Today -100: May 5, 1919: Crushed

Headline of the Day -100: 

Gustav Landauer, the anarchist Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction in the Bavarian Soviet Republic (and director Mike Nichols’ grandfather), is arrested, beaten, and shot dead by government troops.

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Today -100: May 4, 1919: Of soviet republics, the fall of Petrograd, stuff you shouldn’t send in the mails, and driving tests

The Allies are questioning whether the German envoys sent to sign the peace treaty will have the authority to speak for renegade Bavaria. To me, it sounds like they’re calling for the violent suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic (already in progress) as a condition for peace.

Rudolf Egelhofer, the 23-year-old commander of the Bavarian “Red Army,” is summarily executed in reprisal for the Reds’ execution of several hostages.

The German deputation to the Peace Conference will be fenced in to keep them wandering around Paris, after 2 German newspaper correspondents were found to have (gasp) gone to the theater.

Petrograd, according to “information believed to be trustworthy” by the ever-gullible NYT, has been captured by the Finns.

In response to the mail bombs, the federal and city authorities in New York claim to be investigating 2,000 radical agitators present in the city. Many are non-citizens and may be deported.

Speaking of mail bombs, a hand grenade is found in the post office in Boston, but it was safe (as safe as a live hand grenade can be anyway) and probably just some soldier’s souvenir.

The Auto Club lobbies NY Gov. Al Smith to veto a bill that would require driving tests only for drivers in New York City.

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Today -100: May 3, 1919: Of May day affrays, corsets, and vicious and corporate interests

Paris police claim 428 cops were injured on May Day. They also claim that the crowds were largely led by Russians and Spaniards.

4 radicals arrested in Boston on May Day are sentenced to 2 months for “taking part in an affray.” One of the arrested is William Sidis, 21, who entered Harvard at 11 and graduated at 16.

Some young boys steal hand grenades, phosphorus bombs, mortar shells – you know, souvenirs – from the evidently poorly guarded Army ammunition boxes in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where they were part of an exhibition of trench warfare in support of a victory bond drive. Authorities are on the lookout for, you know, explosions.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue is pondering whether corsets are a luxury, subject to luxury tax, or underwear and thus an untaxed necessity.

Los Angeles Mayor Frederick Woodman is acquitted of taking bribes to protect gambling, booze and brothels. Woodman blames the prosecution on “vicious and corporate interests” who want to “prostitute” the city, which is maybe not the best word choice under the circumstances.

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Today -100: May 2, 1919: May Day

May Day “riots” in Cleveland (a protest against the imprisonment of Eugene Debs) are suppressed by the police and military, including what must be the first use of tanks against US civilians (could have been worse: the US Army stationed machine-gun companies outside the city, but didn’t use them). One civilian is shot dead by a cop. It all kicked off when an army lieutenant ordered a soldier marching in the socialist May Day parade to stop carrying a red flag and the soldier refused. Soldiers and others destroy Socialist headquarters.

Police in Boston violently break up an unauthorized May Day parade. Ditto Detroit. Soldiers and sailors attack meetings in New York City.

Rather more May Day violence in Paris, much of it by the police. I don’t think any of the US police forces used actual sabers in crowd control.

China is pissed that the Peace Conference is giving the former German rights in Kiao-Chau and Shantung (Shandong) to Japan. Japan says it will totally give Shantung back... some time. Obviously, it would be an insult to Japan’s honor to demand an actual deadline, Japan says. It should be noted that the country being treated as the spoils of war, China, was on the Allied side.

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Today -100: May 1, 1919: We want Wilson’s Fourteen Points

Yesterday’s mail-bomb to former senator Thomas Hardwick is followed by 36 more, to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson, miscellaneous district attorneys and immigration officials, and others. The government thinks it’s Wobblies, based on the chosen targets. All the bombs are detected (some because they had insufficient postage) and made safe in the post office system.

The US Army occupying forces in Germany refuse a permit to the SPD for a May Day parade because there might be criticism of the peace terms, such as a banner saying “We want Wilson’s Fourteen Points.” The newspapers are censored in their discussions of the peace talks to prevent any criticism of the Allies.

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Today -100: April 30, 1919: It is just one of those outrages that beggar description

A bomb is mailed to the home of former senator Thomas Hardwick (D-Georgia). Hardwick says he has no idea who the “miscreant” is. “It is just one of those outrages that beggar description,” he says, ungrammatically. It will turn out to have been retaliation for his sponsorship of last year’s immigration law aimed at deporting anarchists. The bomb blows the hands off Harding’s black maid and burns his wife badly.

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando gets a vote of confidence from the Chamber of Deputies, 382-40 with the Socialists opposing. He says the Italian delegation can now return to the Peace Conference with increased authority. Evidently this is a rebuttal to Wilson’s attempt to appeal to the Italian people.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, soon to take over as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, contradicts Wilson’s policy, saying Italy should have Fiume.

German troops have surrounded Munich.

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Today -100: April 29, 1919: Of supreme offenses against international morality

The Peace Conference decides, for now, that former kaiser Wilhelm should be tried by a special tribunal made up of 5 judges from 5 countries, for “a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.” Countries whose nationals were the subject of criminal acts can try German soldiers by military court, and Germany is supposed to hand them over, as well as any evidence asked for.

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Today -100: April 28, 1919: Of jollies

The Italian people used to like Woodrow Wilson. Now they don’t.

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I should think it would. Actually, this is a Lt. Allington Jolly, testing an experimental plane, the Christmas Bullet, named after its inept designer, William Christmas, who once claimed to have designed a plane perfect for a secret mission to enter Germany and kidnap the kaiser. This is the second Christmas Bullet; the first also crashed on its first flight, in January, killing another pilot, one Cuthbert Mills; this post has now reached its quota of silly names. The Bullet’s wings aren’t braced because they’re designed to “flap.” Instead, they tended to just come off. Christmas later billed the government $100,000 for the design – and got it.

Speaking of killing jolly, the Salvation Army plans to buy out a bunch of bars and keep them open as soft-drink-serving bars after prohibition, keeping them as “abodes of comfort and cheer.”

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Today -100: April 27, 1919: The Italian people have often known hunger, but never dishonor

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando does the balcony-speech thing in Rome, telling the crowd that even if the Allies retaliate against his pulling out of the Peace Conference by withholding food aid, “The Italian people have often known hunger, but never dishonor.”

John Tildsley, Associate Superintendent in charge of NYC high schools, says there are lots of socialist teachers and they should all be fired and all prospective teachers interrogated about their political views.

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Today -100: April 26, 1919: Of walk-outs, the abolition of slavery, and dead Indians

The Italians leave the Peace Conference, but claim it’s just to fulfill PM Vittorio Orlando’s promise to brief Parliament. Which would explain why he’s returning home, but not why the rest of the delegation is.

Headline of the Day -100: 

And why is this editorial headline the Headline of the Day -100? Because they’re finally spelling it Lenin rather than Lenine. Trotsky is still Trotzky, though. Baby steps.

An anonymous Russian, in a totally not made-up at all interview in the Journal Epoca explains the totally not made-up compulsory marriage (aka “communization of women”) law: “Abolition of celibacy has been adopted simply as a means toward class equality.”

The NYT, in what I believe is only its second article on the subject, reports that 4.9 million Indians died of the Spanish Flu. It’s actually a lot more than that, so maybe there’ll be a third article some day (also, the Amritsar Massacre was nearly 2 weeks ago, although I think this isn’t a NYT thing so much as a British censorship thing).

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Today -100: April 25, 1919: The world is tired of war only for the time being

Major Gen. Leonard Wood says the idea that the League of Nations will prevent wars is “idle twaddle and a dream of mollycoddles”. Idle twaddle is the worst kind of twaddle. “The world is tired of war only for the time being,” he says, depressingly.

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando frames his decision to quit/threaten to quit the Peace Conference as a response to Woodrow Wilson’s public statement on Fiume, not because of his rejection of Italy annexing the city, oh no, but his temerity in appealing to the Italian people over the heads of its government, “treating the Italian people as if they were a barbarous people without a democratic government.” Well, give it two or three years.

Orlando reveals his plans for when he goes to Rome after storming out of the peace conference: “I shall show myself to the crowd, as it is my duty, and it shall express its feelings.” Italy plans to just go ahead and occupy Dalmatia and other areas promised it in the secret 1915 Treaty of London (the one Wilson says was superseded by the 14 Points). They’re kind of glossing over the fact that Fiume wasn’t mentioned in the Treaty of London.

Herbert Hoover, head of the Inter-Allied Relief Organization, threatens to stop food relief to Germany if strikes and other disorder continues.

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Today -100: April 24, 1919: Fiuming

The Italian delegation to the Peace Conference (which includes PM Vittorio Orlando

and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino) says it’s pulling out of the conference because of Woodrow Wilson’s opposition to Italy annexing Fiume. “Walking out, we say! Don’t try to stop us! We’re totally leaving...” They’re especially pissed (they say) that Wilson chose to issue a public statement rather than, you know, talk to them (which was precisely the objection senators had the last time Wilson was in the US, when he made a pro-League speech before briefing them. Wilson does not learn). And just when the Italians were totally about to make “the last supreme effort toward conciliation”. Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George call their bluff, threatening to make a separate peace if the Italians (who have a special train prepared and everything) carry out their threat.

A letter from a Mrs Adele Woodward of the National Juvenile Motion Picture League threatens that if movies don’t clean up their act, the “great public conscience, which has so recently adopted prohibition, is now turning its attention to all saloon substitutes – the spotlight is now directed on the pictures of crime and vulgarity which have for so many years been an insult to the intellect of adults and a menace to the welfare of children and young people.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

In rumored red revolt news, 1) Switzerland supposedly foiled a plot by Lenin, who sent “General instructions for a revolution in Switzerland,” and 2) Turkey is unreliably rumored to have turned soviet.

Maryland Gov. Emerson Harrington sends troops to protect a jail from mobs rumored to be planning to lynch Isaiah Fountain, a black prisoner (alleged crime unmentioned) who has just been recaptured after an escape.

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Today -100: April 23, 1919: Firm for Fiume

Headline of the Day -100: 

Iowa gives the presidential vote to women.

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The Times is really going big on these tabloid-y headlines lately. Romanian troops have invaded Hungary to help overthrow the Hungarian Soviet Republic.

The NYT prematurely proclaims the fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich.

Germany is supposedly making secret preparations for a plebiscite on the peace terms, which the government thinks is a nifty way of avoiding responsibility for signing them.

The nationalization of Russian women, who must register at the Bureau of Free Love, is suspended in one northern Russian... okay, was anyone actually buying this “nationalization of women” bullshit?

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Today -100: April 22, 1919: Of Fiume and hearty welcomes

Germany is grumbling that it won’t sign the peace treaty without negotiations.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) says Germany has signed a treaty with Lenin’s government for the two countries to aid each other, Russia feeding Germany, Germany sending military instructors, etc. Obvious horseshit.

And the city of Vienna is taken back by the government. The communist takeover seems to have been premature, encouraged by Hungarian leader Béla Kun on his visit last week. Either that or the government is just blaming Hungarian “outside agitators.”

Things are coming to a head at the peace conference over Fiume, claimed by both Yugoslavia and Italy.  Fiume, a small town which only has an Italian majority if you don’t count the suburbs, is fast becoming a right-wing nationalist fetish object.

Italy would also like to absorb the Southern Tyrol. The Tyrolese National Council tells Woodrow Wilson that they want to be an independent country instead.

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Today -100: April 21, 1919: Of songs, ideal anarchists, and caged envoys

A bunch of soldiers and sailors invade a concert of the Master Bakers’ – bakers! bakers! bakers with a k! – Association in New York City and demand that German songs on the program be omitted, or else. The German songs are dropped.

The city of Vienna is taken over by soldiers’ councils.

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Self-described “Ideal anarchists” take over the Wittelsbach Palace, using the former king of Bavaria’s bed chambers as a council room and his bathroom as their anteroom. No word on what they use as a bathroom.

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Today -100: April 20, 1919: Of sullen attitudes, frequent shootings of a casual nature, and moral fibre

India: “The people are reported to be maintaining a sullen attitude.” Possibly because the British keep shooting them.

Mobs of unemployed people set fire to the Austrian parliament buildings in Vienna. The fires are put out. “As the evening wore on, there were frequent shootings of a casual nature, but the city bore to a great extent its accustomed aspect of the night life which it has taken on during the last few weeks.”

It is now legal in the state of New York (subject to local regulations or bans) to show movies, play baseball (after 2 p.m.) or fish on Sundays. Gov. Al Smith, signing the legislation, says of watching baseball, “It is in no sense deteriorating to the moral fibre of the witness.”

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Today -100: April 19, 1919: Do not get the idea that we are lying awake nights, trying to do you an injustice

The India Office reports that on the 13th a mob in Amritsar ignored the ban on public meetings, there was some shooting and there were 200 casualties and I guess that’s all they have to say about that.

“Reds” try, but fail, to storm the Austrian Parliament building.

Ousted Bavarian PM Johannes Hoffmann calls for military intervention by the German federal government to retake Munich. They are on their way, bringing artillery. The communists in Munich are blocking roads and emplacing their own artillery in preparation for a siege.

Rep. Joseph Cannon, the former Speaker of the House, addresses – and by addresses I mean condescends to – Puerto Rico’s Insular Legislature, asking it “Why are you worrying about statehood and independence? You will get either or both just as soon as you are ready. Do not get the idea that we are lying awake nights, trying to do you an injustice.”

The French Black Sea Fleet stationed off Sevastopol mutinies, the sailors insisting that no war against Russia had been declared and they should have been demobilized by now, since the actual war was over, and the food sucks.  After a few days, the French Navy will agree to their demands and the warships are withdrawn.

Now Playing:

About some misguided lefties who buy an island and establish a socialist utopia.

The utopia degenerates into a dictatorship and yadda yadda yadda. The film is based on a novel by Thomas Dixon, whose novels were also the basis for Birth of a Nation. Watch it... if you dare!



Secretary of Labor William Wilson is outraged by the advice in Moving Picture World to distributors that they advertise “Bolshevism on Trial” by such stunts as “put up red flags about town and hire soldiers to tear them down if necessary”.

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Today -100: April 18, 1919: Of censorship and ufas

The US Navy has stopped censoring cables to parts of Europe and Latin America and the Far East. Britain, which controls much of cable traffic, bans coded messages, which pisses off businesses which don’t want their secrets leaked.

Bolsheviks kill several hundred prisoners in Ufa.

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Today -100: April 17, 1919: Belgium does not seek revenge

British Prime Minister Lloyd George returns from the peace talks to make a speech to Parliament challenging his enemies, i.e., the Northcliffe-owned newspapers. He insists on being left alone to negotiate peace, which is really really complicated (“Before I went to the Peace Conference, I had never heard of Teschen, but it very nearly produced an angry conflict between two allied states [Poland & Czechoslovakia]”), without any more obnoxious telegrams from Parliament. He reassures MPs that he’s not planning military intervention in Russia - “a volcano which is still in furious eruption.” Actually, he spends quite a while justifying non-intervention, mostly on the grounds that it won’t work anyway because you know what those Russians are like.

The French parliament votes 334-166 to allow the government to continue to leave it in the dark about what’s going on at the peace talks.

The India Office says that “all is quiet at Amritsar, Lahore, and Bombay.” How long are they going to pretend that the Amritsar Massacre didn’t happen? The stacks of corpses should be kind of a giveaway.

The Iowa Legislature ignores the Judiciary Committee’s recommendation to impeach Gov. William Harding for soliciting a $5,000 bribe in return for pardoning a convicted rapist, instead censuring him.

If you’re wondering what happened to the race to be the first to cross the Atlantic by air: bad weather. Everybody’s just sitting around, waiting for it to clear up.

New Zealand’s prohibition referendum was initially announced as having passed, but it loses once the votes of soldiers abroad are counted.

The Big Four had got it into their heads that the former kaiser should be tried by Belgium. Belgium says no. “Belgium does not seek revenge,” they say, “It wants only justice.”

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How will that man from Nantucket cope?

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Today -100: April 16, 1919: Of riots, commissioners, and communization of women

An article entitled “India Riots Widespread,” which blames the passive resistance movement because of course it does, refers in passing to “a few casualties at Amritsar”.

Mrs. F.H. Wilder, a women’s suffrage and temperance activist, is elected commissioner of police in Fargo.

Munich is again captured by the communists, according to a source who also says they ordered the communization of all women, including wives, so take that for what it’s worth. Oh, and Bavarian Soviet Republic Foreign Minister Franz Lipp has been put in a lunatic asylum (again), supposedly.

I have found an its/it’s error in the New York Times.

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