Today -100: February 11, 1917: 8 weeks tops

Headline of the Day -100:

Secretary of State Robert Lansing says the US in on the verge of war but may still avoid being “forced into” it. He inserted this into a speech at Amherst on college spirit, which he says is just like patriotism in that it is not based on material interest or selfish motive.

The initial rush of Germans and Austrian immigrants applying for US citizenship is falling off. One notable aspiring American is Ladislaus Majphenje of Hungary, 32, who is an elevator operator in New York City. And a baron. He’s willing to give up his title.

Headline of the Day -100:  

One of the many British ships sunk this week is the steamer Japanese Prince, whose crew included 25 American muleteers, and this time they’re white so they actually count (we know this because the NYT was careful to point out their race; I think muleteers were generally black).

The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage is not happy about stories that pacifists are quitting the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association and joining the CU.

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Today -100: February 10, 1917: Because the difference between a citizen and a slave is $5 a month

The US Army is working on a plan for universal male military service at 19. For a year at $5 a month. Or as they call it, a “citizen army.”

Germany is saying that its decision to take US Ambassador James Gerhard hostage when the US broke diplomatic relations (well, to refuse to let him leave the country) (and cut off his telephone and mail) was the US’s fault for not letting the German ambassador send coded telegraph messages home. They only heard about Wilson breaking off relations from Switzerland.

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Today -100: February 9, 1917: Of turinos, cumulative casus belli, forts, ships, and reservists

One of the ships sunk by the Germans, who are on a ship-sinking tear, is the British steamer Turino. An American crew member named George Washington, no less, is killed, and if that doesn’t make the US go to war... oh, you say he’s negro? Guess not then.

The NYT’s unnamed source says that the Wilson administration’s case against Germany (and for war) will be “cumulative.” “For the present the Government is paying no particular attention to sporadic cases of the deaths of Americans through German submarine attacks.”

But they are totally building a fort. On the New York coast at Rockaway Point.

The other neutral nations are not following the US’s lead in breaking off relations with Germany. Not the Netherlands, Spain or Sweden (which after all have to share a continent with Germany) nor the South and Central American countries, although the latter do call the German blockade illegal.

The US government has been particularly unhelpful to shipping lines wondering whether they should cancel sailing plans or arm their ships. The American Line has decided to send the St Louis to Liverpool, but only if it can find a cannon, but it seems that these are only available from the Navy. They also have to decide whether to use their running lights or run dark.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Providence Journal, presumably in its role as disseminator of British Secret Service propaganda, says that German reservists in the US are heading to Mexico, along with German POWs who escaped from Siberia and made their way through China to Mexico, as one does, in order to direct operations against the US from Mexico in event of war.

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Today -100: February 8, 1917: Of lighthouses, internment, Parisian nightlife, and women’s suffrage

The Senate votes 78-5 to approve Wilson’s breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany.

The US Coast Guard and lighthouse services are firing all German employees who are not US citizens.

Germany is sending Romanians from occupied Romania to internment camps in Germany, in retaliation for Romania sending Germans to Siberia, which Romania says it didn’t do.

Germany is refusing permission for Americans to leave Germany, even US Ambassador James Gerhard, who will be kept along with his staff until German Ambassador to the US Count Johann von Bernstorff makes it back to Germany and maybe crews of German ships sequestered in the US as well. Gerhard is also not being allowed to send cables in code. For a country supposedly trying not to get into a war with the US, the hostage-taking seems rather ill thought-out.

A German u-boat sinks the British steamer California without warning.

The French government orders Paris theatres to close 4 days a week and suspends public transportation after 10 pm, which is the most un-French thing I’ve ever heard.

The New Hampshire state senate rejects women’s suffrage 16-7.

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Today -100: February 7, 1917: Of seamen, naval appropriations, and Texas women

The Wilson admin does not plan on treating the killing by a German u-boat of American seaman Richard Wallace on the British steamship Eavestone as a casus belli. Which probably really has nothing to do with the fact that we’ve now learned that Wallace was black. Probably.

The Naval appropriations bill is amended to give Wilson the power to seize shipbuilding yards and munitions factories in event of war or national emergency. And $150 million is added for ship-building and $1 million to acquire the patents for warplanes. Money is also appropriated for machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, etc etc. $500 million all told.

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

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Today -100: February 6, 1917: When Johnny comes marching home

US pacifists (the term tends to be used interchangeably for both those opposed to this war and those opposed to all war) agree to coordinate.

Germany is indeed escalating its naval warfare, sinking, for example, the British steamer Eavestone and shelling its lifeboats. One American seaman is killed.

It’s almost like the Germans aren’t taking the threat of conflict with the United States seriously. Because they’re not. They think that well before the US could build up a real army and bring it into play, submarine warfare will have brought England to its knees.

Speaking of the US’s small army, the last of it just exited Mexico, with Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing at its head – on foot? on horseback? in a car? it doesn’t say. I’m guessing on a horse. No one seems to be making speeches declaring victory. Sure, there wasn’t any victory, but when has that ever stopped anyone?

The US government is refusing to tell shipowners whether they should avoid war zones. It also won’t provide convoys, because that would be admitting that Germany might do what it has said it will do and because an attack on a convoy that including ships of the US Navy would be an act of war. So shipowners are being told to just use their best judgement.

German and Austrian immigrants in the US are hurriedly taking out citizenship papers in large numbers.

Congress is working feverishly on legislation to provide real criminal penalties for spies.

The Senate follows the House in overriding Wilson’s veto of the immigration bill with its literacy clause. It’s Wilson’s first veto override.

Margaret Sanger is sentenced to 30 days for disseminating birth control information. There is an option of a fine, but only if she will stop doing what she does. She won’t hunger strike like her sister because she is not in great health.

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Today -100: February 5, 1917: We are a moral people and are willing to make a sacrifice to establish a moral principle

Many Americans believe that even if the US enters the war, its role will be “merely passive,” providing the Allies money and munitions and that’s it. The US Navy is small and the army almost non-existent, these people say.

Wilson asks other neutral nations to follow him in breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany.

Guards are placed at docks, bridges, aqueducts, and the White House gates. Crews of German and Austrian steamships (31 of them) are told to stay onboard their ships (or go through Ellis Island immigration inspections), although the government denies that it has seized the ships.

Former President Taft suggests conscription begin now and be made permanent. “Conscription is needed to discipline our native young men and to teach them respect for authority. It is needed to teach our millions of newly created citizens loyalty.” He says the country will rally behind Wilson: “We are going to do everything that any country can do to vindicate its rights and show that we are a moral people and are willing to make a sacrifice to establish a moral principle.” Because nothing says “moral” like mass slaughter.

A Keep Out of the War meeting at Carnegie Hall will call for a national referendum before entering the war, as does former Wilson Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. Bryan suggests the US temporarily waive its rights of free travel on the high seas.

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Today -100: February 4, 1917: We do not desire any hostile conflict with the German government

Woodrow Wilson breaks diplomatic relations with Germany. But, Wilson tells a joint session of Congress, “We do not desire any hostile conflict with the German government.” He says he “cannot bring myself to believe” that Germany intends to do what it says it will do; “I cannot bring myself to believe that they will indeed pay no regard to the ancient friendship between their people and our own... Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.” SPOILER ALERT: Believe it, dude.

Later in the day a note arrives from Austria saying it would be following Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare policy, so Wilson breaks relations with them too (this may be an inaccurate report) (or possibly Wilson changed his mind; one difference between the two Teutonic nations is that Germany’s change in policy violates a promise it made to the US but Austria never promised the US anything). The new ambassador has only just arrived too, and hasn’t even taken up his post.

Congressional support for Wilson is nearly unanimous, although it’s unclear (to me, anyway) how many of them share his belief that they’re not actually on the road to war.

A German u-boat sinks the US steamer Housatonic off the Skilly Isles a couple of hours after Wilson sent Ambassador Johann von Bernstorff packing (“I expect to retire to my farm and raise potatoes,” Bernstorff says). The u-boat gives the ship a one-hour warning to evacuate and even tows its lifeboats towards shore, so this is not the overt act that Wilson doesn’t believe will happen. Housatonic, by the way, is also the name of the first ship ever sunk by a submarine, during the US Civil War.

William Jennings Bryan issues a statement to the American people asking them to tell their president and congresscritters that they don’t want the US to enter the war.

Theodore Roosevelt fully supports Wilson, for once, and volunteers his own services and those of his four sons in the event of war, in a Rough-Riders-type unit he just asked the War Department permission to allow him to raise.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George calls Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare policy “only a development and advance along the road to complete barbarism which is crushing out of that country the last shreds of civilisation” and says it reveals the “Goth in all his naked savagery.” Sounds like he had a bad experience dating a goth chick. He says that Wilson’s “peace without victory” would just be a rest period for the Central Powers. The prime minister speaks in his constituency of Carnarvon, Wales to an audience that was carefully screened because of the fake assassination plot against him. Organizers planned to exclude women, just like in the good old pre-war suffragette days, but decided to let in a handful of wives and daughters of local notables.

The NYT says there are maybe 10,000 foreign spies (German, Austrian, Turkish, Bulgarian) in the United States, half of them in New York. That’s a lot of spies.

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Today -100: February 3, 1917: I just came to swap views

Woodrow Wilson confers with senators and the Cabinet about what to do about Germany. There seems to be consensus about breaking diplomatic relations, with differences only over whether to wait for Germany to carry through on its threats to sink ships without warning. Wilson reassures the senators that he doesn’t think Germany will actually do it, because he never tires of being wrong about things.

Wilson has a weird idea of conferring with Congress. He just went over without warning, after the Senate recessed for the day, and talked only with Democrats, because that’s all he could find. He tells reporters, “I just came to swap views.”

Bills to ban Japanese people owning land are withdrawn in the Oregon and Idaho legislatures after strong pressure from the federal government not to complicate the US’s international relations at this precarious time.

The prime minister and cabinet of Montenegro resign because King Nicholas refuses to abdicate in favor of Serbia’s crown prince in a preliminary move towards a union with Serbia.

Margaret Sanger is convicted in a non-jury trial. She says if sent to the workhouse, she will hunger strike like her sister Ethyl Byrne. Commission of Correction Lewis says Byrne was released in better physical shape than when she arrived, thanks to all that forcible feeding and received medical services – for no charge – that would have cost $1,000 a day on the outside. I’m sure Byrne will send him a thank you card or something.

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Today -100: February 2, 1917: We have been challenged to fight to the end

Woodrow Wilson has evidently given Germany 24 hours to rescind its unrestricted submarine warfare decree.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg tells the Reichstag Ways and Means Committee, “We have been challenged to fight to the end. We accept the challenge, we stake everything, and we shall be victorious.” He says Germany is ready to accept the consequences of sub warfare.

The NYT says the federal government is drawing up names of German-Americans and sympathizers with Germany, just in case.

War is hell: the Paris police ban the sale of pastries on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Ethel Byrne accepts NY Gov. Charles Whitman’s offer to pardon her for distributing birth control literature if she promises not to do it again. Actually, her sister Margaret Sanger made the promise on her behalf, Byrne being too sick from the hunger-striking and force-feeding.

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Today -100: February 1, 1917: A benefit to mankind

Headline of the Day -100:

Germany announces that it will reverse the pledge it gave to the United States 9 months ago to limit its use of submarine warfare (not sinking commercial ships, especially those of neutral countries, not sinking ships without warning, attempting to rescue evacuees, etc), and resume unrestricted sub warfare starting at midnight, with the goal of stopping all shipping to Britain. One US ship a week will be allowed through a safe passage, if it is promised not to carry any contraband. Since Germany made that pledge last year in response to a US ultimatum to abide by international law or face a break in relations with the US, such a break now seems inevitable.

Germany presents its decision as a response to the perfidious British plot to starve Germany and the United States’s failure to get it to alter that plot, and as a measure to bring the war to a rapid conclusion: “Each day of the terrible struggle causes new destruction, new sufferings. Each day shortening the war will, on both sides, preserve the lives of thousands of brave soldiers and be a benefit to mankind.”

The Legal and Literary faculties of Stamboul University (Turkey) suggest the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to Kaiser Wilhelm, the “forefighter for the peace idea.”

Theodore Roosevelt thinks the US should respond by seizing every interned German ship and banning trade with Germany.

British Colonial Secretary Walter Long says Germany will never be given its colonies back.

In Britain, Alice Wheeldon, her two daughters Hettie and Winnie and her son-in-law are charged with a plot to assassinate Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson, the Labour member of the War Council. With poison darts, no less. Wheeldon was a suffrage activist before the war and has been smuggling conscription resisters out of the country. In fact, they’ve been framed by an MI5 agent provocateur, a convicted blackmailer who had been twice committed for insanity. Which was not known at the trial, because the government refused to produce him.

The Senate passes a bill for prohibition in Alaska.

There’s a new Mexican constitution. Presidencies are one term only. 8-hour day, anti-trust laws, land reform, preference for Mexicans in acquiring lands and concessions (mining etc). The US is not happy about the last part. All clergy must be Mexican citizens and can’t teach in public schools or private elementary schools.

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Working towards the Frito Führer

Trump’s MuslimBan™ was implemented without advance notice and with what seems to have been few directions about how it was to be implemented. So it is instructive to look at how government officials did implement it.

Octogenarians were handcuffed. Social media logins were demanded. People were asked their opinions of Trump. They were kept without food or medicine for long periods. Their lawyers were turned away and court orders defied. They were snidely told to “Call Mr. Trump.” CBP officers tried to trick them into signing away their residency rights. Etcetera. Still, no one was kicked to death, so that’s good.

How much of that came from above, and how much of it was low-level officials taking it upon themselves to fill in the gaps in their orders with bullying tactics and casual cruelty, because that’s what The Donald would want them to do? In 1930s Germany, this sort of behaviour was referred to as “working towards the führer.”

In the coming months, we’ll see how many government officials act like Sally Yates  – who behaved admirably but wasn’t likely to survive Trump’s ideological purge of the Justice Department anyway – how many will keep their heads down and follow every unconstitutional order blindly, and how many will take the opportunity Trump’s offering them to let their worst instincts come into play.

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Today -100: January 31, 1917: Of notes, toys, sinkings, mature women, Rodins, and unashamed New Yorkers

Germany will evidently soon send the US a reply to Wilson’s note asking it to spell out its peace terms.

Or it might be something else entirely.

Headline of the Day -100:

Including $361 for toys. This is the accounting by his mother for his trust fund, left after his father died when the Titanic sank. 

The captain of a British civilian freighter Clan Robertson receives a £1,000 reward for sinking a u-boat in the Bay of Biscay a few months ago. The reward was offered by a shipowner for every u-boat sunk by a non-military ship. The German case for treating all British ships as military vessels is looking rather more plausible.

In Britain the Speaker’s Conference, a group formed to discuss changes to the electoral laws chiefly to ensure soldiers aren’t disenfranchised, but which is now considering all aspects, including proportional representation, decides that women should get some sort of parliamentary vote but with a minimum age so that the recently depleted ranks of British manhood aren’t outnumbered by women in the electorate. They’re thinking 30 or 35. Sylvia Pankhurst protests that “Women mature, if anything, earlier than men.”

The sculptor Auguste Rodin, 76, marries. The NYT thinks he was married to someone once before, when he was 23, but this is the same woman he’s been living with without benefit of clergy since then. Rose will die in a couple of weeks, Auguste by the end of the year.

“New Yorkers can’t be shamed into joining the army.” Some women, mostly wives of army officers, set up a recruiting tent on 42nd Street, and inspire exactly zero men to join the army.

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Today -100: January 30, 1917: It is not a test of character, of quality, or of personal fitness

Woodrow Wilson vetoes the immigration bill over its literacy test. Congress had altered it since the last time Wilson vetoed it, exempting those fleeing religious persecution. Wilson really hates this, because it requires immigration officials to decide which countries are persecuting people. He says of the literacy test: “It is not a test of character, of quality, or of personal fitness, but would operate in most cases merely as a penalty for lack of opportunity in the country from which the alien seeking admission came.”

The Earl of Cromer, who ran Egypt on behalf of the British both before and after it became a formal colony – or as the NYT puts it –

and then came home to write books about Egypt and fight against women’s suffrage, dies at 75.

Alfredo González Flores, the Costa Rican president who was just deposed in a coup, asks the US to intervene to restore him to power. Won’t happen.

Margaret Sanger’s trial for a speech about birth control is continued so that one of the justices can read her book “What Every Girl Should Know,” so she’s available to attend a meeting at Carnegie Hall after leaving the court, or the “vortex of persecution” as she refers to it. She notes that Theodore Roosevelt keeps telling people to have large families “and he is neither arrested nor molested” while in a single week she received 63 letters from poor women in Oyster Bay (where TR lives) asking for birth control information.

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Can the revival of the rest of the Alien and Sedition Acts be far behind?

By a wacky coincidence, while researching the 1917 portion of this blog this morning, I came across a story about the round-up of suspected German spies during the day after the United States declared war on Germany. It was done without a court order using the president’s powers under the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, which authorized him to imprison males 14 years and older from countries with which the US is at war. As I was reading this, I suddenly realized that that was one of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which you might remember from AP American History. The others were repealed, but not the Alien Enemy Act, which FDR used to intern Japanese-Americans. It’s still the law of the land and available for Trump to use. Fortunately, there does have to be a declared war.

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Today -100: January 29, 1917: Of withdrawals, force-feedings, assassins, banned bloomers, and monkey murders

Gen. Pershing’s men are withdrawing from Mexico. Mostly on foot because they can’t use the trains without risking an attack from Pancho Villa’s bands, so not exactly returning covered in glory.

Ethel Byrne’s force-feeding meals will consist of eggs, milk and brandy. I don’t recall the British authorities trying to get suffragette hunger-strikers drunk. The Correction Commissioner Lewis says “Forcible feeding is nothing to cause so much comment.”

A military coup in Costa Rica deposes Pres. Alfredo González Flores. He’d been trying for a second term. Presidents aren’t allowed second terms, but his argument is that that doesn’t count in his case because he was selected by Congress rather than by a popular presidential vote (which is what happens under the constitution when no one wins a majority).

In Russia, the Black Hundred terrorists planned to assassinate Constitutional Democratic Party leader Pavel Milyukov. At any rate according to a man who says he was chosen to do the deed but published a confession instead.

Headline of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: January 28, 1917: We say it’s a long, long way to starvation

Ethel Byrne is force-fed in prison. There has been no regurgitation, which we know because the prison is telling the press an awful lot about Byrne’s medical condition. This is the first force-feeding of a female political prisoner in the United States. There will be more. Soon.

The British Navy declares part of the North Sea dangerous to shipping (i.e., they’re planning to mine the shit out of it) and off-limits, in what is totally a safety measure and not at all a tightening of the blockade on Germany.

German Food Dictator Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe says there is no starvation in Germany nor can there be. Hell, he tells an American reporter, there is less starvation in Germany than in US cities. He admits that there aren’t many potatoes around, but says there are plenty of turnips. “The English say it’s a long, long way to Tipperary; we say it’s a long, long way to starvation.” To the sweetest gal I know.

The Arizona Supreme Court decides that Thomas Campbell rather than George Hunt is the governor. Four weeks of dueling governors is over.

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Today -100: January 27, 1917: Of Columbian islands, seas, private dicks, and 25¢ menus

People have been suggesting in letters to the NYT possible new names for the Danish West Indies. Today, “The Columbian Islands” is offered.

Russia endorses Wilson’s peace ideas, especially giving every nation access to the seas (Russia has, after all, been trying to seize the Dardanelles Strait from Turkey).

Although private detective supreme William Burns did uncover German espionage operations by breaking into a law office, it turns out that breaking and entering and making stolen private correspondence public is illegal, and he has been fined $100.

First it was members of the Chicago Board of Health eating for 40¢ a day, then New York cops for 25¢, now Woodrow Wilson is volunteering to try a budget menu – for one day. A Eula McClary of the Life Extension Institute has drawn up the menu:

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There’s plenty of anger right now. How can you have more?

Donald Trump was interviewed by ABC’s David Muir.


A TREMENDOUS MAGNITUDE: 

DAVID MUIR: Let me ask you, has the magnitude of this job hit you yet? 

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It has periodically hit me. And it is a tremendous magnitude. And where you really see it is when you’re talking to the generals about problems in the world. And we do have problems in the world. Big problems. The business also hits because the -- the size of it. The size.

On the Wall (and can I say how much I love that former Mexican President Vicente Fox is using the hashtag #FuckingWall on Twitter): “All it is, is we’ll be reimbursed at a later date from whatever transaction we make from Mexico.” It’s that clarity and precision of language that has served him so well in business.

HE HAS A BIG HEART LIKE HE HAS BIG HANDS: Says the “dreamers” “shouldn’t be very worried. I do have a big heart. We’re going to take care of everybody. We’re going to have a very strong border,” but refuses several times to rule out deporting them.

I can’t remember, did George Bush refer to undocumented immigrants as “illegals” the way Trump does? Anyway, Trump says repeatedly that there could have been 3 to 5 million illegal votes cast in 2016 – “There are millions of votes, in my opinion.” Muir fails to ask what evidence he’s basing this on. Or indeed, how he penetrated the secret ballot to ascertain this: “I will say this, of those votes cast, none of ‘em come to me. None of ‘em come to me. They would all be for the other side.” Boy, the ability of the Democratic Party to manufacture millions and millions of illegal votes without leaving any material evidence beyond “my opinion” that Trump can point to, all while losing the election, they must be the greatest organizational geniuses and the greatest incompetents simultaneously, and we know only one of those two things is true of them.

On his threat against Chicago – and Muir once again failed to ask for specifics, like which “feds” Trump wants to send in – “Maybe they’re not gonna have to be so politically correct. Maybe they’re being overly political correct. Maybe there’s something going on.” Boy, that “something going on” Trump likes to talk about is always so mysterious. “You can’t have thousands of people being shot in a city, in a country that I happen to be president of. Maybe it’s okay if somebody else is president.” Um, what? “I want them to fix the problem. They have a problem that’s very easily fixable.” It’s the thick-crust pizza, isn’t it?

He says incoming Director of Central Intelligence Mike Pompeo is “somebody fabulous as opposed to the character that just got out who didn’t – was not fabulous at all.” I don’t know if the CIA can cope with all that fabulousness.

Muir asked him about torture and Trump said that he wouldn’t bring it back because Mad Dog Matthis doesn’t like it, even though unnamed “people at the highest level of intelligence” tell him torture totally does work. Unfortunately, Muir never asks him if waterboarding is torture. “You never saw heads chopped off until a few years ago. Now they chop ‘em off and they put ‘em on camera and they send ‘em all over the world. So we have that and we’re not allowed to do anything.” Jesus, don’t sound so fucking jealous.

“I will say this, I will rely on Pompeo and Mattis and my group. And if they don’t wanna do, that’s fine. If they do wanna do, then I will work for that end.” It’s nice to have a president who takes firm moral stands, isn’t it?

Will the ban on immigration anger Muslims throughout the world? “There’s plenty of anger right now. How can you have more?” That’s what we said about you, but there it is, every day.

On “taking” Iraq’s oil: “And if we took the oil you wouldn’t have ISIS. And we would have had wealth.” So it is actual looting for own enrichment that he’s advocating. As for his comment in Langley that maybe we’d have another chance, well, he never talks about military plans in advance. Something to look forward to, Iraq (a country he says has no government).

“It’s been our longest war. We’ve been in there for 15, 16 years. Nobody even knows what the date is because they don’t really know when did we start.” Yup, truly one of the great unknowables.

On replacing Obamacare: “We will unleash something that’s gonna be terrific.” Or a kraken. Probably a kraken.

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Today -100: January 26, 1917: A unity in war such as never existed before

Ethel Byrne, Margaret Sanger’s sister, is indeed hunger-striking in the workhouse to which she was sentenced for 30 days for disseminating birth control literature. She is also thirst-striking, but she has relented on her refusal to wash.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George invites the heads of the Dominions (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa) to join in an Empire War Council to deal with matters of war and then with the  peace negotiations. He hints at a more permanent change in the imperial structures. “The peoples of the empire will have found a unity in war such as never existed before”. The Empire that kills together chills together.

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) introduces a resolution opposing Wilson’s peace overtures, reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine and nonintermeddling (is that a real word? the Times uses it) in European affairs.

Japan’s Emperor Yoshihito dissolves the Diet, which was threatening a vote of no confidence against Terauchi Masatake’s government. An assassination attempt is made on opposition leader (and former minister of justice and mayor of Tokyo) Yukio Ozaki by two guys with swords, because Japan.

The US objects to changes Carranza wants to make in the Mexican constitution relating to land ownership by foreigners, the ability of the government to expel foreigners, exemptions of concessions from taxation, etc.

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