100 Years Ago: Quotes from June 1914

Pressure from the southern Slavs is bound to increase.
The Nation, 4 June 1914

Thunderstorm in London

The giant storm [of 14 June] that broke over South London was a phenomenon quite outside the previous experience of any who lived through it.  At high noon, day became night — illuminated by sheets of blood red lightning and accompanied by a racketting thunder seemingly orchestrate by a malevolent intent on an evil outcome to the excesses of Nature's power. . . In the area of Wandworth Common eleven people were struck by lightning. Seven of them died.

Newspaper Accounts

Released in Book Form June 1914

Iron

Guns,
Long, steel guns,
Pointed from the war ships
In the name of the war god.
Straight, shining, polished guns,
Clambered over with jackies in white blouses,
Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth,
Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses,
Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties.

Shovels,
Broad, iron shovels,
Scooping out oblong vaults,
Loosening turf and leveling sod.

I ask you
To witness--
The shovel is brother to the gun.
Carl Sandburg, published in Poetry Magazine, June 1914

We stand for the Reality of the Present — not for the sentimental future. . . We need the unconsciousness of Humanity — their stupidity, animal-ism and dreams.  We believe in no perfectibility except our own.

Vorticist Manifesto, Blast, No. 1, 20 June 1914

But it is too late. The attempts at the suppression of a feeble effort like THE WOMAN REBEL only add fuel to the fire, only strengthen our cause, create new interest, and rejuvenate the revolutionary spirit in women. It is altogether too late to attempt a suppression of this idea of free bodies among working women.

If THE WOMAN REBEL were allowed to publish with impunity elementary and fundamental truths concerning personal liberty and how to obtain it, the birth control movement would become a movement of tremendous power in the emancipation of the working class. The attempted suppression is thus primarily a blow at the entire working class of America, intended for no other purpose than to retard the economic and spiritual emancipation of working men, women and children. . . Nothing will cause the downfall of parasitic institutions like the Church, the State, and Big Business more than these attempts at suppression.

Margaret Sanger,  "Suppression," The Woman Rebel, Vol. 1, No. 4, June 1914

Published June 1914

The [recent economic] troubles are not political, but social. Human history and experience teach that things go around in circles. We are now in a part of the circle which I shall not endeavor to classify. We are troubled with an epidemic of emotion among people who don’t stop to reflect. Radical doctrines are merely a sign of the times. Some day there will be a further swing around the circle and then you will see a change.

Senator George Edmunds (Vermont), Interview, 25 June 1914

What is the good of your speeches? I come to Sarajevo on a visit, and I get bombs thrown at me. It is outrageous.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Sarajevo City Hall, 28 June 1914