Today -100: January 18, 1919: Summary, if irregular, justice

The armistice is extended for another month.

Karl Liebknicht is reportedly shot dead while “attempting to escape.” And Rosa Luxemburg is reportedly beaten by a mob and shot dead by some rando and thrown in the canal. Both stories are, of course, bullshit (except for the canal part; it will be months before her body, um, surfaces): the two were tortured and then executed by the soldiers who held them, under orders from their commanding officer. Pre-meditated, in other words. The German press mostly blames her for her supposed mob lynching, for having aroused “the basest passions.” And so does the NYT, which calls their murders “a summary, if irregular, justice to the fomenters of robbery, murder, and anarchy.” It blames the thriving of the Spartacists on the hesitance of the Socialist government “to make the final test.” “These two leaders, the man violent but weak, the woman a termagant of the familiar revolutionary type, have perished miserably by the sword they drew.”

The press protest their exclusion from the peace negotiations, demanding the admittance of 5 journalists from each major country. The French newspapermen don’t join the protest, they’re not fussed. The Supreme War Council backs down and will allow in 3 reporters from each country, except when they don’t.

Another rumor of a counter-revolution breaking out in Petrograd. Lenin is evidently now in exile in... Barcelona.

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

Today -100: January 17, 1919: They would drag us all down to the level of the lowest man

Nebraska is the 36th state to ratify the prohibition amendment, which means it is now the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. It will come into effect in a year. It will require Congress to pass enacting legislation, defining “intoxicating liquors” and setting up enforcement (the states also have enforcement powers).

Rosa Luxemburg has been “murdered,” according to a correct but sparse report. And Karl Liebknecht is reported captured by troops.

Some Montenegrins don’t want to be folded into Yugoslavia and are resisting Serb troops.

The Senate votes 50-21 to exonerate Robert La Follette of disloyalty for a 1917 speech in which he said that the sinking of the Lusitania was not a sufficient reason to go to war.

The Ebert government issues a draft constitution for Germany. Provisions include a 10-year term for an elected president and the partition of the country – and more importantly, Prussia – into entirely new states.

Spartacists are declaring separatist republics in Bremen and Brunswick.

46 members of the IWW are convicted of conspiracy to violate the Conscription Act. Federal prosecutor Robert Duncan told the jury, “They would drag us all down to the level of the lowest man. They do not recognize difference of ability in man, but would give the unworthy the same privileges for which the worthy have to strive so hard.” 43 of the Wobblies refused to speak or put on any defense. They will be sentenced to terms ranging from 1 to 10 years.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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

Today -100: January 16, 1919: Of molasses. Sweet, murderous molasses.

Headline of the Day -100: 

This is the Great Molasses Flood, in which 21 Bostonians come to a sticky end as 2 million gallons of molasses run through the streets at 35 miles per hour, drowning people and horses, destroying buildings and crumpling elevated train tracks. There’s a book about this.

After all the talk about “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at,” the five Powers decide (supposedly over US and British objections) to keep the Versailles deliberations secret.

The NYT prints another story about how the Romanovs are totally still alive, at a monastery in the Urals.

You know who’s (also) not alive? Karl Liebknicht and Rosa Luxemburg. I think it’ll take a few days for their bodies to be discovered.

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

Today -100: January 15, 1919: Where is the enemy?

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) attacks the idea of a League of Nations as requiring the maintenance of large militaries, including peace-time conscription in the US (actually the Peace Conference is talking about banning conscription. Oh, or maybe that hasn’t come up yet). Borah is also not fond of Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels’ plan for a huge navy, asking “Where is the enemy?”

The peace talkers have almost decided on whether the talks will be conducted wholly in French. They have allocated representation: 5 delegates for France, Britain, the US, Italy and Japan, 3 for Brazil for some reason, 2 for Belgium, Serbia (just Serbia, not the United Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) no decision yet about the Croats and Slovenes), Greece, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, China, Canada, Australia, South Africa and India. 1 for New Zealand and Newfoundland. States which broke off diplomatic relations with Germany but didn’t declare war, like Portugal, get 1.  Decisions will have to be unanimous.

The Senate votes for a $5,000 pension (and franking privileges) for Theodore Roosevelt’s widow Edith.

The remnants of the Spartacists, having lost their revolution, are turning to looting and holding up casinos frequented by war profiteers, the NYT reports.

Former Kaiser Wilhelm now has a beard. It’s grey.

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

Today -100: January 14, 1919: We have no policy in Russia

Sen. Hiram Johnson (R-CA) is frustrated that the Foreign Relations Committee is delaying action on his resolution asking the government for its rationale for keeping troops in Russia and he is frustrated at the White House for not responding. He says this shows “that we have no policy in Russia.” Troops yes, policy no.

Britain has tentatively suggested that the Bolshevik government be invited to the peace talks, along with the various competing White governments. No one else seems too keen.

The Japanese delegation arrives. The only non-whites at the conference presently, I believe. It’s still being worked out which countries will be represented and by how many delegates each, but China will be there and won’t be represented by Japan, which I can’t believe was ever seriously proposed but I guess it was.

That the peace talks seem to have accomplished so little is in part due to the powers spending more time talking about out how to remove the Bolsheviks from power in Russia.

Using heavy artillery, the German government defeats the Spartacists in Berlin. Prisoners are being executed, which is a first since the Revolution began in November. It won’t be the last time. Rosa Luxemburg writes, in what will be her last article, “the government’s rampaging troops massacred the mediators who had tried to negotiate the surrender of the Vorwärts building, using their rifle butts to beat them beyond recognition. Prisoners were lined up against the wall and butchered so violently that skull and brain tissue splattered everywhere.”

California is the 24th state to ratify the prohibition amendment. In so voting, the Legislature chooses to defy the results of the prohibition referenda held last November.

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

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.