Today -100: June 30, 1917: Of beer and wine, dumas, and activities of a sinister German character

Woodrow Wilson intervenes in the Food Bill to prevent it banning beer and wine along with distilled spirits, although he will have the power to put such a ban in place, which he doesn’t want and won’t use.

The Russian Duma will ignore the polite request of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet that it dissolve itself. It points to its role in getting the tsar to abdicate as proof that it is now independent of its previous position as part of the imperial regime.

The Greek government installed by the Allies breaks relations with Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey. Which is not quite declaring war, but close enough.

Arizona Gov. Thomas Campbell calls the work of IWW union activists organizing copper miners “activities of a sinister German character,” and asks the War Department to investigate.

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Today -100: June 29, 1917: Of premature news, arrests at the White House, and self-determination

Secretary of War Newton Baker is pisssssssed that the news of the arrival in France of US troops was published yesterday.

Suffragists trying to display banners to the president are now being arrested every single day. 25 so far in the last week.

Socialist members of the Austrian Parliament introduce an interpellation in favor of peace negotiations and demanding that Austria finally state its war aims. The socialists (led by Ignacy Daszynski of the Polish Social Democratic Party, who will be prime minister of Poland for a week in 1918) argue for the right of people to determine their own destinies, to which Austrian Minister-President Ernst Seidler takes exception, saying that only the emperor can determine Austrians’ destinies. The Austrian emperor.

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Today -100: June 28, 1917: Over there

The first US troops arrive in France.

The Pan-Russian Congress of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Soviets votes against a separate peace with Germany, but it wants peace now, given that “The present war arose in consequence of aspirations of imperialists, prevailing among the ruling classes of all countries and tending toward the usurpation of markets and submission to their economic and political influence of small and decadent nations.” Decadent? The Congress also opposes a war that ends with the defeat of one side, which would only lead to more wars.

6 suffragists are sentenced to 3 days for picketing the White House. Too short for a hunger strike.

The NYT claims Lenin just attempted a rising against the Russian government, with German money.

Eleftherios Venizelos takes office as Greek prime minister.

The US War Department rejects the offer of some short dude to form “bantam regiments” of men too small to join the army (below 5’4” and 120 pounds).

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Today -100: June 27, 1917: Of air raids

The recent German raids on London by fixed-wing planes have led to demands for reprisals in kind on German towns, but Minister of War Lord Derby tells the House of Lords that Britain should not try to imitate German brutality. Baron Montagu says that the Germans have a perfect right to bomb London.

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Today -100: June 26, 1917: Of pickets and prohibition

The situation in front of the White House is escalating, with 12 suffragists arrested yesterday. Notably, only one of them is married.

Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore opposes the prohibition clause in the food bill.

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Today -100: June 25, 1917: It would be better for you to face ten German bayonets than one tigree mother of Russia and the curse she lays upon you

Headline of the Day -100:

The Russian Women’s Battalions of Death issue an appeal/threat: “And you others, soldiers in name but Judases in fact, who are selling Russia to the foe, know that the time will soon be at hand when it would be better for you to face ten German bayonets than one tigree mother of Russia and the curse she lays upon you.”

Germany orders that all publications discussing questions of public interest be submitted to military censorship.

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Today -100: June 24, 1917: The soviets are getting a little uppity

The Pan-Russian Congress of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Soviets votes to dissolve the Council of the Empire and asks for the Duma to be dissolved as well. Or I guess dissolve itself, since it was the czar who used to do that. The soviets don’t actually have the authority to dissolve anything, but hey.

The House passes the Food Administration Bill 365-5, with the surprise inclusion of an amendment banning the production of liquors during the war and authorizing the president to seize all existing stocks.

The Justice Dept bans pro-German newspapers printed in Mexico from entering Texas.

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Today -100: June 23, 1917: Loud and boisterous talking is the worst kind

The Chicago City Council begins moves to impeach Mayor Big Bill Thompson. He is considered pro-German, won’t help raise the Liberty Loan, and wasn’t nice to Balfour when he came to town. Thompson tries to adjourn the Council, but it refuses to go.

Two of the White House women’s suffrage picketers, Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey, are arrested with a banner displaying only Woodrow Wilson’s words about democracy and people having a voice in their own government (who thought there would be ironic protest banners in 1917?). They are charged with obstructing traffic, unlawful assemblage, and “loud and boisterous talking.”

Germany officially divides Belgium into two bits, Flemish and Walloon.

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Today -100: June 22, 1917: Of former kings, women’s battalions of death, pickets, and who owns the news

From exile, former Greek King Constantine I says he’s still the king.

The NYT has an AP article on the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death, a source of endless interest to the Western press, although not enough interest that they don’t mangle the name of its “girl commander,” “twice wounded girl officer” (she’s in her late 20s) Yashka Boshkareva. Boshkareva points out that the battalion still uses the disciplinary system of the tsarist army, with none of that soldier self-government stuff. And yes, they shave their heads.

The Associated Press wins a lawsuit against Hearst’s International News Service, which was stealing its news stories. It’s an interesting legal decision, by the 2nd Circuit Court, in that news is held to be property. News is evidently something distinct from facts.

Suffragist pickets outside the White House are again attacked by angry mobs.

The Maryland House of Delegates votes down women’s suffrage 56-41.

The FTC recommended that the railroads, coal mines and coke producers be run by the government. Big Business is not best pleased, nor by the administration’s attempts to keep prices on raw and manufactured goods down or the president’s new powers to embargo the export of any products he likes.

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Today -100: June 21, 1917: America Is Not A Democracy

Headline of the Day -100:

As a delegation from Russia visits the White House, a suffrage banner hoisted by the National Woman’s Party’s White House picketers informs them (in English), “President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia. They say, ‘We are a democracy. Help us win a world war, so that democracies may survive.’ We, the women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy. ... Help us make this nation really free. Tell our Government it must liberate people before it can claim free Russia as an ally.” Reporters are on hand, having been told this was coming. Crowds tear the banner apart, because freedom, to the annoyance of police who wanted it as evidence. No arrests are made, though police warn the suffragists there will be if they do it again. They will do it again. A lot of Washingtonians are quoted disapproving of the banner, none in favor. Rep. Jeanette Rankin, a former suffrage activist herself, expresses no opinion either way, which is disappointing.

Russia indicts government officials from the Czarist era, including former Prime Minister Boris Stürmer and various cabinet ministers and governors. The most interesting charge is against former Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov for stealing the original telegraph dispatches between Rasputin and the czar and czarina. 

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Today -100: June 20, 1917: Of women’s suffrage, fecking rioting, and German titles

The British House of Commons votes 214 to 17 for women’s suffrage, on an unequal basis. Even former Prime Minister Asquith votes for it. Efforts to expand the provision to women below the age of 30 are turned down.

The release of Irish political prisoners is celebrated in Dublin by rioting, as is the custom. Actually, the article calls it rioting, but it sounds much more like ordinary or garden-variety demonstrating. The Sinn Fein flag is hung on the wreckage of the Central Post Office. The police don’t intervene until 2 in the morning, which does seem to be the time to tell the marching bands to go the feck home.

Did I do that right? Feck?

King George is forcing all the princes and princesses of his large family who are English subjects to drop any Germany titles (lookin’ at you, Prince Louis of Battenberg).

The Austrian Cabinet resigns because the Polish deputies in the Reichsrath are now joining other Slavs in refusing to vote for the war budget.

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Today -100: June 19, 1917: This disagreement will be resolved by a Marx Off to see who can interpret Marx faster, probably

The All-Russian Congress of all Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets calls for a new treaty with the Allies aligning their war aims and rejecting a separate peace with Germany. Lenin is not pleased, and calls War Minister Kerensky’s call for a new offensive treason to international socialism. Kerensky accuses Lenin of misinterpreting Marx.

102 US coal corporations and 51 persons associated with them are on trial for conspiring to fix prices.

Annie Besant, the Theosophist leader who will soon be president of the Indian National Congress, is banned by British Indian authorities from lecturing, publishing, or participating in meetings. Also her letters will be censored and she’s banned from Madras City.

Irish political prisoners jailed after the Easter Rising are released. This is partly to make sure the Irish Convention goes ahead, partly to keep the US sweet. Also released are Sinn Feiners who organized a banned meeting on June 9th to protest against the imprisonments; a police inspector was killed as police broke up the meeting.

An Army training camp for negro officers opens. It’s in Iowa, because of course it is. White officers will train the negroes, who will run segregated negro regiments.

Haiti breaks relations with Germany.

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Today -100: June 18, 1917: Meet Countess Sofia Panina, the woman pioneer you’ve never heard of

Headline of the Day -100:

When a Frenchman has to find something nice to say about an American, but he’s just so... American.

The Russian Duma votes for starting an immediate military offensive. Why that required a secret session is unclear.

Also, the Russian government is joined by a new Assistant Minister of Social Tutelage (aka State Welfare), Countess Sofia Vladimirovna Panina of the Kadet Party, the first woman cabinet minister in any country ever. She plans for her staff to consist mostly of women. The Bolsheviks will put her on trial, and she will spend the last decades of her life in exile.

An independence movement is growing in Catalonia.

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Today -100: June 17, 1917: We ask you to fight for our freedom equally with yours

Woodrow Wilson gets tired of waiting for Congress to pass legislation authorizing a Food Administration, so he just goes ahead and tells Herbert Hoover to start organizing the housewives of America to use food efficiently under his directions.

Charles Jonnart, the French former governor-general of Algeria who spearheaded the Allies’ successful efforts to force Greece’s King Constantine to abdicate, publishes a proclamation telling the Greeks that that forcible abdication and the military occupation of Athens are all in the interests of “the independence, greatness, and prosperity of Greece.” Greece has been freed from the German-Bulgarian yoke, he says. Constantine is now out of the country, on his way to exile in Switzerland.

Elihu Root, in Petrograd heading a mission from the US, tells the Russian people, “we are going to fight and have already begun to fight for your freedom equally with our own, and we ask you to fight for our freedom equally with yours.”

Kaiser Wilhelm sends a telegram to ousted Greek King Constantine, his brother-in-law: “I assure you that your deprivation can be only temporary. The mailed fist of Germany, with further aid from Almighty God, will restore you to your throne, of which no man by right can rob you. The armies of Germany and Germany's allies will wreak vengeance on those who have dared so insolently to lay their criminal hands on you.” Criminal hands are the worst kind.

The new Greek king, Alexander I, the NYT reports, likes driving cars fast.

Headline of the Day -100:

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are being held on $25,000 bail, which they cannot raise. The article quotes a surprisingly long extract from an anti-draft pamphlet.

The British government use the Defence of the Realm Act to ban all dog shows. Something about the dogs eating too much food that might go to soldiers. Also, all unregistered dogs are to be killed.

Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the NY State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, warns of the “servant slacker” and says the role of American women in this war is to stop “noisily pursuing useless activities” like, oh for example, women’s suffrage, and spend their time supervising their servants and keeping their cooks from wasting food. This article is everything you expect an anti-suffrage woman to say about servants.

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Today -100: June 16, 1917: Of anarchists and conscription

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are arrested by the feds at the oxymoronic “anarchist headquarters” for conspiring to “aid, counsel, and induce” men not to register for the draft.

Headline of the Day -100:

The NYT now regularly uses loaded terms like slackers and shirkers and  sedition and patriotic (and unpatriotic) in its news reporting.

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Today -100: June 15, 1917: Deceitful peaces are the worst kind

Headline of the Day -100:

In a Flag Day address, Pres. Woodrow Wilson lays out the case for war against Germany, which “denied us the right to be neutral” by sending “vicious spies and conspirators” (vicious spies and conspirators are the worst kind), and by “impudently” denying us the use of the high seas. But we are not at war with the German people we will be attempting to slaughter. “They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into it; and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own.” (Historical question: have the Germans ever seen it, and have they sent us a nice card and maybe an edible arrangement?). He spends a surprising amount of time painting Austria as a puppet of Germany, considering the US and Austria are not at war. He describes Germany’s calls for peace as a “sinister intrigue” (sinister intrigues are the worst kind) because Germany’s bargaining position can only decline from here.

Theodore Roosevelt also speaks, at a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Nebraska’s statehood. He complains that we didn’t go to war much earlier, calls for “an absolute and undivided Americanism” during this “war for liberty and democracy” and for the suppression of German-language newspapers, and says churches which don’t fly flags should be closed. Also, everyone should give to the Red Cross. He says, “I wanted to go to war and the people wanted me to go. But now I am feeling fine. I keep my good health by having a very bad temper, kept under good control.”

Japan thinks that with the US and Japan now on the same side of the war, the US should recognize Japanese paramountcy in China.

The first result of the forced abdication of Greece’s King Constantine: the Allies occupy Athens, because of course they do.

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Today -100: June 14, 1917: Of air raids, glasses, and horses

German planes bomb London, killing over 100 people. All civilians, Britain will claim. It was a daytime raid and – a detail the NYT misses – the first air raid on London composed of airplanes rather than Zeppelins. One silly theory is that the Germans were trying to kill American Gen. Black Jack Pershing, currently visiting London.

The War Department has decided not to draft men with tuberculosis, but it will take men with glasses, since the outdoor life will cure them of their ocular deficiencies because that’s totally how eyes work.

The committee drawing up new election rules for Russia will give the vote to... the former czar.

Germany will start food rationing for horses. But they won’t stop horse racing, because none of the other warring countries stopped horse racing so they won’t either.

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Today -100: June 13, 1917: Of conscription, abdication, and rumors

Sen. William Calder (R-NY) points out that basing conscription on districts’ population, as the Selective Draft Act envisions, means that in areas with proportions of draft-exempt immigrants, this will mean drafting high proportions of citizens.

King Constantine I of Greece abdicates, forced out by Allied threats to bomb Athens if he doesn’t. His younger son Alexander will now be king, because the Allies didn’t like older son Crown Prince George either.

The US Secret Service is arresting people (12 so far) who have been circulating a (false) rumor that US ships were in a battle with German ones and several were sunk and there was a mutiny on one ship.

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Today -100: June 12, 1917: We can put an end to disloyalty, and we are going to do it

A policeman is killed at a banned Sinn Fein meeting in Dublin as the cops arrested speakers, including Count Plunkett, MP, because there is totally a Sinn Fein member of Parliament named Count Plunkett. He was elected in a by-election in January. All three of his sons were sentenced to death after the Easter Rising and one was executed.

Headline of the Day -100:

US marshals raid an anti-conscription meeting in New York City called by Emma Goldman, and arrest men not carrying registration cards. US Marshal Thomas McCarthy says he’ll stop any further such meetings and arrest Emma Goldman and “all of her kind” if they organize any more meetings. “We can’t stop free speech as contemplated by the Constitution, but we can put an end to disloyalty, and we are going to do it.” Marshal McCarthy does not do irony.

The Canadian government introduces a bill for conscription.

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Today -100: June 11, 1917: Of the Women’s Battalion of Death

Russian War Minister Kerensky’s wife Olga enlists in the Women’s Battalion of Death. This isn’t actually true, but I believe this is the first NYT mention of the Battalion, which was ordered formed last month, although women have been allowed to serve in the regular army for a couple of years (each one had to be individually approved by the czar). The efficacy of those soldiers, combined with the lobbying of “Yashka” Boshkareva, a semi-literate peasant soldier, and the idea of embarrassing male soldiers into resuming active military operations, led the Provisional Government to create several of these units. Being all-volunteer meant they were more gung ho than the male conscripts, who were not in fact embarrassed into fighting or into backing up the battalions or holding positions the female units captured. Boshkareva fell afoul of the Bolsheviks and was executed in 1920. There’s a recent okay, by-the-numbers Russian movie on the Battalion.

The Swedish Riksdag rejects women’s suffrage.

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