Today -100: September 27, 1917: Of hunger strikes, nebulous and unctuous generalities, death battalions, and old women of both sexes

Thomas Ashe, a former schoolteacher and Sinn Fein/IRA leader, dies of a hunger strike demanding political prisoner status in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. Ashe was sentenced to death for his activities during the Easter Rising released during the amnesty in June and subsequently re-imprisoned, this time just for giving speeches. He seems to have died as a result of botched forcible feeding. The British government will from now on mostly refrain from force-feeding hunger-striking prisoners.

In a reply to Pope Benedict’s peace proposals, Germany offers to de-occupy Belgium on condition that German businesses can operate there and that Belgium is divided administratively into Flanders and Walloon. Letting Belgium go doesn’t seem to be conditional on Germany getting its colonies back, which had been mentioned in various trial balloons leaked over the last few weeks.

Former Prime Minister Asquith denounces the offer as “teeming with nebulous and unctuous generalities.” Nebulous and unctuous generalities are the worst kind.

The military section of the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet demands the dissolution of battalions with the word “death” in their name (the Women’s Battalion of Death etc), because these privileged soldiers arrogate to themselves the right to die for the liberty of Russia, which is the right of all soldiers, and divide the army into heroes & a mass of conscienceless soldiers. This is a very silly discussion.

In a speech in Chicago, Theodore Roosevelt calls Robert La Follette “the most sinister foe of democracy in this country,” unworthy to represent the loyal people of America, and TR wishes he could just send him to the kaiser.  So, um, Teddy wants to overturn a democratic election, but it’s La Follette who’s the sinister foe of democracy? Teddy R. does not do irony. DOES. NOT. DO. IRONY! He calls pacifists “old women of both sexes,” because of course he does.

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Today -100: September 26, 1917: Of impeachments and censorship

Texas Gov. James Ferguson is removed from office and barred from ever holding office in Texas in the future. Actually he resigned the night before the state senate finished impeachment procedures, evidently thinking it would protect him from the office-holding ban (it doesn’t, not that he won’t try to run for governor again next year). He is replaced by Lt. Gov. William Hobby, riding to the rescue (see what I did there?)

The postmaster general says he intends to strictly enforce the part of the Trading with the Enemy Act that allows him to ban “seditious” non-English-language newspapers from the mails. I hadn’t realized that any material he excludes from the postal system is also banned from using commercial express companies. The postmaster is also talking about censoring letters to Mexico, but not to France or Britain, where he can just rely on their censorship systems.

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Today -100: September 25, 1917: The ignorant zealot goes where the paid traitor sends him

Theodore Roosevelt demands that the Senate figure out a way to expel Robert La Follette.

In Congress, Rep. “Cotton Tom” Heflin (D-Alabama) is attacked for his comment, made after the State Dept claimed that at the start of the year Germany spent $50,000 to influence Congress, that he could think of 13 or 14 members of Congress who “acted suspiciously” and that there was a certain German-run cardroom where pro-German congresscritters could “win” large sums (in a newspaper interview he will deny having given). On the House floor, though, he refuses to name names.

The NYT says that if Germany was trying to sway Congress when the two countries were at peace, they must still be doing it. “The thing needs no proof.” The Times also needs no proof to accuse the pacifist movement of being pro-German: “The ignorant zealot goes where the paid traitor sends him.”

Germans complain that at a time when railroad cars can’t be found to transport food, the crown prince got a special train to bring opera singers from Munich to his headquarters. Two newspapers have been suppressed for mentioning this.

The House of Representatives votes 181-107 to create a Committee on Woman Suffrage. Joseph Walsh (R-Mass.) objects to giving in to the White House picketers, who he calls “the nagging of iron-jawed angels” and “bewildered, deluded creatures with short skirts and short hair.” In response to the states’ rights argument, Jeanette Rankin points out that it is nearly impossible to amend some state constitutions. New Mexico, for example, requires 3/4 of the votes and 2/3 in every county.

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Today -100: September 24, 1917: Of fun fights, false teeth, and Usonians

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Secretary of State Robert Lansing says that before Romania declared war on Germany, Germany snuck explosives and biological warfare (anthrax, glanders) into the country and hid them in the consulate.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The war has created a false teeth shortage in France.

Christine Ladd-Franklin, a psych lecturer at Columbia University writes to the NYT about the problem of what to call US soldiers, who really don’t like “Sammies.” She suggests Usonians, from the abbreviation for United States of North America. Ladd-Franklin likes abbreviations: in the 1870s she applied for a fellowship at Johns Hopkins as “C. Ladd” and that worked out well for her.

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Today -100: September 23, 1917: Of recounts, impeachments, and extremists

Headline of the Day -100: 

“No, it’s still just 4½ inches, Mr. Mayor.”

Actually, NYC Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel’s competitor in the Republican primary, William Bennett, has been claiming there was fraud and threatening to run as an independent, so Mitchel wants a recount to prove him wrong. In fact, the recount will go against Mitchel and he will run as an independent “Fusion” candidate.

Texas Gov. James Ferguson is impeached and found guilty on 10 charges (out of 21) of stealing state funds, various corrupt activities at his bank, and trying to coerce the regents of the University of Texas.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Bolsheviks are demanding an end to the war, the military structures of which present, as Gen. Kornilov showed, a continuing threat of counter-revolution.

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Today -100: September 22, 1917: Of peace, influence, technical rights, and champagne

Germany and Austria finally respond to Pope Benedict’s peace proposals. They are all for them in principle but vague as hell about the details. That took them nearly two months?

Secretary of State Lansing releases a message sent in January by then German Ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff to Berlin about spending $50,000 to influence the US Congress. He also suggested they sway US opinion with a statement in favor of Ireland. Members of Congress immediately start accusing each other of having taken German money, although I’m pretty sure Bernstorff meant influence, not bribe.

Minnesota Gov. Joseph Burnquist (R) announces an investigation into Sen. Bob La Follette’s alleged seditious remarks at a conference on the cost of living. Bob La F. said that the “technical rights” of US citizens – “the right of an American citizen to ride on a munitions-loaded ship flying a foreign flag” – had been abused by Germany, but that wasn’t worth going to war over.

Headline of the Day -100: 

We’ve all been there.

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Today -100: September 21, 1917: Because nothing says making the world safe for democracy like setting human beings on fire

An arrest warrant is issued for Philadelphia Mayor Thomas Smith (R), Councilman Isaac Deutsch and police Lt. David Bennett for conspiracy to, among other things, interfere with Tuesday’s primaries, which were marked, as we saw yesterday, by an attack on Deutsch’s opponent and the killing of his police guard.

Germany denies a French story that Kaiser Wilhelm offered a reward of 300 marks and 3 weeks’ leave to the first German who captured an American soldier.

However, some guys in Mulvane, Kansas have pledged $1,000 towards a planned $1 million bounty on the head of the kaiser.

Secretary of War Newton Baker rejects a request by Rep. James Gallivan for war reporters from local Massachusetts papers be allowed to go to France. He says the 16 reporters already there will have to do, because they’re using all the cable facilities, so more reporters would just mean shorter stories. Baker says the best news comes from letters home from soldiers. Which the Army censors, of course.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Or, you know, not.

The US army will use gas and flamethrowers.

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Today -100: September 20, 1917: One looming shadow if this war is its drift toward socialism

1/5th of the men drafted in Manhattan failed to show up.

Food Administrator Herbert Hoover warns a war conference of the US Chamber of Commerce that if business doesn’t to its public duty and cooperate with the government in the war effort, the result might be socialism. Just look at Russia, he says.

After Bolshevik resolutions – exclusion of the propertied classes from government, abolition of private property, the Soviet to seize power from the provisional government, etc – win in the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, the outvoted executive committee resigns.

Argentina’s Senate votes 23 to 1 for breaking off relations with Germany.

The Republican primaries in Philadelphia’s Fifth Ward (the “Bloody Fifth”) are marked by riots and a blackjack attack on one candidate by a paid thug who then shoots and kills a cop who was guarding the candidate. He is captured along with others from a group of men recruited in Jersey City – by a man called “Little Neck,” no less – to vote illegally and intimidate the opposition.

Italy refuses a request from the Jewish Union of Frankfurt that it allow the export of palm branches for use in religious services.

Alice Smyth Burton Jay sues Chappell & Co., Ltd., the publishers of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” for stealing the chorus from her 1908 song Yakima (beginning “I’m on my way to Yakima”). She wants $100,000.

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Today -100: September 19, 1917: I hate it when that happens

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: September 18, 1917: Woodrow Wilson, America, democracy for me

Leon Samson, a junior expelled by Columbia University for his pacifist views, fails to get relief from the state Supreme Court, Justice Mullan, perhaps unclear on the concept of pacifism, calling him a “menace” to the university.

An Indiana superior court judge declares the new women’s suffrage law unconstitutional. The state supreme court will agree.

Vice President Thomas Marshall tells some Freemasons that the democracy for which the US is fighting to make the world safe is not one that includes the IWW’s principles. “Is it not possible to have until the conclusion of this war all hands in America lifted up to the God of our fathers, and all voices proclaiming: ‘Woodrow Wilson, America, democracy for me’?”

Feds arrest 7 people at a Chicago IWW meeting.

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Today -100: September 17, 1917: Of eternal indefiniteness, fake news, women doctors, and Polish regencies

Kerensky declares Russia a republic in order to “put an end to the eternal indefiniteness of the State’s organization”.

With Gen. Kornilov finally in custody, the government is saying that most of the soldiers who marched on Petrograd were told lies or one sort or another about why they were doing so. Not sure to what extent this is actually true, but it’s a good way to de-escalate the situation.

The London Daily News reports that right after the fall of Riga, Kerensky got married. To an actress, no less. “It is amusing to hear that this item of fashionable intelligence created an unfavorable impression in Petrograd.” Petrograd will be pleased to hear that it is not true. Kerensky is already married. As is the actress in question. But it’s an interesting rumor for someone to have started.

Harvard – well, just Harvard Medical School, but still – will admit women for the first time. Its enthusiasm for the scheme is shown by the announcement being made only a week before the start of the new term.

Germany and Austria decree a new Polish state. Which they will be occupying while the war lasts. They still haven’t named a king, but they will appoint a 3-person regency, who will appoint a prime minister, and there’ll be a State Council, also unelected, which will pass legislation. No one’s asking the Poles about any of this.

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Today -100: September 16, 1917: The heel of authority must crush the heads of the serpents of sedition

Kerensky, still unable to form a coalition government, establishes instead a 5-person Directorate consisting of himself, Foreign Minister Mikhail Tereshchenko, Minister of War Gen. Alexander Verkhovsky, Navy Minister Dmitri Verderevsky, and of course Minister of Posts and Telegraphs Alexei Nikitin.

Nikitin is also interior minister, NYT, otherwise that would be silly.

Kerensky issues an order to the men of the army and navy, telling them to stop with all the political discussion, stop arresting their commanding officers, and stop forming voluntary groups on the pretext of fighting counter-revolutionaries.

Headline of the Day -100: 

A NYT editorial about street-corner speakers expresses the Times’s traditional support for free speech: “The heel of authority must crush the heads of the serpents of sedition before they have become too numerous.”

CSI: Stockholm. An autopsy is performed on Sweden’s King Karl XII to determine whether he was shot by his own men or by the enemy. Karl was killed in 1718.

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Today -100: September 15, 1917: Of masses, Russian turmoil, and celery

The Masses is banned from the US mails, again. Circuit Court Justice Augustus Noble Hand refuses to enjoin the postmaster because the paper “hold[s] up violators of the Conscription act to admiration”. Hand is the judge who ruled in 1934 that James Joyce’s Ulysses is not obscene.

Kerensky is still having trouble keeping his government functional. The Kadets have withdrawn from the Cabinet (except one). Meanwhile the Bolsheviks get the Petrograd Council of Deputies to support their position that all representatives of the bourgeoisie including the Social Revolutionaries (SRs) must be excluded from power. Also abolition of private property, workers’ control of the means of production, etc.

Headline/Name of the Day -100: 

That’s the Argentinian naval attaché in Berlin, Captain Arturo Celery.

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Today -100: September 14, 1917: Of crushes, failed coups, and cursing the president of the United States

Headline of the Day -100: 

Gen. Lavr Kornilov offers his surrender. Soldiers who participated in his revolt claim they were misled. And some of them don’t speak Russian, so maybe. Muslim troops from the Caucuses ask to be reassigned there, as long as they don’t have to fight Turks.

In South Carolina, Edward Oldham – a white man, the NYT feels obligated to inform us – is charged for having, to quote the warrant, “cursed the President of the United States and the Federation Government and used words to thwart the draft law,” to wit, expressing the wish that President Wilson be put adrift on foreign seas and victimized by a submarine.

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Today -100: September 13, 1917: Of bloodless liquidations, newspapers, and conscription

The German legation in Buenos Aires is attacked by mobs pissed at Germany sending secret messages via Swedish diplomatic channels. Also attacked: the German Club, a German-language newspaper and various German-owned businesses. The chargé d'affaires, Count Luxburg, is being expelled.

Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky takes over as commander-in-chief of the army, what with the previous one leading a revolt and all. Kerensky says the revolt has failed in a “bloodless liquidation.”

The Senate passes a Trading With the Enemy Bill, including a bit requiring German-language newspapers to provide an English translation in side-by-side columns for any article commenting on the war, foreign policy, the government of the United States, or its allies.

The Senate passes a resolution for the drafting of aliens from friendly countries for military service and aliens from Germany and its allies for non-combatant war work. Aliens from countries with treaty rights prohibiting that (Italy, Serbia, Japan) who invoke those treaties would have 90 days to leave the country.

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Today -100: September 12, 1917: Of coup attempts, and envelopes of true information

Petrograd is under martial law. Kornilov’s troops are advancing on the city, but the NYT reports that the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, the Cadets, and the Constitutional Democrats are all backing the government, which might be true but would carry more weight if the Times’ correspondent knew that Kadets and Constitutional Democrats are the same thing. Some members of the Duma are joining Kornilov, or being arrested before they can do so.

The Kadet and Socialist members of the cabinet resign over Kerensky’s plan to rule through a five-member Directorate, which isn’t going over particularly well in the Duma.

British military types support Kornilov and the idea of a military dictatorship that will keep Russia in the war. Mostly it’s a “martial races” thing – Kornilov is a Cossack.

The US feds claim that the raid on the Philadelphia Tageblatt shows it is at the center of a massive plot, German money, yadda yadda yadda. It printed pro-German news and “didn’t even take the trouble of opening the envelope containing true information sent out by the United States Government to all newspapers.”

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Today -100: September 11, 1917: Of suffrage, coup attempts, newspapers, and war taxes

Maine’s referendum vote rejects women’s suffrage nearly 2 to 1 (on an incomplete count).

Russia: Gen. Lavr Kornilov is fired as Commander in Chief of the Russian armies after he asks to be named dictator of all the Russias, please, threatening to march on Petrograd. The government declares a state of siege. Foreign Minister Tereshchenko thinks it’s all a big misunderstanding which will be cleared up. The misunderstanding part is not entirely untrue – a go-between reported Kornilov’s suggestions as ultimata, which made Kerensky understandably nervous about Kornilov’s request that Kerensky come to talk in person. But Kornilov’s desire to impose authoritarian discipline on Petrograd as he had reimposed it in the military would have brought him into conflict with the civilian government sooner rather than later. So it’s sooner.

The US government closes down the Philadelphia Tageblatt, a German-language socialist paper, and arrests the editor and 5 others for treason and shit.

The Senate passes the taxation bill. With provisions for consumption taxes on coffee, sugar, tea and cocoa removed, the war will be funded from increased income taxes, an excess war profits tax, and distilled spirits.

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Today -100: September 10, 1917: Of evacuations and Wobblies, but not wobbly evacuations

The civilian population of Petrograd is ordered to evacuate the city. The government claims it’s not because of approaching German troops, but food supply issues. The government itself is staying put for the time being.

Wobblies disrupt a loyalty meeting in Milwaukee and get into a gun battle with the police, who kill 2 of them.

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Today -100: September 9, 1917: Spurlos versenkt

Japan starts making cars.

Secretary of State Lansing releases secret dispatches sent by the German chargé d’affaires in Buenos Aires to Berlin via Swedish channels, in which he advised that two Argentine steamers sailing for France should either be let go or sunk without trace (“spurlos versenkt”). They were let go. He also called the Argentine foreign minister an “ass.” The US doesn’t say how it acquired the documents (British Naval Intelligence?). The US plans to use this incident to pressure Sweden to pick a damn side already.

The grand jury looking into the East St. Louis, Illinois race riots indicts Mayor Fred Mollman and 37 others.

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Today -100: September 8, 1917: Where are our ideals to go when we have to bribe our men to fight the battle of liberty?

Sen. Thomas Hardwick (D-Georgia) is loudly attacked by several other senators as unpatriotic for supporting Bob La Follette’s proposal to give $50 a month extra to every soldier sent to France. The alliterative Knute Nelson (R-Minnesota): “Tax the rich so as to bribe our men to go France? Where are our ideals to go when we have to bribe our men to fight the battle of liberty?” Nelson, who volunteered to fight in the Civil War without ever asking what his pay would be, says we have to fight the Germans there or they’ll invade, “and then I should like to see the senator from Georgia at the head of a battalion of colored troops leading them down there.” Nelson calls offering soldiers extra money “humiliating, belittling legislation”. I would imagine most soldiers would quite like to be humiliated and belittled.

The government of Alexandre Ribot resigns. It was France’s fourth government of the war.

The Canadian Parliament is working on a bill to extend the vote for the duration of the war to female relatives of overseas soldiers. The Liberal opposition asks instead for proper women’s suffrage.

The Hoboken School Board removes German from the curriculum. It’s been mandatory in grammar schools there for the last 25 years, because more than half the students used to be German. Italians were probably never especially happy about that, but really don’t appreciate it now.

China now has a military government under Sun Yat Sen.

Karel Kramář, a member of the Austrian Imperial Council until he was sentenced to death in 1915 for supporting Czech independence but was recently amnestied by the new emperor, is elected to the Hungarian Parliament.

Secret Service agents and members of the American Protective League arrest 66 suspected IWW members in Cleveland.

Another issue of The B.E.F. Times, formerly the Wipers Times, appears, and it’s a rather alcohol-themed issue from the parody of Longfellow’s Excelsior (which I can never read without picturing Thurber’s illustrations):

The shades of night were falling fast,
When up the muddy C.T.* passed
A youth who bore, though looking glum,
A mighty gallon jar of rum.
Excelsior!

* C.T. = communication trench.

to the letter in support of the Society for Providing Free Gin for Generals. “‘Jack’ and ‘Tommy’ have their rum provided by a benevolent government what about our generals? ‘Gin for Generals’ should be on everyone’s lips during the coming months.”

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