Today -100: December 6, 1915: And if the belligerent nations know for what they are fighting, why not tell the world?

Headline of the Day -100: 

Jacob Schiff, banker and important leader of Jewish Americans, expects a mass immigration of European Jews after the war, but he says US cities are kinda full.

William Jennings Bryan calls on Pres. Wilson to ask the warring European nations what their peace terms are. “Each of the governments at war certainly knows what it is that it demands – otherwise it could not justify a continuation of the slaughter.” Um, right. “And if the belligerent nations know for what they are fighting, why not tell the world?”

News about a newly discovered comet reaches the US from Copenhagen, although some details are suppressed by military censors because why not.

A federal grand jury in New York is investigating Labor’s National Peace Council, which may or may not be a German front and which works for an embargo on the export of war materials. What is illegal about any of this that brings it within the purview of the grand jury remains unclear.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 5, 1915: Of peace ships, money well spent, and French contempt

The Oscar II, Henry Ford’s Peace Ship (the NYT is calling it Peace Ark) is under way, with over 150 passengers, of whom 1/3 are reporters. The passengers include suffragist Inez Milholland Boissevain and the poet Berton Braley and his new wife – who marry on board the ship before it sails. The ship is seen off by William Jennings Bryan, Thomas Edison, and a band playing “I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier.”

US government investigators report that since the start of the war Germany has spent $27 million in the US on various nefarious projects, including $3 million on propaganda and subsidies to newspapers and $12 million to foment a Huerta-led counter-revolution in Mexico.

Headline of the Day -100: 

And the New York Times is ON IT!

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 4, 1915: Fight preparedness

The US asks Germany to recall Karl Boy-Ed and Franz von Papen, its naval attaché and military attaché in Washington respectively, because of their “improper activities.” They are personae non gratae. Although both have been involved in espionage, sabotage and the like on US soil since the start of the war, there’s no clear reason why the Wilson administration is acting now. Papen says “I have no regrets. I have simply done my duty as a soldier and have obeyed instructions”. He will be Hitler’s vice-chancellor.

Germany retaliates by saying that US ambassador to Belgium Brand Whitlock, currently visiting home, will not be returning, although they’re claiming he has retired. Which is news to him.

Henry Ford and William Jennings Bryan meet at the Biltmore, where Bryan explains that he can be more useful working against military preparedness in the US than by joining the Peace Ship (or Ship of Fools, as some of the British press have taken to calling it). He endorses Ford’s mission without quite saying that he expects anything to come of it. A reporter asks Ford about accusations that “some people” are making that he has German blood. Ford says he investigated that today and no he doesn’t. His last word to the US before leaving: “Fight preparedness.”

Carranza says US recognition of his government isn’t enough, he needs the US to enforce its supposed embargo against non-Carranza groups.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 3, 1915: We should not marvel at an occasional fire or blow up

Gen. Joseph Joffre is named commander-in-chief of all the French armies in Europe (excluding north Africa).

DuPont denies rumors that the explosion at its Wilmington gunpowder plant was caused by saboteurs. “We should not marvel at an occasional fire or blow up,” says one company official about the deaths of 30+ of his employees.

The head of the Hamburg-American Line, Karl Buenz, and 3 of his underlings are found guilty for defrauding the US government (filing false papers in order to supply and fuel German Navy ships from US ports early in the war).

Headline of the Day -100: 

A French soldier (a piou-piou – young chick – which is slang for a young soldier), Priv. Lucien Tapie Bellocq, writes to the NYPD asking them to track down his wife, who he believes absconded here, to let her know “I forgave her before I died for my country,” adding, “I still feel friendly to her, in spite of her act of folly.” What’s the French for “guilt trip?” He thinks she can be found working in a hospital or infirmary “or maybe in a much worse place”. There is no follow-up story in the NYT index.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 2, 1915: Of sentimental war talk

Henry Ford responds to his critics: “There has been a lot of talk of attack on ‘sentimental peace talk’ by people who want us to have sentimental war talk instead.” The State Dept is restricting the scope of his mission by only issuing passports for Peace Shippers to enter neutral countries (Ford’s proposed conference would be held in the Netherlands). Several people who want to go are having difficulty getting passports in time, which may be deliberate State Dept obstruction, confusing new passport rules, or Ford’s almighty rush.

Gen. Obregon, commander of Carranza’s forces, says Pancho Villa has gone insane.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: December 1, 1915: Worst Christmas tree decorations ever

A gunpowder explosion at a DuPont plant near Wilmington, Delaware kills 31. For some reason the workers in the packing plant were all aged 16 to 21. The Western Newspaper Union News Service reports: “From every tree left standing in the neighborhood there was hanging either pieces of flesh or parts of clothing worn by the unfortunate men.” The remaining workers had to pick up all those bits and bobs.

Does this explosion have anything to do with a poster campaign to get German & Austrian workers at the plant to quit? It would be irresponsible not to speculate. DuPont says the cause may never be known, since everyone in the packing plant was, you know, blown to tiny pieces. In fact, DuPont’s powder plants have explosions of a pretty regular basis.

Kaiser Wilhelm is visiting Vienna and it would be irresponsible not to speculate that he’s there to persuade the ancient Austrian emperor not to make a separate peace with Italy.

IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is acquitted on a charge of inciting violence during the Paterson silk strike of 1913. The jury disbelieved police witnesses about Flynn’s language (the cops all remembered the same words about forcing scabs out of the factories by force but somehow failed to remember anything else at all from her speech) and believed her witnesses.

British newspapers are now refusing Ford automobile ads because of Henry F’s anti-war activism.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 30, 1915: If the warring countries would go back to fighting then, they are fools

Canadian and Australian soldiers (and medical students, according to the London Times) break up a peace meeting in London called by the Union of Democratic Control, gaining entrance with forged tickets and bearing gas bombs. The Daily Express, which has been inciting such action, describes this as the “utter rout of the pro-Germans.”

It’s a World War, After All:

Germans are supposedly training Indian and Burmese insurgents in far Siam.

Henry Ford thinks that news of his Peace Ship has so inspired the warring nations’ troops – who he thinks have all heard about it – that on Christmas they will start a general strike against the war. “What we want right now is to get these men out of the murder ditches and home for Christmas. If the warring countries would go back to fighting then, they are fools.” No word yet on whether William Jennings Bryan will be on the Peace Ship, and Pres. Wilson’s daughter Margaret has declined her invitation, but they do have Charles Pease, president of the Anti-Smokers’ Protective League of America.

The Supreme Court upholds a New York law against the employment of aliens on public works projects. If I’m reading this correctly, it’s treating the city as a private body in hiring matters, not subject to the 14th Amendment.

The New York Radium Sanitarium opens tomorrow. I’m assuming every one of its patients will die horribly.

Ad of the Day:

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 29, 1915: Of conquests, lost provinces, poison gas, and lynchings

Germany declares victory in Serbia. Half the Serbian army are now prisoners, most of the rest have escaped into the mountains or out of the country. King Peter supposedly keeps talking about suicide. Serbia does not admit defeat, claiming to be retreating in perfect order with barely any losses.

Germany denies plans to give Schleswig-Holstein, seized in the 1860s, back to Denmark in return for its neutrality in the war. Why, it would be an insult to even suggest that Denmark could be bribed, Germany says.

Fog of War, so to speak: the Allies say that Turkey has used poison gas for the first time, at Gallipoli.

John Willey of Gibonsburg, Ohio, who was out on bail while on trial for murdering his grandmother, is lynched. He’d been getting letters threatening a “lynching bee” for some time. Since the NYT doesn’t mention his race, I assume he was white.

Ad of the day:

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 28, 1915: Of rodds, Parisian crime, armbands, and truces

Skirmishes between Pancho Villa’s forces and the US Army on the Arizona border kill 11 of the former. In a later clash with Carranzaists, which was supposedly due to a mistake, one US soldier is killed.

The Berliner Tageblatt said (in a 5-week-old article the NYT is just now reading) that Italy’s government and military are being secretly run by the British ambassador Sir Rennell Rodd (!), exercising his influence on Queen Elena through the royal children’s English nurse.

Émile Marie Laurent, prefect of the Paris police, says crime has almost entirely ceased in Paris since the war began, including murder, burglary and armed robbery. And with buses commandeered for war work, the streets of Paris are much safer. So he’s been focusing on the aspects of la vie parisienne he especially detests: gamblers, drug dealers, and restaurants that have both wine and live music (“not a decent combination”).

The British government is now issuing khaki armbands to men of military age who are doing work exempting them from military service or who have enlisted but not been called up yet. All the better to put social pressure on shirkers.

Pope Benedict plans to ask everyone for a Christmas truce.

Seriously: Sir Rennell Rodd.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 27, 1915: Out of the trenches before Christmas, never to go back

Henry Ford gives an anti-war speech in Washington. It’s his first public speech ever and it consists of the slogan, “Out of the trenches before Christmas, never to go back.”

A meeting in London of disaffected Women’s Social and Political Union members declares that Emmeline Pankhurst is misusing the group’s name – and its funds – by associating it with pro-war rather than pro-suffrage activities. There will soon be two splinter groups, the Independent Women’s Social and Political Union and the Suffragettes of the Women’s Social and Political Union.

Suffragist Inez Milholland reveals that it was she who proposed to her husband.

A Mrs Adamson of Philadelphia adopts a Japanese baby to test whether environment is more important than heredity. Says Mrs Adamson, “She doesn’t know that she is Japanese and will not know it until she is old enough to recognize the different racial characteristics.” Evidently if at 21, after not learning Japanese, she chooses to live in the US rather than Japan, that will have proved the importance of environment, because science.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 26, 1915: I know that moral pressure will not be without its effect

Henry Ford’s letter of invitation to governors and former presidents and other dignitaries to join his Peace Ship says that Jane Addams and Thomas Edison have already accepted, which they haven’t. Asked how he expected to compel the warring nations to participate in the peace conference he intends to call, he says “I know that moral pressure will not be without its effect”.

Spoiler Alert: moral pressure will totally be without its effect.

The NYT notes that the idea of the Peace Ship originated with Rosika Schwimmer, the suffragist and internationalist who would probably not have been thrilled to be described by the Times as Austrian – she’s a Hungarian Jew. After the war Schwimmer had to flee Hungary when it went fascist (proto-fascist? whatever), but was denied US citizenship because of her refusal to take an oath to take up arms on behalf of the United States, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court which said that a citizen has the right of conscientious objection but a non-citizen applying to become a citizen does not, because logic.

The Medico-Legal Society of America wants all states to pass laws making all illegal-drug users, no matter the degree of their drug habit, wards of the state to force them into treatment, rather than wait for them to commit crimes or go insane.

Thanksgiving Day sermons in New York largely focused on the need for military preparedness. A warning someone should have given the Indians at the first Thanksgiving.

Alaska’s delegate to the US Congress, James Wickersham, will introduce a bill for statehood in the coming congressional session.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 25, 1915: I intend to try to crush militarism

Henry Ford charters an entire liner, the Oscar II, to carry him and an assorted group of pacifists to go to Europe to stop the war. “We are going to try to get the boys out of their trenches and back to their homes by Christmas Day.” Well at least he’s given himself a full month. He’s invited any number of prominent people to join him, including William Jennings Bryan and Thomas Edison, who have or will both refuse. “I intend to try to crush militarism,” Ford says.

Spoiler Alert: He will not crush militarism.

Edward Ryan’s luggage explodes in Budapest. Specifically, an artillery shell which he was taking back to the US as a souvenir, as you do. Dr Ryan was head of an American Red Cross mission in Serbia.

The German Army has adopted an artificial-respiration device, involving a rubber tube and foot-operated bellows, which was invented before the war by Dr. Samuel Meltzer of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research for use by miners, to restore the breathing of soldiers asphyxiated by gas or buried in trench collapses. The Rockefeller Foundation has supplied these devices to the British, French and (more recently) German armies.

Headline of the Day -100:

A “foreign official source, in no way connected with European affairs” tells the NYT that for 6 months Germany has been funding Huerta’s attempt to start a counter-revolution in Mexico, to keep the US occupied militarily and distracted. And then the US arrested Huerta right before he could reach Mexico.

The Serbian government is now a government-in-exile, retreating to Scutari, Albania.

Greece gives the Allies permission to move their troops around Macedonia unimpeded, because what choice did Greece have? In return, the Allies promise not to keep any Greek territory they occupy during the war.

Albert Einstein presents to the Prussian Academy of Sciences the Einstein Equations establishing the theory of general relativity.

On Stone Mountain, Georgia, 16 men re-found the Ku Klux Klan. Burn a cross and everything. Next week the state of Georgia will issue them a charter. It will take a while for it to amount to anything – it may be a few years before I have cause to mention it again – but this group will grow into the mammoth Second Klan of the 1920s, which will elect (and impeach) governors in states throughout the union (Oregon, Indiana, etc), pass laws banning Catholic schools, and fight against unions and immigrants and for prohibition.

One of the men on Stone Mountain is Col. William Joseph Simmons, who will be the Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He’s mostly harmless and had in mind not a night-riding, negro-lynching organization but a fraternal order much like the others he loved: Elks, Shriners, Masons, Woodmen of the World, that sort of thing (the “colonel” title came from the Woodmen of the World, although he was a private during the Spanish-American War). The fact that the body he chose to revive was the Klan is of course down to “The Birth of a Nation,” which he adored and watched over and over. One of the things he adopted from it: burning crosses, which the post-Civil War Klan did not do. He loved the paraphernalia and secret handshakes and such, which he would lovingly detail in a 54-page document called... wait for it... the Kloran. However, Simmons wasn’t much of an organizer (and liked the bottle a little too much), so his Empire will remain mostly Invisible in fact as well as name until he hired some PR people in 1920...

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 24, 1915: Oh, of course there was sauerkraut

Officials of the Hamburg-American Line and other Germans and German-Americans are being tried for conspiring early in the war to supply German ships illegally from the US. Including sauerkraut? the prosecutor asks a stevedore, but he can’t remember. The testimony directly implicates Capt. Karl Boy-Ed, the German naval attaché in Washington, who somehow hasn’t already been expelled from the country despite repeated links to espionage and sabotage.

The feds have found a building in Cleveland (still under construction) which they think Germans were building to store explosives for an attack on Canada.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 23, 1915: I think this line’s mostly filler

Allied forces capture Tibati, in Kamerun, if you needed a reminder that this is indeed a world war or something to write on a slow news day -100.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 22, 1915: Cigars v. zeppelins: the eternal Battle of the Phallic Symbols

New British regulations limiting alcohol sales to five hours a day will go into effect next week and London trade unionists are not happy, threatening to resist “by open revolt if necessary.” “No Beer, No Work” will be their clarion cry.

I think I mentioned the State Dept yanked the passport of a German-American naturalized citizen after he made some sort of remarks about Woodrow Wilson. Now, because he can’t prove that he’s a US citizen, which he is, he’s likely to be drafted into the German army. The US ambassador to Germany still refuses to give back his passport.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Allies are pressuring Greece to join their side of the war through a “pacific blockade” of Greek ports, harassing Greek-flagged ships, etc. If that doesn’t make Greece more kindly disposed to them, I don’t know what will.

Germany isn’t very impressed with Greece’s declared neutrality either, threatening that if Greece doesn’t disarm Serb and other Allied soldiers fleeing into Greece (Serbian forces are losing quite badly right now), then German troops will invade Greece to go after them.

Anna Howard Shaw resigns as president of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 21, 1915: Of fires, uncultivated literary taste, locusts, and careless pedestrians

Pennsylvania State Fire Marshal Joseph Baldwin says several recent fires at munitions plants were all started deliberately.

Headline of the Day -100 (NYT Magazine):  “Do Women Lack Cultivated Literary Taste?” Harry Leon Wilson, author of Ruggles of Red Gap, thinks so, and the pandering to them by publishers is dragging American literature down.

Palestine has been hit by a plague of locusts. As was the custom.

Francis Hugo, NY secretary of state, warns the NY State Automobile Association that public opinion has been hardening against reckless drivers. It’s true; since I’ve started these posts I’ve seen a shift away from viewing the running down of pedestrians as the inevitable price of modern life. In today’s auto news, Treasury Secretary McAdoo denies that his wife (Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Eleanor) had been summoned for speeding - it was her chauffeur. And Prince Paul Troubetzkoy, the sculptor, escapes the workhouse for reckless driving because there’s only one witness. However, the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce says that 90% of New York City street accidents “are due to carelessness or other fault of the injured”. Of course many of those the Chamber is blaming are children, who account for 45% of fatalities.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 20, 1915: Of inflammatory street speaking, rajahs, and Paris dresses

The Allies are trying to get China to join the war. China wouldn’t be expected to do anything militarily (indeed, China is incapable of doing anything militarily), but it’s hoped this will allow Japan to focus more on its small role in the European war and less on bullying China.

Wobbly hobo poet Joseph Hillstrom is executed in Utah by firing squad. Hillstrom yelled “Fire” himself. Hillstrom still claimed to be innocent and he could prove it but that would wreck a woman’s reputation, so he didn’t. Gov. William Spry says he will now clear the “lawless element” out of Utah and stop “inflammatory street speaking”.

Britain denies German claims of revolts in India. Indeed, they say that not only is the Rajah of Bhagalpur not leading a revolt, but there is no Rajah of Bhagalpur.

Edith Galt, Woodrow Wilson’s fiancée, is having trouble ordering dresses from Paris, which is what happens when you use a German-American importer.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 19, 1915: Of zep bombs, cold soldiers, safety at sea, and cases of undue importance

The Daily Mail (UK) prints a claim that unusually high death rates among those injured by bombs dropped from zeppelins must mean that the Germans are using biological warfare (they’re not).

A story going round the German Army on the Eastern front says that Gen. Hindenburg asked Kaiser Wilhelm for warm clothes for his troops but Willy said no, if they were cold they’d be more likely to take Riga and Dvinsk quickly just to warm up.

Headline of the Day -100: 

It will. Not. Do! Good day to you, sir. I said, good day!

Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes asks the Nebraska secretary of state to ignore a petition being circulated to put his name of the 1916 ballot for president (the secretary will comply).

Utah Gov. William Spry rejects Pres. Wilson’s request to stay the execution of hobo poet Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom), complaining that “Your interference in the case may have elevated it to an undue importance”. (For those clicking on the article: Hillstrom did not compose “Hallelujah I’m a Bum”).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 18, 1915: Of hopeless defectives, vice presidents and senators (but I repeat myself), privy councillors, and hobo poets

This has been kind of a big deal in Chicago for the last few days: a doctor decides not to perform an operation that might have saved a new-born “hopeless defective” boy, which has now died. The doctor says the boy would have been doomed to “an animal existence and imbecility.” He says he’s done a favor for the child, “its” parents, and.... the race.

Vice President Marshall is giving Pres. Wilson and Edith Galt a Navajo blanket as a wedding gift.

Sen. Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania announces his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. Right now Penrose is following the Liberty Bell as it tours around the country.

In Britain the Anti-German League is suing to remove Sir Edgar Speyer and Sir Ernest Cassel from the Privy Council because they are naturalized citizens (Speyer was American but with German parents, Cassel a German Jew).

Pres. Wilson asks Utah Gov. William Spry to stay the execution of hobo poet Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: November 17, 1915: Of exterminations, sneaky contract, and loyal and vigorous conduct of the law

Lord Robert Cecil, the British under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, denies that Britain stirred up the Armenians to revolt, saying rather that the Armenian massacres were pre-meditated by the Turks to “exterminate the Armenian race,” but adding that no, Britain didn’t intend to do anything to stop them.

German money, from the Deutsche Bank of Berlin, was used to prevent the Bridgeport Projectile Company providing shrapnel presses to the Allies, by entering into a contract that was never intended to be fulfilled and which was cancelled 12 hours after it was signed without invalidating a provision which prevents the company selling to anyone else until 1916. The whole thing is now in court.

The Albert Hall cancels a meeting Mrs. Pankhurst was to have held “to demand loyal and vigorous conduct of the war,” by which she means forcing Prime Minister Asquith and Foreign Secretary Grey to quit.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.