Today -100: April 4, 1918: We can henceforward regard the future with tranquillity

The Germans say their offensive has only slowed down because of bad weather.

Gen. Ferdinand Foch says “We can henceforward regard the future with tranquillity.” So that’s okay then.

Former President Taft says spies should be court-martialed and executed, “their citizenship ended by bullets.” But mob violence is wrong, he says. Don’t be like the lawless Germans, he says.

The French claim to have captured a German document ordering that soldiers from Alsace-Lorraine not be put on the front lines or given jobs that would allow them to gather intelligence for the French.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 3, 1918: Remember that practically every pacifist is a suffragist

In a red-baiting election for Chicago aldermen, every Socialist candidate is beaten by “loyalists.”

The NY State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is changing its name to the Women Voters’ Anti-Suffrage Party to push for a new referendum to reverse the one that gave the vote to NY women last year. Outgoing president Mary Kilbreth reminds the annual meeting, “Remember that practically every pacifist is a suffragist.”

Sen. Charles Thomas (D-Colo.) claims that German spies working in a factory making gas masks sabotaged more than half of them. With little tiny holes. He blames immigrants who can’t speak English, who he wants banned from voting, and plotters speaking in foreign languages, which thwarts the Secret Service, whose members can’t be expected to be bilingual.

The Senate Judiciary Committee adopts an amendment to the Espionage Act making it illegal to make false statements with the intention of interfering with US military success or discourage the sale of Liberty Bonds or “wilfully cause or attempt to cause, or incite or attempt to incite, insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces” or obstruct military recruiting or say disloyal or seditious things about the government, Constitution, president or the flag or military uniforms or bring the government into disrepute or incite resistance to federal authority, or favor the cause of enemy nations, etc etc., subject to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The NYT totally supports this as “proportionate to the magnitude of the crime.” It would also like sabotage to be subject to the death penalty.

The Texas Legislature bans peace officers who earn less than $40 a month from carrying guns, presumably because they’ll be tempted to use those guns to supplement their income.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 2, 1918: Of machine guns, sedition, and dressing for war and/or Easter

The Canadian army actually uses those machine guns against anti-conscriptionists in Quebec City. The article claims the trouble there is being fomented by Outside Agitators, possibly IWW, possibly with German money.

A Friedrich Pawlik of Hoboken, New Jersey is sentenced to 1 year for making seditious remarks about the president. Stanley Rapiz of Brooklyn is sentenced to 1 year for insulting the crew of a US transport. 112 IWW members go on trial in Chicago. 5 Indians and one Agnes Smedley are indicted for attempting to stir up rebellion against the British Raj. Which doesn’t really seem like the business of US courts. And:

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: April 1, 1918: Of the draft and wool grips

More anti-conscription rioting in Quebec. The army is bringing in machine guns.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Alien Property Custodian A. Mitchell Palmer plans to seize German-owned woolen mills in New Jersey.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 31, 1918: Of hard-working burglars, daylight savings, and bilingualism

A “hard-working burglar, supporting a large family” writes to the Manhattan IRS collector saying he’d like to pay income taxes so the US can fight “the biggest burglar in the world – the Kaiser,” but he wants to know if his income tax return would be turned over to the cops. He evidently signed the letter, and Collector Eisner is pondering how to respond.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Because nothing says patriotism like a rally marking the introduction of daylight saving as the clock on the Metropolitan Tower is set forward at 2:00 a.m.

Kentucky Governor Augustus Owsley Stanley (D) vetoes a bill that would have banned the teaching of German in public schools.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 30, 1918: Foched!

To coordinate the Allied response to the massive German offensive, the chief of the French General Staff, Gen. Ferdinand Foch, is put in charge of all allied forces on the western front, including American, Wilson having pushed for a unified command for some time. His new title is Généralissime, a title which is somehow much more impressive in Spanish than French.

The right-wing in the German Reichstag, getting cocky, are talking about demanding indemnities.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The German national is named Henry Fricker, the sailor A.M. Dengle, and if Fricker and Dengle doesn’t sound like a vaudeville act, I don’t know what does. Fricker is arrested for murder, but presumably not prosecuted since his name does not subsequently appear in the NYT index.

Anti-conscription riots in Quebec. The militia is called in.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 29, 1918: Ah, probably fake German atrocity stories, how we’ve missed you

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100:

German Chancellor Georg von Hertling receives to a deputation from Lithuania asking for recognition of Lithuania as an independent state. He does so, except... in confederation with Germany. And Lithuania will be expected to help pay for Germany’s war.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 28, 1918: Of planes, flags, and czars

George Creel’s Committee on Public Information has been telling newspapers that the US has shipped hundreds of warplanes to France when it has, in fact, shipped one warplane to France.

Mary Takeh of NYC, an Austrian national, is arrested for insulting an American flag. It started when she hung a German flag on her landing, to dry it after washing it, she said. The police confiscated it away and her neighbors told her to hang an American flag instead and then put one up. She took it down and threw it on the floor, at which point she was arrested and... sentenced to 6 months by a magistrate who says he’d have sentenced her to life if he could.

The Bolsheviks will move the ex-czar and his family to the Urals, presumably to prevent them being rescued by the anti-Bolshevik Whites.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 27, 1918: Let George do it

Turkey thinks that if Germany gets the Baltics, it should have Crimea, because... self-determination?

Theodore Roosevelt accuses the Wilson Administration of having a “Let George do it” policy toward the war (i.e., letting the British do all the fighting).

The city of Chicago will revoke all 6,000 business licenses held by non-US citizens.

And the NY Legislature’s lower house passes a bill to ban all teachers who are either not US citizens or have not taken out first naturalization papers. Only the Socialists vote no.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 26, 1918: Of crashing Christophers, muck, sex-ignorance, and wheat

For some reason the British are calling the shells hitting Paris from those far-off giant cannons “crashing Christophers.”

Karl Muck, the Boston Symphony’s conductor, is arrested as an enemy alien. The US is ignoring his Swiss citizenship and passport because he was born in Germany.

Marie Stopes’s book Married Love is published in Britain, providing information about sex and contraception. 37, Stopes is a geologist and paleobotanist (plant fossils). She is divorced, engaged to what will be her second husband, and a virgin. Her mother, also a university graduate and a feminist, didn’t clue her in before her wedding night. Some time later, wondering why she hadn’t gotten pregnant, Marie looked at some biology books in the secret section of the British Museum Reading Room which she only had access to because of her university degree, figured out what was going wrong and promptly, in 1916, got an annulment on the grounds of her husband’s impotence, presenting the court with a certificate from her doctor that her hymen had not been “penetrated by a normal male organ” (her ex, who was named Reginald Ruggles Gates, because of course he was, was not best pleased).  She writes in the preface, “In my first marriage I paid such a terrible price for sex-ignorance that I feel that knowledge gained at such a cost should be placed at the service of humanity.” As in the US, people who published on the subject of birth control had been prosecuted for decades (and books like the 1915 edition of T.H. Huxley’s Human Physiology still left out the reproductive bits of human physiology), but Stopes was not (her writings were banned in the Irish Republic from 1930 until at least 1998). The title of the book is intended, like Margaret Sanger’s coinage of the term “family planning,” to distance contraception from notions of free love (and prostitution). Stopes went on to open birth control clinics all over Britain and snipe back and forth with the Catholic Church.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Not proto-hipsters being precious about gluten, but the Dodgers rejecting outfielder Zack Wheat’s salary demands.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 25, 1918: When the European proletariat rises in revolt we shall say, We are here

The German offensive continues, Allies continue to pretend it’s no biggie.

What the NYT claims is the largest projector gas bombardment of the war is carried out by the Canadians, which doesn’t seem like a very Canadian thing to do.

Ingratitude of the Day -100:

Russian Military Chief Leon Trotsky calls for the creation of a new, large army to defend the Russian Revolution against European capital, and so that “when the European proletariat rises in revolt we shall say, ‘We are here.’”

Composer Claude Debussy dies.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 24, 1918: Of big guns and Wobblies

The German drive is rolling along nicely, if you like that sort of thing, and they’ve literally brought the big guns in, hitting Paris every 15 minutes with shells fired from 60 or 70 miles away and arcing down from the stratosphere. No one knew they could do that. For a while it is assumed they must be being dropped from invisible airships, but fragments of the giant shells are found to have rifling on them, so... really big gun. The battle can be heard from London. Kaiser Wilhelm is on the scene, directing the offensive personally, or pretending to direct the offensive personally, as was the custom.

US District Court in Chicago denies the IWW’s request for the return of its seized papers. US District Attorney Charles Clyne tells the court the IWW is not a labor organization but a group of insanely embittered men preaching the gospel of unremitting hatred toward all employers, demanding, just like the Germans, that the world be delivered into their hands.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 23, 1918: Of treaties, trenches, and tusks

The German Reichstag ratifies the Brest-Litovsk treaty, rejecting an Independent Socialist motion to stay the hell out of Finland.

The Liberty Loan Committee gets permission to dig trenches in Central Park as publicity for the next war loan, and New Yorkers are not happy. Really not happy. The plan will be dropped next week.

NYT Index Typo of the Day:

Turks, actually. The Turks have a battalion of women which they are trying to get all women aged 18-30 to join, but will keep them well away from the fighting.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 22, 1918: Give me some blow and Cracker Jacks

The German offensive begins. This is the Last Big Push for Victory.

Headline of the Day -100: 

That is, the failure of a bill in the NY Legislature to legalize Sunday baseball games, NOT the introduction of Cocaine Day to make Sunday baseball games more bearable.

During a debate in the Senate on a bill to empower the government to take over timber operations, senators from the north-west demand the suppression of the IWW, which Sen. William King (D-Utah) says is being “coddled” by the federal government. 

A Pentecostal preacher, Rev. Clarence Waldron of Windsor, Vermont, is convicted for disloyal speech and advising draft resistance, and is sentenced to 15 years. In fact, the accusation may have been false, part of an attempt by parishioners to force him out of his Baptist church after his conversion to Pentecostalism. His sentence will be commuted in 1919.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 21, 1918: Of seized ships and Fake News

Woodrow Wilson orders the seizure of all Dutch ships in US territorial waters, after failed negotiations in which neutral Netherlands tried to prevent its ships being used to carry troops and munitions, which its neighbor Germany would not be pleased about. Germany has threatened to retaliate by sinking ships bringing food to the Netherlands, but evidently Wilson considers a few starving Dutch people to be a price worth paying.

The editors of the German-language Philadelphia Tageblatt are on trial for presenting news in such a way as to favor Germany. The DA seems to be mostly quoting headlines. (The judge will direct a not guilty verdict because there was no “overt act.”)

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 20, 1918: Great moments in prognostication

The NY Legislature decides to neither ratify the prohibition amendment nor hold a referendum.

South Dakota ratifies.

The NYT says American “observers” are convinced there will be no German offensive. So that’s okay then.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 19, 1918: Of prohibition and dangerous bluffs

New York Gov. Charles Whitman, a prohibitionist, calls the proposed state referendum on the federal prohibition amendment an “evasion and a deception,” saying the Legislature is trying to evade its duty to vote for the amendment, just as Boss Tweed engineered a referendum on the 15th Amendment in 1869 in an attempt to defeat negro suffrage.

Delaware ratifies the amendment, the 9th state to ratify.

NYC public school teachers are being required to sit through at least 5 patriotic lectures.

John Dillon, the new leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, says the Sinn Fein call for an independent republic, as opposed to Home Rule, is a “dangerous bluff,” but notes that it is supported largely by young people and encouraged by, well, he doesn’t say English perfidy, but that’s what he means. He warns republicans against another rising, which would just give the military an excuse to shoot them down (again).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 18, 1918: Of questionable councils, gallantry, and dull and unsociable Czars

The hilariously unrepresentative puppet “Courland National Council” (Courland is the part of Latvia forcibly extracted from Russia by Germany, which is pretending Courland’s an independent duchy now) asks Kaiser Wilhelm if he’d like to be Duke of Courland. He doesn’t say yes, possibly because he’s planning absorb more of the Baltics and structure their governance along different lines, but he does effuse “My heart is deeply moved and is filled with thanks to god that it has been granted to me to save German blood and German kultur from perishing. God bless your land, upon which German fidelity, German courage, and German perseverance have made their impress.” Sure uses the word “German” a lot, almost like he didn’t recognize “Latvian” as a thing.

The deputies and senators of Belgium send a protest to German Chancellor Georg von Hertling against Germany basing its plans to split Flanders from Belgium on a mysterious self-proclaimed Council of Flanders which “has come into being no one knows how or by whose will” (although the Council has recently gotten itself re-elected in a public meeting called with one day’s notice to which anyone could come. You know, democracy).

Headline of the Day -100: 

But mostly with machine guns. Gallant machine guns.

Ex-Czar Nicholas is becoming dull and unsociable. He wants to return to Crimea (where he has a palace) and practice horticulture.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 17, 1918: Hey, Lenin: No Backsies!

The House and Senate vote for daylight saving.

Lenin hints that Russia will break the Brest-Litovsk treaty if circumstances change.

The lower house of the Austrian Parliament is adjourned after a fight between Czech and German deputies, the former complaining that Prague has been without food for days, “including potatoes,” and a German saying that Bohemia was failing to send enough food to German Austria because the Czechs are allies of the British.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 16, 1918: Peace-ish

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets ratifies the peace treaty 453 to 30. Germany says it will appoint commissions to oversee Russian ministries, with the power of veto, to make sure the provisions of the treaty are enacted. Pretty sure that wasn’t in the treaty.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.