Today -100: May 20, 1917: Eat Plenty, Wisely, and Without Waste

The new Russian Cabinet declares against a separate peace and for a peace without annexations or indemnities, based on national self-determination. Aleksandr Kerensky, promoted from Justice Minister to War Minister, says he will enforce discipline in the army. Good luck with that, Alex.

Pres. Wilson asks Congress for extensive powers over food production and appoints Herbert Hoover as his Food Administrator, rejecting the titles “food dictator” or “food controller.” Hoover has a motto and everything: “Eat Plenty, Wisely, and Without Waste. Also, Pineapple on Pizza is Just Wrong.”

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Today -100: May 19, 1917: The business now at hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific directness and precision

Pres. Wilson sets June 5th as Registration Day, when 10 million men aged 21 to 30 are required to register for the draft. They will be chosen and sent (in a few months) to train in 32, um, concentration camps. Man, Hitler just ruined that phrase for everyone, didn’t he?

Fun fact: the term concentration camp was coined by the British during the Boer War for the places they stuck Boer women and children, some of whom starved to death.

But Roosevelt won’t be going, the White House says. Wilson dismisses the argument that TR would rally morale, saying “The business now at hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific directness [or definiteness; the story uses both in different places] and precision.” Dude should totally write motivational posters.

Sinn Fein says it will boycott the proposed Irish convention and ignore any constitution it comes up with.

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Today -100: May 18, 1917: When was this ever denied to any man?

The Army Draft bill passes the Senate 65 to 8. The amendment allowing Roosevelt’s volunteer divisions is put back in after a debate in which William Stone (D-Missouri) attacks TR’s temperament and military competence, noting that he led the Rough Riders into a hole from which they had to be rescued... by a negro regiment. TR is defended by his former running mate Hiram Johnson, who says “This privilege is asked by a man who is in the twilight of life [He’s 58!], so that he may lay down his life for his country. ... When was this ever denied to any man?” Ominously, the Senate rejects a clause that would have ended conscription when the war is over. The good news: Registration Day will be a holiday! With parades and speeches and mandatory signing up for possible death and everything!

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Army commanders complain that the soldiers have heard the phrase “peace without annexations” and are interpreting it as a reason not to engage in offensive warfare. Which seems like as good an excuse as any, actually.

There’s some agitation in Russia for the publication of secret treaties.

The Irish Nationalist Party rejects Lloyd George’s nice offer of Home Rule plus partition. They do accept the “well if you don’t like my idea just hold a convention of Irish people” part, but of course the Ulsterites reject that. As will Sinn Fein.

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I’m not a beer drinker, but I understand they have a lot to answer for here. Kennedy Jones, the Daily Mail editor who was just appointed director-general of Food Economy, explains (to people who wonder why they should ration their bread intake while others are drinking beer) that barley will no longer be malted. He says science proves that beer is nutritious and “beer has been, for centuries, a part of the daily diet of our working classes” and men who work at heavy manual labor “must drink considerable malty liquid. ... It is a scientific fact.” Can’t argue with science.

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Today -100: May 17, 1917: He is the very model...

New York Gov. Charles Whitman offers Theodore Roosevelt the rank of major general in the state militia.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George proposes Home Rule for Ireland that excludes Northern Ireland for at least 5 years. Or alternately, the Irish might hold a convention and work it out for themselves. Basically, he wants this issue out of the way because of its effect on the US.

US destroyers join the British fleet on anti-u-boat patrol.

The Senate holds a closed-door session on war appropriations, during which the Wilson administration is assailed for failing to explain much of anything about how it plans to spend all that money. Every single detail of the closed-door session leaks to the press, as is the custom.

Wilson gives up on getting Congress to pass a censorship law. For now.

Germany seems to be considering a compromise on the future of Alsace-Lorraine, but not the one you’d think. They might split it between Prussia and Bavaria. Evidently this is a bribe to get the Catholic Zentrum party, which is strong in heavily Catholic Bavaria, to continue supporting Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg.

In solidarity with the food economy being practiced by his subjects, the food served by King George V has been reduced to “the utmost simplicity” and guests must cut their own bread. And no toast.

CUT THEIR OWN BREAD!

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Today -100: May 16, 1917: A program of conquest helps us as little as a program of reconciliation to win victory and the war

Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg tells the Reichstag that he rejects demands that he express Germany’s war aims coming from both the left (no annexations or indemnities) and the right (big-ass annexations and indemnities). To declare what Germany is fighting for, he says, “would not serve the country’s interests.” He says if he renounced annexations, the enemy could continue to fight without risk. And he has the kaiser on his side, so suck it.

He does make an exception for Russia, which he tells that there is a No Annexations deal to be made which “excludes every thought of oppression and which would leave behind no sting and no discord.”

The Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet agrees to join a coalition government. Meanwhile, several commanding generals have resigned over the new policy allowing soldiers to vote on whether to obey orders. The Petrograd Soviet’s main strategy seems to be encouraging Socialists in Germany and Austria to prevent their armies being used as “the executioners of Russian liberty.”

The Turks are supposedly deporting the Jewish population of Jaffa. During Passover, no less.

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You’d think he’d have more important things to do than stand in an intersection in a yellow rain jacket and wave cars through, but...

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Today -100: May 15, 1917: Of espionage, choates, and purely destructive

The Senate passes the Espionage Bill, with the censorship (and prohibition) provisions stripped out.

Famous lawyer (and former US ambassador to Britain) Joseph Choate, dies.

The NYT calls the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet “a purely destructive force.” In general, the Times is soooo over the Russian Revolution.

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Today -100: May 14, 1917: Ours is not a true democracy

Carrie Chapman Catt points out that the US can’t talk about making the world safe for democracy until it gives all women the vote: “There is nothing more illogical than to insist that men have the divine right to rule over women and say at the same time that kings haven’t divine right to rule over men.”

Gen. Lavr Kornilov reportedly resigns as commander of the Petrograd Military District, unwilling to continue to tolerate the interference of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet. I know he didn’t resign at this time, so I guess he’ll change his mind.

Germany allows (and indeed encourages) another 280 Russian “agitators” to return to Russia from exile in Switzerland, including future secretary of the Comintern Angelica Balabanov.

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Today -100: May 13, 1917: This is no war for mere spontaneous impulse

The House is delaying the conscription bill, in part to try to force Theodore Roosevelt’s volunteer divisions into it. That amendment is sponsored in the Senate by Warren G. Harding, by the way. Says former Speaker of the House Uncle Joe Cannon, “I want Theodore Roosevelt to carry the heart of America to the trenches of France”. Walter Chandler (R-NY) says “Roosevelt will fight, and everybody knows it. He is the fighter of the age”.

At a Red Cross event, Woodrow Wilson says, “This is no war for amateurs.” I wonder who he could mean? “This is no war for mere spontaneous impulse. It means grim business on every side of it.” But he finds a bright side too: it will heal the last division between North and South, “and when effort and suffering and sacrifice have completed the union, men will no longer speak of any lines either of race or association cutting athwart the great body of the nation.”

Rep. J. Thomas Heflin (D-Land of Cotton) suggests that ships could survive a u-boat torpedo if bales of cotton were placed along the sides so if the ship is holed it will still float. And when the submarine surfaces to check out the damage, you could just shoot it.

It is quite possible that Rep. Heflin is 6 years old.

The Virgin Mary appears to 10-year-old Lúcia Santos and her younger cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto in Fátima, Portugal, tells them secrets and promises to appear again. A Felliniesque carnival will grow up around the subsequent appearances. There will be an official cult and everything. And today, Pope Francis is going to canonize the girls, unjustly spurning the girls in Cottingley who just about the same time took pictures of fairies that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thought were real.

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Today -100: May 12, 1917: Of strikes and Romanovs

The British gov warns munitions workers not to strike and that anyone inciting strikes is liable to imprisonment for life.

The Russian provisional government reportedly had plans to deport the czar and his family, but they were vetoed by the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, which want to make sure all of the Romanov’s money is seized.

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Today -100: May 11, 1917: Of separate peaces and peaces that pay, concentration camps, and conscription

The US will not make a separate peace with Germany. This needed to be made explicit because the US has no formal alliance with the Allies.

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The French were never going to be onboard for a No Annexations, No Indemnity peace deal given their demand for the return of the lost territories of Alsace-Lorraine, but they’d also like to make Germany pay for the French cost of fighting the war. They might also take the Saar. This from a report by the Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, which also says that “the towns and villages destroyed by a criminal race of barbarians shall be rebuilt by German hands.” Which sounds rather like slave labor.

The US government rented a property from the Kanauga Club in North Carolina for use as a concentration camp – yes, that’s the term they’re using – for interned Germans, but there’s some dispute over whether the club manager had the authority to rent it out, so the government has to postpone sending the first contingent of prisoners from Ellis Island.

The War Department says there is no possibility that the local draft boards will practice favoritism. None at all. Spoiler Alert: they will totally practice favoritism. Especially in the South. But in truth, class favoritism is built into the law. People can be exempted from service because they are more “valuable” at home, and many boards determined this by how much money people earned. People with religious objections to war will be required to perform jobs the president deems noncombatant.

Joseph McGuiness is elected to the British Parliament at the South Longford by-election. He is a Sinn Fein activist currently in jail for his participation in the Easter Rising.

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Today -100: May 10, 1917: The woman who wastes a crust wastes a bullet

The British Food Ministry issues some slogans:

Former ambassador to Mexico Henry Lane Wilson wins his libel suit against Harper’s Weekly for correctly reporting about his complicity in the Huerta coup and murder of Pres. Madero. He is awarded six (6) cents.

Herbert Hoover wants prohibition introduced as a war measure to conserve grain. He visits Pres. Wilson to talk food policy, but tells reporters he doesn’t want to be a food dictator. “The man who accepts such a position will die on the barbed wire of the first entrenchments.”

Only 30 of 20,000 NYC teachers refuse to sign the loyalty oath.

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Today -100: May 9, 1917: Of state gags, u-boats, and non-revolutions

Secretary of State Robert Lansing prohibits State Department officials talking to reporters. The State Dept cites as examples of confidential news that has leaked without authorization a telegram quoting the German consul in Mexico claiming that the US ambassador was hissed in the Mexican Assembly.

Theodore Roosevelt is now giving speeches demanding to be allowed to raise a division and go to France. He says 9 out of 10 of those opposing him do so because they think he’ll do too good a job, whatever that means. We’d have so much winning we’d get tired of winning, I guess.

There have been a lot of rumors that the US has a secret plan to defeat German u-boats. Possibly involving an invention, possibly from Thomas Edison.

The NYT thinks there’s a revolution going on in Bolivia. There isn’t.

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Today -100: May 8, 1917: Of food and dancing in wartime

Herbert Hoover, the new head of the American Food Commission, testifies to the House Ag Committee but insists some of it remain secret because reasons. Hoover does not support government fixing the price of agricultural goods.

War is Hell:

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Today -100: May 7, 1917: Of volunteers, powerful masses, Birth Control The Motion Picture, potatoes, secret treaties, and lynchings

200,000 men have volunteered to join Theodore Roosevelt if he is allowed to raise his own army (he won’t be).

William Howard Taft says the war is the fault of the German and Austrian monarchies and if the two kaisers abdicated there would be peace in two weeks.

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The NYC Commissioner of Licenses George Bell bans Margaret Sanger’s film Birth Control. IMDB has no information on it, but I see that Jennifer Laurence has bought rights to do a biopic, which is, um...

You know it’s truly war when the lawn of the Wisconsin governor’s Executive Mansion is plowed up and potatoes planted. Says Gov. Emanuel Philipp, “we shall not ask others to work on the farms producing crops unless we do our share also.” Because the governor will totally by planting those potatoes himself.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Hamburg Fremdenblatt says it has unearthed a secret treaty between Britain and the US to prevent Germany ever having colonies again. Germany’s surplus population, deprived of this safety valve, will be sent to regions controlled by the US & UK, where they will be “absorbed” like Germans have been in the US.

We haven’t had a lynching for a while. Now we have Arizona’s last ever lynching, that of Starr Daley (presumably white since they don’t give his race), who shot a man and raped his wife. He is arrested and a mob chases the sheriff’s car 40 miles from Phoenix before running it off the road and grabbing Daley, who they take back to the scene of his crime and hang. Supposedly he gives the mob instructions in how to tie a noose. A coroner’s jury rules it a justifiable homicide by unknown parties, as was the custom.

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Today -100: May 6, 1917: Of governors, soviets, suicides, and steam airplanes

The new German “governor” of Belgium, Baron Ludwig von Falkenhausen, takes up his post. His nephew will hold the same post when Germany again occupies Belgium in the Second World War.

Everything is fine in Russia again: the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet passes a vote of confidence in the government (by a narrow majority). The Duma will soon be re-convened for the first time since the February Revolution.

Eldon Jacob Crull, who lost the primary race for Congress to Jeanette Rankin, commits suicide.

Abner Doble of the Abner Doble Motor Vehicle Company says the future of airplanes is steam power (guess how his cars are powered). One (1) steam-powered airplane will successfully fly in 1933, but that’s it.

To summarize, the names in this post are: Ludwig von Falkenhausen, Eldon Crull, and Abner Doble.

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Today -100: May 5, 1917: Making some sacrifices like the rest of us

The censorship bill passes the House. Somehow the amendment requiring that publishing prohibited information could only be prosecuted if there was intent to harm the US has disappeared. The stupidest thing said during the debate was probably Edwin Webb (D-NC)’s “The newspaper ought to be required to make some sacrifices like the rest of us.”

The Russian provisional government’s note to the Allies promising to continue with the war provokes demonstrations by “the easily aroused crowds of Petrograd” in a struggle for power between the provisional government and the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, which feels that the government should have asked permission before sending the note.

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A Brooklyn man slapped a Bronx man for saying that Americans would only enlist if you got them drunk first.

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Today -100: May 4, 1917: Of food powers, war aims, and the Jews of Palestine

President Wilson sends a bill to Congress giving the president the power to control food production, distribution and prices during wartime. Also fuel, clothing, etc. And the power to seize factories, mines, etc. And to limit the use of grain for liquor. Not that Wilson wants to use all these powers, he says, he just wants the threat.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg will soon say more about Germany’s war aims. He is under attack for this from the right, who are calling him weak because being specific about terms for peace is something the Socialists want. The Socialists have been pushing No Annexations, No Indemnity. The right, while evidently having given up on annexing, say, parts of Belgium and France (specifically the parts with coal under them), still strongly demand that Germany’s enemies pay indemnities so Germany doesn’t wind up in debt or have its taxes put up.

The Ottoman governor of Palestine allegedly threatened to exterminate all Jews there.

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Today -100: May 3, 1917: Sagacious pigs are the worst kind

Assistant Treasury Secretary Byron Rufus Newton attacks recent price increases for flags. As much as double. Which he calls a penalty on patriotism imposed by “a few opportunists and sagacious pigs.” Newton has asked the attorney general if something can be done.

Posters go up in Berlin offering a $750 reward for anyone turning in “spies” spreading discontent. Why, they might even be disguised as good-natured old men or soldiers in uniform.

In the House of Lords, the archbishop of Canterbury objects to the bombing of the German city of Freiburg in retaliation for a German attack on a hospital ship. The only support for the attack comes from Lords Curzon and Milner, who are both former colonial governors.

A New York Supreme Court justice bans The Awakening of Spring, an old play by Frank Wedekind of Pandora’s Box fame. He thinks it’s too sexy and shit.

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Today -100: May 2, 1917: Only madmen or enemies of national liberty are capable of such revolting acts

There were street riots in Petrograd on Monday, with a little bomb-throwing, as was the custom. Someone assassinates Gen. Kashtalinski, who generaled in the Russo-Japanese War. The Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet condemns the disorder: “Only madmen or enemies of national liberty are capable of such revolting acts, which might compromise the Russian Revolution.” But Tuesday was nice, with big May Day celebrations.

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Venustiano Carranza exchanges the title of First Leader of Mexico for Presidente. His first official act is pardoning the leader of a strike.

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Today -100: May 1, 1917: Of flags

The French commission to the US is really pushing for the US to dispatch troops as soon as possible. They think the sight of American flag will seriously demoralize the Germans.

The Germans are being reassured by their government and newspapers that the US will only send money to the Allies, not troops. But what about flags?

The NYT says the Russian government was right to let “the German agent” Lenin give speeches which lost him sympathy instead of making a martyr of him by imprisoning him.

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