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Sleepless Nights, by Kriwub. France standing by her bed, arm raised against a giant German soldier watching her through the window. A Zeppelin passes in the distance. Someone has written the years of sleepless nights in blue: 19-14-15-16-17 and perhaps -18.
Chosen Boy, a 1918 watercolor by Paul Klee. From Paul Klee: Early and Late Years: 1894-1940. © 2013 Moeller Fine Art
Photograph of two German soldiers in spiked helmets and fur coats, standing in the snow, dated January 24, 1918. A short translation from the reverse: “. . . The Russians are already gone. They are right. We should do the same . . . " (translation, Thomas Faust). © John Shea
Nautical chart of the Kiel Fjord on the Baltic Sea, leading to Kiel, one of the home ports of the German Baltic Fleet. Just north of Kiel is the entrance to the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, which crosses the Jutland Peninsula in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, and carries traffic to the mouth of the River Elbe on the North Sea.
England's Distress: Postcard map of England and Ireland with the restricted zone Germany proclaimed around the islands, showing the ships destroyed by submarine in the 12 months beginning February 1, 1917.
"— the 23rd. Still waiting for the great offensive. 'They give us the programme and the date as if it were a special performance at the Opéra,' writes Anatole France from Antibes. We are also expecting an air raid on Paris. The newspapers themselves are reviving this fear by the renewed warnings. . . .— the 23rd. An announcement has been made of the restriction of the bread ration to ten ounces. All preceding orders have been cancelled. There is fear of an outbreak of discontent among the working classes. Workmen and farm-hands consume two pounds of bread a day. Cakes have also been abolished, but the tea-rooms substitute cream buns and croquettes, which use up other equally scarce materials, such as butter, milk, and sugar." ((1), more)
"I know that I shall meet my fateSomewhere among the clouds above;Those that I fight I do not hate,Those that I guard I do not love;My country is Kiltartan Cross,My countrymen Kiltartan's poor;No likely end could bring them lossOr leave them happier than before.Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,A lonely impulse of delightDrove to this tumult in the clouds;I balanced all, brought all to mind,The years to come seemed waste of breath,A waste of breath the years behindIn balance with this life, this death." ((2), more)
"The Russians are already gone. They are right. We should do the same." ((3), more)
"On 25 January [1918] the workers of the Torpedo Yard in Kiel walked off their jobs to protest the Navy's decision to send several of their 'foremen' to the front as punishment for public demonstrations for food. Within 72 hours, the number of strikers had reached 24 000. By 28 January they were joined by tens of thousands of workers in Berlin; 2 days later the police estimated the number at 185 000 from 299 factories. Daily food consumption had fallen from 3000 calories in peacetime to just 1400 by 1918." ((4), more)
"January 26th [1918].—The last day of two monotonous weeks of 3-in-the-morning réveillé and doing uncongenial navvy work, although there was plenty of interest, much of it painful, in the political game in which the conduct of the war was floundering. In notes and letters I made seven references to politics during the fortnight. The peace feelers, which began to be protruded in 1916, had been protruded further and more actively during recent weeks. . . . In Eastern Europe Germans and Bolsheviks split hairs over Poland and the Baltic lands. At home Mr. Lloyd George, as Prime Minister, found unlimited scope for his genius for intrigue, and for short-sighted deals and expedients. The wretched Irish-Ulster imbroglio was up again; there were fresh talks along old lines, and it was being said that the Prime Minister had tried to diddle both sides." ((5), more)
(1) Entries for January 23, 1918, from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government writing in Paris. Corday wrote frequently about the luxury available in the French capital that was denied the less fortunate and the soldiers at the front. Since the Bolshevik Revolution in November, 1917, and the armistice and subsequent peace negotiations between Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, the Allies had been anticipating a German offensive in the west bolstered by forces moved from the Eastern Front. Anatole France was a French poet, novelist, and journalist, and a friend of Corday who appears numerous times in Corday's diary. Antibes is on the French Mediterranean coast.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, pp. 309–310, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
(2) 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death' by William Butler Yeats. Major Robert Gregory, the son of Lady Gregory, died January 23, 1918.
The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by William Butler Yeats, page 135, copyright © 1983, 1989 by Anne Yeats, publisher: Collier Books MacMillan Publishing Company
(3) Part of the message on the back of a photograph of two German soldiers in spiked helmets and fur coats, standing in snowy woods, holding their rifles with bare hands, dated January 24, 1918. After Russia's February 1917 Revolution, which abolished the death penalty in the army, loosened the Army's command structure, and promised the transfer of land to the peasants, many soldiers simply left the front. This intensified after the failed Kerensky Offensive in July and the subsequent suspension of all Russian offensive actions. The Bolshevik Revolution in November promised an end to the war, and an armistice and peace negotiations between Russia and the Central Powers followed swiftly. In January, 1918, however, the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk were at a stalemate. Translation by Thomas Faust, ebay's Urfaust.
We should go too, publisher: Unknown, publication date: 1918-01-24
(4) Workers in Austria-Hungary and then Germany went on strike in January, 1918 as hunger and war-weariness bit. Hopes for an end to the war that arose from the December, 1917 armistice between Russia and the Central Powers were dashed on January 12 when German military representative General Max Hoffman made it clear Germany would not evacuate occupied territory on the Eastern Front. Anticipating revolutionary activity across war-weary Europe, Russian representative Leon Trotsky played for time. Kiel, the German Empire's major port on the Baltic Sea, was connected to the North Sea by the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal.
The First World War: Germany and Austria Hungary 1914-1918 by Holger H. Herwig, pp. 378–379, copyright © 1997 Holger H. Herwig, publisher: Arnold, publication date: 1997
(5) Excerpt from the entry for January 26, 1918 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J. C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. Negotiations in Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers raised hopes on both sides that peace would come soon, but in late January the talks were at a stalemate, in part over Germany's refusal to evacuate occupied Russian territory. There were attempts to extend conscription in Ireland from Ulster to the rest of the island, highly unlikely in the aftermath of the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 435–436, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
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