Today -100: April 30, 1919: It is just one of those outrages that beggar description

A bomb is mailed to the home of former senator Thomas Hardwick (D-Georgia). Hardwick says he has no idea who the “miscreant” is. “It is just one of those outrages that beggar description,” he says, ungrammatically. It will turn out to have been retaliation for his sponsorship of last year’s immigration law aimed at deporting anarchists. The bomb blows the hands off Harding’s black maid and burns his wife badly.

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando gets a vote of confidence from the Chamber of Deputies, 382-40 with the Socialists opposing. He says the Italian delegation can now return to the Peace Conference with increased authority. Evidently this is a rebuttal to Wilson’s attempt to appeal to the Italian people.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, soon to take over as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, contradicts Wilson’s policy, saying Italy should have Fiume.

German troops have surrounded Munich.

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Today -100: April 29, 1919: Of supreme offenses against international morality

The Peace Conference decides, for now, that former kaiser Wilhelm should be tried by a special tribunal made up of 5 judges from 5 countries, for “a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.” Countries whose nationals were the subject of criminal acts can try German soldiers by military court, and Germany is supposed to hand them over, as well as any evidence asked for.

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Today -100: April 28, 1919: Of jollies

The Italian people used to like Woodrow Wilson. Now they don’t.

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I should think it would. Actually, this is a Lt. Allington Jolly, testing an experimental plane, the Christmas Bullet, named after its inept designer, William Christmas, who once claimed to have designed a plane perfect for a secret mission to enter Germany and kidnap the kaiser. This is the second Christmas Bullet; the first also crashed on its first flight, in January, killing another pilot, one Cuthbert Mills; this post has now reached its quota of silly names. The Bullet’s wings aren’t braced because they’re designed to “flap.” Instead, they tended to just come off. Christmas later billed the government $100,000 for the design – and got it.

Speaking of killing jolly, the Salvation Army plans to buy out a bunch of bars and keep them open as soft-drink-serving bars after prohibition, keeping them as “abodes of comfort and cheer.”

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Today -100: April 27, 1919: The Italian people have often known hunger, but never dishonor

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando does the balcony-speech thing in Rome, telling the crowd that even if the Allies retaliate against his pulling out of the Peace Conference by withholding food aid, “The Italian people have often known hunger, but never dishonor.”

John Tildsley, Associate Superintendent in charge of NYC high schools, says there are lots of socialist teachers and they should all be fired and all prospective teachers interrogated about their political views.

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Today -100: April 26, 1919: Of walk-outs, the abolition of slavery, and dead Indians

The Italians leave the Peace Conference, but claim it’s just to fulfill PM Vittorio Orlando’s promise to brief Parliament. Which would explain why he’s returning home, but not why the rest of the delegation is.

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And why is this editorial headline the Headline of the Day -100? Because they’re finally spelling it Lenin rather than Lenine. Trotsky is still Trotzky, though. Baby steps.

An anonymous Russian, in a totally not made-up at all interview in the Journal Epoca explains the totally not made-up compulsory marriage (aka “communization of women”) law: “Abolition of celibacy has been adopted simply as a means toward class equality.”

The NYT, in what I believe is only its second article on the subject, reports that 4.9 million Indians died of the Spanish Flu. It’s actually a lot more than that, so maybe there’ll be a third article some day (also, the Amritsar Massacre was nearly 2 weeks ago, although I think this isn’t a NYT thing so much as a British censorship thing).

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Today -100: April 25, 1919: The world is tired of war only for the time being

Major Gen. Leonard Wood says the idea that the League of Nations will prevent wars is “idle twaddle and a dream of mollycoddles”. Idle twaddle is the worst kind of twaddle. “The world is tired of war only for the time being,” he says, depressingly.

Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando frames his decision to quit/threaten to quit the Peace Conference as a response to Woodrow Wilson’s public statement on Fiume, not because of his rejection of Italy annexing the city, oh no, but his temerity in appealing to the Italian people over the heads of its government, “treating the Italian people as if they were a barbarous people without a democratic government.” Well, give it two or three years.

Orlando reveals his plans for when he goes to Rome after storming out of the peace conference: “I shall show myself to the crowd, as it is my duty, and it shall express its feelings.” Italy plans to just go ahead and occupy Dalmatia and other areas promised it in the secret 1915 Treaty of London (the one Wilson says was superseded by the 14 Points). They’re kind of glossing over the fact that Fiume wasn’t mentioned in the Treaty of London.

Herbert Hoover, head of the Inter-Allied Relief Organization, threatens to stop food relief to Germany if strikes and other disorder continues.

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Today -100: April 24, 1919: Fiuming

The Italian delegation to the Peace Conference (which includes PM Vittorio Orlando

and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino) says it’s pulling out of the conference because of Woodrow Wilson’s opposition to Italy annexing Fiume. “Walking out, we say! Don’t try to stop us! We’re totally leaving...” They’re especially pissed (they say) that Wilson chose to issue a public statement rather than, you know, talk to them (which was precisely the objection senators had the last time Wilson was in the US, when he made a pro-League speech before briefing them. Wilson does not learn). And just when the Italians were totally about to make “the last supreme effort toward conciliation”. Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George call their bluff, threatening to make a separate peace if the Italians (who have a special train prepared and everything) carry out their threat.

A letter from a Mrs Adele Woodward of the National Juvenile Motion Picture League threatens that if movies don’t clean up their act, the “great public conscience, which has so recently adopted prohibition, is now turning its attention to all saloon substitutes – the spotlight is now directed on the pictures of crime and vulgarity which have for so many years been an insult to the intellect of adults and a menace to the welfare of children and young people.”

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In rumored red revolt news, 1) Switzerland supposedly foiled a plot by Lenin, who sent “General instructions for a revolution in Switzerland,” and 2) Turkey is unreliably rumored to have turned soviet.

Maryland Gov. Emerson Harrington sends troops to protect a jail from mobs rumored to be planning to lynch Isaiah Fountain, a black prisoner (alleged crime unmentioned) who has just been recaptured after an escape.

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Today -100: April 23, 1919: Firm for Fiume

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Iowa gives the presidential vote to women.

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The Times is really going big on these tabloid-y headlines lately. Romanian troops have invaded Hungary to help overthrow the Hungarian Soviet Republic.

The NYT prematurely proclaims the fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich.

Germany is supposedly making secret preparations for a plebiscite on the peace terms, which the government thinks is a nifty way of avoiding responsibility for signing them.

The nationalization of Russian women, who must register at the Bureau of Free Love, is suspended in one northern Russian... okay, was anyone actually buying this “nationalization of women” bullshit?

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Today -100: April 22, 1919: Of Fiume and hearty welcomes

Germany is grumbling that it won’t sign the peace treaty without negotiations.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) says Germany has signed a treaty with Lenin’s government for the two countries to aid each other, Russia feeding Germany, Germany sending military instructors, etc. Obvious horseshit.

And the city of Vienna is taken back by the government. The communist takeover seems to have been premature, encouraged by Hungarian leader Béla Kun on his visit last week. Either that or the government is just blaming Hungarian “outside agitators.”

Things are coming to a head at the peace conference over Fiume, claimed by both Yugoslavia and Italy.  Fiume, a small town which only has an Italian majority if you don’t count the suburbs, is fast becoming a right-wing nationalist fetish object.

Italy would also like to absorb the Southern Tyrol. The Tyrolese National Council tells Woodrow Wilson that they want to be an independent country instead.

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Today -100: April 21, 1919: Of songs, ideal anarchists, and caged envoys

A bunch of soldiers and sailors invade a concert of the Master Bakers’ – bakers! bakers! bakers with a k! – Association in New York City and demand that German songs on the program be omitted, or else. The German songs are dropped.

The city of Vienna is taken over by soldiers’ councils.

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Self-described “Ideal anarchists” take over the Wittelsbach Palace, using the former king of Bavaria’s bed chambers as a council room and his bathroom as their anteroom. No word on what they use as a bathroom.

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Today -100: April 20, 1919: Of sullen attitudes, frequent shootings of a casual nature, and moral fibre

India: “The people are reported to be maintaining a sullen attitude.” Possibly because the British keep shooting them.

Mobs of unemployed people set fire to the Austrian parliament buildings in Vienna. The fires are put out. “As the evening wore on, there were frequent shootings of a casual nature, but the city bore to a great extent its accustomed aspect of the night life which it has taken on during the last few weeks.”

It is now legal in the state of New York (subject to local regulations or bans) to show movies, play baseball (after 2 p.m.) or fish on Sundays. Gov. Al Smith, signing the legislation, says of watching baseball, “It is in no sense deteriorating to the moral fibre of the witness.”

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Today -100: April 19, 1919: Do not get the idea that we are lying awake nights, trying to do you an injustice

The India Office reports that on the 13th a mob in Amritsar ignored the ban on public meetings, there was some shooting and there were 200 casualties and I guess that’s all they have to say about that.

“Reds” try, but fail, to storm the Austrian Parliament building.

Ousted Bavarian PM Johannes Hoffmann calls for military intervention by the German federal government to retake Munich. They are on their way, bringing artillery. The communists in Munich are blocking roads and emplacing their own artillery in preparation for a siege.

Rep. Joseph Cannon, the former Speaker of the House, addresses – and by addresses I mean condescends to – Puerto Rico’s Insular Legislature, asking it “Why are you worrying about statehood and independence? You will get either or both just as soon as you are ready. Do not get the idea that we are lying awake nights, trying to do you an injustice.”

The French Black Sea Fleet stationed off Sevastopol mutinies, the sailors insisting that no war against Russia had been declared and they should have been demobilized by now, since the actual war was over, and the food sucks.  After a few days, the French Navy will agree to their demands and the warships are withdrawn.

Now Playing:

About some misguided lefties who buy an island and establish a socialist utopia.

The utopia degenerates into a dictatorship and yadda yadda yadda. The film is based on a novel by Thomas Dixon, whose novels were also the basis for Birth of a Nation. Watch it... if you dare!



Secretary of Labor William Wilson is outraged by the advice in Moving Picture World to distributors that they advertise “Bolshevism on Trial” by such stunts as “put up red flags about town and hire soldiers to tear them down if necessary”.

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Today -100: April 18, 1919: Of censorship and ufas

The US Navy has stopped censoring cables to parts of Europe and Latin America and the Far East. Britain, which controls much of cable traffic, bans coded messages, which pisses off businesses which don’t want their secrets leaked.

Bolsheviks kill several hundred prisoners in Ufa.

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Today -100: April 17, 1919: Belgium does not seek revenge

British Prime Minister Lloyd George returns from the peace talks to make a speech to Parliament challenging his enemies, i.e., the Northcliffe-owned newspapers. He insists on being left alone to negotiate peace, which is really really complicated (“Before I went to the Peace Conference, I had never heard of Teschen, but it very nearly produced an angry conflict between two allied states [Poland & Czechoslovakia]”), without any more obnoxious telegrams from Parliament. He reassures MPs that he’s not planning military intervention in Russia - “a volcano which is still in furious eruption.” Actually, he spends quite a while justifying non-intervention, mostly on the grounds that it won’t work anyway because you know what those Russians are like.

The French parliament votes 334-166 to allow the government to continue to leave it in the dark about what’s going on at the peace talks.

The India Office says that “all is quiet at Amritsar, Lahore, and Bombay.” How long are they going to pretend that the Amritsar Massacre didn’t happen? The stacks of corpses should be kind of a giveaway.

The Iowa Legislature ignores the Judiciary Committee’s recommendation to impeach Gov. William Harding for soliciting a $5,000 bribe in return for pardoning a convicted rapist, instead censuring him.

If you’re wondering what happened to the race to be the first to cross the Atlantic by air: bad weather. Everybody’s just sitting around, waiting for it to clear up.

New Zealand’s prohibition referendum was initially announced as having passed, but it loses once the votes of soldiers abroad are counted.

The Big Four had got it into their heads that the former kaiser should be tried by Belgium. Belgium says no. “Belgium does not seek revenge,” they say, “It wants only justice.”

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How will that man from Nantucket cope?

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Today -100: April 16, 1919: Of riots, commissioners, and communization of women

An article entitled “India Riots Widespread,” which blames the passive resistance movement because of course it does, refers in passing to “a few casualties at Amritsar”.

Mrs. F.H. Wilder, a women’s suffrage and temperance activist, is elected commissioner of police in Fargo.

Munich is again captured by the communists, according to a source who also says they ordered the communization of all women, including wives, so take that for what it’s worth. Oh, and Bavarian Soviet Republic Foreign Minister Franz Lipp has been put in a lunatic asylum (again), supposedly.

I have found an its/it’s error in the New York Times.

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Today -100: April 15, 1919: Of hunger strikers, red orgies, race riots, and five and dimes

Britain releases 89 hunger-striking Irish political prisoners, most of whom were unconvicted, either awaiting trial by court-martial or interned without trial under the Defence of the Realm Act. They were originally supposed to be released temporarily so they could see doctors and then return to prison after six weeks (under the Cat and Mouse Act passed in 1913 to deal with suffragette hunger-strikers), but they refused to promise to come back. Well, so did the suffragettes back in the day, for all the good that did them, but the Irish have the threat of a general strike behind them, so they’re released unconditionally.

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There’s a race riot in Millen, Georgia. A couple of cops and 5 blacks killed, one of them taken from the jail and lynched, black churches burned, etc. No explanation for the events is given in the article.

F.W. Woolworth, the five-and-dime man, died last week. He died unexpectedly and before he could sign a new will, so under a 30-year-old will his millions will go to his “demented” wife.

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Today -100: April 14, 1919: Of crimes against humanity, red rules, wine, and pension protests

Turkey executes Kemal Bey, the governor of Diarbekr, by public hanging for his role in the Armenian Genocide, making him the first person executed for crimes against humanity.

Armenians are being killed by mobs in Cairo and Alexandria, for some reason. Armenians are killed, Egyptians are shot by British troops, British troops are killed, rinse and repeat.

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Harsh but not entirely unfair. But the Bavarian Soviet Republic really doomed itself when it ordered all cafés to close at 6 pm, an order soon rescinded after popular outrage.

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A Franco-American League for the Protection of Individual Liberty will be formed to fight prohibition, because wine.

Gustav Neuring, Saxony’s war minister, is killed by a mob of veterans outraged over proposed cuts to their pensions. They storm the ministry in Dresden, drag Neuring out, throw him in the Elbe, and shoot him as he tries to get out. The government claims, as was the custom, that Russian agents were behind the incident.

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Today -100: April 13, 1919: There could be no question of undue severity

Pilot Harry Hawker and his navigator, Lt. Commander Mackenzie Grieve (Hawker & Grieve, couldn’t make it up), start their trans-Atlantic plane crossing. Or they would do if their Sopwith would start, which it doesn’t. They were trying to start earlier than planned, since another team (with a Martinsyde biplane) arrived in Newfoundland to make its own attempt at the £10,000 prize. They’re getting a little desperate and are planning to ditch the Sopwith’s undercarriage, including the landing gear, 100 miles into the voyage in order to reduce weight, which means they won’t so much arrive at their destination as crash.

The Iowa Legislature is considering impeaching Gov. William Harding for soliciting a $5,000 bribe in return for pardoning a convicted rapist. Harding is otherwise most famous for having banned, during the war, the public speaking of any language other than English, including in sermons and on the telephone.

Japan, currently violently putting down pro-independence protests in Korea, fails again to get racial equality included in the League of Nations covenant. Chief opposition came from Britain, which is violently putting down protests in Egypt, and...

In Amritsar in the Punjab on this day (it will take a while for the NYT to hear about it), Gen. Reginald Dyer orders soldiers (Indian, Ghurka soldiers, it should be noted) to fire on a crowd protesting the deportation of a couple of local activists. They fire continuously for 10 minutes, killing somewhere between 379 (the official figure) and 1,000 Indians. The crowd struggled to escape through a narrow passageway, so many of those shot were shot in the back, and others were trampled to death. It would have been worse if Dyer could have gotten his armored vehicles with mounted machine guns through those narrow  streets. Martial law will be proclaimed and 18 Punjabis publicly hanged. Others will be publicly flogged – on a country club tennis court, no less – and others made to crawl through a major street – “fancy punishments,” as the British called it.

Dyer will explain to an investigation next year that he was punishing the crowd for gathering in defiance of his proclamation against public meetings: “It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd; but one of producing a sufficient moral effect, from a military point of view, not only on those who were present but more specially throughout the Punjab. There could be no question of undue severity.” He will further explain, “I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself”. He will be allowed to resign, and on his return to England will be presented a £26,317 fund raised by the Daily Mail. In 1940 Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the lieutenant-governor of the Punjub during the massacre, will be assassinated by one its survivors. Kim Wagner’s book Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre is out now (April 13) but not as I am writing this post.  Judging by his 2016 article in Past and Present on the massacre, which I read for this post, I suspect the book is pretty good. There’s a tv documentary on Britain’s Channel 4 tonight, called The Massacre That Shook the Empire, and there was a radio documentary earlier this week on BBC Radio 4, which can be listened to anywhere in the world for about 25 days.

Belgium grants women’s suffrage for local elections, and for national elections for widows and mothers of soldiers killed during the war or executed by the Germans, or who were themselves political prisoners under the occupation.  Women will get full suffrage in 1948.

As expected, the crackdown in New York on doctor & pharmacist drug-pushers has resulted in hundreds of junkies flooding the clinics, which are asking for 500 women volunteers (why women?) to help out. Health Commissioner Royal Copeland suggests that there should be some means of identifying addicts to prevent them double-dipping on prescriptions – branding them, for example, with nitrate of silver.

Communists overthrow the Bavarian Soviet Republic, setting up a Council and storming the Munich police stations. There are now three competing governments in Bavaria, and it’s all a bit confusing.

Italian armistice officials steal a bunch of art from Austria, mostly paintings taken from Venice to Vienna in 1816 and 1838. Viennese newspapers are complaining about this “Bilderkrieg” (picture war).

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Today -100: April 12, 1919: No viva

At Paris, the Powers are discussing conditions under which they could provide food to Russia. Pres. Wilson proposes offering food on the condition that a cease-fire is called. France objects to anything that might suggest recognition of the Bolshevik government and doesn’t want the Whites forced into a cease-fire even if the Bolsheviks agree to one.

Woodrow Wilson gets agreement on an amendment to the League of Nations covenant recognizing the Monroe Doctrine, which it calls a “regional understanding.” Mexico will soon point out that it doesn’t recognize or approve of the Monroe Doctrine.

Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, returns from visiting the Peace Conference as part of a labor delegation. He says the revolution in Germany wasn’t real, and the same people are still in power, which you can tell because unlike in earlier, real, revolutions, no one in the previous regime has been guillotined.

The NYT notes that the Bavarian Soviet Republic’s foreign minister, Franz Lipp (who they call Lapp) was confined to a madhouse more than once. That’s just the sort of rumor that the NYT falls for, but in this case it’s true. At one point Lipp will complain – in a letter to Lenin, no less – about the deposed government having taken the key to the foreign ministry toilet with them when they left. Also at some point he’ll declare war on Switzerland. Meanwhile, right-wingers in Munich are telling everyone that the soviet republic is the fault of the Jews.

Mexican troops lure rebel leader Emiliano Zapata into a trap – a general pretended he was ready to defect to Zapata; there was even a fake battle staged to prove the sincerity of his defection – and kill him. They take pictures of the body – which you can find on line if you’re into that sort of thing – to prove it.

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Today -100: April 11, 1919: If blood is spilled it will be on the heads of the Communist maniacs

370 Members of Parliament send a telegram to Lloyd George, demanding he present Germany with a bill for the total cost of the war. He responds threatening to call a general election. The French Senate passes a similar resolution demanding Germany be made to pay through its collective anus.

German Defense Minister Gustav Noske threatens to use force to return Bavaria to “order.” “If blood is spilled it will be on the heads of the Communist maniacs.”

The Council of Four decide to put ex-kaiser Wilhelm on trial before a special tribunal for violation of international morality and for breaking treaties.

US troops in Archangel refuse to fight the Bolsheviks, because they’re expecting to be relieved when warmer weather makes sea navigation possible, around June 1st, and anyway the Great War is over and the US isn’t supposed to be at war with Russia and we don’t wanna. Their officers eventually talk them around, telling them they were fighting defensively to save their own lives.

Secretary of State Robert Lansing warns California that yet more anti-Japanese legislation (a bill to prevent Japanese leasing agricultural land is under consideration, joining the existing ban on ownership) would be “particularly unfortunate” at this time. And, surprisingly, this time the Lege plays nice (the leasing ban will be passed by a ballot initiative in 1920).

A day after British soldiers shot protesters in Amritsar, India, a British missionary, Marcella Sherwood, is stripped and beaten by a mob. Gen. Reginald Dyer will order that everyone using the street on which this happened (including residents with no other way to get to their homes) will crawl its length on their hands and knees. He will later explain, “Some Indians crawl face downwards in front of their gods. I wanted them to know that a British woman is as sacred as a Hindu god and therefore they have to crawl in front of her, too.”

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