Today -100: May 12, 1919: Of treaties, plebiscites, invasions, and drownings

The Spartacists in Berlin demand the German government sign the peace terms, which makes them pretty much the only Germans doing so.

Denmark is annoyed at the provision in the peace terms for plebiscites in northern and southern Schleswig, worried that the southern province, which is lousy with Germans, might want to join with Denmark. (Spoiler Alert: it won’t)

Finland is preparing to invade Russia.

Rumors say that Russian government troops are in mutiny and that they drowned a bunch of commissars, including Trotsky’s secretary.

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Today -100: May 11, 1919: Anyone for tennis?

I’m officially bored with the trans-Atlantic aeroplane race.

A shooting in a Charleston, South Carolina pool room leads to several hours of clashes between local blacks and white sailors, in which at least 6 are killed.

German President Friedrich Ebert says the peace terms suck and would “deliver German labor to foreign capitalism for the indignity of wage slavery and the permanent fettering of the young German republic by the Entente’s imperialism” in this “peace of violence.” Germany’s counter-offer will be a proposal for “a peace of right on the basis of a lasting peace of the nations.”

Gen. Douglas MacArthur is named superintendent of West Point.

BREAKING: Czar Nicholas and all the Romanovs are still alive!

Yugoslavia sends a memorandum to the Peace Conference laying out the historical, ethnological, strategic, and economic reasons why Dalmatia – and all of Dalmatia – should totally go to Yugoslavia.

The American Legion objects to Wilson’s pardons of conscientious objectors and demands the deporation of aliens who evaded the draft.

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I love that “Irrational Lawn Tennis Association” typo nearly as much as the mellifluous phrase “tennis with Teutons.” The US tennis association is following similar moves by the British and French associations.

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Today -100: May 10, 1919: If these are the peace terms, then America can go to hell!

Germans are especially upset about being forced to give up Upper Silesia to Poland and to allow the kaiser to be put on trial. Gen. Ludendorff’s only remark to the press: “If these are the peace terms, then America can go to hell!” The German government calls for the suspension of public amusements and of all plays except those that “correspond to the seriousness of these grievous days.” Newspapers are referring to the treaty as “an instrument of robbery,” “a peace of annihilation,” and “the graveside of right.” All of which would be excellent names for rock bands. Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann says the government “must discuss this document of hatred and madness with sobriety.”

Belgium, which should know better than to remind people of its record as a colonial power when it’s trying to play on world sympathy, formally objects to the League of Nations mandate for German East Africa (Tanzania) going to Britain rather than, say, Belgium.

The British military occupy Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The current lord mayor since 1917 is Sínn Feiner Laurence O’Neill and he’s been holding SF meetings there.

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Today -100: May 9, 1919: Stunned

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A Lawrence, Mass. trolley is dynamited, presumably to prevent scabs being brought in during a mill strike.

The race to be the first plane to cross the Atlantic has begun, finally, with two US Navy hydroplanes making the first leg, from Long Island to Halifax. Unfortunately, three planes started that journey, and no one knows where the third one is...

Oh, okay, it just had engine failure and had to make a water landing. Everyone’s fine.

Woodrow Wilson commutes the sentences of 50+ people who have spent more than a year in prison under the Espionage Act.

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Today -100: May 8, 1919: Such a confession in my mouth would be a lie

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The peace terms for Germany have been agreed upon. It’s the longest treaty ever. Germany will lose its colonies – Togoland, South West Africa, Tanganyika, Kamerun, German Samoa, etc –  1 million square miles and 15 million people, as well as Alsace-Lorraine. Saarland and Danzig will be internationalized, with a plebiscite in the former in a few years. It will lose territory to Poland, Denmark and Belgium (which feels short-changed). The German army will be restricted to 100,000 men, with no conscription, and the navy similarly reduced. Reparations including $5 billion or so in cash. Germany to agree to a trial of the kaiser. The NYT says, “It is a terrible punishment the German people and their mad rulers have brought upon themselves. Not only is their military power to be destroyed, but the military spirit will be crushed out of them by the stern but necessary conditions the nations impose. How great will be their moral and spiritual suffering we cannot know, for the world has its doubts about the German conscience.”

China won’t sign, in protest against Japan being awarded Germany’s rights in Shantung/Shandong. Japan orders China to ban a “national disgrace” meeting planned in Beijing.

Italy agrees to take over Fiume as a League of Nations mandate until 1923, at which time they’ll annex it fully. This is not precisely what will happen.

The US (following Britain and maybe France, I forget) recognizes Finland.

New York State bans the red flag.

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Cruel aggressions would be a good name for a rock band. This is during the ceremony at which the peace terms are handed to the German delegates (although “cruel aggressions” doesn’t appear in the words quoted in the article). One of these delegates, Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantazau, which is a name to conjure with, objects to the war-guilt clause: “It is demanded from us that we shall confess ourselves to be the only ones guilty in the war. Such a confession in my mouth would be a lie.” Without denying German responsibility for the war and the way in which it was fought, he points out other factors in the start of the war: the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, 50 years of imperialism by all European states, Russian mobilization, public opinion in all the countries that went to war etc. As to war crimes, they “may not be excusable, but they are committed in the struggle for victory and in the defense of national existence, and passions are aroused which make the conscience of people blunt.” He also wants Germany to be allowed to join the League of Nations. 

The French have a plane, the Farman Goliath, capable of carrying 25 passengers.

L. Frank Baum, author of 14 Oz books among others, dies at 62. What a world, what a world.

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Today -100: May 7, 1919: Of fiumes, 20-year armistices, and calm

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, finding that after the Italian delegates stormed out of the peace talks the other Allies are just going ahead with arrangements to sign the peace treaty with Germany, is hastily returning to Paris, without having received any promise about Fiume.

The latest objection to the peace terms comes from Marshal Foch, who says France shouldn’t sign because French security requires holding the Rhineland in perpetuity instead of just 15 years. He will famously grumble, “This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years,” which is just crazy talk.

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Because nothing says “calm” like people being hunted down and summarily shot. Hundreds killed, thousands arrested.

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Today -100: May 6, 1919: The very essence of the Hun spirit

The trans-Atlantic airplane race, though still waiting for better weather, has its first casualties, US Navy Ensign Hugh Adams and Chief Machinist's Mate Harold “Top” Corey in a plane crash over Rockaway Beach Naval Air Station. Another one of the planes is damaged by a fire on the ground.

At the National Conference on Lynching in Carnegie Hall, former NY governor & former Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes calls lynching “the very essence of the Hun spirit.”

A moonshiner kills two revenooers in Oklahoma, as was the custom.

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Today -100: May 5, 1919: Crushed

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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.

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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.”

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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

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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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