Today -100: March 9, 1917: Of wirelesses, plots, pacifists, boy disloyalists, war crimes, and zeppelins

In the continuing ostracization of senators who filibustered the Armed Ships Bill, Sen. Moses Clapp (R-Minnesota) is disinvited from addressing a men’s Bible class.

The US government leaks to the press that there exists a secret wireless connection between Mexico and Germany, free of the benevolent censorship the US imposes. Actually, it seems that the Mexican wireless station, which was intended to keep the Mexican government in touch with its far-flung armies, isn’t strong enough to transmit to Germany but it can receive.

Headline of the Day -100:

In the pro-war propaganda campaign in the US, the Zimmermann Telegram is portrayed as just one strand in a complex, insidious web of German plots. That word gets used a lot. Too much, really, when you consider how quickly it loses meaning when you repeat it: plot plot plot plot plot plot. It should also be noted that the Zimmermann thing only came into play if the US declared war on Germany, in which case, Germany asks, were we not supposed to seek allies? it’s kind of what you do in war. Of course “it’s what you do in war” is also their excuse for invading Belgium, using poison gas, and sinking ships without warning, but I think they are genuinely puzzled that other people refuse to see these things through the same “pragmatic” lens they do.

Another “plot” mentioned in that story, which as far as I know is fictional, was a German attempt to persuade Mexico to annex Guatemala.

Headline of the Day -100: 

400 US Marines land in Santiago, Cuba, allegedly at the request of its Civil Governor and at the orders of Commander Belknap on his own authority, without orders from the Navy.

The NYT welcomes Columbia University’s un-American activities committee, saying every school and college should have one: “We do not charge that such doctrines are taught in Columbia or elsewhere, but where does the noisy brood of boy disloyalists, anarchists, pacifists, come from?”

Irish Nationalists in the British Parliament respond to Lloyd George’s statement that Ulster won’t be coerced into joining a Home Rule Ireland. They say this “would involve denial of self-government to Ireland forever.”

Russia complains about violations of the rules of warfare by its enemies, including poison gas, explosive bullets, poisoned wells, the misuse of Red Cross flags and flags of truce, throwing bombs at sanitary trains, and the sinking of a hospital ship by a Turkish sub.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Bulgarian Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov is said to be planning to pull Bulgaria out of the war if it isn’t over by summer.

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the you-know-what, dies at 78.

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Today -100: March 8, 1917: I will never go to war for a capitalist government

There are bread riots in Petrograd today, mostly women. The Cossacks are called in, as was the custom.

Austria will start drafting 17-year-olds. And probably men up to 61.

The Wilson administration is thinking about using the Navy to convoy merchant ships, since arming them to shoot at u-boats seems to be illegal, but it’s still hopeful that the Senate will curb the filibuster and reverse the 1819 law in the special session.

The Senate is indeed working on restricting the filibuster for the first time in the history of the republic. It is proposed that a 2/3 vote can limit debate to one hour per senator.

While the state legislatures of some of the senators who filibustered the Armed Ships Bill have repudiated them, those of Wisconsin, Nebraska, Colorado, and Iowa refuse.

Supposedly, the amputated arm of a British soldier (the son-in-law of an MP, no less) is successfully surgically reattached.

The Australian Senate votes 28-2 for a resolution asking Britain to give Ireland Home Rule without undue delay. And in the British Parliament, Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond presents a resolution for immediate Home Rule. The government says sure, but Northern Ireland won’t be “coerced” into joining.

Germany orders almost all Belgian industry shut down.

Hsuan Tung, the 11-year-old former emperor of China, will be educated in the United States, it is announced. He won’t be, actually no doubt because of the attempt later in the year to make him a puppet emperor again.

Eugene Debs tells the workers of the United States they should declare a general strike in the event of war (“for Wall Street”) being declared. “When the working people own this country and other countries there will be no war.”

The Cuban rebellion seems to be over with the capture of its leader, Gen. José Miguel Gomez.

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Today -100: March 7, 1917: Of unusually bright Orientals, women’s suffrage, submarines, and sangers

The NYPD arrest a Bengal, Chandra Chakraberty, and a German, Ernest Se Kunna, for a plot to invade India and stir up uprisings there. The NYT article contains this sentence:

Women in Arkansas are given the vote. In primaries only, but Arkansas’s a one-party state anyway. This is the first suffrage victory below the Mason-Dixon line.

The Women’s Peace Party ousts Carrie Chapman Catt as honorary vice chair because as president of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association she offered Woodrow Wilson the services of suffragists in the event of the US going to war (without asking the suffragists).

Austria follows Germany in responding to US demands regarding submarine warfare. It says it totally agrees with the US about the protection of neutrals, but this applies to neutral ships, not to neutral persons on enemy vessels. Austria’s rejection of Wilson’s doctrine that American citizens do act as inviolable human shields may well lead to a break in diplomatic relations. Austria also agrees with Germany that all ships have been given a general warning to stay away and therefore a specific warning before sinking them is not required. Also, England started it.

Margaret Sanger went into prison for a month as a birth-control campaigner and came out as a prison-reform campaigner. She is especially critical of the “studied cruelty and heartlessness” of Katherine Davis, chair of the Parole Board, who rejoices in refusing to tell prisoners when they will be released, removed knives and forks so prisoners have to eat with their hands, installed screens so prisoners can’t see their visitors, etc. Sanger also describes the guards’ two-hour failed attempt to forcibly take her fingerprints.

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Today -100: March 6, 1917: We are provincials no longer

Woodrow Wilson gives his second inaugural address. Its clear aim is to prepare the American people for war, while exonerating them, and himself, from the charge of actually wanting war.

To be indifferent to it [the war], or independent of it, was out of the question.
And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself.
As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable we have still been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready to demand for all mankind – fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live and to be at ease against organized wrong.
It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality since it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forget. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle itself. ...
We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not.

“The more active assertion of our rights”!

While the Wilson administration reconsiders whether that 1819 law really prevents the arming of merchant ships and the Senate considers neutering the filibuster, there are calls of “traitor!” and “hang them!” as the names of the filibusterers are read out at a meeting in Carnegie Hall, which passes a resolution supporting Wilson and condemning “so-called ‘pacifists’” as un-American, and Oregonians initiate recall procedures against Sen. Harry Lane (D). He will die in May before that goes anywhere (and yes, in Oregon it was possible to recall a US senator). Robert La Follette is barred from Wheeling, West Virginia, where he has a lecture scheduled (the horror) and is hanged in effigy by University of Illinois students. And the trustees of Columbia University, the largest university in the country, appoint a committee, headed by former chief justice of the New York Supreme Court George Ingraham, to investigate any “disloyalty” among the faculty. The country’s not even at war yet.

However, the Metropolitan Opera denies that it will ban German opera in event of war.

German newspapers are portraying the Zimmermann telegram revelation as some sort of trick by Wilson to stampede Congress against Germany, even though they’re not denying the authenticity of the telegram.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sounds like a missed opportunity.

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Today -100: March 5, 1917: Of helpless and contemptible governments

Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated for his second term, the oath administered by the chief justice in the President’s Room in the Capitol, in front of a couple of Wilson’s friends, his wife, the Cabinet, and “such public officials as happened to be in the room transacting official business when the hour of noon arrived.” Actually, it was 12:04, so the country was without a president for 4 minutes, if it had but known it.

The Senate fails to pass Wilson’s Armed Ship Bill before the 64th Congress’s session expires. 11 senators (5 D’s, 6 R’s) filibuster the bill to death. 75 senators sign a manifesto saying they would have voted for it. Robert La Follette has a long speech he’d like to filibuster with, but the other side conspires to use the rules to prevent him speaking, just to be dickish. He is not best pleased. Other bills and nominations got lost thanks to the filibuster.

Pres. Wilson, says “A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” He demands that the Senate change its rules to prevent filibusters, and then he’ll call a special session.

Until recently, the White House had been saying that, while it would prefer to have Congress’s consent, the president has the inherent power under the Constitution to order the Navy to put cannon (and sailors) on private commercial vessels. However, they’re now discovered an 1819 law which says merchant ships may be armed but may not shoot at ships of countries with which the United States is not at war. So what were the cannon for? Pirates, of course.

The Chinese cabinet decides to join the US in breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany. Pres. Li Yuan-Hung refuses, saying that that power is his and his alone. So the prime minister and Cabinet resign. And leave Peking.

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Today -100: March 4, 1917: The most important part of the plot is its conditional form

German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann admits that the Zimmermann Telegram is authentic, but says that it’s not a “plot,” because Germany only proposed to ally with Mexico and Japan against the United States if the United States declared war on it. “The most important part of the plot is its conditional form.” (Or he may have said “condition and form.”)

Mexico’s foreign minister denies (finally) that Mexico ever received an alliance proposal from Germany. He is lying.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg promises to make Flanders a separate country from Belgium.

The US Department of Justice has discovered a culprit to blame for high food prices: two pro-German bankers and a commission merchant who plotted to keep vegetables out of New York in order to provoke demonstrations against exporting food to Europe.

A public meeting in St Thomas in Danish (for now) West Indies, decides in favor of “the American Virgin Islands” as the colony’s new name, rather than, say, the Dewey Islands after the late Admiral Dewey. Did no one suggest as a compromise the Dewey Virgin Islands?

French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, responding to accusations that he likes German music too much, publishes an entire book, Germanophilie, to refute that premise. In it, he calls for a French boycott of German music, especially Wagner. He says French people only think they like Wagner. “Wagnerism, in the guise of art, was a machine marvelously adapted for sapping French patriotism. It was the German soul creeping little by little into our public.” He says the French should try to appreciate French composers, except that fucker Debussy. Okay, he doesn’t say that, but Saint-Saëns really didn’t like Debussy.

Texas Gov. James E. Ferguson (D), invited by the Legislature to come and discuss his possible impeachment, calls State Sen. W.A. Johnson a “nigger-lover from the North,” then informs Johnson that “you look like a nigger, you are a nigger.” Johnson, the Times notes, is of Swedish extraction. Gov. Ferguson is accused of misappropriating public funds and violating banking laws. This all started when Ferguson vetoed funding for the University of Texas because it refused his order to fire certain faculty members, including the former lieutenant-governor who ran against him in the gubernatorial primary. Ferguson will be removed from office later this year and barred from holding office in Texas. He will attempt to run for governor again, then president, then senator, and while never holding office again, his wife will be elected governor twice. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson will be the second female governor in the US, in 1925, closely following Nellie Tayloe Ross, who succeeded her late husband in Wyoming after a special election. The third, decades later, was George Wallace’s wife Lurleen (George was term-limited out). So the first non-spouse female governor in the United States was only elected in 1974, Ella Grasso of Connecticut. We really are a backwards country.

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Today -100: March 3, 1917: Of armed ships, warnings, citizens, and flags

Headline of the Day -100:

About time, they’ve been painting penises on them for years.

Sen. Bob La Follette (R-Wisconsin) is holding up the bill to allow the arming of ships. Aside from him, senators are happy to avoid going to conference by passing the House bill intact. The House version strips out Wilson’s demand for vague “other instrumentalities and methods,” and its provision of insurance for merchant ship cargoes excludes ships carrying munitions.

Japan denies having been approached by Germany to join against the US, but Mexico ain’t talking.

Germany responds to the claim that the Laconia was sunk without warning: the warning was the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare on Feb. 1st.

A new law makes Puerto Rican residents citizens of the United States (which they have the power to renounce within a year). Since annexation nearly 20 years ago, Puerto Ricans have not been citizens of any country (this was not an uncommon phenomenon at the time for people in colonies). And just for the hell of it, Congress also imposes prohibition on the island, although that could be reversed if wets organize a referendum.

The Iowa Department of Justice rules that newspapers containing images of the American flag are breaking the law.

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Today -100: March 2, 1917: I see no yellow stripe in that flag

Headline of the Day -100:

Yup, the NYT is in full war-monger mode: “Militant Americanism was dominant in Washington today – in those quarters of the capital where action counts in this perilous time. By one bold strike President Wilson had emboldened the timid, scattered his enemies, and brought honest critics to his side.” Dishonest critics presumably including Sen. William Stone (D-Missouri), who offers an amendment asking whether the Zimmermann Telegram came into Wilson’s hands from any government engaged in the war. Which it totally did. So far, the administration is willing only to say that it’s definitely authentic and that disclosing sources ‘n methods “might be dangerous for some people.” But it is, as Henry Cabot Lodge points out, evidently willing to ask Congress to act based on unconfirmed Associated Press stories rather than official reports. Stone is attacked from all sides for implying that the Wilson administration did, well, the thing it actually did. And Sen. Albert Fall (R-New Mexico) says that Democrats who imply that Wilson released the telegram to influence public opinion are “accusing the president of the veriest trickery and impossible practices.” Which, in fact, were precisely the trickery and impossible practices Wilson had, er, practiced. Socialist Congresscritter Meyer London says “We have reached a stage where sentiment rules and reason has been dispensed with.” He says members of Congress talking about how much they love the flag “make as big fools of themselves as the man who tells how he loves his wife.” William Patterson Borland (D-Missouri, campaign slogan: “He grew up with Kansas City”) responds, “I see no yellow stripe in that flag, and I’ll never put one in it.”

Anyway, after this exposure of German perfidy, the House votes 403-13 to give Wilson the authority to arm merchant vessels.

Secretary of State Robert Lansing says that the Mexican and Japanese governments are totally innocent in all this and that they may not have even been approached by Germany. The Zimmermann telegram did say that such an approach should only be made by the German ambassador to Mexico if war between Germany and the US became certain. Another (false) theory going around, however, is that Carranza told the US about being approached by Germany, and this is the “proof” Wilson claims to have that the telegram is not fake.

Cuban rebels are setting fire to the sugar cane fields, as was the custom.

France will start rationing bread.

We all just pictured a man with a striped shirt and beret riding a bicycle, carrying a baguette, didn’t we?

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Today -100: March 1, 1917: Conduct war jointly, conduct peace jointly

Headline of the Day -100:

The note, which is being leaked to the press on Woodrow Wilson’s personal orders, is from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the ambassador to Mexico ordering him to propose to Mexico, if the US declaring war on Germany in response to its resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare seems imminent, that it join in fighting the US and in return receive Texas, Arizona and New Mexico – “conduct war jointly, conduct peace jointly” – and ask Mexico to ask Japan to break with the Entente and join Germany.

Actually, the headline is a lie: it was actually British Naval Intelligence which intercepted and decyphered the Zimmermann Telegram and passed it to the US, which pretended publicly that it had cleverly discovered it all on its own. In fact, British Naval Intel’s head, Admiral William “Blinker” Hall, lied to the Americans about how he got it since he’d actually retrieved it from the US State Dept’s channels, which the US had allowed Germany access to to communicate with its embassy in Washington in the hopes that Germany would ask Wilson to mediate a peace deal. Hall didn’t want the Americans to figure out that he was also reading all their (weakly encrypted) communications, even going to the trouble of intercepting the telegram a second time, as it was transmitted via Western Union from the German embassy in Washington to the embassy in Mexico City. The British role won’t become public until the 1920s. None of today’s newspaper stories say how the telegram came into the hands of the US government, although there’s speculation that it came from a search of expelled Ambassador Bernstorff’s baggage. The AP broke the news, and the AP ain’t talking.

Mexico will deny that the offer was ever made. It was but Carranza never seriously considered it, correctly calculating that Germany would provide minimal assistance, as it had with the Easter Rising in Ireland, and obviously Mexican forces, which haven’t been able to put down Pancho Villa, would be crushed by the US. In truth, the German Foreign Office just sort of half-assedly jotted this idea down on the back of a napkin, fired off the telegram and then more or less forgot about it. They will actually be a bit surprised that the US is making such a big deal about this “plot.”

The NYT says that Huerta’s attempt to return to power in Mexico in 1915, which was thwarted by his arrest by US federal agents, was bankrolled by Germany. It wasn’t.

The Japanese embassy denies any knowledge of such a German proposal and says Japan would never betray its Entente allies. Which it wouldn’t, because it already seized Germany’s Far East possessions at the start of the war, so Germany doesn’t really have anything to offer them.

Speaking of the Japanese, the Idaho Legislature derails the Alien Land Bill, but may still outlaw marriages between whites and “Mongolians.”

The House Foreign Affairs Committee reports out Pres. Wilson’s bill giving him the authority to arm merchant ships, but strikes out the clause allowing him to use “such other instrumentalities and methods as may in his judgment and discretion seem necessary and adequate”. Also, the US government will not be insuring cargoes of munitions.

Wilson orders Admiral Mayo to land 250 marines on Cuba to protect American and other foreign lives and property. Mostly sugar mills.

The House votes to impose prohibition on the District of Columbia.

Opera singer Eleanore Cochran goes bankrupt due to the influx of European opera singers who have come to the US since the start of the war.

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Today -100: February 28, 1917: They probably did not think the Germans quite as murderous as I did

William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson’s former secretary of state, will fight his request for the power to arm ships and “other instrumentalities and methods.” It’s about Congress not surrendering its power, he says.

The NYT scoffs at congressional Republican demands for an extra session of Congress during this slightly dangerous time: “Their zeal for the constitutional powers of Congress and their dread of Executive despotism are but postures. In the extremity of their partisanship they care more for Republican tactics than for the protection of American shipping and lives. They are more jealous of the power of the President than of the honor of the country.”

Austin Hoy, whose sister and mother were killed when that German u-boat sank the Laconia, demands that Woodrow Wilson avenge them. AVEEEEEENGE THEEEEEM! He says if the US goes to war he’ll join the army. If not, he’ll join the British or French army (“If [the US] stultifies my manhood and my nation’s by remaining passive under outrage, I shall seek a man’s chance under another flag,” he manfully cables Wilson, and I was just going to comment about how dirty “seek a man’s chance under another flag” sounds, until I realized I’d written that Hoy “cabled” Wilson. He says he wired to his mother and sister not to risk the crossing, but they wanted to get back to London while the getting was still good and “They probably did not think the Germans quite as murderous as I did.”

The sinking of the Laconia is reportedly regarded by the Wilson administration as the “overt act” that constitutes crossing Wilson’s red line. This doesn’t mean Woodrow plans to declare war but to use the powers he asked Congress for “in a way that will make Germany realize that the United States means business.”

And Germany is evidently not releasing the prisoners (including Americans) seized from the Yarrowdale after all. Not still holding them hostage against the treatment of German sailors in the US, oh no, the Germans claim to have detected an unnamed infectious disease in their detention camp, necessitating a quarantine.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg is not happy with the US’s position: “I cannot possibly consider it a vital question for the American nation to protect international law in a one-sided fashion, only against us.” He’s got a point, sort of. He says that unrestricted submarine warfare is totally working and will totally defeat Britain and will be continued.

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Today -100: February 27, 1917: Armed neutrality

Woodrow Wilson asks a joint session of Congress to allow him to arm American merchant ships and “employ such other instrumentalities and methods as may in his judgment and discretion seem necessary and adequate” to protect those ships. Which is too vague and blank-checky for some Republicans, although Wilson claims “I am not now proposing or contemplating war or any steps that might lead to it.” So that’s okay then. The government would also be permitted to insure ships. “Armed neutrality” it’s called, in which a country is not party to a war but is prepared to defend its so-called rights with violence.

Literally as Wilson arrived at the Capitol (and once again he just kind of showed up, with only 3 hours warning), news came that the Cunard liner RMS Laconia was torpedoed by a German u-boat near Ireland.  12 are dead (6 passengers, 6 crew), including two Americans, Mary (58) and Elizabeth (33) Foy of Chicago, a mother and daughter (those ages are from the Chicago Daily Tribune; the NYT says 60 and 30).

(Actually, they’ve been living in London for 5 years but for purposes of outrage, they’re Chicagoans.) The lifeboats, at least those that weren’t smashed, were picked up 8 hours later.

The NYT claims that the pacifists and pro-Germans and even actual Germans it spoke to consider armed neutrality fantastic and likely to keep the US out of the war.

Because of lack of paper – a likely story – every newspaper in Hungary must cease production.

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Today -100: February 26, 1917: In no essential degree

A NYT editorial asks whether pacifists would fight a band of hungry wolves or allow themselves and their families to be eaten up. “That contingency differs in no essential degree from that which many a nation has had to meet”. The Times fails to specify who the wolves are in this scenario.

The National American Woman’s Suffrage Association pledges the support of its 2 million members if the US is “drawn into the maelstrom” of war. It doesn’t actually ask those 2 million members if they want to have their support pledged for them.

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Today -100: February 25, 1917: No man who is not a patriot is to be trusted with a woman’s welfare

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Supposedly, bands of armed Germans, possibly sailors escaping internment, crossed into Brazil from Argentina. There have also been stories about the Hamburg Colonization Company intending to establish a colony of Germans – and only Germans – in Brazil. Pretty sure this is an old plan that never got off the ground.

The proposed Mexican constitution is rather interesting.

Headline of the Day -100:

Congresswoman-elect Jeanette Rankin says she doesn’t feel bound to follow the Republican Party leaders. She denies that she plans to introduce a women’s suffrage measure, but says she’ll support one if someone else does. Ditto prohibition.

The State Department shows Woodrow Wilson the Zimmermann telegram.

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Today -100: February 24, 1917: Of filibusters and food

Republicans in the Senate are objecting to Wilson’s plans to let Congress dissolve and then not convene the new Congress for 9 months (as was the custom), while whatever shit goes down goes down. They’re planning to filibuster everything, so a special session has to be called. Pacifist congresscritters are also worried that without anyone around in Washington to put a check on Wilson, he’ll will do something that will lead to war.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George tells Parliament that food stocks are dangerously low, in effect admitting that Germany’s submarine warfare is working, although he blames bad harvests. He will order imports cut back drastically (no tea!) and force farmers to use every inch of their land – or else – while guaranteeing them a minimum price. Newspapers will have to make do with a lot less paper.

France asks all schoolboys in the country to raise vegetables on vacant land. Just the boys, evidently, or maybe that’s a translation error.

New York City, facing its own food problems, wants the state to give the city the power to buy food during emergencies and sell it at cost.

Federal investigators who federally investigated whether food riots were caused by German secret agents decide that they were not.

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Today -100: February 23, 1917: Of vaux bacon, colonies, yarrowdales, referenda, and telegrams

Headline of the Day -100:

Not a weird photography experiment, but Britain’s plans to hold a secret trial for alleged spy George Vaux Bacon.

The Allies announce that Germany won’t be getting any of its colonies back. Britain, France, Portugal, and Belgium also plan to redraw the map of Africa so the borders between their colonies are tidier.

The crews, including American sailors, on the Yarrowdale, have been released by the Germans. Which was reported a week ago, I guess wrongly. (Update: actually this report is wrong too).

American pacifists are divided on whether a referendum on war is a good idea or not.

British Naval Intelligence informs the US of the contents of the Zimmermann Telegram.

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Today -100: February 22, 1917: Of helmets, food riots, and the great Bavarian-Prussian War of 1917

The Wilson administration is warning newspapers not to say that the threat of war with Germany has passed.

Congress has postponed replacing soldiers’ current helmets with steel ones.

The two baseball leagues are implementing military drill for their players.

There have been food riots in New York City, although you’d barely know it from the New York Times. Mayor Mitchel tells a deputation of women that they should complain to Albany and D.C., not to him. He has asked the commissioner of health to determine how many people have starved to death recently.

Minnesota’s lower house passes a bill for a referendum on women’s suffrage in 1918, Maine’s lower house for one in September of this year, while the Vermont House rejected women’s suffrage. And the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage objects to Puerto Rico possibly getting self-government before women get the vote.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Supposedly, a huge fight between Prussian and Bavarian soldiers in Belgium has resulted in 32 deaths.

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Today -100: February 21, 1917: A limit which makes civilisation impossible

Oxford introduces a PhD degree, because Americans like them.

Headline of the Day -100:

The bill to make spying illegal passes the Senate 60-10. Opponents say it gives the president dictatorial powers to suppress speech. There are differing penalties depending on whether the US is at peace or at war, ranging all the way up to the death penalty for communicating information about troop numbers and movements and suchlike to an enemy nation. It also makes it illegal to impersonate a foreign official.

The British War Office requisitions all stocks of leather in the country, denies it’s for anything kinky.

William Howard Taft says it’s not the time for pacifism and that George Washington’s warning against entangling alliances “was made when conditions were totally different than they are now and it was intended for that period.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

The u-boat, thought to be the same one that sank the Lusitania (it isn’t but is perhaps captained by that guy), sank the Thor II (and you thought it was Chris Hemsworth’s acting and a weak script), towing its lifeboats to shore but not releasing the ship master and his family, including 6-year-old Solveig, who they treat as a mascot, if you normally bring mascots into a war zone and military engagements. The sub is nearly destroyed when a French ship it torpedoes turns out to be carrying ammunition, resulting in a larger-than-expected explosion.

The Americans in charge of the Dominican Republic’s finances have fired a great many Dominicans from government no-show jobs. They’re also saving the Dominicans money by cutting the army, since the US has decided the Republic doesn’t need one.

In the British Parliament, pacifists Philip Snowden, Charles Trevelyan and Arthur Ponsonby make speeches accusing the government of pursuing a war of conquest (for example acquiring Constantinople for Russia) and failing to respond to German peace approaches. Chancellor of the Exchequer Bonar Law (Tory) claims to be shocked at such pacifism, especially at a time when the United States “has itself recognised that there is a difference between right and wrong – has itself recognised that the excesses of our enemy have reached a limit which makes civilisation impossible, and are intolerable even to any neutral State.” Read the whole debate here.

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Today -100: February 20, 1917: It’s a war of inches

The US threatens the Cuban rebels again, saying it will hold them responsible for any property damage.

Albert Sander, drama editor for William Randolph Hearst’s Deutsches Journal, and Charles Wunnenberg, both Brooklynites, are arrested for supposedly sending fake newspaper reporters to England to spy for the Central Powers. With invisible ink and everything.

Gen. Frederick Funston, who had overall command of the expedition into Mexico and would have led any, you know, hypothetical expeditionary force to Europe, dies suddenly of a heart attack at 51.

Headline of the Day -100:

All Connecticut citizens (male citizens, I assume) over 16 are being registered for possible military service.

The American Institute of Weights and Measures is formed in New York City to fight “an aggressive campaign” against the metric system.

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Today -100: February 19, 1917: Of Jews, enemy aliens, potato wars, and zapatas

Russia plans to ease restrictions on Jews’ ability to enter certain professions, form companies, etc. and to ease up on residency restrictions. And wounded soldiers, including from the Russo-Japanese War, will get the same privileges as Christians, whatever that means. Prime Minister Prince Golitzin says “The experience gained in putting these reforms into practice will serve as valuable material for the final solution of the Jewish problem.” Um, right.

Rep. George Edmonds (R-Pennsylvania) introduces a bill requiring enemy aliens to register in time of war.

Headline of the Day -100:

The Food Controller has fixed a price for potatoes that retailers are refusing to sell at, and consumers are getting pissed at the prices.

Emiliano Zapata issues a manifesto renouncing all treaties the Carranza regime makes with foreign nations. And anything else the new Congress does.

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Today -100: February 18, 1917: If one must go it will have to be you

Headline of the Day -100:

Or, as they’ll think of this in a quarter-century, the good old days.

Headline of the Day -100:

The nature of which is, shhh, a secret.

The US State Dept is “negotiating” a treaty with the Dominican Republic to put a US-nominated man in charge of the country’s finances, US officers in charge of its police, US engineers in charge of its public works, etc.

A bill is introduced in the South Dakota State Senate requiring that every appendix which has been surgically removed be sent to the state lab and if found healthy the surgeon will have to return their fee.

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