Today -100: December 25, 1917: We must bring peace to the world by battering in with the iron fist and shining sword the doors of those who will not have peace

Former British Prime Minister Asquith’s son Arthur is wounded while serving in the Royal Naval Division in France. His leg will be amputated.

Kaiser Wilhelm addresses the Second Army on the French front: “If the enemy does not want peace, then we must bring peace to the world by battering in with the iron fist and shining sword the doors of those who will not have peace.” If that’s not a peace-loving sentiment, I don’t know what is. He says the Germany army has done so well in 1917 that it’s clear God is on Germany’s side, that’s just science.

G.H. Mika of the Slav Press Bureau (in New York, I think) points out a little problem with the recent declaration of war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire: there are immigrants from the Dual Monarchy currently serving in the US military who have only taken out their first papers on the path to citizenship, which means if captured by Austria they will be treated as traitors subject to execution.

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Today -100: December 24, 1917: We would accept them only in order to rise together with the German people against German militarism as we did against Czarism

Peace talks begin between Russia on one side and Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria on the other. A Polish delegation wants to participate; good luck with that, guys. Trotsky worries aloud to delegates of the Petrograd Soviet, the Peasant Congress and the like about negotiating with representatives of the German kaiser rather than the German people and says “if, exhausted as we are by this unprecedented slaughter, we must accept the terms of the German emperor, we would accept them only in order to rise together with the German people against German militarism as we did against Czarism.”

Trotsky accuses the American ambassador and the head of the American Red Cross mission to Romania of “counter-revolutionary activities,” to wit, trying to send cars and other supplies to rebel Gen. Kaledin. They claim the goods were just being transported through Rostov on their way to Mesopotamia.

The German socialist newspaper Vorwärts is suspended for the umpeenth time for writing about poor conditions in Germany, saying many are starving and that war profiteers are hoarding, and because an “article denouncing the militaristic party’s demands for the annexation of large sections of Russian territory is considered likely to stir up trouble.” Trouble among, you know, soldiers who had been told they were fighting to defend Germany and are now fighting to expand the Reich.

The Hungarian government introduces a bill extending suffrage to all literate adults, male and female, over 24.

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Today -100: December 23, 1917: Of governors, Americanization, hommes du monde, and supermarkets

The Arizona Supreme Court, which after a close election in 1916 decided that Thomas Campbell (R) had been elected governor after 4 weeks of George Hunt (D) refusing to give up his office, now decides that Hunt is governor after all.

The New York State Suffrage Party, having won suffrage, turns its attention to “Americanizing” immigrant women who now have the vote by virtue of being married to naturalized citizens, without having had to meet the tests their husbands did (speaking English, being of good character, 5 years’ residence, oath of allegiance, etc).

The French Chamber of Deputies votes to suspend the parliamentary immunity of former prime minister Joseph Caillaux so he can be charged with treason because he, I don’t know, supported peace, and conspired with people he says he couldn’t possibly have conspired with because he’s a gentleman (“un homme du monde”).  Caillaux claims this is all a political and personal attack on him on trumped-up charges, and he is not wrong. He ends by calling for the lifting of immunity that was going to happen anyway, because he wants all this cleared up in a trial (perhaps remembering how his wife literally got away with murder in a trial in 1914).

Canada is moving towards prohibition, to expire one year after peace.

The NYT has an article about a self-service market in Lockport, NY. Instead of the grocer standing behind a counter and the customers asking them for goods, this market’s items are put alphabetically on shelves. In fact, the idea, a product of wartime labor shortages, was originated and patented in October by Piggly Wiggly of Memphis (customers enter through a turnstile, take a basket, go up one aisle, down the next, up the next, down the next, and pay at the cash register, that’s literally all the patent was for).

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Today -100: December 22, 1917: Of secret treaties

Russia publishes another secret treaty, one between Russia and Japan in 1916 for joint military action against a third party like Britain or the US achieving dominance in China.

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Today -100: December 21, 1917: Of abandoned militarism and ultimata

British Prime Minister Lloyd George talks about Britain’s war aims, in the usual vague terms. Prussia must “abandon militarism” – what does that actually mean, in concrete terms? He says Germany’s overseas colonies will be disposed of by the peace congress and that future trustees of the colonies (independence is literally unthinkable) must take into account the sentiments of their peoples (Spoiler Alert: they won’t) (I mean, South West Africa was made a trust territory of South Africa, for fuck’s sake). And Turkey will never get Jerusalem back.

Ukraine rejects the Russian ultimatum that it stop assisting Gen. Kaledine and stop preventing passage of Russian troops through Ukraine to fight him.

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Today -100: December 20, 1917: Of contempt of court, states of siege, and enemy aliens

Philadelphia Mayor Thomas Smith is indicted for contempt of court for trying to cover up his role in the murderous violence on election day.

The Petrograd Soviet declares a state of siege in Petrograd to deal with all the looting of wine shops.

Renegade Gen. Kaledin proposes that the Don region, of which he is top dog, be given independence.

In Salt Lake City, a German named Herman Frederick Wilhelm Babbel (I know, you’d have been lost if I hadn’t already told you he was German) is ordered interned after saying that Germany would win the war.

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Today -100: December 19, 1917: Of spoils, bombs, prohibition, drill, and women doctors

New York Mayor-Elect John Hylan participates in that great tradition of NY politics: Tammany Hall’s Boss Murphy gives him a list of people to hire.

A bomb takes out part of the California governor’s mansion, near where Gov. William Stephens and Mrs. Governor are sleeping. The culprits are not caught, but Stephens says it was probably “done with a view to terrorism, the chief weapon of the alien enemy.”

The Senate passes the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution, 47-8. A lot of senators seem to have skipped the vote.

The NYT notes that many of the dry states wishing to impose prohibition on wet states are Southern states which object to having women’s suffrage imposed on them and which also continue to obstruct and nullify enforcement of the 15th Amendment.

The foreign ministers of Germany and Austria will go to Brest-Litovsk for negotiations with Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Trotsky informs the Allies and asks if they’d like to come to, or “state whether they wish peace or not.” Pravda denies rumors that Germany is demanding that Russia evacuate Finland and... Petrograd, disarm the Russian Army, and grant Germany a monopoly of grain exports.

City College of New York (presumably like many other colleges) has suspended or expelled 19 students for not attending military drill.

Obit of the Day -100: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917), the first woman doctor in Britain, the first woman elected to a school board (London in 1870, with three times as many votes as T.H. Huxley), the first woman mayor in England (Aldeburgh in 1908), the first woman magistrate, and a few other firsts. The doctor thing is a funny story. Doctors had only recently been legally required to have a license to practice, which could be issued by several medical societies (surgeons, physicians, etc). Garrett realized the apothecaries’ society didn’t specifically forbid women members (they changed that rule fast after she used it). She later founded the London School of Medicine for Women. A long-time suffragist – here’s Bertha Newcombe’s 1910 painting depicting her and Emily Davies passing John Stuart Mill a women’s suffrage petition, hidden under the apples for some reason, for him to present to Parliament in 1866 –

her younger sister Millicent Garrett Fawcett is president of the largest women’s suffrage society in Britain, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, which Anderson left for the more radical Women’s Social and Political Union, although she resigned when it became too militant for her.

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Today -100: December 18, 1917: Of yellow cats, curbing intemperance by law, and royal privates

Canadian elections: the Unionists do very well outside Quebec, leading to a likely showdown with Quebec over conscription.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: an American woman living in Venice claims German planes dropped poison gas on the city. It turned her cat yellow.

The House of Representatives votes 282 to 128 for a Prohibition amendment to the Constitution. Julius Kahn (R-California) objects, saying “You cannot curb intemperance by law, but you make sneaks, liars, and hypocrites of men when you attempt to put in force laws of this kind.” There is a 7-year time limit for ratification, which might or might not be constitutional.

Rep. Royal Johnson (R-South Dakota) takes a leave from Congress (he doesn't quit, as the NYT says) to join the army as a private.

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Today -100: December 17, 1917: Not the fortress, but the guillotine

Germany and Russia sign a 4-week armistice, with peace negotiations to follow. Germany promises not to transfer troops to other fronts.

The Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet declares the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) enemies of the people. Trotsky says “You are perturbed by the mild terror we are applying to our enemies. But know that within a month this terror will take the terrible form of the French revolutionary terror – not the fortress, but the guillotine.”

There are rumors – false, of course, that the Tsar has escaped.

The Vatican says its only regret about the capture of Jerusalem is that the soldiers involved were not all Catholics.

Former French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux is being investigated by the Chamber of Deputies for making unpatriotic speeches in Italy. Caillaux says the forgery industry has declined since the days of the Dreyfus Affair and accuses the French ambassador to Italy of making it all up, after a spat in which the ambassador’s wife refused to receive Caillaux’s wife, the famous unconvicted murderer.

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Today -100: December 16, 1917: Please don’t let any one get the idea that we discussed peace

The Bolsheviks say they have captured Gen. Alexey Kaledin of the Don Cossacks. They have not.

“Pro-Germans” petition for Rep. Fiorello La Guardia to be removed from Congress because he’s off in the military doing military things. So far Speaker Champ Clark is taking no action because La Guardia is not violating the law by taking two salaries.  In fact, he’s not currently getting either salary, and he is furious. The House will later grant him a leave of absence and eventually agree to pay him (his congresscritter’s pay is 3 times what he’d get as a captain in the Army Air Service, so that’s good for him).

Col. House returns from Europe, where he consulted with Allied leaders about war and only war: “I didn’t talk peace with a soul in Europe. I didn’t discuss war aims. ... Please don’t let any one get the idea that we discussed peace.” Heaven forfend.

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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.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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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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