Today -100: October 26, 1917: Of New York traitors, war hogs, turnips, and yellow perils

Speaker of the House “Champ” Clark claims that “a ring of New York financiers” is sabotaging the Liberty Loan so the next one will have to pay higher interest. He doesn’t name names or reveal his source. The NYT demands the federal DA make him appear and offer proof.

Despite the alleged sabotage, the Loan has raised close to $5 billion.

Woodrow Wilson gives a speech on women’s suffrage that offers stronger support than he has previously.

Everett Wheeler, the chairman of the Association Opposed to Political Suffrage for Women, writes to Wilson to complain that prominent suffragists Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt are campaigning for the women’s suffrage referendum in New York, despite being on the Women’s Advisory Committee of the Council of National Defense. He wants an executive order banning women people in public service from engaging in politics.

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Headline of the Day -100: 

Or vice versa. Also, the government decrees that women’s skirts must be shorter and tighter to... to conserve material, yeah, that’s the ticket.

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In other words, they’re trying to fuck soldiers. This will become a grave concern for some people, including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

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Today -100: October 25, 1917: Only by German bayonets

Kerensky complains to the Preliminary Parliament that the army “seems to have lost the sense of duty and honor”. He blames the Bolsheviks for undermining morale. Minister of War Verkhovski plans to introduce legislation allowing for collective punishment of entire regiments, reducing the food rations of demoralized units because that’ll help. “It seems to be possible to end anarchy only by German bayonets,” he says.

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Today -100: October 24, 1917: A thing no government can permit is organisation for rebellion

The US Secret Service claims to have thwarted a German plot to start another rising in Ireland next Easter. Which the SS nipped in the bud by arresting... three men. Which doesn’t really sound like a large rising, as risings go. One of the men is “General” Liam Mellowes, who led a division during the Easter Rising and then escaped to the US. He will be executed in 1922 during the Irish Civil War.

In Parliament, Lloyd George says “a thing no government can permit is organisation for rebellion.” John Redmond of the Irish Nationalists says the Irish Executive is trying to undermine the Irish convention (which is currently meeting to work out Ireland’s future) through petty harassments like banning Swedish gymnastic exercises and arresting Boy Scouts for drilling.

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Today -100: October 23, 1917: We must settle this once for all

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George says that any peace enacted now would just be an armed truce preparatory to an even bigger war: “all the best scientific brains in the lands, stimulated by national rivalry, national hatred, national hopes, devoting their energies for ten, twenty, thirty years to magnifying destructive powers. We must settle this once for all.” He notes that air power and submarines – “the infernal weapons of the deep” – are in their infancy. After 30 years of development, their use “would mean the death of civilisation.”

There will be a women’s suffrage parade Saturday in New York City to support next month’s referendum. Since one of the banners will evidently scold the suffragists who’ve been picketing the White House, the National Woman’s Party (whose chair Alice Paul has been sentenced along with Dr. Caroline Spencer to 7 months for their picketing) will skip the parade and hold a protest meeting outside the New York Woman’s Suffrage Party hq instead.

NY Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, speaking to a bunch of Methodist Episcopal ministers, denies the Hearst papers’ claims that he dances the tango. This “greatly pleased the ministers”.

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Today -100: October 22, 1917: The revolution and the people are in danger

Theodore Roosevelt admits that he is blind in one eye, the result of a boxing mishap when he was, um, president of the United States.

At the opening of the Preliminary Parliament in Petrograd, PM Kerensky praises the navy but says the army sucks. President of the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet Leon Trotsky addresses the body, attacking the government as bourgeois and retrograde. Before leading a walk-out, he says “I am leaving to tell the workers, soldiers and peasants that the revolution and the people are in danger.”

Arthur Conan Doyle’s His Last Bow comes out, the second Sherlock Holmes book published during the war, consisting of stories published before the war except for the title story, with the bees and the spies.

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Today -100: October 21, 1917: Of disrespect for law and order, and what 8¢ can buy you

NYC mayoral candidate John Hylan blames the student strikes and school-window-breakings on Mayor Mitchel for imposing the Gary system against the wishes of parents, although he finds the turmoil “deplorable” and “bound to develop in our children a disrespect for law and order”.

You’re In The Army Now:

And I’m sure it’s scrumptious.

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Today -100: October 20, 1917: Of untruths, moving to Moscow, and Chequers

Headline of the Day -100: 

In a lawsuit in 1908 against the Black Diamond Automobile Company of Brooklyn. Mayor Mitchel says Hylan used a dummy to sue the company while he was its lawyer.

The NYT claims that Bulgaria is trying to negotiate separately from its Teutonic allies, whom it worries will screw it at the peace conference. It’s certainly been left out of talks with Russia over prisoner exchanges.

The Russian government announces that it will move to Moscow. German troops are getting closer and closer to Petrograd, with zeppelins and everything.

Lloyd George takes possession of Chequers, the country mansion donated for the use of British prime ministers by Sir Arthur Lee. Because the idea was to give it to the office of prime minister rather than to Lloyd George personally, a law had to be enacted, which marks the first reference in British law to the office of prime minister.

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Today -100: October 19, 1917: Of mutinies, loan slackers, conspiracies, and funny-looking dogs – yeah, I said it, funny-looking

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: More alleged mutinies are reported in the German and Austrian navies.

The NYT is calling people who don’t buy enough war bonds (the Liberty Loan) “loan slackers.”

Mexican Gen. Obregon says Pancho Villa and his soldiers are completely surrounded. In other news, Mexico is still a thing, not that you’d know it from the Times (this story exists only because Obregon is in New York).

Protests against the Gary system continue in the Bronx, with parents now joining students in breaking school windows and throwing stones at cops, as was the custom.

11 socialists are acquitted in Grand Rapids for conspiracy against conscription, which amounts to just circulating literature supposedly inducing men not to register. The judge tells the jury that socialism is not on trial; the judge is full of shit.

A judge recognizes a man charged with manslaughter as one he himself prosecuted for murder 25 years before, so that was a nice reunion. This time the man, now a saloon owner, killed his bartender because “He made fun of my dog.”

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Today -100: October 18, 1917: The German agent pervades the land

A NYT editorial warns, “The German agent pervades the land.” With German-language papers now under strict censorship/ban by the Post Office, these agents’ principle weapon is spreading rumors about sunk transport ships, mutinies, etc.

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Today -100: October 17, 1917: Of Gary systems, Polands, candy, and picketers

NYC Mayor Mitchel’s introduction of the “Gary system” of education – rotating students to different rooms throughout the day for efficiency, increased vocational ed., etc – is meeting a little resistance, with 1,000 kids on the Upper East Side going on strike and smashing school windows. There is concern that the Gary system (as in Gary, Indiana) is too focused on shaping working-class children for the needs of capitalism, and there’s a religious thing, and a certain amount of hysteria.

Russia now says the peace agreement must include complete independence for Poland, not just autonomy under Russia.

Meanwhile, Germany finally installs its puppet Council of Regency in Poland, appointing the archbishop of Warsaw, the mayor of Warsaw (a prince), and some rich dude.

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British Prime Minister Lloyd George withdraws his libel action against several newspapers which said that he left London after an air raid warning was given, after the papers retract.

4 of the suffragists who picketed the White House are sentenced to 6 months in the workhouse.

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Today -100: October 16, 1917: What better covering could any man have?

Mata Hari is executed by the French as a spy, on little evidence. What she actually did, and who she did it for (everyone? no one?) is still a confused question. She certainly did not tell the Germans about tanks, as the story claims.

The New York World has been running stories about NYC mayoral candidate John Hylan having, a few years ago, sued a company he was involved with for payment for his legal services and then, as lawyer for that company, failing to contest himself. Or something. Anyway, incumbent Boy-Mayor John Purroy Mitchel publicly demands that Tammany Boss Murphy say whether that’s the reason he chose Hylan, a singularly unimpressive campaigner with no governmental experience – because he knew he’d have something to hang over his head. Mitchel continues to paint Hylan as un-patriotic, but says all he has to do is denounce Murphy, Hearst, and, er, everyone else who supports him – the “whole galaxy of anti-Americanisms.” Mitchel tells a group of Italians, “It is said that in this campaign of loyalty I am wrapped up in the American flag, and if I am, what better covering could any man have?”

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Today -100: October 15, 1917: Let all remember that the Fatherland will not forgive criminal levity

Following the German occupation of Osel Island in the Gulf of Riga, Russian PM Kerensky calls on the navy to keep out the Germans, complains about the “attitude” of the Kronstadt fortress weakening Russian defenses, and calls for sacrifices. “Let all remember that the Fatherland will not forgive criminal levity.”

Criminal levity is the worst kind.

The Jewish Daily Forward gives in to Post Office censorship, will no longer publish any opinions about the war.

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Today -100: October 14, 1917: Of chancellors, improper letters, and draft boards

German newspapers agree that Chancellor Georg Michaelis is toast because of his inept handling of, well not the August naval mutiny itself (which the government is now saying was just on one ship), but the political ramifications. Which I think means the right is pissed that he didn’t make a more credible case blaming it on the socialists. The left in the Reichstag would also like a new chancellor, one named by the Reichstag rather than the kaiser.

Frank Haungs is arrested for sending an “improper” letter to First Lady Edith Wilson, under the name of his foreman at work.

Local draft boards, especially in New York City and Louisiana, have been drafting men with dependents for whom they are the sole support, and the Army will now release those men.

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Today -100: October 13, 1917: Of oratorical contests with petulant young men, marine ministers, soviets, and negro-less towns

Judge John F. Hylan, the more-or-less Democratic candidate for mayor of New York, refuses to debate incumbent Mayor John Purroy Mitchel: “No mere oratorical contest with this petulant young man, who is smarting under deserved and almost universal condemnation, will meet the situation or satisfy the people.” Hylan says he is fighting for democracy, just like the Allies in France.

German Minister of Marine Eduard von Capelle is fired (is he though?), ostensibly for the August mutinies, really for the failure of submarine warfare to defeat Britain.

Trotsky is elected president of the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet, which passes a resolution refusing support to Kerensky’s new coalition government.

Two white men are convicted for killing a 17-year-old black man during the East St. Louis race riots and sentenced to 14 years.

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At the army training camp Camp Funston. “The telegrams declare that Junction City has no negro population.”

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Today -100: October 12, 1917: Of tsars and lost provinces

Ex-Tsar Nicholas and family are moved to a monastery, still in Siberia, ostensibly because he’d been complaining about the crowds that came to gawk at him.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George says Britain will fight until France gets Alsace-Lorraine back. Is that what the tommies thought they’d been fighting for?

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Today -100: October 11, 1917: Of mutiny, lost provinces, and krennings

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The NYT reports that there was a mutiny on 4 or 5 German ships a few weeks ago, in which the captain of one of them was thrown into the sea and drowned. Kaiser Wilhelm ordered that 1 in 7 sailors be shot, but only 3 were executed after Chancellor Michaelis objected.

There are a couple of grains of truth in that. There was a fairly minor  rebellion in early August. No captain was drowned, but two sailors were executed, because the German Navy doesn’t recognize the concept of “fairly minor” mutinies. The government and right wing are using the incident as a stick to beat the opposition, blaming it, with no basis in fact, on the Independent Social Democrats (USPD); this is why we’re hearing about this now.

German Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann says the only thing that can’t be negotiated is Alsace-Lorraine.

Henry Krenning, the recently retired president of the Dorris Motor Car Company, is charged under the Espionage Act with making disparaging remarks about Woodrow Wilson at the theatre. Annoyingly, the nature of the remarks is unspecified, and there’s no follow-up.

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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.

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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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