Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
A woman tramway worker operating a manual switch, changing the direction of her trolley. As men entered or were conscripted into the military, women took on unaccustomed roles.
Embossed postcard of the flag and coins of Mexico, with fixed exchange rates for major currencies including the German Mark, Austro-Hungarian Krone, British Shilling, Latin Monetary Union Franc, Dutch Guilder, Russia Ruble, Scandinavian Monetary Union Krone/Krona, and United States Dollar. Includes images for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 25 and 50 Centavo coins, and 1, 5, and 10 Peso coins.
Embossed postcard of the flag and coins of Russia, with fixed exchange rates for major currencies including Germany, Austria-Hungary, England, the Latin Monetary Union, Netherlands, and the United States of America. The Russian Ruble equaled 100 Kopeks. Tsar Nicholas II is on the obverse of most of the gold and silver coins; Tsar Alexander III is on the 7 1/2 ruble gold piece.
The heck with the Zeppelins!Screw the Zeppelins!A French soldier and his lover couldn't care less about the Zeppelin raid in progress. It's hard to tell if he is holding a cigarette in his right hand, or giving a fig to the Zeppelin.
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Tsaritsa Alexandra, their four daughters and son, a portrait of the Russian imperial family in 'An Ambassador's Memoirs' by Maurice Paléologue, the last French Ambassador to the Russian Court.
"The woman chauffeur has reached the height of her ambitions — she is to be allowed at last to drive the royal mail vans. A start will be made in London next Monday, beginning with the eleven o'clock night shift, when six women drivers, wearing the uniform of the Women's Volunteer Reserve, will drive the one-ton lorries which convey the outgoing mails from the G.P.O. to the railway stations, where they will wait for the incoming mails. The six are only the pioneers of a large number of women drivers wanted to drive the royal mail vans, in order to release as many as possible of the 300 men now employed. The first women drivers of H.M. Stationary Office wear uniforms of a military character." ((1), more)
"On the first of February we intend to begin submarine warfare unrestricted. In spite of this it is our intention to endeavor to keep neutral the United States of America.If this attempt is not successful, we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico:That we shall make war together and together make peace. We shall give general financial support and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement.You are instructed to inform the President of Mexico of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the United States, and suggest that the President of Mexico, on his own initiative, should communicate with Japan suggesting adherence at once to this plan . . ." ((2), more)
"[Tsar] Nicholas pressed his head between his hands. 'Is it possible,' he asked, 'that for twenty-two years I tried to act for the best and that for twenty-two years it was all a mistake?'The question was astonishing. It was completely beyond the bounds of propriety for Rodzianko to answer, yet, realizing that it had been asked honestly, man to man, he summoned his courage and said, 'Yes, Your Majesty, for twenty-two years you followed a wrong course.'" ((3), more)
"I found spirits in the village greatly changed since my last home leave. The disaster in Romania, the dispatch of numerous forces to Salonika, the imminent call-up of the conscript class of 1918, the numbers of those exempted from service who had escaped the net of the recruitment boards, the shortages of sugar, coal, and transport—all these had turned a sunny optimism into somber pessimism, as eyes began to open to how things really were." ((4), more)
"In the freezing cold of 9 January the streets of Petrograd were filled with 145,000 strikers. They were commemorating the tragedy of Bloody Sunday in 1905, when the priest Father Georgi Gapon had led 200,000 men, women and children through the snow to the Winter Palace. The people he led had wanted political rights and an end to the war with Japan. Dressed in their Sunday best they had carried aloft pictures of the Tsar but he rewarded their protest with bullets — among the 1,240 casualties 370 were killed. And now, 12 years on, the people at least knew where they stood. Their banners read 'Down with the Romanovs!' — gone were the portraits of 'the Tsar of all the Russias'. Now the red flags fluttered in the bitter breeze." ((5), more)
(1) January 18, 1917 item from the Daily Sketch, a British tabloid published in Manchester, on the breaking of another workplace barrier to women.
The Virago Book of Women and the Great War by Joyce Marlow, Editor, page 242, copyright © Joyce Marlow 1998, publisher: Virago Press, publication date: 1999
(2) Beginning of the 'Zimmerman Telegram' dated Berlin, January 19, 1917, a message from Dr. Alfred Zimmerman, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the German Empire, to Heinrich von Eckhardt, German Ambassador to Mexico. The telegram, encrypted and delivered over American cables, was intercepted and decrypted by British Intelligence. Japan was allied against Germany, and had seized, in 1914, some of Germany's colonies in Asia including Tsingtau. The telegram was sent from Berlin to Johann von Bernstorff, German Ambassador to the United States, on January 16, and forwarded to Eckhardt on the 19th.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. V, 1917, p. 43, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(3) Part of an exchange between Russian Tsar Nicholas II and Michael Rodzianko, President of the Russian Duma, on January 20, 1917. In the last day's of the Russian Empire, Nicholas was given numerous warnings his throne was at risk. The assassination of Grigori Rasputin at the end of December 1916 struck at the heart of the royal family. British Ambassador George Buchanan warned the Tsar, on January 12, that most of the Russian army could not be relied on to defend the dynasty. Rodzianko focused on removing the Empress Alexandra, who was widely perceived to be pro-German, from all decisions and sending her to the Tsar's Black Sea estate.
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie by Robert K. Massie, page 395, copyright © 1967, renewed 1995 by Robert K. Massie, publisher: Random House, publication date: 2011
(4) Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, who came home to his village in Languedoc in southern France on January 21, 1917. The Allies had opened the Salonica Front in 1915 in a failed attempt to aid Serbia. By early 1916 there were over 500,000 Allied soldiers on the front. Romania entered the war on the side of the Allies in August, 1916, and were quickly defeated, the capital of Bucharest falling on December 6. The remains of the Serbian army was in the Allied line in the Balkans. What was left of Romania's army was in Moldavia, in the country's northeast, holding the front with the Russians. German troops held much of France's coal fields in northern France. The coal shortage was made worse due to rationing, a very cold winter, and its diversion to military uses. The shortage of coal and military demands of course affected transport.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 291, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
(5) The bitterly cold winter of 1916–17 strained all the combatant nations, perhaps none more so than Russia. The cold and a coal shortage prevented transport of adequate food supplies to the cities including the Russian capital of Petrograd. Russian Tsar Nicholas II was Nicholas Romanoff, autocrat and Tsar of all Russias. He hoped to pass the autocracy on to his son intact.
1917: Russia's Year of Revolution by Roy Bainton, page 50, copyright © Roy Bainton 2005, publisher: Carroll and Graf Publishers, publication date: 2005
1 2 Next
