the war, he was refused a passport because they were afraid he might make mildly salacious jokes in Europe, I guess. He went to the White House and got Wilson, Bryan and the attorney general out of a cabinet meeting to issue him a pardon on the spot, allowing him to get a passport and sail on the Lusitania. Hubbard coined the phrase (rather better than the lame contraceptive joke) “Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive” and the first version of the thing about when life hands you lemons. He also said, “There are only two respectable ways to die. One is of old age, the other is by accident. All disease is indecent.” He and his wife Alice refused a seat in the life boats. He was 58, Alice 53.

Survivors: Margaret Haig Thomas Mackworth, the future Viscountess Rhondda, a Welsh suffragist, head of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s Newport branch, who went to prison for trying to burn a letter box and went on hunger strike. At one point or other her cousin, both sisters, her aunt (who broke a shop window and later returned to buy a hat to make it up to them) and even her mother were arrested for the cause (her mother waiting until her father was no longer in Parliament). Rhondda will gleefully point out in her memoirs that just 8 years after her prison sentence, she was made a magistrate. Oh, her father, David Thomas, was also onboard and also survived. He was on a munitions-buying trip on behalf of the British government. He had extensive business interests (coal, insurance, publishing), which she took over on his death in 1918. But not his seat in the House of Lords, although she did apply for it – and then sued when she was refused. She started the influential magazine Time and Tide in 1920.

The captain, William Turner, survived. He remained with the ship until it went under, then climbed a ladder until he was above water, grabbed an oar that was floating by, then a chair, and was pulled out of the sea after two hours, when the yellow braid on his waving arm was spotted. He will also survive having another ship torpedoed out from under him two years from now. And he was also on a boat that sank in Scotland when he was 8. Dude did not know how to take a hint.

People who were supposed to travel on the Lusi, but didn’t, include conductor Arturo Toscanini, composer Jerome Kern (who overslept), Isadora Duncan, actress Ellen Terry (whose creditors were holding her luggage), future congresswoman Lacey Davenport Millicent Fenwick, talent agent William Morris, and actor William Gillette, the first stage Sherlock Holmes (who gave us Holmes’ curved pipe, because it was easier to talk around).

Headline of the Day -100 (Chicago Tribune):

The NYT editorializes that the State Department must “demand that the Germans shall no longer make war like savages drunk with blood, that they shall cease to seek the attainment of their ends by the assassination of non-combatants and neutrals. ... Germany must be called upon to bring her practices into conformity with the usages of civilized warfare.”

Theodore Roosevelt calls it an act of piracy and says “It seems inconceivable that we can refrain from taking action in this matter, for we owe it not only to humanity but to our own national self-respect.”

Some recruiting posters which made use of the Lusitania:

Regular readers please note that there are two Today -100 posts today, of which this is the second. Collect them all.

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Today -100: May 7, 1915: We must fight gases with gases

The Daily Chronicle (London) says the Cabinet is considering responding to German use of poison gas. “[W]e must fight gases with gases.” But it will still be the Germans’ fault, because they introduced it, so “an account must be duly exacted at the end of the war,” even if Britain does exactly the same thing, because if there’s one thing this war has taught us, it’s that “But they started it” is a valid excuse for war crimes.

The Chronicle also prints a letter from an officer describing the effects of poison gas on the human body in lovingly gory detail, if you’re into that sort of thing

Prime Minister Asquith describes the Gallipoli campaign as “highly satisfactory.” To whom, he does not say.

Normally the Lusitania news would show up here tomorrow, 100 years after it appeared in the papers, but I’ll make an exception and run a Lusitania-only post today at 4 a.m. PST.

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Today -100: May 6, 1915: Of helmets, dalmatians, and POWs

British soldiers are selling captured German helmets to collectors at high prices, but haven’t been able to get many, dead Germans and their helmets tending to be located in hard-to-reach no man’s land.

Serbia is worried that if Italy enters the war, it will demand the Dalmatian Coast, which Serbia considers its future war prize. Serbia hasn’t been told that its French and British allies already made that deal with Italy.

The British government opens all departments to women, so young male officials can be pressured into enlisting.

Headline of the Day -100: 

That treatment of course, was in retaliation for British segregation of prisoners captured from u-boats. Lord Cecil reports that those British prisoners are kept locked in cells and are not even allowed to smoke.  NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO SMOKE. Tory Party leader Bonar Law suggests confiscating all German property throughout the British Empire. Asquith says “The maltreatment of prisoners is a form of cruelty which was not even common in the Dark Ages, and it appears to have been left, as so many other fiendish devices in this great war, to one of the Christian nations to invent and elaborate.”

Tennessee Governor Rye vetoes a bill abolishing the death penalty, saying it would just lead to more lynchings.

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Today -100: May 5, 1915: Of acts of piracy, gas, programs for solidifying peace, annexations, and non-candidates

The responses of Pres. Wilson and former Pres. Roosevelt to the German u-boat attack on the oil tanker Gulflight illustrate their respective characters.

It’s just like Obama and McCain, isn’t it?

The London Morning Post reports that France is ready to respond to German poison gas attacks with its own gas, which supposedly doesn’t kill, just paralyzes temporarily. Britain is also considering using poison gas. It points out that a week before Germany launched its first gas attack, it falsely accused Britain of using asphyxiating gases, as a pretext.

It is believed that the decision of Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel not to attend the unveiling ceremony for a monument to Garibaldi indicates that Italy will not enter the war quite yet. An uprising in recently colonized Libya might also have contributed to a decision not to attack Austria. Yet.

The Japanese are complaining about the “tone” with which China rejected its polite demands to surrender much of its sovereignty. It is likely to re-express those demands in the form of an ultimatum, to make China realize that Japan “is determined upon the acceptance of its program for solidifying the peace of the Orient.” There’s a lot of this Orwellian shit from Japan just now, with the Japan Times calling for Japan to occupy several Chinese provinces, saying it would not be a violation of Chinese sovereignty “since its sole aim would be to insure the integrity of the country,” adding “You’re welcome,” probably.

A German airplane sinks a British submarine.

There’s an ad in the NYT (p.9) from Columbia Records for the complete opera Aida on 17 records at 75¢ each. It fails to say who the singers, conductor or orchestra are, only that they are “renowned Italian artists.”

It is leaked that a while ago the Allies offered Greece 140,000 square kilometers of Asia Minor if it entered the war on their side. The king refused and the prime minister, who wanted to take the deal, resigned.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Antwerp journalists were supposedly summoned to German occupation hq and told to prepare Belgian public opinion for an announcement of annexation by Germany. Since then, German troops failed to achieve a breakthrough at Ypres and the annexation plans are shelved, for now.

John Lawson, head of the United Mine Workers in Colorado, is convicted for the murder of a deputy sheriff during the Colorado coal strike. A general strike is being considered in response to a verdict which is largely considered to be, to use a legal term, bullshit.

Pres. Wilson refuses to give the Federal Industrial Relations Commission investigating the coal strike his correspondence with Colo. Gov. Ammons about it.

Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes “wholly disapproves the use of his name in connection with the Presidential campaign. ... He is not a candidate in any sense”.

German tailors are having to rename the English words they use for some of the products of their trade, such as ulster, cutaway, reglan, smoking, and knickerbockers. So will German prostitutes, who use the exact same terms for some of the products of their trade, probably. The new terms for smoking, ulster and raglan will be abendjacke, wettermantel and haengemantel, which you’ll no doubt be surprised to notice are longer words with more syllables.

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Today -100: May 4, 1915: For nobility of spirit we have reaped slander

Glasgow clergy enlist in a special clergymen’s corps.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Hamburger Nachrichten is exercised over the supposed ill-treatment of German POWs by the Allies (the French have been making them clean the canal at Fontainebleau). Also, French newspapers have been calling them by the derogatory term “boches.” “For nobility of spirit we have reaped slander; for chivalrous war the wildest brutality.”

Someone dynamites the Bronx Borough Hall. Anarchists are suspected, but aren’t they always?

The NYT says that the torpedoing of the US ship Gulflight is “one of those acts which constitute a provocation to war.” But since Germany doesn’t actually want a war with the US, it will probably disclaim the act, pretend the sub didn’t see the US flag in the fog, apologize and make reparation.

British recruiting poster issued sometime this month:

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Today -100: May 3, 1915: Of gulflights, mountain tops, and extreme states of subdivision

The American oil tanker Gulflight is torpedoed off the Scilly Islands on its way from Texas to France. 3 dead, including the captain (from a heart attack).

Headline of the Day -100 Which Is Totally Not a Euphemism:

Race riot in Seaford, Delaware, with threats of lynchings. (Is there a follow-up to this story? There is not.)

Reynold Spaeth, a biologist at Clark College, writes a letter to the NYT in support of chemical warfare. Why, he says, we asphyxiate our unwanted animals, and “Aesthetically or humanely an intact corpse seems preferable to an extreme state of subdivision or even to a living human fraction, deprived of appendages and sense organs which we have come to consider essential.”

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Today -100: May 2, 1915: I wonder what the Germans will do next

Headline of the Day -100: 

The warning was that ad taken out by the German embassy in various newspapers suggesting that Americans not travel across the Atlantic on any British steamships (see yesterday’s post). Asked about the ad, the Lusitania’s Captain William Turner laughed and said, “I wonder what the Germans will do next.”

Bon voyage, Lusitania.



The Summit Silk Company is evicting striking silk workers and their the families from their company-owned houses.

China rejects most of Japan’s demands.

The town of Warren, Illinois swears in its first woman mayor, and indeed Illinois’s first woman mayor, Angela Canfield. Under her leadership, the town council orders the closure of the town’s two poolrooms, its shooting range, and a boxball alley (whatever that might be). And that’s just in her first 7 minutes in power.

I know what I’ll be wearing this summer.

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Today -100: May 1, 1915: Safety in speed

British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George wants to deal with the alleged problem of lost productivity in the munitions industry caused by drinking by raising the duty on alcoholic drinks.

The International Congress of Women at the Hague passes a resolution declaring that women’s suffrage would be another pro-peace move. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, the British militant suffragette, says that international conflict is deliberately stoked by munitions tycoons, and proposes nationalization of armaments as a step towards universal disarmament. 1938 Superman would agree.

I’m sure Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence would have appreciated the visual aids.

Belgian and French bishops and cardinals ask Pope Benedict to drop his attitude of neutrality and come out against the Hun. Like Jesus would.

The German Embassy in the US takes out an ad in various newspapers (this one’s from the NYT).

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan gives a one-hour temperance lecture at a Carnegie Hall meeting called by the National Abstainers’ Union. Hundreds then come to the front to sign the pledge, getting Bryan to sign as witness. Booker T. Washington also gives a speech. Bryan alludes to the war: “In some of the belligerent countries it has been found that loyalty to Bacchus, Gambrinus, and Barleycorn is greater than loyalty to King, Kaiser or Czar. The aeroplane that drops its bombs from above and the submarine that shoots its torpedoes from below are less to be feared than the schooner that crosses the bar.”

H.G. Wells writes about what the Allies’ war aims should be: restoring Belgium (and enlarging it to more defensible borders), a “rational readjustment” of borders. And, of course, “the chastening of Germany.”

This British recruiting poster was issued sometime in May:

It’s all about the hats.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: April 30, 1915: Of congresses of women, Ypring it up, donkey decoys, and resented terms

The International Congress of Women at the Hague passes resolutions in favor of nations solving their differences with arbitration rather than mass slaughter, opposing secret treaties, abrogating all existing secret treaties, and transferring territory between countries only with the consent of its inhabitants.

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan denies plans to recognize Carranza’s or any other government in Mexico.

Four Germans celebrate the German victories in Ypres. Unfortunately, they do it in Vancouver, and a lot of Canadians died at Ypres (indeed, a lot of Canadians were gassed at Ypres). The Germans, who are now under arrest, insist that their party was merely a housewarming.

Headline of the Day -100:

Don’t click on the link if you don’t want to read about 1,000 dead donkeys.

In Britain, an Anti-German League and a British Patriotic League have formed, both aimed at making sure anti-German sentiment doesn’t end with the war’s conclusion.

Samuel Pearson, an American citizen who served as a general for the Boers in the Boer War, files a discovery suit in Wisconsin to find whether Bethlehem Steel and other companies are secretly making shrapnel shells for the Allies in violation of Wisconsin law, which seems like an odd thing for Wisconsin law to cover. Pearson says such sales could hurt his investments in Germany.

Frances Blascoer of the Public Education Association writes a report on black children in New York public schools. There are two private schools for black children because the principals of the city’s public schools don’t want them.

One of those principals says black children’s class spirit is bad. Imagine that.

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Today -100: April 29, 1915: Of gas, u-boats, crucifixions, emotional people, and setting an example of self-sacrifice

The Prussian military newspaper Kreuz Zeitung says it was the Allies’ “behavior” that forced Germany to resort to poison gas. And the Frankfort Zeitung says poison gas is much more humane than artillery shells, producing a quick, painless death.

The French armored cruiser Léon Gambetta is sunk by an Austrian submarine commanded by Lt. Baron George von Trapp. They didn’t mention that bit in The Sound of Music. 684 of the Gambetta’s crew of 821 are killed.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times):

A report on the massacre of Christians in Urumiah, Turkish Persia, confirms that while local Kurds carried out the acts, they were assisted by Turkish soldiers. Who raped the women (which the NYT, surprisingly, states explicitly).

Hey, the very next article I read also has a rape reference. German suffragist leader Dr. Lida Heymann, VP of International Congress of Women at the Hague, says “Worse than death, yes, worse than hellish, is the defenselessness of women in warfare and their violation by the invading soldier!” The American delegates finally arrived at the Hague after the British navy held up their ship in the English Channel for four days. The NYT/Chicago Herald’s story is written by Jane Addams, who is the Congress’s president. 

Writing in the Boston Herald, Elizabeth Lowell Putnam, sister of the president of Harvard, says the Women’s Peace Party, which sent Addams and others to the Hague congress, “is one of the most dangerous movements which has threatened our emotional people for a long time,” appealing to “emotional women [she really doesn’t like emotions, does she?] whose hearts are so large that many people have mistaken them for heads.”

Greece offers to join the war on the Allies’ side, but are told they’re offering too little help and demanding too much in return.

The Church of England’s Convocation comes out against prohibition. The next day it voted to “invite” the church and laity to “set an example of self-sacrifice” re alcohol, only after being reassured that this did not mean total abstinence. The Dean of Canterbury says he tried not drinking once, “and found it a failure in that it impaired his health.”

Carranza claims to expect the United States to recognize him within a couple of weeks. He also plans to defeat Villa any day now.

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Somebody white just has to face that emotion and say that we’re sorry

1968 after the Martin Luther King assassination, NY Mayor John Lindsay walked the streets of Harlem. He is credited for helpign prevent the riots that occurred elsewhere. He said, “Somebody just has to go up there. Somebody white just has to face that emotion and say that we’re sorry.”

Compare and contrast with the leadership style of would-be President Rand Paul: “It’s depressing. It’s sad. It’s scary. I came through the train on Baltimore last night. I’m glad the train didn’t stop.”

Rand Paul: Chicken shit leadership you can count on!

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Today -100: April 28, 1915: His hour of disgrace

The US asks Turkey to please stop massacring Armenians.

The British War Office is asking the women of Britain to make gas masks for the soldiers. Well, gauze things more like the face masks you might wear to protect against smog in downtown Beijing, which should be totally effective against chlorine gas. (Actually, worse: when dry, the cotton was just useless; when wet, the user couldn’t breathe at all.)

The British say their troops at Gallipoli are “thoroughly making good their footing”. The Turks say they’ve been beaten back to the coast.

The NYT piles on the First Lord of the Admiralty for the mistakes of the Dardanelles campaign: “Now Winston Churchill’s hour of disgrace has come.” But really it’s more the fault of Asquith for allowing him to keep the job after war began: “For nine disastrous months he has been trying to do work for which neither his training nor his temperament fits him.”

Germany plans to purchase food enough for four more years of war.

The governor of Georgia is receiving thousands of letters calling for Leo Frank’s sentence to be commuted.

Margaret Buckner Lytle files for divorce from William Lytle, a black dentist in Oakland, California she married seven years ago under the mistaken belief that she was also a negro. She was raised in a convent and didn’t know her parents but a recent blood test has proved that she is white. So she wants a divorce. Or an annulment since inter-racial marriages aren’t legal.

The pianist & composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin dies, at 43. From blood poisoning. Because he scratched a pimple. So don’t do that.

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Today -100: April 27, 1915: Of dardanelles, war babies, last shots, and funny fat men

Headline of the Day -100:

The Morning Post (UK) is already calling for Winston Churchill’s hide for the mishandled Dardanelles campaign. They say he ignored the military’s advice by insisting that the Dardanelles could be forced through naval bombardments alone, without landing soldiers. The London Times, however, complains that the UK is attempting too many military campaigns simultaneously, with side-shows like the Dardanelles drawing resources away from the main show on the Western front.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will head a committee to investigate “war babies” – who they are, where do they come from, what do they want, etc. No, really, it’s planning to determine “the steps to be taken if the problem proves a serious one”. What “steps” might those be? Harrumphing, I imagine. Lots and lots of harrumphing.

The British are blaming riots in India on Turkish propaganda to Muslims in the Raj. 

The Florida Legislature rejects a resolution for a women’s suffrage referendum.

The New York World takes a poll of “prominent” men about women’s suffrage. They’re against it.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Obit of the Day -100: John Bunny, the “famous funny fat man” as the LAT refers to him, who is considered the first major film comedian for such shorts as A Cure for Pokeritis, Bunny and the Twins, Bunny Buys a Hat for His Bride, Bunny Buys a Harem, The Pickwick Papers, etc. A few survive and can be seen on YouTube. “The name of John Bunny,” the NYT says, “will always be linked with the movies. ... at the time of his death his face was one of the best known in the world.”  This face.

There’s an article on Bunny in the next Sunday NYT Magazine written by Joyce Kilmer, who suggests that cinema has revived the art of pantomime.

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Today -100: April 26, 1915: Of treacherous projectiles, massacres, and hat critics

Germany admits to using poison gas, although only, in the words of the Frankfurter Zeitung, “as a reply to the treacherous projectiles of the English and French.” Treacherous projectiles are the worst kind. The French report that the Germans are using chlorine gas. No shells, they’re just letting it loose when the winds are pointing in the direction of the French trenches, and hoping it doesn’t change direction.

Italy is still negotiating simultaneously with the Allies and with Austria, whose latest offer is that Trieste be given autonomy rather than be handed over to Italy outright. It’s almost like Austria doesn’t take seriously the threat of the mighty Italian military.

In fact, on this day Italy signed a secret treaty with the Allies. Italy would enter the war and in return get large portions of Austria, Albania (well, as a protectorate, but we all know what that means), some of Germany’s colonies, etc. Italy would only get some of this after the war, and threw a decades-long sulk over the slight to its (very minor) contributions to the Allied victory, a sulk which helped Mussolini take power.

Reports from Armenia say that the inhabitants of 10 Armenian villages have been massacred. One thing about the Armenian Genocide: everyone knew it was going on, right from the start, and knew many of the details, if they cared to.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 25, 1915: The free sea was not given by God to England to be rented out to various tenants

Bernhard Dernburg, a former German minister of colonies who has been in New York making semi-official but deniable statements about Germany’s positions, says that if Britain wants Germany to leave Belgium, it just has to agree to neutralized seas (“The free sea was not given by God to England to be rented out to various tenants”), free cable (meaning telegraphic communications, not free HBO, although Dernburg is a huuuuge Game of Thrones fan), a recodification of international law, and German expansion “in parts of the world where that expansion would not be objected to by the people of the lands to be settled,” wherever that might be.  “There will never be any universal peace,” he tells the University Club in Brooklyn, “until the German people have the same chance and the same right to branch out as have the people of other nations.” I believe there’s a word for that in German...

The Terra Haute city council impeaches Mayor Donn Roberts, evidently thinking he can’t continue to perform the job from his current location in Leavenworth Prison.

A play currently being performed in Frankfurt, Germany, “Wir Barbaren” (We Barbarians), is a musical comedy about Allied atrocity charges against Germany.

All the French feminist organizations are refusing to send delegates to the Hague peace conference (French feminists are perhaps the most blood-thirsty). Germany has banned German delegates and also Swiss ones from traveling through Germany.

Another article about British feminists and the conference quotes Emmeline Pankhurst accusing daughter Christabel of being influenced by the German propagandists she claims are behind the conference. That would be Sylvia, NYT: Sylvia was the anti-war firebrand, Christabel the pro-war one. Forgotten daughter Adela, now in Australia, is also anti-war. Anyway, the Home Office has given passports to 20 women it will allow to go to the Hague (out of c.120 who wanted to go), which is a charade because they also stopped all passenger ships going there.

The LAT reports that there are only a few doctors remaining in Glasgow, and people have been asked to call doctors only in an emergency. School authorities are being asked to do without school medical officers. The doctor shortage, evidently hitting Glasgow earlier than elsewhere in Britain, is of course related to the war and will continue throughout, leading, as you might guess, to greatly improved general health among civilians.

235 Armenian political, religious, and intellectual leaders are arrested in Constantinople overnight, and murdered.

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Genocide and the passive voice

It’s the 100th anniversary of the genocide that dare not speak its name. Or at least whose name American presidents dare not speak. Thee Armenian Genocide. Barack Obama issued a statement.

He doesn’t use the word genocide, but he does call it “the first mass atrocity of the 20th Century.” I assume in the hierarchy of violence to which all leaders subscribe, the mass atrocities inflicted in the many 20th century wars that preceded 1915 don’t count as mass atrocities because they are the legitimate acts of governments, just as drone strikes don’t count as murder.

Also, the Armenian Genocide was not the first mass atrocity of the 20th century, it wasn’t even the first genocide. Hello, Herero people of Namibia! Sorry we keep forgetting you!

“the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths.” All that passive voice. Deported by whom? Massacred by whom? Did they march to their deaths because they really enjoyed marching?

Also note the use of the archaic-sounding “Ottoman Empire” rather than Turkey.

“Amid horrific violence that saw suffering on all sides...” Wow, even Bush didn’t straight up adopt Turkey’s everybody-was-doing-it narrative.

Then he sort of skips past the specifics of mass atrocity to celebrating Ambassador Henry Morgenthau for collecting information about what was going on and making it public, and the American people for relief work. All of which is worth celebrating, but really, dude, everything that happens is the world is not all about us.

“I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view has not changed.” You haven’t used the word “genocide” since 2008, so don’t trumpet your consistency.  “Peoples and nations grow stronger, and build a foundation for a more just and tolerant future, by acknowledging and reckoning with painful elements of the past.” Like remember that time I had to admit blowing up some hostages “accidentally” with a missile shot from another thing whose name I don’t use? Good times.

Now go read today’s Jon Schwarz post on the subject.

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