Today -100: July 10, 1918: Of social revolutionaries and searching for the true assassins

Some of the people arrested by the Bolsheviks for alleged participation in this week’s revolt were Social Revolutionary party members of Kerensky’s old cabinet, including assistant war minister Boris Savinkov and interior minister Irakli Tseretelli. ...aaaaand a little more research suggests that none of these people were actually arrested.

With the killers of German ambassador to Russia Count Wilhelm von Mirbach uncaught, Germany is blaming England, based on no evidence (although some German papers are claiming that Mirbach was so well-loved in Russia that they must have been paid by foreigners, that’s just science).

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Today -100: July 9, 1918: It would appear that the government wishes to know the extreme limits of the people’s endurance

The Bolsheviks rather easily defeat a counter-revolution in Moscow, if something organized by the “Left Social-Revolutionary Party” can properly be called a counter-revolution, which was timed to coincide with the assassination of the German ambassador. Chief Moscow Military Commissar Semyon Aralov issues a communique: “I beg to announce that the mutiny was caused by a group of cheeky fools, and was suppressed without difficulty by the Moscow garrison.” The SRs are now fucked.

Trotsky has been calling for universal conscription, but says the bourgeois can’t be trusted with actual fighting, so it’ll be trench-digging for them. It’ll be fun to see how the government defines proletariat/bourg.

The Allies, including the US, are working out how to “help” or “aid” Russia, which is the way everyone’s referring to sending a “commission” and a bunch of soldiers, to help/aid the Russian people if not necessarily the de facto Russian government.  Other phrases used in this article to describe the proposed military intervention: “encourage the Russian people to re-establish their nationality,” “leaving to the Russian people to carry out the program of regeneration which the Allies will initiate and support,” “bring back Russia, economically and politically, into the sisterhood of nations,” “the peaceful penetration of Siberia”...

The Berlin potato ration, reduced last week from 7 pounds per person to 3, is again reduced, to 1, not that it matters since there are none available. Meatless weeks will begin in August. In the Reichstag, one deputy objects to any food being sent to Austria, and a socialist deputy says “It would appear that the government wishes to know the extreme limits of the people’s endurance.”

Field Marshal Hindenburg calls for 1 million more men. There aren’t 1 million more men available, so they’ll be drafting 16-year-olds, as well as prisoners, foreigners etc.

Edward Rumely, publisher of the New York Evening Mail, is arrested for perjury for telling the government his paper is American-owned. The government claims the German government really owns it.

Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels tells a YMCA rally at Carnegie Hall that the war is to make the world safe not just  for democracy but for Christian civilization.

Two trains crash into each other, head on, near Nashville, killing 101 or more people, which is a record still unbroken in the US. In part, this was due to the passenger cars being made of wood rather than steel. Most of the victims were black workers traveling to work at a gunpowder factory.

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Today -100: July 8, 1918: Of murmen, political maneuvers to provoke trouble, ardor, and draft evaders

The Murman Coast and its population of half-men-half-fish secedes from Russia to join the Entente.

Lenin condemns the assassination of German Ambassador Count Wilhelm von Mirbach, calling it “a political maneuver to provoke trouble.” For some reason he says the assassination involved a bomb, and yesterday’s report mentioned grenades. Nope, just ordinary garden-variety guns.

Headline of the Day -100: 

A gun battle between a sheriff and his deputies and some draft evaders in the woods of Arkansas leaves 3 dead, but 30 or so armed resisters escaped. The governor is sending troops and machine guns.

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Today -100: July 7, 1918: It’s like he wasn’t even paying attention to the stewardess

Headline of the Day -100: 

Not as salacious as they make it sound. NY’s former Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, training as a pilot, forgets to fasten his seat-belt and falls out of his plane. He was 38.

Prussia’s Diet’s lower house passes a half-hearted reform of the 3-tiered franchise system, giving equal votes to all men 25 and older but with residency requirements designed to suppress the working-class vote.

Count Wilhelm von Mirbach, the German ambassador to Russia, is assassinated at the German embassy in Moscow by two unknown men. They are, in fact, members of the Left Social Revolutionary Party, assisted, maybe? by Cheka chief Felix Dzerzhinsky, part of a Left SR plan to restart the war between Germany and Russia and seize power from the Bolsheviks. Yakov Blumkin, the chief assassin, will go on to do all sorts of exciting secret agent stuff before being executed on Stalin’s orders in 1929, as was the custom.

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Today -100: July 6, 1918: Of sultans, frogs, budgets, executions, dry virgins, and prayers

Mohammed V, Ottoman Sultan, dies at 73. One could be forgiven for having forgotten that Turkey still has a sultan. There are rumors that he was murdered, as was the custom. Next up: Mohammed VI, Five’s brother.

Yarn of the Day -100:

At the battle of the Chemin des Dames (May 27), Mr Prince says, the croaking of millions of mating frogs covered up the sound of the Germans moving into position, then made it impossible for the French to gauge the position of their machine guns. This story seems to be true.

Philipp Scheidemann, leader of the German Social Democratic Party, says the SPD won’t vote for any more budgets until the government states its peace terms.

Headline of the Day -100:  

3 black soldiers who supposedly sexually assaulted a white 17-year-old. Everyone is ordered to watch. Is that the case when white soldiers are executed?

Rep. Jeanette Rankin of Montana announces that she will run for Senate. The article doesn’t say, but I believe this is because her chances for re-election to the House dropped significantly when the state Legislature finally got off its ass and divided the state into two congressional districts – when she was elected last time, everyone could vote for 2 people for the 2 at-large seats, which helped her.

Headline of the Day -100:  

There’s a joke in there somewhere.

The US Senate passes a resolution asking Pres. Wilson to call on the American people to observe a prayer every day at noon for the rest of the war.

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Today -100: July 5, 1918: Of strange trappings and primitive authority, crappy Christmases, and gas

Headline of the Day -100: 

At a 4th of July thing, he says we must eliminate “governments clothed with strange trappings and the primitive authority of an age that is altogether alien and hostile to our own.”

The National Council of Defense has suggested that gifts not be given this Christmas, just cards and letters, because there’s a war on. The National Retail Dry Goods Association is not best pleased.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 4, 1918: Of big armies, pogroms, pitchforks, and sox

The US Army now has more than 2 million men.

Austria: there are anti-Semitic riots in several Galician towns. And the state (ok, duchy) of Styria is under martial law due to mutiny and desertion.

Sen. (and former governor) Benjamin Tillman (D-SC) dies at 70. Pitchfork Ben (the nickname is from an election speech in 1894 in which he promised to stick a pitchfork in Pres. Cleveland’s “fat old ribs”) is best remembered as a virulently racist piece of shit.

Sports Headline of the Day -100:

In fact, he plans to play a game in the Delaware River Shipbuilding League. The Sox are threatening an injunction. I believe what’s going on here is that he has acquired, or will acquire, a no-show factory job to keep him out of the draft.

It’s July 4th and I did a baseball story. I feel so cheap.

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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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