Today -100: November 2, 1916: So far as every other nation is concerned we must be absolutely a unit

Woodrow Wilson complains about (unnamed) people who use foreign policy for political advantage. You know: people who criticize him. Doesn’t like that at all. “Variety of opinion among ourselves there may be... but so far as every other nation is concerned we must be absolutely a unit.” He refers to people who “make play with the loss of the lives of American citizens even in order that they may create a domestic political advantage,” presumably meaning the recent sinking of the British steamship Marina, in which 6 American members of the crew died.

The odds being offered on the election are now 10:7 in favor of Hughes.

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Yes, food. Britain will require that all food for British and Canadian POWs in Germany go through England so it can be checked for secret messages. The delay involved means that foods likely to spoil can no longer be sent. This censorship does not apply to officers, only NCOs and privates.

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Today -100: November 1, 1916: Of race favoritism, dimes, and twiddles

A Republican National Publicity Committee ad in today’s NYT:

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This doesn’t refer to blacks, who are discriminated against in the segregated army, but to Jews. The problem arises from Cavalry Capt. Le Roy Eltinge’s book Psychology of War (1915), which says of the Jew: “For centuries he has been without a country. He doesn’t know what patriotism means. ... He has not been a soldier for over 2,000 years. ... The soldier’s lot is hard physical work. This the Jew despises. He does not have any of the qualities of a good soldier”. The War Dept orders him to delete all direct references to Jews, so that bit is changed to: “Another large proportion of our population is made up from those who, through they have no particular home on the earth from which to inherit their ideas, have peculiarities of physique and of mind that make them foreign in tastes and mental attitudes to all other classes of our population.” Evidently that’s not offensive because it doesn’t spell out the people to whom it’s obviously referring.

Can’t help but notice that the paragraph preceding that one is about the negro: “By association we know something of what he will do, but as we think with a different kind of brain we do not perceive the why of his acts. In other words, we will not be able to get the best out of him as a soldier because we do not understand how to touch the mainsprings of his character.” Eltinge also elaborates on the respective martial characteristics of the southern European and Anglo-Saxon races.

The new 10¢ coin, the Mercury dime, is out. People are lining up at the Sub-Treasury office and speculators are paying high prices for them because they might be recalled to be replaced because these have the designer’s initials, which the Treasury considers impermissible advertising. To be honest, the only reason I’m including this story is to mention that the Chief Clerk of the Sub-Treasury office in New York is named Wesley S. Twiddle.

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Today -100: October 31, 1916: Numerical superiority and danger exist only for the weak

Erich Ludendorff, head of the German army, pooh poohs the vast Russian army: “Numerical superiority and danger exist only for the weak. Who objects against fate ought better to object against himself. A firm will commands fate. There is no blind fate.” Worst... fortune cookie fortunes... ever. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg adds that France is “exterminating lives by their method of fighting. All their tenacity will be of no avail, for in the end there will be none of them left.”

Woodrow Wilson denies that there was ever any proposed “postscript” to his note to Germany about the Lusitania, telling them to ignore its warnings.

The British say that German flying ace Oswald Boelcke was shot down by a Brit. He wasn’t.

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Today -100: October 30, 1916: Aces high, then not so high

The killingest German flying ace Oswald Boelcke dies after a collision with another German plane the day after downing his 40th Allied plane. He was 25.

Charles Evans Hughes puts out a statement of “My Conception of the Presidency.” A lot of it is about preparing for the trade war that will inevitably follow the end of the European war. He wants to wage this war with tariffs and government cooperation with business, while the Wilson administration, he says, treats “the business men of this country as though they were suspicious characters. ... In four years it has put this country further on the road to class war than has been accomplished in a generation before.”

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Today -100: October 29, 1916: Proud mothers of a nation of heroes or mothers of a race of degenerates?

Australian voters reject a referendum proposal to bring in conscription, despite the government, in a Texas-level attempt at voter suppression, authorizing polling officers to question young male voters about whether they’d registered for the possible draft like they were supposed to do. Before the vote, Prime Minister Billy Hughes says that Germany would never dare put issues like this to the vote, and notes that Australian women are voting – “Will the women of Australia be the proud mothers of a nation of heroes, or stand dishonored as the mothers of a race of degenerates?” The latter, evidently. Hughes’s Labor Party is so divided on the issue that in a couple of weeks it will expel him.

With the US presidential race well into the traditional last-minute-sliming stage, Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge are accusing Woodrow Wilson of appending a postscript to one of his notes to Germany about the Lusitania telling them not to take its strong anti-Lusitania-sinking language seriously. According to the story, he had to delete it because members of the Cabinet threatened to resign.

Headline That Sounds Dirty But Really Isn’t of the Day -100:

Louis Marshall Ream, heir to the Ream millions, had his marriage to a chorus girl annulled, but she gets a NY Supreme Court justice to un-annul it.

Headline That Sounds Dirty But Really Isn’t of the Day -100:

A horse, as it happens. A horse named Bondage. Bondage was ridden by Ball and beat Tragedy at the Potomac Handicap. There are probably less pleasant ways to arrange the words “bondage,” “ball,” “handicap” and “tragedy” in a sentence.

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Today -100: October 28, 1916: Who is responsible for the Armenian Genocide? The answer might surprise you.

I mentioned that Margaret Sanger opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Astonishingly, it took 10 full days for it to be raided. Sanger, her assistant, and her sister are all arrested. Emma Goldman is also arrested, in a separate incident, for giving out birth control information.

Ernest von Koerber is appointed the new prime minister of Austria, replacing the assassinated Count Karl von Stürgkh.

The ban on street lights in Halifax, Nova Scotia is ended, with no more explanation than was given for the ban.

Remember that thing about black voters supposedly being imported into northern states to vote Republican? The Justice Dept is now ordering US attorneys (at least the one in Louisville) to track black people moving from the South to the North and take down their names, origins and destination. I’m not sure how they’re supposed to do this.

Germany says it will start holding captains of merchant ships from Allied countries as prisoners of war, claiming that they are fair game because they’re under orders from their governments to spy.

Turkish Foreign Minister Halil Bey says the Armenians have only themselves to blame for the, you know, genocide.

In other news, Turkish Foreign Minister Halil Bey can go fuck himself.

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Today -100: October 27, 1916: The business of neutrality is over

Music is broadcast over the wireless, from the laboratory of the Columbia Graphophone Company. It was heard, apart from a few interruptions by the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s storm warning broadcasts, at the Hotel Astor, which is like two whole miles away.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt responds to Charles Evans Hughes’s remark that “we must pay less attention to punctuation and more to targets” by accusing him of “casting a veiled aspersion” on the Navy. But what about the veiled aspersion he cast on punctuation, Franklin? WHAT ABOUT THE PUNCTUATION?

Speaking of punctuation...

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Ack, “old-time”! They’re everywhere! 

Other lines from Roosevelt’s speech: “I am being held up to the American people as a bloodthirsty being, when, as a matter of fact, I am a peaceful literary man.” “If a person lets the idea get abroad that slapping his face is a safe and healthy amusement he is liable to have a lot of trouble.”

Woodrow Wilson says this is the last war that the US can keep out of, that wars are now fought on such a scale that “the business of neutrality is over.” In future wars. Not this one. We can totally keep out of this one.

An attempt by the pro-German “American Independence Conference” to line up German priests, Catholic and Lutheran, against Hughes in the Midwest did not go well, and now Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee Sebastian Gebhard Messmer bans priests having anything at all to do with politics.

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The US War Department issues a statement that it has information that “enemies of the Administration’s policy toward Mexico” have arranged for an attack at a border point sometime before the election in order to influence voters to vote against Wilson. Some hours later they clarify that they didn’t mean Republicans, they meant Mexican politicians opposed to Carranza.

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Today -100: October 26, 1916: Not too proud to get kicked

Between Norway banning German u-boats from its territorial waters and German u-boats sinking a lot of Norwegian ships recently – a lot – the two countries seem to be close to war.

I’m not sure if Roosevelt is making more speeches on Hughes’s behalf than Hughes is making, or if Hughes’s speeches are just so dull that they’re not being covered, but from the newspaper coverage you’d think Roosevelt was running for president. His speeches are certainly much more anti-Wilson than they are pro-Hughes, who he barely mentions. In a speech in Nebraska, TR says that a man who is “too proud to fight” is not too proud to get kicked, and the same is true of nations. More than two years into the Great War, with literally millions of people dead, and Americans still sound like they’re talking about a school-yard scrap. And again Roosevelt blames Wilson’s too-proud-to-fightism for the Lusitania and the deaths of Americans in the Mexican civil war.

The presidential race is neck and neck:

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Today -100: October 25, 1916: Let him not vote for me

Henry Ford will pay female employees on an equal basis, following an “inspiring” conversation with Woodrow Wilson.

Headline of the Day -100:

Or indeed, anyone “whose allegiance to our flag is not single and complete.”

On the other hand:

Not helping the “Wilson Kept Us Out of War” meme, two US officers are killed in the Dominican Republic, you know, the country Wilson invaded (one of several countries Wilson has invaded).

Hughes refuses to take any position on prohibition.

The Sun accuses Woodrow Wilson of using the word “very” too often, which it says is a sign of femininity.

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Today -100: October 24, 1916: At least when he dodged the draft, he did it en pointe

The London Times says the British government is considering changing the election laws to allow proxy votes for military personnel on active service.

Charles Evans Hughes’s story is that when he met Jeremiah O’Leary and the other pro-Germans, he had never heard of O’Leary before.

Republicans counter-charge that it’s actually the D’s who are going after the hyphen vote, that they are in fact putting out campaign literature in... gasp... German.

Theodore Roosevelt says that Wilson not firing Secretary of War Newton Baker shows that Wilson “in his heart believes that Washington was no better than Villa or Carranza”.

Women voters are expected to tip the balance in the presidential election in Illinois, but neither party knows how to deal with that.

Russia demands that the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, currently touring the US, return to join the army, or be declared a deserter (actually, he was declared a deserter in 1911 for not doing 3 years of military service). In 1915 Austria interned him as an enemy alien, and he was released only after promising not to bear arms.

The mayor of Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein bans the peeling of potatoes. 3 months in jail or a fine. They take food shortages seriously in Eckernförde. Also potatoes.

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Today -100: October 23, 1916: Of secret racial organizations, comparative rebels, and assassins

The Allies are now demanding that Greece remove all its troops from Thessaly and hand over to the Allies those troops’ military supplies.

The DNC accuses Charles Evans Hughes of making a secret deal with Irish- and German-Americans. Hughes admits having met with the American Independence Conference (which the DNC calls a “secret racial organization... a weapon of vengeance and force against Anglo-Saxon influence”), but says there was no deal.

The Daughters of the American Revolution demand the resignation of Secretary of War Newton Baker for supposedly saying that Pancho Villa’s followers are just like George Washington’s soldiers at Valley Forge, who were also big ol’ thieves (which Baker denies saying).

Friedrich Adler says he assassinated Austrian Prime Minister Count Karl von Stürgkh because he refused to recall the parliament, which hasn’t met since several months before the war began. Austrian authorities are already trying to portray him as a lunatic, because they’d really prefer to commit him rather than let him speak at a trial.

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Today -100: October 22, 1916: Everyone is justified to use force when the laws are destroyed

Count Karl von Stürgkh, the authoritarian minister-president (prime minister) of Austria (but not of Hungary) since 1911, is assassinated in a Viennese restaurant by Friedrich Adler, 37, son of Victor Adler, the founder of the Austrian Social Democratic Party. Friedrich, a publisher, was upset that his anti-war writings were censored. At his trial, he will say that his act of killing was exactly the same as the war which Stürgkh waged without the permission or consent of the Austrian people; “Everyone is justified to use force when the laws are destroyed,” Adler says. After a delayed trial he will be sentenced to death but the emperor will commute his sentence and then release him altogether, which is a little odd if you consider that this whole stupid war started because of an Austrian assassination.

Adler was also a physicist and a friend of Albert Einstein. Freddy will stay active in Socialist politics, fleeing Austria in 1938. He’ll then live in exile the rest of his life, first in New York and then Switzerland, dying in 1960 at 80. His father’s political career doesn’t seem to have been affected: he became foreign minister in the last days of the war, and died of a heart attack on the last day.

Stürgkh will be replaced by a series of short-lived minister-presidents, five over the next two years.

If it’s Sunday, it must be the Sunday New York Times Magazine’s special English Authors Prettying Up the War issue. There’s H.G. Wells’s “Italy’s Picturesque Mountain War” and Rudyard Kipling writing about British destroyers in the North Sea looking for German u-boats, which is just like fox-hunting, he says. Just like it.

Congressional elections in Mexico tomorrow. Only Constitutionalists are eligible for office. And no secret ballot.

German soldiers have been given a letter they’re supposed to mail to their relatives, asking them not to send any depressing news from home because it would just be a “drag” on the army – “many a letter speaks of discouragement, a feeling to which we would remain foreign; we at the front ignore the meaning of the word discouragement.” The German Army is especially annoyed that letters from home describing the hardships of daily life have been found on POWs and published by the Allies.

The letter makes interesting reading, although the translation comes from the London Times, which has been known to be less than trustworthy in this regard – in 1917 it will accuse Germany of rendering soldiers’ corpses to produce glycerine based on a deliberate mistranslation. Anyway, the letter refers in passing to “the hypocrisy of the United States, who is merely playing the ignoble role of moneylender.”

Theodore Roosevelt gets in a debate/shouting match with hecklers in Gallup, New Mexico about the 8-hour day, Mexico, etc. And then there was this exchange, which I’m a little confused by:

“Didn’t yet let the Japs sit beside our children in the schools of California?” 

“Ha! I sent the battle fleet [the “Great White Fleet”’s round-the-world tour of 1907-9] around the world to protect just such men as you against the Japs.”

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Today -100: October 21, 1916: Of chief inspectors, u-boats, blackouts, and legions

A French officer has been appointed “chief inspector” to the Greek Interior Ministry. He will have approval over all orders to police.

Hindenburg yesterday, and Ludendorf today, ask Germans who are agitating loudly for unrestricted submarine warfare to knock it off.

The Canadian military orders a nighttime blackout for Halifax, Nova Scotia, for some mysterious reason. Fear of zeppelin raids? They’re not saying.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Allies are claiming that the Central Powers’ Polish Legion has mutinied and most of its members imprisoned.

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Today -100: October 20, 1916: Of banners, Standards, quarantines, and klucks

Members of the National Women’s Party picket a Woodrow Wilson speech in Chicago, but the crowd tears up their banners (“Wilson is against women,” “Wilson prevented the passage of suffrage amendment”, etc).

Inside, Wilson says that the function of women will be “the element of mediation, or comprehending and drawing all the elements together. It is the power of sympathy, as contrasted with the power of contests.”

In another Chicago speech (or possibly the same one? not worth going back to check), he tells immigrants not to be so... foreign. He says the US can help in the settlement of the Great War because Americans come from all stocks and can “interpret the thought of the world [and...] the needs of the future.” I’m not sure if he realizes that he’s assigning the US the same place in the world as he assigned to women in politics.

The Bayonne Standard Oil strike breaks up when American-born workers desert their immigrant (mostly Poles) compatriots.  Standard offered nothing, but will “investigate” any grievances – except those involving pay.

The Harvard football team is quarantined (well, confined to campus) after a half-back comes down with suspected polio.

German Field Marshal Alexander von Kluck retires, at 70, to the doubtless disappointment of British soldiers, who sang songs about him.

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Today -100: October 19, 1916: Of inconsistent principles and polio

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond introduces a resolution in Parliament declaring that the treatment of Ireland is “inconsistent with the principles wherefor the Allies are fighting in Europe”. He demands immediate Home Rule, the ending of martial law, and the release of prisoners from the Easter Rising (500 still held without trial).

As there were “only” two polio deaths in New York yesterday, the health commissioner has decided the epidemic is over and will stop issuing daily reports.

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Today -100: October 18, 1916: A surrender can’t be repealed

A heckler asks Charles Evans Hughes if he would repeal the Adamson Act, the law which established the 8-hour day in the railroad sector. Hughes says a surrender can’t be repealed. He says if he’d been faced with a threatened rail strike as Wilson was, he’d have appointed a commission so impartial and so fair that neither side would have gone against its recommendations. Oh, Charles Evans, you’re just too pure for this wicked world.

Woodrow Wilson fails to get the belligerents to agree a plan to allow relief supplies into Poland.

The Justice Dept is investigating claims that Republicans are “colonizing” Southern negroes into Illinois and Indiana to register to vote, although Illinois law requires one year of residence to register. However, the article also notes that many of them are taking meat-packing jobs formerly held by immigrants who have returned to Europe to fight, so maybe this is just normal economic migration and racist D’s then, like racist R’s now, just automatically equate black people voting with voter fraud.

Under some sort of deal with Germany, Switzerland bans exports of munitions to the Allies if those munitions are made using German coal or steel.

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Today -100: October 17, 1916: Of provisional governments, lynchings & laudings, operatic menaces, newsprint, and obedient wives

The Allies recognize Eleftherios Venizelos’s “Provisional Government,” although possibly only in Crete?

The NYT has its first picture of a tank.

Two black men are lynched in Paducah, Kentucky. One is accused of attacking a white woman, the other supposedly “lauded” the first’s attack.

Headline of the Day -100:  

There’s a newsprint shortage in the US, so the FTC asks big-city newspapers to cut down the size of their Sunday papers, so as not to put smaller newspapers out of business.

The Episcopalians refuse to remove the word “obey” from the marriage vow for women.

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Today -100: October 16, 1916: Babies vs. dogs

Princeton University is under quarantine after a freshman dies of polio.

Margaret Sanger opens a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brooklyn.

Norway has banned armed submarines from its ports and Germany’s afraid other neutrals will follow suit.

The train of pro-Hughes women continues its campaign tour. In Medford, Oregon, Democratic women planned to bring stray dogs to greet them, but Republican women arranged to bring babies to the train station, because politics.

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Today -100: October 15, 1916: Let the enemy crush his head against a wall of iron

Kaiser Wilhelm visits the troops on the Eastern Front. He tells them “Let the enemy crush his head against a wall of iron. God help you in this great work.” They respond, “So we’re like the wall in this scenario?”

Charles Evans Hughes insists that his “doctrine of firmness” will not lead to war, while Wilson’s policies of weakness and vacillation will.

40 opposition members of the Hungarian Diet who are in the military, including their leader Count Karolyi, are being sent to the front. This seems to be retaliation by the army for their criticism of its mishandling of the war.

Australia will hold a referendum on whether to introduce conscription.

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Today -100: October 14, 1916: And we’ll keep it broken

The Allies demand control over the Greek police, the banning of Greeks carrying arms, and the export of wheat (which is currently prohibited) from Thessaly.

The Greek Navy’s sailors will be turned into an army. When the Allies seized the Navy, the king gave them the option of staying with their ships under French command, but none did.

Bayonne, NJ police break the Standard Oil strike, as was the custom. “We got this strike broken, and we’ll keep it broken,” says Commissioner of Public Safety Henry Wilson.

Greek King Constantine still opposes Greece going to war on the Allied side. He says Romania is about to fall and then, if Greece declares war, the full might of Germany would fall on it.

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