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King Constantine of Greece in military uniform.
On guard against saboteurs and espionage, troops guard the Boston & Maine Railroad bridge and the Hoosac Tunnel, in Adams, Massachusetts.
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.
Parted red curtains; in the center, in a trench, a German soldier, eyes closed, hands in overcoat pockets, leans against one side of a trench, smoking a pipe, his rifle resting on the other side of the trench. To the right, a Red soldier, red from red fur hat to red boots, holds two rifles. To the left, a Russian soldier casts away his his hat, backpack, and rifle. Across the bottom of the stage it reads, 1918. Operett: "Trockij", Operetta Trotsky. A watercolor postcard by Schima Martos.
Photograph from overhead of bomber, likely an Italian Caproni Ca.1, a two-engined biplane.
"On June 9 [1917] Jonnart arrived off Salamis; on the following evening French troops landed near the Corinth Canal and a mixed division entered Thessaly, encountering some resistance. Late on June 11 Constantine announced his intention of abdicating in favor of his second son, Alexander. On June 14, with Athens in French hands, Constantine left the country, and on June 27 Venizelos was received by King Alexander and became constitutionally Prime Minister of united Greece, committed to the Allied cause. It was Sarrail's one victory that summer." ((1), more)
"Section three of the Espionage Act contained a clause which could be interpreted by the courts to prove an effective curb on free speech in wartime: '. . . and whosoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct the recruiting of enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service of the United States, shall be punished with a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.'" ((2), more)
"On June 16 when the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets met in Petrograd under the presidency of Chkheidze, the delegates (248 Mensheviks, 285 Social Revolutionaries and 105 Bolsheviks) gave their approval for a new offensive against Germany and Austria. The Bolsheviks of course voted against the resolution, but they were shouted down, and Lenin in particular was met with jeers." ((3), more)
"On June 4, a declaration that I had submitted concerning Kerensky's preparation for an offensive at the front was read by the Bolshevik faction at the congress of the Soviets. We had pointed out that the offensive was an adventure that threatened the very existence of the army. But the Provisional government was growing intoxicated with its own speechifying. The ministers thought of the masses of soldiers, stirred to their very depths by the revolution, as so much soft clay to be moulded as they pleased. Kerensky toured the front, adjured and threatened the troops, kneeled, kissed the earth—in a word, clowned it in every possible way, while he failed to answer any of the questions tormenting the soldiers. He had deceived himself by his cheap effects, and, assured of the support of the congress of the Soviets, ordered the offensive." ((4), more)
"The men stay on the mountainside for eight days. When the skies clear on 18 June, the artillery opens up and the infantry attacks again, with air support from Caproni bombers. That afternoon the clouds return. The next day, men of the 52nd Division hack their way to the summit of Ortigara with daggers and bayonets, capturing a thousand prisoners and several guns. They hang on until the 25th, resisting bombardments and counter attacks, until stormtroopers sweep them off with gas and flame-throwers." ((5), more)
(1) The French government sent diplomat Charles Jonnart to Athens, capitol of Greece, as the Allied High Commissioner tasked with informing Greek King Constantine he was violating the Greek Constitution in assuming absolute authority in the absence of a Prime Minister. The King was pro-German, the Prime Minister he had dismissed twenty months earlier, Eleftherios Venizelos, pro-Entente. Venizelos had helped create the Salonica Front across northern Greece when he supported the landing of French and British troops in October, 1915, a move opposed by Constantine. French General Maurice Sarrail commanded Allied forces in Greece, and had launched his spring offensive at the beginning of May. A costly failure, it was halted by the end of the month.
The Gardeners of Salonika by Alan Palmer, page 140, copyright © 1965 by A. W. Palmer, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1965
(2) Slow to ask the Congress and the country to go to war, Woodrow Wilson would, once committed, do everything possible to win and to make opponents fall in line. The Espionage Act of 1917 was passed on June 15, 1917, the day after Wilson's address celebrating the second Flag Day, a commemoration he had proclaimed in 1916. On his 1917 speech he threatened, 'Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nations.' (World War I and America, p. 372) Wilson's Espionage Act would be enforced by his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.
Mr. Wilson's War by John Dos Passos, pp. 218–219, copyright © 1962, 2013 by John Dos Passos, publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
(3) Russian Minister of War Alexander Kerensky returned to Petrograd on June 14, 1917 after a three-week tour of the Russian Front to attend the All-Russian Congress of Soviet and Front Line Organizations. Since the February Revolution, the Russian army, which had suffered mutiny, enormous numbers of desertions, and incidents of officers being killed by their men, was beginning to stabilize as the Congress began, with increased support for the Provisional Government and for waging war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Vladimir Lenin was utterly opposed to the war. Many other Bolsheviks supported the war, but not the offensive that would soon begin.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, page 199, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
(4) Russian Minister of War Alexander Kerensky returned to Petrograd on June 14, 1917 after a three-week tour of the Russian Front to attend the All-Russian Congress of Soviet and Front Line Organizations. The declaration our author, Leon Trotsky, wrote was delivered on June 17, 1917 (June 4, Old Style.) The Russian army, which had suffered mutiny, enormous numbers of desertions, and incidents of officers being killed by their men in the months since the February Revolution, was beginning to stabilize when the Congress began, with increased support for the Provisional Government and for waging war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and other Bolsheviks voted against the resolution for Kerensky's offensive.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 311, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
(5) The Battle of Mount Ortigara, June 10 to 25, 1917, was fought on the Asiago Plateau, on Italy's northern border with Austria-Hungary by the Tirol. A year earlier, on May 14, 1916, the Austrians had launched the Asiago Offensive in the same region. Most of the land war between the two countries was fought on the Isonzo River, a rough and natural approximation of the border in Italy's northeast. Mount Ortigara is roughly 40 kilometers east of Trento, Italy (in 1917 Austria-Hungary) and 20 km north of Asiago. Mount Ortigara would end as another failed Italian offensive.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, pp. 259–260, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
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