Today -100: December 15, 1917: Only good enough for German fertilizer

More delegates to the Russian Constituent Assembly show up, but the Bolshevik government stations sailors with orders to keep them out. Members are threatening to go to Kiev, and some government employees, now on strike, are threatening to go with them.

Pope Benedict celebrates the “liberation of Jerusalem” by British troops.

Kate Richards O'Hare, the Socialist writer, editor and lecturer, is sentenced to 5 years for a speech in Bowman, North Dakota opposing the war and conscription. Mothers who raised their sons to be cannon fodder, she said, are no better than brood sows, and young men who volunteer are “only good enough for German fertilizer.”

A NY judge does one of those join-the-military-or-go-to-jail things with a man who committed petty larceny ($40). Army recruiters are livid.

Gen. Skalon, one of the Russians negotiating a truce with Germany, shoots himself. This may be bullshit. Certainly the NYT identifies him as the former governor-general of Russian Poland, but that Skalon died in 1914, so I don’t know.

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1917 porn was just weird.

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Today -100: December 14, 1917: Only the simplest of living is patriotic

The Russian Constituent Assembly assembles. Well, only about 50 of the 600 actually show up, so they adjourn for a day, when 40 show up. The Assembly was initiated before the October revolution, and now the Bolsheviks don’t want one, and arrest some of the delegates. The government orders the arrest of all Constitutional Democrat (Kadet) leaders, on general principles and, Trotsky says, to save them from being lynched. He’s considerate that way.

Food Czar Herbert Hoover asks American families to add a porkless day to their meatless day and wheatless day. “In this emergency only the simplest of living is patriotic,” he says. In 12 years Hoover’s economic policies will lead to many Americans living very patriotic lives indeed.

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Today -100: December 13, 1917: Of alien enemies, first shots, and rankins

There are a lot more citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire living in the United States than Germans, and many of them are essentially refugees from the oppressed minority nationalities of the Empire – Czechs, Slovenes, Poles, etc – so Wilson won’t make them register or restrict their movements like he did the Germans (males over 14 do have to get permission to leave the country). Also, the war would grind to a halt without  miners, steelworkers etc from the Dual Monarchy. Wilson’s proclamation on all this doesn’t even use the term “enemy aliens” (which the NYT mistakenly calls “alien enemies”).

The first American to shoot at Austria after the declaration of war is Rep. George Holden Tinkham (R-Massachusetts), who fires a shell into Gonfo. Since he’s not in the military, Tinkham committed a war crime punishable by execution. (Spoiler Alert: he will not be executed).

The House of Representatives gives the chairmanship of the new Committee on Woman Suffrage to John Raker (D-CA) rather than to the only, you know, woman in the House. Jeanette Rankin really wanted the job but wasn’t supported by her own Republican party. I know! Republicans being dicks to a woman.

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Today -100: December 12, 1917: Of short shrifts, great futures, and military justice at its finest

Russian officials stranded in London are quite sure that an alliance of the Don Cossacks and the non-Bolshevik parties will “make short shrift of the Bolsheviki.”

According to Wikitionary, a short shrift was originally “a rushed sacrament of confession (shrift) given to a prisoner who was to be executed very soon.” I feel like I should have known that before now.

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That’s Col. Sir Mark Sykes of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement recently made not-so-secret by Trotsky, on how swell Zionism is gonna turn out.

13 black soldiers are hanged for the race riots in Houston in August. 41 more are sentenced to life imprisonment.

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Today -100: December 11, 1917: It’s on. Oh, IT IS ON.

Panama declares war on Austria-Hungary.

Jerusalem surrenders to British troops in this, the 822nd year of the Crusades. Gen. Edmund Allenby enters the city on foot to show respect for the holy sites of the city he’d been respectfully besieging.

Portuguese coup leader Sidónio Pais reassures the Allies that Portugal will stay in the war, doing whatever it is that Portugal is doing in the war. Ousted Prime Minister Afonso Costa is arrested. The war minister and the commander of the fleet seek sanctuary on British warships.

The Supreme Court rules that there is no 14th Amendment right to possess alcohol.

The Supreme Court rules that employers may impose an open shop, that is make a condition of employment that employees not join a union. It says attempts to unionize, in this case a mine, may be illegal even if they’re completely peaceful, for example by “persuading man after man to join the union, and having done so, to remain at work, keeping the employer in ignorance of their number and identity, until so many should have joined that by stopping work in a body they could coerce the employer and the remaining miners to organize the mines, and that the conduct of the defendants in so doing was unlawful and malicious.” Forcing the mining company to accept unionization through “fear of financial loss” is thus illegal. What power do they think a union has, if not a threat of financial loss? Loud tutting? And how does the Court think the mine got miners to agree not to join the UMW in the first place, if not a threat of financial fucking loss? This is just terrible supreme courting.

The government now regulates bakeries, requiring standard 16- and 24-ounce loafs of bread using less milk and sugar and animal fat.

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Today -100: December 10, 1917: Of civil wars, armistices, and swear words

The Bolshevik government announces that Gens. Kornilov and Alexey Kaledin of the Don Cossacks have started a revolt in the Don region “against the people and the revolution.” The counter-revolution and civil war begin here.

The Russian and German positions in the armistice negotiations seem quite far apart.

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Today -100: December 9, 1917: Of coups, enemy aliens, and armistices

A revolution in Portugal (actually more like a coup) led by Sidónio Pais forces the government to resign. Pais will exercise increasingly dictatorial powers for a year until he is assassinated.

One consequence of the US declaring war on Austria: newly enemied aliens from the Empire have to be weeded out of the US military.

Trotsky informs the Allies that Russia will only sign an armistice with Germany on condition that it not move troops to the western front (a condition Germany has been scoffing at). On the 7th, for the first time since the war began, not a shot is fired on the Russian front. Trotsky is suspending negotiations a week to give the Allies time to say whether they will join an armistice and, if not, to state what their war aims are.

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Today -100: December 8, 1917: In matters of war I am a teetotaler

The US is at war with Austria. The declaration passes the Senate unanimously (La Follette is not present, claiming later he didn’t know the vote was going on) and the House by 363 to 1, the 1 being Meyer London (Socialist-NY), who says Socialists oppose war. “In matters of war I am a teetotaler. I refuse to take the first intoxicating drink.” Walter Chandler (R-NY) asks him to cite one instance in which Karl Marx denounces war.

Jeanette Rankin (R-Montana) says war is a “stupid and futile way of attempting to settle international difficulties” and this one was caused by “commercial and selfish interests,” but this time votes for war, saying it’s not a real declaration of war but a “technicality” arising from the previous declaration of war on Germany.

No one pushes for Bulgaria and Turkey to be included, grumpily accepting Wilson’s argument that, like Austria, “They too, are tools of Germany. But they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our proposed actions.” The US will end the war without having declared war on the two countries, or vice versa.

Halifax, hundreds of its houses in ruins after the munitions ship explosion yesterday, now faces a blizzard, because of course it does. Rescue work halts. “Many of the injured necessarily died of neglect.”

Finland declares independence from Russia.

Romanian troops who were fighting alongside Russians join the cease-fire, because what choice do they have? Austria starts releasing Russian prisoners even before Russia begins releasing Austria’s.

Recent German air raids on London show that Germany has switched completely from zeppelins to airplanes.

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Today -100: December 7, 1917: Of Halifax, baby factories, and contested elections

In the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia, the SS Mont-Blanc, carrying a big ol’ load of munitions, collides with a Belgian relief ship, drifts to land and goes boom. 2,000 or so dead. The largest explosion (not counting volcanoes) before 1945. Bits of the ship including the anchor are found miles away. The blast wave takes out every window in the city and a pretty good chunk of the city. Naturally, many assume it was a German plot.

The Croydon (UK) conscription tribunal upholds the plea of a widow that her, I believe, youngest son not join his 10 brothers in the military.

There will be a 10-day cease-fire between Russia and Germany.

In Parliament, Chief Secretary for Ireland Henry Duke says that Éamon de Valera’s election as MP for East Clare can be challenged by any elector in the constituency because he may not actually be British (the future president of Ireland was born in New York).

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Today -100: December 6, 1917: Lords of Looseness?

The House Committee on Foreign Relations passes the declaration of war on Austria with no dissenters. Everyone except Clarence Miller (R-Minnesota) falls in line behind Wilson’s decision not to include Bulgaria and Turkey.

Incidentally, this is another of those “recognizes that a state of war exists” declarations of war.

Rudyard Kipling has a new bad poem out. Evidently Bunyan predicted World War I, or something:

Likewise the Lords of Looseness
  That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,
  And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals
  Who crack beneath a strain--
John Bunyan met that helpful set
  In Charles the Second's reign.

Etc.

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Today -100: December 5, 1917: This is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation

Woodrow Wilson, in his State of the Union address (as they didn’t call it yet) to the new session of Congress, asks it to declare war on the Austria-Hungarian Empire but not Bulgaria or Turkey. He says his goal is not to “impair or rearrange” the Empire. Oh, it so is. He portrays the populations of Austria, Turkey and the Balkans as in need, just as much as those of Belgium and northern France, of liberation from the “impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy”.

Impudent and alien dominions are the worst kind.

So really, declaring war on Austria is for the benefit of Austria, which these days is “simply the vassal of the German Government.” This great act of charity extends even to Germans: “We are in fact fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with our own”. But do we ever get a thank you? no, we do not.

Wilson responds to critics of the war: “I hear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and troublesome. I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it, with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut about their uneasy hour and be forgotten.”

Gen. Nikolay Dukhonin, who refused to give up his self-designated title of Supreme Commander of the Russian military, is removed from office with extreme prejudice by “infuriated members of the Bolsheviki.”

Hey, Apocalypse Now was nearly 40 years ago, do people still understand “extreme prejudice” references?

Siberia and Ukraine have declared themselves independent republics.

Secretary of War Newton Baker denies that there is any discrimination against negroes in the (segregated) army and says any complainants are suffering from “overworked hysteria.”

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Today -100: December 4, 1917: Of armistices, debauched soldiers and sailors, legations, rustlers, and teachers

A new session of Congress opens. Everyone wants to declare war on Austria, and maybe Bulgaria and Turkey as well. They’re weirdly excited by the prospect.

Germany says there are local armistices in place with the Russian army at the division and corps levels.

New Rochelle, NY saloon owners are indicted for conspiracy to debauch soldiers and sailors. Which I guess just means letting them buy booze.

Russian Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky fires 160 Russian legations and consulates abroad who don’t recognize the Bolshevik government.

American troops invade Mexico and have a pitched battle with some cattle-rustlers, killing 35 of them.

The High School Committee puts on “trial” the 3 suspended De Witt Clinton High School (Bronx) teachers. Samuel Schmalhausen is accused of not rebuking one of his students for an essay calling Woodrow Wilson a murderer in such a way as to force the student to perceive the “gross disloyalty involved in his point of view” and even saying he didn’t think it was his job to “develop in the students under his control instinctive respect for the president of the United States as such”. They drag in the student, who says he didn’t get the ideas from Schmalhausen but from books and his own thinking. He was then hanged as a witch, probably.

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Today -100: December 3, 1917: Of ambassadors, mad carousels (mad carousels are the worst kind), antis, and teaching German

Russian Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky responds to letters from the US and French military missions protesting Russian armistice and possible separate-peace plans, saying Russia “cannot permit allied diplomatic and military agents to interfere in the internal affairs of our country and attempt to excite civil war.”

Trotsky appoints Georgy Chicherin as ambassador to Britain. Chicherin is an exile from the 1905 Revolution currently held in Brixton Prison in Britain for writing against the war. Trotsky wants him and another Russian political prisoner in Britain released and is threatening to hold English supporters of counter-revolution in reprisal (and tomorrow will ban any British subjects from leaving Russia).

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I can’t tell if the NYT reporter really enjoyed this meeting or really felt out of place.

Mad carousel?

New York anti-suffragists will work to oppose the federal suffrage amendment and not to repeal women’s suffrage in New York. They figure women will just get tired of all the voting. Why, in a couple of years it’ll be current suffragists calling for repeal.

Pittsburgh orders the removal from high school German classes of all textbooks praising Kaiser Wilhelm or the German military system. Did language textbooks actually do this?

The good folks of Dyersburg, Tennessee burn a black man at the stake for allegedly attacking a white woman.

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Today -100: December 2, 1917: Wikileaks 1917

Russia releases another secret treaty, in which, as a price for Italy entering the war on the Allied side, it would get various bits of the Austrian Empire and control of Albania’s foreign policy if the Allies decided on an independent Albania instead of dividing it among Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro. And if France and Britain take some of Germany’s African colonies, Italy gets some too. Italy undertook to try to prevent the pope working to end the war. Russia also reveals the territorial bribes offered Greece (which didn’t bite). American officials are pretending to believe that the documents might be forgeries and that Italy, to whose aid the US is planning to go, was not massively bribed to enter the war. Which it totally was.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany is said to be sending germ-infested balloons into the American trenches.

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Today -100: December 1, 1917: Of measles, ensigns, and knitting

US army camps in the South have been fighting measles outbreaks.

Russian military Supreme Commander Nikolai Krylenko is having trouble getting the Russian military to accept his supreme commanderness, possibly because he’s just an ensign. He orders the arrest of generals and the disbandment of soldiers’ committees which don’t recognize his authority.

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The Netherlands adopts universal male suffrage and proportional representation and allows women to be elected to public office, though there is no women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: November 30, 1917: Of coalitions and negotiations

The Bolsheviks are having difficulty establishing control. Doing less well than expected in the Constituent Assembly elections, they will be forced into a coalition government, at least temporarily.

German Chancellor Georg von Hertling says he’s willing to negotiate peace with the Bolsheviks, as soon as they send negotiators.

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Today -100: November 29, 1917: Anarchists and Wobblies and food riots, oh my!

The commissioner of immigration claims that Italian anarchists, allied with the IWW, planned to start food riots, starting with Boston.

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Today -100: November 28, 1917: They tried to terrorize and suppress us. They could not, and so freed us.

Germany says that if Norway joins the war, it will feel obligated to occupy Denmark on general principles.

The War Dept says the bodies of American soldiers killed in Europe will not be brought home until after the war.

Someone’s spreading rumors that Lenin is being advised by a bunch of German staff officers.

The NYT points to the recent increase in government surveillance of enemy aliens as a good reason not to declare war on Austria-Hungary, thereby increasing the number of enemy aliens who must be expensively surveilled.

22 of the hunger-striking suffragettes are ordered released before their terms have been served, including Alice Paul, who says “We are put out of jail as we were put into jail, at the whim of the Government. They tried to terrorize and suppress us. They could not, and so freed us.” Suffrage prisoners who did not hunger strike have not been released.

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Today -100: November 27, 1917: Of nobles, despotism not liberty, and raiders

Russia abolishes the nobility.

The NYT complains that the Bolshevik regime is establishing “Despotism, Not Liberty,” although its Burkean conception of liberty suggests it takes 5 or 6 centuries to establish.

The foreign ambassadors to Russia (i.e., those from the Allies) have a meeting and decide to simply ignore Trotsky’s note proposing an armistice. They also decide that if Russia begins separate peace negotiations, they will leave the country and treat it as a declaration of war on Russia’s former allies.

Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, who headed the semi-private Jameson Raid intended to start a war with the Boer republics so they could be absorbed into South Africa, as did happen a couple of years later with the Boer War, dies at 64.

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Today -100: November 26, 1917: The armistice will be attained by revolutionary methods

Lenin: “Our party never said it would give peace immediately. We said we would make an immediate proposal for peace, and would publish the secret treaties. That we have done, and now begin the revolutionary struggle for peace. Victory is assured. The armistice will be attained by revolutionary methods.”

Speaking of secret treaties, it seems France planned on taking back not just Alsace and Lorraine, but the left bank of the Rhine as well.

Kerensky, still in hiding, resigns.

Self-proclaimed Supreme Commander Gen. Nikolay Dukhonin refuses to give up the post to Bolshevik-appointed Nikolai Krylenko, who is a 32-year-old ensign.

Dr. Elsie Inglis dies. A long-time suffrage activist, early in the war Inglis formed the Scottish Women’s Hospitals Units and sent women-only-staffed hospitals to the front in places like Serbia, France and Russia after the War Office turned down her offer to provide (and fund) hospitals (“My good lady, go home and sit still” was the exact phrase). The Red Cross also turned her down, but Serbia didn’t. She was taken prisoner for three months in 1915 when her hospital was overrun. She has died at 53 of cancer.

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