Old News reads newspaper archives from about 100 years ago, and 100 years ago today, the Arkansas Legislature was two weeks away from allowing women to vote in political primaries.
Although that victory for women's rights rode a rising tide, opposition to suffrage did not vanish when Gov. Charles Brough signed the primary voting law March 6, 1917, before a sea of happy suffragists in the Marion Hotel.
Suffrage remained big news throughout 1917, much too big for these columns to cover with justice, however overlong and tediously I write. Luckily for us all, a new website, ualrexhibits.org/suffrage, provides pages and pages of illustrated detail -- with context -- on the campaign for women's voting rights in Arkansas.
Hosted by the Center for Arkansas History and Culture at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the site is a one-stop shop with faces and biographies, narratives, cartoons and documents from one of the most important political campaigns in state history.
But today's Old News brings us a campaign of a different kind. While women were making their voices heard in February 1917, the Great War in Europe threatened to drown them out.
SUBMARINES!
Oh, man. Although World War I brought some positive changes, I dread the news that awaits us in the newspaper archives of 1917. One, because even though Arkansas' casualties were relatively low, according to the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, 2,183 Arkansans died and 1,751 were injured. Troop movements at home spread the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed about 7,000 Arkansans.
And two, I dread what lies ahead because some of you good readers know your military history very, very well, better than I ever could, and you have telephones and email accounts and are not afraid to use them.
But to paraphrase a cousin, "Don't fret about those torpedoes. Full speed ahead."
By January 1917, the Allies (Britain, France, Russia, Italy) were getting the best of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria) in Europe's Great War. The United States remained on the sidelines, biting its lip in a neutral fashion.
The Allied naval blockade had Kaiser Wilhelm II's surface fleet largely bottled up in German ports. Food and supplies to Germany were scarce, and meanwhile, the German land force was stuck in France, outnumbered.
Wilhelm had a technologically brilliant submarine fleet that could give him deadly advantage against the otherwise superior British Royal Navy. But he was holding back from attacks on vessels that bore the flags of neutral nations -- some of which helped the Allies.
After notorious submarine attacks in 1915 slaughtered noncombatants (main example, the British ocean liner Lusitania), President Woodrow Wilson had warned the kaiser he could not stand idle in the face of unrestricted submarine warfare, and Wilhelm had listened. But now the kaiser's military leaders advised him it was all-out U-boat war or defeat.
The kaiser's order, signed Jan. 31, unleashed more than 100 subs to attack at will, and they sank ships right and left.
Within the week, Wilson severed diplomatic ties with Germany; and a German submarine sank the Housatonic, a merchant ship bearing the American flag.
Housatonic had been on its way to Liverpool from Galveston, Texas. Captain and crew survived, and severing ties is not a declaration of war. But a Rubicon had been crossed.
Arkansas Gazette front pages conveyed the seriousness of developments as U.S. Ambassador James Gerard and 202 other Americans left Berlin by train Feb. 11, bound for Switzerland.
Switzerland's ambassador became a go-between as the kaiser sent Wilson placating offers.
Here's an interesting story from the Feb. 13, 1917, Gazette. To understand it, we need to know that a German raider, the Moewe, in December had captured the Yarrowdale, a British freighter, in the Atlantic. Loaded with 400 prisoners, the "prize ship" craftily slipped past the Allied blockade and into the port Swinemuende (now the Polish port Swinoujscie).
Among the POWs were conflicting numbers of Americans. Stored in a prison camp, these men became a bargaining chip.
72 Americans Are Held As Hostages
"Washington, Feb. 12. -- Notification of the retention in Germany of the 72 American sailors brought in as prisoners on the prize ship Yarrowdale was given to the State Department today by Dr. Paul Ritter, Swiss minister here, together with an inquiry as to the status of the crews of the German war-bound ships in American harbors.
"Germany, Dr. Ritter said, has decided to hold the Yarrowdale prisoners until she has definite assurance that German crews in American harbors will not be held or imprisoned.
"This development was amazing to the American government. Officials here had come to the conclusion that the early reports which misled the German government as to the treatment of German crews here had been disposed of by the forwarding of complete details. As this included President Wilson's announcement that German ships would not be seized now or in case of war, and full information about the fair attitude of the government toward the German sailors, officials cannot understand what report could have so suddenly changed Germany's attitude. ...
"Eventual release of the Yarrowdale prisoners is regarded as assured, but an urgent protest against their reimprisonment will be made at once. ...
"Though the Yarrowdale came into port December 31, its arrival was not reported for military reasons until January 19. Following reports that there were Americans on board, three direct inquiries were made, culminating in a list of 64 American sailors held prisoner in [Westphalia], made public by the State Department only a few hours before President Wilson announced the severance of relations with Germany. Immediately afterward the announcement of protest against their imprisonment and demand for their release was given out at the State Department. The next day came word of their release and it was supposed until today that they would go out of Germany with the other Americans."
But the prisoners weren't released until March 8. Germany claimed that typhus in the camp required a quarantine. American newspapers, including the Gazette, reported the Americans as mistreated.
What became of the Yarrowdale? Renamed the Leopard and outfitted as a raider, on March 16 it tried to sneak back out to sea disguised as a Norwegian merchant. Allied warships sank it with all hands aboard.
Next week: Wild Scene Is Enacted
ActiveStyle on 02/13/2017