Today -100: September 8, 1918: Of Junker trickery, gum, and dead Lenins

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Oh no, not moderate ideas!

Novelist Gertrude Atherton writes to the NYT imploring Herbert Hoover to ban chewing gum from being sent to US soldiers in Europe. She fears that the French are already picking up the horrid habit.

“Travelers” arriving in Sweden from Moscow say Lenin is definitely dead.

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Today -100: September 7, 1918: Why does the enemy incite colored people against the German soldiers?

Xu Shichang is elected president of China.  He will spend the next 4 years trying to balance various warlords off against each other.

Columbia, NYU, City College of NY, along with many other colleges, plan to cease to be academic institutions and exist purely for military training.

The Food Administration orders all breweries to shut down on December 1st.

The NYT interviews Maj. Gen. William Luther Sibert, the Director of Chemical Warfare – and wow, you’d think they’d use a euphemism but no, it’s just straight-up Director of Chemical Warfare – bragging about mustard gas and the quality of American gas masks.

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg issues an address to the German people saying that Entente planes have been dropping pamphlets containing “most insane rumors,” such as that Germany is losing the war. “Why,” asks Mr. von H, “does the enemy incite colored people against the German soldiers? Because he wants to annihilate us.”

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Today -100: September 6, 1918: Of roundups, dead Romanovs, pacifists, Zionists, and daddies

Some senators are pissed at the “slacker roundups,” pointing out that fewer than 1% of those arrested were actual draft dodgers. They’re asking who is responsible for soldiers and sailors being used to seize Americans off the streets of American cities.

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It’s on page 13, which is what you do when you don’t really believe the rumor but you’re printing it anyway because what the hell.

An Italian military court sentences Giovanni Fassina, a Socialist member of the Milan City Council who refused to be drafted, to be shot – in the back, which is just, like, sarcastic. It sounds like he’s in Switzerland and was tried in absentia.

Pres. Wilson sends a Rosh Hashanah greeting to Rabbi Stephen Wise praising Chaim Weizmann’s Zionist commission. The Rabbis’ National Committee of New York protests, saying Zionism poses a religious and political problem for Jews and would lead to divided allegiances for American Jews.

Now playing: John Hobble’s play “Daddies” at the Belasco Theatre. The NYT reviewer says “The sentimental comedy of the war orphan has arrived.” Evidently it’s sort of a Three Men and a Baby thing about a club of anti-marriage bachelors who find themselves in charge of war orphans through various hilarious mixups, and one of the orphans is twins and one is a 17-year-old French girl one of them eventually marries, I guess? And one agrees to marry, sight unseen, the French mother of the baby he’s been caring for. Sounds kind of terrible, but it will run and run and be made into a movie in 1924.

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Today -100: September 5, 1918: Of censorship, German fear propaganda, places of refuge, and bad headaches and worse grouches

Gen. Pershing evidently got French authorities to suspend the Socialist newspaper L’Heure for some reason.

A couple of Post Office workers, a sailor and a random woman are killed by a bomb presumably planted by member(s) of the IWW in the Chicago Post Office Building where the trial of the Wobbly leaders was held last week. Big Bill Haywood says it must have been “German fear propaganda” because no Wobbly would do such a thing.

The British embassy in Petrograd is attacked by Soviet troops. A British soldier, the alliterative Captain Cromie, is killed, but only after himself shooting down 3 Russian soldiers, according to the story the Brits will be putting out. Embassy staff are arrested on suspicion of plotting with counter-revolutionaries, which they are totally doing. Britain demands satisfaction – satisfaction, I say! – or it will ensure that members of the Soviet government are treated as international outlaws and “no place of refuge shall be left to them.”

Another ship arrives in NY from Europe after a mid-Atlantic outbreak of Spanish Flu. 2 dead, both Italian steerage passengers, 23 other cases, including one non-steerage passenger, a Claude Almyr, Wales of the Locomobile Company of Bridgeport, CT, who says this version of influenza is much worse than other diseases: “It gives its victims a bad headache and a worse grouch.”

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Today -100: September 4, 1918: Of round-ups domestic and foreign, primaries, and governments clothed with proper authority

Another mass roundup of suspected “slackers” inconveniences 20,000 young men in New York City, 12,000 in New Jersey, 27,000 in Chicago, etc. This will, as usual, be a colossal waste of time and manpower, yielding just a handful of actual draft evaders, while men who didn’t happen to have their documents on them (some because they’re too old to be eligible for the draft and thus have no documents) are held overnight while trying to get someone to bring documents.

In response to the assassination attempt on Lenin, thousands of arrests are made, focusing on the Social Revolutionary (SR) Party, and an order is issued that everyone found with a gun will be instantly executed and every active opponent of the Soviet government will be placed in a concentration camp and their property seized. Non-residents of Moscow and Petrograd are ordered to leave those cities.

New York gubernatorial primaries: it’ll be Charles Whitman, going for a 3rd term, for the R’s, and Al Smith for the D’s.

The US recognizes Czechoslovakia as a nation, and Tomáš Masaryk’s Czechoslovak National Council as its de facto government, “clothed with proper authority to direct the political and military affairs of the Czechoslovaks.” It does not explain who it was who so clothed them. Masaryk is currently in the US, and his wife is American.

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Today -100: September 3, 1918: Nature abhors anarchy

Evidently Lenin’s not dead after all. The NYT editorializes, dickishly: “The shooting of Nikolai Lenine, like the shooting of Nikolai Romanoff, was a thing that was bound to come. If he is not dead of his wounds, as reported, it is probable that he will be shot again. ... Nature abhors anarchy, and has its own way of curing it”.

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Today -100: September 2, 1918: Of horses and carriages and paid agents, political tools/plain fanatics

Important Correction: Pres. and Mrs. Wilson did not walk to church to observe Motorless Sunday, they rode in a horse-drawn carriage.

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His premature obit begins, “Nickolai Lenine, the man who brought Russia to the verge of ruin, and then delivered her to the Germans in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk... Paid agent, political tool or plain fanatic there is no doubt of the man’s ability or the strong impression he made upon those with whom he came in contact.”

The assassin, Fanya Kaplan, “a young girl belonging to the intellectual class,” has been arrested.

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Today -100: September 1, 1918: Of assassinations, fruit pits, and some of the best men in the community

Lenin is shot twice by Fanya Kaplan (sometimes called Dora Kaplan), a Jewish member of the banned Social Revolutionary (SR) Party and former prisoner for her part as a 16-year-old in a plot to assassinate a Tsarist official. Lenin is pretty badly injured and will never fully recover.

Also assassinated: Moisei Uritsky, the head of the Cheka in Petrograd, by a former military cadet.

The London police strike ends swiftly with a nice raise and sort-of recognition of their union.

Since the administration asked the American people not to drive on Sundays, Pres. Wilson has to walk to church.

The War Dept asks people to save their fruit pits and nut shells to make into charcoal for gas masks.

The Ku Klux Klan revived in 1915. I believe this is the first time the NYT has mentioned it. Some Kluxers grab a strike organizer in Mobile, Alabama from the police. He hasn’t been seen since. They also seem to have kidnapped another unionist in Birmingham, Alabama. The article’s tone is supportive of these activities: “Wherever it is organized it is made up of some of the best men in the community.” (Voiceover: It isn’t.)

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Today -100: August 31, 1918: When once war is declared that right ceases

In Chicago, Big Bill Haywood and 14 other IWW leaders are sentenced to 20 years in prison, with 5- and 10-year sentences for other Wobblies. Plus fines. Judge Landis: “When the country is at peace it is a legal right of free speech to oppose going to war and to oppose even preparation for war. But when once war is declared that right ceases.”

War is Hell: Germany has run out of tobacco leaf, so its cigar factories will have to close.

London cops go on strike. An unnamed “high Scotland Yard official” accuses them of mutinying in the face of the enemy.

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Sounds smelly.

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Today -100: August 30, 1918: May she prosper and grow conservative

Another day, another self-declared Russian “government,” this one formed by members of the old Constituent Assembly at Samara and consisting of three Tsarist-era generals led by Mikhail Alekseyev, acting as a Directorate.

Rep. Jeanette Rankin fails in the Montana Republican primary for US Senate and the NYT dances on her political grave, accusing her of “kootooing to or consorting with Sinn Feiners, the Non-Partisan League, the I.W.W.” “Miss Rankin should never have gone into politics. Her judgment is feebly developed in comparison with her sentimentality. May she prosper and grow conservative!”

British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, touring the US, says American women should be employed making planes and poisoning themselves in munitions factories like their British counterparts, because #feminism.

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Today -100: August 29, 1918: If you can’t trust a certain Erbs, conductor of a Swedish band, who can you trust?

The Horvath Dictatorship in Eastern Siberia collapses after, like, an hour when the Entente tells him no.

Where is the (dead) former tsarina Alexandra now? According to the Daily Mail, citing a pseudonymous source in Sweden, who in turn cites “the authority of a certain Erbs, conductor of a Swedish band,” Alexandra and her daughters are alive and well and living in Crimea and were in fact never in Siberia, that was just a Bolshevik lie. Also, A. Certain Erbs thinks Tsar Nicholas is not reallly dead.

In yet another example of the NYT quoting pretty much anyone, James Keeley, the former owner of The Chicago Herald, says Germany is even now picking out a new tsar for Russia.

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Today -100: August 28, 1918: Of essential work, dictators, border skirmishes, and Sunday drives

The Senate unanimously passes the bill expanding the draft to ages 18-45 years (it was 21-31), and includes a “work or fight” amendment drafting anyone not employed in “essential” work. Strikers who obey arbitration decisions of the War Labor Board are exempted.

Speaking of essential work, the LAPD decide that movie extras are not performing it, and raid the movie studios to arrest extras.

Henry Ford wins the Democratic nomination for US Senate from Michigan, but not (at least in the early results) the Republican nomination. He says if he does get both he’ll flip a coin.

Former South Carolina governor Coleman Blease (remember him?) loses the primary for US Senate.

Gen. Dimitri Horvath declares himself dictator in Siberia.

A bunch of US soldiers are killed, and a lot more Mexicans on the border at Nogales, Arizona after a Mexican customs official tried to smuggle someone across the border. No idea what this is all about or who the Mexicans might be. (Update: it seems the shooting was started by a US private firing across the border and hitting a Mexican soldier. He claims the Mexicans were about to shoot).

The Fuel Administration asks everyone to stop driving or motor-boating on Sundays.

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Today -100: August 27, 1918: Of speed-ups and whistling

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He could always run it at 24 frames per second.

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Today -100: August 26, 1918: A dog’s death for a dog

The federal District Court in NY rules that the Lusitania was an unarmed merchant ship with absolutely no explosives on board, so Germany’s torpedoing it was a violation of the rules of war and “an inexpressibly cowardly attack.” I don’t know if they actually believed that there were no explosives on board, which was not true and it wasn’t really a secret, but the court uses that finding to throw out the case of survivors against the Cunard Line.

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The Daily Mail (London) quotes an unnamed Russian prince who escaped Russia as saying that Tsarevitch Alexei was executed by Bolsheviks who told him “We killed your father – a dog’s death for a dog.” No explanation for how this alleged prince witnessed that and lived to tell the tale, but this is the first report that Alexei died of something other than “exposure.”

Dr. P. H. Howard of Cincinnati, investigating conditions in France on behalf of the Salvation Army, claims that the Germans crucified a US sergeant. He also rather gleefully describes a fight he saw in which “our boys” “knocked the hell out of” some Germans. “There isn’t enough of that picked Prussian Guard today to make a respectable link sausage for a cannibal”.

The Entente issues a statement in the bit of Russia they’ve invaded, denying Lenin’s branding of them as brigands. Rather, they say, they were invited by the “legitimate Government,” meaning the breakaway White “Government of the North,” with “the complete and unanimous agreement on the part of the population.” And they’re not here to interfere with the internal affairs of Russia, the statement says (after endorsing one self-proclaimed regime while declaring another illegitimate).

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Today -100: August 25, 1918: Herbert Hoover is already sweet enough

A Peruvian army garrison mutinies, demanding that Peru declare war on Germany.

The Senate releases to the public the evidence that led a sub-committee to condemn the Army aircraft program as inefficient, slow and wasteful, including closed-door testimony in which Secretary of War Newton Baker admitted having no idea if any US-made planes are actually being used in France (they aren’t).

German poison gas bombs are also really bad for linens, and the NYT is ON IT!

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The story’s not of particular interest, but I’ve been meaning to point out the increasing use of “Reds” as a way to describe the current government of Russia without according it any legitimacy.

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Today -100: August 24, 1918: Of criminal military systems, and u-boats

British Foreign Under-Secretary Lord Robert Cecil says Germany is totally unfit ever to have colonies, unlike, ahem. He also says a League of Nations can only succeed if there’s victory first and if Germany acknowledges “that her whole military system is criminal.”

The German gov is now permitting newspapers to stop claiming that there are only a few US soldiers in Europe. They’re offsetting this move towards honesty by exaggerating the extent of u-boat activity off the US’s eastern coast. Evidently the subs are totally ready to bombard every coastal city.

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Today -100: August 23, 1918: Always the last to know

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Three weeks ago, but the State Dept is only just finding out now.

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For instance, according to this story, Germans interrupted a movie to deport every male in the audience to Germany, claiming they were unemployed.

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Today -100: August 22, 1918: Good riddance to bad racist

Henry Ford says he will give back all the profits which he personally makes from war contracts.

Lenin tells the pope he can’t let the Romanovs out of the country like the pope asked, because Moscow is out of communications with the place where they are now. Which is hell. Because they’re dead. But he doesn’t tell the pope that.

Sen. James Vardaman loses the primary for re-election. The  NYT rejoices in the Mississippi Dems’ rejection of the “duper and idol of the ‘hillbillies,’ the astute player on ignorance, passion, and ‘poor white’ prejudice, the ‘White Chief,’ the upholder of the ‘White South’...”, the “egoist-pacifist” who opposed US entry into World War I, which for the Times is a much bigger crime than his long-time support for lynching and the disenfranchisement of black people. The former governor will not hold office again. The University of Miss. announced in 2017 that it would change the name of Vardaman Hall but doesn’t seem to have actually done it. Mississippi also has a town called Vardaman, the “sweet potato capital of the world.”

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Today -100: August 21, 1918: But how about three tons of eloquence?

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau thinks the war will be over by the end of 1919.

Gabriele d'Annunzio declines to attend a celebration in Rome of his pamphlet air-drop on Vienna. “Three tons of explosives dropped on the enemy are more effective than three ounces of eloquence.”

23 suffragists imprisoned after protesting across from the White House are released after a 6-day hunger strike. They were in for the crime of holding a demonstration without a permit. Their release and the fact that tomorrow they will be issued a permit for their next demo strongly suggest that the Wilson Administration is worried about the optics internationally of imprisoning people demanding the vote.

Some fishermen whose boats were destroyed by u-boats near Nantucket say they chatted with a German officer who boarded their ship, I guess before sinking it, and he showed them a Broadway theater ticket stub from 2 days before because u-boat crews totally went on leave in Manhattan like all the time, that was just one of the perks.

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Today -100: August 20, 1918: Of waning red power, cheap drugs, u-boat dangers, and Hinky Dinky Parley Voo

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Two “German agents” are arrested for selling drugs “at surprisingly low prices” to soldiers in an obvious plot to “debauch” them.

Woodrow Wilson has been on vacation in Manchester, Massachusetts, with the sea and the golf and whatnot. He’s been guarded by torpedo boats and submarine chasers just in case a u-boat tries to assassinate him, which is totally a thing that could really happen.

Gen. Pershing orders soldiers not to fuck French prostitutes. (Spoiler Alert: American soldiers will totally fuck French prostitutes.)

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