Today -100: October 10, 1917: Of licensed newspapers, supreme power, and negro divisions

Postmaster-General Burleson says that his new powers to “license” foreign-language newspapers won’t be used against criticism of the government... unless it impugns the motives of the government, because that encourages insubordination. “For instance, papers may not say that the government is controlled by Wall Street or munition manufacturers, or any other special interests.” (NYC mayoral candidate and actual next mayor John Hylan accuses City Hall of being run by a “combination of tax-eating, franchise grabbers, food-price jugglers, land sharks and city financial manipulators,” but I guess he couldn’t do that in a foreign-language newspaper). Also, no opposition to conscription or attacking the US’s allies will be allowed. Burleson says socialist papers won’t automatically be barred, unless they contain treason or sedition. But most of them do, he says.

Dateline Washington DC: “Russian diplomats here appear to be convinced now that the Bolsheviks have finally been overthrown and that Premier Kerensky is once more firmly established in the supreme power.”

The Army will create a new division composed of blacks from all over the country. This follows a long debate about the segregation of the... nah, just kidding, segregation’s just taken for granted.

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Today -100: October 9, 1917: Dead or alive

Charles Beard resigns from Columbia in protest at the expulsion of anti-war professors by “obscure and willful” trustees “who are reactionary and visionless in politics, narrow and medieval in religion" and who are destroying free expression at the nation’s largest university. The best-selling historian is not an opponent of the war like the fired profs.

Poolville, Texas raises a $1,246.50 reward for the capture of Kaiser Wilhelm.

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Today -100: October 8, 1917: Of forwards, brotherhood, and unlikely fights

Uruguay breaks off relations with Germany. Ditto Peru.

The postmaster general is threatening to ban the Jewish Daily Forward from the mails. The editor, Abraham Cohen, denies any pro-Germanism, saying that the government is actually going after every socialist newspaper in the country.

London mobs including soldiers set fire to the Brotherhood Church ahead of a pacifist meeting which was to be addressed by Bertrand Russell.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Probably not the most epic of battles.

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Today -100: October 7, 1917: God pity the man who would paralyze the arm of the American people in this conflict

Robert La Follette defends himself in a two-hour speech in the Senate, which had put aside plans to consider expelling him and then for some reason put it back on the table. Senator Bob makes a case for free speech and the right to criticize the president before the sceptical members. Sen. Joseph Robinson (D-Arkansas), for one, disagrees, saying La Follette should “apply to the kaiser for a seat in the German Bundesrat.”

And the House censures Rep. “Cotton Tom” Heflin (D-Alabama) for saying that fellow congresscritters had been bought off by Germany.

Edsel Ford’s application for exemption from the draft on the grounds that he is too busy helping his father run the Ford Motor Company is rejected. The decision will later be reversed. The controversy over this was probably the cause of his father’s narrow defeat when he ran for the Senate in 1918.

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Today -100: October 6, 1917: Of cabinets and theosophists

Kerensky forms forms a new cabinet, defying the Democratic Congress’s demand that the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) be excluded.

The Russian government declares a state of war in Turkestan, which is in revolt.

A.P. Warrington, president of the US branch of the Theosophical Society, says that death in the war is so noble it relieves all karma, so a dead soldier’s next reincarnation will be fantastic. He says theosophists should spread this good news to the survivors of dead soldiers, but “don’t be queer about it all.”

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Today -100: October 5, 1917: Of excess profits, mutiny in the workhouse, and Fake News

The new excess profits war tax will include an 8% tax on incomes over $6,000. This tax will not apply to members of Congress, who earn $7,500 a year. Both the tax and the exemption were snuck into the bill in secret during the reconciliation process, and most congresscritters, anxious as they were to begin their vacation, probably didn’t know they were there.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Or to put it another way, workhouse authorities induced black woman prisoners to attack the suffragists, who are being charged with... wait for it... “mutiny.”

The feds seize the German-language newspaper Freie Zeitung, raiding its New Jersey plant and arresting owners and editors. The 60-year-old paper is being accused of publishing false reports intended to interfere with US military success, whatever that means. The paper will be back in business tomorrow. The NYT notes, without quite saying that this is the reason for the raid, that on August 15 an article in the Zeitung noted that soldiers about to be sent to France shouted “Are we down-hearted? No!” and commented “If the boys are not downhearted in six months they may consider themselves lucky.”

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Today -100: October 4, 1917: We will give it all back to them and we will give it to them soon

New York Mayor John Purroy Mitchel attacks his opponent John Hylan for being backed by people not in sympathy with the war campaign. He attacks Boss Murphy and Tammany Hall, as was the custom, and the Hearst papers. Hylan himself is less interested in the war than in keeping the subway fare to 5¢, which is pretty much the beginning and end of his platform.

British Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill says the u-boat attack on Britain has been checked, even repulsed.

Prime Minister David Lloyd George, speaking in part of London recently bombed by German airplanes, says “We will give it all back to them and we will give it to them soon. We shall bomb Germany with compound interest.” Which seems like too much math to me.

The NYPD are cracking down on newsboys who shout sensational war-related headlines that aren’t true.

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Today -100: October 3, 1917: Of blockades and the draft

Britain will now join the US in blockading neutral countries Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

Mexico objects to US plans to draft Mexican nationals. One problem is that the citizenship laws of both countries lay claim to children born in the US to Mexican citizens.

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Today -100: October 2, 1917: Of academic freedom

Columbia University fires two professors, James McKeen Cattell (psychology) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana (English), the grandson of the poet, for pacifism.

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Today -100: October 1, 1917: Of special grievances, Lenin, and loyalty

Theodore Roosevelt says the US is not in the war to make the world safe for democracy, but “because we had a special grievance,” specifically, Germany’s attacks on ships.

“The Bolsheviks have abandoned the idea of having Nikolai Lenine, the radical pacifist agitator, appear as their representative in the Congress on account of the firm determination of the Government to discover and arrest him.”

The Chronicle Magazine sent a letter to people with German-sounding names in Who’s Who and the Social Register, asking them to express their undying loyalty to the US. It will print the responses it likes, and turn the ones it doesn’t like over to the Justice Dept. The letter says that anyone who doesn’t respond will be considered hostile to the United States.

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Today -100: September 30, 1917: Of influence and psychological struggles

The State Dept tells Congress that it knows of no payments by the German Embassy (before the US entered the war) to members of Congress.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The German foreign secretary has suggested that the Reichstag study “the psychology of our enemies.”

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Today -100: September 29, 1917: Of Wobblies, shadow Huns, and war aims

Government raids seize most of the IWW’s leadership after a Chicago grand jury charges 168 with seditious conspiracy.

Reps. “Cotton Tom” Heflin (D-Alabama) and Patrick Norton (R-North Dakota) get in a shoving match on the House floor, after the House Rules Committee decides not to investigate Heflin’s claims of German influence on certain congresscritters because the Justice Dept is already conducting an investigation.

Theodore Roosevelt calls Robert La Follette and other congressional critics of the war “shadow Huns.” Which is a nicely sinister coinage.

German Chancellor Georg Michaelis again rejects Germany stating its war aims, because that would just be confusing.

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Today -100: September 28, 1917: Of pacifists of the lowest order and Degas

Rep. “Cotton Tom” Heflin (D-Alabama) names 4 of the 13 congresscritters he suspects of being under German influence. One, Frederick Britten (R-Illinois) responds that Heflin is “a pacifist of the lowest order” (although Britten voted against the war). [Note: this article is supposed to be continued on page 9. It isn’t.]

The artist Edgar Degas dies. Ballet dancers are in mourning.

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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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