Today -100: March 5, 1915: Englishmen do not think it necessary to put up the shutters whenever they are engaged in war

As Italy removes its troops from the interior of Libya just in case it needs them... someplace else... the natives begin a revolt.

Woodrow Wilson signs a Congressional resolution giving the president powers to enforce the neutrality laws against exports of munitions to belligerent countries, but not the absolute power to do so (I don’t understand the distinction, to be honest), which Wilson objected to as giving him too much power, if you can wrap your head around the idea of a president ever thinking such a thing.

The London Times suggested that horse racing be shut down for the duration. Lord Rosebery writes in to disagree: “You say that our Allies ‘cannot understand how Englishmen can go to race meetings when their country is engaged in a life and death struggle.’ With all submission I think our Allies understand us better than this. They know that Englishmen do not think it necessary to put up the shutters whenever they are engaged in war.” Rosebery is worried that thoroughbred lines would disappear, as it’s too expensive to keep them around “for the mere pleasure of looking at them in the stable.” The Epsom and Ascot races were held during the Crimean and Napoleonic wars, he points out.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Russian Amazons Capture Soldiers.” Actually peasant women who hadn’t evacuated the war zone.

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Today -100: March 4, 1915: We will fight, but we must have potatoes

Gen. Obregon threatens to take his troops and leave Mexico City at the first sign of rioting, rather than be forced to fire on “the hungry multitude” in order to protect merchants who he says refused his “invitation” to assist the people. Others point out that it is his army which commandeered the food supply of Mexico City, shut down the railroads, etc.

British warships are still destroying Turkish forts at the Dardanelles, firing from beyond the range of the forts’ guns.

Potato shortage in Berlin. Socialists to SPD Reichstag deputy Eduard Bernstein says, “We will fight, but we must have potatoes.”

Germany reduces the bread/flour ration from 225 grammes per person to 200.

The Ship Purchase bill is killed in the Senate by a Republican filibuster on the last day of the session.

Retiring Sen. Elihu Root (R-NY) complains about the Senate eliminating the Navy Department’s Plucking Board, which chose candidates for forcible retirement, without replacing it with anything, “leaving a lot of men in command whom a former president of the United States once described to me as a lot of wheezy, onion-eyed, old stuffed puddings.” I’m gonna take a wild case that the unnamed former president then said “Bully!”

Headline of the Day -100:  “Greatest Mountain Battle. Snow in Carpathians So Deep the Dead Remain Standing.”

Headline of the Day -100:  “For Permissive Widows’ Pensions.” Permissive widows are the best kind.

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Bibi Netanyahu and the Tentacles of Terror

Netanyahu addressed Congress today.

He started out with a lie. “I’m deeply humbled...”

IT WAS INTENDED TO BE A NON-POLITICAL CALL FOR WAR: “I deeply regret that some perceive my being here as political. That was never my intention.”

STAND UP, SIT DOWN, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT: “I know that no matter on which side of the aisle you sit, you stand with Israel.”

“The remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States has always been above politics. It must always remain above politics.” “Politics” is how things get decided. What he means is it must always remain unquestioned.

“Some of what the president has done for Israel is less well known. I called him in 2010 when we had the Carmel forest fire... In each of those moments, I called the president, and he was there.” Cursing the lack of Caller ID on White House phones.

He complains that Ayatollah Khamenei tweets about Israel.

“Iran’s goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror.” First, he gets points for “goons,” a goofy word we do not hear nearly enough these days. Second, “three tentacles of terror” suggests that he spends his Saturday nights watching bad movies on the SyFy Channel, eating Ben & Jerry’s while checking Khamenei’s Twitter feed to see if he’s talking about him.

“We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.” Again with the standing.

DA DUM DA DA DA DUM DUM DA DEE: “In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no peace for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone.” But a lot of frontal nudity.

PUT A RING ON IT: “the greatest dangers facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons.”

He makes clear that it’s not just a non-nuclear Iran he wants, it’s an Iran whose economy is strangled permanently:

Would Iran be less aggressive when sanctions are removed and its economy is stronger? If Iran is gobbling up four countries right now while it’s under sanctions, how many more countries will Iran devour when sanctions are lifted? Would Iran fund less terrorism when it has mountains of cash with which to fund more terrorism?

So any deal with Iran that includes the lifting of sanctions must be unacceptable. It’s almost like he doesn’t want negotiations to succeed.

“This deal won’t be a farewell to arms. It would be a farewell to arms control.” Some of his rhetoric in this speech is pretty good. This is kind of lame.

It is literally an irresponsible speech, a speech that says what he wants to happen and what he doesn’t want to happen, but leaves it to others to figure out how to comply with his wishes. It is Bibi talk.

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Today -100: March 3, 1915: Of exiles, coal, stealing from Indians, and attachés

The German occupation authorities in Belgium claim the tax they’re imposing on exiles was suggested by Belgians.

Germany will stop allowing the US ships bringing relief supplies to Belgium to re-coal at English ports.

Kate Barnard, the Oklahoma state commissioner of charities, appeals for the defeat of 13 bills pending in the OK Legislature, all designed to steal land from Indians by mortgaging orphan’s property, preventing proper legal notices being issued, etc.

The US military attaché in Berlin is being recalled, supposedly so he can make reports on the military situation in person that he can’t entrust to cables, but how could the timing not be related to the accusations against the German military attaché in Washington?

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Today -100: March 2, 1915: We do not propose to assassinate their seamen or destroy their ships

Headline of the Day -100: 

A ship, not the city or the state. Just arrived in New York (the city and indeed the state, not the ship) from Liverpool (the city, not a pool of liver).

Headline of the Day -100: 


Cecil C. doesn’t care that the British government has disavowed his speaking tour of the US.


The captain of a Norwegian steamship, the Thordis, says he rammed and sank a submarine.

Britain and France announce plans to cut off all of Germany’s sea trade. As retaliation for German’s sub warfare thing, of course, which Asquith describes in Parliament as grotesque and puerile. Puerile? He reassures neutral countries that this won’t necessarily mean seizure of their cargoes and “We do not propose to assassinate their seamen or destroy their ships.” So that’s okay then.

Herbert Hoover says the Germans are keeping their promise not to requisition food from Belgium, so all the food sent by the US is actually reaching Belgians, who he says are entirely dependent on those shipments.

The Arizona Legislature’s lower house rescinds its earlier vote to make the chamber smoke-free, which was evidently originally done at the behest of Rep. Rachel Berry, the only woman in the House.

Headline of the Day -100, or Euphemism for a Weird Sex Act? You Be the Judge: 




Two reporters on the pro-German New York newspaper, the Staats-Zeitung, visit Annette Stegler, the American wife of Richard Stegler, the German naval reservist arrested for fraudulently obtaining a US passport, in order to... persuade her to withdraw her charges against German Naval Attaché Capt. Karl Boy-Ed. The idea was to trick her into visiting a hotel room and threatening to ruin her reputation. When this fails (and she throws a seltzer bottle at the reporters), they have her arrested on charges of assault.  The judge throws the case out as the obvious frame-up job it is.

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Today -100: March 1, 1915: It is idle to trust to the tepid good will of other nations

Enrico Caruso will sing to benefit the French Red Cross, at the request of Prince Albert of Monaco. The German newspapers say, “We have no more use for Caruso than for Prince Albert.” There’s a joke in there somewhere.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George says the US is even more militarily unprepared for war than Britain was.

An American Legion is formed - not the current American Legion, which was formed by veterans in 1919, but a sort of informal military reserve organized privately but with the unofficial blessing of the War Department (update: or not. Secretary of War Garrison tomorrow will act as if this is all news to him. It looks like Gen. Leonard Wood was freelancing).  The Legion will consist of former soldiers, national guards and the like, aged 18 to 55, ready to spring into action if the US enters some war or other. Its leaders “wanted to make clear, first, that it is not an attempt at militarism, and, second, that while all who are loyal and patriotic are wanted to join, there will be small place in its ranks for hyphenated Americans.” Theodore Roosevelt endorses the Legion because of course he does. He says in event of war he will ask Congress’s permission to raise his own cavalry division, just like the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War. In fact, when the US entered WW1, he did ask the army for permission and was told no. It made him very sad. TR says “It is idle for us to trust to arbitration and neutrality treaties unbacked by force. It is idle to trust to the tepid good will of other nations. It is idle to trust to alliances.”

The NYT explains what’s at stake in the British Dardanelles campaign: “The capture of Constantinople will mean the extinction of Turkish rule in Europe and the collapse for all time of German plans for Asiatic dominion. It will not only check the Turks’ plan to invade Egypt, but will stop all German supplies to the Turkish troops in Asia Minor and afford a free passage from Black Sea ports of vast Russian stores of grain and oil”.

Cecil Chesterton, brother of G.K., who has been lecturing in the US, trying to win American support for the British war effort, is disavowed by the British government, which says it would never be so gauche as to propagandize in the United States.

Speaking of propaganda, Britain rolled out these passive-aggressive recruiting posters sometime this month:

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Today -100: February 28, 1915: Of guarded potatoes, saving corsets, betraying dogs, wars of starvation, grieved plutocrats, and unabashed nudity

Headline of the Day -100: 

Another Headline of the Day -100: 

Maybe that guy shouldn’t have been cleaning that gun in a hotel lobby in the first place.

Still Another Headline of the Day -100, Because It Was Just That Sort of Day: 

Supposedly, Germans craftily chalked on a ruined house in a Flanders town from which they were withdrawing, “Please feed the dogs.” The incoming French and Belgian soldiers did, the dogs started howling at midnight, and the Germans used the noise to direct their shelling. Since then, the Allied soldiers have killed all the dogs.

Yet Another Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times):  “Declaration by the Allies of a War of Starvation.” Britain and France intend to stop all shipping to Germany.

Sad Headline of the Day -100: 

By the city of Cleveland, which is actually attempting to collect taxes from him. He says he spends a lot of money in the city, and years ago prevented it being wiped off the map when the Pennsylvania Railroad wanted to move its offices to Pittsburgh, so he shouldn’t have to pay any taxes, I guess.

Chinese people in San Francisco, Fresno, Vancouver, etc. are boycotting Japanese-owned businesses to protest the Japanese government’s demands on China.

Nude Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): 

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Today -100: February 27, 1915: No one can hold me responsible for the recent earthquake in Italy

The Supreme Court is hearing the Leo Frank appeal. The state of Georgia denies that there were any intimidating mob scenes during the trial, “except such as was developed in a ‘law-abiding community’ by the evidence as it was gradually unfolded.”

The British government orders shipbuilders in Scotland not to strike for a 4p/hour wage increase; says it will arbitrate.

The German naval attaché at the embassy in Washington, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed, laughs off the accusation that he is running a spy/sabotage ring: “If another accident happens in the subway I shall probably be accused of that. ... At any rate I am happy to say no one can hold me responsible for the recent earthquake in Italy.” No, but that explosion on the bridge at the Canadian border...

South African troops are invading German Southwest Africa (Namibia), led personally by Prime Minister Botha, who was a general in the Boer War.

Like Germany, Austria will turn its schoolchildren into agricultural laborers, closing all schools for summer a month early.

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Today -100: February 26, 1915: Of spies, mines, human shields, and aliens

Richard Stegler, a member of the Germany Navy’s reserves, is under arrest in New York for fraudulently obtaining a US passport. He has implicated the German naval attaché in Washington, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed, as head of the German secret service/sabotage operation in the US. Which he is. Stegler says Boy-Ed (who is half German, half Turkish) supplied Carl Lody, the spy executed by the British a few months ago, with his false US passport.

Woodrow Wilson politely asks Britain and Germany to remove all their mines from the high seas.

A Prof. Walker, an expert on international law at Cambridge, suggests putting interned German - not even POWs, just people who happened to be German who were in Britain when the war started – on commercial ships to prevent Germany sinking them. “If election must be between the discomfort of belligerents and the lives of non-combatants and peaceful neutrals, it is true humanity will have no hesitation as to a decision.”

The Scandinavian countries give up their plan of convoys for their merchant ships, because Britain opposes the scheme.

Italy and Austria are negotiating how big a bribe Italy would require to remain neutral.

Britain says it’s destroyed all the Turkish forts at the entrance of the Dardanelles and the no doubt successful invasion of Turkey can now commence.

New York’s highest court upholds the state’s ban on aliens being employed on public works. The opinion, written by future Supreme Court justice Benjamin Cardozo, says “The moneys of the State belong to the people of the State. They do not belong to aliens.” Good luck getting those subways built, New York City.

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Today -100: February 25, 1915: Of undead princes, unmutilated prisoners, women voters, Belgian millinery, and lady cops

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The Excelsior newspaper (Paris) reports that the German crown prince totally died last December. It’s been a while since one of these rumors.

More Fog: The German consul in Chicago, Baron Kurd von Reiswitz, gave newspapers an affidavit from one Robert Meyer, who says he enlisted in the British army and while he was in hospital in Ostend after sustaining a wound in Rheims in September, saw German soldier prisoners who had been mutilated – 3 whose eyes were gouged out, 3 tongues, 2 ears – at least 4 of whom were mutilated by British soldiers. The British ambassador responds that there is no record of such a person and points out certain problems with his timeline and other errors, such as there being no 14th Company of the Grenadier Guards, the unit he claimed to have been in, no British troops in Rheims in September, etc.

Birmingham, Alabama arrests Hiram De Laye, a newspaper/magazine distributor, for selling a copy of a newspaper published outside the state which contains a liquor ad, which is illegal under the state’s new strict prohibition law.

In Illinois, women have the vote in local and national elections but not state ones. This means they have separate ballots from men, so you can actually determine the gender differences in voting. Yesterday’s primaries show they don’t vote with their menfolk, but are more Democratic. And 900+ women in Chicago’s 32rd Ward, the NYT says, were “deceived by a political trick,” voting for a black barber named W.W. Taylor, who didn’t even know he was running for alderman, someone having submitted papers for him so he’d be confused for the popular W.A. Taylor. Ah, Chicago politics.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Germans Forbid New Belgian Millinery.” Women have been wearing Belgian soldiers’ caps, and the German occupiers are not best pleased.

The New Jersey Legislature passes a bill permitting the appointment of policewomen. Whatever is the world -100 coming to?

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Today -100: February 24, 1915: A people of poets and thinkers has been transformed into a united people in arms

Sarah Bernhardt is now minus one leg and is resting.

Sen. Albert Fall (R-New Mexico) proposes that the US, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil intervene in Mexico to restore order. It’s not clear what exactly he has in mind but on past form it’s something stupid.

The Prussian Diet sent Kaiser Wilhelm a message of congratulations on the victory in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes. He responds, “A people of poets and thinkers has been transformed into a united people in arms, and we can rely on the strength of its determination to triumph over all the enemies of German Kultur and civilization.”
Today’s shipping losses include: the US steamer Carib, which hits a mine off Germany, the Swedish steamer Specia, sunk by a mine in the North Sea, and the Norwegian ship Regin, hit by either a mine or a torpedo off the coast of Dover.

Carter Harrison, Jr., 5-time mayor of Chicago, though non-sequentially, loses the Democratic primary for a 6th term in some sort of intra-Democratic feud that doesn’t sound like it has a lot to do with actual issues. He was first elected mayor in 1897, 4 years after his father, Carter Harrison, Sr, who was also the mayor of Chicago, was assassinated. Both were elected five mayor times.

At the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, which just opened, a janitor finds a bomb at the Japanese building.

Dirty-Sounding Headline of the Day -100: 

To make it worse, her name was Mae Cockrell. She committed suicide in the elevator shaft of the Washington Monument.


Turkish newspapers, perhaps being fed stories by the German press bureau, have reported that His Islamic Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm has already entered Paris in triumph and had his hand kissed by the French deputies. Also, Wilhelm’s harem and the harems of his staff officers will be visiting Constantinople. So that’ll be nice.

Indian troops on the way to fight in Egypt mutiny in Singapore and go on a rampage.

The German government is asking people to stop stamping the words “God punish England” on mail going to other countries, as it might give the wrong impression.

Congress passes the Army appropriation bill, including a provision banning the use of stopwatches and other “scientific management” methods in government plants.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times, but possibly from the Manchester Guardian):  “Terrors of Bearded Troops.” Russian soldiers are going all shaggy because they think it frightens the Germans.

The US Supreme Court upholds the California law setting a maximum 8-hour work day for women in factories and shops (but not in agricultural labor, canning, boarding-houses, nurses or domestic servants).

The NYT misses this story, and the LA Times gives precisely two sentences to it: the US Supreme Court unanimously rules in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio that motion pictures do not have 1st Amendment protection against local censorship boards. They are not akin to newspapers, as Mutual had argued, the Court says, but more like circuses, theater and “other shows and spectacles” which the state can regulate in the interests of public morality. “Moving pictures is a business pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit,” and “not to be regarded... as part of the press of the country, or as organs of public opinion.”  The Court seems rather scared of movies, for some reason: “Their power of amusement, and, it may be, education, the audiences they assemble, not of women alone nor of men alone, but together, not of adults only, but of children, make them the more insidious in corruption by a pretense of worthy purpose or if they should degenerate from worthy purpose. Indeed, we may go beyond that possibility. They take their attraction from the general interest, eager and wholesome it may be, in their subjects, but a prurient interest may be excited and appealed to.” Just a few days before, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White had seen his very first motion picture - “The Birth of a Nation.”

The Mutual decision was reversed in 1952, when motion pictures were ruled to come under the 1st Amendment after all.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times):  “Bryan Wears a Toy Dove.”

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Today -100: February 23, 1915: First they came for the pigs, and I said nothing...

Germany is calling up 17-year-olds. Farm work will now be done by older children, who will be let out of school. Of course this is only until the end of the war, which they expect to be in November or so.

Germany responds to British claims of cruelty towards its POWs with an inquiry which totally clears itself, so that should settle that. “The evidence expressly states that when some of the allegations of cruelty published in England were read to the prisoners all of the Englishmen present broke out into laughter.”

The London Times reports that Turkish troops have been killing Armenians and leaving their bodies in the streets to be eaten by dogs.

Germans are told it is their patriotic duty to eat pork in order to reduce the numbers of pigs and save the grain they would have eaten for humans. There are 25 million pigs in Germany. For now.

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Today -100: February 22, 1915: Of curtailed sandwiches, sunk ships, lynchings, jewels, and bluffs

Headline of the Day -100:  “Ask German Children to Curtail Sandwich.” For the war effort, they are supposed to eat only one slice of bread.

The US steamer Evelyn strikes a mine in the North Sea and sinks, with no loss of life but considerable loss of cotton, which it was bringing to Bremen. It is not currently known whose mine it was and I don’t think it ever will be. (Correction: one dead - frozen to death - and 13 missing, it will be reported tomorrow).

Austrian torpedo boats and airplanes bomb two fishing boats clearly flying the flag of neutral-for-now Italy.

A possible train robber who got into a gun fight with cops, killing one, is lynched in Pleasant Hill, Missouri. He is white, as was not the custom.

King George of England arranges a £50,000 loan for the Queen of the Belgians, putting her jewels (which were sent to the UK before the Germans occupied Antwerp) up as collateral, although it’s not quite clear which of the jewels are legally hers and which belong to Belgium.

The Berlin police ban afternoon teas in hotels, cafés etc if they are accompanied by music, recitations, or lectures. No one knows why.

A posse led by a US marshal fights Piute Indians near Bluff, Utah.

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Today -100: February 21, 1915: Woman in politics is the last thing a real woman wants

The Lusitania arrives in New York. It didn’t fly the American flag this time, but neither did it fly the Royal Naval Reserve flag Capt. Dow is entitled to fly, and usually does.

A U-boat sinks a steamer off the Welsh coast without warning, and a Norwegian ship is sunk by a mine off the Danish coast.

Germany and Austria complain that submarines are, they say, being built for Britain in the US and shipped in pieces via Canada.

Britain and France claim to have successfully bombarded the Turkish forts guarding the entrance to the Dardanelles, silencing their guns. Turkey, of course, claims the forts haven’t been damaged.

Carranza arrests 180 native priests (i.e., not the Spanish priests Villa hates so much) for non-payment of a 500,000 peso levy on them, supposedly to be used for the poor.

Sarah Bernhardt on her forthcoming leg amputation: “I would rather be mutilated than powerless.”

The NYT prints another batch of letters on women’s suffrage:

Elizabeth Goldsmith says “It sometimes seems as if the suffragist had ceased to think of man and woman as two halves of a whole” and cites the “law of unity and polarity” in nature. You know, man the active principle, woman the passive principle, like fire and water, day and night, etc. Since woman is “the passive, the acted upon,” if she has the vote “she will do nothing original with it, nothing creative.”

Florence Howe Hall says that far from coarsening women in the states that have it, women’s suffrage has refined men.

Helen Glover, vice president of the Connecticut Anti association, says “The hysterical, emotional way in which women are clamoring for the ballot, without rhyme or reason, only shows how unfitted they are for it, and of how little use it would be in their hands if they had it. Woman in politics is the last thing a real woman wants”.

Henrietta Wheatley says “Men and women were created to co-operate – not to compete.”

Frederic Almy replies to the original editorial: “You say that women must work as men work in order to vote as men vote. I do not want them to vote as men vote, but differently.”

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Today -100: February 20, 1915: Of open doors, drugged soldiers, and chandlers

New York bankers refuse to give a loan of ten to twenty million dollars requested by French bankers, backed by French government bonds.

Pres. Wilson will complain to Japan about its demands on China, which violate the US “Open Door” policy in China.

Etherical Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: A French officer says that Germans only fight when drugged with a mixture of ether and alcohol, which sometimes causes them to fall asleep in the trenches they’ve just captured, whereupon French soldiers “butcher them like sheep.”

Britain responds to the US note complaining about the false use of US flags on British ships, saying yeah, we’re gonna keep doing it, and pointing out that US ships did the same thing during the Civil War.

The NJ Legislature’s committee investigating last month’s fertilizer strike in which deputy sheriffs shot at strikers, killing five, is told by a doctor who treated 16 of the shot strikers that all 16 were shot in the back.

Harry Chandler of the LA Times Chandlers is indicted, along with Boer general-turned-mercenary Ben Viljoen, for conspiring to foment a revolution in Mexico – actually against Carranza’s governor in Baja California – and recruiting troops in the US for that purpose. Chandler owns millions of acres of land in Baja and Gov. Cantu has been insisting that he actually pay the tax on exporting cattle to the US, which was never collected under the previous governor Chandler is, coincidentally, trying to reinstate.

Wikipedia tells us that Chandler “attended Dartmouth College, and on a dare, he jumped into a vat of starch that had frozen over during winter, which led to severe pneumonia. He withdrew from Dartmouth and moved to Los Angeles for his health.” And married a newspaper heiress. His Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention this trial, which seems to have fizzled out, with no outcome (dismissal, I assume) reported in either the New York or Los Angeles Times. The latter doesn’t even mention the legal action against its part-owner until Feb. 23, and then just in a reprint of a Detroit Free Press editorial which asks, “Can One Conspire Against a State of Anarchy?” I’m not sure “things in Mexico are so anarchical that one more mercenary army won’t make any difference” is a great legal defense.

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Today -100: February 19, 1915: All the things we have been trying to forget

Germans are very excited about news that the blockade of Britain will involve zeppelins as well as submarines. What’s the German for “That is so fucking steampunk”?

The Iowa Legislature votes in prohibition.

Frank James of James Gang fame (I believe he was the Ringo) dies at 74. He’d been a farmer for 30 years. He was tried once, but was never convicted of any crimes.

Woodrow Wilson tells a deputation of mostly German-American women that banning the export of munitions to warring countries would be an un-neutral act at this time.

Jacob Dickinson, secretary of war under Taft, says that the US land forces aren’t in a state of readiness for defense, and calls for rearmament, saying no one could suspect the US of preparing for world conquest if it did so.

Protests in Atlanta by Southern women’s groups against a theatrical production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin has resulted in the removal of scenes involving slave auctions and the whipping post and the change of the play’s name to Old Plantation Days. Said Mrs. Joseph Morgan, president of the Women’s Pioneer Society, “The play appeals to all the things we have been trying to forget.” The Daughters of the Confederacy says the play carries suggestions that are filled with injustice and misrepresentation of the South. Like the fact that there used to be slavery within living memory, probably.

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Today -100: February 18, 1915: Sweet charity

Henry Ford is making job offers to every inmate at Sing Sing before they are released (or other companies participating in his scheme are). Part of the deal is that they go wherever they are sent, which will be nowhere near New York, because Ford’s reform theory involves removing offenders far from their old environment. He even plans to give them new names.

The Rockefeller Foundation is trying out a new scheme for the relief of Belgian refugees in, um, concentration camps in the Netherlands, where instead of being given relief because they’ve been, you know, driven out of their homes and their country penniless by marauding German soldiers, they’ll have to work in exchange for food and clothing, because slavery is so much better than charity.

The mayor of Vancouver, L.D. Taylor, is unseated by the Supreme Court for lacking the property qualification required for the office.

The Nevada Legislature again makes Reno a divorce destination, reducing the residency period for divorces back to 6 months.

Paris will issue no new alcohol sales licenses.

D.W. Griffith holds a special secret screening of “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House (secret because Wilson is still in mourning for his wife, and secret only until Griffith breaks his promise not to leak the story to the press, in other words not secret for very long), arranged by Wilson’s old college buddy Thomas Dixon, author of the books on which Birth is based and a huuuuge racist. Wilson is supposed to have said that the film is “like writing history with lightning,” but he probably didn’t.

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Today -100: February 17, 1915: Of plocks, suffrage, and the day of slapstick and rough-house stuff

German troops occupy Plock. Or possibly they’re just making up names now.

The Massachusetts Legislature votes to hold a referendum on women’s suffrage in November. It will require a 2/3 vote.

The South Dakota State Senate rejects a bill passed by the lower house giving women the municipal and (partial) county and state vote. Suffrage bills are also working their way through the Indiana and Rhode Island legislatures.

The Arizona Legislature defeats a prohibition bill that was considered too strict (1% alcohol counted, clubs banned, powers of search extended).

Mack Sennett says, “The day of slap-stick and rough-house stuff is swiftly passing.” He says he will now produce works of “a distinctly higher class of comedy.” (Spoiler alert: no he won’t).

The film page of the LA Times explains how D.W. Griffith got a little black girl to cry in “The Clansman.” He had tried telling her the boogy man would get her and that bears would eat her. Finally he yelled at her that she was a lousy actress and he was going to send her home. That did it.

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Today -100: February 16, 1915: Germany cannot be allowed to adopt a system of open piracy and murder

Russia orders Jews in Poland to evacuate to at least 50 miles from the front, following the discovery of a concrete base for heavy guns at a factory that before the war employed only Jews.

German Socialist leaders meet and decide not to support any peace movement until Germans, you know, win. On at least one front.

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill tells Parliament that he plans to choke off Germany’s food supply in retaliation for its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, which he calls “piracy and murder” in, no doubt, Churchillian tones. He also reports that 5,500 British sailors have been lost, mostly to U-boat attacks.

Actually, although I think Churchill wouldn’t have known this when he spoke, Germany just floated a proposal to modify its U-boat plans if Britain stops attacking its food supply. But it also claims that British civilian merchant shops are preparing to fight, that they’re being equipped with naval guns and plan to ram U-boats. [Update: just noticed that typo, which is so awesome that I’m leaving it in]. This not only makes them fair game, but makes boarding them to ascertain their civilian status too risky. As the German ambassador to the US says, “Germany has been compelled to resort to this kind of warfare by the murderous ways of British naval warfare, which aims at the destruction of legitimate neutral trade and at the starvation of the German people.” I doubt the neutral countries will be any more impressed by this game of “But they started it” (Churchill is pretending that choking off Germany’s food supply is a new policy) than they were by the “But they mobilized first/they went to war first” claims of last September.

Sarah Bernhardt corrects the story from a couple of days ago, saying “It is next Monday that the surgeon will amputate my leg, and after that I shall be happy again.”

The House of Representatives passes a child labor bill, banning children from mines and quarries until 16 and factories until 14 (or working more than 8 hours a day or 6 days a week until 16). Farm work is still okay at any age. Actually, child labor isn’t quite banned, but products of child labor can no longer be sold across state lines.

A jury summons is mistakenly sent to A.E. Wicke of Brooklyn, who is actually Antoinette Wicke. She is a feminist and would love to serve, but of course women are not allowed on juries (in fact, even when they were, jury duty wasn’t mandatory for women in NY state until the US Supreme Court struck down discriminatory jury-duty laws in several states in 1975).

I just don’t understand the selection process for the front page of the NYT. That story is on the front page, right below Greece breaking diplomatic relations with Turkey and right above “Girl, Yawning, Sprains Jaw.”

Austria is drawing up a census of church bells, because it may want to melt them down for the copper.

China has rejected all of Japan’s demands re railroads and treaty ports and Manchuria and whatnot.

The US claims that an attack by a mob in Panama on American soldiers, in which shots were fired by both sides, was due to the “carnival spirit entirely.”

Ottawa has a second night of air raid scares. The first one may have been caused by children sending up fire balloons, but they’re taking no chances.

The Germans are worried about possible British submarines in the Baltic and asking how they got there. One theory is that they followed in the wake of a German warship (which would know where the mines are), but my favorite theory is that the subs were shipped in pieces and assembled in Kronstadt.

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Today -100: February 15, 1915: Why should Germany and the United States wage war on each other?

Headline of the Day -100: “Bernhardt Loses a Limb.” To be specific: the actor Sarah Bernhardt and her right leg, respectively. Also, it’s not true. Yet.

Headline of the Day -100: “Snow Entombs Thousands.” On the Eastern Front, where it’s evidently quite cold.

Invention of the Day -100: The sardine cannon (a sardine can filled with dynamite which launches a re-filled shell case into the enemy trenches).

Ottawa has an air raid scare. Some planes – or possibly UFOs - were spotted crossing the border from New York. They failed to make an appearance in Ottawa, but everyone in Ottawa was pretty excited for, you know, Canadians.

The German government has made public the letter from the United States protesting its declaration of submarine warfare, and the public is pretty relieved that its terms weren’t particularly strong. Now US Ambassador to Germany James Gerard gives an interview with a German newspaper, in which he asks, “Why should Germany and the United States wage war on each other? There is not the slightest question of a conflict between them; their interests oppose each other nowhere in the world.” He also points out that the two countries are in completely separate continents, so really, how could you even fight a war?

France exempts fathers with six children from the draft.

Racist Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times):

Albanians invade Serbia, although it is not clear if Albania is even an actual country right now, its sort-of leader Essad Pasha being either president of an independent Albania or commander of the Ottoman army in the province of Albania, depending on who he’s talking to.

Headline of the Day -100:

Not a euphemism.

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