Today -100: October 6, 1918: Of negotiations, mistrials, flu & explosions, and ex-armies

Austria again proposes peace talks, on the basis of Wilson’s 14 Points (or 23, because he keeps adding points). Austria’s offer, which has to be translated and go through Sweden and then I think Switzerland, hasn’t officially reached the US yet. Note that “negotiating on the basis of the 14 Points” is not the same as accepting them and negotiating at all is not the same as surrendering.

New German Chancellor Max the Prince talks about peace to the Reichstag. He wants Germany to join a League of Nations. He accepts the 14 Points too, but with conditions, like Germany getting its colonies back and Alsace-Lorraine getting autonomy rather than being reattached to France.

France says if Austria carries out its threat to execute captured pilots who dropped leaflets, it will execute twice as many captured Austrian officers, so there.

A second mistrial in the trial of Max Eastman, John Reed et al.

That NY Health Dept plan to stagger opening hours to reduce Spanish Flu infection by relieving crowding on public transportation was screwed by that shell-loading plant explosion in New Jersey, which resulted in the closing of bridges and subways in NYC (authorities thought the fire might reach and set off 80,000 pounds of TNT, destroying East River bridges and the under-river subways). This created greater congestion than ever, as, for example, thousands stood around trying to get on ferries to get home to Brooklyn. The plant continues to be ripped by explosions every half hour or so for hours.

Boris III, the new Bulgarian king, orders the army demobilized.

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Today -100: October 5, 1918: The only way to make a Hun feel friendly is to knock him out

The T.A. Gillespie Co.’s shell-loading plant in Morgan, N.J. blows up. It is (or was before it, you know, blew up) the largest such plant, loading 32,000 shells per day. Enough ammunition is destroyed to supply the Western Front for 6 months. More than 100 people are killed. There would have been more, but the first explosion was small and the workers on the night shift were mostly able to get out.

Bulgarian King Ferdinand abdicates, 2 days shy of 10 years in power – doesn’t even get a cake in the shape of Bulgaria – in favor of his eldest son, now Boris III.

The new German cabinet of Prince Max will include Philipp Scheidemann, the first Socialist (SPD) in a German government, and Adolf Gröber and Matthias Erzberger of the Catholic Zentrum (Center) party, all as ministers without portfolio. The idea is that a government unencumbered by the militarist and pan-German policies of the past will be acceptable to the Allies as an interlocutor for peace talks.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Theodore Roosevelt tells an audience which came to see him at a Nebraska railroad station, “The only way to make a Hun feel friendly is to knock him out. ... Put this war through right, so that no other nation will look cross-eyed at us.”

NYC Health Commissioner Royal Copeland orders stores to open at 8 am and close at 4 pm, offices 8:30 to 4:30, textile factories 9-5. He isn’t closing theatres and cinemas, but orders their hours staggered. All this to prevent over-crowding on public transport, which he considers the chief danger. “We believe it is proper to keep the theatres and churches open if we can eliminate the sneezers, coughers, and spitters.” Ushers should remove those gross people by “force if necessary.” And he won’t close the schools because “in some homes there is careless disregard of modern sanitation” but children from those homes are washed and their teeth brushed before they’re sent to school, where they can be inspected.

In January the War Dept banned people in military service being paid for writing (and for writing for publication even unpaid, I think?). They have now rescinded  this.

Headline of the Day -100:  

A letter from a G.C. Hall of Montgomery, Alabama takes issue with Pres. Wilson’s assertion that the Susan B. Anthony Amendment is a war matter. If proving our democracy is so important, why not abolish the Electoral College? And if it’s so important, why not just proclaim it by executive edict? Continuing, Hall writes,

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Today -100: October 4, 1918: Of flu, evacuations, betrayals, and reconstruction

King Alfonso of Spain has the Spanish Flu, which seems only fair (in Spain it’s called the French Flu). Actually, I’ve been meaning to explain the etymology: in the belligerent countries, censorship is tamping down stories about the extent of the influenza outbreak. Spain had no such restrictions and its newspapers reported honestly (including about what was going on in France and elsewhere), thus the name. There’s some debate, but the Spanish Flu originated, depending on which theory you believe, in France or Kansas.

Spanish Flu is now reported in 43 states. All theatres, dance halls, schools, etc in D.C. are ordered closed (ditto Philadelphia, which adds churches) and office hours in government departments are being staggered to cut down on street car crowding. The Chicago health commissioner orders the police to arrest anyone sneezing or coughing without a handkerchief. There are epidemics in most or all army training camps.

Austrian troops are evacuating Albania.

Turkish troops are evacuating Persia.

Kaiser Wilhelm says he wanted a government of “men who enjoy the confidence of the people,” so he chooses as his new chancellor... Prince Maximilian of Baden. Max von Baden to his friends. Prince Max. The Princinator. Maximus Princius.... The NYT says he was once put in an insane asylum after being jilted by the Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna in 1895 because of his philandering. No he wasn’t, and I’d love to know where that story came from. Also, the Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna would have been 13.

German newspapers are finally reporting that Bulgaria is out of the war, after a few days of the government hoping that it was just Prime Minister Malinov’s initiative and he would be overthrown or the people would rise up and demand more war. The word “betrayal” is frequently used to describe Bulgaria’s act.

Senate Democrats, on the urging of the Wilson Administration, introduce a bill for a post-war Commission on Reconstruction, giving the president vast powers to organize the economy.

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Today -100: October 3, 1918: Of auxiliaries, evacuations, good progress, and reforming Prussia

Gen. Edmund Allenby captures Damascus. The Allies recognize Arab forces as official auxiliaries with the Allies. The Turks are supposedly putting out informal peace feelers.

Germany is preparing to evacuate Belgium, and the Allies are considering telling it that if it does its usual thing of destroying towns (as it leaves poor St. Quentin, poor Cambrai), they will do the same when they enter Germany.

Austrian Prime Minister Baron Max Hussarek von Heinlein tells the lower house of Parliament (Abgeordnetenhaus) that even with Bulgaria’s withdrawal from the war, the situation is not critical and “we are making good progress”. Also, Austria won’t give up its “right” to Bosnia-Herzogovina. Czech deputies heckle him throughout the speech.

In a textbook example of too little too late, the Prussian parliament finally agrees to almost equal suffrage, the almost being that people over 50 would get an extra vote. I’ve forgotten whether this abortive reform includes women’s suffrage and the NYT either doesn’t know or doesn’t think it important enough to inform us about. Kaiser Wilhelm, in his letter accepting Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling’s resignation, claims to be moving towards democracy: “I desire that the German people cooperate in a more effectual manner than hitherto in the task of deciding the destiny of the country.” He suggests that his new cabinet will include some actual Socialists, you know, the largest party in the Reichstag, and you know how much Willy must haaaaaate that.

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Today -100: October 2, 1918: Soap costs less than medicine

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Susan B. Anthony Amendment gets 53 votes in the Senate (26 D’s, 27 R’s), with 31 opposed (21 D’s, 10 R’s), short of the necessary 2/3. John Williams (D-Mississippi) offered an amendment to enfranchise only white women (did he use the n–word? Yes he did), but this was defeated 61-22.

The NYT says everyone should now shut up about women’s suffrage for the duration of the war.

A large ad by the Colgate Company on p.10 of today’s NYT:

Naturally, the best form of prevention involves buying Colgate products. Remember, kids: Soap costs less than medicine.

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Today -100: October 1, 1918: Without their counselings, we shall be only half wise

Bulgaria surrenders. Under the terms of the armistice, it will have to remove its troops from Greece and Serbia, demobilize its army and give up its arms and ammunition. The Allies will take control of Bulgarian railroads and navigation on the Danube. This leaves the various Central Powers armies cut off from each other. The Turks are now on their own. The occupation of Albania is now untenable. King Ferdinand pardons all political prisoners, but who will pardon him for getting Bulgaria into this stupid war? No one, that’s who.

Following German Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling’s resignation, foreign minister Paul von Hintze is fired.

Woodrow Wilson goes to the Senate (without advance notice, as was his custom) to make a speech in favor of the women’s suffrage Amendment, which he says is “vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged,” just as important as soldiers voting (did no one tell him that his own War Dept just blocked NY soldiers voting?), and it will be important after the war. “We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system or life, as well as to discover just what it is that ought to be purified and reformed. Without their counselings, we shall be only half wise.” The speech doesn’t seem to have swayed anyone, least of all the next speaker, Sen. Oscar Underwood of Alabama, who lost the Democratic nomination for president in 1912 to Wilson and who just wants to get this “trying and vexatious question” “disposed of.” By which he means rejected. “It is because we are a democracy that I oppose it. Do we want Government by mob? Do we want Government by the unrestricted and unresponsible majority?” By which he means putting black and white women on a parity, which would surely, he says, destroy the South’s future.

NY Health Commissioner Royal S. Copeland says the Spanish Flu has been halted and checked, if by halted and checked he means 694 new cases.

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Today -100: September 30, 1918: Of armistices, shotguns, and Spanish Flu

German troops are pulling out of Romania. And going to “reinforce” Bulgaria where they plan to march right through Sofia so that the Bulgarians can all see how much reinforcing the Germans are doing and they certainly wouldn’t want to try to pull out of the war now that there are all these German soldiers reinforcing them in their capital, would they?

Bulgarian delegates (a general, the finance minister, and a former cabinet minister) arrive in Saloniki to discuss an armistice.

Germany complains to the US about its soldiers’ use of shotguns, which it says are illegal under the Hague Convention of 1899 (which the US denies applies to repeating shotguns). It’s threatening to execute soldiers captured with shotguns. The US says, Yeah, well we’ll execute your guys right back.

The US Dept of War stops NY from sending people to Europe to collect ballots from the 200,000 New Yorkers serving in the military there. Republicans say those soldiers would certainly all have voted Republican; the Dems say nuh ah.

Massachusetts is up to 85,000+ sick with Spanish Flu. And 1,226 dead so far. The Boston Elevated Railway Company discontinues all smoking cars for the duration.

This BBC doc on the Spanish Flu that aired this week is nothing mind-blowing, but worth watching.

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Today -100: September 29, 1918: Potatoes are ok

German Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling resigns.

Suffragists have failed to get 2/3 of senators to support the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, as Christie Benet (D-SC), who was just appointed to replace the late Pitchfork Ben Tillman, says he won’t vote for it. Antis may have been pulling a fast one on the suffragists regarding Benet, making them think they had 2/3 so they’d push for a vote and lose.

At a war bonds talk, Theodore Roosevelt calls for draft registration to continue after the war and to include women, “for the purposes of peace no less than for the purposes of war.” He’s rather unclear about what the training for women would consist of during peacetime. Only those who so serve should have the vote, he says. He says we must stop all profiteering by capitalists and all slacking and loafing. And if you didn’t think he would suggest super-tough measures against profiteering by capitalists, you’d be wrong: “any man who makes a fortune out of this war ought to be held up to derision and scorn.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

No it doesn’t.

The Senate passes a resolution to create a $1 million emergency fund to fight the Spanish Flu.

Speaking at the dedication of the Altar of Liberty in Madison Square,

Vice President Thomas Marshall apologizes to America for having supported neutrality for the first 2½ years of the war. America responded, “Oh, did you? We weren’t paying attention. To be honest, we’d forgotten all about you.”

The troop ship Leviathan leaves Hoboken, despite the fact that hundreds of its soldiers are already sick with Spanish Flu (Woodrow Wilson at some point explicitly decided that the certainty of spreading infection through Europe was worth it). At least 80 will die onboard before it reaches Brest on October 8, at least 100 will die soon afterwards, and some of the rest will spread the flu to other troops. The numbers are approximate because no one’s bothering to count.

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Today -100: September 28, 1918: A people’s war

Woodrow Wilson makes a speech at the Met for the 4th Liberty Loan bond drive. The war, he says, “has become a people’s war.” Democracy blah blah League of Nations yadda yadda.

Philadelphia will have a big parade today to promote the Liberty Loan, followed by a John Philip Sousa concert. Thousands will catch the Spanish Flu as a result. Here’s an article about it.

Bulgaria asks for an armistice. Germany claims PM Aleksandar Malinov made this plea without asking the cabinet or King Ferdinand, so he should immediately be put on trial for high treason.

The War Dept wants colleges under contract with it to run military training courses not to allow the men on those courses to join fraternities which are just, like, distracting.

A couple of boys in Jersey City spot two men digging a hole under a railway trestle and fetch the cops, thus obviously foiling another dastardly German plot.

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Today -100: September 27, 1918: Of the timidity of white men, reigns of terror, leaflets, and Spanish Flu

Allied troops (British, Greek) have pushed into Bulgaria.

Pro-suffrage senators filibuster the Susan B. Anthony women’s suffrage Amendment because they are still short of the 2/3 votes required. Sen. John Sharp Williams (D-Miss.), the former House minority leader, offers an amendment to change the word “citizens” to “white citizens.” Mississippi’s other racist senator, James Vardaman, supports this, criticizing the “timidity of white men of the South to make a political issue of the negro question in suffrage.”  Joseph S. Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) objects to the vote being given to immigrant women naturalized through marriage.

Headline
of the Day -100: 

Um... good?

An Austrian military order says any captured Allied pilot who dropped leaflets is subject to the death penalty. Evidently dropping leaflets is worse than dropping bombs. (I have my doubts about this story).

The NYC Department of Health says the Spanish Flu is actually an epidemic of pneumonia and they have no idea what the connection between the two is (also, they’re saying influenza is passed by germs, because they don’t really know what a virus is yet or that it’s not the same thing as bacteria). The Dept says the rapid spread of the flu is “nothing alarming” but suggests people stop crowding each other on subways and whatnot.

Boston had 156 Spanish Flu/pneumonia deaths yesterday. Theatres, dance halls etc are ordered closed, as are schools and churches in many Massachusetts towns. Lt. Gov. Calvin Coolidge appeals for aid to Pres. Wilson, the governors of Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island, and the mayor of Toronto.

So many army training camps have flu outbreaks that next month’s draftees won’t be sent to them until it’s run its course.

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Today -100: September 26, 1918: Of strikes, fords, flu and Stonehenge

Headline of the Day -100: 

That’s J.H. Thomas, the Labour MP for Derby and general secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, pictured below:

Henry Ford, the car guy and Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan, sends a letter to the state Democratic convention to tell them they’re not the boss of him and he won’t be bound by any decisions they come to. He also says he doesn’t plan to spend any of his own money on this election.

Brazil more or less declares war on Austria.

The Spanish Flu is now present in 26 of the 48 states. It is epidemic in New England and present but not yet epidemic on the West Coast. There are a few scattered cases in fly-over country.

The owner of Stonehenge, one C.H.E. Chubb, donates it to the nation.

Crown Prince Carol of Romania is being held in close confinement for 75 days for sneaking out of the country to get married. King Ferdinand is not happy with him.

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Today -100: September 25, 1918: Of Whites, flu, and lynchings

A conference is being held at Ufa in Bashkortostan, Russia, to form a single, unified anti-Bolshevik shadow government for Russia.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Another 150 cases of Spanish Flu reported in NY City yesterday, including 47 newly arrived immigrants, but Health Commissioner Royal Copeland isn’t alarmed.

There haven’t been a lot of lynchings lately, at least none that are reported in the NYT. But a 17-year-old black man, Sandy Reeves, is hanged by a mob in Georgia after allegedly assaulting a 3-year-old girl.

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Today -100: September 24, 1918: Of prohibition, handkerchiefs, and dead czars

The war is going badly for all the Central Powers. Bulgarian forces are being badly beaten in Macedonia and Gen. Edmund Allenby is capturing huge numbers of Turkish troops in Palestine. Even the Italians are winning battles now. Constantinople is bombed.

The House votes 171-34 to introduce prohibition from June 1919 until the end of the war.

The NY Board of Health posts 10,000 placards in subways, movie theatres etc about influenza: “sneeze, cough, or expectorate, (if you must) in your handkerchief. You are in no danger if every one heeds this warning.”

Russian White soldiers dig up and hold a little ceremony for what they claim are the remains of Czar Nicholas II, but which are not.

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Today -100: September 23, 1918: Of hard Germans and crown princes

Headline of the Day -100:

The NYT reports, and then instantly casts doubt on, rumors that Crown Prince Carol of Romania has married, rumors which have presumably been spread by Germany to discredit the deeply divided Romanian royal family. As it happens, it is true that he married “Zizi” Lambrino, daughter of a Romanian general. They both snuck into Odessa to do it before his family caught on, which makes him technically a deserter, but hey he’s the crown prince. The Supreme Court will decide next year that the marriage is unconstitutional, and annul it, which the couple will disregard, producing a child 9 months and 10 days after the annulment. The marriage will peter out and he’ll marry a Greek princess and that won’t work out either. Oh, and a court in 1996 will rule that the annulment was invalid, which would make Carol’s next two marriages bigamous and King Michael a bastard.

In other crown prince news, German POWs pass on a rumor that a Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht tried to shoot Hindenburg but missed.

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Today -100: September 22, 1918: All civilized nations should register their abhorrence of such barbarism

The US sends a note to Allied and neutral governments asking them to condemn the killings in Russia. The ones by the Bolshevik government, which it calls “mass terrorism,” not the ones by the Whites. “[A]ll civilized nations should register their abhorrence of such barbarism,” it says. It asks the nations whether they’re interested in taking “some immediate” but unspecified “action, which is entirely divorced from the atmosphere of belligerency and the conduct of the war, to impress upon the perpetrators of these crimes the aversion with which civilization regards their present wanton acts.” The US in taking this initiative is “acting... solely in the interests of the Russian people themselves”.

Supposedly, there is an assassination attempt on Trotsky. By a soldier in Kursk.

The documents that the NYT has been printing “proving” that the Bolsheviks were in the pay of Germany and following its orders have been called forgeries by Santeri Nuorteva of the Finnish Information Bureau, who says that some of them had been given to the Kerensky government last year at the time it was actively trying to prosecute Bolsheviks but even it wouldn’t use such obvious forgeries. George Creel of the Committee on Public Information responds, “The documents are absolutely authentic, and when a Bolshevik makes an unsupported attack against them, it’s hardly worth bothering about.”

Another day, another article on how the Spanish Flu isn’t really that dangerous.

A letter to the NYT from the father of a soldier objects to the term "doughboy," which "is surely undignified, as it seems to imply that our troops are either half-baked or not baked at all and is also unpatriotic."

Now playing: "Laughing Bill Hyde," Will Rogers’s first movie. A lost film, I believe.

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Today -100: September 21, 1918: Frederick the Great, we hardly knew ye

NYC Health Commissioner Royal Copeland asks clergymen to give information about Spanish Flu this Sunday. What to do if you have it, how not to spread/catch it, etc.

Germany has been melting down bronze statues to make ammunition but excluded those of the ruling Hohenzollern family. Popular uproar is now forcing them to melt those as well.

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Today -100: September 20, 1918: Readiness for peace is not in contradiction to the spirit with which we are waging the struggle for the homeland

Austrian Foreign Minister Baron Burian says that his note to belligerents calling for closed-door talks on peace was indeed approved by Germany, and it was considered for weeks and so it was certainly not a panicked response to recent military setbacks, how could you suggest such a thing? And Field Marshal von Hindenburg tells the German army that the proposal doesn’t mean they can slack off: “Readiness for peace is not in contradiction to the spirit with which we are waging the struggle for the homeland.” German planes drop leaflets containing the proposal on the Western Front.

Today in forged anti-Soviet documents: Germany ordered Russia to withdraw the Red Guards from Finland so it could be taken over; the Soviets recruited notorious anarchists to assassinate counter-revolutionaries.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt arrives back from Europe with Spanish Flu (contracted on the boat) and double pneumonia. He’s met at the dock by an ambulance and taken to his mother’s house. And then Eleanor unpacks his bags and finds a bundle of letters from Lucy Mercer...

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Today -100: September 19, 1918: Of Spanish Flu and u-boats: That’s just science.

Lt. Col. Phillip Doane, the head of the Health and Sanitation Section of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, whatever that might be, thinks the Spanish Flu was probably brought to the US by German agents on u-boats.

I probably should have been linking to the daily disgorgement of forged anti-Soviet documents, but here’s today’s.

Former Russian Minister of War Vladimir Sukhomlinov is court-martialed and shot in the same day, the NYT reports. There’ll be a serves-him-right editorial in tomorrow’s paper. Sukhomlinov is not dead (or even in prison).

Sergei Prokofiev is in New York. I’m a little surprised the NYT has heard of the 27-year-old Russian composer.

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Today -100: September 18, 1918: Of strikes and Spanish Flu

A few days ago Pres. Wilson sent a note to striking machinists in gun & ammo factories in Bridgeport, Connecticut telling them to get back to work, or else. They now vote to do so but their employers refuse to let them, so Wilson sends a letter to them which, while taking the same scolding tone as his letter to the strikers, does not threaten the factory owners with being drafted.

The NYC Board of Health now requires doctors to report all cases of influenza and pneumonia.

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Today -100: September 17, 1918: Of peace talks, blackmail, Spanish flu, burning words, and ideal husbands

The US rejects Austria’s call for non-binding peace talks, saying everyone already knows the US’s position so there’s nothing to talk about. British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour calls it a cynical attempt to divide the Allies. German newspapers are all insisting that the Austrian feelers were made entirely on its own initiative. Presumably if there had been a positive response Germany would be taking the credit.

A janitor is arrested for attempting to blackmail J.P. Morgan Jr. and his daughters. He sent letters claiming to have infected them with a horrid but slow-acting disease which had already killed J.P. Sr and would kill them too within 3 years unless they paid $20,000 for the antidote. Thorn, the janitor, will be sentenced to 15 months in Leavenworth.

Camp Upton on Long Island is shut down – no one in, no one out – because of an influenza outbreak.

Woodrow Wilson tells a group of Democratic women that he will urge the passage of the women’s suffrage amendment. Later, members of the National Woman’s Party, finding this inadequate and Wilson complicit in the Senate’s foot-dragging on the amendment, burn his words in front of the Lafayette monument.

Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband” has its New York premiere, a quarter century after it was written.

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