December 1916

In December 1916 a new cabinet assumes power in Great Britain.  Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, who has led the government since 1908, is replaced by David Lloyd George, and Arthur Balfour replaces Sir Edward Grey as Foreign Minister.  Germany, in diplomatic notes and in a speech in the Reichstag by Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, offers to open negotiations with the Entente in a neutral country.  A few days later President Wilson sends notes to the belligerent nations asking for their views regarding terms on which the war might be ended.  Germany responds by repeating its offer to negotiate, but refuses to state its terms.  The Allies have not yet replied to the American notes, but reject the German offer as a "sham."  On the Western Front, French forces at Verdun attack the besieging Germans and push them back to positions near the lines from which they began the siege in February.  In the Balkans, German troops occupy Bucharest.  Grigori Rasputin, the influential mystic and religious adviser to the Tsar's family, is murdered in Petrograd.  In Greece a civil war rages between the king and his government. 

*****

Britain's New Prime Minister

A new coalition government has taken power in Great Britain.  Prime Minister Herbert Asquith had formed a War Committee that included Secretary of State for War David Lloyd George and First Lord of the Admiralty Arthur Balfour.  When Lloyd George insisted, with Balfour's support, on the chairmanship of the Committee, Asquith forced the issue by demanding the resignation of his cabinet with the objective of forming a new government.  Instead, Asquith himself was forced to resign and a new government was formed with Lloyd George as Prime Minister.  Balfour is the new Foreign Minister, replacing Sir Edward Grey, now raised to the peerage as Viscount Grey of Fallodon.  Sir Edward Carson, previously Leader of the Opposition, has joined the government as First Lord of the Admiralty.  The new Prime Minister has appointed a War Cabinet to make decisions on important matters relating to the conduct of the war.  The members are Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Lord President of the Council; Andrew Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Arthur Henderson, the Leader of the Labour Party; and Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner.  Lord Milner, who was the Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner for South Africa during the Boer War, has been added to the War Cabinet to take advantage of his experience in leading a civil government during wartime.

 Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg Addressing the Reichstag

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg rose in a special session of the Reichstag on December 12 to announce that Germany was offering to negotiate an end to the war.  Simultaneous notes were delivered to ambassadors representing neutral powers, including the United States, for transmission to Germany's enemies.  They make no specific proposals, but simply offer "to enter forthwith into peace negotiations."  Germany is willing to do so, the notes say, "[i]n spite of our consciousness of our military and economic strength and our readiness to continue the war (which has been forced upon us) to the bitter end, if necessary."  They say "Germany and her allies ... gave proof of their unconquerable strength," gaining "gigantic advantages over our adversaries superior in number and war material."  Germany and its allies "have been obliged to take up arms to defend justice and the liberty of national evolution."  If their peace proposal is rejected, they "are resolved to continue to a victorious end, but they disclaim responsibility for this before humanity and history."  Addressing German troops the next day, the Kaiser assured them that he was proposing negotiations only because "we are the absolute conquerors."

On December 30 the Entente nations rejected the German proposal as a "sham."  Their joint note stated that, unless the German government is willing to furnish a statement of peace terms, its note must be regarded not as a serious proposal but as a "war manoeuvre."  They said they "are determined never to sheath the sword until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed."

President Wilson

The week after the German peace proposal, President Wilson made his own attempt to start peace negotiations.  In a note dated December 18 and delivered to the warring nations on December 20, he asked them to state their "respective views as to the terms on which the war might be concluded," and stated that he was willing "to serve, or even to take the initiative in its accomplishment, in any way that might prove acceptable, but he has no desire to determine the method or the instrumentality ... if only the great object he has in mind be attained."  The President "takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects, which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in this war, are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world."  He says he "is not proposing peace; he is not even offering mediation.  He is merely proposing that soundings be taken in order that we may learn, the neutral nations with the belligerent, how near the haven of peace may be for which all mankind longs with an intense and increasing longing."  Recognizing that the Central Powers had made their own proposal for a peace conference only a few days earlier, the American notes include a statement that the president's suggestion is one he "has long had it in mind to offer" and that he is "somewhat embarrassed to offer it at this particular time because it may seem to have been prompted by a desire to play a part in connection with the recent overtures by the Central Powers."  Nevertheless, it was "in no way suggested by them in its origin."

The morning after the American note was released to the press, Secretary of State Lansing issued a surprisingly clumsy statement to the press.  He said the note had been sent because "more and more our own rights are becoming involved" and "we are drawing nearer the verge of war ourselves, and therefore we are entitled to know exactly what each belligerent seeks, in order that we may regulate our conduct in the future."  That afternoon, after hearing from the President, Lansing issued a clarification.  He said "I have learned from several quarters that a wrong impression was made by a statement which I made this morning ... I did not intend to intimate that the Government was considering any change in its policy of neutrality."  The second statement was released in time for both statements to appear in the same edition of American newspapers.

At year's end, the Entente nations have not yet replied to President Wilson's request.  Germany issued a brief reply on December 26, in which it evaded the request for a statement of war aims, instead repeating its proposal for a conference "of the belligerent states at a neutral location," pointedly excluding neutrals such as the United States.  In case the point was missed, the note went on to say that Germany would "be ready with pleasure to collaborate entirely with the United States" in the "exalted" task of preventing future wars, but "only after the end of the present struggle of the nations."

General Nivelle

On December 12 General Robert Nivelle, commander of the French forces at Verdun, replaced General Joseph Joffre as Commander-in-Chief of all French armies on the Western Front.  Three days later, the French mounted an attack on the German forces encircling Verdun and pushed them back almost to the lines they had occupied before beginning the siege ten months ago.  The French captured over 11,000 German soldiers and 115 heavy guns.  On December 26, General Joffre retired and was made a Marshal of France.

General Mackensen Entering Bucharest

Although Germany suffered extensive losses during 1916, particularly at the Somme and Verdun, its boast of military success is not entirely without foundation.  Despite massive attacks by the Entente, the Germans have lost little territory and their casualty counts have been largely matched by those of the Allies.  In the Balkans, Romania's entry into the war has been a failure, as German forces commanded by General August von Mackensen inflicted a series of defeats on the Romanian Army.  On December 6 German troops marched into  Bucharest, led by Mackensen on a white horse.  The German Army now occupies five enemy capitals: Bucharest, Brussels, Warsaw, Belgrade and Cetinje.

 Grigori Rasputin

The session of the Russian Duma that began last month ended on December 29, a day before its scheduled adjournment.  The session began with a violent attack on the government by Professor Pavel Miliukov, leader of the Constitutional Democrat (Kadet) Party, followed by sensational disclosures in speeches by Vladimir Purishkevich and others, charging that Prime Minister Boris Sturmer and Grigori Rasputin, a monk with close ties to the Royal Family and a reputation for sexual and gastronomic excess, were responsible for "dark forces fighting for Germany and attempting to destroy popular unity."  Late that night, Rasputin was the victim of a murder plot conceived and carried out by Purishkevich and others at the highest levels of the Russian nobility.  Prince Felix Yusupov lured Rasputin to his palace where he was joined by Purishkevich, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and possibly others.  The conspirators fed Rasputin cakes and wine laced with large quantities of potassium cyanide and, when those appeared to have no effect, shot him multiple times and threw his body from a bridge into the freezing Nevka River.

Venizelos (center) in Salonika

The dispute between the Greek King Constantine and Prime Minister Venizelos has flared into open warfare, On December 7, pro-Entente forces led by the Prime Minister set up a provisional government in Salonika and declared war on Germany and Bulgaria.  Forces loyal to the the King, who wants Greece to remain neutral, defeated an attempt by Venizelos forces to take control of Athens.

  

December 1916 – Selected Sources and Recommended Reading

Contemporary Periodicals:

American Review of Reviews, January and February 1917

New York Times, December 1916 and January 1917

Books and Articles:

A. Scott Berg, Wilson

Britain at War Magazine, The Third Year of the Great War: 1916
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1911-1918
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt

Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality

John Dos Passos, Mr. Wilson's War

David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922

Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life
Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History

Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume One: 1900-1933
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Volume III: The Challenge of War, 1914-1916

Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917

August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

Godfrey Hodgson, Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House

Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War

Keith Jeffery, 1916: A Global History

Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography
John Keegan, The First World War
David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society
Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949
Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War

Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 1915-1916 

Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917

G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, The Somme

Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes
Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 

J. Lee Thompson, Never Call Retreat: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great War
Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram   
Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

The West Point Atlas of War: World War I

November 1916

In November 1916 the American presidential campaign draws to a close with speeches by President Woodrow Wilson and former President Theodore Roosevelt at Cooper Union, by Wilson and his Republican challenger Charles Evans Hughes at Madison Square Garden (still in those days on Madison Square), and by President Wilson at his New Jersey estate Shadow Lawn.  After the election the outcome is unclear for days, but eventually is decided in favor of Wilson when the final tally in California narrowly goes his way.  Jeanette Rankin, a Republican, becomes the first woman elected to the United States Congress, but the Democrats retain control of both houses.  Meanwhile the World War continues in France, on the Isonzo River, in the Balkans and in Salonika.  Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary dies in Vienna at the age of eighty-six.  Germany proclaims a new Kingdom of Poland.  The British and the French fight the last battles of the Somme offensive and at Verdun.  The Federal Reserve Board warns its member banks not to buy unsecured British notes.

*****

 Electoral Votes by State

In the United States on November 7, President Woodrow Wilson became the first Democratic president since Andrew Jackson to win reelection.  The electoral vote was 277 for Wilson and 254 for his challenger, former Supreme Court Justice and New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes.  The final result was uncertain until California's vote count was completed days after the election, giving Wilson the state's thirteen electoral votes by a popular vote margin of less than 4,000 out of almost a million votes cast.  California Governor Hiram Johnson, running for the Senate, won his race in a landslide; Johnson's strained relationship with Hughes, highlighted by Hughes's awkward visit to California in August, might have cost Hughes the state and the presidency.  (See the August 1916 installment of this blog.)

The Waldorf Astoria

The presidential campaign continued down to the wire except for the Sunday and Monday before the election, which both candidates observed as days of rest.  On Thursday, November 2, the president made his only visit of the campaign to New York City, a whirlwind tour that began at 9:00 when the presidential train arrived at Grand Central Station after an overnight journey from Buffalo and included speeches at the Waldorf Astoria that afternoon and at Madison Square Garden and Cooper Union in the evening.  Thirty thousand Democrats led by Tammany Hall Sachems paraded down Fifth Avenue, and thousands more besieged Madison Square Garden in an attempt to get a glimpse of the president.  The crowd defeated all attempts by the police to exercise control, forcing the president and his wife to enter the Garden through a fire escape on the 27th Street side of the building.  Samuel Seabury, the Democratic candidate for governor; Alfred E. Smith, the Sheriff of New York County who was the grand marshal of the parade; Charles F. Murphy, the leader of Tammany Hall; and Mrs. Edward M. House, the wife of presidential adviser "Colonel" House, were among those unable, at least at first, to get into the building.  From Madison Square, the president motored to Cooper Union, where he gave another speech and was greeted afterward by a crowd of some 15,000 in Cooper Square.  As he stood on the outdoor platform, the crowd strained forward to hear him over the sound of passing elevated trains and other vehicles, challenging the police who were trying to maintain a clear space in front of the platform.  After brief remarks, the president boarded the presidential yacht, the Mayflower, for a leisurely cruise back to Shadow Lawn.

Cooper Union

Cooper Union was the site the next day of former President Roosevelt's last speech of the campaign.  He pulled no punches in attacking Wilson's foreign policy, telling his audience that it was the misfortune of the United States, when it needed a Washington or a Lincoln, that it had instead been given a Buchanan.  He said that just as the country had redeemed itself in 1860 by exchanging Buchanan for Lincoln, it should exchange Wilson for Hughes this year.  Taking aim at the president's policy with regard to Mexico and Germany, Roosevelt employed the metaphor of Shadow Lawn, the president's residence on the New Jersey shore:

"There should be shadows enough at Shadow Lawn: the shadows of men, women and children who have risen from the ooze of the ocean bottom and from graves in foreign lands, the shadows of the helpless whom Mr. Wilson did not dare to protect lest he might have to face danger; the shadows of babies gasping pitifully as they sank under the waves; the shadows of women outraged and slain by bandits; the shadows of Boyd and Adair and their troopers who lay in the Mexican desert, the black blood crusted around their mouths, and their dim eyes looking upward, because President Wilson had sent them to do a task, and had then shamefully abandoned them to the mercy of foes who knew no mercy.  Those are the shadows proper for Shadow Lawn; the shadows of deeds that were never done; the shadows of lofty words that were followed by no action; the shadows of the tortured dead."

The former president's Cooper Union speech played well to his East Coast Republican base, but the force of his rhetoric may have had the opposite effect among the isolationists and pacifists of the Midwest and West, where the election would be decided and where the Democratic Party's slogan "he kept us out of war" was winning votes for Wilson.  In that part of the country, Roosevelt's eagerness for America to join the fight was more alarming than inspiring.

The President Speaking at Shadow Lawn

At Shadow Lawn on Saturday, November 4, President Wilson delivered his final speech of the campaign.  He attacked the Republicans for their stand on tariffs and immigration, and said that in foreign affairs their rhetoric was "spreading tinder in this country when sparks without number were blowing over from this terrible conflagration."  He accused Republicans of "seeking to make party capital out of things which, if not settled wisely, might bring this country at any moment into this world conflict which is devastating Europe."

Madison Square Garden

That evening at Madison Square Garden, it was Hughes's turn.  Before entering the Garden, he reviewed a parade of thousands of supporters marching up Fifth Avenue, cheered by thousands more standing along the line of march.  The crowd was as large and enthusiastic as the one that greeted President Wilson two days earlier, but was relatively orderly and gave the police little trouble.  Inside the Garden, Hughes gave his last speech of the campaign, speaking in favor of patriotism, preparedness, and a protective tariff, and predicting a "march to a triumphant victory."  He said "the way to preserve peace is to deserve respect," and insisted that "it is idle for anyone to say that a criticism of the policies of the present administration implies either a desire for war or a tendency to war.  We propose that this nation shall stand erect before the world, ...  exhibiting firmness and consistency and indomitable spirit which will show that we mean what we say and we say what we mean."

Hotel Astor

Both candidates spent Sunday and Monday resting quietly with their families, Wilson at Shadow Lawn and Hughes at the Hotel Astor.  On Monday Wilson played golf and Hughes went for a long walk and to the theater in the evening.  On Election Day Wilson went to Princeton to vote and Hughes voted in Manhattan.  That evening, hundreds of thousands of people crowded the streets of New York gazing up at bulletins projected on screens by the several newspapers in the City.  Hughes, whose hotel faced Times Square and the New York Times building, watched the crowds cheering his name as it became clear that he had won New York's forty-five electoral votes by a substantial margin.  The early editions of newspapers, including the New York Times, declared Hughes the victor, and when Hughes saw a sign that read "U.S. Tires," he quipped that the next day they might be able to complete that sentence by adding the words "of Wilson."  By the next morning, however, the issue was in doubt, and the final tally gave most of the western states to Wilson (the South, of course, was conceded to Wilson from the beginning).  Two weeks elapsed before the final count was completed and Hughes sent Wilson a telegram conceding the election.  When he finally received the telegram, Wilson told his brother he was glad to see it.  "It was a little moth-eaten when it got here," he said, "but quite legible."

 Jeanette Rankin

The Sixty-fifth Congress will include the first woman elected to that body.  The State of Montana, which adopted woman suffrage in 1914, has two seats in the House of Representatives, both of which are elected at large.  This month it elected Republican Jeanette Rankin to fill one of its House seats, bucking a Democratic sweep of the other statewide offices as well as the state's three presidential electors.  In the Senate, the Democrats retained their majority but their margin slipped from 54-41 (with one vacancy) to 51-45.  In the House the Democrats, who enjoyed a 230-196 majority (with eight third party members: six Progressive, one Socialist and one Prohibition) in the Sixty-fourth Congress, now have fewer members than the Republicans (213-215) but are likely to retain control of the chamber with the support of third party members (three Progressive, one Socialist and one Prohibition).  Democratic Representative Champ Clark of Missouri will probably remain Speaker.

*****

Emperor Franz Joseph

Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary died on November 21 in the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna.  Born August 18, 1830, Franz Joseph became Emperor  of Austria and King of Hungary in 1848 and presided over the creation of the dual monarchy in 1867.  The assassination of his nephew and heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 led to Austria-Hungary's ultimatum and subsequent declaration of war against Serbia, triggering the series of events at the end of July and beginning of August that plunged Europe into war (see the July and August 1914 installments of this blog).  Prior to being stricken with the pneumonia that took his life, the emperor's attention was focused on his army's prosecution of the war, most recently turning back the Russian offensive in the Carpathians and supporting German General August von Mackensen's offensive in Romania. The new emperor is Franz Joseph's grandnephew, Archduke Charles.

German Prisoners at Beaumont Hamel

In an effort to achieve a breakthrough at the Somme before winter sets in, the British Army mounted a major offensive at the Ancre River, a tributary of the Somme, on November 13.  The infantry attack was preceded by an enormous seven-day artillery barrage, and as it advanced across no-man's land it was preceded by a "creeping" artillery barrage.  The offensive ended on November 18 after capturing the villages of Beaumont Hamel, Beaucourt and St. Pierre Divion, not far from where the first battles of the Somme offensive took place in early July.  Allied losses were approximately 22,000 men compared to the Germans' 45,000.
 

A French Sentry at Fort Vaux

At Verdun, the French retook Fort Vaux on November 2.  In a statement announcing their abandonment of the fort, the German Army said that the sacrifices involved in continuing to occupy the fort in the face of intense French artillery fire were no longer justified.  Along with Fort Douaumont, Fort Vaux had presented a formidable obstacle to the German attack on Verdun, but once occupied by the Germans both forts were less suitable for defending against attacks from the other direction.  The Germans therefore removed or destroyed the forts' armaments and withdrew to less vulnerable positions.

The Italian Army on the Attack

The Ninth Battle of the Isonzo River began with an attack by the Italian Army on November 1.  It was designed to secure the Italian positions in and around the town of Gorizia, but it bogged down in mud and was called off after three days of modest gains and heavy losses on both sides.  Nine thousand Austrians were taken prisoner.  In Salonika, an Allied attack succeeded in driving the Bulgarians across the Serbian border and entering Monastir.on November 19.

Governor-General von Beseler

Germany and Austria-Hungary issued a joint declaration on November 5 proclaiming the establishment of a supposedly independent Kingdom of Poland, comprising the German-occupied portions of formerly Russian Poland.  No provision was made, however, for Polish self-government; Poland will continue to be governed by its German governor-general, Hans Hartwig von Beseler.

The Federal Reserve Board

The Federal Reserve Board supervises the Federal Reserve System created by legislation enacted in the United States less than three years ago.  On November 27 it warned American banks to be cautious about accepting unsecured notes issued by nations at war.  The Board urges banks to "pursue a policy of keeping themselves liquid" and "proceed with much caution in locking up their funds in long-term obligations or in investments which are short-term in form or name but which, either by contract or by force of circumstances, may in the aggregate have to be renewed until normal conditions return."  The Board is concerned that "liquid funds of our banks, which should be available for short credit facilities to our merchants, manufacturers and farmers, would be exposed to the danger of being absorbed for other purposes to a disproportionate degree, especially in view of the fact that many of our banks and trust companies are already carrying substantial amounts of foreign obligations and of acceptances which they are under agreement to renew."  Member banks, therefore, are cautioned that the Board "does not regard it in the interest of the country at this time that they invest in foreign treasury bills of this character."

This is a serious development for the Allies.  The war is costing Britain, the Allies' purchasing agent, five million pounds a day, forty percent of which is spent in the United States.  Last month an interdepartmental committee reported that Britain would be unable to provide collateral for the extension of further credit after March of next year.  In a meeting on November 30, the British Cabinet considered a recommendation to abandon the gold standard, but decided instead to delay the issuance of additional Treasury notes and advise the military that it must restrict the purchase of war supplies.

November 1916 – Selected Sources and Recommended Reading

Contemporary Periodicals:

American Review of Reviews, December 1916 and January 1917

New York Times, November 1916

Books and Articles:

A. Scott Berg, Wilson

Britain at War Magazine, The Third Year of the Great War: 1916
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1911-1918
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt

Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality

John Dos Passos, Mr. Wilson's War

David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922

Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life
Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History

Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume One: 1900-1933
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Volume III: The Challenge of War, 1914-1916

Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917

August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

Godfrey Hodgson, Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House

Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War

Keith Jeffrey, 1916: A Global History

Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography
John Keegan, The First World War
David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society
Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949
Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War

Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 1915-1916 

Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917

G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, The Somme

Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes
Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 

J. Lee Thompson, Never Call Retreat: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great War
Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram   
Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

The West Point Atlas of War: World War I

1916 Presidential Campaign

This is my presentation last month at the WWI Museum about the 1916 presidential campaign.

Watch the video here

October 1916

In October 1916, as the presidential election campaign continues in the United States, no part of the world is untouched by the war.  A German U-Boat pays a visit to Newport, Rhode Island, where it makes and receives courtesy calls on American officers, then returns to sea and sinks nine merchant ships off the North American coast.  Six Americans are killed when a German submarine attacks an armed British merchant ship in heavy seas off the coast of Ireland.  On the Western Front, the French retake Fort Douaumont, the first of the fortifications at Verdun that fell to the Germans when they began their assault in February.  On the Somme, bloody fighting continues without significant gains by either side.  The Italian Army launches the eighth battle of the Isonzo and attacks Austrian troops in the mountains of the Trentino.  Continuing their offensive against Romania, German armies force the Romanians to abandon all the gains they have achieved since declaring war in August.

*****

President Wilson Campaigning in New Jersey This Month

The American presidential campaign is in full swing.  President Wilson left Shadow Lawn on October 3 for a visit to Omaha to join in the semi-centennial celebration of Nebraska statehood.  At the Omaha Auditorium on October 5, he told a capacity crowd that America has stayed out of the war "not because she was not interested, but because she wanted to play a different part."  He said "there is as much fight in America as in any nation in the world, but she wants to know what for."  On the same day Elihu Root, the former Secretary of State, Secretary of War and Senator from New York, addressed a Republican Club rally in Carnegie Hall.  He said the Wilson administration had failed to impress its opponents, whether Germany, Mexico, or the railroad unions, with the true spirit of America, and that the Republican Party and its nominee Charles Evans Hughes represented patriotic Americanism.  Back at Shadow Lawn on October 7, President Wilson attacked the Republican Party as one "with no proposals upon which all could unite," a disunited party which "cannot avow its purpose" and is "shot through with every form of bitterness, every ugly form of hate, every debased purpose of revenge, and every covert desire to recover secret power."  Referring to former President Roosevelt, he warned that "if the Republican Party should succeed, one very large branch of it would insist upon what its leader has insisted upon, a complete reversal of policy ... [which] can only be a reversal from peace to war."

Hughes Campaign Button

In Louisville, Kentucky on October 12, Wilson's opponent Charles Evans Hughes answered a heckler by saying that if he had been president when Germany published its warning to Lusitania passengers he would have warned Germany that an attack on the ocean liner would have meant the immediate termination of diplomatic relations.  Referring to the American response in February 1915 to Germany's declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare, Hughes accused President Wilson of not living up to his own strong words in response to the initial submarine threat.  Hughes said that, unlike Wilson, "when I said 'strict accountability' every nation would have known that that was meant."  On October 16 in Omaha, he responded to Wilson's charge that a victory of the Republican Party would mean the country would be ruled by "secret power" wielded by an "invisible government."  He said it is not the Republicans but the Democratic administration of President Wilson that has been governed by "mysterious influences" that do not represent the desires or interests of the American people.  In a reference to Colonel House, the president's unofficial but highly influential adviser, Hughes said "I desire government through two Houses and not three."

U53 in Newport Harbor

A German U-Boat, U53, made a surprise visit to the United States on October 7, entering Newport Harbor escorted by an American submarine it encountered as it approached Narragansett Bay.  After being guided to an anchorage at the naval base, the German submarine captain exchanged courtesy calls with Admiral Austin Knight, commander of the Naval War College, and Admiral Albert Gleaves, commander of the destroyer forces, and delivered a letter addressed to German Ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff.  He told the American officers he had sufficient water, provisions and fuel, and was back at sea within a few hours.  Within the next two days, U53 sank nine merchant ships off the coast of North America.  Last May's Sussex Pledge to observe "cruiser rules" was obeyed in every case, and all those aboard the merchant ships were rescued.  After conferring with Secretary of State Lansing, President Wilson has decided to take no action.

Ambassador Gerard

The presence of U53 in American waters coincided with a visit to the United States by the American ambassador to Germany, James W. Gerard.  On October 10, within a few hours after his arrival in New York on the Scandinavian-American liner Frederick VIII, he met with Secretary of State Lansing at Colonel House's residence in New York.  The Secretary then departed for Shadow Lawn, President Wilson's summer residence at Long Branch, New Jersey, where he conferred with the president about reports that the German government is under pressure to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant and passenger shipping.

On October 28, a German submarine torpedoed and sank two British steamships in heavy seas off the coast of Ireland.  One of them, S.S. Marina of the Donaldson Line, was an armed merchant ship with 49 Americans aboard, six of whom were drowned.  The attack appears to have been without warning, violating the Sussex Pledge.

General von Mackensen

War on the European continent continued on multiple fronts.  On October 24, after a two-day artillery barrage, the French Army at Verdun recaptured Fort Douaumont, taking 6,000 German prisoners.  On the Somme, the village of Le Sars, recently captured by the British, was lost to a German counterattack and then retaken five days later.  The Italian Army advanced in the Trentino, regaining the northern slopes of Mount Pasubio, and launched another offensive at the Isonzo River, capturing some 5,000 Austrian prisoners.  In the Balkans the offensive against Romania continued.  On October 19, German Army troops under the command of General August von Mackensen broke through the Romanian defenses at Dobrudja, and three days later entered the port city of Constanta, erasing the gains of the Romanian Army since it entered the war.

October 1916 – Selected Sources and Recommended Reading

Contemporary Periodicals:

American Review of Reviews, November and December 1916

New York Times, October 1916

Books and Articles:

A. Scott Berg, Wilson

Britain at War Magazine, The Third Year of the Great War: 1916
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1911-1918
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt

Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality

John Dos Passos, Mr. Wilson's War

David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922

Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life
Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History

Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume One: 1900-1933
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Volume III: The Challenge of War, 1914-1916

Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917

August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

Godfrey Hodgson, Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House

Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War

Keith Jeffrey, 1916: A Global History

Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography
John Keegan, The First World War
David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society
Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949
Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War

Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 1915-1916 

Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917

G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes
Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 

J. Lee Thompson, Never Call Retreat: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great War
Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram   
Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

The West Point Atlas of War: World War I

September 1916

This post marks the fifth anniversary of my monthly Centennial Countdown blog, in which I review the events of the month a hundred years ago.  All five years are available in the archive.  I started the Countdown with September 1911 not because there's anything special about that date but because September 2011 was when the idea occurred to me.  The project has been a learning experience for me as I hope it has been for you.  I appreciate your interest, and in particular the comments and suggestions (and occasional corrections) the blog has inspired.

#######

In September 1916, the presidential campaign in the United States begins in earnest.  The Democrats formally notify President Wilson of his nomination and a Democratic Congress swiftly passes his pro-labor railroad bill, averting a threatened nationwide rail strike.  Wilson tells suffragists that their cause will triumph with or without a constitutional amendment.  He administers a brutal public rebuff to an Irish-American critic and lays claim to the label "progressive."  David Lloyd George warns America not to interfere with Great Britain's war.  At the Somme, tanks are used in battle for the first time and Prime Minister Asquith's son is killed in action.  Romania may be rethinking its decision to join the Allies, as Bulgaria declares war and joins German forces in a two-pronged attack.

*****

The Democratic Party Notification Ceremony at Shadow Lawn

Traditionally, the presidential campaign begins in September.  This year the Republicans held their notification ceremony a month early to give their nominee, former New York Governor and Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, time for an extended campaign swing through the midwestern and western states.  The Democrats nominated President Wilson for reelection.  Because his normal duties keep him in the news and provide the occasion for regular speeches on questions of public policy, there was no need to hold the Democratic notification ceremony any earlier than usual.  This summer, without waiting for the formal start of the campaign, the president dedicated the new American Federation of Labor building, signed rural credits and child labor legislation, and spent much of the month of August in meetings with railroad executives and union leaders trying to avert a railroad strike.  At the end of August he asked Congress to resolve the railroad impasse by enacting the unions' demands into law.  On Saturday, September 2, his campaign began with the Democrats' official notification ceremony at Shadow Lawn, this year's "Summer White House" on the New Jersey shore. 

Representative Adamson

President Wilson is spending as much time as possible at Shadow Lawn.  While he was there for the notification ceremony, Congress passed the legislation he had requested, called the Adamson Act after its sponsor in the House of Representatives, Representative William C. Adamson (Dem., Ga.).  The president signed it into law the next day in his railroad car before leaving for Kentucky for a ceremony dedicating Abraham Lincoln's birthplace.  On September 4 his Republican opponent addressed a mostly pro-Wilson crowd in solidly Democratic Memphis, Tennessee, in which he attacked Wilson and the Democratic Congress for the Adamson Act, arguing that it sacrificed principle to political expediency and failed to stand up to special interests.  The Republicans are expected to make this a major issue.  Back in Washington on Tuesday, September 5, Wilson signed the bill a second time to foreclose any legal argument that it had not become law because it was signed on a Sunday.

Carrie Chapman Catt

President Wilson traveled to Atlantic City on September 8 to address the National American Woman Suffrage Association.  Attempting to recover ground lost to Hughes on the woman suffrage issue, he restated his support for woman suffrage without mentioning that, unlike Hughes, he opposed making it the law of the land by amending the Constitution.  Calling the woman suffrage movement "one of the most astonishing tides in modern history," he told his audience that they "need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood.  We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it, and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it."  Addressing this group was an unusual experience for him, he said, because unlike most of his trips to Atlantic City, this time he had come "not to fight anybody, but with somebody."  He concluded his address by saying "I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was a force behind you that will, beyond any peradventure, be triumphant and for which you can afford a little while to wait."  Apparently satisfied, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the president of the Association, replied to the president's speech by saying "you touched our hearts and won our fealty when you said you had come here to fight with us."

Jeremiah O'Leary

The American Truth Society was founded in 1912 to promote independence for Ireland.  Since the outbreak of the war in Europe, its membership has grown to include German-Americans and others who oppose what they perceive as the pro-Allied policy of the American government.  Its founder and president, Jeremiah O'Leary, sent a telegram to President Wilson on September 29 in which he accused the president of "truckling to the British Empire" and presidential "dictatorship over Congress, and warned that "your foreign policies, your failure to secure compliance with all American rights, your leniency with the British Empire, your approval of war loans, the ammunition traffic, are issues in this campaign."  Wilson replied the same day and sent copies of both telegrams to the newspapers.  His reply read: "Your telegram received.  I would feel deeply mortified to have you or anybody like you vote for me.  Since you have access to many disloyal Americans and I have not, I ask you to convey this message to them."

President Wilson at Shadow Lawn

In a speech at Shadow Lawn on September 30, Wilson attacked the Republican  Party and laid claim to the "progressive" label.  Addressing a group of young Democrats, he abandoned his usual professorial speaking style and adopted the fiery rhetoric of a political campaign.  He asked "If [the Republicans] are going to change our foreign policy, in what direction are they going to change it? There is only one choice against peace and that is war! The certain prospect of the success of the Republican Party is that we shall be drawn in one form or another into the embroilments of the European war."  He praised the Progressives of 1912 who left the Republican Party and said "the progressive voters of this country all put together outnumber either party."  He advised his listeners to "throw in your fortunes with the party of which the progressives have the control" and said "I am a progressive.  I do not spell it with a capital P, but I think my pace is just as fast as those who do."

A British View of the American Presidential Campaign

Reports circulated this month that Germany might suggest to President Wilson that he offer to act as mediator in an effort to bring an end to the war, and that Germany was also considering the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, thus revoking the "Sussex Pledge" made in May.  In an apparent effort to head off any move by President Wilson to involve himself in peace negotiations, British Secretary of State for War David Lloyd George gave an interview to an American correspondent on September 28.  He said "The fight must be to the finish -- to a knock-out ... Neutrals of the highest purposes and humanitarians with the best motives must know that there can be no outside interference at this stage.  Britain asked no intervention when she was not prepared to fight.  She will tolerate none now ...."  On the same day German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg spoke in the Reichstag, denouncing Great Britain as an unscrupulous foe against whom Germany was justified in using "all suitable weapons."

 A "Tank" in Action at Flers-Courcelette

A new weapon was used in battle for the first time on the Somme battlefield on September 15.  Allied forces attacked German positions south of the Albert-Bapaume road using "battle tanks," armored vehicles designed to carry firepower over barbed wire and through opposing trenches and machine guns.  Of the forty-nine machines that took part in the attack, ten were hit by artillery fire and fourteen suffered mechanical breakdowns or failed to advance for other reasons.  The others advanced over a mile, capturing High Wood and the nearby villages of Flers, Courcelette and Martinpuich.

Raymond Asquith

Among the Allied casualties in the battle of Flers-Courcelette was Lieutenant Raymond Asquith of the Guards Division, who was mortally wounded as he led his men forward..  After being shot, he nonchalantly lit a cigarette as he was carried off the field to encourage his men to continue the attack.  Asquith, a barrister who was regarded as a promising future politician before the war, was Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's eldest son.

 Zeppelin SL11

On the night of September 2-3 Germany mounted the largest Zeppelin raid of the war.  Sixteen airships attacked eastern England, of which ten reached London.  On the return flight one of them, the SL11, was attacked and brought down by a British aircraft piloted by Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson using the new incendiary bullets.  The fiery crash was witnessed for miles around, and thousands of Britons poured into the streets to celebrate the first destruction of a German airship on British soil.  Lieutenant Robinson was promoted to captain and awarded the Victoria Cross.

The Germans also have their aerial heroes.  One of them is Baron Manfred von Richthofen, recently transferred from the Eastern Front where he engaged in bombing missions against Russian targets.  On September 17 on the Western Front, he won his first aerial duel when he shot down a British aircraft flown by pilot Lieutenant Lionel Morris and observer Captain Tom Rees.  Both of the British aviators were killed.

Romanian Troops in Transylvania

Romania's successful prosecution of its war against Austria, which began on August 28 with an offensive through the Carpathian Mountain passes, has stalled.  Bulgaria declared war on September 1 and attacked across the Danube on September 3 as the German Army under the command of General von Falkenhayn attacked from the north and Bulgarian aircraft attacked Bucharest from the air.  On September 26 Falkenhayn advanced into Transylvania and recaptured Hermannstadt.

September 1916 – Selected Sources and Recommended Reading

Contemporary Periodicals:

American Review of Reviews, October and November 1916

New York Times, September 1916

Books and Articles:

A. Scott Berg, Wilson

Howard Blum, Dark Invasion, 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America

Britain at War Magazine, The Third Year of the Great War: 1916
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1911-1918
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt

Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality

John Dos Passos, Mr. Wilson's War

David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922

Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life
Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History

Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume One: 1900-1933
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Volume III: The Challenge of War, 1914-1916

Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917

August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

Godfrey Hodgson, Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House

Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War

Keith Jeffrey, 1916: A Global History

Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography
John Keegan, The First World War
David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society
Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949
Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War

Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 1915-1916 

Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917

G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes
Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 

J. Lee Thompson, Never Call Retreat: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great War
Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram   
Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

The West Point Atlas of War: World War I

August 1916

It's August 1916.  The second anniversary of the outbreak of the World War coincides with the beginning of the American presidential campaign.  Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican nominee, spends the month of August touring the western United States.  He is well-received in most states but encounters bitter intraparty infighting in California, where his attempt to avoid taking sides backfires.  Former President Roosevelt, meanwhile, overcomes his disappointment at being denied the nomination and comes out strongly for Hughes.  In the war, both sides suffer heavy losses on the Somme, an Italian battleship is destroyed by a mysterious explosion, and the Italian Army mounts another attack on the Isonzo.  Over a year after declaring war on Austria-Hungary, Italy declares war on Germany.  On the Eastern Front, the Brusilov Offensive makes gains in Galicia, and Romania enters the war on the side of the Allies.  Pro-Allied Greeks in Salonika proclaim a provisional government.  The Kaiser replaces his top army commander.  Great Britain tightens its blockade of Germany and hangs Sir Roger Casement for treason.  The United States agrees to buy the Danish West Indies (soon to be renamed the U.S. Virgin Islands) from Denmark.  President Wilson, frustrated in his attempt to mediate a railroad labor dispute, asks Congress to resolve it by legislation.

*****

 Charles Evans Hughes on His Western Tour

Attempting to get a head start on the 1916 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Charles Evans Hughes spent the month of August on a speaking tour of the Western United States.  He left New York shortly after his formal acceptance of the nomination at Carnegie Hall on July 31, but not before sending a telegram to Senator George Sutherland (Rep., Utah), a Senate sponsor of the proposed woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution, declaring his support for the measure.  Hughes sent the telegram on August 1 in response to a letter from Senator Sutherland asking that he clarify his position, since the Republican platform was silent on the issue.  That evening he elaborated on his position in an address to women's groups at the Hotel Astor.  This places him in opposition to (or at least ahead of) President Wilson, who recently announced his support for the enactment of woman suffrage by the states but repeated his opposition to a constitutional amendment.

Hughes began his western tour in Detroit.  After addressing a friendly crowd of some 10,000 working men, he attended a baseball game, where he shook hands with the players and chatted with Tigers center fielder Ty Cobb.  As his train continued to the west coast, Hughes delivered several speeches a day, addressing enthusiastic crowds at Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Fargo, Helena, Spokane, Tacoma, Seattle, and numerous stops in between, some scheduled and some not.  Continuing down the coast to California, he confronted the major challenge of his trip.  The feud between the Old Guard and Progressive branches of the Republican Party, resolved with varying degrees of lingering hostility in most states, is still white-hot in California.  As Hughes entered the state, the Republican primary campaign for the U.S. Senate was in its final days.  Governor Hiram Johnson, Roosevelt's running mate on the Progressive ticket in 1912 and the Progressive Party's choice for the Senate this year, was also seeking the Republican nomination.  He was strongly opposed by the regular Republicans, led by California's Republican National Committeeman William H. Crocker and Republican State Chairman Francis V. Keesling, who supported Johnson's opponent Willis Booth.  Hughes's visit, far from healing the party's rift, made things worse.  The representatives of the Old Guard insisted on taking the leading role in all the events at which Hughes appeared and the Progressives refused to attend under those circumstances.  Hughes tried to assume a stance of neutrality, but his unwillingness either to exclude the Republican Party leaders from his rallies or to compel the Progressives to attend them allowed the impression to build that he favored the Old Guard establishment.  The impression was heightened on August 19 when he was the guest of honor at a luncheon at the Commercial Club in San Francisco.  Waiters in the city were on strike, and the union refused to make an exception for the luncheon, so it was served by strike breakers.  The next day Hughes visited a hotel in Long Beach without knowing Johnson was present in the same building, leading Johnson and his followers to think he was being deliberately snubbed.  Hughes left California on August 29, the day of the Republican primary.  When the votes were counted, Johnson was an easy winner, leaving him in firm control of both the Republican and Progressive Parties in the state.  In the general election he will face the Democratic nominee, Mayor George S. Patton of San Marino, whose son is an Army officer serving in Mexico with General Pershing.

It seems that Hughes would have been well advised to wait until after the primary to campaign in California.  Governor Johnson still nominally supports Hughes, who like Johnson has both parties' nominations.  His support is at best lukewarm, however, and the rift in the state party is wider than ever, with Hughes on the wrong side of it despite his progressive credentials.  Hughes's visit to California, in short, may have done his presidential campaign more harm than good.

Roosevelt Speaking to Visitors at Sagamore Hill

Former President Roosevelt's presence at Hughes's notification ceremony on the last day of July was also his first appearance at a Republican Party event since he left the Party four years ago, and his presence arguably attracted more attention than the speech itself.  On August 31, as Hughes was on his way back from California, Roosevelt began his campaign for Hughes with a speech at City Hall Auditorium in Lewiston, Maine.  Scoffing at the Democrats' claim that President Wilson "kept us out of war," Roosevelt said that this was true only if one believed, as Wilson apparently does, that "deeds are nothing, and words everything."  He pointed out that more Americans had died in the undeclared war in Mexico than in the declared Spanish-American War, and that although more Americans were lost in the attack on Veracruz than in the capture of Manila, Wilson abandoned Veracruz while President McKinley did not abandon Manila.  The only difference between the undeclared war in Mexico and the declared war against Spain, Roosevelt argued, was that the former was "entered into pointlessly and abandoned ignobly."  After Pancho Villa's attack on Columbus, New Mexico, the president sent American troops into Mexico with the mission of capturing Villa "dead or alive," but that mission too has been abandoned.  Wilson, Roosevelt charged, is pursuing a Mexican policy "between feeble peace and feeble war."  Turning to the European war and Germany's invasion of Belgium, Roosevelt said that Wilson's policy of neutrality "in fact as well as in name, in thought as well as in action," has been compared to that of Pontius Pilate, but that this was "unjust to Pontius Pilate, who at least gently urged moderation on the wrongdoers."

A frequently heard theme in this campaign is criticism of "hyphenated Americans," meaning those Americans who are inclined to place their loyalty to their country of origin ahead of loyalty to the United States.  No candidate for public office wants to defend those kinds of "hyphenates," but neither does either party want to offend the substantial voting blocs of German- and Irish-Americans.  In Lewiston, Roosevelt avoided using the term "hyphenated," but denounced "professional German-Americans who in our politics act as servants or allies of Germany," adding that "I would condemn just as quickly English-Americans or French-Americans or Irish-Americans who acted in such manner."  "During the last two years," he said, "we have seen an evil revival in this country of non-American and anti-American division along politico-racial lines."  He blamed President Wilson who, he said, "has lacked the courage and the vision to lead this nation in the path of high duty."  Wilson's record, he said, has combined "grace in elocution with futility in action."  Against Wilson's record of "words unbacked by deeds or betrayed by deeds," Roosevelt pointed to Hughes's "rugged and uncompromising straightforwardness of character and action in every office he has held."

The Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto

The war in Europe continues without respite.  In the Allied offensive on the Somme, the British Fourth Army on August 8 attacked the village of Guillemont, on the right flank of the British sector.  The Germans counterattacked on August 18 from their positions in Leuze Wood.  Both attacks were turned back with heavy losses.  In the early morning hours of August 3, in the harbor of Taranto in the Adriatic, a magazine explosion sank the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci.  Austrian sabotage is suspected.  The next day Italy mounted its sixth offensive of the war on the Isonzo Front.  Two weeks later the Italian Army had advanced three to four miles along a fifteen-mile front and entered the town of Gorizia, but at the cost of some 50,000 casualties.  On August 27, Italy declared war on Germany.  On the Eastern Front, the Russian offensive commanded by General Brusilov resulted in the capture of Stanislau in Eastern Galicia on August 7.  Encouraged by the Russian success, Romania joined the war on the side of the Allies, declaring war on Austria-Hungary on August 27 and invading Hungary the next day.  By August 30 the Romanian Army had seized five Carpathian passes and occupied Kronstadt and Hermannstadt, two major cities in Transylvania.  The German Army got a new commander on August 28 when the Kaiser appointed Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg to the position of Chief of the General Staff, replacing General Erich von Falkenhayn.  In Greece, King Constantine remains determined to adhere to a neutrality favoring the Central Powers, while Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos wants Greece to join the Allies.  On August 30 Greek troops at Salonika loyal to Venizelos declared the formation of a provisional government and called on the Greek people to drive the Bulgarians out of Greece.  On August 18 the British government moved to tighten its blockade of Germany.  To solve the problem of shipments to neutral Sweden being reexported to Germany, all exports to Sweden will now be prohibited other than by special license.

 Sir Roger Casement On His Way to the Gallows

Great Britain is still feeling the aftershocks of the Easter Rising in Dublin.  The ringleaders were tried by court martial and executed by firing squad in Dublin shortly after the rebellion was put down.  (See the April and May 1916 installments of this blog.)  Sir Roger Casement, who was arrested on the eve of the uprising on the coast of Ireland after being put ashore by a German submarine with a cache of weapons and explosives, was taken to London where he was tried and convicted of treason in June.  Judicial appeals and diplomatic appeals for clemency were denied, and Casement, stripped of his knighthood, was hanged on August 3 in Pentonville Prison.  The brutal response to the Easter Rising has added one more source of friction to Britain's relations with the United States.

Signing of the Treaty

In New York on August 4, Secretary of State Lansing and Constantin Brun, the Danish minister to the United States, signed a treaty providing for the purchase by the United States of the Danish West Indies (St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John), a group of islands lying between the Atlantic and Caribbean east of Porto Rico.  The agreed price is $25,000,000.  The treaty also provides for protection of Danish business interests on the islands and for the United States' recognition of Denmark's exclusive interests in Greenland.  The islands occupy a strategically important position, and the harbor on St. Thomas is admirably suited for naval and military operations.  Perhaps of more importance, the acquisition of the islands by the United States will foreclose the possibility of their control by another European power.  The treaty will now be submitted to the United States Senate and the Danish Parliament for ratification.  Ratification by the United States is considered certain.  Ratification by Denmark, while probable, is somewhat less certain, due to possible opposition by Germany or other European nations with strategic interests in the West Indies.

President Wilson Addressing Congress

After trying unsuccessfully to mediate a labor dispute between the railroads and the railway unions, President Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress on August 29, asking for legislation giving the unions essentially everything they have wanted and been willing to go on strike for: a standard eight-hour day for railroad workers with mandatory overtime pay for additional hours worked.  The Adamson Act is opposed by most Republicans and some Democrats, who object to what they regard as an abject surrender to special interests and the threat of force.  It is the most radical legislation affecting labor relations that has ever been proposed in the United States, and coming in the midst of a hard-fought presidential campaign it will inevitably be a major political issue.  President Wilson and his supporters no doubt calculate that there are more votes to be gained by supporting labor's demands than by opposing them.

August 1916 – Selected Sources and Recommended Reading

Contemporary Periodicals:

American Review of Reviews, September and October 1916

New York Times, August 1916

Books and Articles:

A. Scott Berg, Wilson

Howard Blum, Dark Invasion, 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America

Britain at War Magazine, The Third Year of the Great War: 1916
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1911-1918
John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt

Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality

John Dos Passos, Mr. Wilson's War

David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922

Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life
Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History

Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume One: 1900-1933
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Volume III: The Challenge of War, 1914-1916

Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917

August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

Godfrey Hodgson, Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House

Paul Jankowski, Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War

Keith Jeffrey, 1916: A Global History

Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography
John Keegan, The First World War
David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society
Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949
Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War

Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 1915-1916 

Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910-1917

G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes
Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 

J. Lee Thompson, Never Call Retreat: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great War
Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram   
Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

The West Point Atlas of War: World War I