Today -100: October 8, 1916: Maybe soon, maybe never

Germany plans to court-martial two captured British pilots for using tracer bullets. Britain explains that everyone uses tracer bullets for machine guns, including zeppelins, and hey we captured the crew of a zeppelin just last week and it had tracer bullets, so....

A German u-boat docks in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island, to everyone’s surprise. Evidently it made the 17-day voyage just to deliver a letter to the German ambassador to the US, which the captain asks an AP reporter to pop in a mailbox for him. Supposedly the letter is about relief campaigns in Poland, but rumors that the kaiser is asking Wilson to mediate peace inevitably spread. Under the rules of war, the sub can stay in port one day (Britain disagrees with this, saying that submarines are different from ships). Fregattenkapitän Rose says “We expect to reach home maybe soon, maybe never.” Spoiler Alert: He will reach home. During the war, the U-53 has or will sink around 88 ships.

Woodrow Wilson says that the Republicans lack a united set of proposals. “The only distinct definitions of purpose come from the collateral branches of the family” i.e., Teddy Roosevelt, who “professes opinions and purposes at which the rest in private shiver and demur.” Fair enough.

Mihály Károlyi, leader of a Hungarian opposition party, demands the end of the war, or at least Hungary’s participation in it, and for the emperor to dismiss the government of Count István Tisza, which “obtained its majority by corruption and does not represent the nation”.

Germany denies deliberately infecting prisoners of war with tuberculosis.

The NYT says that Russian military censors have allowed all sorts of calumnies about Jews to be published (cowardice as soldiers, evading military service, responsibility by treachery for military defeats, secret agents of the Germans, Jewish doctors maiming wounded soldiers, etc), while suppressing anything that praises the bravery of Jewish soldiers or contradicts the anti-Semitic lies.

Germany is reportedly interested in re-establishing the Vatican as a temporal power (making it independent of Italy).

Headline of the Day -100:

Oh, go fuck yourself, AP reporter who wrote this.

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Today -100: October 7, 1916: Madness, ruin, and disaster

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond says he doesn’t think the government is insane enough to try to introduce conscription in Ireland: “in that way lies madness, ruin, and disaster.” Which sounds like a typical Friday night in... nah, I won’t go there.

Orville Wright will not renew his British patent monopoly when it expires in March, as his contribution to the British war effort. In five months.

Headline of the Day -100:

You do you, Mother Jones, you do you.

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Today -100: October 6, 1916: There is as much fight in America as in any nation in the world

The first lawsuit is filed under California’s 1913 Alien Land Law. The state’s assistant attorney general is trying to seize a house purchased by the Harada family in Riverside.

Since it was bought by the Harada parents in the name of their three American-born children, who are US citizens, the purchase will be ruled (in 1918) as legal. So that’s a nice loophole.

Headline of the Day -100:

“The war,” Wilson says, “has obscure European objects which have never been disclosed. Europe must understand that before we exert the force of this nation we want to know what we are exerting it for.” He says that after the war there needs to be a league of nations to preserve peace.

Mother Jones leads a crowd of female relatives of striking NYC carmen in destroying a street car.

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Today -100: October 5, 1916: Have you tried texting them?

Greek King Constantine will form a government of national unity including the Venizelos crowd. The Cabinet resigns to allow this to happen, although their official statement also cites as a reason that they haven’t been able to get in contact with the Entente powers’ representatives.

Corporal Adolf Hitler is seriously wounded by a shell on the Somme. He will be a couple of months recovering, during which he will return to Germany (Berlin and Munich) for the first time in years and will be appalled by the low home-front morale, which he will blame on the, oh you know who.

Tsar Nicholas issues a decree dissolving the marriage of his sister the Grand Duchess Olga to the homosexual Duke Peter of Oldenburg. They were married 15 years, since she was 19. This form of divorce allows her to remarry, which she will do almost immediately to someone who actually was willing to fuck her, which Duke P never did. She’ll be one of the Romanovs to survive the Revolution, emigrating with her husband to Denmark, then Canada, where she died in 1960. Peter will also remarry, another Olga.

A black woman is lynched in Leary, Georgia. She was part of a quarrel during which her son shot and killed a white farmer. He’s still in jail.

An idea is spreading in Britain that after Germany’s inevitable defeat it should be punished in the peace treaty for sinking all those ships by having its own ships seized as compensation on a ton-by-ton basis.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: October 4, 1916: Of hatred, polio, and hand-shaking

Headline of the Day -100:

Sensible sentiments – revenge would sow the seeds of future wars, consult reason and passion, you can’t ban a whole people for all time to come, etc – but a bit laughable coming from Bryce, the man who wrote the propaganda report accusing Germany of fictional war atrocities to gin up anti-German passion and revenge.

Russia gets its fifth Interior Minister in a 10-month period. Outsiders aren’t sure what’s going on.

The feds think the polio epidemic is over and are ending inspection of interstate travel originating in New York City.

Taft and Roosevelt shake hands. After all reporters had been removed from the room. They did not speak, beyond “How d’you do?” or somesuch. Definitely worth a front-page article.

Japanese Prime Minister Okuma resigns, supposedly because of his age.

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Today -100: October 3, 1916: Of ellises, POWs, and golf

Edith Ellis, the novelist, feminist activist, and lesbian wife of sexologist Havelock Ellis dies, having caught a cold watching a zeppelin raid (that’s not quite right, but never mind).

Jamaica doesn’t go ahead with a conscription bill after all, because the governor decided it would be too expensive. The House of Assembly votes to ban enemy aliens from having any business in Jamaica for 20 years after the end of the war.

Germany sent 10,000 French POWs to Russia in retaliation for France sending its POWs to North Africa. Now both sides are backing down.

William Howard Taft is down to a fighting weight of 266 pounds, 100 pounds less than when he was president. He says it’s all due to golf. I presume he’s on an all-golf-ball diet now. Very high in fiber.

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Today -100: October 2, 1916: Of zeppelins and palaces

Britain shoots down a zeppelin north of London, the fourth in the last month. Searchlights, better guns, and experience are making the air raids unproductive for Germany.

The Vatican complains to Italy after it seizes the palace in Rome used by the Austrian ambassador to the Vatican.

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Today -100: October 1, 1916: There is only one choice as against peace and that is war

Woodrow Wilson gives a speech accusing the Republicans of wanting war in both Europe and Mexico. After all, they’re saying that his foreign policy is all wrong, and “There is only one choice as against peace and that is war.” The logic is impeccable.

Theodore Roosevelt says of Wilson’s May 1915 “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight” speech that “In all our history there has never been any other American president who has used a phrase that has done such widespread damage to the good name of America.”

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg’s speech a couple of days ago in the Reichstag declaring that any German politician failing to support the use of all means to shorten the war deserves to be hanged is being taken as signaling the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.

Emperor Iyasu V of Ethiopia (age 21) is deposed amid rumors that he had converted to Islam (he’s also excommunicated), and replaced by his aunt Zewditu Menelik. Iyasu will make trouble for a few years before being captured. He will die in 1935 during the Italian invasion, possibly killed on the orders of Haile Selassi to prevent him being used as a puppet by the Italians.

Thanks to the polio epidemic, there aren’t enough children to pick cranberries in New Jersey.

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Today -100: September 30, 1916: Of handshakes and outrageous buttons

Former presidents Roosevelt and Taft will both attend a reception for Charles Evans Hughes at the Union League Club, but Roosevelt makes it clear that this will not be a reconciliation with Taft. In fact, he won’t make a move to shake hands with his former war secretary, although he will be in the receiving line so he may have to shake Taft’s hand, but it’ll just be an ordinary hand-shake, it won’t have any special meaning. The event’s organizers have been pushing the reconciliation angle, presumably because it’s more of a draw than boring ol’ Charles Evans Hughes. Roosevelt is also really pissed to hear that there were plans to put out a button with a picture of himself, Taft and Hughes – “outrageous,” he says.

Hughes says he supports the 8-hour day, really he does. No, it’s just the Adamson Bill for railroad workers he opposes, because it will mean an increase in wages, and the public will have to pay for it. I’m not sure who he thinks pays when workers in other industries get fewer hours at the same wages.

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Today -100: September 29, 1916: Britain has only begun to fight

On Crete, Eleftherios Venizelos forms an alt-government at an “armed meeting of Cretan people.” They’re armed and they dare you to make that joke. Back in Athens, the king’s capitulation on going to war actually seems to be confined to going to war against Bulgaria, whose troops are presently occupying Greek Macedonia.

British War Minister Lloyd George says that any talk of peace by neutral countries, including the US, will be considered as pro-German and unneutral because the Allies are totally winning now and “Britain has only begun to fight; the British Empire has invested thousands of its best lives to purchase future immunity for civilization; this investment is too great to be thrown away.” He then goes on a bit about how “the British soldier is a good sportsman” and fights and dies like a sportsman and fair play and Jesus I can’t believe we’re still using sports metaphors to describe this horror. “Even when beaten like a dog he was a game dog.” OK, you can go back to the stupid sports metaphors now. Asked whether the allies were similarly game, he says that France will stick to the end and Russia will “go through to the death.”

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Today -100: September 28, 1916: Of plebiscites, sympathy strikes, and demoralized Germans

The Danish Parliament will hold a plebiscite on the sale of the Danish West Indies to the US. A plebiscite of the Danish people, not the Danish West Indians, obvs.

The attempt in New York at a general strike in sympathy with the street car etc workers fails miserably. So much for solidarity.

King Constantine of Greece gives in to the revolt and will graciously allow Greece to go to war.

In war spin news, the British say German troops on the Somme are totally demoralized, and Germany says British tanks are total failures (their specific criticisms – that the tanks are slow, prone to break-down, miserable environments for their crew – are all true).

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Today -100: September 27, 1916: Of provisional governments and executions

A memorial from the Army chief of staff and 500 officers addressed to Greece’s King Constantine demands that Greece enter the war. Former PM Venizelos says his provisional government isn’t actually superseding the Athens government, which makes no sense.

Supposedly the Carranzistas have executed 600 suspected Pancho Villa supporters in Chihuahua.

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Today -100: September 26, 1916: Of men on horseback

Former Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos leaves Athens for Crete to head the revolutionary movement intended to bring Greece into the war on the side of the Entente. He’s accompanied by the chief admiral and is supported financially by Leonidas Embericos, the richest man in the country.

Thomas Dixon, author of the novels that D.W. Griffith adapted into The Birth of a Nation, plans to commission a statue of his uncle, Col. McAfee, on horseback in Ku Klux Klan robes, to be placed in front of the Shelby, North Carolina Court House. There is some controversy about this.

The Mexican-American Commission is absolutely not discussing internal Mexican matters, says Mexico.

New York public schools opened yesterday, belatedly, but an estimated 10% of children were kept home by polio-fearing parents and another 4 or 5% were sent home because they’d been out of the city and didn’t have health certificates. Classrooms have all been sprayed with oil because science.

A bomb goes off in a Chicago movie theatre, evidently from a dispute between two projectionists’ unions. It’s the Chicago way.

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Today -100: September 25, 1916: The ancient struggle for dominance between zeppelins and turnips... continues

The “Great Secret Order” is meeting in Cleveland. The anti-Catholic group claims to be able to order 5 million people to vote as a bloc and elect whoever they pick, probably Hughes.

The British have been getting better at defending against zeppelin raids, and on Saturday shot down two over Essex. There were survivors from one of the airships. They were taken into custody by a single village constable. One farmer complains that “The wreck had made a sad mess of one of our trees and there were a good many mashed turnips in the field.” Oh, and eight dead bodies, most of them burned to death, one decapitated, but getting back to those mashed turnips....

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Today -100: September 24, 1916: Of TB, tanks, war whoops, polio, britlings, and gardeners

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: France claims that Germany is deliberately infecting POWs with tuberculosis in secret prison camps and then returning them to their home countries (or to neutral countries).

Germany may complain to the International Red Cross about the British use of tanks, which it says is contrary to the recognized methods of civilized warfare. Because the Germans are all about civilized warfare.

Headline of the Day -100:

The Germans’ll probably complain about this too.

US Secretary of War Newton Baker has supposedly told Secretary of State Robert Lansing that Pancho Villa is definitely, absolutely, positively dead.

New York City polio death toll = 2,233. Schools are reopening tomorrow, but attendance will not be mandatory.

The NYT reviews H.G. Wells’s latest novel, Mr. Britling Sees It Through. They like it. I would say that while showing the limitations of the form of the Edwardian novel in dealing with the subject matter of the war, it is an excellent portrayal of the effects of the war on the psyche of a certain stratum of English society on the home front.

British novelist Marie Corelli asks her local military tribunal not to draft her gardener. The army’s man on the tribunal says rude things about her garden and they refuse the exemption.

The Women’s Republican National Committee is sending a trainload of women to speak on behalf of Charles Evans Hughes in 28 states. Alice Chittenden of the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage complains that the women all seem to be supporters of women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: September 23, 1916: Of Greek splitters and sympathetic strikes

Large portions of Greece have declared themselves independent of King Constantine and his government.

A general strike is called for New York City. After all, good union men can hardly be expected to go to work on public transportation manned by scab labor (actually, they can: the general strike will be a miserable failure).

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Today -100: September 22, 1916: Who is ever going to think of Greece, save with shame?

Former Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos refuses to deny plans to set up a revolutionary government in opposition to King Constantine and take Greece into the war on the Entente side. He makes the case that whichever side wins the war, Greece is sure to lose land to either Bulgaria or Serbia if it has not allied itself to someone. “Who is ever going to think of Greece, save with shame, if we have stood idly by while half the world has battled for civilization?” Meanwhile, PM Nikolaos Kalogeropoulos denies that King Constantine is pro-German, saying he is only pro-Greek. Asked by an AP reporter about his own attitude toward the Entente, Kalogeropoulos, whose name makes me so grateful for copy-and-paste, says he’s been smoking French tobacco for 45 years. Crete’s local administration is overthrown, and King Constantine advises new army recruits to display blind devotion to their superior officers and ignore people who “sell patriotism like retailers.”

New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel threatens to bring in the military to crush any sympathetic general strike called in support of striking train workers.

A NYT editorial mentions a lynching in Olathe, Kansas, but doesn’t give many details and there is no news story. A mob took convicted murderer Bert Dudley, who killed farmer Henry Muller and his wife, from the jail the night before he was due to be transferred to the state pen to start his life sentence. In a whimsical touch, the lynch mob chose Dudley Road as the locale for the hanging (the town later changed the street’s name). There’s an 8-minute film about the lynching here.

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Today -100: September 21, 1916: Because if there’s anything Germans hate, it’s cruel efficiency

The French claim to have found a confidential order on a captured German soldier, complaining about the British tanks, “whose cruelty is equaled by their efficiency.” It also says soldiers who do not fight to the death to hold their positions will be court-martialed. Anyway, the credibility of the document is rather undermined (for me, that is; the NYT hasn’t noticed this) by the fact that it’s dated September 14th, the day before tanks were first deployed.

NY Gov. Whitman’s special train hits a brewery truck, killing 2.

Headline of the Day -100:

That’s Secretary of War Newton Baker, who says “As a civilian I believed that a standing army was a menace to free institutions, and that the professional soldier desired war”. But then he was put in charge of the army, and found this not to be the case (although he evidently hasn’t learned the definition of “civilian” if he thinks he isn’t one).

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Today -100: September 20, 1916: Of seals, salvage, parasitism of big business, and islanders

German Food Dictator Adolf Tortilowitz von Batocki-Friebe is now pushing seal meat. Which even Germans think is gross.

The Cunard Steamship Company files suit to limit damages from the sinking of the Lusitania to the value of the ship – well, the salvage of the ship – plus the money they took in for passenger fares and freight on the last voyage, a total of $91,296.

In a speech in Philadelphia, Woodrow Wilson ascribes the calls for military intervention in Mexico to the “parasitism of big business.” “What she needs more than anything else is financial support which will not involve the sale of her liberties and the enslavement of her people.”

There is a letter to the NYT from Harry Houdini. He asks for people to send newspapers and magazines to the only white man on one of the Solomon Islands, a Mr. H.M. Markham, who is getting a little bored. Which would make for a great New Yorker cartoon, if the New Yorker existed yet.

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Today -100: September 19, 1916: The enemy has by no means a monopoly on inventive ingenuity

Gen. William Crozier, chief of the US Army’s Ordnance Bureau, denies that Lewis offered the Lewis gun for free to the army. He is lying.

The Holt Caterpillar Company of Stockton, California claims that the British tanks are based on its tractors. Which is true. Lloyd George, Minister of Munitions when the development of tanks was authorized, credits Winston Churchill with persuading him of their utility. “The enemy has by no means a monopoly on inventive ingenuity,” he adds.

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