Today -100: January 3, 1919: Of perms and Spartacists

Supposedly when anti-Bolshevik forces captured Perm, they nearly captured Lenin as well. Supposedly.

And Polish soldiers have entered Germany, which is informing some of its newly demobbed soldiers that they’re soldiers again. Some of the former soldiers are telling the Army to go fuck itself, some are not.

There are tactical differences in the German Spartacists, with Karl Liebknecht advocating participation in elections for the National Assembly and Rosa Luxemburg saying the meeting of the National Assembly “must be prevented at all costs.” Her position prevails at the Spartacist Congress.

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Today -100: January 2, 1919: Of incontestable rights, German towns, royal marriages, and the emperor’s old clothes

French Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon asserts France’s “incontestable” rights in Armenia, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, which are based “on historic conventions and on more recent contracts.” The historic conventions go back to the Crusades, or something, while the “more recent contracts” means the 1915 secret treaty with Britain, which may or may not be the first time everyone else (including the populations of Armenia, Syria, etc) are hearing about them, in which the two colonial powers divided up the Ottoman Empire between themselves.

Germany declares martial law in Posen, claiming it is because of pogroms against Jews, but Poles say the disturbances were started by German soldiers shouting “Posen is a German town” and singing Deutschland über Alles, which provoked a riot to which the soldiers responded with machine guns.

British newspapers are discussing the marriage prospects of the Edward, the 24-year-old Prince of Wales, now that there are fewer royal families to interbreed with than there used to be. The Daily Express thinks it would be great if he’d marry an American. Spoiler Alert: the Daily Express is wrong.

Headline of the Day -100:

Kinky.

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Today -100: January 1, 1919: There are old wrongs to be righted

The 73 Sinn Féiners elected to the British Parliament plan to constitute themselves as a National Assembly in Dublin and proclaim an independent Irish republic. Or at least the ones who aren’t in British prisons, which is c.34 (with more in exile in the US).

French President Georges Clemenceau says France will only consider reducing its arms if and when the League of Nations proves a success. He is explicitly distancing himself from Woodrow Wilson’s League-first policy, saying “America is very far from Germany, but France is very near,” adding ominously, “There are old wrongs to be righted.”

Evidently there’s a Bolshevik “coup” in German Silesia.

Poland is preparing a military campaign along its Russian border with “Reds and Ruthenians.”

Bombs explode at the Philadelphia homes of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Robert von Moschzisker, acting Police Chief William Mills, and president of the Chamber of Commerce Ernest T. Trigg, which is as chamber-of-commercey a name as you could hope for. The police arrest some anarchists, as was the custom, muttering darkly about a nation-wide terrorist plot.

Fred Toney, pitcher for the New York Giants is sentenced to 4 months under the Mann Act (crossing state lines to have consensual sex with a woman not his wife). And he’ll go on trial, again, for evading the draft (claiming his wife was dependent on his salary when they were estranged and he wasn’t, maybe, supporting her). I’m sure this will be the biggest scandal baseball sees this year.

Interesting summary of 1919 and its lasting effects on the US by Ted Widmer. On a quick read, only one small mistake jumped out at me. Can you spot it?

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Today -100: December 31, 1918: The masses must learn how to use power by using power

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau wins a vote of confidence after explaining that France adheres to a “balance of power” strategy.

The German Communist Party (KPD) is founded. Rosa Luxemburg gives a long speech, as was the custom. She calls for a revolutionary mass struggle by the proletariat to undermine the Ebert-Scheidemann government.  “We must build from below upward, until the workers’ and soldiers’ councils gather so much strength that the overthrow of the Ebert-Scheidemann or any similar government will be merely the final act in the drama. For us the conquest of power will not be effected at one blow. It will be a progressive act, for we shall progressively occupy all the positions of the capitalist state, defending tooth and nail each one that we seize.” “The masses must learn how to use power by using power. There is no other way.”

German PM Friedrich Ebert has gotten the backing of the People’s Commissioners and the Central Council to crack down with force on “all attempts at lawlessness in every form.” The meeting is followed by the resignation of the left-wing Independent Socialist members of the cabinet.

US Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels says the US needs to strengthen its position at the peace conference and “realize her destiny as a leader of democratic impulse” by approving a really big naval ship-building program, bringing the navy up to the size of Britain’s. He also wants 250,000 men in the Navy, increased pay, and promotion by merit rather than seniority.

Rumor of the Day -100: Prussian monarchist military officers have kidnapped ex-prince Wilhelm, the 12-year-old grandson of the former kaiser, because they regard him as King of Prussia and hope to rally Germans around him. Total horseshit.

Headline of the Day -100:

"The former Emperor is suffering from nervousness, which does not make intercourse with him easy."

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Today -100: December 30, 1918: Of genocides, fighting Bolshevism, and pilots

The Turkish government is talking about holding courts-martial for those (few bad apples) responsible for the Armenian massacres. Armenians in the US protest that the Turks can’t be trusted to investigate themselves.

The NYT complains that the Allies aren’t creating a unified command to fight the Russian Bolsheviks. “The Allies can fight Bolshevism now, before its teeth have grown, and run the risk of having the cruder minds among their soldiers debauched by the argument that ignorance should rule knowledge; or they can wait until Bolshevism has spread that argument through the cruder minds not only of their armies but of their whole populations, and then fight it with their morale thus impaired.”

French Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon says that Allied military intervention in Russia is actually defensive, to prevent the Bolsheviks invading Ukraine, the Caucasus and western Siberia.

A German pilot, Christian Donhauser, claims that it was he who shot down and killed Theodore Roosevelt’s son Quentin. This may or may not be true. Donhauser, the article notes, weighs 94 pounds, not counting the Iron Cross he received for shooting down something like 30 planes. He hopes to emigrate to the US and fly planes here but instead will die in a plane crash in a couple of weeks.

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Today -100: December 29, 1918: Of British elections, death tolls, and whither Ludendorff?

Berlin Rumors: Ebert has fallen and been replaced by Liebknecht.

The British general election was held two weeks ago but the vote counts are being released now because they were waiting for ballots from soldiers and sailors to trickle in from around the world. It’s a complicated election in that Conservatives and Liberals (well, most of them) fought under a “Coalition” label, not competing with each other. So, of the 707 seats in the House of Commons, 478 will be held by Coalition MPs, nearly 3/4 of whom are Tories. Lloyd George, an ostensible Liberal, will now be presiding over a basically Conservative government. Awkwaaaaaard. The Liberal Party has split, with 28 non-Coalition Liberal MPs headed by former Prime Minister Asquith, who loses his East Fife seat to Sir Alexander Sprot, which is exactly the name you’d expect a Tory colonel to have, as have most other Liberal former Cabinet members. The once great Liberal Party of Gladstone and Palmerston is basically done. Labour has 63 MPs, up from 42, and is now the de facto opposition party, increasingly absorbing former Liberal voters. However, future Labour prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, a pacifist, loses his seat, as does current Labour Party leader and pacifist Arthur Henderson. Sinn Féin sweeps Ireland outside of the North (and de Valera defeats Irish Nationalist leader John Dillon), winning 73 seats which they will not take up for obvious reasons (if nothing else, there’s a loyalty oath to the king they’d have to take). One of those Sinn Féiners is the Countess Constance Markievicz, who wins in Dublin, the only woman elected, garnering 66% of the vote without campaigning (she’s kind of in prison). 13 other woman candidates, including Christabel Pankhurst, Women’s Freedom League leader Charlotte Despard, and several other prominent suffragists, lose. (Note: my figures come from David Butler’s British Political Facts. Wikipedia differs.)

With estimates in from every country, the death toll from the Great War is estimated at 5,936,504 (that’s way too low).

Woodrow Wilson celebrates his 62nd birthday in London. The king gives him a set of books. I wonder what books?

Ridiculous Rumor of the Day -100: Former head of the German Army Erich Ludendorff has been hired by Lenin to head the Soviet Army.

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Today -100: December 28, 1918: Of military interventions, perms, Red Christmases, illegal birds, and Spanish Flu

The Allies will, after all, send troops to southern Russia and Ukraine, but not on a large scale. The Soviet government again asks the Allies to name peace terms, and is again ignored, because the Allies don’t recognize them as the government of Russia.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Siberia is going to look back on this year’s yearbook and CRINGE.

The British Admiralty denies a rumor that it threatened to take action against Bolshevism in the German fleet, including sinking any ship flying a red flag.

The German sailors in Berlin will be permitted to keep their guard jobs if they promise not to revolt against the government again, in an “eleventh hour compromise [that] apparently saved Berlin from an Extremist Christmas today.” (Soon Germans will be using the term “Red Christmas.”)

Headline of the Day -100:  

Oh good, Germans LOVE rules. Pershing’s rules on Germans in the US-occupied territory includes registration of everyone over 12, travel and alcohol regulations, and censorship of the press, the mail, and theaters. Phone calls outside the occupied zone are banned, as are carrier pigeons (owners of said birds must give a description of them to the military commander). Photography is banned.

The German government appoints two guys to negotiate with Herbert Hoover over food relief, but he tells them to go to hell (his words) because they were part of the occupation regime in Belgium.

454 new Spanish Flu cases in Boston yesterday, a record. 36 deaths.

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Today -100: December 27, 1918: Of delegates, depressed Russians, and zeppelins

There will be 27 nations represented at the peace conference, either combatants in the Great War or new countries that exist because of the Great War. No neutrals.

Belgium adopts universal suffrage for the next elections (including women).

Germany: the Spartacus Group’s Karl Liebknecht is expected to declare the overthrow of Ebert’s government tomorrow. Ebert orders troops in Berlin to hold themselves in readiness. Various buildings are being seized by both sides and there are skirmishes. This all started when a bunch of (Spartacist?) naval reservists doing guard duty in various public buildings were disbanded but refused to go. Soldiers sent on the 24th to oust them were defeated and left Berlin.

Headline of the Day -100:

Germany’s war zeppelins will be converted, or so we are told, into merchant ships plying the route between Hamburg and New York.

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Today -100: December 26, 1918: All they want for Christmas...

Various Russian exiles, such as former prime minister Prince Lvov, are hanging around the peace talks in Paris, without official status but evidently being treated as if they represented a future, post-Bolshevik Russia. They’re pushing the Allies to intervene militarily in Russia with a large force, but aren’t making much headway.

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Today -100: December 25, 1918: Of pyres and serums

Headline of the Day -100: 

A rare NYT story about the Spanish Flu outside of the US. 1/7th of the population of the capital Papeete is dead. “The disease has virtually wiped out the elder generation of Tahitians, noted for their hospitality and charm.”

Boston health authorities will start treating Spanish Flu victims with a serum derived from the blood of people who’ve been “cured” of the flu. Horlick’s Malted Milk, which is again advertising itself as a treatment for Spanish Flu, is probably not much less effective and definitely much more delicious.

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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.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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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