Today -100: September 9, 1915: Finally, someone puts trench warfare methods to a constructive use

Henry Ford increases his endowment for a world peace fund to $10 million. In response, the Packard Motor Company will pay a bonus and give extra vacation days to any of its employees who join the militia or go to military training camps – the president of Packard, Henry Joy, is also vice president of the Navy League.

William Jennings Bryan suggests that instead of preparing for war with ships and guns and Packard workers, we should build 12 coast-to-coast roads. Which is of course roughly what Eisenhower did in the 1950s for similar reasons.

Gustav Stahl, one of Germany’s witnesses who claimed that the Lusitania had cannons, pleads guilty to perjury before a federal grand jury. He will be sentenced to 18 months in the pokey and a $1 fine.

$1?

The British Trades Union Congress votes 600-7 that the war is “completely justified.”

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And escape with $2,000.

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Today -100: September 8, 1915: Of modesty, orders, gold, conscription, and wreaths

Woodrow Wilson is protesting the efforts of his friends in New Jersey to nominate him for a second term as president. Something about it looking like he was taking advantage of the current world situation for personal advantage.

Austrian ambassador-for-now to the United States Konstantin Dumba tells Secretary of State Robert Lansing that he was just following orders with his plans to disrupt munitions and steel production in the US, except his letter to the Foreign Office sounded more like he was asking permission to carry out his own ideas (the text at the link is presumably the British government’s translation of the letter, so take that for what it’s worth).

Britain ships another $66 million in gold to the US for safe-keeping.

The British Trades Union Congress, representing 3 million trade union members, votes its opposition to conscription.

Walter Kandulski, who shot down Adolphe Pégoud’s plane, drops a wreath on an Alsatian village inscribed “To Pégoud, who died like a hero, from his adversary.” Isn’t that sweet?

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Today -100: September 7, 1915: Of Filipino politicians of not the highest standing, monarchies, and boxing

William Howard Taft (who was governor of the Philippines before he was president), criticizes the Philippines policies of Pres. Wilson and Gov-Gen. Francis Harrison, who he calls “a Tammany congressman” who knows nothing about the Philippines and who put himself under the control of “a Filipino politician of not the highest standing,” Manuel Quezon (who will certainly become a politician of the highest standing, president in fact). He also objects to American colonial officials being replaced by actual Filipinos. Obviously, you can’t give self-rule to the natives for two generations, when everyone will speak English.

The German newspapers are saying that maybe the Hesperian wasn’t really hit by a torpedo. Hey, maybe it didn’t exist at all, or maybe some  kid is dreaming, and we’re all stuck inside his wacky Broadway nightmare.

China decides that becoming a monarchy would create all sorts of paperwork, including getting foreign nations to recognize their government all over again, so they’ll continue to be a republic, but the president will hold office for life and his sons will inherit the office, which is totally different from a monarchy, somehow.

The sheriff of Allen County, Ohio calls out the Ohio National Guard to prevent a boxing match, which involves them in a brief armed stand-off with the Lima police.

You know who else doesn’t like boxing? Illinois Gov. Edward Dunne, who protests Labor Day being celebrated at Joliet Penitentiary with boxing.

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Today -100: September 6, 1915: Rudyard Kipling, sitting in a tree...

The passenger steamer Hesperian is torpedoed (without warning) off Ireland on its way to Montreal, by the same u-boat that sank the Lusitania. 32 are killed. Most of the passengers were wounded Canadian soldiers returning home or British emigrants to Canada. No American passengers. The British newspapers are crowing that this proves the German ambassador’s assurances to Pres. Wilson were lies. (Actually, the Hesperian had a mounted 4.7 gun, which means the U-20 was under no obligation, I believe, to give a warning, although there’s some question about that). (And will be more so when it’s revealed that it was a 6-inch gun, which the US considers the boundary between defensive and offensive guns). It is suspected that the Hesperian was targeted in the belief that it was carrying one of those shipments of gold Britain has been sending to the US.

James Archibald, an American reporter (he was the first man shot during the Spanish-American War, where he was a war correspondent), was detained a few days ago by the British authorities when his ship made a stop at Falmouth on its way from New York to Rotterdam. He was couriering some letters from the German and Austrian embassies in the US. The British kept the letters and are now gleefully leaking their contents. Konstantin Dumba, the Austrian ambassador to the US, is defending his letter to the foreign minister proposing measures to “disorganize and hold up for months, if not entirely prevent, the manufactures of munitions and in Bethlehem and the Middle West,” such as fomenting strikes. Dumba says this is an entirely legitimate part of his job. He says the steel industry has thousands of workers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who “are uneducated and who do not understand that they are engaged in a work against their own country” and he just wanted to explain to them that they could be prosecuted if they ever returned home. He is going to Washington to explain his position to Secretary of State Lansing who (Spoiler Alert) will not agree.

Also seized were similar letters from military attaché at the German embassy, Capt. Franz von Papen, who will also be expelled from the US, although not until December. That’s the same Franz von Papen who was chancellor of Germany in 1932 and vice-chancellor under Hitler.

Canada is building giant military airplanes capable of speeds of nearly 100 mph.

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Rudyard turns his hand to war reporting. The officers he quotes sound suspiciously like Rudyard Kipling.Rudyard turns his hand to war reporting. The officers he quotes sound suspiciously like Rudyard Kipling.

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Today -100: September 5, 1915: Of skirmishes, lynchings, martial law, and Comstockery

Running gun-battles across the Texas-Mexican border with some combination of Mexican bandits and Carranza soldiers.

A negro is lynched near Dresden, Tennessee for a “crime against a white woman.”

The Vatican denies that Cardinal Gibbons passed on a message from the pope to Woodrow Wilson.

US Rear Admiral William Capterton declares martial law in Port au Prince.

William Sanger, husband of Margaret, on trial (and denied a jury) for giving a copy of one of her birth control pamphlets to an agent of Anthony Comstock who passed himself off as a friend of hers, says that he was offered a suspended sentence if he’d say where his wife is.

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Today -100: September 4, 1915: Resolved to win!

Pointless Headline of the Day -100:

The NYT grants anonymity to “a [British] high Government official” to say that Britain wants to... wait for it... win the war. This is actually a push-back against an anticipated move by Germany to negotiate a peace now that it’s winning, especially in the east.

Mexicans have been shooting across the border at US Army airplanes.

Standard Oil of New Jersey agrees to the 8-hour day for all its employees.

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Today -100: September 3, 1915: Of gigantic plots, bee farm locations, readiness, lynchings and grand juries

US District Attorney Charles Clyne of Chicago says he has uncovered “gigantic plots in violation of American neutrality” attempts by foreign nations to recruit soldiers in the US and using operatives to blow up arms factories. The countries he mentions as employing the recruiting agents are Britain and... Montenegro.

Another US district attorney, John Neely in Florida, has to release, due to insufficient evidence, a suspected spy for Germany, the magnificently named August Orbolph, who made sketches of lighthouses and military installations for two years while “on the pretense of hunting a location for a bee farm.”

The White House makes public letters Wilson sent his secretaries of war and the navy asking them to develop plans to strengthen the military. Republicans, not least Teddy R, are looking to make military readiness a major issue in 1916.

Cardinal Gibbons meets Woodrow Wilson, evidently bearing a message from the pope asking him to mediate between the warring powers. But Wilson won’t do that until he’s asked, and asked nicely.

The Cobb County, Georgia grand jury somehow fails to ascertain the identity of even a single member of the mob which lynched Leo Frank, although by golly they tried their very best.

In good lynching news, Speaker of the House Champ Clark talks an outraged mob out of lynching a negro in Missouri. Harry Rose is lucky the mob assembled near Clark’s house, sparing a grand jury the task of a pantomime investigation.

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Today -100: September 2, 1915: Mmmm, horse

Germany gives the US the assurances it demanded, saying in future it will refrain from sinking liners without warning and will try its darnedest not to kill civilians (unless the liners resist or try to escape).

The New York Constitutional Convention rejects a proposal to increase the term of office for governor from 2 to 4 years.

Austria, following Germany, says that its citizens resident in, say, the US, who work in munitions factories are subject to imprisonment or execution.

The influx of Belgian refugees to Britain has brought Belgian cuisine to delight the palates of Londoners and Glaswegians. Well, horse meat, anyway. It is legal in Britain for any butcher to sell whinny steaks, but there must be a permanent sign advertising the fact, and no one gets horse who didn’t explicitly ask for it.

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Today -100: September 1, 1915: Is it YOU?

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The German sub U-24, which sank the SS Arabic, is reported sunk. Which would conveniently release Germany from the dilemma of whether to punish its commander for disobeying directives in torpedoing the British ship or admit that Adm. Tipitz sabotaged the move by failing to pass on the directives to U-boat captains. Or it would have released Germany from its dilemma if the U-24 has actually been sunk, which it has not. Is this German disinformation? A genuine mistake? The NYT doesn’t say where its information came from.

Adolphe Célestin Pégoud, widely but wrongly credited as the first aviator to fly a loop-the-loop, is shot down and killed. By one of his old (German) students, Walter Kandulski.

Two British recruiting posters issued this month:

Punch:

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Today -100: August 31, 1915: Of horse thieves and foreign-policy elections

San Antonio police arrest 26 Mexicans, thwarting a supposed plot to kill gringos (and Germans) and reattach Texas to Mexico.

A posse of Texas Rangers, customs guards, the 13th US Cavalry, and civilians kill 5 horse thieves from Mexico near Hillsburg, TX including, it is suspected (correctly), Gen. Pascual Orozco, who jumped bond last month after being arrested with Huerta. It’s actually a little murky. The rancher Dick Love who called in the authorities didn’t tell them Orozco was one of the Mexicans, although they knew each other. Love may have been carrying out a personal vendetta against Orozco and those may not even have been his horses, but Orozco’s.

The NYT thinks the 1916 elections will be the first US election ever fought on foreign issues. They quote the Boston Herald saying that the D’s will fight on “He kept the country out of war.” First time I’ve seen that phrase in the NYT. Won’t be the last.

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Today -100: August 30, 1915: Of fire and snakes

A mob in Sulphur Springs, Texas, lynches two negro brothers who killed a couple of sheriffs. They are burned (one alive, one dead) at the stake. The NYT describes that as a “compromise” between those who wanted the men burned alive in the town square and those who wanted to allow the law to take its course. Who says Texans don’t believe in compromise?

Germany is supposedly now using phosphorus shells to set enemy soldiers on fire. Are Germans actually Texans? Are Texans actually Germans? Someone check Wikipedia.

Feel-Good Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: August 29, 1915: Of negro women suffragists, TR speeches, and tighter skirts

The Woman Suffrage Party in NY will open a branch for black people (ahead of the November referendum).

Theodore Roosevelt responds to Secretary of War Garrison’s criticism of his speech in typically temperate terms and it’s like watching him degenerate into a Fox News commentator.

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German dressmakers had intended to bring out wider, material-wasting skirts simply to do the opposite of whatever is current Paris fashion. The government would rather save the cotton.

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Today -100: August 28, 1915: Blackjacked

A fire in the Presidio kills the wife and three of the four children of Gen. “Blackjack” Pershing, who will lead US expeditionary forces during World War I. Evidently there are standing orders for Presidio personnel not to pull an alarm to call the SF Fire Department until they’ve tried to put it out themselves (with old, inadequate equipment).

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Today -100: August 27, 1915: When mobs are no longer possible, liberty will be dead

Russia abandons Brest-Litovsk.

Former SC Gov. Coleman Blease shows up at the Conference of Governors and speaks out against the use of the third degree by police, which he says is a violation of the Constitution and a blow to the whole spirit of our institutions.  Unlike lynchings, which of course he totally supports: “when mobs are no longer possible, liberty will be dead.”

The US is now pushing Germany for a response to its last Lusitania letter about submarine warfare. That letter actually said that it didn’t require a written response, just not torpedoing quite so many Americans in the future, but now, with the Arabic sinking, the US demands an explicit response. Germany is evidently telling the US privately that it already sent orders to modify submarine warfare and refrain from attacking passenger ships (which the U-boat that sunk the Arabic ignored), but that it won’t say so publicly because the German people are really committed to sub warfare, in part because the government is exaggerating how successful it is and how vital to the war effort.

France announces the end of martial law outside of actual war zones.

The New York Constitutional Convention reverses itself and drops the literacy requirement.

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The British and German ambassadors to the US both turn up at the Shoreham Hotel restaurant for separate lunches. They do not make eye contact.

German occupation forces appoint a city council for Warsaw, 12 Poles, 12 Germans, and 6 Jews.

A W.J.L. writes a letter to the NYT saying that he’d offered a German street band a dime to play the Marseillaise but “They are not out for cash, it seems.”

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Today -100: August 26, 1915: We have treated elocution as a substitute for action

Haitian President Philippe Dartiguenave, in office less than two weeks following his predecessor’s precipitate removal from office by a murderous mob, signs the convention giving control of Haitian finances and police to the United States. It now has to be ratified by the Haitian Congress and US Senate. Secretary of State Robert Lansing is openly using the term “protectorate.” He says, “The United States Government has no purpose of aggression and is entirely disinterested in promoting this protectorate.” Hell, he says, we haven’t even demanded Mole St. Nicholas be ceded to the US like Guantanamo Bay.

Theodore Roosevelt says Americans should stand by Pres. Wilson only so far as he is right. In a speech at the US Military Instruction Camp at Plattsburg, he denounces “professional hyphenated Americans” and also “professional pacifists and the poltroons and college sissies who organize peace-at-any-price societies,” and the man with a mean soul. He wants every young man in America to be given military training, just like Switzerland. He says the US has “played an ignoble part among the nations” since the start of the world war, shirking its responsibility to defend Belgium. He says, and you know I believe he might just be referring to President Wilson, that “We have treated elocution as a substitute for action. ....  Reliance upon high-sounding words unbacked by deeds is proof of a mind that dwells only in the realm of shadow and of sham.”

Tomorrow Secretary of War Garrison will issue a very public rebuke to Gen. Wood for letting Roosevelt make that speech.

The proposal that the right to vote be contingent on an ability to read and write in English passes the NY constitutional convention. For now.

What the NYT calls the “Grape Juice Hiatus” at the State Department comes to an end, as Lansing reverses Bryan’s ban on alcohol at diplomatic dinners. The NYT asks why grape juice was made the go-to substitute for booze, instead of, say, ginger ale.

Paris jewelers have developed a wrist watch for soldiers - complete with a compass and a glow-in-the-dark radium-coated dial (World War I saw the widespread switch from pocket to wrist watches, which were much more convenient in the trenches).

Headline of the Day -100:

German saboteurs are being blamed lately (sometimes correctly) for every industrial mishap, but this time (in Jersey City) they have gone too far!

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That’s why you should always use SPF 30 or higher.

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I dunno, if Staten Island didn’t have a criminal class, it wouldn’t have any class at all.

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Nope, I can’t even think of a joke to make about this one.

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Today -100: August 25, 1915: Of arabics, literate voters, unknown lynchers, sops, and emperors

Germany has been leaking suggestions that the Arabic wasn’t torpedoed but sank because it hit a stray floating mine. The government has asked the US for a delay for it to prepare an answer after it investigates how the Arabic was sunk and even whether the American passengers who died were actually American.

At the New York constitutional convention, there’s a debate over a proposed requirement for voters to be able to read and write in English. Charles Young (R) says that German immigrants who can only read the German-language press are a grave menace to the US, while Prof. Louis Marshall points out that the requirement would piss off the 1 million Jews who can only read Yiddish.

Completely Unsurprising Headline of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100: 

The 10% who are Catholic or Protestant or who work at US consulates.

Chinese President Yuan Shikai denies planning to make himself emperor (while being obviously behind the propaganda campaign for the restoration of the monarchy). He says that his sons are unfit to be non-commissioned officers, much less succeed him as emperor. I foresee an awkward Thanksgiving.

The US gives Haiti until noon to agree to a 10-year treaty giving the US control of its customs revenue and police forces.

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Today -100: August 24, 1915: War is a dirty business

Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašic says the Serbian army hasn’t been fighting lately because of sanitary conditions. He also says, through gritted teeth, that he is giving in to his allies in allowing Italy to pretend it controls Albania.

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Today -100: August 23, 1915: Universal peace will be any color you want, as long as it’s black

William Jennings Bryan says that the sinking of the Arabic is not a cause for war, and again blames the American passengers who put their convenience above their nation’s welfare for their own deaths, and should we really let selfish dead people like that drag us into war?

I still don’t know exactly how many Mexican leaders, generals etc were sent those letters by the US and the Latin American ambassadors demanding a conference be called to settle, you know, everything, but some of the answers are beginning to trickle in. All of Carranza’s generals got one, and they’re all replying “Hey, talk to the boss. We just work here.” Including Gen. Obregon, who some Americans are considering putting into power.

Henry Ford says he will use his fortune to campaign for universal peace.

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Today -100: August 22, 1915: Of declarations of war, pales, fresh sacrifices, sublime days, and deaf drivers

Italy declares war on Turkey. Italy’s complaints: Turkey is fomenting revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, and it won’t let Italians leave Syria.

Russia loosens its restrictions on where Jews can live, since most of the Pale of Settlement is either occupied by German troops or an active war zone. They still won’t be allowed in Moscow or Petrograd or in the vicinity of the tsar’s various residences, because you have to have some standards.

Some people want the US to respond to the sinking of the Arabic by expelling the German ambassador. Theodore Roosevelt, not surprisingly, thinks this is not sufficient and would, indeed, be “a fresh sacrifice of American honor and interest.” he says the time for words has “long passed,” but doesn’t spell out what the US should do, although I think we can guess.

Germany captures the fortress Novo Georgievsk, or as Kaiser Wilhelm puts it, “It was a sublime day, for which I humbly thank God. The booty in Kovno has increased to 600 guns.” It’s not often you hear someone use the words “sublime,” “humbly thank God” and “booty” so close together, except maybe in rap songs.

A member of the Russian Duma named Alexandrof will be prosecuted for publishing an article before the war predicting war between Germany and Russia.

New Jersey’s DMV commissioner rules that deaf people can’t have driver licenses.

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Today -100: August 21, 1915: Emperors v. mosquitos

The Germans have totally developed a “ray” that can cut through barbed wire from a mile away.

Karl Liebknecht, the socialist Reichstag deputy, puts a question to the foreign minister: will Germany negotiate on the basis of no annexations? Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow replies that “the moment is unsuitable” to answer.

The secretary of Germany’s Imperial Treasury, Karl Helfferich, admits that the war has gone waaaay over budget, but he intends to finance it through war loans which will be repaid by the defeated enemy after the war ends.

Headline of the Day -100: 

I believe Sean Connery had a line about this in The Untouchables.

Jacques Lebaudy, the Emperor of Sahara, is recaptured after being defeated in the Long Island woods by the toughest enemy of all: mosquitos. His lawyers will get him sprung in a week or so. One of his first acts will be to take out an ad disavowing any debts (shop accounts, that sort of thing) entered into by his wife. In fact, he claims that she isn’t even his wife but “a French woman of no social standing” passing herself off as his wife. She is, of course, his actual wife. Some people don’t take being committed by their spouses very well. Their relations and his mental health will not improve and she will shoot him dead in self-defense in 1919.

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