Today -100: October 10, 1916: Of u-boats, bullfights, and retaliation and brutality

There is much talk about what the US can and should do about u-boat activity off its shores. The government thinks none of the sinkings off Nantucket constitute a violation of either international law or Germany’s pledges to limit submarine warfare.

Carranza bans bullfighting in Mexico.

As I may or may not have mentioned, Charles Evans Hughes’s campaign has a trainload of women supporters going around making speeches. The DNC has been alerting locals to expose them as wives of Wall Street and Big Business types (and William Randolph Hearst’s mother).

Thomas Mott Osborne, the reforming warden of Sing Sing, resigns, accusing NY Gov. Charles Whitman of acquiescing in the legal persecution of Osborne and breaking “every promise he ever made to me” and of preferring “the old system of retaliation and brutality.” Osborne accuses the superintendent of prisons of interfering with his reforms without giving them a chance to work (most recently banning lifers who were trusties from leaving prison walls).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 9, 1916: Of u-boats and gomperses

U-boats sink several ships off the East Coast of the US. One of those u-boats is the very same U-53 that just left port in Rhode Island. Seriously, what was the point of that? It didn’t even take on provisions, just dropped off one letter. The US Navy is busily rescuing survivors. The war has now reached the Western Hemisphere.

Britain will protest to the US for allowing the U-53 to leave dock, an act Britain considers unneutral because it allows the sub to interfere with the shipment of munitions from the US to Britain. There’s a flaw in that logic somewhere, I just can’t put my finger on it.

Samuel Gompers complains to Mexico about Carranza’s recent decree abolishing the right to strike and declaring striking treasonable and punishable by death, no less.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 8, 1916: Maybe soon, maybe never

Germany plans to court-martial two captured British pilots for using tracer bullets. Britain explains that everyone uses tracer bullets for machine guns, including zeppelins, and hey we captured the crew of a zeppelin just last week and it had tracer bullets, so....

A German u-boat docks in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island, to everyone’s surprise. Evidently it made the 17-day voyage just to deliver a letter to the German ambassador to the US, which the captain asks an AP reporter to pop in a mailbox for him. Supposedly the letter is about relief campaigns in Poland, but rumors that the kaiser is asking Wilson to mediate peace inevitably spread. Under the rules of war, the sub can stay in port one day (Britain disagrees with this, saying that submarines are different from ships). Fregattenkapitän Rose says “We expect to reach home maybe soon, maybe never.” Spoiler Alert: He will reach home. During the war, the U-53 has or will sink around 88 ships.

Woodrow Wilson says that the Republicans lack a united set of proposals. “The only distinct definitions of purpose come from the collateral branches of the family” i.e., Teddy Roosevelt, who “professes opinions and purposes at which the rest in private shiver and demur.” Fair enough.

Mihály Károlyi, leader of a Hungarian opposition party, demands the end of the war, or at least Hungary’s participation in it, and for the emperor to dismiss the government of Count István Tisza, which “obtained its majority by corruption and does not represent the nation”.

Germany denies deliberately infecting prisoners of war with tuberculosis.

The NYT says that Russian military censors have allowed all sorts of calumnies about Jews to be published (cowardice as soldiers, evading military service, responsibility by treachery for military defeats, secret agents of the Germans, Jewish doctors maiming wounded soldiers, etc), while suppressing anything that praises the bravery of Jewish soldiers or contradicts the anti-Semitic lies.

Germany is reportedly interested in re-establishing the Vatican as a temporal power (making it independent of Italy).

Headline of the Day -100:

Oh, go fuck yourself, AP reporter who wrote this.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 7, 1916: Madness, ruin, and disaster

Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond says he doesn’t think the government is insane enough to try to introduce conscription in Ireland: “in that way lies madness, ruin, and disaster.” Which sounds like a typical Friday night in... nah, I won’t go there.

Orville Wright will not renew his British patent monopoly when it expires in March, as his contribution to the British war effort. In five months.

Headline of the Day -100:

You do you, Mother Jones, you do you.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 6, 1916: There is as much fight in America as in any nation in the world

The first lawsuit is filed under California’s 1913 Alien Land Law. The state’s assistant attorney general is trying to seize a house purchased by the Harada family in Riverside.

Since it was bought by the Harada parents in the name of their three American-born children, who are US citizens, the purchase will be ruled (in 1918) as legal. So that’s a nice loophole.

Headline of the Day -100:

“The war,” Wilson says, “has obscure European objects which have never been disclosed. Europe must understand that before we exert the force of this nation we want to know what we are exerting it for.” He says that after the war there needs to be a league of nations to preserve peace.

Mother Jones leads a crowd of female relatives of striking NYC carmen in destroying a street car.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 5, 1916: Have you tried texting them?

Greek King Constantine will form a government of national unity including the Venizelos crowd. The Cabinet resigns to allow this to happen, although their official statement also cites as a reason that they haven’t been able to get in contact with the Entente powers’ representatives.

Corporal Adolf Hitler is seriously wounded by a shell on the Somme. He will be a couple of months recovering, during which he will return to Germany (Berlin and Munich) for the first time in years and will be appalled by the low home-front morale, which he will blame on the, oh you know who.

Tsar Nicholas issues a decree dissolving the marriage of his sister the Grand Duchess Olga to the homosexual Duke Peter of Oldenburg. They were married 15 years, since she was 19. This form of divorce allows her to remarry, which she will do almost immediately to someone who actually was willing to fuck her, which Duke P never did. She’ll be one of the Romanovs to survive the Revolution, emigrating with her husband to Denmark, then Canada, where she died in 1960. Peter will also remarry, another Olga.

A black woman is lynched in Leary, Georgia. She was part of a quarrel during which her son shot and killed a white farmer. He’s still in jail.

An idea is spreading in Britain that after Germany’s inevitable defeat it should be punished in the peace treaty for sinking all those ships by having its own ships seized as compensation on a ton-by-ton basis.

Headline of the Day -100:

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 4, 1916: Of hatred, polio, and hand-shaking

Headline of the Day -100:

Sensible sentiments – revenge would sow the seeds of future wars, consult reason and passion, you can’t ban a whole people for all time to come, etc – but a bit laughable coming from Bryce, the man who wrote the propaganda report accusing Germany of fictional war atrocities to gin up anti-German passion and revenge.

Russia gets its fifth Interior Minister in a 10-month period. Outsiders aren’t sure what’s going on.

The feds think the polio epidemic is over and are ending inspection of interstate travel originating in New York City.

Taft and Roosevelt shake hands. After all reporters had been removed from the room. They did not speak, beyond “How d’you do?” or somesuch. Definitely worth a front-page article.

Japanese Prime Minister Okuma resigns, supposedly because of his age.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 3, 1916: Of ellises, POWs, and golf

Edith Ellis, the novelist, feminist activist, and lesbian wife of sexologist Havelock Ellis dies, having caught a cold watching a zeppelin raid (that’s not quite right, but never mind).

Jamaica doesn’t go ahead with a conscription bill after all, because the governor decided it would be too expensive. The House of Assembly votes to ban enemy aliens from having any business in Jamaica for 20 years after the end of the war.

Germany sent 10,000 French POWs to Russia in retaliation for France sending its POWs to North Africa. Now both sides are backing down.

William Howard Taft is down to a fighting weight of 266 pounds, 100 pounds less than when he was president. He says it’s all due to golf. I presume he’s on an all-golf-ball diet now. Very high in fiber.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: October 2, 1916: Of zeppelins and palaces

Britain shoots down a zeppelin north of London, the fourth in the last month. Searchlights, better guns, and experience are making the air raids unproductive for Germany.

The Vatican complains to Italy after it seizes the palace in Rome used by the Austrian ambassador to the Vatican.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.