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A large German bomber, capable of bombing England. The plane is powered by two engines, and holds a crew of three with a pilot and front and rear gunners. The plane is likely a Gotha bomber, originally built by Gothaer Waggonfabrik, then built under license by Siemens-Schukert Werke and Luft-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (LVG). Note the ground crew pushing on the lower wing and the men holding the tail up as the plane is moved backwards. Sanke postcard number 1040.
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.
"Brandenburg and his crews were awed at the breath-taking expanse of London stretching out in all directions below them like a vast sea. The airmen could see Tower Bridge casting its shadow on the Thames, the gray-walled Tower, the majestic dome of St. Paul's—all 'sharply outlined in the flaring sunlight'. And on the Thames there were ships 'that looked like toys'. . . .Within a two-minute period, beginning at 11.40 A.M., seventy-two bombs fell within one mile of [Liverpool Street Station]." ((1), more)
"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." ((2), 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.'" ((3), 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." ((4), 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." ((5), more)
(1) On June 13, 1916, twenty Gotha G IV bombers of the England Geschwader, the England Squadron, under the command of Captain Ernst Brandenburg, took off from Belgium to bomb London. Unlike the Zeppelin raiders who attacked at night, the bombers flew during the day. Fourteen Gothas reached London, flying at an altitude of three miles. After the attack on Liverpool St. Station, six bombed Southwark, then Poplar in the East End, where a bomb hit the Upper North Street Schools killing sixteen children, only two of them over five years old. The raiders killed 162 and wounded 432, the most casualties of any raid on Britain during the war, and far deadlier than any Zeppelin raid.
The Sky on Fire by Raymond H. Fredette by Raymond H. Fredette, pp. 55–56, copyright © 1966, 1976, 1991 by Raymond H. Fredette, publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press, publication date: 1991
(2) 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
(3) 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
(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. 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
(5) 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
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