Today -100: March 31, 1917: Let the spy hunts begin!

NYC high school principals are ordered to hold a “patriotic meeting” on April 2nd. But the School Board is running into difficulties in implementing its plan to fire pacifist teachers: that wouldn’t actually be legal. Yet. The Board is now asking the Legislature for a law requiring an oath of allegiance, on pain of dismissal.

German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann defends the eponymous telegram, saying the offer of alliance was to be made to Mexico only in the event of a US-German war. Which isn’t quite true, since he sent a second telegram two days after Wilson broke off diplomatic relations, telling the ambassador to Mexico to make the approach immediately. Since British Naval Intelligence hadn’t made this telegram public (or, indeed, told the Americans about it), Zimmermann thinks, wrongly, that it wasn’t intercepted. He says Carranza was never actually approached, which is a lie.

The Reichstag votes to appoint a committee to investigate whether to democratize the constitution a bit. Making the cabinet responsible to the Reichstag rather than to the kaiser, that sort of thing. Of course this is a stalling action, but the Russian Revolution has created pressure, not only from German lefties, but from the fact that the war now looks more like a bunch of parliamentary democracies, more or less, fighting a bunch of, well, not democracies.

The Russian government says the Polish people should decide on their own form of government in an independent state, although it still talks about that Polish state being “bound to Russia by a free military union.” Germany, meanwhile, finding very few Poles joining the puppet military of its puppet Polish kingdom, is planning to start conscripting them.

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Today -100: March 30, 1917: If this action warrants an increase of bloodshed, we shall not have to bear the burden of responsibility for it

The British Parliament is working on a bill to let the military re-examine men previously rejected for service as unfit, as well as men discharged for wounds, to use them behind the lines. Winston Churchill suggests taking married men in their 40s rather than convalescents.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg tells the Reichstag that Germany does not want war with the United States. He says that if Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare – which was adopted entirely in self-defense – leads the US to declare war, “if this action warrants an increase of bloodshed, we shall not have to bear the burden of responsibility for it.”

Russia: women will be allowed to take any governmental job.

Neutral Spain is put under martial law to prevent a general strike. The economy is in a shambles in part because Germany has sunk a lot of Spain’s shipping. There is also tension over the fact that the majority of the population is neutralist or pro-Allies while the government, army, and clergy are pro-German.

Lloyd George tells a deputation of suffragists (which the London Times describes as “picturesque”) that he realizes that the minimum age of 30 or 35 being proposed for women voters is illogical and without justification, but they should just shut up and accept it because reasons. Emmeline Pankhurst says sure because reasons.

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Today -100: March 29, 1917: No one can now contend that we are yielding to violence what we refused to concede to argument

Albert Staub, head of the Atlanta branch of the American Red Cross, calls for a purge of “disloyal” members because SOMEONE poisoned a batch of bandages and put ground glass in dressings in New Jersey. (Update: Staub will deny ever having said anything about poison).

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George declares himself in favor of women’s suffrage. Actually, NYT, he always claimed in the past to be in favor, even while plotting to undermine it. Rather more remarkable is former prime minister Asquith’s announcing his conversion, claiming that his previous vehement opposition was always based on “expediency” but that women’s war work has proved them worthy etc etc and “we have had no recurrence of that detestable campaign which disfigured the annals of political agitation in this country, and no one can now contend that we are yielding to violence what we refused to concede to argument.” Lloyd George also goes on and on about women munition workers. Parliament votes in favor of the Speakers’s Conference’s recommendations for changing the franchise, which include reducing the residency requirement, a complicated experiment in proportional representation in a few constituencies, and other provisions. Women’s franchise will be on unequal terms, with a minimum age that hasn’t been settled on yet, probably 30 or 35.

The Nebraska State Senate votes down partial women’s suffrage.

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By “invading,” the NYT means “are looking for work.” Long Island businessmen are not happy about it.

German Food Dictator Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe says the state needs to seize the entire food supply of Germany.

Germany is threatening to intern American relief workers in Belgium for 4 weeks before letting them go home, to keep them revealing military news.

The witch hunt begins: Alexander Fichlander, a school principal in Brooklyn, is rejected for promotion because he’s a pacifist who refused to sign the loyalty pledge. George Wingate, a Civil War general who is on the Board of Education, leads the charge against Fichlander and wants to fire any teacher who expresses pacifist views, even if only outside the schoolhouse. Oh, and maybe make them take a loyalty oath.

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Today -100: March 28, 1917: Of cobblers, Canadian concentration camps, literacy, and tango pirates

Alexis Korvanov, a former Russian general and political exile who has been working as a cobbler in New York, sails for home. I don’t think he’ll do did much when he gets there.

While the NYT doesn’t give the name of the ship Korvanov sailed on, it might well have been the Kristianiafjord, whose more famous passenger is Leon Trotsky. Certainly the date is right. The Kristianiafjord will dock in Halifax, where Canadian authorities will detain him for a month alongside interned German POWs, as he later described in the chapter of his memoirs entitled “In a Concentration Camp.” He spent the month trying – with some success – to convert the Germans to revolutionary socialism.

Forced by the law Congress passed over Wilson’s veto to make prospective immigrants take a literacy test, the Labor Department says it will use the Bible, not for religious reasons but because it has been translated into every language, including Klingon.

Former President Taft calls the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanovs “the first great triumph of this war.”

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Today -100: March 27, 1917: Of Russian Jews, declarations of war, Belgiums, and crying czars

Russia will grant full equality to Jews, eliminating educational, residential and other restrictions. Which also means that the passports issued by the US to American Jews will now be honored. Under Taft, the US abrogated its treaty with Russia over this issue.

The Wilson administration is debating whether to ask Congress, at its special session next week, to declare war rather than have it declare that a state of war is already in existence. Evidently in all US history, Congress has only ever done the latter. By directly declaring war, rather than saying that the war began, for example, with the sinking of the Housatonic on February 3rd, the US can later demand compensation for the ships sunk right up to the time the US declared war.

Secretary of War Newton Baker says Germans in this country won’t be interned. If they behave.

Germany will start administering Belgium as two separate countries.

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Today -100: March 26, 1917: Of spy fever, redeployments, and of course polo

A Swedish man is arrested for sketching the Brooklyn Bridge. And a guest at the Hotel Majestic in New York is investigated by the police after a guest becomes suspicious that he is operating an illicit wireless transmitter. He is in fact testing electrical medical equipment before demonstrating it to doctors, which is his job.

Germany has been withdrawing troops from positions on the Western Front in order to mount a major offensive against Russia.

The head of the Polo Association says polo should not be stopped if war is declared.

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Today -100: March 25, 1917: Everyone hates a finicky war

Woodrow Wilson orders the US ambassador to Belgium to leave Belgium along with all other consular officials and the Commission for Relief, since the Germans are sinking all the ships bringing relief supplies anyway.

Theodore Roosevelt says he can raise a division of soldiers and have it in France in 4 or 5 months. And then he went off to “hunt devilfish.”

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The Russian Provisional Government fires Grand Duke Nicholas as army commander-in-chief.

In the German Reichstag, socialist (SPD) deputy Fritz Kunert blames Kaiser Wilhelm and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg for starting the war and says he’d be proud if Germany made such progress as Russia has.

The US rejects Germany’s proposed protocols interpreting the 1799 and 1828 US-Prussia treaties in ways that would allow all German nationals in the US (well over a million of them) to go about their business with no restrictions in the event of a war.

If war is declared, Princeton will immediately suspend all athletics. But they probably won’t shut down the whole university for the duration (or let in women).

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Something about paprika, right?

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Today -100: March 24, 1917: Of recognition, safe czars and nervous kaisers, and humanity and good neighborship

Now that the US has broken the ice, Britain, France and Italy recognize the new Russian government.

Russia will abolish the flogging and chaining of prison inmates.

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Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The British press reports, no doubt on the best authority, that Kaiser Wilhelm has had a nervous breakdown.

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Fight fiercely, Harvard.

Germany will reduce the bread ration by one-fourth. The meat ration, however, will be increased (they’re killing animals to save on fodder).

Having sunk a bunch of Dutch ships, Germany offers, “on considerations of humanity and good neighborship,” to pay indemnities for the dead crew members and to help shipowners buy German ships after the war. The Netherlands tells them to go fuck themselves. It is also likely to ban US merchant ships when Wilson puts cannons on them.

The Nivelle Offensive is going well. For now.

The Justice Dept is taking a census of all Germans in El Paso, with an eye towards internment.

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Today -100: March 23, 1917: And we’ve been friends ever since

The US recognizes the new Russian government, the first country to do so.

Russia says it will end the death penalty “in the near future.” Also, there will be women’s suffrage.

A u-boat sinks an oil tanker owned by Standard of New Jersey, the Healdton, off the Netherlands, its destination. No warning given. 7 Americans dead.

New York City’s Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel accuses State Senate minority leader (and future US senator) Robert Wagner of “working in the interest of Germany.” Wagner – and yes that is a German name – is not best pleased. This is part of a fight over how much the US government will pay the Rockaway-Pacific Corp (a subsidiary of Southern Pacific Railroad) for land on Rockaway Point which it intends to fortify.

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Today -100: March 22, 1917: Taking a man’s part

Woodrow Wilson calls Congress into an extra session for April 2nd, earlier than he’d previously announced, presumably to ask it to declare war on Germany.

It is expected that the US will not just independently start fighting Germany, but will operate in conjunction with the Entente nations, perhaps in a formal alliance, perhaps not. Okay, that may sound obvious, now, but the US hadn’t made a military alliance with another country since the War of Independence, and not getting into “entangling alliances” or interfering in Europe was kind of important to the US’s national self-image, the Monroe Doctrine and all that.

They’re talking about not being able to field an army for a year or so (although Theodore Roosevelt, naturally, wants to send an expeditionary force of whatever size as soon as possible), without anyone suggesting that the war might be over by then.

Henry Stimson, Taft’s secretary of war, demands that the US take “a man’s part” in the European war.

Lots of men, not just those in the military, are practicing military drilling, and would like the government to provide them with some rifles to play with. 600 had been drilling on Governors Island (Manhattan) with broomsticks, but have recently upgraded to wooden rifles.

Czar Nicholas and Mrs. Czar are under arrest.

New French Prime Minister Alexandre Ribot says “We are resolved to wage with the utmost vigor and to a victorious end the terrible war into which we were drawn by inexcusable aggression.” He will do so, he says, by giving a totally free hand to Gen. Robert Nivelle. This should go well.

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I believe you mean “differently abled.”

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Today -100: March 21, 1917: Feeble war but war

Wilson’s Cabinet meets. They are virtually unanimous in favor of war, some of their penises fully erect in anticipation. Wilson is still hesitating, saying he abhors both Germany’s militarism on land and Britain’s militarism at sea.

Republican leaders give speeches at the Union League Club about the international situation, all saying the same thing. Charles Evans Hughes: “Germany is now making war upon the United States, making war with a ruthless barbarity.” (Ruthless barbarity is the worst kind of barbarity). Theodore Roosevelt: “Germany is making war upon us and we are not striking in self-defense. Armed neutrality under these circumstances is feeble war, but it is war.”

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Today -100: March 20, 1917: Any American citizen who is now pro-German is a traitor to this country

The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote upholds the Adamson 8-Hour Act regulating railroad work conditions, including the enforcement of compulsory arbitration on RR companies and workers. Which gives the unions their 8-hour-day victory but introduces the worrying principle that the right to strike in such an industry is limited by the public interest. Some of the ruling seems to be railroad-specific, so Congress might not have quite so many powers over an industry whose functioning was not a vital “public service” affecting interstate commerce.

Theodore Roosevelt, you will be surprised to hear, wants war with Germany. “Any American citizen who is now pro-German is a traitor to this country”. He doesn’t like pacifists either, or armed neutrality, which “is only another name for timid war”. “Germany is already at war with us. The only question for us to decide is whether we shall make war nobly or ignobly.”

75-year-old Alexandre Ribot is the new French prime minister (again).

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George will move a parliamentary motion of congratulations to the Russian Duma for the new revolutionary government, which was formed, he says, “for the express purpose of carrying on the War with increased vigour.” He is heckled throughout by Irish MPs.

Russia announces home rule for Finland.

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Today -100: March 19, 1917: They are war itself

Germany sinks the City of Memphis. A ship, not the actual city. An American ship. Also the Illinois and Vigilancia.

The NYT declaims: “By the repeated acts of Germany a state of war exists between that country and the United States. No declaration has preceded it. The acts of Germany are not to be looked upon merely as a provocation to war, they are war itself.”

Pres. Wilson has not resubmitted his Cabinet members for re-confirmation by the Senate for his second term, as previous presidents have done as a matter of custom if not law.

The new Russian foreign minister, Pavel Milyukov, instructs Russian diplomats to tell anyone who’ll listen that Russia intends to stay in the war until the bitter, bitter end. He also explains to them, tsarist holdovers as they all are, that the Revolution was a good thing.

Maj. Gen. Frederick Maude issues a proclamation to the people of Baghdad, which British forces captured last week, saying they’ve come not as conquerors but as liberators, so that’s good.

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Today -100: March 18, 1917: Gracious! What does all this mean?

Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich did not abdicate after all. But he says he will only accept the czarship if offered by an elected body representing the will of the people. Don’t hold your breath, Mike.

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand and his cabinet, the third during this war, resign. Mostly caused by disagreements over military strategy.

The railroad unions postpone their strike 48 hours (although by the time that order is received in some places, the workers are already striking). The Supreme Court may issue their ruling on the constitutionality of the Adamson 8-Hour Act during that period, which matters to the owners but not so much to the unions, which say that their demands are the same regardless.

A dispute between a teacher, Marie Siebert, and a 14-year-old student, Harry Roper, at Central High School in D.C., goes public. She hangs a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm in her classroom, and he keeps turning it to the wall.

There were 3,541,738 motor vehicles registered in the US at the end of 1916, up more than a million from 1915.

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Today -100: March 17, 1917: How do you say “Buh bye” in Russian?

Czar Nicholas formally abdicates, not in favor of his son (he also abdicates his son), but his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. Who then abdicates after nearly 15 hours. The Romanov dynasty is now over, after three centuries of “the greats,” “the terribles,” and “she fucked a what?”s.

The new Russian government (specifically the new Justice Minister, Alexander Kerensky) promises universal suffrage, amnesty for all political prisoners, freedom of speech and the press, abolition of religious & national restrictions (Jews can be lawyers now), etc.

Woodrow Wilson sends representatives to appeal to the “patriotism” of railroad companies and unions to avert a strike over the former’s refusal to obey the Adamson 8-Hour Act.

Tomorrow -100 is Sunday, and churches will be asking parishioners to sign pledges of loyalty to the president.

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Today -100: March 16, 1917: Revolution

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From a confluence of bread rioting, strikes, military mutinies, some of it the results of plots, some of it not, and a regime that had lost all legitimacy through its inability to feed its population, prosecute the war effectively or keep its soldiers supplied with food, clothing, and ammunition, plus the suspected pro-German sympathies of various members of government and the incompetence and/or batshit craziness of others (plus the influence on the tsarina of the late Rasputin).

Czar Nicholas II finally resolves the whole tsar/czar dilemma by becoming just plain Nick, abdicating in the face of a revolution about which the world outside Russia has heard so few concrete details. In theory, he will go into exile, leaving behind his 12-year-old hemophilic son Alexei as the new tsar, with his brother the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich acting as regent. Or, you know, not.

The NYT is reporting that Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov (a follower of Rasputin, who Protopopov thinks is still giving him advice from beyond the grave) has been killed, which he hasn’t. He has, in fact, turned himself in to the Duma in order to escape being killed by the revolutionary mob. The Bolsheviks will execute him (the syphilis probably would have done for him fairly soon anyway).

The new prime minister appointed by the Duma to head the provisional government is Prince Georgii Lvov, who is associated with the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets).

The British government is said to be pleased at the overthrow of the weak tsar and the ouster of various allegedly pro-German officials, and expects that Russia will now fight Germany much more effectively. Andrew Bonar Law tells Parliament that Russian discontent was not caused by opposition to the war but to it not being carried out “with that efficiency and energy which the people had expected.”

The NYT also welcomes “The New Birth of Russia”: “The Russian people, through trusted leaders in the Duma and men of loyalty and enlightenment outside the Duma, have assumed the direction of affairs in the Empire.” They say the Revolution is mainly aimed at “Germanophile treason and conspiracy,” because everything is about German “plots” for the NYT now.

The Russian ambassador to the US, George Bakhmeteff, can shed no light on events in Russia (a country he will not, I believe, ever see again).

An Alien Registration Bill is introduced in the New York Legislature permitting the governor to require aliens from a country with which the US is or might soon be at war to register and requiring hotels, boarding houses etc to tell the police about any alien guests.

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Today -100: March 15, 1917: Of quasi-civilization, loyalty censuses, algonquins, conscienceless rascals, and boy scouts

China breaks diplomatic relations with Germany and seizes German ships.

Hubert Lyautey resigns as French minister of war after 3 months in the job. He refused to discuss the production of war planes, even in a closed session of the Chamber of Deputies, and deputies shouted at him until he resigned, or something like that. Lyautey had been the colonial governor of Morocco, where he “brought the Moroccans into a state of quasi-civilization,” which it turns out wasn’t really the best background for running a modern war.

New Yorkers are signing pledges of support for the president in the present crisis in a highly organized “loyalty census.”

A German u-boat sinks the American steamship Algonquin. It fired without warning, but all the crew escaped, no doubt while making lacerating witty comments about the experience and not spilling even a drop of their martinis.

The NYT has no news about anything that might be happening in Russia, and is reduced to quoting a Swedish engineer just returned home from Petrograd who says that reports of outbreaks are exaggerated. Phew.

Netherlands, scared of its large neighbor, sentences the editor of the Amsterdam Telegraaf for endangering the Netherlands’ neutrality by writing “In Central Europe there is a group of conscienceless rascals which caused this war.”

Germany says it is halting the deportations of Belgians to Germany.

The Boy Scouts will not take part in actual military operations in event of war, says the National Council of the Boy Scouts after, presumably, considering it.

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Today -100: March 14, 1917: If we sink an American ship, we shall get war

War Paranoia of the Day -100: The NYT claims that Germany is trying to “involve [South America] in a general war as well as to infuse into the countries there a distrust for the United States”. Uruguay would “play the role of Serbia” in this all-out war.

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Johann von Bernstorff, the expelled German ambassador to the US, asked by a reporter whether there will be war between the US and Germany, says “If we sink an American ship, we shall get war. If not, I suppose we can avoid it.” He thinks it’ll be okay if Germany sinks a British ship (like the Laconia) with Americans onboard. He says it was just silly of the US to have gotten so worked up about the Zimmermann telegram, since Mexico would only have been approached if the US declared war on Germany. Actually, the instructions to the ambassador to Mexico said to talk to the government if it looked like the US would declare war, i.e., in advance. And there was a second telegram ordering immediate contact.

The Navy “guards” that will be put on American commercial ships to operate the cannons will work on the assumption that any German u-boat they see will sink them without warning; they are authorized to shoot at u-boats without warning. War by “wacky misunderstanding.” The guards will be placed even on ships carrying munitions.

Railroad workers’ unions are arranging a strike to get the RR companies to follow the Adamson 8-Hour Law (the owners say they won’t obey the law until the Supreme Court rules on it), and to resolve this before any war is declared. Both sides will now accuse the other of being unpatriotic, as was the custom.

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Today -100: March 13, 1917: Odious yokes are the worst kind

The US announces that merchant ships whose owners ask for guns will be given them, and Navy crews to operate them, crews under their own orders rather than those of the ship captain. The US pretends that this arrangement preserves those ships’ status as civilian and not belligerent under international law. Germany, of course, disagrees.

Cuban police search the house of a former secretary of justice and find – hidden in the hollow base of a statuette, no less – documents supporting the recent failed rebellion and proclaiming “Germany has promised your freedom from the odious yoke which weighs on the country,” by which is means the Platt Amendment which the US forced on Cuba giving the US the right to intervene militarily in Cuba whenever it feels like it.

Tsar Nicholas the Last suspends both the Duma and the Council of the Empire.

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Today -100: March 12, 1917: Is it a Menshevik blizzard or a Bolshevik blizzard?

The British capture Baghdad, and that part of the world never gives anybody any trouble ever again.

Yesterday was Sunday, and jingoism issued forth from many flag-bedraped pulpits across the land. Dr. Charles Aubrey Eaton of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church, for example, denounced “poor pussy pacifists.” I don’t understand Christianity.

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Newspapers have been banned. Because a lack of information will totally assuage the worries of a starving populace.

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