Today -100: June 24, 1919: The Government of the German Republic declares that it is ready to accept and sign the peace conditions imposed

Éamon de Valera, Sinn Féin’s putative president of Ireland and escaped British prisoner, is in New York.  Staying at the Waldorf, no less. On his fund-raising tour of the US, he’s spoken with several US senators and a cardinal or two.

The Canadian government, eager to blame the general strike in Winnipeg on foreign agitators, says it will put foreigners who take part in demonstrations in internment camps.

One of the planes of the “Flying Circus,” on an exhibition tour to encourage recruiting for the Air Service, lands on Franklin Field, Boston, more specifically it lands on some children on Franklin Field, killing at least 2 of them.

The German National Assembly authorizes the government to sign the peace treaty without reservations, after the Allies refused a request for a delay of just 48 hours The German government graciously informs the peace conference: “It appears to the Government of the German Republic, in consternation at the last communication of the allied and associated Governments, that these Governments have decided to wrest from Germany by force acceptance of the peace conditions, even those, which, without presenting any material significance, aim at divesting the German people of their honor. ... Yielding to superior force, and without renouncing in the meantime its own view of the unheard of injustice of the peace conditions, the Government of the German Republic declares that it is ready to accept and sign the peace conditions imposed.”

A couple of Republican senators (Walter Edge and Albert Fall) each offer resolutions to simply declare the war over. The idea is that the US can take its time ratifying the treaty – or not – and so be able to resume trade with the former enemy nations like the signatories of the treaty.

An English postal inspector gets a divorce based on a letter a waiter wrote to his wife, which he opened.

Britain says it will court-martial Admiral Ludwig von Reuter for scuttling the German fleet, thus violating the armistice.

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Today -100: June 23, 1919: The time for discussion is past

The German National Assembly votes 237 to 138 to sign the peace treaty. However, the government plans to reject the war guilt part of the treaty and the try-the-kaiser provision and say that since the reparations exceed its ability to pay, Germany won’t accept responsibility for fulfilling them. The Allies respond: “the time for discussion is past” and no qualifications are acceptable.

Marshal Ferdinand Foch is preparing for a possible invasion of Germany in case it refuses to sign. He’s drawn up a proclamation telling Germans not to resist the occupation and hand over weapons, warning that any house from which civilians shoot at Allied troops will be burned down, as was the custom. The NYT correspondent points out a problem if it comes down to a shootin’ war on German territory: will US soldiers be able to identify German soldiers, when pretty much everyone in Germany wears uniforms, from cops and telephone operators to messengers and street-car conductors?

Romania grants citizenship to Jews born in Romania. Or if they served in the military during the Balkan Wars or WW1.

Admiral Ludwig von Reuter says he scuttled the interned ships because he thought the armistice had been terminated, and the kaiser’s wartime orders were for no German ship to be surrendered. The NYT calls the scuttling “a characteristic piece of German treachery”.

British troops in Surrey have been refusing to salute or obey orders, and are especially displeased at orders to go to France. Troops with, yes, machine guns, are sent in to subdue them.

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Today -100: June 22, 1919: Scuttled

Since the Armistice, much of the Germany Navy has been interned at Scapa Flow, Scotland, while the Allies argue about what to do with them. With the signing of the peace treaty imminent, rather than turn the ships over,  Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, using a pre-arranged flag signal, orders the ships scuttled. Which is a fun word to say. Try it now: scuttled scuttled scuttled. 10 battleships, 5 battle cruisers, 5 light cruisers, and 32 torpedo boats are sunk, all without benefit of explosives. Just one capital ship survives. The German sailors then take to life boats. As they approach shore, the British order them to surrender and fire on those that don’t, killing 9, who are the last dead of World War I (unless you count all the people blown up by unexploded ordinance for decades to come).

Winnipeg is placed under martial law after the Royal Northwest Mounted Police shoot into a crowd of strikers, killing 2. Troops with machine guns are stationed throughout the city. Sort of a theme of 1919: the willingness of authorities in many countries to deploy machine guns for crowd control.

The Lusk Committee of the NY Legislature orders raids on the socialist-founded Rand School of Social Science and the offices of the local IWW and of John Reed’s Left Wing Socialists and seize tons of documents . They’re also searching for seditious books and pamphlets.

A new German cabinet forms, with Gustav Bauer (Social Democratic Party) as chancellor. Funny that there’s still a colonial minister.

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Today -100: June 21, 1919: The Huns of the East have come

Headline of the Day -100: 

Literally the Antichrist.  “The Bolsheviki, it is said, are opposing the movement by means of an active propaganda.”

Pres. Wilson will appoint a commission to investigate the pogroms in Poland, headed by Henry Morgenthau, who as ambassador to Turkey did so much to investigate and make public the Armenian Genocide. 2 other members of the 7-person commission will be Jews-to-be-named-later.

German Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann and his cabinet resign because no one wants to take responsibility for Germany signing the peace terms, even though pretty much everyone grudgingly accepts that there is no alternative. The Reichstag is considering putting the thing to a referendum.

Sen. James Phelan (D-California) tells the House Immigration Committee that the US should ban all Japanese immigration. “The Huns of the East have come. Already they have spread over California and are stripping the state of its Americanism.” Also they’re taking over Mexico. They “must be eliminated entirely like a swarm of locusts.” The problem, he says, is that they want to become landowners and work for themselves (just like locusts!), so they take the means of livelihood from whites, who naturally become Bolsheviks and Wobblies, that’s just science.

F.E. Morris of the National Safety Council says that during the 19 months the US was in the war, 56,000 soldiers died while in the US 226,000 people were killed in accidents. Morris has also discovered that women get into accidents getting off street cars at much higher rates than men because they do so backwards, which he explains with some nonsense about women being right-handed and men more ambidextrous.

Catholic priests in Loreto, Italy, go on strike for higher wages.

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Today -100: June 20, 1919: Of ruins, confidence, brutality, and brass & machine guns

Headline of the Day -100: 

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando 

loses a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies, 259-78. I’m not sure to what extent this is about disappointment over the peace terms and how much about internal matters, namely the high cost of living. (The NYT suggests tomorrow that Orlando took up the annexationists’ maximal territorial demands in order to distract from economic conditions, which just lead to disappointment when he failed to get the Allies to agree to all his demands.)

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The lower house of the Ohio Legislature passes a resolution asking Governor James Cox to block the Jack Dempsey-Jess Willard heavyweight world champion boxing match, saying such matches are “brutal in their nature and not conducive to good morals.” I assume their real reason it that they all put money on Willard before seeing how fat he’s gotten.

A strike at brass factories in Waterbury, Connecticut leads to violence between picketers and scabs and fights with the cops, one of whom is probably fatally wounded. Machine guns are set up on roofs, but not used on the strikers, yet.

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Today -100: June 19, 1919: Of rejections, noisy incidents, canals, and censorship

The German delegates to the peace conference recommend that Germany reject the terms.

French Prime Minister Clemenceau apologizes to the German delegates for “some noisy incidents” at Versailles, by which he means a crowd throwing stones at the delegates’ cars, hitting one or two in the head. The prefect of the Seine and the police commissioner have been fired.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is considering a new treaty with Colombia, giving it $25m in compensation for stealing Panama, but not apologizing for stealing Panama.

US postal censorship will end this week.

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Today -100: June 18, 1919: Of hotbeds of war, ignored Ireland, and pastor piles

The Austrian delegation to the peace talks presents a memorandum complaining about the peace terms and saying that the creation of all those new Balkan states just creates “another hotbed of war.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Secretary of State Lansing will pass the Senate’s resolution on Ireland along to the conference without comment.

The Illinois Legislature ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment, again. There was some sort of error in the text the first time.

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That’s Sgt. Alvin York’s pastor, accompanying him on a visit to Nashville, who says the show was not what he expected and “that was no place for Pastor Pile,” because of course Sgt. York’s pastor is called “Pastor Pile.”

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Today -100: June 17, 1919: Of suffrage, armies, and pointed toes

Both houses of the New York Legislature ratify the women’s suffrage amendment, with no opposing votes.

Ohio and Kansas also ratify.

The US troops that invaded Mexico are already back in the US, with a few prisoners and claims to have killed 50 of Pancho Villa’s men, with one US dead.

Secretary of War Newton Baker asks Congress to fund a 500,000-man Army instead of the 300,000 they voted for. Army Chief of Staff Gen. March says 500,000 would require conscription; Baker disagrees, provided soldiers are given education, entertainment, and girls. Baker says the Army needs to buttress the Mexican border and break down all the military installations it built in France, requiring a lot of warm bodies.

Also, the US is currently moving forces into place to, potentially, invade Costa Rica to crush the revolution there.

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Today -100: June 16, 1919: Of alcocks, knoxes, and burning cars

Alcock and Brown successfully cross the Atlantic in a non-stop flight, sometimes upside down. 1,980 miles in 16 hours, 12 minutes, Newfoundland to Ireland.

Republicans in the Senate are pushing the Knox Resolution (sponsored by Philander Knox, Taft’s secretary of state), which demands that the treaty be rewritten so that the US and other nations can join the League of Nations at some later date or, you know, not. Others point out that the League is so woven into the treaty that the treaty falls apart without it.

US troops cross into Mexico to go after Pancho Villa’s followers, whose bullets crossed the border into El Paso during a firefight with Federal forces.

The US Army has lots of cars in France, and would prefer to sell them to French people rather than ship them home. But the French government says no as part of its protectionist policy. So the Army is burning them.

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Today -100: June 15, 1919: Of long flights, deadlines, and Charlie Chaplin sunnyside up

In yet another attempt at yet another aviation milestone, Capt. John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Brown begin an attempt to make a non-stop cross-Atlantic flight in a Vickers-Vimy biplane.

The Allies complete their reply to Germany’s objections to peace treaty terms with minor modifications (for example, Germany will be admitted to the League of Nations, after it fulfills every single requirement of the treaty). Germany will now have 5 days to sign or be invaded and blockaded again. Incidentally, the Big Five haven’t bothered informing other allies of the changes they’ve made. The changes we know about include changing the occupation authority in the Rhine from a military one to a civilian commission, with one member appointed by each Big Power.

Gen. Leonard Wood, the commander of the Central Department, says if ex-soldiers don’t get jobs, they’ll go Bolshevik, and you wouldn’t like them when they’re Bolshevik. There is a federal employment agency for discharged soldiers, but industry is lobbying to shut it down, because capitalism. The Re-Employment Bureau for Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines’ NYC branch says that some returning military folks are upset at not getting their old jobs back, because those were given to pacifists and aliens, and some aren’t getting their old salaries, because the women who filled their jobs during the war did the same work just as well for less money.

Now Playing:

Not the best Chaplin, not the worst. Also opening today, and also playing at the Strand: Fatty Arbuckle’s A Desert Hero (a lost film).

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Today -100: June 14, 1919: Of ignored Turks, dissatisfied Berlin, and parlor coal diggers

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Turkish delegation to the peace conference arrived a couple of days ago, and nobody is talking to them.

Headline of the Day -100:  

By some minor changes to the peace terms.

Secretary of Labor William Wilson tells the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor that the IWW and Bolsheviks are not significant among “real” wage workers but only among “parlor coal diggers.” American workers, he says, don’t want a dictatorship of the proletariat.

The AFL convention votes to allow blacks into international unions, but if any unions continue to discriminate against negroes, the AFL will grant separate charters to negro organizations.

Race riots continue in Cardiff, Wales between locals and non-white workers (blacks, Arabs) brought in during the war.

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Today -100: June 13, 1919: Of red raids, white bread, and ruined children

Just as the NY Legislature begins its investigation into Teh Reds, cops and, for some reason, private detectives raid the Russian Soviet Bureau. Papers are removed and people questioned, and the chair of the investigating committee, Sen. Clayton Lusk (it will soon become known as the Lusk Committee), has come to the conclusion that the Russian Soviet Bureau is issuing propaganda intended to justify the Russian Soviet form of government. Gasp horrors.

Speaking of soviet forms of government, one is rumored to be proclaimed in Austria this coming Sunday. So something to look forward to.

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Headline of the Day -100:  

According to an unnamed Swiss schoolteacher who has recently left Russia, children are now subjected to a regime of “unlimited indulgence of idleness and pleasure,” with no school books or homework, lots of dancing, illiterate teachers, and co-education (which, since religious education is banned, will obviously lead to moral depravity in a primitive country like Russia, she says).

In New York, high school students will be asked questions about the war. They can choose 4 questions to answer from 6 about battles, people, why the US entered the war, etc. But there’s a deeply suspicious question which is the only one mandatory for everyone to answer:

Accompanying this are these instructions to teachers: “call the Principal’s attention to any papers which show an especially intimate knowledge of this subject, those particularly which indicate that the pupils have been submitted to systematic training along this line. We are desirous of finding out to what extent Bolshevist ideas have been impressed upon the students of our high schools.”  The teachers’ union will object to this test, possibly believing that the administration is trying to fire teachers who may have taught radical ideas to their classes.

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Today -100: June 12, 1919: Of treaties and royal suicides

The Senate investigation of the leak of the draft peace treaty points the finger at employees of J.P. Morgan. Republicans deny Gilbert Hitchcock’s (D-Neb.) charge that senators who’d been shown copies were “receiving stolen goods.”

Crown Prince Carol of Romania, 25, attempts suicide by, um, shooting himself in the leg, in reaction to his parents forcing him to divorce the commoner he married against their wishes last year.

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Today -100: June 11, 1919: Of unions, women’s suffrage, undying fires, and jazz credit

The Negro Workers’ Advisory Committee, which represents black labor, welfare, religious etc groups in the Chicago area (?), asks the AFL to get international unions to stop banning black members. And 2,000 members of the Richmond branch of the Virginia Federation of Labor withdraw (unclear if that means they quit as individuals or seceded as a body) in protest at a black man being seated as a member of the Executive Committee. 

Illinois ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment, the first state to do so, followed later in the day by Michigan. Gov. Al Smith has called the NY Legislature into a special session. Assembly Speaker Thaddeus Sweet complains that it’s an unnecessary expense, which is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect someone named Thaddeus Sweet to say.

The US tells Costa Rica not to invade Nicaragua.

An ad for H.G. Wells’s new novel The Undying Fire quotes a New York Sun review, “It may stand out as a landmark of our time a century from today.” Nope.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Literal cats. One senses that Le Matin does not appreciate jazz music.

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Today -100: June 10, 1919: Of treaties, suffrage, and pickle deluges

Woodrow Wilson refused to provide the Senate a copy of the draft treaty, so Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) starts to read out the leaked version, which he was given by the Chicago Tribune. Dems object (Marcus Smith of Arizona calls the illicit acquisition of the treaty a “crime against humanity”). Several hours of debate ensue, but finally the document is put into the Senate record.

Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge passes the federal women’s suffrage Amendment to the General Court, with his personal recommendation that they ratify it.

The hopes for an independent Rhineland are fading (and French support falling away).

Liechtenstein threatens to cut communications with the peace conference (which would also cut Paris-Vienna communications) if it doesn’t get a response to its request to join the League of Nations.

Headline of the Day -100:

A low-flying airplane panics horses pulling a pickle wagon...

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Today -100: June 9, 1919: Of treaties, shimmies, and cranky conductors

The NYT prints excerpts from the leaked draft peace treaty across pages 1 to 6 of today’s paper. That’s the treaty the Wilson Administration is stubbornly refusing to provide to the Senate.

Costa Rica, having crushed a revolt, is threatening to invade Nicaragua, which it says aided that revolt. Nicaragua asks the US to land Marines to protect it from Costa Rica.

Police in Coney Island ban “modern” dances and are now patrolling dance halls, expelling anyone dancing the “shimmy.” You can find examples of that dance on YouTube, but be sure you have a fainting couch handy.

In other cultural news, Arturo Toscanini beats up his second violinist during a concert in Turin, hitting him with his baton and then with his fist. The performance was a Beethoven symphony. Which symphony is not stated; No. 6, the Pastoral, would be funniest.  (Update: the 9th, which is the 2nd funniest).

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Today -100: June 8, 1919: Of pogroms, princely canines, driver’s licenses, and monkey speech

The US’s acting ambassador to Poland Hugh Gibson says the stories of pogroms against Jews have been exaggerated, and anyway the feeling against certain classes of Jews is more economic than religious. So that’s okay then.

Headline of the Day -100:

Yeah, some random German lieutenant totally sold Major Thatcher “the crown prince’s dog.”

When the NY Legislature decided to add a test for driver’s licenses (in New York City only), I kind of assumed it’d be about traffic laws and suchlike. Instead, the 24 questions will include: “Are you crippled in any manner?” “Have you ever been confined in an asylum or institution for the insane or for other mental affections?” Also, drug & alcohol use, vision or hearing impairment, epilepsy, fainting spells...

Prof. Charles  Aschemeier, Smithsonian-funded African explorer, denies Prof. Richard Lynch Garner’s claim to have captured the Missing Link, saying he himself did that. He also denies that Garner, author of The Speech of Monkeys, can in fact speak with monkeys. Aschemeier says even African jungle natives, themselves barely more intelligent than apes, can’t speak with monkeys.

He said that, not me.

Ecuador abolishes debt peonage.

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Today -100: June 7, 1919: Of Rhinelands, certain interests, and air records

French officers send pro-Rhineland-independence posters to the US occupation authorities in Coblenz, but the Americans refuse to put them up. The Americans have also ordered the president of the Rhine Province to ignore orders from Berlin transferring him.

The US Senate votes to ask the US delegation at the peace talks to get a hearing for the Irish nationalists.

The Senate also calls on Secretary of State Lansing to give them the full text of the treaty, noting that copies have already leaked to “certain interests” in New York (i.e., bankers). Also, a German publisher is selling copies throughout Europe and helpfully sent copies addressed to every member of the US Congress, but these have been held up in the post, mysteriously. Anyway, the Senate would like an investigation of the leak.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Evidently aviation records are His and Hers (also, it was more than 15,000 feet). Raymonde de Laroche was the first woman to get a pilot’s license (1910) and probably the first woman to fly a plane (1909).

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Today -100: June 6, 1919: Of French wallets and mine explosions

The German delegation to the peace talks protests against France’s machinations in support of the independence movement in the Rhineland. I don’t know how much support there really is for independence among the Rhenish, but there’s no question France is supporting this to achieve the division of Germany which it couldn’t persuade the rest of the Allies to agree to (but France only occupies one zone in the Rhineland, the US & Britain having their own zones).

The city of Winnipeg holds a rally of war veterans who it wants to volunteer to be special constables to crush the strike movement.

The cops think the man who died trying to bomb Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s house is European because his wallet was.... French.

A coal mine fire in the Delaware and Hudson Coal Company’s Baltimore Mine in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania kills 92 miners. An underground train was carrying both miners and explosives. The state has a safety code that covers the storage of explosives but not its transportation, so the company won’t be held legally responsible.

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Today -100: June 5, 1919: The modern stage is set for hell

The Senate passes the Susan B. Anthony amendment to the Constitution for women’s suffrage, 56-25. It now goes to the states for ratification.

Would anybody like to hear the opinions of clergymen on the state of the theater? Of course you would!  The Rev. William Burgess of Chicago, the director of the Illinois Vigilance Association, tells the Conference of Social Work in Atlantic City, “The modern stage is set for hell,” what with its “moral filth and sensual exhibits which might make devils blush.” And the Rev. H.R.L. Sheppard of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in London, where I once attended a rather nice concert, calls for the Christian church to establish its own theatres so audiences can avoid “bedroom scenes” which are “an insult to their intelligence.”

The reaction to the anarchist bombings goes about how you’d expect:

Those lists, which we are hearing about for the first time, are the Justice Department’s file cards on alleged radicals. The 20,000 is for NYC alone.

NY Governor Alfred E. Smith comes from Albany to NYC to speak with the state attorney general Charles Newton and give him authorization to go medieval on the reds’ asses, only to find that Newton had left for Buffalo.

That’s Cleveland Mayor Harry Davis, whose house was bombed, who wants to deport all immigrants who fail to become US citizens or, as he refers to them, “the cancer which is gnawing at [the US’s] political life.”

The Austrian government doesn’t like the peace terms presented to it. Austria’s borders were decided by different committees dealing with the Italian-Austrian border, the Yugoslav-Austrian border, the Czech-Austrian border, etc without consulting each other, so the total picture is actually harsher for Austria than the Allies had intended.

Leaflets appear in Rhineland cities denouncing the Rhenish Republic as a Catholic plot and calling for a 24-hour general strike.