Today -100: July 3, 1918: Of influenza and polar bears

Passengers on a ship arriving from Spain are fumigated. “Spanish” flu, you know.

The Ausburg Abendzeitung reports what it says are the terms agreed between the Central Powers on the future of Poland. Its borders will be set by the German military according to military necessity. Its army will be restricted to 90,000. Most favored nation status for Germany & Austria for 50 years. In any locality where there are 10 German children a German school will be established. An elective monarchy. Any change in the constitution requires approval by the Central Powers.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: July 2, 1918: Of secret fictional treaties, supreme representatives, and adoptions

Russia denies the rumor that there’s a secret treaty with Germany giving Poland to Germany.

Headline of the Day -100: 

France recognizes the Czech National Council as the “supreme representative of the future Czechoslovak Government” in a letter to Edvard Beneš.

Vice President Thomas Marshall and wife Lois “adopt” a baby from parents who can’t afford his medical treatment. He will die at 3.

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Today -100: July 1, 1918: Of buried princes and opposing the cause of the United States by words

Four-time Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs is arrested for making a speech the government didn’t like. There are believed to be 10 charges against him under the Espionage Act, including “opposing the cause of the United States by words.” The “cause” of the United States evidently doesn’t include free speech. Simultaneously, the Socialist Party in Indiana’s 5th congressional district nominates Debs for Congress (Debs will decline).

Kaiser Wilhelm tells his forces not to bombard the Mont des Cats monastery because its prior is the only person who knows where Prince Max of Hesse (d.1914) is buried and he won’t say where until Belgium is evacuated.

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Today -100: June 30, 1918: A series of tubes

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: German newspapers have been down-playing the size of the US army in Europe. Some are saying the US build-up is actually directed against... Mexico. Which did after all just increase taxes on US oil companies. They’re also saying that Theodore Roosevelt will lead an army of US, Japanese and Chinese soldiers into Siberia.

Woodrow Wilson vetoes the Post Office appropriation bill because it includes funding for the pneumatic tube systems in New York and other large cities, which Wilson says he wants killed because they are “obsolete” and because “I have no whimsy in may soul.”

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Today -100: June 29, 1918: So who’s the new worst woman on earth?

Headline of the Day -100: 

Yup, Moscow taken (by Kornilov and Kaledine with German support) and new czar named are definitely things that totally happened. Also, Lenin and Trotsky have totally fled. Grand Duke Nicholas, by the way, is totally the new czar. This all according to German sources, although scepticism is expressed by “a well-known Russian diplomat.” Way to fact-check, 1918 New York Times. Or indeed the Wolff news bureau in Berlin, which says Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch is leading the anti-Bolshevik movement but won’t take the throne until confirmed by an All-Russian assembly. Actually Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch was killed a couple of weeks ago without ever having escaped his imprisonment, much less led anything, but this news hasn’t leaked out yet.

Pan-Germans have plans to “solve” Alsace-Lorraine by ending its regional government and attaching it to Prussia. In the meantime, the army has told the A-L parliament that it can’t discuss autonomy, even in closed session. Evidently there’s a list of subjects it’s not allowed to talk about.

When the war started, most Parisian renters just stopped paying rent because no one had any money. This was especially hard on landlords, and it would take a heart of stone to read about landlords reduced to working as scrub women for their own tenants without laughing. Anyway, under a new law, on July 15th renters in Paris are supposed to start paying rent again (although back rent is still up in the air). 

Lizzie Halliday, the “worst woman on earth,” dies. In her time, she married 6 or 7 older men, stole from some of them, killed or tried to kill others of them as well as several other people (including a nurse in the asylum to which she was ultimately committed), and burned a bunch of shit down. The NYT gives her death count as 5 but it’s certainly higher, possibly including a first husband in Belfast before she emigrated.

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Today -100: June 28, 1918: Of Spanish flu, abysses of annihilation, and pushes

The US War Dept says there is no influenza in the army. The US War Dept is so wrong.

More false reports that Czar Nicholas is dead, this time shot after a trial. And that the ex-tsarevich is also dead.

The British Labour Party’s annual convention has a surprise guest:  Alexander Kerensky. He says the Russian people won’t recognize the Brest-Litovsk Treaty “which has hurled Russia into the abyss of annihilation.” He doesn’t think too much of the Bolshevik government either. He wants military intervention by the Allies, but all of them.  Next stop: America. (Update: all right, France, then Britain again, then America).

German soldiers are being told that there will be another One Last Big Push in August. It is unclear whether this is really a thing, or something to keep morale up.

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Today -100: June 27, 1918: Of train crashes, flu, and the fall of New York

A troop train (empty) crashes into a circus train (quite full) near Gary, Indiana, killing 85 people, because the engineer fell asleep. Naturally, the feds are investigating whether he was drugged by a German agent. The engineer is being charged with involuntary manslaughter.

German Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann told the Reichstag a couple of days ago that Russia was most responsible for starting the war, followed by France, followed by England (I don’t believe Germany and Austria, or Serbia if it comes to that, even made his list). This has pissed off the Pan-Germans no end, because it’s obvious that perfidious Albion is the most responsible, that’s just science. Also, Kühlmann suggested that the war would end with negotiations, not a triumphant military victory.

“Spanish influenza” is “raging” in the German army. This may be the first reference to Spanish Flu in the NYT.

German POWs say they were told that Germany had landed troops in the US and captured New York City.

Just to be clear, that didn’t happen.

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Today -100: June 26, 1918: Mark your calendar

The NYT reports (on the front page) that a Danish newspaper quotes a Russian newspaper which has it for a fact that ex-Czar Nicholas has been murdered by Red Guards because Czech troops in Siberia were planning to free him. No.

Evidently Germany has been telling its soldiers that the war will end on July 18th. Which could be a problem if it isn’t and soldiers refuse to continue fighting on the 19th.

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Today -100: June 25, 1918: Of strikes, cabinets, and Irish battalions

Factory workers in Vienna strike for peace.

The Austrian cabinet has resigned, but the emperor may not accept.

Arthur Lynch, Irish Nationalist MP for West Clare, is now a colonel and will raise an Irish battalion. He has experience in this, having raised an Irish unit during the Boer War to fight on the Boer side (where he was also a colonel). The British later tried him for treason and sentenced him to death, and now he’s an MP, which must be quite the emotional rollercoaster.

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Today -100: June 24, 1918: Of cold negroes and Russian propagandists

Headline of the Day -100: 

The NYT suggests sending Russian volunteers presently in the US into Russia to organize anti-German propaganda. Not anti-Bolshevik propaganda, it says, just anti-German. They can speak to the Russians on their own terms, and would be better than newspapers, which the Russians mostly can’t read.

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Today -100: June 23, 1918: We shall see whether I can build anything but automobiles, tractors, and ships

Germany will seize restaurants’ & hotels’ tablecloths and napkins, because there’s a war on.

The mayor (burgomaster) of Vienna appeals to Germany’s Gen. Ludendorff for food aid. Ludendorff says no.

Henry Ford unveils what I can only assume is his campaign slogan for his Senate race: “We shall see whether I can build anything but automobiles, tractors, and ships.”

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Today -100: June 22, 1918: Of non-productive baseball, manhood, and anarchists

The US Army clarifies which professions are considered “non-productive” and thus subject to the draft, and yes it does seem that professional baseball players are non-productive. Clerks and store salesmen are non-productive, but store managers and traveling salesmen are not.

Court Case of the Day -100:

William Bergh regains custody of his 3 sons because his wife taught them to play with dolls and teddy bears. Bergh told the court, “Her conduct, while intended to be motherly, has been such as to absolutely disqualify them from developing into manhood.”

The House votes unanimously to allow deportation without hearing of “anarchists.”

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Today -100: June 21, 1918: Think of the white bread you may win for all

The NYT advances a theory that the Hindenburg offensive failed because some of the troops were diverted by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria so he could share in the glory.

The AP is calling the (failed) Austrian drive against Italy a “hunger offensive,” citing a regimental commander’s address, found on a POW: “Soldiers, remember the spoils we got last Fall from the Italians: the sheep, cows, steers, warehouses full of good clothes and grocery stores full of wines, canned gods [sic!], flour and sugar. Think of your family. Think of the white bread you may win for all.” Italians are claiming they can get Austrian troops to surrender by promising them a meal.

The Temps (Paris) claims that the peace treaty with Romania gives Germany/Austria the right to purchase all of Romania’s oil and agriculture and for all Romanian males 14 to 60 to do forced labor for Germany.

Earl Curzon, a member of the British War Cabinet, says the alleged Sinn Fein plot Changes Everything, and the government will now drop Home Rule because going ahead under these circumstances “would almost amount to a crime.” Another reason he gives is the Irish Catholic clergy’s opposition to conscription, which puts them in opposition to imperial supremacy. I’m not sure I follow the logic. Curzon says the Sinn Feiners won’t be put on trial because that would expose how the government discovered their treasonous conspiracy, which totally exists and isn’t a made-up excuse to ditch the government’s promises to the Irish people.

Rioting in Vienna in response to the reduced bread ration. Bakeries are broken into (the Viennese love their bakeries) and the emperor’s Hofburg Palace stoned.

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Today -100: June 20, 1918: Hungry and clamoring

Headline of the Day -100:

I can’t figure out if “Hungry Austrians” is an intentional play on Austro-Hungarians or not. Anyway, Vienna City Council protests against the bread ration being cut in half. The Austrian prime minister has been telling people that the short rationing won’t be for long because Germany will send food soon. Germany is telling everyone it has no food to send. The conquest of Ukraine has not turned out to be the opening of a cornucopia that was promised.

The price of bread in Germany is being increased to 5 pfennigs a pound (increased from what, the NYT fails to say; 1918 NYT sucks at this sort of thing).

Hungry-Austrian Emperor Charles really wants the Austrian army to get sole credit for accomplishing... something, anything... in the offensive against Italy, and is therefore holding off on asking Germany to help now that it’s gone pear-shaped.

Former Bulgarian prime minister Aleksandar Malinov is given that job again. In 1915 he opposed Bulgaria entering the war on Germany’s side, so it is (correctly) suspected that he has been appointed now in order to extricate the country from the war. The pro-German prime minister Vasil Radoslavov, who resigned last week, was widely blamed for the failure to extract more territory from Romania in the peace treaty.

The US will allow Mexicans into the country to work to deal with labor shortages, without the usual head tax and literacy test. Some of their wages will only be available to them when/if they leave the country at the end of the war, although I’m guessing, based on what I know happened with later bracero programs, that they never actually saw that money.

In response to the Supreme Court decision invalidating the Keating-Owen child labor law, Sen. William Kenyon (R-Iowa), who was one of its co-sponsors, introduces a bill to bar child-labor employers from using the US mails.

Germany has heard, whether correctly or incorrectly I do not know, that 10,000 Germans have been expelled from China and interned in Australia. It is threatening to take 10,000 French people hostage until the Germans are returned to China.

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Today -100: June 19, 1918: Wherein is revealed what is in question

Just as Allied politicians have increasingly been describing their war goal as destroying the world-view “Prussianism,” Kaiser Wilhelm in a speech on the 30th anniversary of his ascending the imperial throne speaks about a conflict between the German and Anglo-Saxon weltanschauungen: “Either German principles of right, freedom, honor, and morality must be upheld, or Anglo-Saxon principles with their idolatry of mammon must be victorious. ... we shall gain victory – the victory of the German standpoint. That is what is in question.” The Anglo-Saxons intend, he says, to reduce all other races to their slaves.

(Note: the NYT has screwed up the skip on that story. The rest is on the second page here.)

Edward Cornplanter, Chief of the Senecas, dies, killed by flu (the pandemic, which by the way hasn’t been noticed by the NYT yet) along with much of his family; “although educated, [he] believed in a restoration of pagan customs.”

Kenelm Chase Winslow, in prison for strangling his girlfriend, asks for clemency so he can join the army. NY Gov. Whitman refuses, saying the army is no place for murderers. All right, he says criminals, but still.

The Soviet Central Committee ousts every non-Bolshevik party and demands a similar purge by local soviets. Evidently the Social Revolutionaries, Kadets, Mensheviks, etc are all organizing a revolt against the workers and peasants in conjunction with the counter-revolutionaries.

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Today -100: June 18, 1918: Not everyone wants to shoot people, apparently

Austria is supposedly putting all its Slavic troops at the front of the front, with Tyrolese troops behind them, to prevent mass desertions.

Secretary of War Newton Baker approves sentences of up to 20 years imposed on 12 privates who refuse to fight against Germany and Austria, where they have relatives. He also wants them deported after the war.

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Today -100: June 17, 1918: Of gas duels, cooties, and debseses

Headline of the Day -100: 

Is this the first US use of gas warfare?

Headline of the Day -100: 

In which the NYT’s war correspondent describes the de-lousing of American soldiers in France (conditions in the trenches during the Great War gave the English language the words “cooties” and “lousy”). Don’t know what “grough” is; possibly a typo for grouch.

Eugene Debs, in a speech in Canton, Ohio which will get him imprisoned, says the war is a cover for Junkerism in the US and for plunder in Europe.

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Today -100: June 16, 1918: Hammer, meet child factory worker

The Supreme Court rules 5-4 in Hammer v. Dagenhart that the Keating-Owen Act of 1916 banning products from interstate commerce if they are produced by child labor (13 years and under, or by 14-16 year olds if they worked more than 8 hours a day) is unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment. There’s some bad legal logic at play here, since the Court does allow the banning of interstate commerce in booze or gambling or prostitution but says that these products are inherently immoral whereas cotton, the product at issue in this case, is not, even if produced by children. The Court will reverse this decision in 1941.

Headline of the Day -100: 

As opposed to the generals of every other army?

The Senate votes to ban D.C. schools teaching German.

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Today -100: June 15, 1918: Of nickel-plated cars, meatless Bavarians, and ambassadors

Former Michigan Governor Chase Osborn (R) says Henry Ford’s candidacy for the US Senate might be illegal, although he’s not clear on what grounds – something to do with his Peace Ship in 1915? Osborn says Ford is dangerous because of his wealth and former pacifism, doesn’t pay his workers enough, took out “hysterical advertising” in support of Wilson’s re-election, and when Osborn was governor Ford offered him a free nickel-plated car. “His offer was in bad taste, and I was disgusted with him and have had no use for him since that episode.” In other words, Osborn will also be running for the Senate seat.

Bavaria will implement meatless weeks.

The US Justice Department arrests Cornelius Lehane, the “ambassador” of the self-proclaimed Irish Republic for circulating treasonable literature. Treasonable to whom is not immediately clear.

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Today -100: June 14, 1918: Better at gas!

Carl Alsberg, head of the Bureau of Chemistry, tells the Senate Agriculture Committee that the Allies are now better at gas warfare than the Germans. The US will start making mustard gas soon.

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