Today -100: May 7, 1918: Of peace plots, sneezing powder, and lords lieutenantses

There are rumors that Berlin has put out peace feelers, but

The NYT claims Germany is now firing shells filled with sneezing powder just before poison gas attacks to force soldiers to take off their gas masks. It’s like the worst Mack Sennett comedy ever.

Field Marshal Viscount John French is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a marked militarization of British rule in Ireland.

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Today -100: May 6, 1918: Of gravel, former tsarevitches, and imbeciles

Germany promises, after all, not to use gravel and sand transported through the Netherlands for military purposes.

Russia asks the US, UK, and France to explain their attitudes towards Russia and to explain their attempts to interfere in Russian internal matters, in particular their dealings with the breakaway Siberian autonomous government.

The Soviets move former Tsar Nicholas and some of his family from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg. His 13-year-old hemophilic son Alexis remains in Tobolsk.

Connecticut Gov. Marcus Holcomb (R) says 90% of his state’s population is loyal, 5% are disloyal, and 5% are “pacifists, who ought to be in the Lakeville Institution for Imbeciles.”

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Today -100: May 5, 1918: Of ballots, marxes, thimbles, sedition, and sauerkraut

The Prussian Diet agrees to introduce the secret ballot. And to make voting compulsory, which is just adding insult to the injury of its rejection of one man one vote.

The British home secretary bans a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth. There would have been resolutions against the capitalist war.

For its own celebration, the NYT Sunday Magazine has managed to find the one socialist, John Spargo, who thinks Marx would have supported the US entering this war.

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The First Lady donates a gold thimble for American pilots. Which sounds like the start of a crappy fairy tale.

The Senate passes the Sedition Bill 48-26. 24 of the 26 no votes are Republicans. It provides for 20 years in prison or $10,000 fines for anyone who “makes or conveys false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies” or obstruct the sale of bonds or attempt to incite “insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, or shall obstruct recruiting or enlistment; or shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of Government of the United States, or its flag, or the uniform of its army or navy, or any language intended to bring the form of Government of the United States, or the Constitution, into contempt, scorn, contumely or disrepute” etc. An amendment to protect people “who speak the truth for good motives and for justifiable ends” is rejected on the urging of Attorney General Thomas Gregory. It gives the postmaster-general the power to stop any mail he personally considers seditious. At one point in the debate, Sen. Sherman waves a clipping from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which the president of the Missouri branch of the German-American Alliance predicts that Germany will win the war. Sherman says the paper should have been excluded from the mails, and Sen. King adds that any editor who prints such articles should be put in prison under this act.

In the ongoing discussion on the NYT letters page on what else sauerkraut might be called, one Matthew Craig of Brooklyn suggests sour slaw, to complement cold/cole slaw. He rejects the suggestion kapovsta, because what if we find ourselves at war with Russia some day?

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Today -100: May 4, 1918: Let the soldiers and munition workers hear

When the Prussian Diet rejected equal suffrage yesterday, one Socialist deputy exclaims “Let the soldiers and munition workers hear!”

Persia unilaterally annuls the many treaties imposed on it over the years, and repudiates the 1907 treaty between Russia and Britain establishing “spheres of influence” in the country, to which Persia, oddly enough, was not a party.

Now that it’s independent, Finland is looking for a king, as was the custom. Well, the German-oriented right-wing is. The rest would prefer a republic, but the right is currently in control and they’ve reached out to Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who’d probably appreciate the shorter title. AF is the former governor of German Togoland.

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Today -100: May 3, 1918: Buy freely. Buy quickly. Buy gladly.

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Must be a definition of the word liberty with which I am not familiar. A new organization in northern California, the Knights have so treated 3 men in separate incidents in San Jose, Richmond and somewhere unnamed, for such crimes as failing to buy Liberty Bonds freely, quickly and gladly.

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While Secretary of War Newton Baker is talking of a 3-million-man army, Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to give him the absolute authority to draft as many men as he wants, without limit. This would seem to violate Congress’s appropriations power, since those men would have to be paid.

The Prussian Diet, discussing reforming its ridiculous 3-tier voting system (1/3 of the seats elected by the taxpayers who pay the top 1/3 of the taxes, etc) rejects one man one vote and considers a system in which some people would get more than one vote, despite the kaiser having instructed them to implement an equal franchise and Chancellor Georg von Hertling recommending it as “a regrettable necessity.”

A German report of Kaiser Wilhelm’s visit to the front quotes him, “his eloquent eyes brimming with tears at the devastation all around,” saying “No word in our language can adequately describe it.” Insert your own Germancompoundnoun joke here. He says that if only the people at home who are questioning the war saw the destruction “done here by a ruthless foe who stops at nothing,” they would understand. In fact, he’s been thinking about bringing trainloads of home-dwellers out for that very purpose.

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Today -100: May 2, 1918: Of constructive criticism, cannons, geniuses, and kaiser pennies

Theodore Roosevelt offers “constructive criticism”: let’s declare war on Turkey and Bulgaria! Let’s do it now! Not to have already done it is a “criminal absurdity”!

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The army lets him play with the long-range cannons (not a eupemism).

Former race car driver, now pilot Lt. Eddie Rickenbacher shoots down a German plane for the first time. It won’t be the last.

In 1915 Theodore Dreiser’s novel The Genius was published, to an uninterested world. His publisher, John Lane, pulled the book after the new York Society for the Suppression of Vice threatened to prosecute them. Now, Dreiser and John Lane jointly ask the Court of Appeal to tell them whether the book is indecent or not (Dreiser wants $50,000 damages from John Lane for withdrawing it). (Update: the appellate court will respond “That ain’t our job.”)

Someone in Hoboken has been giving out pennies in which the Indian has been altered to look like Kaiser Wilhelm – spiky helmet, handlebar mustache, etc. Detectives and the Justice Dept are investigating.

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Today -100: May 1, 1918: Of teachers, armies, and bopps

The Minnesota State Safety Commission bans non-citizens from being teachers, not just in public schools but private and parochial schools and the University of Minnesota.

War Secretary Newton Baker wants to increase the US Army to 3 million men.

William Randolph Heart buys the Chicago Herald, will merge it with his Chicago Examiner.

Or possibly there’s no revolt in Petrograd at all!

German newspapers say reports of Gen. Kornilov’s death are wrong. No they aren’t.

The District Court in San Francisco sentences former German consul general Franz Bopp and vice consul Baron E.H. von Schack, already in prison on sabotage charges, to 2 more years, with various sentences for a bunch of others, including “Hindus,” for conspiring to foment revolution against British rule in India, which is illegal in the US somehow.

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Today -100: April 30, 1918: Of POWs, gravel, dictatorships, and possible wars

Germany threatens to seize Petrograd if Russia doesn’t release German prisoners of war. Well, the ones in good health. The ones they can’t send back to the front can stay where they are, I guess.

Germany refuses to let the Netherlands tell it what it can and can’t do with that sand and gravel.

The Senate votes 63-13 for a bill which Woodrow Wilson demanded giving him the power to reorganize executive bureaus as he sees fit to deal with the war (although not to create new ones, which was in the earlier version). Sen. Warren G. Harding (R-Ohio) warns of dictatorship.

Uruguay again asks Germany if they’re at war. It never got an answer last time.

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Today -100: April 29, 1918: Of counter-revolutions, money slackers, sand and gravel, and killer bears

The rumors from Russia (via Sweden) say that the supposed counter-revolutionary revolt there will put in place a government under 13-year-old Tsar Alexei Nikolaevich that will disavow the treaty with Germany and resume the war. Other rumors say it’s Germany behind the revolt. If there even is a revolt.

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“Money slackers.”

The Netherlands gives in to the German ultimatum, allowing Germany to transport sand and gravel through their country, but not in unlimited quantities and only if Germany pinky-swears not to use it for military purposes (they’ll be using it to maintain Belgian roads so tanks and such can drive through to the front; does that count, Holland?).

In the Bronx Zoo, Russian bear Ivan kills Japanese black bear Lillian in front of a few hundred spectators.

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Today -100: April 28, 1918: Of tsars, assassins, hung juries and noble hands, nonsinking ships, the Solomon of the Essex Market Court, and unexpected attacks of common sense

A counter-revolution supposedly breaks out in Petrograd. It names Alexei Nikolaevich, the 13-year-old hemophilic former tsarevich, as the new True Tsar of All the Russias.

Gavrilo Prinzip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, dies in prison of tuberculosis at 23.

There’s a hung jury in the prosecution of Max Eastman and others associated with The Masses. The prosecutor vows to try again, right after he prosecutes Irish radical Jeremiah O’Leary for The Bull. Incidentally, the judge in this case is Augustus Noble Hand, who 15 years later will rule that James Joyce’s Ulysses is not obscene.

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“Guys, so I got this idea for improving our ships. Now, hear me out. What if they were... NON-sinking?”

A New York magistrate settles a case where babies may – or may not – have been switched in a hospital maternity ward last September. He asks everyone in the courtroom to weigh in on which baby looked like which parents, and then ordered the mothers to swap babies. “Mr. Leoniff said at his home yesterday afternoon that he did not believe that he had obtained his own baby, but on the other hand was not sure that the other baby was his.”

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The British food controller resigns because he worked so hard making sure people had food to eat that he forgot to eat. YOU HAD ONE JOB! He liked to boast that he could keep himself healthy on way less food than the rations he imposed on the nation. He was wrong and will die soon. And his daughter will try to take his seat in the House of Lords.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin was planning to come to the US to lobby Wilson against conscription being introduced into Ireland, but has cancelled. The NYT applauds this as “an unexpected attack of common sense.” It says Irish independence based on German support would be treason against “orderly freedom” and says Germany wants “a peace of annexations, national humiliation, and ruin”. Someone inform the Times that Ireland knows all about annexations, national humiliation and ruin. The paper threatens withdrawal of US support for Irish independence if the Irish choose to resist fighting Germany, so at least it realizes that British rule is a punishment.

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Today -100: April 27, 1918: Of enemy singers and breeders of spy work

Well this is annoying: some of the stories in this issue are only available to NYT subscribers. They’ll be the ones with “timesmachine” in the URL. Hopefully this won’t persist. (Update: it will. Fuck.)

The Metropolitan Opera fires 2 semi-principal singers and 18 of the chorus for being from Bad Countries.

Philadelphia Police Superintendent William Mills bans meetings conducted in German because they are “fertile ground for German propaganda and are breeders of spy work.”

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Today -100: April 26, 1918: Of tank battles, wool, drafts, and enemy languages

Now that Germany has tanks too, there is... wait for it... the first ever tank battle! Germany claims to have superior, faster tanks. Britain claims to have won this engagement.

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But not in, like, a creepy way.

A bill before Congress to start drafting men who have turned 21 since last June reverses for this cohort the exemption in the original draft law for medical and divinity students (provided a college president/dean recommended it).

Newspaper dealers in Harlem will boycott “enemy-language” newspapers.

Woodrow Wilson is resisting another attempt in Congress to declare war on Turkey. Supposedly his reason is to prevent a massacre of Americans (and the closing of US colleges and missions in Turkey).

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Today -100: April 25, 1918: Of gas, liberty cabbage, and hangmen

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Same.

Sauerkraut-mongers, whose product has not been selling well of late, are thinking about changing the name to “liberty cabbage.”

Hans Kordess, a German immigrant living in White Plains, New York, failed to register as an enemy alien. When the authorities caught up to him, he explained that it was because in Germany he was a town hangman and it’s illegal there to take his picture, so he assumed that was the case here too. It’s not.

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Today -100: April 24, 1918: Of conscription, quiet in the court, and gravel

Ireland’s one-day anti-conscription general strike passes off peacefully. It was observed almost 100% in Dublin and almost 0% in Northern Ireland.

The trial of 32 Indians in San Francisco for plotting revolution in India – I’m still not sure how that would violate US law – concludes with 29 convictions and 3 acquittals. Oh, also one defendant shoots another one to death in court and is then killed by a US marshal.

That German ultimatum to the Netherlands: they want to be able to send war material (and gravel) through Neth., using its canals and railroads. The US put Neth. in a bad position by seizing its ships and rejecting a plea not to use them in the war zone.

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Today -100: April 23, 1918: Of lynchings, gravel, disloyalists, and barons red

Romania will absorb Bessarabia (which used to be part of Russia).

A black man, Berry Noyes, accused of shooting a sheriff trying to arrest him for violating prohibition, is lynched in Lexington, Tennessee. Hanged and his body burned at the stake.

Germany has been trying to force the Netherlands into the war and to that end has been ramping up a dispute about gravel. Germany is said to have issued an ultimatum.

Woodrow Wilson writes to Congress to oppose a proposed law to try spies and disloyalists by court-martial, saying it’s unnecessary, unconstitutional, and would put us on the level of the fucking Germans. Sen. Chamberlain (D-Oregon) will withdraw it tomorrow.

German pilot Capt. Manfred von Richtofen, the Red Baron, is shot down and killed, possibly by another plane, possibly by ground fire, possibly by Snoopy. The Baron is officially credited with 80 aerial victories.

Guatemala declares war on Germany and the Germanettes.

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Today -100: April 22, 1918: Of conscription, dead generals, and horse

The British military takes over the Irish railroads, post office, and telephone, preparing to deal with the inevitable resistance to conscription. On Sunday (yesterday), Catholic priests and bishops administered the pledge (covenant, even) to resist conscription. Unions call a one-day general strike for tomorrow. Even saloons will close. And the electricity will be off in Dublin.

There are rumors that the anti-Bolshevik leaders Gen. Kornilov and Gen. Semyonov are dead. Yes on the former, hit by a shell, no on the latter.

French Minister of Provisions Victor Boret suggests saving on meat by having one meatless week per month. But you can eat horse, because it’s... classified as fruit, probably? Some of the horses being sold for food come from the British army.

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Today -100: April 21, 1918: Of cops, priests, brutal acts of tyranny and oppression, and symphonies

The federal government takes over the massively corrupt Philadelphia police dept in order to clean up vice to protect soldiers and sailors from themselves.

Today (Sunday) Catholic priests in Ireland will administer a pledge to resist conscription “by the most effective means at their disposal,” and while the priests are calling only for non-violent resistance, that wording is carefully phrased so as not to preclude other kinds of resistance.

55 Irish Nationalist MPs meet and agree to boycott Parliament and remain in Ireland to organize resistance. Conscription, they say, imposed “on a nation without its assent constitutes one of the most brutal acts of tyranny and oppression of which any Government can be guilty.”

Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (Classical) premiers in Petrograd, Prokofiev conducting.

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Today -100: April 20, 1918: Of ground, disloyalists, enemy aliens and spies

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“Yup, looks like dirt alright,” he says.

In Collinsville, Oklahoma, a mob hangs one Henry Rheimer, though not to death, for refusing orders from a Committee of Defense Council to fly a US flag every day for the rest of the war. Hang a flag or get hanged, I guess. Also, his son is a conscientious objector.

By the way, the article about that uses the word “disloyalist,” which, while the OED dates it to 1885, seems to be new to the US.

Under a new extension of the Espionage Act,  enemy alien women will now be treated equally (yay!) with enemy alien men (boo!). Required to register with the police, banned from docks, wharves, the District of Columbia, etc.

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That’s according to Norman White of the Secret Service, testifying before the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Actually, 20,000 is just an estimate of the number of aliens who have failed to register. White also says Germans are selling heroin to soldiers and sailors. He complains that spies keep being released on bail and fleeing to Mexico, or just going to ground.

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Today -100: April 19, 1918: What have I not done to preserve the world from these horrors?

Kaiser Wilhelm recently visited the front and remarked to an officer, “What have I not done to preserve the world from these horrors?” The officer’s reply is not recorded.

The British have succeeded in bringing together the Irish Nationalist Party, Sinn Fein, the Catholic bishops, and a bunch of other normally squabbling Irish factions – in opposition to conscription being introduced into Ireland. Nationalist MPs will join in the boycott of the Westminster Parliament already practiced by Sinn Feiners.

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Today -100: April 18, 1918: Chuckling Germans are especially irritating

Count Stephan Burián is brought back as Austrian foreign minister.

Hackensack, NJ bans German-language newspapers “because they were a source of irritation, particularly when some German resident was observed to be chuckling at something he was reading.”

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