Today -100: August 6, 1914: Of dogfights, ethnic cleansing, glasses, Liège sieges, kitcheners, and boxers

First Lady Ellen Wilson is sick.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Daily Telegraph claims Italy is about to declare war on Austria.

More Fog of War??  Supposedly a German aviator and a Belgian aviator shot at each other, with revolvers.  No one was hurt.  I don’t think this really happened, but if it did it would have been the first ever aerial dogfight.

The Mexican Federal government’s council of war, consisting of 112 generals, which seems like a lot of generals to me, decides to surrender Mexico City unconditionally.

After anti-German rioting, Antwerp will expel all German residents.

The US may soon have a shortage of good-quality glasses lenses, as these come from Germany.

Belgium’s doing pretty well in the first battles.  It won’t last.  Germans besiege Liège, and if the Belgians didn’t want that to happen, they should have named it something less rhymey.

Britain claims that Germany had promised that it would not take territory from mainland France, but made no such promise about its colonies.

For the past few months, Prime Minister Asquith has also held the post of secretary of state for war, since J.E.B. Seeley resigned over the Curraugh Mutiny.  Now Britain needs a real one and it will be Horatio Herbert Kitchener, inventor of the concentration camp during the Boer War, as it probably says on his calling cards.

War measures in Austria: food price-gouging punishable by up to 1 year imprisonment; marriages may be performed without publication of bans.

Woodrow Wilson asks Austria, Germany, France, Britain and Russia if they’d like his help in ending the war, under the Hague Convention for settling international disputes (he didn’t ask Serbia, which is not a signatory).

Headline of the Day -100:  “French Repulse Germans.”  As is the custom.

The Lusitania has turned around and is coming back to some US port, fleeing two German cruisers.

LA Times columnist Harry Carr asks the important and not at all silly question:

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Today -100: August 5, 1914: With clear conscience and clean hands, we grasp the sword

Britain declares war on Germany, with 4 hours’ notice, at 11 p.m. on the 4th. It would have been midnight, when Britain’s ultimatum to Germany to leave Belgium expired, but by then the German ambassador had given back his passport preparatory to leaving the country, which was taken as a No.

Germany declares war on Belgium, invades.

Woodrow Wilson issues a neutrality proclamation.

William Howard Taft calls the war “a retrograde step in Christian civilization.”

300 to 400,000 people congregate in New York’s Times Square to read the NYT bulletins and celebrate, because everyone loves a retrograde step in Christian civilization. “While waiting for bulletins to be posted the crowds indulged in oratory and argument without limit. Almost every one in Times Square was either explaining just what the European situation was to a small audience or listening as one of an audience to some one else’s explanation. ... Each man talked as if he had done nothing since the Franco-Prussian war except study European geography, history, politics, and armament. When two debaters met it was a clash of incompatible but respectively unanswerable argument. ... There were arguments in German, French, Italian, Hungarian, and English, accented with the tongues of all these countries, but there was no attempt by any one to transfer the seat of war from Europe to Times Square.”

French Prime Minister René Viviani explains to the Chamber of Deputies that France “did not seek the war. Since war was forced upon her, she will defend herself against Germany and any other power which, not yet having made known its sentiments, takes part by Germany’s side”.

Kaiser Wilhelm gives his own speech about how hard Germany tried to avoid war, but Russia gave way “to an insatiable nationalism” and France, well you know what those people are like, with their “old hopes and long-standing malice.” Funny how no one sought the war and yet here we are.

Guess which leader said this: “In enforced self-defence, with clear conscience and clean hands, we grasp the sword.” Find the answer at the bottom of this post.

Germany is banning aliens currently in Germany, including American tourists, from leaving the country until military mobilization is complete.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: France says Germany executed a Mr. Samain, former President of the French War Society, who lived in Metz (in Lorraine), and it imprisoned all the other members of the Society.

Prince Roland Bonaparte (grandson of Napoleon I), 56, offers to join the army as a soldier, but Pres. Poincaré tells him it’s illegal for a member of any of the deposed royal families (France has three) to join the military.

Headline of the Day -100: “War May Prevent Balloon Race.”

The Lusitania leaves NY for its normal run to Liverpool.

H.G. Wells has an op-ed in the NYT. Evidently the Germans are the Morlocks, or something. “The victory of Germany will mean the permanent enthronement of the war god over all human affairs. The defeat of Germany may open the way to disarmament and peace throughout the earth. ... Never was war so righteous as is the war against Germany now”. That said, “Europe’s quarrel is with Germany as a State, not with the German people, with the system, not with the race.” Fortunately, “The German is not naturally a good soldier.” Compared with, you know, the French. According to mister big-shot futurologist.

Talks between the Mexican Federalist government and the Constitutionalists on how to peacefully transfer power break down over the fact that the Carranza wants an unconditional surrender, and Carbajal had some, you know, conditions. Mostly regarding amnesty.

Pancho Villa declares himself independent of Carranza.

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Answer: It doesn’t matter which leader said it, it could have been any of them.

Oh, okay, it’s Kaiser Wilhelm.

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Today -100: August 4, 1914: Let every man look into his own heart and feelings and construe the obligations for himself

Czar Nicholas says “Russians will rise like one man and will repulse the insolent attack of the enemy.” Insolent attacks are the worst kind.

Belgium rejects Germany’s ultimatum.

Switzerland is fully mobilized, with every mountain pass and railway bridge guarded, and every means of locomotion seized by the government, down to bicycles. No apology by the Times for its story yesterday that Germany had invaded.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: 1) German authorities supposedly captured a French doctor and two assistants trying to poison the wells near Metz with cholera. The doctor is court-martialled and shot. Supposedly. 2) Germany invades the Netherlands. Or not.

Germany publishes the Willy-Nicky telegrams to “prove” that Russia never negotiated in good faith because it was mobilizing its army at the same time.

Germany’s incursions into France have been limited to small sorties evidently intended to provoke France into being the first to declare war, because they’re still playing that game. The French government issues a declaration of a state of siege, which it says will continue for the duration of the war – so it is using the word war, just not declaring it.

Germany claims that while its soldiers have refrained from crossing the border at all, the French have made full-scale attacks on border posts – without having the common decency to declare war first. They also claim France has violated Belgium’s neutrality by its aeroplanes overflying Belgium to bomb railroad lines in Germany. “In this way France has opened the attack upon us and has established a state of war which has compelled the German Empire to take defensive measures for the security of its territory.” Germany claims that 80 French soldiers tried to sneak into Germany wearing Prussian uniforms.

British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey, in a tour de force speech to Parliament, admits that Britain is not bound by the Entente to join France in war, “but for years we have had a friendship with France. But how far that friendship entails obligation, let every man look into his own heart and feelings and construe the obligations for himself.” He says that Entente military cooperation in the past has created a moral obligation, because France removed its fleet from the western coast to the Mediterranean, trusting in the UK to have its back: “the friendship which had grown up between the two countries has given them a sense of security that there was nothing to be feared from us. The French coasts are absolutely undefended.” It was an argument that had persuaded some of the holdouts in the Cabinet, except for John Burns (president of the Local Government Board) and Viscount John Morley (Lord President of the Council), who have resigned. Morley was the last Liberal in office who had held office under Gladstone (whose massive biography he wrote). Britain is waiting for a couple of red lines (which haven’t been stated publicly, or communicated explicitly to Germany) to be crossed before entering the war: 1) German naval attacks on the French coast, or 2) violation of Belgian neutrality.

“Brave little Belgium” has gone down in myth as the reason Britain was morally obligated to enter WW I, because under the Treaty of London (1839) all the European powers, including the German Confederation, agreed to maintain the new country’s neutrality. This is not what the British Cabinet thought just a few days ago, when after discussion it concluded that the treaty did not create an obligation on individual signatories to go to war to defend Belgian neutrality, but was a collective obligation. But that was then. In his last talk with the British ambassador, on this date, German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg asked why Britain would go to war over a mere “scrap of paper.” For the next four years Britain will spin endless propaganda out of that one.

In his speech Grey went on to say, “It is said we might stand aside and husband our resources in order to intervene in the end and put things right. If in a crisis of this kind we ran away from our obligations of honour and interest with regard to the Belgian treaty, I doubt whether whatever material force we might possess at the end would be of much value in face of the respect we should have lost. If we engaged in war we should suffer but little more than if we stood aside. We are going to suffer terribly in this war whether this country is at peace or war, for foreign trade is going to stop.”

John Redmond, leader of the Irish Nationalists, assures Parliament that all those soldiers currently in Ireland can now safely be removed because, hey, the Nationalists and the Loyalists have all these guns now and can be trusted to defend Ireland against invasion.

The US will act in the interests of German and Austrian subjects in countries with which they are at war.

The US Senate passes a resolution that “deeply deprecates the war between certain European powers”.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “‘Be Calm!’ Says Wilson.” Woodrow Wilson tells reporters, “the European world is in a highly excited state of mind, but the excitement ought not to spread to the United States. So far as we are concerned, there is no cause for excitement.”

Headline of the Day -100 again (LA Times): “Some Do Not Care For It. Many Aliens Seek to Dodge War By Naturalization.” Many Europeans in Los Angeles are taking out naturalization papers. Especially Austrians and Russians. Because they don’t care for war.

Mobs attack stores which raised prices in Brussels and Paris.

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Today -100: August 3, 1914: The lamps are going out all over Europe

Labour MP Keir Hardie calls for a general strike against the war.

Germany refuses to answer Britain’s question as to whether it will respect Belgium’s neutrality. Then it orders Belgium to allow and facilitate the movement of German troops through the country.

Russia invades Germany.

Germany invades France. No one’s declaring war, France because that would make it a defensive war for Germany, and Italy would be obligated by treaty to join on Germany’s side; Germany because that would make it an offensive war by Germany, and Italy would not be obligated to join it, and also because the leftist Social Democratic Party might not fall into line.

Introducing a new rubric under which I will post bullshit stories, propaganda, and rumors reported as facts: Fog of War of the Day -100: “Switzerland Now Invaded by Germans, Basle Seized.”

Who Knows If It’s Really True Stories of the Day -100: 1) French aviator Roland Garros shoots down a German airship. 2) German soldiers shoot down a French plane.

Montenegro mobilizes its army.

Germany orders foreigners to leave its tiny colony in China, Kiao-Chau (Kiautschou).

A NYT editorial begins: “With vast satisfaction does each of the Powers prove to itself that it is the injured party, the victim of aggression by another, that it desires peace above all, but is unwillingly forced to self-defense.” The Times says history will know the real cause, but doesn’t hint at what it thinks that cause might be.

The LA Times sees the bright side: “The United States must feed and clothe Europe: Now is the time to get busy and raise things. Our Industries will hum and big money will be made.”

European countries are calling on men in their army reserves who are currently in the US and elsewhere to return, promising to reimburse them later. The NYT is able to interview an Austrian captain, who will sail home tomorrow, cutting short his vacation with the in-laws in the US. “Austria is entering into no war of conquest or aggrandizement. She does not want nor covet Servian territory. She enters a war for peace, paradoxical as it may seem. Servia is, and has very long been, an irritant in the internal and external affairs of the Dual Monarchy. Only peace can come by crushing the Slav. Then we may have peace for fifty years.” And you were worried that Austria didn’t have lofty motives.

Some American tourists are stuck in Europe, including 3 US senators. With a cash shortage, some are having to leave Paris hotels with their bills unpaid (in some cases being forced to leave their luggage, Paris hoteliers not being the most trusting people in the world, as I can say from experience). So many US teachers tour Europe during the summer that there is concern they may not make it back by the time school starts up.

One thing the war isn’t interfering with: arms-smugg]ing into Ireland. 10,000 rifles arrive in Ballyshannon for the Nationalists.

British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey later quoted himself as having said to a friend on this day, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

I can’t think of any way of slipping this in subtly, but Grey’s wife was killed after being thrown by a horse, and both his brothers died while hunting in Africa in separate incidents, his elder brother eaten by a lion and his younger trampled by a buffalo.

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Today -100: August 2, 1914: We are German brothers and nothing else

Germany declares war on Russia, after demanding it stop mobilizing its army. And it asks France, So whaddaya gonna do about it? That is, Germany demands to know France’s intentions, and gives it a deadline to explain them.

Germany asks (somewhat more politely) the intentions of Italy, its supposed ally in the Triple Alliance. Italy, which also has contradictory secret treaties and understandings with just about everybody else, says that since this is isn’t a defensive war, it’s not obliged by treaty to join Germany and Austria, and will remain neutral.

Kaiser Wilhelm makes another speech from his castle window: “When I enter upon a fight let all party strife cease. We are German brothers and nothing else. All parties have attacked me in times of peace. I forgive them with all my heart.” Isn’t that sweet of him?

France orders full mobilization, but says “Mobilization is not war.” Really, says the cabinet’s proclamation, it’s actually “the best means of assuring peace with honor.”

The French cabinet is reshuffled to butch it up (although not as butch as the article says – Georges “The Tiger” Clemenceau is offered a post but refuses). Théophile Delcassé, who dislikes Germany almost as much as Pres. Poincaré, is the new minister of war.

Greece orders full mobilization. May go to war with Bulgaria.

Russian and German troops shoot at each other (the Russians started it) along the border near Prostken. No one is hurt.

Germany invades Luxemburg. It will claim that this is not a hostile act, but a defensive seizure of Luxemburg’s rail lines (defensive in that France might have tried to seize the lines first).

Germany signs a secret alliance treaty with Turkey pledging the latter to support Germany if Russia declared war on it.  But not if Germany declared war on Russia, which it would.

German ships try to cut the telegraph cables between Germany and Russia (via Denmark), but fail.

Germany orders the return of its automobiles from the exhibition at Malmö, Sweden.

France says it will respect Belgium’s neutrality – if everyone else does.

Norway declares neutrality. Sweden declares neutrality.

The Admiralty asks Welsh coal miners if, given the world situation, they could give up their holiday next week. The miners say no.

Not everyone in the Women’s Social and Political Union is obeying the cease-fire order: someone puts dynamite in the cathedral at Lisburn (Ireland).

NAMING THAT WAR: The phrase “world war” appears, in the Westminster Gazette.

Woodrow Wilson denies a report that he said the war would be good for American business.

The home of the owner of the Youngstown Telegram is dynamited. The paper is prohibitionist and anti-police, so presumably this was done by drunk cops.

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Today -100: August 1, 1914: The sword is being forced into our hand

French socialist leader Jean Jaurès is assassinated. He is shot at the Café du Croissant by Raoul Villain, a 29-year-old who dislikes his opposition to war. In the morning the newspaper Sociale had suggested that Jaurès be nailed to the wall at the same time as the mobilization bulletins. Villain also intended to kill Joseph Caillaux if he wasn’t caught while killing Jaurès, but he was. He will be held without trial until 1919, when he will be acquitted (his lawyers argued he merely wanted to ensure that France would win the war and mistakenly thought Jaurès would have opposed it) and Jaurès’s widow ordered to pay the costs of the trial. Eventually Villain will settle in Spain, where he’ll be murdered early in the civil war, evidently by Republicans who had no idea who he was, because irony.

Russia orders full military mobilization (the previous “partial” mobilization wasn’t that partial anyway, because the military had no plans for such a thing).

Austria orders full military mobilization in response to Russia ordering full military mobilization.

Germany declares a state of war, or a state of impending war – at any rate something war-ish but a step below declaring war (I guess the Germans have as many words for types of war as Eskimos do for snow). Also declaring whatever-this-is: Bavaria, which has to do so separately because of something in Germany’s weird constitution. The kaiser issues a statement calling Russian mobilization an act of “unpardonable disloyalty,” which seems like an odd choice of word until you remember the kaiser and the czar are cousins (in fact, Tsar Nicholas had scotched an order for general mobilization on July 29 after receiving a telegram from the kaiser, one of the famous “Willy” and “Nicky” telegrams)(which were in English, by the way). Wilhelm makes a speech from the window of his palace: “A fateful hour has fallen for Germany. Envious people on all sides are compelling us to our just defense. The sword is being forced into our hand.” Again, he’s still claiming to be trying to avert war. Mostly through bluster, as was the custom.

One odd way in which Germany prepares for war: Prince Oskar, Kaiser Wilhelm’s fifth son, gets married a month earlier than planned.

Germany signs a secret treaty of alliance with Turkey.

Austrian destroyers nearly capture Montenegro’s royal yacht, but it speeds away to Corfu.

The German ambassador to Russia, the Graf von Pourtales, asks Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov if Russia would refrain from war if Austria promised not to annex any of Serbia. Sazonov, who probably recognized what Pourtales was trying to slip past him – that Austria’s allies Romania and Bulgaria would do the carving up of Serbia – says that Russia would not permit Serbia’s “execution”.

The Jewish Chronicle (London) opposes Britain joining the war: “Why should England send the flower of her manhood to defend Russian interests, to sustain an effete and barbarous autocracy on its tottering throne?” (Why indeed? On a somewhat blurred page of today’s NYT I misread a subheadline as “Czar Has Culled 4,000,000 Men” – and I wouldn’t put it past him.) An editorial in the liberal Daily News argues, “If we crush Germany in the dust and make Russia the dictator of Europe and Asia, it will be the greatest disaster that has ever befallen Western culture and civilization.”

Similarly, George Bernard Shaw, in a letter in the Daily Citizen, says “The alliance between the revolutionary Government of France and the reactionary Government of Russia is a monstrous and unnatural product of cosmopolitan finance.” However, he says, “If war is madness, we should have thought of that before. It is no use piling up armaments and blustering for years and then, when the first shot is fired, suddenly joining the Quakers. We have made our bed and must lie on it.”

The NYT thinks that the rules of war will keep this whole thing civilized. There won’t be attacks on civilians, looting, bombing of undefended towns or buildings, shooting of surrendering soldiers, abuse of POWs, or unusually cruel weapons. The Times admits that none of that was true during the two Balkan Wars, but “The Balkan States are not fully civilized. War provokes savagery, but a war involving the great Powers would be fought with due restraint.” So that’s okay then.

The Women’s Social and Political Union calls off the militant campaign, due to the international situation.

Headline of the Day -100: “Hit By Gore With Cane. Blind Senator Smashes Stick Over Former Critic’s Head.”

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Today -100: July 31, 1914: Of menacing mobilizations, neutrality, neurality, hysterical fervor, and sinopes

(NOTE: The NYT website really screwed up this issue, replacing all but 2 pages in the index and Timesmachine with a 1916 issue. Stories I had to get from Proquest have no links. Sorry.)

Austria captures Belgrade. So I guess World War I is over now? I really don’t know what the big deal is.

Alliteration of the Day -100: Germany demands an explanation for Russia’s “menacing mobilization.”

The Netherlands declares itself neutral.

The British Labour party does the same, its MPs passing a resolution that it “hopes that on no account will this country be dragged into a European conflict in which, as the Prime Minister has stated, we have no direct or indirect interest.”

Woodrow Wilson says he has no intention of offering any of the European nations his advice or good offices. To be fair, no one’s asked him for either.

World War I in Los Angeles: a Serb, Jerko Kojarchick, shoots at three Austrians in West LA, misses and runs away, but is soon stopped by a Juvenile Officer, who doesn’t know why Kojarchick was running and whose search fails to discover the gun in his pocket. A crowd had collected after the shooting, so the cop brings him towards it to find out what had happened. Kojarchick starts firing at the crowd, but again hits no one.

Proquest Typo of the Day: “JAPAN WILL REMAIN NEURAL UNLESS ENGLAND IS INVOLVED.”

In the (British) Women’s Freedom League’s newspaper The Vote, Nina Boyle writes of the pro-war demonstrations in Berlin, “Their fervour, had it been displayed by female persons alone, would undoubtedly have been characterised as hysterical!”



The Lick Observatory discovers a new moon of Jupiter, which will only be given a name, Sinope, in the 1970s.

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Today -100: July 30, 1914: Of bombardments, mobilizations, warships, and presidents running amuck

Austria is bombarding Belgrade.

Russia mobilizes 1,200,000 men.

(Tsar Nicholas’s diary: “Had a delightful bathe in the sea.”)
 
The NYT says diplomats find some hope because “Germany, France, Great Britain, and Italy do not want war, and do not think the Austro-Servian quarrel important enough to justify it.”

Austria is taking as prisoners of war all military-age Serbs living in Austria, although they weren’t actually in the Serb Army.

To show how much of an emergency this is, Russia is temporarily suspending the restrictions on Jews serving on boards of directors.

World War I continues on the Los Angeles front, where a Serb, Steven Galich, shoots one Austrian and stabs another, saying “We’ll kill all you Austrians off before you get to the old country.” Other armed Serbs are arrested.

Headline of the Day -100: “Spain Assembling Her Warships.” Fucking Ikea instructions, ammirite?

Supposedly, Russia would refrain from backing Serbia if Austria promised not to chop up and annex parts of the country (NYT: “The Vienna theory that the war is a mere punitive expedition is not admitted by Russia.”) In fact, Austria’s intentions regarding Serbia are unclear, not least to itself. Earlier this month, the chef de cabinet of the Austrian Foreign Office, Graf von Hoyos, was asked about Austria’s objectives by his German counterpart and had to improvise something on the spot; he said that Serbia would be partitioned between Austria, Bulgaria, and Romania. The Foreign Office had to walk this back.

Headline of the Day -100: “Not Running Amuck, President Says.” Wilson responding to complaints from the National Trade Association of Wholesalers about his anti-trust legislation, which he says will calm the agitation about business practices. He seems to think businessmen feel bad that their fellow citizens think they have come by their millions illicitly. Isn’t Woodrow just adorable?

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Today -100: July 29, 1914: With a serene conscience I set out on the path to which my duty points

Austria declares war on Serbia. A manifesto from Emperor Franz Josef says “The intrigues of a malevolent opponent compel me, in defense of the honor of my monarchy and for the protection of its dignity and for the security of its possessions, to grasp the sword after long years of peace. ... In this solemn hour I am fully conscious of the whole significance of my resolve and my responsibility before the Almighty. I have examined and weighed everything, and with a serene conscience I set out on the path to which my duty points.” No other countries are at war yet.

Germany rejects Sir Edward Grey’s proposal of an ambassadorial conference.

Germany has told Russia that if it mobilizes, even partially, it will mean war.

(Tsar Nicholas’s diary entry for today: “played tennis; the weather was magnificent.”)

Serbia’s war plans involve invading the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s province Bosnia to raise an insurrection among Bosnian Serbs.

Austria offers amnesty to anyone who deserted the military or left the country to evade mandatory service. This means you, Adolf Hitler (Spoiler Alert: Adolf joined the German Army instead. This meant that when he’d served his time for the Beerhall Putsch and Germany tried to deport him, Austria refused to take him back, saying he’d relinquished his Austrian citizenship by joining the German Army, so Hitler was stateless for seven years until 1932, when he ran for president of Germany.)

Conscription might be more... interesting in Serbia, which greatly enlarged itself during the two Balkan Wars, and which has not treated the people in the annexed regions especially well.

In Los Angeles, a mob led by Austrian sympathizers attacks the Serbian Red Cross hq (which doubles as the Balkan Coffee House) with stones and bullets. No one is injured.

50 French socialist members of parliament meet and issue a statement that France shouldn’t be drawn into a war by “occult agreements.” Meaning secret treaties, not deals with the devil. Probably. Although the French alliance with Czarist Russia is arguably a bit of both.

The trial of Madame Caillaux concludes. In their closing statements, the prosecutor attacks Henriette as a mere mistress who had triumphed over and displaced Joseph’s legitimate wife. I read this as an attempt to head off a “crime passionnel” acquittal by attacking her character, arguing in effect that she doesn’t deserve the benefit of the traditional jury nullification afforded bourgeois women in murder trials. He also says that she lacked the requisite femininity: “She is a cool, sensible woman, without emotion or pity. ... she prepared the assassination with as much calm as a society woman fitting in calls between two tea parties.” When he describes the shooting, she faints, as was the custom. Her lawyer Fernand Labori (who during the Dreyfus Affair defended both Capt. Dreyfus and Emile Zola) asks the jury to “keep our anger for our enemies abroad. Let us leave this court resolute and united to face the perils which threaten us.” The jury takes less than an hour to acquit her. Le Figaro says the acquittal for the murder of its editor “is the most enormous scandal of our epoch and covers the radical republic with mud and blood.”

The US Senate has postponed consideration of the 20 peace treaties Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan negotiated.

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Today -100: July 28, 1914: We have stood this sort of thing for seven and a half years. It is enough.

Today’s paper is incoherent as hell, with some stories saying the chances of war have receded, but a two-paragraph last-minute report says that Austria has invaded Serbia at Mitrovicza.

British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey is proposing a conference of European ambassadors to prevent war (update: actually, it sounds like he’s only trying to prevent war between Austria and Russia, which would bring in those countries’ allies, not war between Austria and Serbia). Russia claims not to be mobilizing its army (Spoiler Alert: Russia is totally mobilizing its army. Russia is big, so it has to start mobilizing early or the war might start without it). In keeping with the theme of the NYT contradicting itself, elsewhere it says that Tsar Nicholas ordered a partial mobilization, with the words, “We have stood this sort of thing for seven and a half years. It is enough.” (To be fair to the Times, the tsar was pretty contradictory on the question of mobilization himself. Also contradictory: my use of tsar/czar).

Cossacks shoot at German army officers who were supposedly crossing the border in the wrong place.

Headline of the Day -100: In the Cologne Gazette, expressing Germany’s attitude toward Russia protecting Serbia from Austria: “Hands Off!”

A NYT editorial entitled “The Man of the Hour” thinks that Kaiser Wilhelm is the dude who could make the little local difficulty between Austria and Serbia escalate into a war involving Russia, France, and Britain, “and the civilization of Europe would give way to savagery, the greatest war of all human history would be in progress. That is too dreadful for imagining, and because it is too dreadful it cannot happen.” Pfew, for a minute there I was worried.

According to the NYT, no one’s prepared for the greatest war of all human history. “Servia Hopeless If Left Unaided,” says one headline.
“Austria-Hungary Is Not Ready For War,” says another. All true. In fact, one reason it took so long after the assassinations for Austria-Hungary to issue an ultimatum to Serbia is that many of the troops from agricultural areas were on harvest leave.

So who is prepared for the greatest war of all human history? Lloyd’s of London, which has set a premium of 40 guineas per cent. (whatever that means) against the start of a Serb-Austrian war.

Dublin crowds attack military barracks in response to yesterday’s bloodshed, but are dispersed by the police. The assistant commissioner of police who called in the military yesterday is suspended, leading the police commissioner to resign in protest. Even in John Bull’s Other Island, using the military against civilians is no small thing. Dublin municipal authorities are also not happy that they were not consulted. John Redmond tells Parliament that Catholics “will no longer be bullied and punished for conduct which is allowed to go scot free in Ulster” by Protestants. Prime Minister Asquith says “The difficulties in Ireland are due to the attempts in this House to govern a people they cannot understand by a parliament imperfectly equipped for the task” (in other words, they’re an argument for Home Rule). Tory leader Bonar Law says the government should have enforced the law in Ulster before or resigned and held a general election.

The Constitutionalist governor of Nuevo Laredo state, Mexico, Gen. Antonio Villareal decrees that the Catholic Church sucks and its activities will be limited. Foreign priests will be expelled from the state, priests will stay out of politics or be expelled, confession is banned, etc.

At the Madame Caillaux trial, Joseph Caillaux introduces what he says is evidence that Gaston Calmette took bribes from Hungary, in the form of documents given him by Count Karolyi, leader of the Hungarian Radical Party, and also Calmette’s will, showing that he left a suspiciously large amount of money. Asked by the judge how he happened to have a copy of the will, Caillaux replies, The same way Calmette got hold of my private letters. Henri Bernstein, the controversial playwright, insists on being heard. “Why certainly, random spectator,” I’m assuming the presiding judge said, “The more the merrier.” Bernstein accuses Caillaux of standing on a coffin and making a pedestal of it.

Headline of the Day -100: “War Scare May Affect Tennis.”

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Today -100: July 27, 1914: The interest of civilization and humanity

Headline of the Day With the Word “War” In It -100: “Francis Joseph in War Mood.”

Headline of the Day With the Word “War” In It -100, Runner Up: “British Troops Shed First Blood in Ulster War.” Trying to seize rifles smuggled to the Nationalist Volunteers in Dublin. Four or more are killed with bullets and bayonets by the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Some of the police refused to attack and have been suspended. I’m unclear on how many of the 1,000 rifles the authorities managed to capture.

Headline of the Day With the Word “War” In It -100, Miss Congeniality: “10,000 Sing War Songs.” Germans. In Brooklyn. The Allied Germanic Societies of Brooklyn sends the kaiser a telegram congratulating him on his forthcoming war, by which they hope “the supremacy of the German race in Europe shall be established for the future in the interest of civilization and humanity.” Nothing expresses civilization and humanity quite so well as the strains of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.”

Although the war hasn’t officially kicked off, rumor says that Serbs shot across the Danube at ships transporting soldiers.

Belgium is preparing for war by mining its bridges. Britain’s King George is preparing by canceling plans to go to the race track, because sacrifice.

Carranza says he intends to issue an amnesty, but won’t promise one, because “amnesty is only granted by the conqueror to the conquered as an act of generosity” rather than as a condition of surrender.

The US Navy will now allow enlisted men to buy their way out of their enlistments. Enlisted men guilty of drunkenness, or overstaying their leaves twice, will be dishonorably discharged. The Navy can afford to do this because there is a waiting list to get in.

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Today -100: July 26, 1914: War will be a relief

Ten minutes before Austria’s ultimatum was due to expire, Serbia gave a reply, which Austria considers insufficient. It accepted every one of the ten conditions (although with caveats along the lines of Sure we’ll suppress anti-Austrian propaganda, expel from the military people working against Austria etc, just as soon as Austria proves they exist) except the one allowing Austrian officials to come into Serbia and try Serbian subjects, which they accept only in as much as it agrees with “the principle of international law, criminal procedure, and good neighborly relations,” and it wants the Hague Tribunal to rule on it.

Austria is under martial law. Serbia is removing the royal family and government from Belgrade to Kragouyevatz, further from the border. The Tsar orders the mobilization of the Russian Army. Excited pro-war crowds gather in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, the latter shouting “To Berlin!”, which readers of Zola’s Nana will remember they also shouted in 1870. Probably best not to recycle slogans from your most humiliating defeats. A “prominent banker” in Berlin tells the NYT reporter, “The atmosphere had become insufferable; war will be a relief.” (Spoiler Alert: war will not be a fucking relief).

The chief of the Serbian Army’s general staff, Gen. Putnik, chose this time to be in Austria, and is arrested.

Mexican Gen. Terrazas sells 300,000 head of cattle to some Texan for $4 million. He will split the proceeds with Pancho Villa, who will then give him his son back.

Joseph Caillaux’s letters to his then mistress, the current Madame Caillaux, are finally read in court. They make clear that the relationship was an adulterous one, if anyone in France was still out of the loop on that one, and revealed his cold-blooded strategizing about ending his marriage only after the next election (“What is irksome for us both is that for long months we shall have to employ extreme precautions”). As the lawyer got to the bit about “A thousand million kisses upon every part of your adorable little body,” Madame C. fainted.

There was a lively discussion between two of the judges in the case over the presiding judge’s handling of the trial, which resulted in a challenge to a duel. Between two judges. But first, they have to ask the Ministry of Justice for permission to duel (Spoiler Alert: the Great War will begin before all this dueling admin is completed. Paperwork, man).

Several hundred members of the Virginia Militia attack a jail in Gordonsville in an attempt to lynch a negro who supposedly attacked a militiaman.

An LA Times article on “Griffith of the Movies” mentions that D.W. is working on a big drama based on Dixon’s novel The Clansman (yes, that would be Birth of a Nation). It describes him getting negro children to gambol about happily by throwing dimes for them to dance for... and then doing the same for an old negro (with a shiny half dollar).

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Today -100: July 25, 1914: Of letters, ultimata, volunteers, and Hawaiians

The Madame Caillaux trial continues. Yesterday Joseph Caillaux’s first wife, after a display of reluctance so theatrical it’s hard to believe it was innocent, handed the two remaining letters that Calmette hadn’t published at the time of his untimely demise over to the defense lawyer Fernand Labori, putting him in the position of either using letters that put the Caillauxes in a bad light (they were written by Joseph to Henriette to Henriette while he was still married to Berthe) or looking like he was suppressing them. For now, after Berthe repeatedly refuses to take them back, he’s keeping them under wraps.

Imperial Arrogance of the Day -100: “The Haitian and Dominican situations are being closely watched by American naval officers on the scene, who have given stiff warnings to the combatants in both island republics that peace must soon be restored and that no interference with foreigners or their property will be tolerated.”

The Colorado Democratic Party county assemblies are meeting to elect the state assembly which will name the party’s candidates. Everyone wants to (and will) dump Gov. Elias Ammons, whose siding with the bosses during the coal mine strike/Ludlow Massacre looks like costing the party working-class votes for some reason.

Germany says the Austria/Serbia kerfuffle is Austria’s business and it won’t involve itself... Unless, of course, some other Power involves itself and prevents Austria getting satisfaction from Serbia.

Some other Power, aka Russia, asks Austria to extend the ultimatum it gave Serbia, implying war to defend its client if Austria refuses.

There are demonstrations against war in Vienna, where the people think that Germany is pushing an unwilling Austrian government into provoking war so that it can start a “preventive” war with Russia. Austria is calling its reservists outside of the country to join their units.

Also preparing for mobilization: the Ulster Volunteers, as the conference called by King George to end the Northern Ireland crisis fails. The Irish Nationalists were more or less willing to concede the exclusion of Ulster, but no agreement could be reached on how many counties that means. County Tyrone (which is majority Catholic) was an especial sticking point.

Prince Jonah Kuhio, Hawaii’s delegate to Congress, campaigns for re-election for a 7th term. He says the native Hawaiians should vote for a Hawaiian: “If the Haoles [pale-skinned devilswhites] had a majority here they certainly would elect a white delegate.”

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Today -100: July 24, 1914: My dignity forbade me to live any longer with you

Headline of the Day -100: “Austria Ready to Invade Servia, Sends Ultimatum.” That said, the NYT doesn’t seem hugely alarmed:



The 48-hour take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum is for the arrest of everyone involved in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the suppression of all organizations fomenting rebellion in Bosnia (formally annexed by Austria in 1908, but which Serbia would rather like for itself)(one of the organizations, which it names, has several Serb cabinet ministers among its members), the suppression of cross-border arms trafficking, an official disavowal by the Serbian government(in words specified by the Austrians) of “this criminal perverse” anti-Austrian propaganda, the firing of army officers and government officials guilty of anti-Austrian propaganda (Austria has a little list, some of whom were definitely involved in the assassination, although Austria didn’t have proof), and for Serbia to accept Austrian “assistance” in suppressing these groups. You might very well think that Austria doesn’t really expect its demands to be met.

But on to the important news: the Madame Caillaux trial, of course. Joseph Caillaux’s first wife, Berthe Gueydan, who supplied Calmette with letters from Caillaux to her and to his future second wife, testifies. She claims she has no idea how Calmette got her photographs of the letters, no idea at all. But mostly she recited the history of the failure of her marriage. At length. Nor does she care for the defendant: “All the pity has gone to the intruder who defiled my home to take my place,” she complains.

After three hours of that, Joseph Caillaux responds that his only mistake was in marrying her (and seducing her away from her first husband, he doesn’t add). It’s all very Jerry Springer, but it’s also part of a strategy to present Madame Caillaux as the sort of woman worthy of receiving a “crime of passion” free pass. He addresses Berthe directly, telling her that unlike the meek, mild murderess he’s currently married to, she was simply too strong-willed: “Between a man to whom everyone grants authority, vigor, and power, and you in whom those qualities are overdeveloped as well, it was impossible that things would last. ...My dignity forbade me to live any longer with you.” He says any wrongs he did her are more than compensated by the generous alimony he paid, and reminds everyone that she came into the marriage penniless.

After all the histrionics, the spectacle later in the day of two former prime ministers accusing each other of lying was something of an anti-climax. Caillaux had testified that Jean Louis Barthou told him that Berthe had shown him the letters. Barthou denies it.

A woman who watched some of the trial, Jeanne Beclard, the divorced wife of the under-secretary of state for fine arts, goes insane and has to be hospitalized. It seems that she showed up at Caillaux’s headquarters the previous evening intending to shoot him, but hadn’t gotten in.

William Barnes, the chairman of the NY state Republican Party, sues Theodore Roosevelt for libel for accusing him of being a “corruptionist” and comparing him to his counterpart in the D. party, Tammany Boss Murphy (“These machine masters secure the appointment to office of the evil men whose activities so deeply taint and discredit our whole governmental system”). TR says, “Let Mr. Barnes go ahead. I never say anything I can’t make good.” TR is promoting the alliterative Harvey Hinman as a fusion candidate for governor of New York, that is, he will try to have him nominated in both the Progressive and Republican party primaries.

Russian police and Cossacks are shooting strikers on the streets of St Petersburg, as was the custom. Evidently they held back until France’s President Poincaré’s visit was over.

(Oh, and Austria timed its ultimatum to coincide with President Poincaré and PM Viviani both being out of France – and it’s a loooong boat ride back from Russia.)

Carranza accuses Huerta of having sold 100,000 acres of Baja to the Rothschilds, keeping most of the money himself, and with a stipulation that they import at least 50,000 Chinese workers to raise cotton on the land.

Woodrow Wilson loses another nominee to the Federal Reserve Board, Thomas Jones, whose connections to the Harvester Trust aroused opposition.

Dr. Goldwater, NYC health commissioner, wants dogs kept leashed or muzzled all year round instead of just during the summer months as current law requires, based on the theory, long disproved by 1914, that rabies is caused by heat. There is no pound in the city, so stray dogs are chloroformed. Dr. Goldwater doesn’t really see the point of people keeping dogs in the city.

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Today -100: July 23, 1914: Cheap at half the price

An armistice is signed between the two sides in Mexico.

Pancho Villa goes on vacation.

Dorothy Evans of the Women’s Social and Political Union is arrested with explosives inside the home of the lord mayor of Belfast.

George Fred Williams, the US ambassador to Greece who resigned over Albanian policy, “went to Santa Quaranta [Albania[ with the intention of assuming the direction of Albanian affairs, but was politely requested to leave.” In November, when Williams (who was a one-term member of Congress from Massachusetts in the 1890s) returns to the US, surprisingly not in a strait-jacket, he will say he could have been king of Albania if he’d only had $25,000. He would have set up a cantonal form of government, like Switzerland. The Albanian people totally begged him to be their head, he says.

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Today -100: July 22, 1914: Today the cry of civil war is on the lips of the most responsible and sober-minded of my people

There’s some sort of large-scale revolutionary strike movement going on in Russia. The NYT is a little short of details.

Persia’s shah comes of age (16) and takes his oath. The crown is a little too big for his head. Literally.

Joseph Caillaux testifies at his wife’s trial in what the NYT accurately calls “a theatrical defense of himself.” He says the whole thing was his fault because he didn’t act first (shoot Calmette himself, I guess). He pointedly tells the court that he only knew true happiness with his second wife, the defendant, and not with the former wife who gave his private letters to Calmette. He says Calmette was part of a campaign against him by “the interests behind Le Figaro” motivated by opposition to the income tax Caillaux was trying to bring in as minister of finance (elsewhere he implies that Calmette took German bribes). Calmette’s actions in printing his personal letters were designed to “get at me politically through my honor, my honorableness, and at the same time to get at my wife through her honor, because it was our household itself that he was after.”

Caillaux goes on to defend his politics, his career, and his negotiations with Germany over Morocco in 1911. He then called up a Figaro staffer and demanded he produce government documents Calmette had in his possession (which were, though the public didn’t know this, three 1911 telegrams from the German foreign ministry to the German ambassador to France, intercepted and decoded by the French government, about secret conversations between the two governments on the Moroccan crisis. The government will falsely describe these documents as “nothing more than faked copies of documents that do not exist and that have never existed”). In the somewhat unstructured court proceedings of the period, if your name was mentioned, you had the right of reply and could just interrupt the trial to make a speech, like Caillaux is doing, or question witnesses. The victim’s family’s lawyer had the same privilege.

This is all the French newspapers are talking about, and will occupy the majority of real estate on their front pages until just before the war breaks out.

The Berlin police says there is no such thing as a white slave trade.

The conference on Ulster and Home Rule opens. King George begins, saying that the trend of events in Ireland “has been surely and steadily toward an appeal to force, and today the cry of civil war is on the lips of the most responsible and sober-minded of my people.” Liberals object to this language as echoing the Tory line, and, on constitutional grounds, to the king intervening at all.

Pres. Wilson orders that the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company be sued as a monopoly.

Pres. Wilson meets Fernando Calderon, who will be the foreign minister of Mexico when the Constitutionalists take power.

On Friday there’ll be another World War I fest on TCM. We’ve got, among others, Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms, a World War I short actually made during World War I, with a surprisingly grim (although comical) view of life in the trenches; King of Hearts (I’ve been avoiding re-watching this movie for years, for fear that something I quite liked when I was young will turn out to be the sort of thing that only the young like); and the really-shouldn’t-work-but-it-really-does Oh! What a Lovely War.

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A normal summer for our kids

(Written before the invasion of Gaza, but not posted because AT&T sucks):

Israeli Foreign Minister Unholy Avidor Lieberman explains why mass slaughter and occupation of Gaza is absolutely necessary: “It is not possible to ensure summer vacation, a normal summer for our kids, without a ground operation in Gaza.”

You don’t even want to know what he’s willing to invade to preserve Spring Break.

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Today -100: July 21, 1914: Never do we discern the voice of a woman

Headline of the Day -100: “Huerta Sails Away, Escaping Assassins.”

Carranza says he will accept an armistice pending negotiations for the handover of the government to him, but he still demands a surrender without conditions. He will grant a general amnesty, except for the murderers of Pres. Madero.

Headline of the Day -100: “Naps Stumbling Block for Senators.” As is always the case.

(That’s a baseball story.)

IWWer Becky Edelson, whose sentence of three months in the workhouse for refusing to give bond to keep the peace after making a street-corner speech was confirmed on appeal yesterday, plans to hunger strike. The IWW is sending out some rather premature funeral notices. Commissioner of Corrections Katherine Davis says “there won’t be any starving to death on Blackwell’s Island by Miss Edelson,” threatening forcible feeding.

Henriette Caillaux’s trial begins. She says she didn’t intend to kill Le Figaro editor Gaston Calmette: “It is terrible how these revolvers go off when they begin shooting – one can’t stop them!” She also insists that she is a bourgeoise. She says she was worried for months about the prospect of her husband’s letters being published to throw contempt upon him, the government of which he was minister of finance, the Radical Party of which he was president, “and strike through him the Republic.” Le Figaro describes her as having “physiognomy that hinted vaguely at a kind of Parisian elegance, but without distinctiveness and without charm” and “the banality of a shopgirl”. But “in her testimony she was harsh, dry, and without any emotion whatever... What we hear in [her speech] is the tones of parliament, never do we discern the voice of a woman.”

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Today -100: July 20, 1914: Of $2.50, Hindus, wrong impressions of conditions in Austria, and Salome costumes

25 Wobblies are arrested in Aberdeen, South Dakota, holding street meetings after the Commercial Club ran an ad asking farmers not to pay harvest hands more than $2.50 a day.

King George intervenes in the Northern Ireland issue, calling a conference of all parties.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned the ship that’s been sitting in Vancouver harbor for three months with 350 would-be immigrants to Canada who are not being allowed off the ship because they are “Hindus,” barred by Canada’s racist immigration laws despite being fellow British subjects. There have been court fights, questionable hunger strikes, repeated attempts to land, and actual fights. Now the authorities attempt to put food on board the ship, preparatory to forcing it to return from whence it came. The “infuriated Hindus” repel the supplies, pelting the police who attempt to board from a tug with coal.

A Bishop Alexander and a Prof. Getseff have been touring the US raising funds on behalf of oppressed Russians in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But in Passaic, New Jersey, the professor is prevented from giving a speech by a large mob using the argument of the hurled egg to make the point that the two are “trying to give a wrong impression of conditions in Austria.”

Long Beach, NY police crack down on bathing suits they consider unsuitable, arresting men and warning women. “Salome costumes won’t go here,” says one cop.

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Today -100: July 19, 1914: Of French pants, unamiable moods, kicks, best ruffians, and unclean and offensive ditties

The French Army is dropping its pants. Specifically, the traditional red trousers, which it will change for gray-blue ones.

A bank president tries to attack South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease, who had just called him a coward in a campaign speech.

Huerta, who is said to have indigestion and to be in an “unamiable mood,” still hasn’t left the country, but is said to be waiting for more of his cronies to arrive in Puerto Mexico.

The US says it won’t recognize as valid any concessions for natural resource extraction granted by Huerta, or foreign loans contracted by him after he dissolved Congress last October.

Mexican Fake President Francisco Carbajal orders troops to fall back and avoid fighting the rebel forces. And orders the practice of shooting prisoners of war and political prisoners ended. And orders the replacement of the statue of George Washington which was pulled down in April.

And generals Orozco and Cardenas, who played key roles in the overthrow of Madero’s government and his murder, respectively, are starting a new revolutionary movement. Mexico has too many fucking generals for its own good.

Headline of the Day -100: “DYING, HE TOOK REVENGE.; Frank Sharp Stabbed Man Whose Kick Caused Tuberculosis.”

Headline That Can and Indeed Should Be Read In A Different Way Than the Los Angeles Times Intended of the Day -100: “Police Best Ruffians, Who Attack in Force.”

Madame Caillaux’s trial is due to start, and seats are being sold for up to $200 (but no women will be allowed to spectate, except as journalists).

Letter to the Times of the Day -100: A Mrs. W. Williams writes to denounce the singing of “unclean and offensive ditties” and to praise the director of the Palace Theatre for banning “Who Paid the Rent for Mrs. Rip Van Winkle?” (which you can find on YouTube, but you really shouldn’t bother).

Edward, Prince of Wales (age 20) really wants to meet American women. Queen Mary really wants him not to meet American women. He recently cancelled a visit to one country house after his mother struck the names of two American women from the guest list. This is the future Edward VIII we’re talking about, so, well, yeah.

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