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Born in West Belfast, shipyard apprentice James Crozier was reportedly just 16 or 17 years old when the Great War began, but he was determined to join his friends enlisting in the 9th Royal Irish Rifles (RIR). His mother accompanied him to the recruiting station, for she did not want her son to go. Pleading with him not to enlist, she vowed to tell the recruiting officer his real age, but was instead persuaded by Lt. Colonel Frank Percy Crozier (no relation) that she need not worry because he would look after her son. This is the story that the elder Crozier tells, anyway. By the time young James reached France with his comrades in October 1915, his age was listed as 19. This is not the only point where the officer’s memory disagrees with the established facts of James Crozier’s life and death, but we can trust the veracity of the following summation from his memoir, The Men I Killed, of the four months which followed:

Rain, rain, rain! Rain and rain and mud and slush and shells. Four days ‘in’ and four days ‘out’ …Hell. Sentry duty, patrol duty in no man’s land, wet uniform, eternal digging, eternal pumping out, ration parties, carrying parties, working parties. mining-sniping-bombing. Up to the middle in mud and slush for four days on end; then another four days cleaning, drilling, sleeping and getting dry again. But considering all things, the food was good. One of the marvels of the war, was not that the men got good food in beastly, filthy surroundings in the trenches, but that they got food at all.

During that time, Private Crozier developed a poor reputation as a soldier, being counted absent once for a working party and then again from his billet, earning the label of ‘shirker.’ The weather turned abysmal during the last week of January. Perhaps it was the winter doldrums which finally broke poor Private Crozier, or maybe he suffered from shell shock, or maybe he was simply not adaptable to military life for any one of a thousand reasons. We will never know why he went missing at about 8:45 PM on the last day of January, just after his squad leader warned him not to leave his dugout, as it was almost his turn for a shift on sentry duty, but we do know that a thorough search of the company’s area of responsibility failed to locate him. Officially, Private Crozier was listed as missing in action. Unofficially, he was immediately suspected of desertion.

A French firing squad executes a deserter at Verdun during the 1917 mutinies, one of more than 600 that France puts to death during the war. By comparison, the British Army will execute 306 men for desertion and related crimes. The US Army will sentence 24 to death, but no sentences will be carried out. At least eighteen German soldiers are known to have been killed by firing squads during the conflict

Four days later, a different corporal spotted Private Crozier twenty-five miles behind the front as he walked along a light rail line at an artillery park. “He had no numerals, cap badge or rifle or equipment on,” the corporal later testified at trial. “I challenged him and asked him what he was doing. He had no pay book. I placed the accused in our guard room. I asked him his name and regiment and he told me his name and regiment and said he was a Deserter.” Three days later on February 7th, Private Crozier was returned to the 367th Division Headquarters, where he was held prisoner. After a week’s preparation, this morning a Field General Court Martial finds him guilty of desertion and sentences him to die.

Private Crozier does not cross-examine any of the witnesses, none of whom speak for more than a minute. His only defense is a claim of amnesia. “On 31 January 1916 I went into the front line trenches with my platoon. I was feeling very ill; with pains all over me. I do not remember what I did. I was dazed; I do not remember being warned for duty. I cannot remember leaving the trenches ever.” Under cross-examination, however, he admits that enemy rifle grenades were exploding nearby, and that he had not reported himself sick at any time. Four days after the verdict, Private Crozier is examined by a doctor who concludes that he shows no sign of being “other than sound in mind and in body.” Because his brigade has already experienced a desertion, with the offending soldier granted clemency in the form of hard labor, Private Crozier’s chain of command decides to uphold the verdict in order to discourage anyone else from following his example.

Finally, at 7AM on February 27th, Private Crozier is carried out to slaughter, for he has been sotted all night to keep up his courage and is now too drunk to walk without assistance. “There are hooks on the post,” Lt. Col. Crozier relates in his memoir. “We always do things thoroughly in the Rifles. He is hooked on like dead meat in a butcher’s shop. His eyes are bandaged — not that it really matters, for he is already blind.” There is some concern that the firing squad, picked at random from the 9th RIR, will be unwilling to aim true, and indeed they apparently miss the mark, wounding but not killing the hapless private outright. “A volley rings out — a nervous volley it is true, yet a volley. Before the fatal shots are fired I had called the battalion to attention,” Lt. Col. Crozier says. “There is a pause, I wait. I see the medical officer examining the victim. He makes a sign, the subaltern strides forward, a single shot rings out. Life is now extinct.” James Crozier will be the youngest Irish recruit to die before a firing squad in this conflict.

Lt. Col. Crozier tries at first to keep Private Crozier’s mother or the people of Belfast from learning the truth about his execution. But his efforts to present Private Crozier as being ‘killed in action’ fail when rumors reach home anyway, and unit members are pressed for explanations on leave. The matter is controversial in Belfast to this day, and his name is among those posted at the Shot at Dawn Memorial in Staffordshire.

Frank Percy Crozier long after the war as a discredited memoirist, failed constable, and ironic peace activist

#Britain #combat psychology #Ireland #literature #trenches

For over a year, Germany has exerted strict price controls and rationing on almost all foodstuffs, as the allied blockade is cutting off the supply of many things taken for granted before the war. George Michaelis, the attorney and bureaucrat put in charge of the Reich Grain Agency (Reichsgetreidestelle) during January 1915, has become one of the most powerful men in the country, with responsibility for a budget of 70 million marks to oversee the issue of most of the food that German civilians eat now. And because so many foodstuffs are unavailable from abroad, the German government has introduced ersatz (substitute) products of all kinds: coffee made from chicory, acorns, herbs, or berries, bread made with more potato flour and rye but less wheat, synthetic powdered eggs, fake sausage, milk, jam, fruit preserves, cocoa, honey, and so on. Sold in the same pleasant stores as before (see above), all of this food tastes awful.

It is also less nutritious. Most Germans have already lost weight, and to date the average laborer’s daily caloric intake has been reduced by a third or more, with worse to come, impacting their productivity. A hungry coal miner cannot dig as fast as a satisfied one, so his output falls even when his hours are extended. Of course, Germany is hardly alone in suffering from the disruption of global and regional food systems this way. Famine is now spreading from Africa to the Balkans; the quality of bread is declining everywhere, even in Paris; the Italian munitions center around Turin is spiraling towards food riots in June, while breadlines have already appeared in Petrograd; sugar is tightly controlled in London, and so many British agricultural workers have enlisted to serve in combat now that the potato crop will fail in parts of Scotland and England this year. Yet Germany and Austria take the lead in suffering, and the allied press takes positive delight in reporting as much.

This month, British newspapers have begun to focus on reporting non-food substitutions advertised in German papers, such as wooden shoes to answer a leather shortage, imitation flannel and canvas fabrics, soap made with less fat but more sand, and so on. Rumors of worker food strikes are magnified into tales of mass demonstrations. But these stories are not just propaganda. In fact, the most damaging words come from German and Austrian newspapers, all of which pin the blame squarely on Berlin for letting inflation spiral out of control. Last week, the American journal The Nation quoted the Kolnische Zeitung: “It may be taken as axiomatic that in matters of supply our Government never takes the decisive step at the outset, never acts except under undue pressure, and never learns except from its own failures.”

Predictably, the German government has reacted by increasing its press censorship. After calling for a special session of the Reichstag to grapple with wartime inflation, Vorwärts, the newspaper of the Socialist Party, was shut down last week for its fiery denunciations of wartime profiteering: “We are of the opinion that the adequate provision of the people’s means of subsistence and the fight against profit-mongering should be an end to itself, not the means to an end.” Vorwärts will continue to suffer such lockdowns, usually for days at a time, until the end of the conflict.

A German government propaganda cartoon depicts pork, sausage, fats, butter, milk, and meal as characters. Note the bar of soap

The imposition of censorship follows a similar track to the halting, high-handed way that Germany has imposed price controls and rationing. In mid-January, the German Chancellor requested that Field Marshall Hindenburg to suppress the Pommersche Tagespost and Goslarsche Zeitung for reportign on internal disputes at the highest levels of government, including his own clashes with Hindenburg. But the hero of the Eastern Front refused, saying that he would not use his growing, nearly-dictatorial powers on the press “for purely political speculations.” Nevertheless, ten days later a decree ordered all stories regarding conversations with, or other communications from, Army generals to pass through the Kriegspresseamt, the counterintelligence office of the Germany Army. Later this month, all discussions of German-American relations are subjected to censorship before publication.

Three days ago, the German Publishers Association presented the government with a series of requests. Some of these dealt with the annoyances of centralization, such as the requirement that combat reports come to their newsrooms through the official wire service, the Wolff Telegraph Bureau, rather than directly. From the point of view of German newsmen and printers, however, the greatest threat to their freedom is the German government’s complicated paper distribution policy, which allocates more newsprint for those papers which have shrunk between 1913 and 1915 but less for those which have grown in sheet size. This perverse system is aimed at supporting provincial journals, which are seen as more loyal and malleable, over the urban dailies which pursue public interest stories with greater vigor. As a result, the Berliner Tageblatt is seeing greatly-increased circulation throughout the war even as the size of its pages shrinks by half.

Today, the English-language press reports on the GPA’s complaints, putting particular emphasis on their assertion that as many as 2,000 German periodicals of all types have shut down since the war began due to shortages of paper. Though much-ballyhooed as another sign of Germany’s imminent social collapse, it is an enormous exaggeration, for as with any other industry, the biggest problem publishers face is the number of reporters and editors who have left their trade to go serve at the front. Furthermore, German paper production is not really in precipitous decline; instead, paper is being used as an ersatz replacement for all sorts of other materials. Cut off from American cotton, which is a key fiber material for a wide range of products from clothing to bandages to artillery propellant, German industry has been forced to adapt cellulose, recycled rags, and crepe paper as substitutes. Indeed, during 1916 the first paper clothing fabrics will be introduced in Germany, and just like the ersatz foodstuffs, they are quite inferior to what they replace. Last but certainly not least, the Reichsbank is turning to paper money for increased liquidity, adding to the inflation problem. We must therefore assume that the increased number of uses for paper, as well as government policy, explain the scarcity of newsprint better than reduced output at paper factories.

But the paper shortage assumes a life of its own as it becomes a scapegoat. Later this month, all discussions of German-American relations are required to pass through censors, while reprinting of a book on the topic is nixed and the decision blamed on paper shortages. During March, Berlin’s leading newspapers cite their troubles when they refuse to print a speech by Karl Helferrich, the Minister of the Interior. In June, the German Army prohibits extra editions, and while the newsprint shortage is named as the culprit, their desire to suppress bad news from the front has much more to do with the decision. Matters get worse as the war drags on. During 1917, hotels and restaurants are banned from offering free newspapers to customers, while the papers are forced to stop giving away maps and war timelines as incentives for new subscribers.

The German people are fed up with being hungry; these decisions are driven less by a real shortage of paper than the need to dampen public enthusiasm for revolution.

The weekly German ration of 1918: <2 ounces of meat, 2 ounces of fat, <1 oz. of butter, 5.5 lbs of unappetizing bread, 4.4 ounces of beans, just over a half-pound of flour, 5 lbs of potatoes, 1 lb of marmalade, 1 pint of milk, all sweetened with <0.5 oz of sugar

#censorship #famine #Germany #Materialschlacht #newspapers #propaganda

Today was supposed to be the beginning of Germany’s biggest offensive on the Western Front this year. Following a plan finalized on Christmas Eve by Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the General Staff, new roads and rail spurs have been constructed, 1,400 artillery tubes have been positioned and camouflaged, and 2.5 million shells have been transported by 1,300 trains to be laid in store for the first six days of operations. Entire villages in the occupied zone have been emptied to make room for five army corps and to eliminate all possibility of espionage. In total, ten divisions — about 150,000 soldiers — have been marched into the underground shelters (stollen) specially built to conceal their presence. Fokker monoplanes have established complete air supremacy over the sector in recent weeks to deter and destroy French reconnaissance flights.

But then a storm arrived, and this morning the snow and freezing rain reduce visibility to almost zero. Even though the stollen are unheated and subject to flooding, the offensive is postponed at the last moment, and everyone kept on standby until the weather breaks; in the meantime, the unhealthy conditions cause thousands of casualties from intestinal illnesses, poor nutrition, and frostbite. They await the signal to attack without the usual approach trenches that draw harassing fire from the enemy. Instead, when the balloon goes up they will advance over a thousand yards of open ground behind the largest artillery barrage the world has ever seen.

Crown Prince Wilhelm and his staff are products of a military caste that only counts ground won as any kind of victory. Determined to prevent the 5th Army from losing the thread of his plan, which aims at attriting France rather than winning a territorial objective, Falkenhayn maintains absolute control over the reserves for this battle. The opening barrage, which has almost one gun tube for every ten yards of front, will demolish the enemy’s first defensive line, allowing a rapid advance to claim it while the massive artillery corps crawls forward to pound the secondary line of defense. Long-distance guns will keep up a steady fire on French logistical lines to interdict reinforcements and resupply.

It is a detailed, sensible plan that makes best use of the weapons and tactics available in 1916. That this grand strategic vision is being kept on hold by bad weather illustrates just how little things will go according to plan, and why this will be the longest — and one of the bloodiest — battles of the entire conflict.

https://youtu.be/Tpw1kto2AcM

Despite their best efforts at operational security, it has been impossible for the German Army to completely conceal its preparations, and the French high command is aware that something is happening. But a quiet battle has taken place over the measure of the French response. At the beginning of December, before any of the German preparations, Colonel Émile Driant called a meeting of the Army Committee of the Chamber of Deputies to voice his concerns about the state of the defenses around Verdun. Dying of prostate cancer, in mid-December the French Minister of War, General Joseph-Simon Gallieni, sent a formal letter to Supreme Commander Joseph Joffre inquiring after sections of the Western Front where the defenses are thin, including Verdun.

From different sources there are forthcoming accounts of organization deficiencies in the defensive arrangements in particular and notably in the region of Muerthe. The Toul and Verdun trench system would seem to be less complete than on the greater part of the front. This situation, if exact, may have the most regrettable consequences. Any break-through by the enemy in these conditions would involve not only your own responsibility, but that of the whole government.

The most recent information of this war proves superabundantly that first lines can be forced, but that the resistance of the subsequent lines is such as to check the attack, nevertheless, after the initial success. I shall be grateful if you will be so good as to put me in the position to give assurance that on all points of our front the organization of at least two defensive lines has been planned and carried out with all indispensable support in the way of passive obstacles…

In response, Joffre reminded Gallieni of his October orders to subordinate army commands requiring secondary and tertiary lines of defense, pointed to trench construction projects that were underway, demanded to know who had been undermining his authority by reporting otherwise to the government, expressed his disappointment at not having the government’s full confidence, and denied that Verdun was vulnerable to a German offensive. “I ask only one thing,” he declared in mid-January, “that the Germans should attack and should do so at Verdun.”

Regardless of this intransigence, however, Joffre’s real problem is that France is simply short of everything needed to defend a front four hundred miles long: the available manpower, barbed wire, tools, and even telephone wire are just not on hand. France is particularly short of heavy artillery; altogether, there are just 270 guns of all sizes to counter the massive German barrage. It is also unfair to blame Joffre for the state of the twenty forts around Verdun. Already obsolete against the heaviest German guns, which have been destroying concrete fortifications with contemptuous ease throughout the conflict, the Verdun forts have mostly been stripped of their artillery and troops, both of which are badly needed elsewhere. In any case, the forts will play almost no role in the actual fighting.

Nor has Joffre been inactive. Belated, yet critical improvements have been underway for weeks. Bridges over the Meuse are being added, and the road from bar-le-Duc to Verdun is under repair, with the project actually completed on the day after the Germans finally begin their offensive. An endless column of motor vehicles will be the salvation of Verdun, for the only railroad from Paris to the city is under constant fire where it passes close to the German lines in the Argonne, and it is only a single-track line. Two extra divisions are marching into the sector, with the last battalions arriving just in the nick of time. The salvation of France will be a very near thing indeed.

A map of the Verdun sector, where more than 700,000 men will become casualties before the end of 1916

#artillery #barbed wire #Battle of Verdun #communications #France #Germany #intelligence #Joseph Joffre #logistics #railroads #roads #trenches

Forty-five year old feminist, anarchist, and civil rights activist Emma Goldman is arrested today as she begins a public lecture on birth control in New York City. She is charged with violating the 1873 Comstock Law, which is named for Anthony Comstock, the former postal inspector who lobbied for its passage and enforced his eponymous statute through the auspices of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which he ran until his death last September. Goldman is accused of ‘transporting obscene, lewd, and lascivious materials’ through the mail. In 1916, simply sending someone information on contraception is a crime in the eyes of federal courts.

Speaking to the press afterwards, she is unrepentant. “When a law has outgrown time and necessity, it must go, and the only way to get rid of the law is to awaken the public to the fact that it has outlived its purpose. And that is precisely what I have been doing and mean to do in the future.” Seeking “the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government,” she is described in The Nation magazine this month as

[the] prophetess of anarchy—the real article, warranted one hundred per cent, pure, name stamped on every package…. In the United States, whither she came with relatives as a young woman, she first emerged from obscurity in 1893, when she was arrested on a charge of inciting to riot by a speech made at a gathering of habitual miscontents in Union Square, New York….

The trial served to bring out in a most illuminating way her vagaries on various subjects, including the facts that she was an atheist and a disbeliever in all government and law, divine or human; that her pet hobby was that the rich are the oppressors of the poor and the ultimate cause of all the suffering and crime in the world, against which the poor are justified in revolting…and that her mission in life was to make the poor understand that the well-to-do are accountable for their poverty, and thus to promote the social revolution….

Most newspaper readers are so accustomed to thinking of Emma Goldman as simply a human firebrand that it is hard to make them realize that by calling she is a dress-maker and a trained nurse. She is a small, wiry woman, about fifty years old, who might be passed anywhere in a crowd without notice. Her sharp black eyes, intense expression, and rather coarse mouth have nothing distinctive about them at the first glance, though they become more significant with familiarity, and her eyeglasses, framed in part by sharply marked brows, give her an air of active mentality which is lacking in some others of her general type. Her face is too symmetrical to be classed as that of a natural “crank,” but you have only to talk with her for five minutes in order to discover how strong an appeal the theatrical side of social chaos makes to her. Smiles she reserves mostly for sneering purposes.

Rather than pay the $100 fine and go free, Goldman chooses to spend two weeks in a prison workhouse alongside those she deems victims of an unfair society. It is typical of her style that Goldman turns the state’s punishment into yet another form of protest against its policies.

Emma Goldman with her partner Alexander Berkman, who served 14 years in prison for the attempted murder of an industrialist

Born to an impoverished Jewish family in Kaunas, a Russian city in what is now Lithuania, Goldman emigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1885, settling in Rochester, New York. Work in a factory introduced her to the labor movement, and she was soon leading protests of unsafe workplaces and agitating for the eight-hour workday. When anarchist workers held a violent confrontation with police in the Haymarket Riot of 1886, after which four were hanged, Goldman was inspired to move to New York City and join the anarchist movement.

This was how she met her lifelong lover and fellow Russian emigre Alexander Berkman. But their relationship was put on hold in 1892 when Berkman attacked railroad and steel financier Henry Clay Frick with a dagger and pistol in hopes of inspiring the workers at Carnegie Steel to rise up against their oppressor, only to be knocked down and beaten unconscious by those he sought to liberate. Convicted in a four-hour trial where he tried to represent himself and the jury never even left their box to deliberate, he would spend the next fourteen years in prison. But Goldman was not dispirited. She embarked on a public speaking career, campaigning for worker’s rights, founding the anarchist journal Mother Earth, and even serving ten months in prison for inciting a riot. After Leon Czogolsz credited her with inspiring him to assassinate President McKinley, she adamantly pressed for his rights of due process anyway.

Arrested and jailed many times (see the mugshot from 1908 at top), Goldman was training as a nurse and midwife during a stretch of time in prison when she decided that unwanted pregnancy was a scourge on the women of New York City. Seeing contraception as an important means of female empowerment, Goldman then made a new partner in Margaret Sanger, who had recently coined the term ‘birth control,’ during 1914. She then spent all of 1915 on a countrywide lecture tour to promote contraception technology. Though she and Sanger part ways this year, the latter will go on to found the organization still known today as Planned Parenthood.

Nor will this be the end of her career as a professional agitator, for Goldman has also become of vocal opponent of ‘preparedness,’ the movement to enlarge and equip the American military for modern warfare. In 1917, she and her partner Berkman will be arrested and convicted for opposing the draft; deported to Russia, they will quickly turn against the excesses and oppression of the Bolsheviks and flee their natal land once more, living in England, France, and Canada instead.

Despite the war raging in Europe, this is a time of great strides forward for women. Yet some things only change slowly, and it is not until 1936 that federal courts finally change their interpretation of anti-obscenity laws and uphold the right of doctors to import and prescribe contraceptives.

https://youtu.be/hTCMcO4WTjE

#anarchism #labor movement #social change #United States

When the Great War began, naval planners had assumed the conflict would be brought to a rapid conclusion in the North Sea with a decisive battle between surface fleets. But just as the Western Front has been locked in stalemate for sixteen months, the long-expected showdown has not taken place. This is largely because the Kaiser refuses to risk his expensive battle wagons in a slugging match, but it is also a result of Admiral Hugo von Pohl’s conservative interpretation of his orders. Now that he is dying of liver cancer, however, Admiral Reinhard Scheer has taken command, and he is more aggressive than his predecessor.

Before sunrise today, three German torpedo boat flotillas — the 2nd, 6th, and 9th — put to sea. The task force of 25 boats is assigned to sweep the area around Dogger Bank, the shallow region of the North Sea lying roughly one-third of the distance between England and Denmark, for any British activity. And as the early morning light illuminates the water, they do indeed find the 10th Minesweeping Flotilla, which consists of four sloops like the one seen above. Standing by a lighted dan buoy which marks the finishing line for their nighttime sweep, the HMS Arabis is more vulnerable than her sister ships, the Poppy, Buttercup, and Alyssum. Weighing 1,250 tons and 267 feet long, they are lightly-armed with just two 12-cm guns and two 3-pounder antiaircraft cannons, but are large enough to make the German task force believe they are cruisers, hesitating just long enough for the three British sloops already underway to turn away and run.

Belatedly attacking in force, three torpedo boats converge on the Arabis while the others give chase. Driven off for a moment by rapid-fire gunnery, they swing back around for another pass, firing a total of nineteen torpedoes. One of them strikes the target this time, sinking her in moments. Of the eighty crewmen on board, 28 make it into the icy water, including commanding officer Lieutenant Commander Robert Raymond Hallowell-Carew, who will eventually be awarded the Distinguished Service Order. The Germans quickly pluck them from the sea, but four British sailors die of hypothermia anyway. Ironically, one of them is the ship’s surgeon.

A G-class German torpedo boat like the ones involved in today’s action

Equipped with a captured codebook, the British Admiralty has been listening to German radio traffic, so they are already aware that movements are underway. As a result, the battlecruisers at Rosyth, the 5th Cruiser Division at Harwich, and a few ships of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow are already assembling for a sweep of their own. But they are not in time to catch the Germans, and by tomorrow morning they abandon the effort in frustration. The battle then takes another ironic turn when the light cruiser HMS Arethusa hits a floating mine laid tonight off Felixstowe by the submarine SMS UC-7, killing a dozen of her crew. Placed under tow in a bid to return to port, the veteran of the previous Battle of Dogger Bank and the Cuxhaven raid runs onto a shoal and breaks amidships, becoming unsalvageable.

A minor action made larger by its title, the Second Battle of Dogger Bank then takes another odd turn when the German Admiralty maintains that the engagement was even more successful than the British admit. The New York Times carries a short blurb:

The Admiralty reports, relative to the sinking of the British cruiser Arabis, that a second English ship was hit by a torpedo.

[…] A German official statement issued yesterday asserted that on the night of Fed. 10-11, during an advance of German torpedo boats, several English cruisers were met on the Dogger Bank, about 120 miles east of the English coast, and that one of them, the new cruiser Arabis, was sunk. The statement also declared that a torpedo struck a second cruiser.

But the Arabis was not a cruiser, of course, and the day’s action is insignificant to the larger picture of the war in the North Sea. Just as the deadlock of trench warfare has produced a constant stream of stories which trumpet a fighting position won here, or a minor tactical success there, every minor event in the naval conflict is now being reported as a matter of grand strategic importance. Hollow victories are being manufactured, sometimes out of thin air, as both sides fight a daily public relations battle with all the vigor of a major engagement.

A map of the North Sea showing the shallows at Dogger Bank, which were an island chain during the last great ice age

#Britain #Germany #mines #naval battles #naval combat #newspapers #propaganda

The Serbian nation is wholly occupied by its enemies, and the Serbian Army has nearly been annihilated in defeat, but more than 150,000 soldiers and civilians have managed to escape through the hostile tribal hills of Albania and reach the coast at Vlorë, where they have boarded allied ships to sail for the Greek island of Corfu at the rate of 12,000 a day since French troops took possession of the Ionian sea community on January 11th.

Starving and sick with influenza, met with insufficient supplies of food and medicine and clothes and tents and blankets in the cold winter weather, at least three hundred of them have died every day after reaching sanctuary, with a total of 30,000 survivors dying before the fever breaks. Most of their corpses are loaded onto the French hospital ship St. Francis of Assisi and buried at sea in what will forever be known to Serbs as ‘the blue graveyard’ (Plava Grobnica) thanks to a funerary poem written by playwright and soldier Milutin Bojić. It reads, in part:

Buried are here garlands of days past And the fleeting joy of an entire nation, And so this cemetery lies in the shadow of the waves Between the bosom of the earth and the celestial vault.

Halt, imperial galleys! Extinguish your torches, And draw your oars to rest, And when I complete my Requiem, steal away into the dark of the night Piously and inaudibly.

Nevertheless, those who have arrived at the refugee camp on the tiny island of Vido call Corfu ‘the island of salvation,’ and today it is indeed the salvation of the Serbian government, which convenes in exile at the White Venice hotel. The Serbian National Assembly was reconstituted at the National Theatre of Corfu on January 19th. Both institutions will remain here until the end of the war.

The government and parliament of the Serbian Kingdom pose before the front doors of the National Theatre

As century later, their stay on the island is still remembered for the happy accord which develops between refuge and refugee. In his memoirs, Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić recalls that

Of all the foreigners who came and went, Serbs were the ones who aroused most sympathy — and for a number of reasons: firstly because the Serbian officials and officers, who lived in the town, felt the urge to hurriedly spend all their money immediately after receiving it, lacking any sense of economy of the Italians and French that have this trait deeply rooted; because the Serbian soldiers living in small camps all over the island always had the greatest respect for the women of Corfu, whilst the French and the Italians strove to become heroes of Boccaccio’s novels. The Serbs were particularly respected for the fact that none of them showed any intention of staying on the island, but longed constantly for their native land in Šumadija, for their home in Belgrade or Niš.

The Serbs are as good as their word, for the first troops will depart for Salonika in April.

Friendly relations lead to permanent bonds when Mr. Ioannis Gazis, the owner of the White Venice, marries all three of his daughters to Serbs. The political leaders of Corfu also present the Serbian government-in-exile with a printing house which the French equip with the best modern printing presses. Now able to produce a Serbian-language newspaper and books, including textbooks for the hundreds of Serbian children now attending special schools that have been set up for them. Sporting leagues are organized, and the allies play any number of intramural matches in the years to come. Churches are also set aside for the Serbs, and soon there are Serbian restaurants, grocery stores, and other businesses flourishing alongside the native Greek ones. Social interaction even changes the language of Corfu; even today, the oldest residents of Corfu often use Serbian words for family and home.

So I want peace, to officate my Requiem Without words, without tears and quiet sighs, To merge scent of incense, and the breath of dust, With the pounding echo of distant battledrums.

Vido, with the main island of Corfu in the background, was the main refugee camp for the Serbian Army

#France #refugees #Serbia

Since the Zimmerwald Conference in September, a split has formed in international socialism. On one side stands the International Socialist Bureau, an organization associated with the Second International and led by Secretary Camille Huysmans, a Belgian. On the other side stands Russian expatriate Vladimir Lenin (above right, playing chess in 1908), a fierce critic of the Second International who sees the International Socialist Commission created at Zimmerwald as the seed of a new Third International. Lenin wants to supplant a movement in disarray over competing nationalist outlooks on the war. Holding a session of his competing faction today in neutral Berne, Switzerland, Lenin once again denounces the Second International for falling prey to capitalist warmongers.

Comrades! The European war has been raging for more than eighteen months. And as each month, as each day of the war goes by, it becomes clearer and clearer to the masses of the workers that the Zimmerwald Manifesto expressed the truth when it declared that phrases about “defense of the fatherland” and the like are nothing but capitalist deception. It is becoming more evident every day that this is a war between capitalists, between big robbers, who are quarrelling over the loot, each striving to obtain the largest share, the largest number of countries to plunder, and the largest number of nations to suppress and enslave.

It may sound incredible, especially to Swiss comrades, but it is nevertheless true that in Russia, also, not only bloody tsarism, not only the capitalists, but also a section of the so-called or ex-Socialists say that Russia is fighting a “war of defense,” that Russia is only fighting against German invasion. The whole world knows, however, that for decades tsarism has been oppressing more than a hundred million people belonging to other nationalities in Russia; that for decades Russia has been pursuing a predatory policy towards China, Persia, Armenia and Galicia. Neither Russia, nor Germany, nor any other Great Power has the right to claim that it is waging a “war of defense”; all the Great Powers are waging an imperialist, capitalist war, a predatory war, a war for the oppression of small and foreign nations, a war for the sake of the profits of the capitalists, who are coining golden profits amounting to billions out of the appalling sufferings of the masses, out of the blood of the proletariat.

Four years ago, in November 1912, when it had become clear that war was approaching, the representatives of the Socialist Parties of the whole world gathered at the International Socialist Congress in Basle. Even at that time there was no room for doubt that the impending war would be a war between the Great Powers, between the great beasts of prey; that responsibility for the war would rest upon the governments and the capitalist classes of all the Great Powers. The Basle Manifesto, which was adopted unanimously by the Socialist Parties of the whole world, openly stated this truth. The Basle Manifesto does not say a word about a “war of defense,” or “defense of the fatherland.” It castigates the governments and the bourgeoisie of all the Great Powers without exception. It said openly that war would be the greatest of crimes, that the workers would consider it a crime to shoot at each other, that the horrors of war and the indignation these would rouse among the workers would inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution.

When the war actually broke out it was realised that its character had been correctly defined at Basle. But the Socialist and labour organisations were not unanimous in carrying out the Basle decisions; they split. We see now that in all countries of the world the Socialist and labour organisations are split into two big camps. The smaller section, the leaders, functionaries and officials, have betrayed Socialism and have deserted to the side of the governments. Another section, to which the mass of class conscious workers belong, continues to gather its forces, to fight against the war and for the proletarian revolution.

The views of this latter section also found expression in the Zimmerwald Manifesto.

In Russia, from the very beginning of the war, the workers’ deputies in the Duma waged a determined revolutionary struggle against the war and the tsarist monarchy. Five workers’ deputies — Petrovsky, Badayev, Muranov, Shagov and Samoilov — distributed revolutionary manifestoes against the war and energetically carried on revolutionary agitation. Tsarism ordered the arrest of those five deputies, put them on trial, and sentenced them to lifelong exile in Siberia. For months the leaders of the working class of Russia have been pining in Siberia; but their cause has not gone under; their work is being continued by the class-conscious workers all over Russia.

The arrests of those workers’ deputies demonstrated that institutions which might have moderated the worst excesses of the Tsar’s regime were incapable of doing so. An autocrat, the Tsar has eviscerated the power of the Duma to even help manage the ‘war effort’ in Russia, while his presence at Army headquarters has left the nation’s governing apparatus in obsequious hands that are not up to the task of solving Russia’s burgeoning food and production crises. A vacuum of power is forming at the factory level and in the streets, and Lenin’s Bolsheviks are eagerly organizing to fill the gap. But instead of citing their example, today Lenin turns to the work of socialists in the United States for inspiration, comparing perennial socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs to the heroic German socialist and pacifist August Bebel.

Comrades! You have heard the speeches of representatives of various countries, who have told you about the workers’ revolutionary struggle against the war. I merely want to quote one other example from that great and rich country, the United States of America. The capitalists of that country are now making enormous profits out of the European war. And they, too, are agitating for war. They say that America must also prepare to take part in the war, hundreds of millions of dollars must be squeezed out of the people for new armaments, for armaments without end. And in America, too, a section of the Socialists echoes this false, criminal call. Let me read to you what Comrade Eugene Debs, the most popular leader of the American Socialists, the Presidential candidate of the American Socialist Party, writes.

In the September 11, 1915, American weekly, The Appeal to Reason, September 11, 1915, he says: “I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of rite plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight for the ruling class…. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of the social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make it necessary….”

This is what Eugene Debs, the American Bebel, the beloved leader of the American workers, writes to them.

This again shows you, comrades, that in all countries of the world real preparations are being made to rally the forces of the working class. The horrors of war and the sufferings of the people are incredible. But we must not, and we have no reason whatever, to view the future with despair.

The millions of victims who will fall in the war, and as a consequence of the war, will not fall in vain. The millions who are starving, the millions who are sacrificing their lives in the trenches, are not only suffering, they are also gathering strength, are pondering over the real cause of the war, are becoming more determined and are acquiring a clearer revolutionary understanding. Rising discontent of the masses, growing ferment, strikes, demonstrations, protests against the war—all this is taking place in all countries of the world. And this is the guarantee that the European War will be followed by the proletarian revolution against capitalism.

As his rivalry with Huysmans and the International Socialist Bureau deepens throughout 1916, Lenin is already being quietly financed by German agents who see him as a potential weapon against the Russian monarchy. He will not realize his dream of global proletarian revolution resulting from the conflict, but Lenin will nevertheless return triumphant to Russia at German instigation, secure his revolution, and light the beacon of a Third International calling for a worldwide class struggle.

A bas-relief sculpture on the tower of a Geneva church memorializes Lenin’s exile in Switzerland

#international socialism #Russia #Switzerland #Third International #Vladimir Lenin

Redeployed from the London suburb of Hounslow to the French town of St. Omer today, No. 24 Squadron is a wholly new kind of unit for the Royal Flying Corps (RFC). Rather than mix aircraft types and variants to conduct a variety of missions, No. 24 Squadron has been designed for the new role of air superiority and equipped only with the Airco D.H.2 (see above), a ‘push propeller’ plane that has been under development for almost a year. They are Britain’s answer to the new Eindecker monoplanes that have become known as the ‘Fokker scourge‘ since last July by dominating the airspace over the Western Front.

The squadron’s leadership is a sign of how seriously the RFC takes the Fokker threat. Major Lanoe Hawker is Britain’s very first fighter ace and a creative innovator, having claimed seven victories during 1915. Going aloft in a Bristol Scout biplane with a side-mounted gun which could only be aimed indirectly and while inside the defensive envelope of enemy rear gunners, Hawker nevertheless shot or forced down three German reconnaissance aircraft in a single day last July, winning the Victoria Cross for his bravery.

Wounded twice by ground fire, his experienced nerves are steady enough to handle the tricky D.H.2, which has a very narrow speed range (the zone between stall speed and maximum speed) and tends to spin out of control in the hands of a novice pilot. Through patient drill, Hawker has taught his young volunteers how to recover from a spin and take maximum advantage of the plane’s superior maneuverability. Thanks to his efforts, the Fokker scourge is about to come to a sudden end just in time for the great allied offensives being planned for 1916, claiming 70 victories by November at the cost of twelve planes and 21 pilots made casualties of war.

Lanoe Hawker is just 25 years old. Despite command attempts to keep him grounded, he will not survive the year

Hawker’s superiors prove to be almost as much of a hindrance as the enemy. Because the RFC has still not deployed a synchronization gear to fire through a forward propeller arc, the D.H.2’s propeller is behind the pilot and a Lewis machine gun is mounted in front, but not in a fixed position. The weapon proves much more difficult to aim than we might expect, for the pilot is required to fly with one hand and aim with another; Hawker would prefer to affix it straight ahead so as to aim his fire by simply aiming the plane, but the RFC command disapproves, believing that pilots must be free to swivel the gun as needed. He eventually engineers a clamp-and-clip system that allows the gun to both fire forwards and be freed for action in one swift motion, satisfying both requirements. Other Hawker inventions include a double-decker magazine for the Lewis gun to reduce the need to reload, an aiming ring for the muzzle, thigh-high sheepskin boots for comfort at high altitudes, protective fabric covers for propeller tips, and a more realistic training system for target practice on the ground.

RFC rules against squadron commanders taking part in operations fail to deter Hawker, and the rapid development of flight technology means that new German designs soon outclass the D.H.2 in turn. As a result, he is killed in late November after one of the war’s longest dogfights. His enemy, a German pilot flying a brand-new Albatross D.II, fires over 900 rounds of ammunition before hitting Hawker in the back of the head with one of his last bullets, killing him instantly as he tries to escape the faster plane for friendly lines with his own ammunition exhausted. It is the eleventh victory for his opponent Manfred von Richtofen, better known as the Red Baron. Obsolete, the D.H.2 is gradually withdrawn from front-line service to fly in an air defense role over England and to perform scouting duties in the Middle East.

https://youtu.be/Kqdw-jwpJSw

#air combat #aircraft #Britain #Germany #machine guns

When the Great War broke out, the princes of India enthusiastically joined their fates to England’s in hopes of forever cementing their country’s place in the British Empire as an independent dominion like South Africa or Canada. Referring to the conflict as ‘the Empire War,’ they were generous with troops and money, but without coming any closer to their goals. While the war in Europe drags on, pulling the country down towards bankruptcy, the Kaiser’s machinations have stirred up threats on the Northwest Frontier, stretching the Army of India perilously thin and stoking a violent revolutionary conspiracy. Restive, increasingly resentful of imperial policy, the Indian National Congress political party grows bolder all the time in its agitation for true independence.

Two days ago, Imperial Viceroy Lord Henry Hardinge laid the cornerstone of a new university at Benares, opening a series of celebratory events and speeches. Today, it is the turn of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Speaking to a room filled with princes and notables dressed in sumptuous finery, he wears a simple traditional dhoti, cloak, and turban. Gandhi was born to a noble family and given every advantage of education; he returned to India a year ago from South Africa, where he had spent twenty-one years developing a resistance movement against the burgeoning, yet still unofficial system of racial oppression that will come to be known as Apartheid. Returning home at last, Gandhi intends to bring his theories of nonviolent civil disobedience to bear in the liberation of India from London’s imperial yoke.

Left: Gandhi dressed as a westerner for his occupation as a lawyer. Right: Gandhi wears a traditional look in 1916

Gandhi’s turn to address the assembled elites at Benares comes right after Annie Besant, a British social justice reformer and Indian National Congress member who has formed the Home Rule League to press for democracy and dominion status. Rather than contradict her middling approach directly, Gandhi expresses his resentment at being forced to speak in the language of the oppressor.

(D)o not believe that our University has become a finished product, and that all the young men who are to come to the University, that has yet to rise and come into existence, have also come and returned from it finished citizens of a great empire. Do not go away with any such impression, and if you, the student world to which my remarks are supposed to be addressed this evening, consider for one moment that the spiritual life, for which this country is noted and for which this country has no rival, can be transmitted through the lip, pray, believe me, you are wrong. You will never be able merely through the lip, to give the message that India, I hope, will one day deliver to the world. I myself have been fed up with speeches and lectures. I expect the lectures that have been delivered here during the last two days from this category, because they are necessary. But I do venture to suggest to you that we have now reached almost the end of our resources in speech-making…

[…] (I)t is a matter of deep humiliation and shame for us that I am compelled this evening under the shadow of this great college, in this sacred city, to address my countrymen in a language that is foreign to me. I know that if I was appointed an examiner, to examine all those who have been attending during these two days this series of lectures, most of those who might be examined upon these lectures would fail. And why? Because they have not been touched.

I was present at the sessions of the great Congress in the month of December. There was a much vaster audience, and will you believe me when I tell you that the only speeches that touched the huge audience in Bombay were the speeches that were delivered in Hindustani? In Bombay, mind you, not in Banares where everybody speaks Hindi. But between the vernaculars of the Bombay Presidency on the one hand and Hindi on the other, no such great dividing line exists as there does between English and the sister language of India; and the Congress audience was better able to follow the speakers in Hindi. I am hoping that this University will see to it that the youths who come to it will receive their instruction through the medium of their vernaculars. Our languages are the reflection of ourselves, and if you tell me that our languages are too poor to express the best thought, then say that the sooner we are wiped out of existence the better for us. Is there a man who dreams that English can ever become the national language of India? Why this handicap on the nation? Just consider for one moment what an equal race our lads have to run with every English lad.

I had the privilege of a close conversation with some Poona professors. They assured me that every Indian youth, because he reached his knowledge through the English language, lost at least six precious years of life. Multiply that by the numbers of students turned out by our schools and colleges, and find out for yourselves how many thousand years have been lost to the nation. The charge against us is that we have no initiative. How can we have any, if we are to devote the precious years of our life to the mastery of a foreign tongue?

[…] The only education we receive is English education. Surely we must show something for it. But suppose that we had been receiving during the past fifty years education through our vernaculars, what should we have today? We should have today a free India, we should have our educated men, not as if they were foreigners in their own land but speaking to the heart of the nation; they would be working amongst the poorest of the poor, and whatever they would have gained during these fifty years would be a heritage for the nation.

From this complaint, Gandhi segues into an acknowledgement that India remains unready for self-governance:

In every city there are two divisions, the cantonment and the city proper. The city mostly is a stinking den. But we are a people unused to city life. But if we want city life, we cannot reproduce the easy-going hamlet life. It is not comforting to think that people walk about the streets of Indian Bombay under the perpetual fear of dwellers in the storeyed building spitting upon them. I do a great deal of railway traveling. I observe the difficulty of third-class passengers. But the railway administration is by no means to blame for all their hard lot. We do not know the elementary laws of cleanliness. We spit anywhere on the carriage floor, irrespective of the thoughts that it is often used as sleeping space. We do not trouble ourselves as to how we use it; the result is indescribable filth in the compartment. The so-called better class passengers over we their less fortunate brethren. Among them I have seen the student world also; sometimes they behave no better. They can speak English and they have worn Norfolk jackets and, therefore, claim the right to force their way in and command seating accommodation.

Criticizing the bejeweled finery in the room, Gandhi deplores the extraordinary security measures which accompanied Hardinge’s visit as he begins to address a rising tide of anti-British violence in India. It is the key moment in his speech.

I honor the anarchist for his love of the country. I honor him for his bravery in being willing to die for his country; but I ask him-is killing honorable? Is the dagger of an assassin a fit precursor of an honorable death? I deny it. There is no warrant for such methods in any scriptures. If I found it necessary for the salvation of India that the English should retire, that they should be driven out, I would not hesitate to declare that they would have to go, and I hope I would be prepared to die in defense of that belief. That would, in my opinion, be an honorable death. The bomb-thrower creates secret plots, is afraid to come out into the open, and when caught pays the penalty of misdirected zeal.

Alarmed at what she fears is an endorsement of anarchist idealism before the impressionable students present, Annie Besant interrupts Gandhi, who turns to the Chairman. “If I am told to stop, I shall obey,” he says. “I await your orders. If you consider that by my speaking as I am, I am not serving the country and the empire, I shall certainly stop.” The room is divided; some want him to speak, others want him silenced. He continues:

My friends, please do not resent this interruption. If Mrs. Besant this evening suggests that I should stop, she does so because she loves India so well, and she considers that I am erring in thinking audibly before you young men. But even so, I simply say this, that I want to purge India of this atmosphere of suspicion on either side, if we are to reach our goal; we should have an empire which is to be based upon mutual love and mutual trust. Is it not better that we talk under the shadow of this college than that we should be talking irresponsibly in our homes? I consider that it is much better that we talk these things openly. I have done so with excellent results before now. I know that there is nothing that the students do not know. I am, therefore, turning the searchlight towards ourselves. I hold the name of my country so dear to me that I exchange these thoughts with you, and submit to you that there is no room for anarchism in India. Let us frankly and openly say whatever we want to say our rulers, and face the consequences if what we have to say does not please them. But let us not abuse.

Gandhi tries to keep speaking, but is once again interrupted in the middle of another passage about the barriers that Indian social backwardness places in the way of independence. Rather than stifling his message, however, the incident serves to enlarge his reputation as a courageous reformer while diminishing those who have intervened — an example of his nonviolence principles in action. “There are two ways of countering injustice,” he explains in the opening of his famous essay On Civil Disobedience, which is published later this June.

One way is to smash the head of the man who perpetrates injustice and to get your own head smashed in the process. All strong people in the world adopt this course. Everywhere wars are fought and millions of people are killed. The consequence is not the progress of a nation but its decline. Soldiers returning from the front have become so bereft of reason that they indulge in various anti-social activities. One does not have to go far for examples. Pride makes a victorious nation bad-tempered. It falls into luxurious ways of living. Then for a time, it may be conceded, peace prevails. But after a short while, it comes more and more to be realized that the seeds of war have not been destroyed but have become a thousand times more nourished and mighty. No country has ever become, or will ever become, happy through victory in war. A nation does not rise that way, it only falls further. In fact, what comes to it is defeat, not victory. And if, perchance, either our act or our purpose was ill-conceived, it brings disaster to both belligerents.

He could have no better example than the global conflagration which has embroiled India. By the end of the year, Gandhi will have embedded himself forever within the national independence movement, opposing both extremism and collaboration. Reflecting his strong desire to develop religious peace in an often-fractious country, he will become a key figure in efforts to bring the Muslim League into the Indian National Congress during November and December. War may rage everywhere else, but Gandhi is determined to see India free of both foreign oppression and the destructive communal violence which too often accompanies great political changes.

Gandhi with Indian National Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru. Photo at top: Gandhi and his wife during the 1930 salt march

#anarchism #democracy #imperialism #India #social change

At about 9 PM local time on February 3rd, Conservative MP Frank Glass was studying the newspapers in the reading room at Centre Block, the Canadian parliament building, when he felt a wave of heat against his leg. At first, he assumed it was the boiler burping again, as it often did. But as he turned to look, the distinctive odor of burning paper filled his nostrils. It was the second time in just three days that a fire had started in the reading room, but whereas the previous incident was snuffed quickly by Conservative MP William Weichel and a friend who managed to stomp out the flames, this time the fire spread too quickly — and human actions only made it worse. Glass alerted police in the hallway, who attempted to put out the blaze with fire extinguishers. But their design created too strong a spray within too tight a cone, thus scattering the burning embers throughout the room to land on other newspapers as well as the 20,000 books shelved throughout the chamber.

Moments later, the woof of a larger ignition ensured disaster when the resulting air pressure forced the doors open at either end of the reading room, allowing the fire to spread into corridors lined with pine wood wardrobes. The wooden walls were varnished with flammable oil, and so the blaze spread very quickly. In just a matter of minutes, the entire Gothic structure was on fire and its occupants were evacuating in a panic. Seven people died, including two female guests of House speaker Albert Sévigny who returned to their rooms to recover their fur coats rather than face the winter chill without them. Firefighters raced to the scene, braving the danger to rescue people trapped inside and save the beloved symbol of Canadian nationhood. But by 12:30, both houses of Parliament were wrapped in flames. Only the great Library of Parliament was preserved thanks to the swift action of its attendant, who shut the iron doors separating it from Centre Block. As dawn broke, it became sadly clear that the home of Canada’s government was a total loss, with damage estimated at $8 million.

A photograph taken about a half-hour after midnight while the fire was at peak destruction. Note the fire hoses in foreground

News of the fire reached London after the morning papers had already been delivered, and so today is the first time headlines carry the story in England. Whereas the most obvious explanations for the conflagration are mundane — the room had only just been wired for electric lighting, which was notoriously unsafe a century ago, and the rule against smoking in the reading room was never enforced — wartime speculation has already overtaken more reasonable notions of the fire’s cause. This morning’s edition of the Daily Telegraph is a perfect example of the runaway effect on display.

A profound sensation has been caused throughout Canada by the burning of Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, last night, and the growing suspicion that this represents part of the malignant activities of the German Embassy at Washington as exhibited by the work of Captain Boy-Ed.

Mr. M. Martin, of Montreal, who is a member of the Canadian Parliament, and who first discovered the fire, declares positively that he heard at least one explosion, while the extraordinary rapidity with which the fire spread would indicate incendiarism.

Immediate steps are being taken to have stringest investigation made, but the destruction is so complete that there is little likelihood of much light being thrown on the cause of the fire.

If it was the work of a hostile incendiary, he evidently planned it well, as the Reading Room where the fire started was in the centre of the building, with converging corridors wood-lined, and consequently admirably adapted to spread the conflagration as they did.

Without any real evidence, the blaze is blithely compared to known incidents of German sabotage in North America, with concern-trolling added for good measure.

In view of the attempt to blow up Vanceborough Bridge, with other hostile activities now definitely traced to German officials in the United States, the probable destruction of Parliament Buildings will lead to stricter regulations against alien enemies, who have hitherto been allowed a large degree of liberty, and were only compelled to report to Provosts Marshal from time to time.

This is not the first time that Canadians have let their imaginations get the better of them. Almost exactly one year ago, a border prank by American boys put Ottawa on high alert when a series of lamp-laden balloons was mistaken for a German air raid. Here again on page 9 of the Telegraph, unconfirmed reports, unsourced quotes, and erroneous statements of fact are thrown together into an almost-positive declaration that sabotage by sinister enemy agents must be responsible.

Dispatches from Ottawa printed here this afternoon declare that the circumstantial evidence of German guilt has been submitted by Mr. E. M. Macdonald, a prominent Liberal member. Mr. Macdonald states that during the dinner recess last evening, about an hour before the fire alarm sounded, he was attracted by a suspicious-looking foreigner. The man seemed nervous, and was pacing up and down the corridors without any apparent business or destination. Mr. Macdonald spoke to some colleagues at the time as to the peculiar conduct of the stranger, who suddenly disappeared. Less than half an hour later the building was in flames.

The suspicion that this mysterious individual was responsible for the awful catastrophe that followed his disappearance is shared by practically every member. “This is no ordinary fire,” declared one of the coolest and clearest headed men in Parliament. “It seems beyond belief that an ordinary fire should have gained such a terrible impetus in less than five minutes if it had its origin in the usual way. There must have been something other than mere wood and paper to start such a terrible blaze with such extraordinary speed.”

All who escaped from the burning buildings are firm in their conviction that bombs with time-fuses were placed in the Reading Room during the dinner recess, and these, probably aided by a chemical device of some kind, explain the terrible suddenness with which the building became enveloped in flames. Accepting the theory that it was first started by a bomb or a series of bombs, the American police express the opinion that German secret service agents, checkmated, at least for a time, in their moves in the United States, carried their campaign of terrorism across the Canadian border.

[…] Investigation at present strengthens the suspicion that the fire was of incendiary origin. The only person in the reading room when the fire occurred was a woman, perusing the files. Her statement is that there was a sudden flash, and in an instant the newspaper files were in flames. There was only a slight detonation, but the force was sufficient to open the swinging doors at opposite ends of the room leading respectively to the Senate and the House of Commons corridors.

Adding fuel to this irresponsible fire is American newspaper editor John Rathom, a fabricator and propagandist in the pay of the British embassy who claims to have received advanced warning of an attack on the building. In fact, the German diplomatic personnel who did operate a sabotage ring in the United States have already been deported, and their networks’ activities almost completely shut down. Yet a century later, many people still maintain that a ‘pencil bomb’ was responsible for what was almost certainly another example of the lax safety standards and primitive safety engineering which made daily life so perilous at the time. It is another example of Great War myths that refuse to die.

The Library of Parliament stands alone in August after the burned-out Centre Block was torn down to be rebuilt

#accidents #Canada #newspapers #propaganda

Marching in good order along jungle paths, today the first elements of the retreating Kamerun schutztruppe reach the border of Rio Muni, better known as Spanish Guinea, a colony now known as Equatorial Guinea. Over the next forty-eight hours, an estimated 14,000 Africans, including 6,000 native troops, will cross into the small coastal enclave to be interned in neutral territory for the duration of the war. They accompany less than a thousand white Germans.

It is the somewhat-anticlimactic culmination of a campaign which began just weeks after the Great War itself. Having finally brought superior numbers and weight of fire to bear, French and British forces marched into the abandoned German stronghold at Yaounde on the first day of the New Year. Governor Karl Ebermaier and Major Karl Zimmerman, the colony’s military leader, were unable to sustain a siege against enemies who were able to use their own railway against them, and chose instead to withdraw where pursuers could not follow. The last remaining white civilians in the southern portion of the Kamerun colony have trickled into Rio Muni for weeks; now the bulk of Germany’s remaining strength, mainly thousands of native troops armed mostly with rifles, follow them into a gentle captivity. In the north, where the longest siege of the war has taken place around Mount Mora, the German garrison capitulates on February 18th, ending the war in Kamerun at last.

British Nigerian soldiers march into Yaounde on January 1st. The only white man visible is an officer

News of the column’s arrival in Rio Muni reaches Madrid by wire, where it is forwarded to Berlin and the world’s newspapers. Leave it to the German papers to spin this moment into a victory, of course. As reported in the New York Times, the Frankfurter Zeitung describes the flight from Yaounde as one of “the most notable achievements” of the war in Africa: “That the enemy was unable seriously to interfere with the retreat allows us to draw agreeable conclusions as to the unbroken fighting spirit of the Germans” — fine words that fail to recognize the native tribes that have done the great majority of fighting, killing, and dying in Kamerun as a people separate from the colonists. Such sentiments will not last, unfortunately. The few Africans who choose to live in Germany after the war will later find themselves disowned by the Third Reich.

The majority of the Africans accompanying the Germans are from the Beti tribe living in the area around Yaounde. These include oberhäuptling (‘paramount chief’) Karl Atangana, more than seventy subordinate chiefs, and every significant rival they could persuade to accompany them rather than stay behind an usurp their authority. Importantly, this cadre does not expect to be gone from their homeland for very long. Rather, Atangana and his colleagues believe a negotiated end to the war will return the colony to the Germans, so they have left loyal relatives behind to hold their places for an expedient return. Historian Frederick Quinn records one Beti with knowledge of the period saying that “[T]he First World War made a bad impression on the Beti. They spoke with horror of the White man’s war. They had never seen anything like it. Their own wars involved only a few people over a short period of time and were consequently less destructive.”

Germans in uniform at Yaounde. Hardly any will ever return, though many leave children behind with their native mothers

Unable to effectively govern the country, the French colonial authority is weak, and Kamerun slides into chaos. The eastern region, which Germans had divided into three districts run by fifty people, is unified into one district under just five or six Europeans. Former soldiers, self-appointed policemen, and police — basically, those able to procure some sort of uniform — seize whatever authority they can. Real power belongs to the strong, so looting, kidnapping, and raiding are general while law and order are nonexistent. As if reverting to some ancient default setting, a mystic ‘Leopard Society’ fills the vacuum of power with ceremonial sorcery and costumed vigilantism.

But the French still do not trust Atangana, who has spent most of the remaining war in Spain studying European ways with his cadre of chiefs. Judging him a tool of the Germans, they keep him at arm’s length throughout the postwar peace process until the end of 1921, when their hand-picked Chef supérieur Joseph Atemengue has proven incapable of collecting the expected amount of tax revenue. His attempt to govern the country through a western-style cabinet fails by 1925, but his return to power marks the end of the troubled days of disorder and the beginning of modern Cameroon.

A map of Rio Muni shows the railroad to Yaounde and the jungle roads which the column traveled to escape the allies

#colonies #France #Kamerun #newspapers #propaganda #railroads

Late this morning, Sergeant Georges Guynemer is flying his Nieuport 11 near Roye on what will come to be known as a ‘combat air patrol’ when he spots a German LVG reconnaissance plane. Closing at full throttle, he brings his ‘Bébé’ plane as close as possible so as not to miss. “I did not open fire until I was at 20 meters,” he writes afterwards. “Almost at once my adversary tumbled into a tailspin. I dived after him, continuing to fire my weapon. I plainly saw him fall in his own lines. That was all right. No doubt about him. I had my fifth.”

But even though he has just scored enough victories to bear the title of ‘ace,’ Guynemer is not done for the day. Continuing his patrol to the east, he soon spots a second LVG. “I was really in luck, for less than ten minutes later another plane, sharing the same lot, spun downward with the same grace, taking fire as it fell through the clouds.” Both victories are confirmed; Guynemer returns to Escadrille No. 3 and lands for a hero’s welcome.

A Nieuport 11 in flight. Note the machine gun is mounted on the top wing, making it a bit difficult to aim and reload

Born to aristocrats, Guynemer was a slight child prone to poor health, and stayed at home with a tutor until he was fourteen. When he finally did leave home for college, Guynemer was still small and hardly an athlete, but was soon discovered to be a fine marksman with a rifle. Nearing adulthood, he showed an interest in mechanics and the engineering trades, and so in 1911 a family friend invited him to fly in a Farman airplane, an experience that easily captured his imagination.

When the Great War broke out, Guynemer tried to enlist but was rejected as unfit for military service. Undaunted, he made three more attempts, finally passing examination with the help of his father’s influence. Nineteen years old, he was assigned to a squadron as an aviation mechanic and immediately began lobbying his chain of command for acceptance to flight training. At last, in March of 1915 Guynemer got his chance — and a promotion to corporal. It was a hard-won beginning to one of the most stellar fighter ace careers of the Great War. Though he is only the second highest-scoring French fighter ace with 54 victories, Guynemer is humble where the leader is vain, and so he becomes the most beloved by his countrymen.

A German LVG C. Note the rear gunner position and the exhaust pipes obstructing the pilot’s view in the forward arc

Guynemer will win his seventh victory the day after tomorrow at Herbecourt by shooting down another LVG. Thereafter his squadron will be assigned to the Verdun sector, where the German Army is about to launch its biggest offensive on the Western Front this year and the ‘Fokker scourge‘ is concentrated. While pursuing another LVG on March 12th, however, Guynemer is wounded in the arm by the co-pilot’s machine gun fire and withdrawn to recover from his injuries. Promoted to junior lieutenant in April during his convalescence, Guynemer returns to his squadron in June to find that his plane has been replaced by a Nieuport 17 with a 110 horsepower Le Rhône engine and a .30 caliber Vickers machine gun synchronized to fire through the propeller arc. It is the best plane he has ever flown, and his success rate improves immediately.

Flight technology is advancing rapidly in the course of the war, and Guynemer will upgrade again to the Spad XII. But like so many of the daring young men who take to the air during this conflict, he does not survive it. Hit in the head and instantly killed during a dogfight in 1917, his body is never recovered. It is a sad fate, but a fitting one for Guynemer, who has declared: “Until one has given all, one has given nothing.”

https://youtu.be/uYxs35sf6vI

#air combat #aircraft #France

The King Stephen, a 162-top fishing trawler out of Grimsby, has been fishing in forbidden waters 110 miles east of Flamborough Head all night when her first mate spots a distant light just before dawn this morning. Hauling in their nets, the crew set out to investigate just after 6 AM. Although the North Sea is smooth, the wheelhouse roof is covered in frost, creating deadly conditions for any man in the water. But as dawn breaks, the six Englishmen discover that the signal-lamp which has summoned them from their clandestine fishing is being operated from the tip of a downed Zeppelin floating in the water.

Despite the calm, the buoyant half-collapsed airship L 19 bobs dangerously in the water. As the King Stephen approaches, the signaler is joined by seven more and then eight more men on safety lines attached to the upper deck, riding fifty feet over the water on the unsteady airframe. Commanded by Kapitänleutnant Odo Löwe, L 19 is a German Navy craft that has already become well-known to neutral merchant ships operating in the North Sea since her maiden flight in November; on at least one occasion, Löwe has actually descended alongside a Swedish ship for inspection. On another patrol, his crew were able to catch three Royal Navy seaplane tenders as they prepared to launch their aircraft in another air raid on the German port of Cuxhaven, spoiling the attack. But their luck has run out on Germany’s largest attempted bombing mission of the war so far.

A view of the L 19. In addition to the front and rear gondolas, she had three machine gun mounts on top and one in the tail

Leaving their sheds on January 31st, nine Zeppelins made landfall over Britain in the evening darkness and departed their target zones by midnight. This attempt to strike major industrial sites in Britain is an example of the emerging doctrine of ‘strategic bombing,’ wherein air warfare planners try to destroy their enemy’s means of conducting industrial warfare, but it was largely unsuccessful in damaging the British war effort. nevertheless, German propaganda trumpeted a great victory yesterday.

On the night of 31st January one of our naval airship squadrons dropped large quantities of explosive and fire-raising bombs of docks, harbors, and factories in and near Liverpool and Birkenhead, on the iron foundries and smelting furnaces of Nottingham and Sheffield, and the great industrial works on the Humber and near Great Yarmouth.

Everywhere marked effects were observed in the gigantic explosions and serious outbursts of fire. On the Humber a battery was also silenced.

Our airships were heavily fired on from all directions, but were not hit, and safely returned.

None of this is true. While more than seventy civilians were killed and over a hundred injured by the 220 bombs dropped, fog and blackouts combined to draw the Zeppelins far off target, causing them to strike the West Midlands towns of Bradley, Tipton, Wednesbury and Walsall instead. Furthermore, not all of the airships has returned safely, for the L 19 experienced failures in three of its four Maybach engines. Suffering melted crank bearings, broken connecting rods, fractured crankshafts, and other defects, their design has proven unreliable, and so the L 19 found itself almost helpless yesterday when, just after 4 PM, Kapitänleutnant Löwe made his last radio transmission to inform the German Navy that his Telefunken set was malfunctioning. Shortly thereafter, Dutch shore batteries on the island of Ameland opened fire in accordance with standing orders, puncturing the gasbags and reportedly setting the airship on fire.

Bomb damage in Tipton. British civilians saw air raids on cities as yet another German atrocity deserving severe punishment

Aboard the King Stephen, skipper William Martin confers with his crew. “I knew what the Germans had done in the North Sea,” he writes later, “and besides, Zeppelin crews dropping bombs on houses and killing women and children didn’t appeal to me.” Despite pleas and assurances from the Germans, First Mate George Denny is afraid they will overpower the trawler’s small crew. “There were about twenty or twenty-five of them and only nine of us,” he says later. “They would all have revolvers and we had nothing but sticks. So we thought it was not safe to take them on board our trawler…What do you think would have happened if we had invited them on board? They could have easily overpowered us and taken our ship to Germany with us as prisoners — that is if they didn’t pitch us overboard first.” The King Stephen has no lifeboat, and it is not possible to tow the delicate airframe without destroying it.

‘The punishment of a pirate’ — a French magazine’s take on the fate of the L 19 and her crew

Turning away, the King Stephen is pursued by the anguished howls of condemned men. “As we left, some of the Germans, I am told, but personally did not hear it, shouted out ‘Gott strafe England’ (May God punish England) and they shook their fists at us,” Denny says. The winds pick up shortly afterwards, and although Captain Martin does report their find to the British Navy, he gives them the wrong position for fear that he will be punished for fishing in a restricted area.

Four of the German aviators put messages for their families into a bottle, which is recovered six months later. Only one body is ever recovered when it washes ashore in June. But the German press finds out about the incident almost immediately thanks to the British press, which quotes Martin and Denny at length. Opinion is divided in England; while most people support his actions, seafarers have strong feelings about being left to die on the open water, and Captain Martin is excoriated by those who believe there is no excuse for abandoning stricken sailors, even enemies in wartime. He receives hate mail as well as letters of support. The German press is merciless, branding him a war criminal and leveraging the negative commentary in England to do so.

Despite his subterfuge, Martin will never sail again. Immediately following the incident, his boat is requisitioned as a Q-ship to hunt for submarines with a 6-pounder Hotchkiss gun hidden on deck. He dies of heart failure in February 1917 at the age of 45, reputedly broken by drink, paranoia, and the heavy weight that lies on his conscience. Citing nonexistent articles in British newspapers, the German Lokal-Anzeiger reports that “Captain Martin…died as the result of persecution. They say that he received threatening letters from English people who mean well toward the Germans, and that he was so deeply moved by them that he finally became insane.”

#aircraft #Britain #civilians #Germany #propaganda #zeppelins

When Prime Minister Ivan Goremykin convinced Tsar Nicholas II to prorogue the Duma and suspend Russia’s nascent democracy last year, it was seen as the final victory of the bureaucracy. But the failures of 1915, especially the Russian Army’s ignominious retreat from Poland and continuing mproduction shortages, have knocked the autocratic government on its heels for months. Yesterday, Duma leader Mikhail Rodzianko sent Goremykin a foreboding letter to denounce his continued failure to resolve the shortages and mismanagement that still bedevil Russia on the battlefield — and have begun to seriously damage the regime’s credibility in the streets.

I am writing this while still under the impression of the data that was just discussed at the special conference for defense, and which relates to the catastrophic condition of the problems of railroad transportation. This question was raised at the last session of the special conference. The work of a special commission was devoted to it, but its solution went no further than mere discussion, proposals, and estimates. And today, the catastrophe, which was only probably then, is upon us.

The details of the conditions existing in the factories that produce munitions of war, conditions which may lead to the suspension of the operations of these factories, and the information concerning the approaching famine that threatens Petrograd and Moscow, as well as the possibility of serious popular disturbances in connection with this state of affairs, have, no doubt, been reported to you by the chairman of this conference. These facts and considerations make it quite apparent to me, as well as to other members of the conference, to what an abyss our country is rapidly moving, thanks to the complete apathy of the government, which takes no active and decisive measures for the purpose of forestalling the events that threaten us.

[…] The end of the war is rapidly approaching, while within the country, in every department of the people’s life, even in those which are concerned with the satisfaction of the prime necessities of life, complete disorder prevails and grows.

Citing ill health, Goremykin has sought to resign his post for weeks rather than surrender a morsel of his power to the people’s representatives. Today, the Tsar finally accepts it and names Boris Vladimirovich Stürmer as his replacement. From an objective view, Nicholas could not have made a worse choice. Foreign minister Sergey Sazonov regards Stürmer as “a man who had left a bad memory wherever he occupied an administrative post;” Rodzianko calls him “an utter nonentity.” French ambassador Maurice Paléologue, who uncovered the abysmal arms production situation in Russia more than a year ago, takes three days to gather information about the new appointment before concluding Stürmer is

Worse than a mediocrity– third rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience and no idea of state business. The most that can be said for him is that he has a rather petty talent for cunning and flattery…His appointment becomes intelligible on the supposition that he has been selected solely as a tool; in other words, actually on account of his insignificance and servility.

Indeed, only from the royal court’s point of view does Stürmer’s appointment make any sense at all. A loyalist who lacks any political agenda, Stürmer is practically the only sycophant left in Petrograd who isn’t too old or inexperienced at governing for the job. Anti-democratic, he once succeeded in displacing the elected government of Tver’, which was seen as too liberating in its influence. Nicholas wants a man who will execute his policy without objection, who will not threaten to resign, who will not cooperate against him with the parliament. Yet he also needs someone who can foster better relations with the Duma while he is away from the capital at his headquarters, so who better than a flunky that he has long wanted to make Mayor of Moscow?

Left: Tsarina Alexandra, whose influence is felt in the appointment of Boris Stürmer, right

The decision is immediately seen as evidence of the rising power of Grigori Rasputin, rumored lover of the tsarina. In fact, her influence is key to Stürmer’s advancement and will be integral to his tenure as Prime Minister. At her behest, he will fire the competent managers and political advisers who displease her or her mad monk. His reputation for grift is further enhanced when, shortly after taking office, Stürmer tries to redirect 5 million rubles from the military fund to his own office. Yet he will prove unable to articulate or impose a coherent policy of any kind, often leaving meetings without having seemed to understand the topics of discussion at all, leaving ever-more of his work in the hands of Alexandra and Rasputin.

All of this would be bad enough, but Stürmer’s very name is too German for a populace steeped in conspiracy theories about enemy agents supposedly running the country, exacerbating popular discontent with the government. While Stürmer asked the Tsar to allow him to change his surname to Panin in January, Nicholas procrastinated in deference to the aristocratic Panin family; the tsarina and Rasputin have declared that no such change is necessary, further undermining the legitimacy of their chosen Prime Minister.

And Russia needs bold leadership at its center. During the month of February, state budget discussions in the Duma reveal that the deficit has exploded to 355 million rubles, accumulating at 31 million a day. Last year ended with Russian government debt standing at 8 billion rubles; it will reach eleven billion before the year’s end. Alarmed at the prospect of their chief ally running out of cash, Britain and France float emergency loans, while the Russian crown obtains loans in the United States exceeding $100 million. During the first half of 1916, Russia suffers a trade deficit of 520 million rubles due to all the imports of weaponry and munitions. Despite being “a dictator with full powers,” in the words of Rodzianko, Stürmer fails to resolve these issues, managing only to lower the threshold of income tax and further shutter the vodka trade in the misguided belief that a ‘new energy’ will fix everything.

Meanwhile, the nation’s energy supply is actually diminishing as railroads fall apart, workers experience tool shortages, and declining food systems lead to absenteeism and decreased productivity. None of these problems will be solved by the Stürmer premiership. Instead, they will all be greatly magnified.

Programming note: this blog has been suspended recently due to a combination of illness, employment changes, and server issues. We will now attempt to resume a regular schedule of programming as well as filling in backdated posts, but there may be further brief interruptions.

The sumptuous accommodations of the royal train contrast with the deteriorating Russian rail network

#democracy #Materialschlacht #monarchy #production #prohibition #railroads #Rasputin #Russia #Tsar Nicholas II

A diverse and cosmopolitan place, Salonika has been a geographic center of political history in the Balkans for over a decade. The ‘three pashas’ who now run the Ottoman Empire formed their Committee of Union and Progress here in 1904, expanding their influence throughout government and the Army before taking power. When a counter-revolution materialized against them in 1909, tens of thousands turned out to support change at Liberty Square, and the ‘Operation Army’ of Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk departed for Istanbul by train to depose and the sultan and replace him with someone more amenable to political modernization. But Salonika became a Greek city again during the Balkan Wars, and then it was the scene of King George’s assassination in 1913, putting Constantine I on the throne of Greece while Muslims, Jews, and Bulgarians suffered undeserved retaliatory oppression by the police and military.

The Great War came to still-neutral Salonika with these resentments still fresh, and the arrival in force of French and British armies in the last three months has added a whole new layer of woeful complexity. Five days ago, three Albatross reconnaissance planes too off from Bulgarian lines flew 10,000 feet over the city dropping thirty small bombs. While only one Greek citizen was killed, one bomb very nearly struck a Greek general observing his troops on parade. The warships in harbor threw up a curtain of anti-aircraft fire that brought one of the attackers down; like the German Taube aircraft put on public display to help Parisians lose their fear, the Albatross will later be installed at the waterfront for propaganda purposes (see above). But this was not enough to satisfy the Entente allies, who took extraordinary retributive measures that same evening.

French troops in the garden at the Ottoman embassy on December 30th to block any escape

Before midnight, British and French soldiers seized the German, Austrian, Turkish, and Bulgarian consulates, arresting hundreds of people — including their diplomatic officials, who were transferred onto a French cruiser for deportation to Toulon. A Norwegian consul-general is also arrested on charges of aiding and abetting enemy combatants.

These measures have angered the Greek government, which is already hobbled by a domestic political crisis over Constantine’s refusal to join the Entente alliance. Known as the National Schism, this state of paralysis began when the King of Greece fired his prime minister, then grew deeper when his picked successor failed to form a new government out of a hostile and unwilling parliament, which Constantine has now dissolved. It has only gotten worse with his appointment of Prime Minister Stephanos Skouloudis, whose unity government is chilled to near-inaction by the same war question.

Roused to action at last, yesterday Skouloudis’s government sent strong formal protests to Paris and London. These diplomatic letters are published today, and the Greek press — which has already observed the incident with predictable heat and disapproval for the actions of both sides — issues its own official op-ed page condemnations of allied actions right alongside the notes. General Maurice Sarrail, the French commander of the Salonika expedition, responds that his orders were “only just retaliation for the aircraft bombardment, which was a flagrant act of war.” Greece complains of neutrality violations; the Entente powers justify their actions as upholding Greek neutrality.

Meanwhile, the Serbian Kingdom which allied troops arrived in Salonika to save has disintegrated.

A contemporary view of the medieval walls around Salonika, now Thessaloniki

Bulgaria retaliates today, arresting all remaining former civilian employees of the British, French, and Serbian legations who stayed in the capital after Tsar Ferdinand threw his lot in with Berlin and Vienna. Despite promises from the Kaiser that Greece will not be attacked, Ferdinand’s victorious armies nevertheless crowd the Greek border as if to impose the will of the Central Powers through sheer intimidation. The survivors of the shattered Serbian Army and government are being evacuated to Corfu; Constantine’s emergency government does not want them relocated to Salonika, where they might form the nucleus of an allied offensive to retake the Balkans. It is one more point of increasing tectonic tension with the Entente allies.

But the king has already overplayed his hand. In late November, when the defeat of Serbia was still in doubt, Greek officials interfered in the timely disembarkation of reinforcements for the Macedonian battlefield, so the Entente powers declared a naval blockade of southern Greece to force a change in attitude. Powerless to kick out his unwelcome guests, Constantine has privately turned to his German brother-in-law Kaiser Wilhelm II in hopes of receiving the financial and material means to do so, but no such aid is forthcoming. Soon, a Bulgarian shadow looms over Greek Macedonia. The bombing raid which sparked today’s crisis was a warning of even greater challenges to come.

The diversity of the international force at Salonika will befit a polyglot community. Via Levantine Heritage

#Britain #Bulgaria #diplomacy #France #General Sarrail #Greece #neutrality

Quickly overwhelmed in Russia’s initial invasion of Hapsburg territory, the heart of Bukovina was recaptured, lost again, and retaken once more in a series of Austrian offensives from January to March. Now the southern end of the 500-mile long Eastern Front rests on a line of hills known as the Berdo Horodyszcze along the east bank of the Strypa between the Pruth and Dniester rivers. Overlooking Czernowitz, the capital of Bukovina province, these heights have been the objective of two Russian armies in the attack since December 23rd, with a fifty hour-long preparatory bombardment beginning the fight in earnest on the day after Christmas.

These attacks have focused on the towns of Toporowce and Bojan, but the assaults have been as futile as they have been relentless. This ferocious, if forgotten, battle pits the Russian VII, IX, and XI armies against the Austrian 7th Army and the German Südarmee, with the Central Powers winning a clear victory despite Russian propagandists with glowing claims of success. Yesterday, six Russian regiments ‘won’ a space about seventy-five acres in size around the former village of Rarancze in an attempt to break through to Czernowitz; today, the attack resumes at great cost in blood without taking any new ground.

An Austrian sniper uses a telescopic sight in trench fighting near Czernowitz

The Russian offensive pauses slightly for two days on the 5th of January, resuming on the 7th, which is Christmas Day according to the Russian calendar. Austrian pilots report reinforcements moving in the Russian rear as well, and the attacks redouble again on the 11th with a seven-hour series of human wave attacks accompanied by hundreds of artillery guns. These attacks focus on the Austrians rather than the Südarmee, but they are stopped by accurate defensive fire and determined infantry fighting behind the standard defenses of the Great War: parapets, barbed wire, and aerial observation. In fact, Austrian pilots report reinforcing movements, allowing them to anticipate another seven-hour series of assaults on the 11th. Finally, on January 15th the Russian offensive grinds to an exhausted halt; tens of thousands of Russian soldiers are dead, wounded, or captured, having gained almost nothing with their lives.

An Austro-Hungarian water transport team slakes the thirst of a front-line unit

Why this terrific waste? According to contemporary sources, there are two main reasons. One is that the Russians hope to draw enemy strength away from Montenegro, but the Central Powers invade the tiny Balkan state anyway, arriving hot on the heels of the disintegrating Serbian Army during the winter battle. But the other reason is still-neutral Romania, which the Russians hope to impress into joining the Entente alliance against the Central Powers. Romania does indeed covet the provinces of Bukovina and Transylvania, both of which which lie on their national borders and have large Romanian populations. The Romanian Prime Minister has missed previous opportunities to shift the balance of the conflict, however, for he wants guaranteed rewards at minimum risk. This time will be no different.

Meanwhile, the war is still destroying armies. Still lacking a reserve army, the Imperial and Royal Army (k.u.k.) is being hollowed out, relying more and more on German support to conduct operations. Russia is throwing half-trained conscripts into battle behind fewer and fewer officers of declining quality. The Eastern Front is turning into a struggle over who will be the last to reach the bottom of the barrel.

Shell damage in Czernowitz, which the Russians faslely claim to have captured this week

#Austria-Hungary #Bukovina #infantry #Romania #Russia #Transylvania #trenches

Fourteen years have passed since Pasadena last hosted a football game for its annual New Years Day Tournament of Roses. Won by the Michigan Wolverines to cap off a perfect season in which the team scored 550 points and surrendered none, that game ended on a gentlemen’s agreement with eight minutes remaining and 49 points on the board — an example of so-called ‘mercy rules.’ Since that lopsided game in 1902, the Tournament has tried more exotic attractions such as charioteers and ostrich races while the game of American football went through enormous changes.

At President Theodore Roosevelt’s instigation, a hodgepodge of rules has been replaced with uniformity on every field. The value of a touchdown has changed from five points to six, and field goals from five to three; the length of the field and the duration of the four quarters has been established forever; ten yards are now needed for a first down rather than five, and forward passing is now legal in every game. In fact, 1915 has been a groundbreaking year for American football, as the ‘bowl season’ has included no less than five games matching teams from the western states with clubs from east of the Mississippi River, a sign of the rapid nationwide growth in the popularity of the sport.

Seen above, the Cornell Big Red have finished 9-0 in a strong field (see above), becoming the consensus ‘national champion,’ but this still-imaginary award is entirely subjective. A century before the first college football playoff formalizes the process of determining a top team, there is not even an Associated Press poll to help form public opinion, much less a coaches poll or computer rankings. Even though the criteria for champions do not change much in the decades to come, the history of American college football after 1915 will be a running argument about how to determine the best team in the country.

Coin toss: team captains meet referee Walter H. Eckersall to determine which side kicks off first. Note the shape of the ball

Today’s Rose Bowl is a good example of how this decentralization of opportunity bedevils the sport. The game features a strong Washington State University team with a 7-0 record. Led by their new Lakota Native American coach Lone Star Dietz, the Cougars have outscored their opponents 204-10 in the course of the season, but their scheduled opponents have been weaker than Cornell’s. Seeking an opponent of better caliber to improve their standing, WSU has tried to interest Pittsburgh in the Tournament of Roses, but they were more eager for a rematch with Cornell; the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Syracuse Orange, and Michigan have also declined the invitation. Finally, the Bruins of Brown University agreed to play the West coast powerhouse, but with a season record of 5-3-1, they are hardly top-notch competition. As a result, the greatest team in WSU history will not be named the best in the nation.

The weather is terrible. Days of rain have turned the field to mud, and the downpour leaves thousands of seats empty. Reduced to a diving run game, the first half ends in a scoreless tie with each team failing inside the 20-yard line, the so-called ‘red zone.’ WSU finally punches through the exhausted Brown defense in the third quarter, adding a second touchdown in the fourth to win the game 14-0. But history is still made today, for Brown halfback Fritz Pollard is the first black football player to be named an All-American; he will go on to become one of the first two professional football players in history — and then the first black head coach.

Footballs dating from 1894 (upper left) to 2014 (bottom right). The shape, color, and size of the ball change as forward passing increases and placekicking replaces drop-kicking

While he was saving the game of football from itself, Roosevelt insisted that football prepares young men for the battlefield, and in fact there are remarkable similarities between the nature of the sport and the characteristic violence of the Great War. Born from the British working class sports of association football (soccer) and rugby, the length of an American football game is governed by a precisely-managed clock — just like the modern factory with its time cards and shift-announcing horns. Reflecting the rich diversity of the Western Front and the imperial polyglot army manning the trenches, racial divisions and color lines are already more muted in football than in baseball, an American sport with roots in the aristocratic game of cricket. Indeed, the professional baseball leagues will continue segregated professional play for decades to come.

But the shape of the game itself speaks to the applied principles of industrialized mass fire which seem to inspire it. On offense, each team tries to outflank the other or achieve a breakthrough; on defense, they struggle to hold the line. A no man’s land-like ‘neutral zone’ separates the opposing ‘armies’ until the ‘snap,’ and every operation (‘play’) requires a committee meeting to agree on the formation and complex maneuvers involved. The most telling sign of this relationship, however, is what’s on the average football player’s head. Just as the high rate of head injuries has led all of the combatants on the Western Front to begin distributing helmets by the beginning of 1916, leather headgear has greatly reduced the horrifying toll of deaths and injuries on the football field that so concerned Roosevelt when his own son played for Harvard. Recent improvements include more padding, protective flaps with ear-holes for better communication, and the first internal webbing to separate the player’s skull from the hard outer shell of his helmet — an engineering feature found inside every new military helmet, too.

Whereas Britain has suspended its professional sports for the duration of the war, America remains neutral. Despite understandable controversy, even the coming of war will not suspend college football; only the public quarantines of the Spanish influenza pandemic in 1918 can accomplish that, and only incompletely. The Rose Bowl will continue as an annual football tradition — one that survives a century later even as the college game finally, grudgingly changes to an actual playoff system.

As on the Western Front, progress is measured in yards. Hash marks are a later innovation

#racism #social change #United States

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