Today -100: March 8, 1919: Of mandates, ships, and pogroms

German government troops and Freikorps fight “reds” on the streets of Berlin, with many dead.

Albania, which is asking the Peace Conference for territories currently held by Greece, Serbia and Montenegro, says it’s willing for the United States to exercise a League of Nations mandate over the disputed territories for a year, I guess to organize plebiscites. There is zero chance of this happening.

“President Wilson is not in favor of taking the German Navy to sea and sinking it.” Meanwhile, negotiations break down over what to do with German merchant ships sequestered abroad during the war. The Allies suggest taking the ships in exchange for some food for Germany, which Germany rejects because it would only be a couple of weeks’ worth of food. France, you will be surprised to hear, is being particularly unhelpful in resolving the situation and allowing Germans to, you know, eat.

Reports of more pogroms of Jews in Eastern Galicia and the Ukraine.

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Today -100: March 7, 1919: Of leagues and machine guns

Senators William Borah, James Reed and Charles Thomas open their campaign against the League of Nations. Borah calls for a national plebiscite. He says the League would protect the territorial integrity even of countries that don’t, I guess, deserve it, including if “Trotsky brings Russia into the League.”

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Swell.

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Today -100: March 6, 1919: There are giants in the sky

Austrian Foreign Minister Otto Bauer is negotiating terms for the union of Austria and Germany.

The German government claims the Spartacists tried to seize Königsberg in order to clear a route for Soviet Russian armies coming to their aid, but were thwarted by government troops.

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The baseball team, not actual giants. They might travel on aeroplanes to Philadelphia to open the season.

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Today -100: March 5, 1919: His gluttony for the limelight is well known. Delicious, delicious limelight.

Giving a pro-League of Nations speech at the Met, Woodrow Wilson says criticism means nothing to him, because “there is no medium that will transmit them,” whatever that means. Demonstrating that spirit of flexibility and compromise for which he is known, Wilson wonders how the critics of the League “can live, and not live in the atmosphere of the world... and I cannot particularly imagine how they can be Americans and set up a doctrine of careful selfishness thought out in the last detail.” After being played onto the stage with “Over There,” he promises not to come back from France until the peace talks are over, over there.

The 65th Congress comes to an end, not having finished much of its business thanks to a filibuster by Senators Lawrence Sherman (R-Ill.), Joseph France (R-Maryland), and Robert La Follette (R-Wisc.). Lost bills include the General Deficiency Bill to pay old bills and fund the government’s control of the railroads; army and navy appropriations; repeal of daylight savings; a 4-year ban on immigration; prohibition enforcement; and a revised women’s suffrage constitutional amendment. Pres. Wilson says he won’t call a special session, because he’ll be back in France until June and “it is not in the interest of the right conduct of public affairs” for Congress to work while he’s not around to (cough) cooperate with them. Or, as Sen. George Moses (R-New Hampshire) puts it, “His gluttony for the limelight is well known” and his “dogged refusal to summon Congress, save when and as he pleases, is... due to his desire to monopolize the center of the international stage, and to close the only national forum available here for the voicing of opposition to the proposed constitution of the League of Nations.” It’s funny because it’s true.

Spartacists seize the police hq in Berlin. The general strike’s demands include recognition of workers’ and soldiers’ councils (or soviets, if you will), reversal of the re-establishment of the military hierarchy, disbandment of the Freikorps, the creation of a Red Guard under the soviets, the release of all political prisoners, and trial by revolutionary tribunal of various Hohenzollerns and generals and whatnot.

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A Jewish delegation meets Polish President Józef Piłsudski and Prime Minister Paderewski to ask them to stop the pogroms. They both decline to do anything. Piłsudski says the Jews are hostile to Poland. Asked for proof of this, he says there is none but that’s the general feeling.

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Today -100: March 4, 1919: A most fatal error for any people

British Prime Minister Lloyd George warns small nations (he doesn’t specify which small nations, but he has to have at least Belgium and Yugoslavia in mind) not to emulate the faults of large empires by annexing lands not their own: “This is a most fatal error for any people, great or small.”

Ignoring that advice, of course, is France. The current version of the Peace Conference’s map of the proposed French-German border is interesting. France will re-annex Alsace-Lorraine without the complication of asking its inhabitants their wishes. The Rhineland and the northern Saar region of Germany, important for coal and steel and, consequently, for providing raw material for the German military machine, are inconveniently too German in population for France to get away with annexing them, so it’s been suggested that they be made sort of neutral – “sterilized” is the word they’re using – with France taking their coal and steel while the inhabitants would be neither French nor German and would be represented in neither parliament but would also not be conscripted into either army.

37 Republican senators from the incoming Senate sign a resolution against the US joining the League of Nations unless certain changes are made. Signers include Henry Cabot Lodge, William Borah, Warren Harding, Hiram Johnson, and Reed Smoot. They didn’t ask Democratic senators to sign and indeed actively refused one or two who wanted to, so this is clearly more about the 1920 elections than the League. They also want a peace treaty signed before there is any consideration of the League. Considering the widespread belief that the continuance of the wartime blockade of Germany is starving that country into Bolshevism, this doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable.

British Secretary of War Winston Churchill asks Parliament to maintain an army of 2.5 million, since they might wind up having to occupy Germany if it doesn’t agree to the terms handed it.

The Supreme Court upholds (in Schenck v. United States) the convictions of socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer under the Espionage Act for calling for resistance to conscription. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writes that during wartime things that people might be permitted to speak “are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and no court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” The NYT misses the famous line in the ruling that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger”.

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Today -100: March 3, 1919: Every strike brings us a step nearer to the abyss

The NYT reports “The possible fall of the German Government,” beset as it is by strikes and soviets and Spartacists. The government issues a manifesto: “Every strike brings us a step nearer to the abyss. Only work can save us.”

Woodrow Wilson meets American Zionist leaders and expresses support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Peace talks between Poland and the Ukraine fail.

Former French Prime Minister René Viviani says Paris is too close to the border, and since they can’t move Paris, they should move the border, that’s just science.

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Today -100: March 2, 1919: Of republics, dynamiters, and statehoods

A Soviet republic is declared in Brunswick.

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No answer having been forthcoming to the request Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner Félix Córdova Dávila made to Congress last month to say whether Puerto Rico can ever become a state, the island’s Legislature repeats the question. Puerto Rico’s Union and Republican parties agree that if it isn’t, they should work for independence.

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Today -100: March 1, 1919: Of mobilizations, train accidents, and writing history books

The Netherlands is mobilizing its army to fight off any attempt by Belgium to annex Dutch territory.

In 1917, 9,567 people were killed on railroads and 70,970 injured.

At a White House dinner for members of the DNC, Woodrow Wilson says he’s looking forward to writing some history books after March 3, 1921. In other words, he’s not running for a 3rd term.

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Today -100: February 28, 1919: Of strikes, palmers and whipples, and feeble kaisers

German troops crush Spartacist strikes in the Ruhr coal region.

Woodrow Wilson nominates Alexander Mitchell Palmer, the Alien Property Custodian and a former congresscritter from Pennsylvania, to be attorney general. He beats out Sherman Whipple, which is surely the name of a cartoon character.

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Today -100: February 27, 1919: Of promiscuous shooting, rioting, and parks

Spartacist uprising in Saxony, with a general strike. And in Düsseldorf armed Spartacists seize the ballots for the city council elections and burn them, then engage in “a little promiscuous shooting,” as was the custom.

Socialist journalist John Reed goes on trial in Philadelphia for inciting to riot and rioting. Last May he tried to give a speech that the police didn’t want him to give, which seems to be the extent of his “rioting.” Also on trial is William Kogerman, who allegedly tried to bite a cop who was arresting him, which he denies. (They will be acquitted).

Among other legislation passed at the end of the 65th Congress’s term, but not mentioned in this article, is one establishing the Grand Canyon as a national park.

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Today -100: February 26, 1919: Repent! Repent!

Willy Hohenzollern thinks Germany “will soon repent of having overthrown the monarchy.” Spoiler Alert: Germany will not repent of having overthrown the monarchy.

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Today -100: February 25, 1919: Good morrow, my little soldiers

Boston police arrest 22 members of the National Woman’s Party who planned to burn Woodrow Wilson’s speeches on Boston Common during the welcome parade. The charge is loitering.

In his speech at Mechanics Hall, Boston, Wilson says abandoning the peace treaty would be breaking the promises the US made to new nations Poland, Armenia, Czechoslovakia etc. “I have no more doubt of the verdict of America in this matter than I have of the blood that is in me.” And about that blood: “I have fighting blood in me.”

Prince Leopold is arrested for possibly being behind the assassination of Bavarian PM Kurt Eisner. And they’re looking for the former Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. A bunch of aristos have also been arrested.

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“Good morrow, my little soldiers,” he addresses them. “Good morrow, comrade,” they reply.

Full-page ad on page 7:

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Today -100: February 24, 1919: Of non-lynchings, non-civil wars, fog, and money

The NYT reports the lynching by an angry Budapest mob of Communist leader Béla Kun. This is not true.

On his return home from the peace talks, Woodrow Wilson’s ship almost runs aground in the fog, in what is definitely not a metaphor of any kind. And the Secret Service raids a couple of places looking for two Spanish anarchists allegedly planning to assassinate Wilson and for the bomb they allegedly planned to throw at him. They arrest 14 men, which may or may not include the two they’re looking for, and find zero bombs.

German Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann told the National Assembly in Weimar that civil war has broken out in Munich. The government quickly disavows this.

Poland plans to introduce its own currency in a few months, pegged to the French franc.

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Today -100: February 23, 1919: 60% dead

The assassination of Bavarian Chancellor Kurt Eisner is followed, as was the custom, by an uprising in Munich and the declaration of a Bavarian Soviet Republic. AP says Eisner’s assassin has been lynched; he hasn’t. NYT: “It is predicted that the killing of Eisner will be avenged in a most frightful manner.”

A revolt breaks out in Budapest. Communists attack the Social Democratic Party’s official newspaper Népszava (People’s Word) and take over the telegraph office and train station. The NYT thinks that Germans and Russians are behind it.

Sing Sing prison had 106 cases of Spanish Flu, nearly 10% of the prison’s population, and 14 cases of flu-related pneumonia, but not a single death. They used quinine and “physic.”

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Today -100: February 22, 1919: Another day, another assassination

Kurt Eisner, the radical Bavarian Chancellor, who was actually on his way to the state Diet to resign, is shot dead by Count Anton von Arco auf Valley, who hated Eisner on political as well as anti-Semitic grounds despite his own Jewish heritage on his mother’s side. Arco-Valley shouts “Down with the revolution, long live the kaiser!” He will be tried before a sympathetic right-wing judge by a sympathetic right-wing prosecutor who will praise his “enthusiasm.” He will serve 5 years (some of it in a cell that Hitler got right after him) (right now he’s in the same cell Eisner occupied a year ago).

While announcing Eisner’s death to the Diet, Interior Minister Erhard Auer, a rightist, is himself shot and wounded by someone in the public gallery. Spartacists seize Munich police hq, but government forces recapture it.

The Central Federated Union of New York votes to strike on July 1 if beer is cut off on that date. No beer, no work.

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Today -100: February 21, 1919: They are exceedingly clumsy

The assassin’s bullet that hit French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau penetrated his lungs and is inoperable (nevertheless, he’s up and walking around and will live another decade). The Tiger says, “My adversaries are really poor shots.  They are exceedingly clumsy.”

Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and some of his men are helping bring troops to Archangel, with reindeer and sledges and what not.

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Victor Berger, Socialist member of Congress from Wisconsin, and his fellow defendants are sentenced to 20 years for violation of the Espionage Act and obstructing the war.

The French province Champagne demands that the Peace Conference prevent the name of that eponymous beverage being used by bubbly originating from any other region. You know, along with peace and disarmament and the League of Nations. 

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Today -100: February 20, 1919: Insulting his house is just going TOO FAR

Anarchist Émile Cottin attempts to assassinate French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 77, hitting him with 1 (the NYT incorrectly says 3) of 7 shots. Clemenceau will make endless jokes about Cottin’s bad marksmanship. Cottin is immediately surrounded by women, who hit him with umbrellas, as was the custom, and is already giving interviews with the press. He says Clemenceau is the enemy of humanity and is preparing for another war (it’s funny because it’s true). He also says Clemenceau’s house is ugly (it’s now the Musée Clemenceau in the 16th arrondissement and yeah, kinda). Some time after his release from prison, Cottin will go to Spain to fight in the Civil War, where he will be killed in battle.

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Today -100: February 19, 1919: Nor does she represent anything but agitation

The NY Legislature confirms Frances Perkins as a state industrial commissioner. Sen. George Thompson (R), leading the opposition, says Perkins “does not represent women, nor does she represent anything but agitation” and complains that she didn’t take her husband’s last name.

The Costa Rican army is evidently preparing to invade Nicaragua. The US blames German propaganda for stirring up trouble, because of course it does.

At least 75 German (mostly Prussian) army officers have applied for commissions in the US Army. The army tells them, Dudes, we’re technically still at war.

The armistice, however, is renewed, this time for an indefinite period, but with the Allies giving themselves the right to abrogate it on just 3 days’ notice. The Germans aren’t happy about Gen. Foch being allowed to interpret armistice terms any way he chooses or the provision that German troops should stop attacking Poles. The German cabinet strongly considered not signing the armistice and just seeing what happened.

Sweden tells former head of the German Army Erich Ludendorff, who’s been living there in exile since the Revolution, to leave.

The US Army occupies Luxembourg City to prevent a revolution in what the NYT calls “this little toy nation.”

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Today -100: February 18, 1919: Oh, You Black Death

An IWW strike among Butte, Montana copper miners protesting a wage cut (from $5.75 a day down to $4.75) fails.

A large crowd watches the 369th Infantry march up 5th Avenue, the first New York regiment to return from Europe. The 369th is a black unit, or “blutdurstig schwarzemänner” (bloodthirsty black men) as the Germans called them, so it’s nice to see them greeted with candy, coins and cigarettes (the 3 c’s). Cheers are especially loud for Sgt Henry Johnson, who fended off a German attack with his bolo knife after his gun jammed. “Oh, You Black Death,” the spectators shout affectionately.

The War Office announces that US troops will be withdrawn soon from northern Russia (soon being when the weather is better).

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South Carolina is the most illiterate state.

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Today -100: February 17, 1919: Of retaliation and riffraff

A Le Journal reporter who “escaped” from Petrograd says that 4 Russian grand dukes were shot without trial in retaliation for the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

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The Senate committee investigating Russian Bolshevism hears from the American former manager of a factory in Russia, who is testifying incognito. He claims that factory workers are not Bolsheviks and that the government is “made up of the riffraff of the industrial and the peasant world.” There are many delightful 1919 words that have sadly slipped out of modern usage, and then there are words like “riffraff” that can just go fuck themselves. Mr. Anonymous brags about having armed his workers to resist government demands that his factory pay its taxes.

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