Today -100: June 8, 1918: Nothing more ominous than a German laughing

Headline of the Day -100: 

And in other war propaganda news:

But did they laugh?

Rep. Henry Rainey (D-Ill), the speaker of the House in the 1930s, asserts darkly that a German – well, naturalized US citizen Charles Engelhard Sr. – controls 80% of the US’s platinum supply, and “modern wars cannot be fought without platinum.”

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Today -100: June 7, 1918: So there’s a department?

British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is visiting the US, drumming up support for the war and talking shit about the Bolsheviks. She spent a few days in Russia last year, between the two revolutions, and is therefore an expert. She says that women of Russia are all now considered public property, forced to register at 18 with the free love department, and so on.

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Today -100: June 6, 1918: Force is the one way to end Prussianism

Headline of the Day -100: 

Boy, the French, it’s just sex sex sex with them.

Secretary of State Robert Lansing, speaking at Columbia U., says the 2 greatest obstacles to be overcome in the war are unconstructive criticism (which is “unpatriotic and un-American”) and suggestions of peace that allow “Prussianism” to continue.  “Force is the one way to end Prussianism, for it is the only thing which the Prussian respects.”

Priv. Philip Grossner is court-martialed for making “disloyal remarks” and sentenced to 30 years.

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Today -100: June 5, 1918: Of street lights, our present interest in democracy, and Poland

New York will order the street lighting reduced on certain streets to reduce the ability of German bombers launched at night from submarines (which is not a thing) to identify from the air streets with more lighting, such as 5th Avenue and Broadway, and thus figure out where bombing targets are located.

Woodrow Wilson telegrams the Louisiana Legislature, urging it to adopt women’s suffrage (this is at the state level, not the federal amendment). He says it is of “worldwide significance... affording a standard by which to judge our present interest in the complete establishment of democracy.”

Charles Warren Fairbanks, Theodore Roosevelt’s vice president and Charles Evans Hughes’s reluctant running mate in 1916, dies.

The German Reichstag is working on a bill to create army units of convicts.

The primes minister of Britain, France and Italy agree that the creation of a unified independent Polish state is now one of their goals. They also “note with satisfaction” US Secretary of State Lansing’s declaration in favor of the national aspirations of the Czechs and Jugoslavs. It’s impressive how fast the latter term has come into common usage.

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Today -100: June 4, 1918: Of secret treaties

A Swedish newspaper claims there is a secret treaty between Germany and the Finnish government, secret even from the Finnish Diet, to establish a monarchy under one of Germany’s many spare princelings, and for Germany to control Finland’s army.

I don’t think there was actually a secret treaty, though Finnish conservatives did install Frederick Charles of Hesse, Kaiser Wilhelm’s brother-in-law, as king late in the war – it didn’t last long.

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Today -100: June 3, 1918: Of crucifixions, ice, and the music of conquest

Herbert Pratt, VP of Standard Oil of New York, just back from doing something or other for the YMCA in France – ensuring that they had tobacco to sell soldiers I think – says he keeps hearing that German soldiers crucified 2 American soldiers and decapitated a bunch more. He’s sure these stories are true because he heard them several times from soldiers who knew a guy who knew a guy who’d seen the bodies. It’s nice to see fake atrocity stories from early in the war being recycled for gullible Americans.

Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration is doing a survey of ice throughout the country.

The first Pulitzer Prize for drama goes to Jesse Lynch Williams for “Why Marry?”

The Los Angeles Board of Education withdraws 3,000 copies of its “Elementary Song Book” because it has too much German music (Brahms, Schubert, Handel’s “Joy to the World,” a Bavarian yodel – you know, pro-German propaganda like that). Superintendent Albert Shiels orders a purge of “any poem, musical selection, illustration, or other reference complimenting the civilization of Germany, the rulers or officials of that country.” The LA Times (June 18th) approves: “German music, as a whole, is dangerous in that it preaches the same philosophy, or, rather sophistry, as most of the German literature. It is the music of conquest, the music of the storm, of disorder and devastation. It is symbolical of neither the sunbeams singing among the daisies nor of grand cathedral bells calling worshipers to prayer. It is rather a combination of the howl of the cave man and the roaring of the north winds.” Well, the yodel maybe.

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Today -100: June 2, 1918: Of women’s suffrage, unwritten laws, and aces

The Hungarian parliament rejects women’s suffrage.

A jury takes 45 whole minutes to acquit the 11 men charged with the lynching of Robert Prager near Collinsville, Illinois in April. Their lawyer told the jury that the war had created a new “unwritten law” in which it is now ok for mobs to murder people they suspect of disloyalty.

The US has its first (more or less) “ace,” a pilot who shoots down 5 enemy planes, Lt. Douglas Campbell. He will later be the general manager of Pan-Am.

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Today -100: June 1, 1918: Why the long gas mask?

The US War Department is making gas masks for horses.

Chemical Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany is rumored to be dropping poison gas on whole villages in Ukraine, killing everyone in them.

Ahead of implementation of NY’s anti-loafing law, the police are drawing up lists of people in non-productive professions, including

Fashion of the Day -100:

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Today -100: May 31, 1918: America does not want to win this war on points

Theodore Roosevelt’s Memorial Day speech: “America does not want to win this war on points, we want a knockout.”

Lady Randolph Churchill, aka Jennie, aka Winston’s mother, will remarry tomorrow. She is 64 and Montagu Phippen Porch (known as “Porchy,” as though you could possibly improve on Montagu Phippen Porch),  an officer in the colonial government of various African colonies, is 41, younger than Winston by 3 years.

And Margaret Vanderbilt, widow of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt of the rich-as-fuck Vanderbilts, who died on (or, um, near) the Lusitania, will also remarry, to Raymond Baker, director of the US Mint and former warden of the Nevada State Prison.

In Britain, the Maud Allan libel suit against MP Noel Pemberton Billing for his article about the 47,000 perverts being blackmailed by the German government began in April but now reaches the NYT for the first time. I covered this in February when Pemberton Billing published “The Cult of the Clitoris.” The NYT manages to avoid using the word clitoris, because the NYT is no fun.

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Today -100: May 30, 1918: This great city is unwilling to endure any longer their language

Headline of the Day -100: 

Although I prefer the version in the NYT index:

If the food situation in Germany is bad, it’s even worse in the ethnic-German parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where they blame the Slavic regions of the Empire for not sending food.

The NYC Board of Education votes unanimously to have no more classes in beginning German for the duration of the war. They say that with the “best” American teachers now being so anti-German that they can’t teach the course with enthusiasm, it would be left in the hands of German-born teachers, which would interfere with the teaching of “Americanism” to the pupils [As atrocious as current political language is, I am thankful not to have to hear the word Americanism repeated ad nauseum]. Abolishing the teaching of German will make a dent in the spread of Pan-Germanism “by shaking possibly the morale of the German people as they come to realize that this great city was unwilling to endure any longer their language, and that it desired thus to break off more completely the possibility of intimate relations with them through the medium of language.” Interpretive dance is quite another matter.

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Today -100: May 29, 1918: Insidious German Plot of the Day

William Guggenheim of the American Defense Society (and one of the lesser members of the mining/museum family) says that before the US entered the war, German agents bought up all the black walnut wood necessary to make airplane propellers.

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Today -100: May 28, 1918: Politics is adjourned

Former Congresscritter Charles Lindbergh, grandfather of the Lindbergh Baby, can’t find a hall in Duluth willing to rent him space for a rally for his gubernatorial bid, presumably because of his opposition to the war.

Yesterday there was a story which I didn’t bother passing on about a soldier whose Bible stopped a bullet. But this...

Pres. Wilson shows up unexpectedly at Congress, as was his custom, and gives a speech asking for more war taxes, especially on war profits, incomes & luxuries, to be voted on this session rather than after the November elections. Congress doesn’t want to do that because, you know, DC in summer without air-conditioning, but, says Wilson, “Politics is adjourned.”

One tax the US doesn’t like: Mexico’s new tax on oil, which the Wilson administration claims amounts to confiscating the property of US businesses without due process.

Draft Dodger of the Day -100:

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Today -100: May 27, 1918: Oh the infectious humanity!

Rumor of the Day -100:

This replaces the recent rumor that he is in fact dead.

Headline of the Day -100:  

You had one job!

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Today -100: May 26, 1918: Of insidious German plots and loafing

The British are claiming that the Germans planned an uprising in Ireland, to start around the time the spring offensive succeeded. They’d establish u-boat bases in Ireland and... oh c’mon, who’s falling for this crap?

Secretary of War Newton Baker says the anti-loafing order is not intended to bring all of labor under military control. A likely story. He also says that it’s not supposed to apply to people on strike.

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Today -100: May 25, 1918: Of declarations of war, women’s suffrage, and wheat

Costa Rica declares war on the Central Powers (but won’t actually do any war stuff).  However the current CR government was put in place by a military coup last year and is not recognized by the US, so it won’t be represented at the Versailles peace talks and will technically still be at war until after World War II.

Canada extends the vote in federal elections to women of British or Canadian citizenship over 21, except in Quebec, where women won't have the vote until 1940. Also not included: women banned from voting by the provinces because of race (Chinese in Saskatchewan, all Asians in British Columbia until 1948), Inuits or First Nations women.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Thompson Restaurant (one of a chain) says it mostly serves sandwiches and pastries, so, you know, wheat, and it’s following all governmental guidelines.

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Today -100: May 24, 1918: No Government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people

A Mrs. Rose Pastor Stokes is convicted in federal court for writing a letter to the Kansas City Star saying, “No Government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people, and I am for the people, while the Government is for the profiteers.” The judge instructed the jury: “Anything which lowers the morale of our forces, which serves to chill enthusiasm, extinguish confidence, and retard cooperation, may very well cause insubordination, disloyalty, or mutiny.”

The House of Representatives adopts a provision to force the president to ban the production of beer and wine.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin wants to come to the US to see Pres. Wilson but the British government is demanding that he submit any documents he intends to bring with him for their approval or they will refuse him a passport. He may have planned to demand that the future League of Nations deal with the Irish question.

The federal government plans to take the “anti-loafing” laws adopted by several states national, or at least ask all the states to force young men to do useful work or go into the military. Jobs the government considers not useful include race track attendants, clairvoyants, waiters, elevator operators, servants, and sales clerks. Secretary of War Newton Baker refuses to say whether professional baseball players will be spared.

A black man is lynched in Georgia.

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Today -100: May 23, 1918: Stormy waves of imperialistic reaction are broken one against another

Rumors keep cropping up that deposed Russian Prime Minister Kerensky is about to arrive in New York, which keep not being true (although he is in fact in the process of sneaking out of Russia). Rich Russian exiles rent a brownstone for him on Riverside Drive. It sounds nice.

Lenin tells the Central Executive Committee, “The situation is that stormy waves of imperialistic reaction, which seem ready any moment to drown the little island of the Socialist Soviet Republic, are broken one against another.” But he warns that Russia may not remain safe, as the bourgeoisie of Germany, the US, Japan etc “have a common interest in dividing up the globe.” So Russia needs a proper army. This will come when the peasant soldiers return home and realize they now have something to defend.

France, Britain, Italy and the UK reject the German-Romanian peace deal.

Austria will try to divide (and conquer) the Czechs by creating 12 decentralized provinces in Bohemia to “take the first step towards the reestablishment of order in Bohemia.” The plan is to give the ethnic German minority electoral and other power way out of disproportion to its numbers. Austria may also later create a “German Bohemia.” This is not just about subjugating Bohemia, but rigging elections to ensure a German majority in the federal parliament (Reichsrath), where Czechs, Croats, Poles, Ruthenians etc are increasingly working together.

The Federation of Russian Associations of America, a recently formed group, will ask Pres. Wilson for permission to send Russian volunteers into Russia to fight Germany and, too, also, the Bolsheviks.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Enemy cotton is the worst kind of cotton.

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Today -100: May 22, 1918: Of railroads, suppressing all things German, monarchies, and insidious German plots

The Wilson administration fires the presidents of all the railroads. It may rehire them (at a lower salary) as government employees, following government orders only.

Mrs. Oliver Cromwell Field, chair of the American Defense Society's Committee for Suppressing All Things German, fails to persuade NYC Mayor Hylan to ban all German newspapers.

Headline of the Day -100: 

New Finnish dictator Pehr Evind Svinhufvud says what the country really needs is a constitutional monarchy. He does not mean himself.

Austria bans correspondence in Hebrew.

The US government leaks that German agents are inciting Irish people in the US. Also Finns. And Lithuanians. And negroes. The US evidently provided the British with some of the intel they used in the mass arrest of Sinn Feiners this week.

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Today -100: May 21, 1918: Of dictators, air mail, and cops

Headline of the Day -100: 

Pehr Evind Svinhufvud (pronounced exactly like it’s spelled, probably). With German backing. 

Yet another air mail mishap. A plane on the DC-Philly leg snaps a propeller when landing for gas, tries to resume anyway, develops engine trouble, flips upside down and is badly damaged on landing (the pilot is ok).

An NYPD patrolman who was originally born in Germany is suspended for refusing to put Red Cross placards on doorknobs during his patrol.

The NYPD will add 12 women police officers to the current 5. They’ll have guns and badges and everything. I don’t know if this is the first time women cops are given guns.

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Today -100: May 20, 1918: Of regime changes, mass arrests, lynchings, and side deals

A curious NYT article says that certain unnamed people in Washington think Russia can be brought back into the war. Of course it would involve overthrowing the Bolsheviks first.

The Chief Secretary of Ireland, Edward Shortt, tells an American reporter that he didn’t have all those Sinn Fein leaders arrested because of home rule or conscription, it’s just about the German plot that totally exists to start a rebellion and maybe land some soldiers to help.

Four negroes are lynched, in separate incidents, in Valdosta, Georgia, in connection with the home invasion and murder of a white farmer.

The new Entente treaty may (or may not) include the deal made between Italy and the “Jugoslavs” to create a nation of Yugoslavia (yes, I’m going to have to figure out how I want to handle the J/Y thing) combining Serbia with the Croatian and Slovenian bits of the Austrian Empire.

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