Search by or
Search: Quotation Context Tags
Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies. The date on Wilson's desk calendar is October 8, 1916, a day on which German submarine U-53 sank five vessels — three British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian — off Nantucket, Massachusetts. One of the British ships was a passenger liner traveling between New York and Newfoundland.
1898 map of Petrograd, the Russian capital, Kronstadt Bay, and the Russian naval base of Kronstadt, from a German atlas. Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on Kronstadt Bay, an extension of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. Kronstadt was an important naval base. North and east of central Petrograd was the Vyborg district, site of many factories and housing for workers.
Austrian pencil sketch on blank field postcard from Virgil of the 15th air company (Fliegerkomp. 15). On the reverse is a drawing of a fruit basket signed Mesavogl (?) 1917.
Egypt and Sinai from Cram's 1896 Railway Map of the Turkish Empire.
Portrait postcard of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe of the Royal Navy. Appointed Commander of the British Home Fleets on August 2, 1914, Jellicoe was criticized for his leadership of the British fleet during the May 31, 1916 Battle of Jutland in which he failed to decisively defeat the German High Seas Fleet. He was made First Sea Lord later that year. The card was postmarked from Glasgow, Scotland, on January 7, 1915.
"The president released the message to the press on February [28, 1917], and, once convinced it was authentic (and not a British forgery), American newspapers were nearly unanimous in condemnation of the base plot. Interventionists were almost blind with rage. If Wilson did not go to war, Roosevelt remarked privately, 'I shall skin him alive.' Sending the Zimmermann telegram appeared to most Americans a cruel and hostile deed, but the episode probably has been exaggerated as a cause of American intervention. The telegram helped condition Americans to the likelihood, perhaps the wisdom, of war with Germany. It did not provoke Wilson to ask for a declaration of hostilities; that act did not come until a month afterward." ((1), more)
"On March 1, 1917, bread rationing was introduced and there was a run on the bakeries. This was followed by strikes in the metal works and women's demonstrations. But it was the sort of thing that had happened so often before and there was no general alarm in Petrograd, no real upsetting of the city's life. The first week of March slipped away uneasily but uneventfully, and no really effective precautions were taken beyond the dispatch of a small force of seamen to the capital and a certain tightening-up of discipline by the police." ((2), more)
"March 2nd.—A lot of us watched a clever piece of work by a German flier two or three miles off. He came over at a great speed, made for one of our sausage balloons, manœuvred to keep it between him and our Archie-guns, and set it alight. The observers leapt out. One came down safely; but pieces of the burning balloon fell on the parachute of the other and burned it, so he dropped, and died of his injuries; this was his second leap from a burning balloon." ((3), more)
"Having spent two days watching the line, and having decided that demolitions further south had clearly been ineffective, since trains were running in both directions more or less daily Newcombe opted for a three-pronged attack on the station. His guide, the young and well-respected Sharif Nasir, hoped that the attack would help persuade the numerous Arabs the Ottomans employed on the railway to desert. The Turks repelled the Arabs' direct assault on the station on 3 March, but demolitions on both sides of the station destroyed at least a mile of track and isolated one of the working parties. Reports that the Turks did not trust their mostly Arab railway workmen proved correct. The captives from this raid, reported Newcombe, were '8 most delighted prisoners.'" ((4), more)
"Visit from Admiral Jellicoe.A real sailor and a real Anglo-Saxon.He takes a serious view of the situation as a result of the submarine war. In February 500,000 tons were sunk, and against this between eight and ten enemy submarines were destroyed. It is extremely difficult to know when a submarine has been sunk. . . .The Germans are beginning to lack experienced officers." ((5), more)
(1) 'The message' President Woodrow Wilson released was the 'Zimmerman Telegram', from Alfred Zimmerman, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the German Empire, to Heinrich von Eckhardt, German Ambassador to Mexico, on January 19, 1917. It directed Eckhardt to invite Mexico to ally with Germany and Japan against the United States. On success, Mexico would be rewarded with its lost territories of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The British had originally intercepted the cable, but Zimmerman publicly admitted it was authentic. Roosevelt was former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt. (Wilson was a Democrat.) The date in the source of the citation, 'February 29' 1917, did not exist, 1916 having been a leap year.
The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War by Ross Gregory, pp. 124–125, copyright © 1971 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., publication date: 1971
(2) Events in Petrograd, Russia's capital, for the first days of March, 1917 (New Style) including the introduction of bread rationing on March 1. The bitterly cold winter of 1916–17 affected the combatant nations, and in Russia's case it severely hampered the transport system that supplied the cities. Factories and worker housing were located on the northeast side of the city, across the Neva River. The island of Kronstadt, west of the city in Kronstadt Bay, was home to a Russian naval base. March 8, 1917, was International Women's Day.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, page 136, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
(3) Extract from the entry for March 2, 1917 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. Observation balloons were tethered to the ground, had no means of propulsion, carried one or more observers in a gondola, and were well protected by both anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes. Some pilots became specialists, in most cases briefly, at 'balloon busting.' Unlike pilots who did not wear parachutes, balloon observers did.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 301, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
(4) On February 20, 1917, British Officer Herbert Garland and his guide Abdel Kerim conducted the first successful raid on the Turkish railway in Hejaz on the Red Sea coast of Arabia, derailing and destroying the irreplaceable locomotive. The railway line was well-constructed, well-guarded, and had few bridges. The raids focused on destroying the locomotives, which were irreplaceable during the war. The raid by Stewart Newcombe and Sharif Nasir showed the Turkish railway was vulnerable on multiple fronts.
Setting the Desert on Fire by James Barr, pp. 115–116, copyright © 2008, 2006 by James Barr, publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., publication date: 2009
(5) Entry from the war diary of Albert, King of the Belgians, March 4, 1917, on his visit from Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Great Britain's First Sea Lord. Germany had resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1 in an attempt to starve Britain into submission. 500,000 tons was a significant increase over the average of 320,000 in the preceding four months, a period in which the Allies sank only ten submarines in all theaters. Jellicoe overestimates the Allies' success in destroying U-boats. Halpern, in his A Naval History of World War I, writes that, 'in February, March, and April the Germans lost only nine submarines' (p. 341).
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, pp. 156–157, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
1 2 Next
