Today -100: December 24, 1918: A very Hohenzollern Christmas

The German government refuses to allow former kaiser Wilhelm’s former court chaplain to go to the Netherlands for his Christmas Eve ceremonies. So Willy will just give the sermon himself. He doesn’t want any gifts. He supposedly helped cut down some Christmas trees on the estate of Count Bentinck, whose opinion on the felling of his trees for a German Xmas tradition is not recorded. All Bentinck’s friends declined invitations to hear the sermon, but his servants aren’t being given a choice. Their opinion is also not recorded.

Germany supposedly sends a bunch of soldiers to Posen, to challenge the Polish claim to that area and prevent them holding elections.

Theodore Roosevelt won’t be going to the peace conference.  Not that anyone invited him.

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Today -100: December 23, 1918: Terrifying novelties are the worst kind, especially terrifying novelties of a most intricate character

Sweden refuses Estonia’s request for military assistance against the Russian invasion.

British Munitions Minister Winston Churchill says Germany is just lucky the war ended when it did, because Britain had a bunch of new weapons it was just about to use, “terrifying novelties, some of a most intricate character.”

All food restrictions are lifted in the US, but rules against profiteering will continue to be enforced for the time being.

The state of Prussia is annoyed that Poland is holding elections on territory that both P’s claim. Prussia tells the people in those areas that voting will be construed as high treason and acceptance of office will be criminally chargeable as impersonation of an official.

Woodrow Wilson visits wounded American soldiers in France. He asks one soldier with wounds in his legs why no one in the hospital has wounds in the upper part of their body. Because soldiers with those wounds “have gone on,” he’s told. He also visits wounded French soldiers at their hospital, but he doesn’t speak French.

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Today -100: December 22, 1918: A great wave of moral flatulence moving through the world

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.), speaking in the Senate, says 5 of Wilson’s 14 Points should be put aside for now, including freedom of the seas, banning secret diplomacy, and of course the League of Nations, while the Allies focus on the task of kicking Germany while it’s down and making sure it doesn’t get up again (I’m paraphrasing).

Woodrow Wilson, in Paris, says “There is a great wave of moral force moving through the world”. And,

Czech President Tomáš Masaryk cancels an order deporting Jews.

Some group of Armenians declares Armenia independent.

Arts critic James Huneker says Sergei Rachmaninoff “raised the roof” in his performance at Carnegie Hall. His fans "surged toward Serge in serried masses," but couldn’t induce him to play the Prelude in C Sharp Minor. He played some of his stuff and some Chopin, Mozart and Beethoven. Huneker finds him “a cerebral, not an emotional, artist.”

Tacoma City Council decrees that, when dancing, the man may only put one arm around his partner, while the woman may put her hand on the man’s arm, not his shoulder or back. THE TACOMA CITY COUNCIL HAS DECREED IT!

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Today -100: December 21, 1918: Thank heaven Berlin is not Germany

King Victor Emmanuel of Italy is visiting France, and all the French politicians speaking at his events are making a point of saying that Italy “spontaneously” entered the war in 1915. In reality, Italy negotiated a large bribe for itself in territory and other stuff that the Allies now really don’t feel were justified by Italy’s meager military contribution. Also, it was one of those embarrassing secret treaties. Also, Yugoslavia is objecting loudly to the idea of Italy getting territory which it thinks is properly Jugoslav. Italy is saying it won’t demobilize its army because it might have to go to war with Yugoslavia (which is not technically that country’s name yet, but that’s what I’m going with).

Germany: the Soldiers’ and Workers’ Councils vote to hold National Assembly elections on January 19th and to ask the Allies to withdraw from occupied parts of Germany so elections can be held there. The far left (Independent Socialists, Spartacists) would have preferred to postpone elections. The SPD’s Philipp Scheidemann warns the Councils that they should disband and go home because they’re just making it easy for their enemies on the left, the Bolsheviks, to take over, which would be even worse for Germany than for Russia because Germany has so much more to destroy. “Thank heaven,” he says, “Berlin is not Germany.”

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That would be Major General Joseph Dickman, the American general in charge of the occupation of some of Germany, who tells newspapers not to complain about conditions in the occupied zone or criticize the US or the Allies or their militaries. The US forces are also arresting demobbed German soldiers still wearing uniforms.

A lynch mob takes 4 black people (2 of them women) from the Shubata, Mississippi jail and hangs them from a bridge over the Chickasahay. They supposedly killed a dentist one of the women “had trouble with.”

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Today -100: December 20, 1918: Because nothing says “every British instinct of honour and humanity” like sending in the army to kill people

The London Times estimates that 6 million people have died of the Spanish Flu worldwide. The NYT, which has barely noticed that the pandemic affected other countries (has it ever mentioned its spread in India, for example? I’m not sure), finds this story worthy of 2 paragraphs on page 24.

The French (except for the socialists) would like the peace conference to consider more war, in the form of intervention in Russia to exterminate Bolshevism. They cite the need for a Russia strong enough to hold back the Teuton hordes. They’re not sure they’ll be able to convince Wilson.

And British Secretary of War Viscount Milner says that the Allies intervened militarily in Russia because of a “debt of honour” to the Czech troops fighting the Bolsheviks. He admits that the Great War, the initial reason for the intervention, is done and dusted, but because “in the course of this allied intervention thousands of Russians have taken up arms and fought on the side of the Allies,” there’s now another debt of honor to those guys. “It would be an abominable betrayal, contrary to  every British instinct of honour and humanity.”

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Today -100: December 19, 1918: Of undead czars, gratificiation of the lust for revenge, and child labor

The late Czar Nicholas II’s mother Maria Feodorovna, currently living in the Crimea but soon to escape back to her native Denmark, has been getting letters from someone claiming to be him; she is convinced they are real and Nicholas is still alive.

Poland broke relations with Germany last week. Germany’s ambassador, Count Harry Kessler – the “Red Count” – making a diplomatic exit from the country, blames journalists from the Saturday Evening Post, who he says “came to Warsaw with large sums of money to intrigue against us,” and the French, who are using Poles “for the gratification of their lust for revenge”. TheSaturday Evening Post denies that the men Kessler named work for the paper.

Germany is also unhappy that the Poles are organizing elections to the Polish Parliament in regions claimed by both Germany and Poland.

The US Senate adopts a 10% tax on the profits of products produced by child labor. This is an attempted end-run around the Supreme Court decision overturning a law banning inter-state commerce in the products of child labor. The vote is 50-12, all 12 being Southern Democrats.

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Today -100: December 18, 1918: Puzzled by Russia

Supposedly the Bolsheviks are getting ready to abandon Petrograd.

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Specifically, about which of the self-proclaimed governments actually speaks for Russia. Not the Bolsheviks, obviously, that would never do, but the various White factions are too divided to be credible.

A British squadron in the Gulf of Finland bombards Russian Red Army forces in Estonia. Did I forget to mention Russia invaded Estonia? And Lithuania?

While I’ve largely given up on trying to follow the intra-mural scuffles in the German far left, especially as interpreted by the NYT, it’s worth noting that of the 450 delegates at the Central Congress of Delegates from Soldiers’ and Workers’ Councils now meeting in Berlin, just 3 are women.

The first American Jewish Congress meets in Philadelphia and calls for the Peace Conference to recognize Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth under British trusteeship.  It will send delegates to the conference to request that recognition of new or enlarged states be conditioned on their adoption of a Jewish Bill of Rights including equal rights, no restrictions on language, no blue laws, etc.

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Today -100: December 17, 1918: I did not want to come to this dump in the first place

Pres. Wilson commutes the death sentence imposed on Priv. Solomon Losofsky of Newark, who said on arriving at Camp Dix, “I did not want to come to this dump in the first place and I have no respect for the flag or the country.”

Pres. Wilson is made a citizen of Paris, receiving a gold medal, a beret, and a baguette to commemorate the occasion. Or whatever the stereotypes about the French were  in 1918.

The Portuguese government takes advantage of the assassination of President Sidónio Pais to arrest the leaders of the opposition parties, as was the custom.

It’s rumored that Pope Benedict will wander outside the precincts of the Vatican, which all popes have refused to do since 1871 to protest Italy’s refusal to recognize the Vatican as a separate state (the Church also orders Catholics not to participate in Italian politics). I could be wrong, but I don’t think any pope does leave the Vatican until the Concordat with Mussolini.

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Today -100: December 16, 1918: Of assassinations and mobs of Dutch women

Portuguese President Sidónio Pais is assassinated in a Lisbon train station, just over a year after he took power in a military coup. The NYT reports, wrongly, that his assassin is killed by an angry crowd. They do beat him up. He will be placed in an asylum, where he will die in 1946.

Wishful Thinking Headline of the Day -100: 

Headline of the Day -100:  

We’ve all been there, ammiright guys?

via Gfycat

[gif from https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/GloomyWhirlwindErmine]

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Today -100: December 15, 1918: Of armistices and overstaying guests

The armistice is extended for a month. The Allies reserve the right to occupy the neutral zone on the German side of the Rhine.

Dutch Prime Minister Ruys de Beerenbrouck tells Parliament that the government did not know in advance that ex-kaiser Wilhelm was going to cross into the Netherlands, and really would have preferred him to choose somewhere else, but he didn’t and there’s such a thing as asylum and.... The PM is pretty wishy-washy about what the kaiser’s future might be. Reading between the lines, it all depends on how much pressure other countries put on the Netherlands.

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Today -100: December 14, 1918: Of uniforms, overstaying guests, teaching turkeys, and bumpuses

The War Department will allow discharged soldiers to keep their uniforms. The previous plan was to require them to return the uniforms within 3 months.

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Headline of the Day -100:  

The country, not the bird. Evidently this is being suggested by various British people, including former foreign secretary Viscount Grey. Presumably it’s one of many schemes to keep the US engaged with the world and not withdraw back into itself.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George says that the peace conference will be a failure and a sham if conscription is not abolished everywhere. Britain, of course, intends to maintain a huge navy to continue its dominance over the oceans. They’re very wary of the 2nd of Wilson’s 14 Points, freedom of the seas.

Headline of the Day -100:  

For I am... President Bumpus of Tufts!

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Today -100: December 13, 1918: Of Spanish Flu, trials, and red flags

NYC Health Commissioner Royal Copeland (he’s a homeopathist, you know) doesn’t think. Oh, sorry, NYC Health Commissioner Royal Copeland doesn’t think the Spanish Flu will recur in New York. He thinks every New Yorker has already been exposed to the germ (he thinks it’s a germ). He’s just back from the American Public Health Association meeting in Chicago, where public health professionals completely failed to come to any agreement on how to fight influenza.

The German government decides not to oppose Willy Hohenzollern being put on trial by the Allies (this story may be bullshit).

The (German) Spartacus Group’s newspaper The Red Flag warns radicals to be ready, warns that returning troops will be used in Berlin against the revolution. They’re not wrong.

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Today -100: December 12, 1918: Germany should pay to the utmost limit of her capacity

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, campaigning, says the war bill which the Allies will present to Germany (not including the US, which doesn’t want any indemnities from Germany, according to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels) is $120 billion. That’s considerably more than the entire wealth of Germany, so it will only be required to “pay to the utmost limit of her capacity.” “The first consideration in the minds of the Allies will be the interests of the people upon whom the Germans have made war, and not in the interests of the German people who have made war and have been guilty of that crime.” Ah, collective guilt and collective punishment, always the best foundations for a lasting peace. France will also be demanding the return of the indemnity it was forced to pay after the Franco-Prussian War, with interest, naturally.

Page 13 Headline of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: December 11, 1918: Of suicides, national security, and Transylvania

The Leipzig Tageblatt says former kaiser Wilhelm tried to kill himself (doesn’t say how) but was stopped by one of his retinue, which has now been reduced to a pitiful 18.

The House of Representatives orders an investigation of the National Security League and other groups which attacked the loyalty of members of Congress during the last elections. The League failed to file campaign expense accounts.

I guess the NYT missed this, but on the 1st Transylvania’s National Assembly declared the union of Transylvania (formerly a province of Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and Romania. Transylvanian Socialists only agreed after Romania introduced universal male suffrage and banned garlic.

I thought I’d be able to write about Transylvania without making a stupid vampire joke, but I was wrong.

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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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