Today -100: January 13, 1919: I would rather die than be forced to admit that civil war is prevailing

In the midst of trying to form a coalition government for Poland, Ignacy Jan Paderewski is shot, but not seriously injured.

Uruguayan police supposedly foil a Bolshevik plot for simultaneous revolutions there and in Argentina.

Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde announces her abdication; Luxembourg is now a republic, says the NYT, a bit prematurely.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Willing to shoot down their fellow countrymen, you know, “dependable.” Troops recapture the Vorwärts building (well, set it on fire after bombarding it. Not sure how useful it will be for putting out a newspaper now). This is followed by a parade of soldiers through Berlin to show who’s in charge. The Spartacist uprising spreads to Düsseldorf and...

“Infection.” Bavaria’s socialist Prime Minister Kurt Eisner says “I would rather die than be forced to admit that civil war is prevailing in Munich.”

The French General Staff is reportedly going to propose exiling ex-kaiser Wilhelm and all the male members of the Hohenzollern family to (French) Algeria.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 12, 1919: Did you win the war in order to knit Ireland’s chains?

The NYT is pretty sure Karl Liebknecht has been machine-gunned to death. Nope.

I’ve been wondering: when did the NYT first have a corrections section? Does anyone know?

Headline of the Day -100: 

Not really a significant headline, just worth noting that Germany still has POWs, presumably darned pissed-off POWs, it hasn’t released 2 months after the armistice.

Sinn Féin hq in Dublin is raided. The police find pamphlets addressed to US soldiers asking “Did you win the war in order to knit Ireland’s chains?” and “We helped to win your independence. Will you help us to win ours?”

Knit?

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 11, 1919: When you have the entire bourgeoisie and three-fourths of the Berlin workmen with you, what can’t you do?

The NYT says Gen. Luis Dellepiane is now dictator of Argentina. He isn’t, but in his role as head of the police he is crushing a communist/anarchist strike/uprising in what became known as the Semana Trágica (tragic week).

In Berlin, the army tries to machine gun a plane dropping Spartacist leaflets. Where did they think it would crash if they succeeded in shooting it down?

The Ebert government, which is about to order soldiers to use military force against the Spartacists in Berlin, says “This whole Bolshevist uprising will be put down within the next three days. We are absolutely sure of our position. The entire bourgeoisie and three-fourths of the Berlin workmen are with us.” Also, possibly, Field Marshal Hindenburg, who it is rumored will be asked to lead the army against Berlin?

An ad placed by the Association Opposed to National Prohibition asks the question

Evidently “National Prohibition will compel a spy system similar to that of the overthrown Czar and the Kaiser.” Prohibition “will be the best excuse that can be offered to stir up strife among the people.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 10, 1919: On immigration, fighting in Berlin, and the secretary of the air

Congress is considering legislation to ban immigration by Bolsheviks, or just blocking almost all immigration for 2 or 4 years because you never know who might be a Bolshevik.

German troops beat back Spartacists in Berlin. Lots of shooting. Bavarian Interior Minister Erhard Auer threatens to send... I don’t know, the Bavarian Army?... into Berlin.

Italy is happily reconquering Libya.

Bolsheviks retake Vilna.

Lloyd George announces his new Cabinet: Austen Chamberlain will be chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill (still a Liberal) will be secretary for war and secretary of the air (yes, “secretary of the air” is a thing). Arthur Balfour will continue as foreign secretary. Sir Satyendra Prasanna Sinha, the former president of the Indian National Congress, will be under-secretary for India, the first Indian in the British government. It will be a largely Tory cabinet and will quietly sabotage LG’s election promises about housing and land for returning soldiers.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 9, 1919: No one can tell what the Germans will do

The Spartacists, described by the NYT correspondent as “typical proletarians, some of whom affect even a more dilapidated appearance than is naturally their own,” are still out on the streets in Berlin. Fortunately, the Ebert government is prepared to engage them with reason and patience and...

Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann address crowds in front of the Chancellor’s palace.  Scheidemann says “This dirty mess has to be brought to an end” and  “If you men who have had military training will join us, you will get arms.” (Those quotes may be from 2 different such speeches). Increasingly, he will find what the kaiser was unable to find in November: German soldiers willing to use lethal violence against fellow Germans. A government proclamation says “Force can only be fought with force... The hour of revenge draws near.”

Which is the best false rumor about Russia published by the NYT today -100: 

1) another report that Czar Nicholas is still alive, according to a Morning Post correspondent who heard it from Grand Duke Cyril, who heard it from Prince M____, who heard it in a letter from the totally-not-dead Grand Duchess Tatiana, who said that the Bolshevik officer in charge of the execution didn’t care who he killed, as long as he had a body with its head blown off to show his bosses, so Count T____ insisted on taking the czar’s place.

or 2) Trotsky arrests Lenin and declares himself dictator?

The US has 12,941 soldiers in Russia.

Victor Berger, Socialist member of Congress for Wisconsin, is convicted along with 4 other Socialist Party leaders (Adolph Germer, William Kruse, J. Louis Engdahl and Irwin St. John Tucker) for disloyalty and sedition under the Espionage Act. The NYT says the conviction bars him from Congress. The House will debate this before expelling him. He will then win the special election and be barred again, then his conviction will be overturned by the Supreme Court and he’ll defeat the man they declared elected in his place.

US delegates to the Peace Conference have been suggesting that the blockade of Germany be lifted to prevent mass starvation, uphold the Ebert government, and prevent the spread of Bolshevism. France is ok with mass starvation in Germany.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George asks soldiers, who have been demonstrating for demobilization to be sped up, for patience, saying it’s necessary to maintain a large army during peace negotiations. “Although the fighting has stopped, the war is not over. The German armies have not yet been demobilized and are still very powerful. No one can tell what the Germans will do, nor whether they will agree to the terms of the peace and reparation which we seek to impose upon them.” The soldiers are especially worried that they’re being retained so they can be sent to Russia, but the War Office denies this.

The British Labour Party accepts the position of Official Opposition for the first time, which means they get the good seats in Parliament.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 8, 1919: The German menace is still there

While German political parties are reshaping themselves in preparation for Reichstag elections (which are being fought without much in the way of rallies and speeches), the Spartacists are seizing telegraph and newspaper offices. Radical Berlin Police Chief Emil Eichhorn was fired by the central government but refuses to go, saying “I received my position from the revolution, and I will only give it back to the revolution” (actually during the revolution in November he just walked into hq and said he was chief now, which isn’t quite the same thing). The government bans street gatherings (and secretly orders Freikorps, non-governmental organizations of former soldiers, to suppress the Spartacist rising).

Sen. Robert LaFollette objects to US troops being kept in Archangel to fight the Bolsheviks, especially with no war having been declared. Claude Swanson (D-Virginia) replies that they’re needed to protect Allied ammunition stores there, because we’re technically still at war with Germany, which wanted to keep Archangel as a u-boat base. “The German menace is still there, for Germany has shown that she is trying to influence the Bolsheviki. It is the Bolsheviki who are making the trouble, and it is to keep the trouble down that our men are being kept there, but back of it all is the German menace.” LaFollette replies that the Bolsheviks are not in fact friends with Germany but the evidence of this has been stifled by the censors. William Kenyon (R-Iowa) points out the the US soldiers don’t have the proper clothes for a Russian winter.

The US military is admitting to 132 deaths in the Northern Russia campaign (half from disease).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 7, 1919: TR out

Former president Theodore Roosevelt is dead. Embolism, brought about by his history of tropical diseases and the bullet he still had in him from the 1912 assassination attempt and whatnot. Age 60, a reminder of how early he became president (43) and how young he was when his important public work was over.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Yeah, death’ll do that. Republicans, who had become grumpily reconciled to TR returning to the party as their 1920 presidential candidate, now have to find someone else. Speculation is focusing on Sen. Philander Knox, Gen. Leonard Wood, and Sen. Warren G. Harding. I really don’t know what Harding has ever accomplished to so distinguish himself.

We could have had a president named Philander. Imagine that.

US oil companies deny that they have come to an agreement with the Mexican government to pay royalties on oil extracted from their Mexican properties, insisting that their absolute “right” to their oil be respected. Mexico says they can drink all the oil they like. OK it doesn’t say that.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 6, 1919: Of uprisings, kingdoms, mutilated soldiers, justice to peasants and Jews, united cigars, and fake Archies

The “January Uprising,” a hasty workers’ rebellion in Berlin, begins.

The Kingdom of Serbia is now the United Serbian-Croatian-Slovene Kingdom. Good luck fitting that on the stamps.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Romania grants citizenship to Jews born in Romania. And expropriates the lands of large landowners. “It is thus,” the Romanian ambassador to France writes to one of the Rothschilds, “that at one and the same moment the Government grants justice to our peasants and to our Jews”.

The United Cigar Stones Company will ask its customers to contribute to a fund to distribute (through the Red Cross) cigars, cigarettes and tobacco to wounded soldiers in hospitals in New York.

Someone claiming to be Archie Roosevelt, the former president’s son, has been sending telegrams to his acquaintances asking for money. And someone (the same person?) is impersonating him in hotels in Albuquerque. The real AR is recovering from war injuries in New York.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 5, 1919: Of approval, unfree love, and helpful toxic gases

Headline of the Day -100: 

Woodrow Wilson has decided that the enthusiastic crowds greeting him in Rome, Paris, London and Manchester are signs that everyone wants the League of Nations, that’s just logic.

Supposedly the Bolsheviks are planting mines in Petrograd in case they lose the city. 

However, Petrograd has other things on its mind (according to credulous idiots):

And of course the state will remove any children of these unions and raise them itself.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: January 4, 1919: Of relief, red invasions, and potatoes

Businessman Herbert Hoover is now head of Allied relief efforts in “liberated” enemy and neutral nations.

Headline of the Day -100: 

You know what’s missing from these stories? Any statement from Allied governments about what implications German military action against Poles and/or Bolsheviks would have under the armistice agreement. You’d think France at least would be squawking about any plan to recruit more German soldiers.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Prince Ludwig Windisch-Grätz was Food Controller.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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?

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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."

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.