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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Today -100: March 11, 1917: Of Nissen huts, armed ships, poison darts, and food riots

The NYT has a short article about Nissen huts, those pre-fabricated portable semi-circular buildings usually associated with the Second World War, but which were put into use by the British Army in 1916.

Austria says it has granted autonomy to occupied Albania. In other words, it plans to conscript Albanians.

If Wilson arms private commercial ships, and he seems to have decided that he can just ignore the 1819 law, they will be authorized to fire on German u-boats without warning even if those subs haven’t done anything hostile. The administration says this still counts as self-defense since the German government has said its subs can do the same. And Germany said that armed ships are not civilian ships with the rights that would go along with that status It’s almost like both these countries want to go to war with each other.

The official British investigation into the Dardanelles campaign is made public, and it’s surprisingly honest about the incompetence of military leaders, although it places a lot of blame on the conveniently late Lord Kitchener.

A British court finds Alice Wheeldon, her daughter and son-in-law, guilty of a plot to assassinate Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson. With poison darts, no less. Her other daughter is acquitted. Sentences of 10, 5 and 7 years, respectively, are imposed. Their lawyer tried to suggest that the government’s failure to produce as a witness the “mysterious secret government agent known as Gordon” was somehow suspicious. And indeed, “Gordon” was in fact a paid government agent, had made it all up, was a convicted blackmailer, had been committed for insanity, all of which might have been seen as a little suspicious by the jury, had they known about it. The lawyer probably didn’t help anything by suggesting that in Gordon’s absence, the defendants should be subjected to trial by ordeal. Since Wheeldon was a suffragette before the war, Emmeline Pankhurst is allowed to testify, not because she has any evidence, just to deny that the WSPU ever plotted to assassinate Lloyd George (although they did blow up his house that one time). Indeed, now, Pankhurst says, “The Women’s Social and Political Union regards the Prime Minister’s life as of the greatest value in the present grave crisis, and its members would if necessary to do so, take great risks themselves to protect it from danger.”

In response to food riots, the Petrograd municipal government is given control of all food supplies in the district. What’s the Russian for “too little, too late”?

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Today -100: March 10, 1917: Of fats, quarantines, censi, and Joan II: this time it’s personal

Woodrow Wilson calls a special session of Congress for April 16th.

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Germany finally releases the American crew members of the Yarrowdale, which they’ve been holding since December (except for 4 or 5 they say are sick). And we finally hear what disease they’ve been “quarantined” for – spotted fever.

New York Gov. Whitman supports a bill for a census of the military resources of NY, including women who might be conscripted into war work as well as men.

Emmeline Pankhurst repudiates another of her daughters – that’s the word she uses, “repudiates,” in a letter to the prime minister of Australia, where Adela has been organizing anti-war meetings.

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Oh good, because that sort of thing always goes well. The unnamed Joan wannabe is invited to visit the bishop at Poitiers, who tries to expose her as a fraud by exchanging robes with an ordinary priest, but she sees right through the ruse, and... this is beginning to all sound made-up, isn’t it? The Church now has her “in a religious home in Paris under ecclesiastical surveillance.”

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Today -100: March 9, 1917: Of wirelesses, plots, pacifists, boy disloyalists, war crimes, and zeppelins

In the continuing ostracization of senators who filibustered the Armed Ships Bill, Sen. Moses Clapp (R-Minnesota) is disinvited from addressing a men’s Bible class.

The US government leaks to the press that there exists a secret wireless connection between Mexico and Germany, free of the benevolent censorship the US imposes. Actually, it seems that the Mexican wireless station, which was intended to keep the Mexican government in touch with its far-flung armies, isn’t strong enough to transmit to Germany but it can receive.

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In the pro-war propaganda campaign in the US, the Zimmermann Telegram is portrayed as just one strand in a complex, insidious web of German plots. That word gets used a lot. Too much, really, when you consider how quickly it loses meaning when you repeat it: plot plot plot plot plot plot. It should also be noted that the Zimmermann thing only came into play if the US declared war on Germany, in which case, Germany asks, were we not supposed to seek allies? it’s kind of what you do in war. Of course “it’s what you do in war” is also their excuse for invading Belgium, using poison gas, and sinking ships without warning, but I think they are genuinely puzzled that other people refuse to see these things through the same “pragmatic” lens they do.

Another “plot” mentioned in that story, which as far as I know is fictional, was a German attempt to persuade Mexico to annex Guatemala.

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400 US Marines land in Santiago, Cuba, allegedly at the request of its Civil Governor and at the orders of Commander Belknap on his own authority, without orders from the Navy.

The NYT welcomes Columbia University’s un-American activities committee, saying every school and college should have one: “We do not charge that such doctrines are taught in Columbia or elsewhere, but where does the noisy brood of boy disloyalists, anarchists, pacifists, come from?”

Irish Nationalists in the British Parliament respond to Lloyd George’s statement that Ulster won’t be coerced into joining a Home Rule Ireland. They say this “would involve denial of self-government to Ireland forever.”

Russia complains about violations of the rules of warfare by its enemies, including poison gas, explosive bullets, poisoned wells, the misuse of Red Cross flags and flags of truce, throwing bombs at sanitary trains, and the sinking of a hospital ship by a Turkish sub.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Bulgarian Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov is said to be planning to pull Bulgaria out of the war if it isn’t over by summer.

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the you-know-what, dies at 78.

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Today -100: March 8, 1917: I will never go to war for a capitalist government

There are bread riots in Petrograd today, mostly women. The Cossacks are called in, as was the custom.

Austria will start drafting 17-year-olds. And probably men up to 61.

The Wilson administration is thinking about using the Navy to convoy merchant ships, since arming them to shoot at u-boats seems to be illegal, but it’s still hopeful that the Senate will curb the filibuster and reverse the 1819 law in the special session.

The Senate is indeed working on restricting the filibuster for the first time in the history of the republic. It is proposed that a 2/3 vote can limit debate to one hour per senator.

While the state legislatures of some of the senators who filibustered the Armed Ships Bill have repudiated them, those of Wisconsin, Nebraska, Colorado, and Iowa refuse.

Supposedly, the amputated arm of a British soldier (the son-in-law of an MP, no less) is successfully surgically reattached.

The Australian Senate votes 28-2 for a resolution asking Britain to give Ireland Home Rule without undue delay. And in the British Parliament, Irish Nationalist leader John Redmond presents a resolution for immediate Home Rule. The government says sure, but Northern Ireland won’t be “coerced” into joining.

Germany orders almost all Belgian industry shut down.

Hsuan Tung, the 11-year-old former emperor of China, will be educated in the United States, it is announced. He won’t be, actually no doubt because of the attempt later in the year to make him a puppet emperor again.

Eugene Debs tells the workers of the United States they should declare a general strike in the event of war (“for Wall Street”) being declared. “When the working people own this country and other countries there will be no war.”

The Cuban rebellion seems to be over with the capture of its leader, Gen. José Miguel Gomez.

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Today -100: March 7, 1917: Of unusually bright Orientals, women’s suffrage, submarines, and sangers

The NYPD arrest a Bengal, Chandra Chakraberty, and a German, Ernest Se Kunna, for a plot to invade India and stir up uprisings there. The NYT article contains this sentence:

Women in Arkansas are given the vote. In primaries only, but Arkansas’s a one-party state anyway. This is the first suffrage victory below the Mason-Dixon line.

The Women’s Peace Party ousts Carrie Chapman Catt as honorary vice chair because as president of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association she offered Woodrow Wilson the services of suffragists in the event of the US going to war (without asking the suffragists).

Austria follows Germany in responding to US demands regarding submarine warfare. It says it totally agrees with the US about the protection of neutrals, but this applies to neutral ships, not to neutral persons on enemy vessels. Austria’s rejection of Wilson’s doctrine that American citizens do act as inviolable human shields may well lead to a break in diplomatic relations. Austria also agrees with Germany that all ships have been given a general warning to stay away and therefore a specific warning before sinking them is not required. Also, England started it.

Margaret Sanger went into prison for a month as a birth-control campaigner and came out as a prison-reform campaigner. She is especially critical of the “studied cruelty and heartlessness” of Katherine Davis, chair of the Parole Board, who rejoices in refusing to tell prisoners when they will be released, removed knives and forks so prisoners have to eat with their hands, installed screens so prisoners can’t see their visitors, etc. Sanger also describes the guards’ two-hour failed attempt to forcibly take her fingerprints.

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Today -100: March 6, 1917: We are provincials no longer

Woodrow Wilson gives his second inaugural address. Its clear aim is to prepare the American people for war, while exonerating them, and himself, from the charge of actually wanting war.

To be indifferent to it [the war], or independent of it, was out of the question.
And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself.
As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable we have still been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready to demand for all mankind – fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live and to be at ease against organized wrong.
It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality since it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forget. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle itself. ...
We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not.

“The more active assertion of our rights”!

While the Wilson administration reconsiders whether that 1819 law really prevents the arming of merchant ships and the Senate considers neutering the filibuster, there are calls of “traitor!” and “hang them!” as the names of the filibusterers are read out at a meeting in Carnegie Hall, which passes a resolution supporting Wilson and condemning “so-called ‘pacifists’” as un-American, and Oregonians initiate recall procedures against Sen. Harry Lane (D). He will die in May before that goes anywhere (and yes, in Oregon it was possible to recall a US senator). Robert La Follette is barred from Wheeling, West Virginia, where he has a lecture scheduled (the horror) and is hanged in effigy by University of Illinois students. And the trustees of Columbia University, the largest university in the country, appoint a committee, headed by former chief justice of the New York Supreme Court George Ingraham, to investigate any “disloyalty” among the faculty. The country’s not even at war yet.

However, the Metropolitan Opera denies that it will ban German opera in event of war.

German newspapers are portraying the Zimmermann telegram revelation as some sort of trick by Wilson to stampede Congress against Germany, even though they’re not denying the authenticity of the telegram.

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Sounds like a missed opportunity.

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Today -100: March 5, 1917: Of helpless and contemptible governments

Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated for his second term, the oath administered by the chief justice in the President’s Room in the Capitol, in front of a couple of Wilson’s friends, his wife, the Cabinet, and “such public officials as happened to be in the room transacting official business when the hour of noon arrived.” Actually, it was 12:04, so the country was without a president for 4 minutes, if it had but known it.

The Senate fails to pass Wilson’s Armed Ship Bill before the 64th Congress’s session expires. 11 senators (5 D’s, 6 R’s) filibuster the bill to death. 75 senators sign a manifesto saying they would have voted for it. Robert La Follette has a long speech he’d like to filibuster with, but the other side conspires to use the rules to prevent him speaking, just to be dickish. He is not best pleased. Other bills and nominations got lost thanks to the filibuster.

Pres. Wilson, says “A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” He demands that the Senate change its rules to prevent filibusters, and then he’ll call a special session.

Until recently, the White House had been saying that, while it would prefer to have Congress’s consent, the president has the inherent power under the Constitution to order the Navy to put cannon (and sailors) on private commercial vessels. However, they’re now discovered an 1819 law which says merchant ships may be armed but may not shoot at ships of countries with which the United States is not at war. So what were the cannon for? Pirates, of course.

The Chinese cabinet decides to join the US in breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany. Pres. Li Yuan-Hung refuses, saying that that power is his and his alone. So the prime minister and Cabinet resign. And leave Peking.

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