Today -100: December 10, 1918: Of mobs in terror, and red flags

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Germany is kind of a mess right now. Evidently the executive of the Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council has been arrested, possibly not on orders of the government. Allegedly there’s a counter-revolution beginning in Potsdam.

There are rumors of violent crackdowns, rumors that the Spartacists will name Karl Liebknecht president of Germany, etc. Also, too, how many “Spartacus group”s are there, anyway?

The Serb, Croat and Slovenian bits that declared independence from Austria-Hungary officially announce their plans to join with Serbia, and now they’d like Italy’s troops to get the hell out, please and thank you.

It is now illegal to display a red flag in Chicago.

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Today -100: December 9, 1918: Of khaki kandidates, batons, just reparations, and vanquished victors

14 women are standing for the British Parliament in the general election. There are also 256 soldiers, from 19 generals down to a private, in what will be known as the “khaki election.”

Gen. Philippe Pétain is promoted to Marshal of France. A baton comes with that. I’m not sure what he’s supposed to do with it, but I have a few suggestions...

The NYT accuses separatists in the Rhineland and Westphalia of trying to split up the German empire “in the hope of bilking the Allies of their just reparation.”

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“Vanquished victors,” the Germans are calling themselves, in this start of the Dolchstoßlegende.

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Today -100: December 8, 1918: Kill Liebknecht wherever you meet him

The Netherlands will extradite Willy Hohenzollern and the former crown prince if the Allies insist (don’t know how official this story really is), but suggests instead that they be exiled to one of the Dutch colonies.

Posters mysteriously appear in Berlin advising readers to “Kill Liebknecht wherever you meet him; he is your and your country’s worst enemy.”

Article That Raises More Questions Than It Answers of the Day -100:

Also: no one wants your uncleaned hair, probably.

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Today -100: December 7, 1918: Of crowns, reparations, tied-up men, apoplexy, and straight dickermans

German/Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm finally renounces his crowns. Prussia withdraws the Hohenzollerns’ immunity from the law.

Britain will present Germany with a bill for £8 billion in reparations. France is still doing the math on its bill.

In the German state of Brunswick, the president is evidently a clothes-mender, the vice president a professional juggler, and the education minister a semi-literate woman.

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As punishment, not for fetishistic sex – at least that was the story they were going with. Secretary of War Newton Baker says this type of punishment used to be useful in “breaking” prisoners of “the usual military type,” but now there are stronger-willed political prisoners (I assume he means conscientious objectors) and punishments against them have... escalated.

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Because if there’s anyone whose cause of death will be “apoplexy,” it’s a prominent lawyer named Luther Laflin Kellogg, while playing golf.

Also in the obits, I was trying to decide if there was anything funny about Major Straight. Reading further, I see his full name is Willard Dickerman Straight. So no, nothing funny about that name, not at all.

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Today -100: December 6, 1918: Of war crimes, well-tried and well-deserved supremacy, martial law, and rubber heads

Germany’s Ebert government is undecided on the fate of the former kaiser. They’re still reading documents related to the start of the war to determine whether those “responsible” for the war should be put on trial.

Winston Churchill says the British delegates to the peace conference will demand abolition of conscription in Europe. And that Britain will ignore any peace arrangement that limits the size of its navy and threatens “its well-tried and well-deserved supremacy.”

The French government says it won’t lift martial law in France, even though the war is, like, over, because of Bolshevik propaganda.

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Today -100: December 5, 1918: Of coupons, food, and kings

One result of the Liberals and Tories fighting the British general election as a Coalition is that many MPs are running unopposed, including 69 coupon candidates (those given the “coupon” of approval to run under the Coalition banner) and, fighting for the 105 Irish seats, 22 Sinn Feiners including future Irish president Éamon de Valera.

Yesterday there were rumors of a conspiracy to bring back Kaiser Wilhelm; today’s rumors, which are a bit more likely, are of a Bolshevik uprising led by Karl Liebknecht. Liebknecht’s Spartacus Group’s The Red Flag complains that Woodrow Wilson, representing international capitalism, has made the delivery of food relief to Germany conditional on the maintenance of “order.” Still, I’m not sure how popular the message “Any attempt to send food to Germany must be opposed as a capitalistic effort to beat Bolshevist aims” will be with hungry Germans.

Evidently Kaiser Wilhelm initially planned to abdicate as kaiser but not as king of Prussia.

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Today -100: December 4, 1918: I have not renounced anything and I have not signed any document whatever

Germany’s former crown prince Frederick Wilhelm insists he’s still crown prince: “I have not renounced anything and I have not signed any document whatever.” But he says if Germany declares itself a republic (it has, dude), he’d be happy to return and take up a job as a simple factory worker. He says he had nothing to do with the decision to go to war. According to the AP reporter who interviewed him in Holland, “The Prince is living a very simple life now. He strolls about the island, chats with peasants, and is learning the Dutch language from a small boy.” According to the crown prince, “My hovercraft is full of eels.”

George Bernard Shaw is running for Parliament as a Labour candidate.

Former Women’s Social and Political Union (now the Women's Party) leader Christabel Pankhurst is also running, for Smethwick (near Birmingham). Lloyd George and Bonar Law prevail on the previous Coalition candidate in the constituency, Major Thompson (whose first name is evidently lost to history), to step aside. She’ll be beaten narrowly by the candidate of the Labour Party, which she will accuse during the campaign of Bolshevism; Labour will respond that it works for social reform without breaking windows or setting post boxes on fire (irrelevant side note: British post boxes were introduced by the novelist Anthony Trollope in his day job).

Theodore Roosevelt attacks Wilson’s State of the Union speech. He says if the American people have expressed any opinion on the 14 Points it was to reject them at the ballot box last month, and he denies that the Army was fighting for them: “Why, there was not one American soldier in a thousand that ever heard of them. The American Army was fighting to smash Germany.” Of the Points, he’s especially critical of freedom of the seas. “The British must, of course, keep the colonies they have conquered.” Of course.

The Allies are holding off on pressuring the Netherlands to hand over Willy Hohenzollern until Wilson arrives in Europe. They say extradition laws don’t even enter it, he should be treated as someone who doesn’t have the right to sanctuary, like a pirate or a slave trader. Meanwhile, a Catherine Callan Hayden of Chicago, whose father died on the Lusitania, applies for an arrest warrant against Willy for murder. “The only thing I object to,” she says, “is that hanging is the severest penalty which can be inflicted.”

The National War Labor Board decides that the best way to end the strike of male employees at the Cleveland Railway Company is to fire all its women employees.

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That’s a bit over-dramatic. Actually they mostly won’t sell stuff to Austria. Also, none of them will allow trains from what was the Austrian State Railroad to cross their new national borders in case they don’t get them back. Every country is also banning export of hard cash (they’re still using the old Austrian currency, presumably while they decide on quaint names for their new currencies).

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Today -100: December 3, 1918: Of private thoughts or purposes, vacant offices, pogroms, cyranos, ex-kings, and kangaroos

Before setting off for Europe, Pres. Wilson goes to Congress to deliver his State of the Union Address (still not called that). Doesn’t sound like much of a speech: praises soldiers and the American people for their work in the war, wants to reduce taxes but not to pre-war levels, something should be done about railroads but he doesn’t know what, says he isn’t going to the peace talks with any “private thought or purpose” and hopes for the support of Congress and the public. Most of Congress just sits grumpily during the speech.

Sen. Lawrence Sherman (R-Illinois) threatens to introduce a resolution declaring the office of president vacant, evidently permanently, when Wilson goes to Europe. A resolution introduced in the House by William Rodenberg (R-Ill.) would do the same but only while Wilson is out of the country. Sen. Albert Cummins (R-Iowa) proposes that a bipartisan Senate committee go to Paris (uninvited) to keep the Senate informed of all the doings.

The NYT, citing a “well-informed Pole,” says Józef Pilsudski is now the dictator of Poland, arresting Bolsheviks. The NYT’s Pole is indeed well-informed, about that anyway, but less informed is his description of the recent pogroms in Galicia as “fomented by agitators of suspicious origins,” as opposed to plain old anti-Semitic mobs, cops, and soldiers.

French playwright/poet Edmond Rostand, author of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “Chantecler” and “Les Romanesques,” dies at 50 of the Spanish Flu (insert runny nose joke here).

The Montenegrin parliament, which is delightfully called the Skupshtina, deposes King Nikola, preparatory to merging the country into Serbia. Nick has ruled since 1860.

Belgium decides that damage and seizures of raw materials and machinery during the German occupation amounted to $1,200,112,000. They’ll be sending an invoice.

Frank Morrison, secretary of the American Federation of Labor, proposes that the US ban all immigration for 5 years.

I’ll spare you the ad on page 6 for The Edwin Chapp Shoe store, which asks the question, “Why Kangaroo For A Gentleman’s Shoe?”

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Today -100: December 2, 1918: Against my will they sent me to Norway

The NYT says that the newly enfranchised British women will probably vote for Lloyd George because he’s the one politician they’ve heard of.

Former kaiser Willy Hohenzollern says the blame for the war is not his but that of his chancellor and foreign minister at the time, who sent him out of the country so they could scheme: “Against my will they sent me to Norway.”

The NYPD is getting an aviation division. Police planes could be used in case of fire, riot, whatever.

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Today -100: December 1, 1918: Of happy Alsatians, the kaiser’s bed, and actual natural radium

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Residents of Alsace-Lorraine are happy to be part of France again, which just pisses Germans off.

Iceland becomes mostly independent of Denmark. The NYT doesn’t notice.

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Lithuania declares itself a republic.

William Howard Taft decides not to be the commissioner of baseball.

Ad of the Day -100:

Guaranteed to have “a definite quantity of Actual Natural Radium” – beware the fake stuff, which I believe is called I Can’t Believe It’s Not Radium – and to retain its radioactivity for at least 20 years, not unlike your glowing corpse. Contains no animal fat.

Douglas Fairbanks’s wife divorces him... ladies.

Sugar rationing over, the restrictions on Christmas candy are lifted.

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Today -100: November 30, 1918: I am not going to be a Bolshevist president

The names of the US commissioners to the peace conference are announced: Pres. Wilson (to be replaced later in the process by Secretary of War Newton Baker), Secretary of State Robert Lansing, Col. House, former ambassador to Italy and France Henry White, and Gen. Tasker Bliss. While White is a Republican, Republicans would rather have had a more important, more Republican, Republican, like Taft or Charles Evans Hughes or Elihu Root. There will also be 4 Harvard and 2 Yale professors in the party. What, no Princeton?

Vice President Whatsisname will remain in Washington while Wilson is out of the country. He says it’s just so someone’s there to greet the visiting Japanese prince, not to sign or veto legislation: “I am not going to be a Bolshevist president.”

The German government asks Wilhelm for an official abdication, gets it.

Former Austrian Emperor Charles is supposedly ordered to leave Austria. Also, he’s depressed; “He sits for hours at his desk staring vacantly.”

German employers, no longer fearing a socialist revolution quite so much, are reneging on the concessions they made to workers (especially the abolition of piece-work pay) at the start of the revolution. Naturally, there are now strikes. Unemployment is rising, in part due to no longer getting coal and other raw materials from Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia.

The Berlin press is attacking The People’s State of Bavaria’s socialist Prime Minister Kurt Eisner for undermining the unity of the empire (they’re still saying empire, I guess), for leaking those secret papers from the start of the war, and ffor being a, you know, Jew.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George tells an election meeting that Wilhelm should be tried. By what court he does not say, but I guess LG is campaigning on a “hang the kaiser” plank.

The Justice Dept is considering prosecuting Eugene Debs for a speech he gave in Toledo Wednesday in which he said that the common people of the US did not declare war and “all wars are wrong.” Debs’ supporters point out that he can hardly be interfering with the conduct of the war, which is over, dudes.

The Allies ask Herbert Hoover to be Director General of Relief, in charge of feeding Europe.

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Today -100: November 29, 1918: Of court intrigues, pogroms, and lady delegates

“The New York Times correspondent can state authoritatively that since his arrival in Holland the ex-Kaiser has not ceased to endeavor to prove Germany guiltless in the war.” He asserts his lack of responsibility and blames “court intrigues.” At least he didn’t have a fucking Twitter account.

Last week there was a pogrom in Lemberg (aka Lvov, aka Lviv, aka Lwów), Poland, following the Polish expulsion of troops from Ukraine, which claims the region. Polish soldiers and civilians attacked the Jewish and Ukrainian quarters of the city. Dozens are killed, shops are looted, and houses burned, as was the custom. The Polish Information Bureau in NY denies there was any pogrom, saying it’s a story spread by Germans to bias the Allies against the creation of an independent Poland. It isn’t.

The New Jersey Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage writes to Pres. Wilson objecting to Carrie Chapman Catt’s proposal that there be at least one woman on the US delegation to the peace talks.

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Today -100: November 28, 1918: Of Wilson’s disfavor, Spartacides, 20 bullet holes, and physical training

The White House is shipping 13 automobiles for Wilson and his party to use in France, because... France doesn’t have any cars?

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The refusal of Adm. Beatty to receive three members of the Soldiers' Council as part of a German naval delegation is being taken as indicative of the Allies picking and choosing which forms of German governance to recognize. Moderates (including non-revolutionary socialists) are pushing for a quick constitutional convention to establish representative government (rather than the various councils) in Germany on a legitimate basis.

Why is the NYT referring to the Spartacus League as “Spartacides?”

Soldiers’ groups in Cologne offer a $20,000 reward for the former kaiser and crown prince, dead or alive.

Or is it actually “former” kaiser? It seems there are no official documents of his abdication in Germany.

Reporter Carl Ackerman ventures into Ekaterinburg to find out whether Czar Nicholas and his family were really executed there. “There is no evidence except some twenty bullet holes in the wall”. Which he discounts, but doesn’t say where he thinks the Romanovs are now. Alive and well and living in Argentina?

Transylvania has declared itself independent of Hungary. Hungary says no, but I don’t recall anyone asking them.

The US army transfers 40 shell-shocked soldiers to Fort Sheridan, where it will try to cure them with... “physical training.”

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Today -100: November 27, 1918: Of unspoiled soldiers, temp presidents, extraditions, and ambassadorial jazz

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European borders are totally up in the air. The Rhineland is talking about splitting from Germany as an independent country, as is Southern Germany (Bavaria and such).

Chile and Peru don’t go to war.

Former Attorney General George Wickersham says if Pres. Wilson leaves the country to attend the peace talks, Vice President Whatsisname might have to be sworn in because Wilson wouldn’t have the ability to veto a bill and therefore would be unable to discharge the duties of his office. VP Whatsisname responds that he would not “voluntarily” assume the office, although he says a court might order him to. And he doesn’t know what he’d do if asked to by a joint resolution of Congress. During the time Wilson will be away, Whatsisname was supposed to be touring the country for the League to Enforce Peace, but may decide that he needs to stay in Washington.

The British and French are trying to figure out how they can extradite Willy Hohenzollern from the Netherlands. The Dutch says it probably can’t extradite him without permission from Germany. In Germany, Karl Liebknecht’s paper The Red Flag calls for the former kaiser, along with the former crown prince and Bethmann-Hollweg, who was chancellor at the start of the war, to be put on trial by a revolutionary tribunal. The Bavarian government’s recent release of secret government papers from 1914 has made it clear that Germany – Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner would say Prussia – was more responsible for the Austrian policies that led to the war than was previously known.

A NYT editorial about the appointment of Rosika Schwimmer as Hungarian ambassador to Switzerland is, not surprisingly, rather dickish, delving into her association with Henry Ford’s Peace Ship. It says sarcastically that her appointment  “injected desirable ‘jazz’ into the stagnant art of diplomacy”. The term jazz probably refers here to energy, zippiness, its original meaning in baseball parlance, rather than the musical form, although that fairly new usage did appear in the paper in April.

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Today -100: November 26, 1918: Of black jacks, borders, and lady ambassadors

Some Republicans in Ohio start a campaign for Gen. Black Jack Pershing for president in 1920. The organizers claim not to know whether Pershing actually wants to be president.

A bunch of soldiers, sailors and marines try to storm a socialist meeting in Madison Square Garden, but are pushed back by mounted cops.

The French are discussing what the borders of Alsace-Lorraine should be, and they’re getting greedy, suggesting they should get back not just territory lost in 1870 but in 1815 as well.

Supposedly German Chancellor Friedrich Ebert gives up real power to the Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council.

Rosika Schwimmer, the Jewish Hungarian suffragist, active during the war in the international feminist anti-war movement, is appointed Hungarian ambassador to Switzerland, making her the first woman ambassador ever (depending on whether you count St. Catherine of Siena. Do you?).

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Today -100: November 25, 1918: When any one is without food he is apt to do many unusual and violent things

Mrs Minnie Grinstead, a former lecturer for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, is elected the first woman to enter the Kansas House of Representatives, in an election which sees her fellow Republicans take 113 out of 125 seats. 48 are farmers and 1 is a tombstone dealer. In her 6 years in the legislature, she will attempt to ban cigarettes in the state and will introduce a bill for court awards for injuries to women to go to them rather than their husbands. Neither will pass.

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In an AP interview, former Austrian emperor Charles says the Allies should start feeding the Austrians quickly, or risk Bolshevism: “The people here are fine, kind and patient, but when any one is without food he is apt to do many unusual and violent things.”

King Albert of Belgium, back in Brussels to a rapturous reception and only a few calls for a republic, calls for equal suffrage “for all men of the mature age required” (there was a system of plural voting in which educated or wealthy men’s votes counted 2 or 3 times). I think the mature age thing means he wants to keep the voting age at 25 (30 for the senate). Next year plural voting will be abolished and the male voting age lowered to 21; women will get the national franchise in 1948.

Taft says he’d accept the job as baseball commissioner only if  he’d be sole decider of law and fact in arbitration cases.

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They’re pretty sure it’s a lion or panther that escaped from a circus.

Now Playing: “My Cousin,” starring Enrico Caruso in two roles as identical cousins, a poor sculptor and a big opera star, featuring Caruso singing (we’ll have to take their word for it) Pagliacci. Flicking through it on YouTube, I saw an intertitle that began “Mama mia, sir.”

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Today -100: November 24, 1918: A fit country for heroes

Former president Taft has been offered the job of baseball commissioner. He’s thinking it over. Taft is a big baseball fan. When he was the governor of the Philippines, he introduced baseball and genocide to the natives.

Supposedly the Bolsheviks have executed 500 former army officers.

Woodrow Wilson is talking about nationalizing wifi wireless.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George declares in an election address that the Liberal-Conservative coalition’s task will be “To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.” He plans a series of public works to prevent Britain falling into the post-war depression that most economists expect, including work on roads and canals, and housing and small farms or allotments for returning soldiers.

German Chancellor Friedrich Ebert tells Russia to recognize his government and stop calling for a dictatorship of the proletariat, please and thank you. The Central Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council has informed Ebert and the rest of the government that they are subject to the instructions of the Council.

Germany has 278 fewer kings & princes than it did at the beginning of the month. Cheers to the NYT for using “deposal” in the headline.

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Today -100: November 23, 1918: Of hoards of gold and Henry Ford’s definite ideas and ideals

200 sacks of former kaiser Willy Hohenzollern’s gold coins arrive in the Netherlands. It is not clear where it’s now being stored. It’s also not clear if he ever actually abdicated. NYT reporters are frantically making calculations trying to figure out how much real money 200 sacks of coins amounts to.

Secretary of the Treasury and Director-General of the Railroads William Gibbs McAdoo, Pres. Wilson’s son-in-law, resigns, because he wants to make more money. That’s the only reason he gives; his resignation letter complains of the “inadequate compensation” for cabinet officers and the “very burdensome cost of living in Washington.”

Henry Ford hands over the reins of Ford Motor to his son Edsel to devote himself to making The Dearborn Independent into a wide-circulation national newspaper so he can spread his “definite ideas and ideals.” Some of those ideas will be about The Jews.

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Today -100: November 22, 1918: Of sea power, supreme governors, future dread, and house flus

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Germany surrenders 9 battleships, 5 battle cruisers, 7 light cruisers & 50 destroyers. U-boats are also surrendering.

“Admiral” Alexander Kolchak (pictured below, probably)  becomes dictator of the anti-Bolshevik Provisional All-Russian Government in Omsk in a coup, although not one he started. He’s calling himself Supreme Governor now.

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The last remaining German monarch-type standing, more or less, is Prince Friedrich of Waldeck-Pyrmont, who was deposed last week but refuses to abdicate. He is being held prisoner by a Soldiers’ Council until he does.

Woodrow Wilson’s chief advisor Col. House (who is neither a colonel nor a house) has the Spanish Flu.

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Today -100: November 21, 1918: Of POWs, Bolshevik plots, and larceny

Germany has been simply releasing British prisoners, without food or transportation, leaving them to make their own ways back, so Britain is threatening to “take this into account in any question of revictualing Germany or satisfying the requirements of the German population.”

Hundreds arrested in Vienna for a supposed Bolshevik revolutionary plot.

Vermont Governor Horace Graham (R) is indicted for larceny and embezzling funds when he was state auditor.

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