The Saga of the Irish Canadian Rangers in the Great War

By James Patton

At the start of the First World War, some Canadians wondered how their large population of Irish immigrants would respond to the Dominion’s call for volunteers. Irish Nationalist sentiment was fairly widespread and it was thought that many had left the homeland to avoid British domination. The answer came just a month after the declaration of war when a committee was formed in Montréal to create an all-Irish regiment in the Canadian militia. Behind this was a 36-year-old lawyer, H.J. Trihey (1877–1942). A graduate of Loyola College (Montréal), he had captained the Montréal Shamrocks team that won the Stanley Cup in 1899 and 1900.

The committee received approval at the end of August. Trihey was named the commanding officer and he designated the unit as the 55th Regiment, The Irish Canadian Rangers. Its badges would be distinctly Irish, with a shamrock on the cap and a harp on the collar. The Regiment specified “Irish descent” as a required qualification, but religion wasn’t specified.

Harry Trihey

There was another distinctive feature about Trihey’s Rangers: as militia they would not be sent overseas. The response to the first recruiting campaign was positive and the four authorized companies were soon filled. However, only the Adjutant, Major John Long, had any military service (Trihey had attended an officers school in Halifax). In mid-1915 the Rangers contributed “C” company, 60th (Victoria Rifles of Canada) battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). This company was commanded by a Ranger, Dublin-born Capt. E.H. Knox-Lee, and. Major Long became the 60th ’s adjutant.

The Rangers also supplied volunteers to the Montréal Home Guard, a “composite” battalion made up of men from local militia regiments who had not volunteered for the CEF. These men guarded strategic infrastructure like locks on canals. In the winter of 1915-16 the Rangers were ordered to raise a whole overseas battalion, to be called the 199th Irish Canadian Rangers. All those willing to serve were discharged from the militia and enlisted in the CEF.

First they needed officers. Trihey was made a a lieutenant colonel and put in charge. He drew almost all of the officers from his 55th Militia Regiment. Most were Irish Catholics but born in Montréal. Four were also Loyola "old boys" They came from business, finance and the professions. Only one had any military experience, the now-Major Knox-Lee, who had returned from service in the 60th CEF.

The next task was recruiting and training NCO’s. There were many volunteers; most of whom had prior military experience, some in Imperial service, one with the U.S. volunteers in the Philippines and one even claimed to have fought with Pancho Villa. By the spring of 1916, the 199th was ready to begin general recruiting. The plan was to emphasize that all the Irish in Canada lived in unity. A recruiting poster featured a map of Ireland emblazoned with “All in One.” The Montréal Gazette said “that the 199th Irish Rangers were the Canadian exemplification of this new United Ireland.” This ideal was expressed by the motto “Quis Separabit,” (Who Shall Separate Us? ) which was shared with many other Irish formations, originating in 1793 with the 88th Foot, known as the Connaught Rangers.

By coincidence, the 199th began their recruiting on 24 April, Easter Monday, 1916, the very day of the Dublin uprising. For the next three months, while Irish Canadians were being called on to enlist, the newspapers carried stories of the uprising, its brutal suppression, of martial law and executions.

There was also a newsworthy scandal: the Quartermaster was caught selling the men’s civvies instead of storing them, and also embezzling the proceeds from the sale of leftover food. So, after all of this bad publicity, six month’s of effort had yielded a battalion that was still 100 men short, and a Montréal paper declared, “it has been a complete failure.” With the ranks not full, the recruiters had to range farther afield, stalking the Richelieu and Châteauguay valleys, the Eastern Townships and even places in Ontario.

This last move piqued the Mayor of Toronto, who declared that anyone from his city who joined a Montréal battalion would lose the insurance policy paid for by his city. In August 1916 the 199th gained a royal patron, an honor shared by only five other Canadian formations. The Prussian-born HRH Princess Louise, the Duchess of Connaught (1860–1917), the wife of the Governor-General (and the mother of THE Princess Patricia of the Canadian Light Infantry regiment) bestowed the honor. The 199th became The Duchess of Connaught’s Own Irish Canadian Rangers, thus acquiring distinctive new insignia. The Duchess herself embroidered the flag, and when it was presented, the salute was taken by the Duke (the third son of Queen Victoria). His concluding message was “You have one of the finest battalions I have ever reviewed in Canada.”

Despite the royal patronage, the spiffy badges and the Duke’s rhetoric, the battalion still couldn’t get up to full strength. The decline in recruiting seen in Montréal in the last half of 1916 was experienced in every military district of Canada. Many men who wanted to fight had already joined up. Others were distracted by the rising industrial wages of a war economy. Many of the volunteers were in poor physical condition; after three months of recruiting, about 1,000 men who had tried to enlist with the 199th had failed to pass the medical boards. In some weeks as many as three out of four were rejected.

Nevertheless, at the end of November, the 199th was inspected prior to deployment. The Inspector-General’s report didn’t echo the governor-general’s glowing praise. The 199th was 200 men short and 66 were absent without leave. Lt. Col. Trihey was allowing a company sergeant major who was under arrest to parade under arms. The report’s conclusion: “On the whole the unit is only fit for drafts [backfill] and will require a lot of work to make them fit at that.”

Despite this, the 199th still prepared to depart. In a farewell address, their honorary Colonel, the Minister of Justice C.J. Doherty (1865–1931), repeated the recruiting campaign theme, “you show that in this country all races and creeds live together in amity.” It was decided to show off this feature of Canada in the 199th’s first and only "tour" of duty overseas. It was literally a tour—of Ireland. The Canadian-born British Colonial Secretary, Andrew Bonar Law (1858–1923), requested it of Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden (1854–1937), “With a view of helping recruiting in Ireland.” After the  Easter Rising and its aftermath, Irish recruitment had collapsed and, of course, conscription was off-limits. Some in Whitehall thought that Irishmen might be more receptive to serving in the Canadian Army, since it was more egalitarian than the British,  and the Canadian pay scale was very attractive—CD$1.10 per day—over four times the value of the British one shilling per day. Some estimate that 300 to 400 Irishmen did volunteer for the Canadian Army as a result of the parades.

The 199th left Halifax on 21 December 1916 and arrived in Liverpool on New Year’s Eve. During the voyage Trihey turned thirty-nine and his residence in Westmount burned down, and that was not to be the only bad news. The 199th had been assigned to the 15th Brigade in the new 5th Division, but on 5 January 1917, at the urging of Maj. Gen. Arthur Currie, the decision was made to stand down the 5th Division, and the 199th was assigned to the 23rd (Reserve) battalion CEF, which backfilled the 5th Brigade, 2nd Division. For its brief life thereafter, the 23rd would carry the honor The Duchess of Connaught’s Own.

The Rangers had not been singled out, but Trihey and Doherty believed theirs to be a special case, since the former Minister of Militias Sir Sam Hughes (1853–1921) had promised them that the 199th would serve together with its own officers, but the decision stood. Trihey and his second in command then resigned and Lieut. Col. John O’Donahoe, a veteran officer with 15 months of service with the 87th CEF, was appointed commander.

The Irish Rangers Marching in Cork

However, the recruiting tour of Ireland was still on. From 25 January to 2 February 1917, the 199th visited Dublin, Belfast, Armagh, Cork, and Limerick. Splendidly housed, the men were feted everywhere by the municipal corporations and local dignitaries.

They were inspected by the Lord-Lieutenant Ivor Guest, Baron Wimbourne (1873-1939) and blessed by Cardinal Michael Logue (1840–1924), the Catholic Primate of Ireland. The seemingly endless orations repeated the themes of unity and sacrifice for a just cause. Here is one example, from Sir James Gallagher( 1860–1925), the Lord Mayor of Dublin:

It is a great gratification to me to see such a fine body of men who have responded voluntarily to the call of duty and donned the uniform of the King in order to defend those rights and liberties which we so dearly love. I understand you are Irish by birth or descent, and that you embrace amongst your ranks men of all shades of religious and political opinion. You have set a fine example of what Irishmen can do if they only come together for one cause — the cause of liberty and humanity.

On 14 March the 199th lost their royal patron. To many her death was the symbolic end   f the 199th, which had been the only all-Irish battalion in the CEF, compared to 47 Scottish battalions, although many weren’t exclusively populated with Scots. It is reported in a contemporaneous writing that men who began service with either the 55th or the 199th were awarded one Military Cross five Distinguished Conduct Medals and 36 Military Medals, but I can’t verify this. The 55th Regiment was re-designated in the militia as The Irish Canadian Rangers on April 1st , 1920, and the battle honors Hill 70, Ypres 1917 and Amiens were bestowed due to the first battalion, which perpetuated the 199th .

The colors of the 199th were eventually laid up in the Loyola College Chapel (now part of Concordia University) in 1933. The Irish Canadian Rangers were disbanded in 1936.

Sources include:

Canada to Ireland: The Visit of the Duchess of Connaught’s Own, Drysdale, A.M., London 1917; The Montreal Irish and the Great War by Burns, Robin B. (Bishop’s University), CCHA Historical Studies, 52 (1985), 67-81, from the University of Manitoba website; Digital Collections, McGill University Library. Great War Forum 2004 thread.

 

Her Privates We

By Frederic Manning

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

 Andrew Roberts, Reviewer

British Attack at Neuve-Chapelle

Originally Presented at the Hoover Institution Blog, 9 August 2016

Frederic Manning was an expatriate Australian aesthete-turned-journalist-turned-soldier who wanted his readers to understand was it was like to have fought in the trenches of World War One. His haunting autobiographical novel became an international bestseller in the 1930s and no less an authority than Ernest Hemingway described it as “the best and noblest book of men in war that I have ever read. I read it over once each year to remember how things really were so that I will never lie to myself nor to anyone else about them.” Manning wrote under the pseudonym “Private 19022” and perfectly reproduced the authentic slang of his comrades in the King’s Own Shropshire Rifles. (The book’s title is a lewd pun on the lines from Hamlet: “On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button … Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? … Faith, her privates we.”) 

It was not until 1977 that an unexpurgated edition was published, in which the swear words of the original manuscript were reinstated, and “beggar,” “cow,” and “muckin” were returned to their baser originals. The obscenities do not seem at all out of place, however, in the context of rats eating corpses in shell holes, human beings being ripped apart, and all the other horrors of the Somme Offensive in which Manning had fought. 

Yet Her Privates We is not antiwar per se: Despite being written at the height of the political movement that sought to characterize war as a crime, Manning instead presented it as merely a horrible but unavoidable part of the human condition. Nor did the book contain a denunciation of the British officer class, indeed some of the most sympathetic characters are the harassed but honorable captains and lieutenants trying to do their best for their men in impossible circumstances.

Order HERE

Editor's Note: We have drawn on Manning's writings several times over the years.  Some representative excerpts can be accessed HERE. MH

The Funeral of Edward VII Marked the End of an Age: Ten Who Were There, Part II

 

By Assistant Editor, Kimball Worcester

It was just noon when the purple-draped train carrying the coffin and its of mourners moved out of Paddington station, while all the troops presented arms. In striking contrast to the usual din of a railway terminus, Paddington had for upward of an hour resounded only with the tramp of marching men and the wail and throb and crash of the dead march. King George gave his arm to his mother as she left her coach to board the train. On the arrival at Windsor the gun-carriage which bore the royal coffin was drawn to St. George's Chapel by seamen of the Royal Navy and followed on foot by the royal mourners. At this part of the proceedings Theodore Roosevelt and M. Pichon, representatives of the sister Republics of the United States and France, walked at the end of the long line of royal Princes. Mr. Roosevelt was carrying his overcoat over his arm and wearing evening dress.

Ten Who Were There, (6–10)

6. Stéphen Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, France (1857-1933) 

The representative of France at the funeral was the French politician of the Third Republic, Stéphen Pichon. An associate of Georges Clemenceau, he served several times under Clemenceau and others as minister of foreign affairs, a role in which he proved amiable, but not particularly effective. His most notable service was under Clemenceau during the latter part of the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but, like most of the other foreign ministers at the conference, Pichon was largely sidelined by the more forceful figure of his head of government.

7. Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich Romanov (1878 - 1918), Tsar Michael II (1917) 

Grand Duke Michael of Russia appeared in the cavalcade of royalty in Edward VII's funeral cortege as the representative of his brother and sovereign, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He and Nicholas were the King's nephews. Two years later, Michael married morganatically and set himself outside the social and royal pale of the time. He settled abroad with his wife, Countess Brasova, and son, George. It was the Great War that brought him back to his country and, ultimately, his execution. Michael served with distinction in the war, commanding the "Savage Division" (Caucasian Native Cavalry Division, made up of Muslim volunteers) on the Galician and Carpathian fronts as well as in the Brusilov offensive of 1916. 

Michael was technically Tsar Michael II for several days in 1917 upon the abdication of Nicholas and his son, Alexei, but he chose to reign only as a freely elected monarch under a constitutional government, which was not forthcoming. It was Grand Duke Michael who arranged through his Danish royal relatives the passport enabling Alexander Kerensky to escape westward from the Bolsheviks in November 1917. In the early hours of 13 June 1918 Michael was shot, together with his loyal British secretary, Nicholas Johnson, outside Perm, Russia, by a Bolshevik execution squad. Their bodies were never found.

8. Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States (1858-1919)

The former president of the United States was America's special envoy at the funeral. His greatest impact on the coming war was a result of his attempt to regain the White House in 1912. In splitting the Republican vote by forming a third party, the Progressives (or "Bull Moose"), he assured the election of little-known Princeton University president Woodrow Wilson. When the Great War began, he was an early advocate for U.S. preparedness and participation. 

After America joined the fray, all four of Roosevelt's sons and one of his daughters saw service overseas. His youngest son, Quentin, was killed in action while flying with the 95th Aero Squadron, probably the most famous casualty of the war for the nation. Quentin's death shattered him. He seemed to be well positioned to regain the presidency in 1920, but his health deteriorated rapidly after the loss of his son, and he died in 1919.

9. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria (1869-1955) 

Crown Prince Rupprecht's lineage gave him a curious link to the English throne by virtue of his descent from James II -- had the Jacobite succession continued in England, he could arguably have been Robert the First of Great Britain. 

Rupprecht may have attended Edward's funeral as second-tier royalty, but he was certainly of premier military caliber and can be assessed as the most able of the German royal commanders in the field during the Great War. His skillful maneuvering of the Sixth Army during the Lorraine campaign thwarted France's beloved Plan XVII, drawing French troops farther east as the Schlieffen plan tried to unfold in the west. Rupprecht also held the defense of the Hindenburg Line in 1917/18. Late in the war he voiced his displeasure at the Hindenburg/Ludendorff stranglehold on command and was one of the first generals to realize the need to make peace. 

Between the wars, Rupprecht was strongly anti-Hitler, and when the Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939, he and his (second) wife and children fled to Italy. In 1944 his wife and children were caught and interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau until the end of the war. His wife died not long after the end of the war, effectively from her treatment in the camps. Rupprecht died at his family estate, Schloss Leutstetten, near Munich ten years later. 

10. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1859-1941) 

Whole libraries have been written on the Kaiser and his role in World War I. We recommend:

     The Roads to the Great War Archive "Kaiser Wilhelm II" READ HERE

Part I of this article was yesterday's entry on Roads to the Great War.

Source: Over the Top, November 2010

The Funeral of Edward VII Marked the End of an Age: Ten Who Were There, Part I

By Kimball Worcester, Assistant Editor

In her classic work The Guns of August, historian Barbara Tuchman begins her exploration of the opening of the Great War with the funeral of King Edward VII of Great Britain. Tuchman believed, as do we, that the ceremony's grandeur and conspicuous participation by nine kings and long list of royals (some of whom were doomed to be deposed or murdered) was symbolic of the passing of a soon to vanish "Old Order" that had led Europe and the world for a millennium. Today, Roads to the Great War begins  a two-part series of biographical sketches of ten of the attendees at  the 20 May 1910 funeral who would play roles in the First World War of varied degrees and character. 

Ten Who Were There (1–5)

1. Albert I, King of the Belgians (1875-1934)

He would become the most accomplished of any of the royals who attended the funeral during the Great War. Albert succeeded his uncle, Leopold II, as king of the Belgians, in 1909. He would become the most beloved monarch in Belgium's two centuries of existence through his determined war leadership, his rebuilding of the nation afterward, and his recognition of Flemish citizens' status.

During the Great War he would save his army from destruction and eventually link up with Allied forces to close and hold the Western Front on the English Channel for the war's duration. He attempted to remain independent of the Allied war aims merely seeking to  protect Belgium's territorial integrity. In 1918, however, he modified his views and took the offensive, commanding the Flanders group of armies that included Belgian, British, French, and even two American divisions. King Albert was killed in a climbing accident in 1934 and was succeeded by his son, the less stalwart Leopold III.

2. Edward, Duke of Cornwall (1894-1972) 

The grandson of Edward VII had not yet been invested as Prince of Wales at the time of the funeral. That would come a year later, with the ceremony held in Wales for the first time in centuries, in a ceremony designed by Welshman David Lloyd George. When the First World War (1914-18) broke out, Edward had reached the minimum age for active service and was keen to participate. He had joined the Grenadier Guards in June 1914, and although Edward was willing to serve on the front lines, Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener refused to allow it, citing the immense harm that would occur if the heir to the throne was captured.

Despite this, Edward witnessed trench warfare firsthand and attempted to visit the front line as often as he could, for which he was awarded the Military Cross in 1916. His role in the war, although limited, made him popular among veterans of the conflict. When his father died 1936, Edward became king. He remained popular with the country until he announced his intention to marrying the American Wallis Warfield Simpson, who was suing her second husband for divorce. Edward insisted that he had the right to marry the woman of his choice, despite -- with his being head of the Church of England -- her marital background making her unsuitable. The government, headed by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, saw a challenge to constitutional procedure and forced his abdication in 1936. 

Edward was designated Duke of Windsor and married Wallis Warfield in 1937. His pre-World War II conduct included a controversial flirtation with Nazism and support of appeasement. During the war he was effectively exiled as Governor of the Bahamas. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor spent the rest of their lives as minor celebrities.

3. Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, Duke d'Aosta (1869-1931) 

The son of King Amadeus of Spain (where he had been the crown prince) and a cousin of Italian King Emanuele III, the Duke of Aosta was a professional soldier in the Italian Army. During the war he would command the Third Army, the most important Italian formation along the lower Isonzo River sector, where Italy mounted eleven, costly and mostly failed offensives, 1915-1917. 

His finest moment as a military commander may have been after the Caporetto fiasco, when he arranged an orderly retreat, saving his army for the subsequent successful defensive and, later, offensive operations against Austro-Hungarian forces. At Caporetto, the Third Army on the upper Isonzo -- Aosta's left flank -- had been utterly shattered in the opening attack. After the war the duke was named a marshal by Mussolini's government. He was buried in a crypt at the Third Army Memorial at Redipuglia, surrounded by the remains of 100,000 of his men. 

4. Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este (1863-1914) 

Franz Ferdinand became heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne through two untimely deaths. The first was of the Emperor's son, Crown Prince Rudolph, who killed himself (and his 16-year-old mistress) in 1889. The second was the death of Franz Ferdinand's father, Archduke Charles Louis, in 1896. Considered more flexible in matters of military and domestic affairs than his uncle Emperor Franz Josef, he was a reformist with new ideas to be put into practice when he ascended the Hapsburg throne. One of these ideas was "trialism" - the reorganization of the dual monarchy into a triple monarchy by giving the Slavs an equal voice in the empire. This would put them on an equal footing with the  Magyars and Germans living inside the Austro-Hungarian borders. These politics were in direct conflict with those of the Serbian nationalists. 

The archduke and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 (their 14th wedding anniversary) by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. The archduke's role of inspector general of the Austrian Army had brought him to Sarajevo for the summer maneuvers. Neither Emperor Franz Josef nor the Kaiser saw fit to attend the funeral. His death, however, would set off the series of diplomatic misjudgments known as the July Crisis of 1914, the immediate cause of World War I.

5. George I, King of the Hellenes (1845-1913) 

The Danish-born King of Greece was elected king after the 1862 deposition of his predecessor, Otto I. He introduced a democratic constitution to Greece and expanded its territory in his near-50-year reign despite a disastrous defeat in the Ottoman War of 1897. 

Never excessively concerned about personal security, George was assassinated by a socialist on the streets of Salonika in 1913. He would be succeeded by his son, Constantine I, who was also in attendance at Edward's funeral as Duke of Sparta. Constantine's reign would prove utterly tumultuous during the war. He opposed the Allies in World War I and was forced to abdicate in favor of his second son, Alexander. He was restored after Alexander's death, but in 1922 a military rebellion forced him to abdicate again.

Part II Tomorrow

Stuff One Might Find on a World War One Battlefield a Century Later

Varlet Farm, Ypres Salient, October 1917

When I was leading tours to the Western Front, one of my favorite stops was a Varlet Farm, near the village of Poelkapelle, north of Ypres. The site was on situated on the front line for most of the war until it was secured by the Royal Naval Division in late 1917.  In modern times, until about ten years ago, its longtime owner Charlotte Descamps, operated the farm with a bed and breakfast she had added, with a museum showing all the war material—much of it dangerous ordnance—she and her workers had dug up over the years.

Charlotte Showing Her Collection to My 2011 Western Front Group

Eventually, Charlotte sold the farm and moved to New Zealand. She later prepared a terrific PowerPoint presentation to show the good people of Wellington what her former life in Flanders was like. Below are a selection of a few of the 40 slides from that program along with some images from my visits there.  Her full selection can be found online HERE.  

Charlotte with One Season's Finds from Working the Farm

Note:  Removing, digging up, or possessing WWI artifacts from Belgian battlefields is strictly prohibited by federal and regional laws. However, under Belgian law, any archaeological artifact discovered in the ground remains the rightful property of the landowner. Special rules apply for unexploded ordnance and any potential war grave that may be discovered.

Sources: Life on the Battlefields Battlefields, 94 Years Later; Atlantic Monthly; Royal Naval Division Archives

Did Woodrow Wilson Have the Flu in Paris?

A Determined Looking Woodrow Wilson in London En Route to  Paris

By James Patton

On the night of  3 April 1919, President Woodrow Wilson began to cough. His condition quickly worsened to the point that his personal doctor, Rear Admiral Cary Grayson NC (1878–1938), thought that Wilson might have been poisoned. Grayson later described the long night spent at Wilson’s bedside as “one of the worst through which I have ever passed. I was able to control the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious.”

However, Wilson wasn’t poisoned; it is widely speculated that he was laid low with the “Spanish Flu” that killed about 20 million people worldwide, although the third wave of the pandemic had peaked in France two months previously. Whether influenza or not,  Wilson was left bedridden in the middle of the most important negotiations of his life, the Paris Peace Conference to end World War I.

In  January 1919  Wilson came to the Paris negotiations determined to accomplish his visionary Fourteen Points initiative, including open and transparent diplomacy, freedom of the seas, free economic exchange, disarmament, fair adjustment of colonial claims, recognition of self-determination for all Europeans and, above all, his Point XIV,  the creation of a “general association of nations”—later called  the League of Nations—to obviate future wars.

An Enthusiastic Wilson Is Greeted in Paris, 13 December 1918

Parts of Wilson’s  vision were quashed by France and the UK, who controlled the agenda. The German  colonies and vast portions of Ottoman territory were divvied up without any regard for the interests of their residents. Parts of Germany and much of the Austro- Hungarian dual monarchy were given away, even though some of these lands contained significant German or Hungarian-speaking populations. Wilson’s only success at "self-determination" was the creation of two new Slavic confederations, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, both of which turned out to be bad ideas. 

The French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929), openly clashed with Wilson over the economic punishment of the Germans. Clemenceau demanded billions in reparations for the loss of French lives and the massive destruction of French property, but Wilson wanted to spare the German people further suffering. He refused to assert any reparation claim on behalf of the U.S. Rather than making Germany too weak to be a threat, he wanted to focus on preventing future war by disarmament and the empowerment of his League.

At the time that Wilson fell ill, the Paris negotiations were deadlocked. No progress was made while he was bedridden for five days at the Hôtel du Prince Murat. He reportedly had a 103-degree fever and racking coughs, but Dr. Grayson told the world that it was nothing more than a bad cold.

The 1918 Spanish flu was notorious for aggressively attacking the respiratory system, often progressing to pneumonia, causing the lungs to fill with fluid, thus killing the patient quickly. Clearly, Wilson’s case didn’t progress that far. But some of those who seemed to survive the infection experienced resultant neurological symptoms.

These flu victims displayed “post-influenzal manifestations”—psychotic delusions and visions that may have resulted from damage to the nervous system, says John Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

“The most comprehensive study of the 1918 pandemic noted how common neurological disorders were,” says Barry. “They were second only to the lung. This included psychosis, which was usually temporary.”

A Sullen, Almost Angry Looking President Wilson at a Post-Illness
Meeting of the "Big Four," 27 May 1919

From several sources, evidence suggests that Wilson suffered from these effects both during and after his illness.

• “He became paranoid,” says Barry. “Wilson thought the French had spies all around him. He was bizarrely obsessed with his furniture and his automobiles, and pretty much everyone around him noted it.”

• The White House Chief Usher, Irwin “Ike” Hoover (1871–1933), wrote later that “something queer was happening in [the president’s] mind” and that “[o]ne thing is certain: he was never the same after this little spell of sickness.”

• The British prime minister, David Lloyd George (1863–1945) came to visit Wilson during his recuperation and described Wilson’s behavior as a “nervous and spiritual breakdown” under the pressure of the heated disagreements.

Although instances of “the psychoses of influenza” had been reported by physicians as early as the Russian flu outbreak of 1889, there was no prescribed treatment, and the symptoms were thought to resolve with time. One hypothesis is that this neurological disorder, apparently experienced by Wilson, was due to mild encephalitis, a known side effect of the flu.

When Wilson resumed attending the Conference, his approach scarcely resembled that of  the man who had fought so long and hard for his principles. The illness seemed to have weakened both his body and his mind, and he simply didn’t have the stamina or the will to stand his ground.

“The impact was pretty dramatic in my view,” says Barry. “Wilson had been adamant, insisting on the ‘Fourteen Points,’ ‘self-determination’, and ‘peace without victory.’ Clemenceau had even accused him of being ‘pro-German.’” All of a sudden, Wilson caved in on everything still in contention except for Point XIV (the League of Nations), and Barry claims that Wilson only got that because Clemenceau let him have it. 

Wilson and Lloyd George on the Day of the Treaty's Signing
Note the President's Emaciated Look and Forced Smile

For many on Wilson’s negotiation team, the Treaty of Versailles that was signed on 28 June 1919 was a betrayal of everything  he had stood for.

William Bullitt (1891–1967), an Assistant Secretary of State and a loyal Wilson attaché at the Paris negotiations, immediately proffered his resignation:

I was one of the millions who trusted confidently and implicitly in your leadership and believed that you would take nothing less than ‘a permanent peace’ based on ‘unselfish and unbiased justice,’” wrote Bullitt. “But our government has consented now to deliver the suffering peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections, dismemberments—a new century of war.

Bullitt’s long career at State wasn’t over, though; he became the first U.S ambassador to the Soviet Union (1933–36)  and later the ambassador to France (1936–40).

Bullitt’s assessment was tragically prescient. Historians agree that one of the chief causes of the rise of the Nazis in Germany was the national diminution and economic desperation inflicted on the German people by the treaty. 

Did Wilson’s illness play a significant and disruptive role in the peace negotiations? Barry said it certainly had an impact.

“You can’t absolutely prove that he wouldn't have caved in on everything anyway, but if you know anything about Wilson, there’s nothing in his behavior that suggests he was a compromiser on issues like that,” says Barry. “Quite the reverse. He had been insistent that it was ‘his way or the highway’ on pretty much everything.”

Returning to the United States, things only got worse for Wilson. First, the Senate rejected American membership in the League of Nations, and then he suffered a debilitating stroke from which he never fully recovered. Dr. Grayson stayed with Wilson until the end in 1921, and in 1926 he was awarded a Navy Cross for his service as Wilson’s doctor (the Navy Cross wasn’t exclusively awarded for valor until 1942). 

Did Wilson have “post-influenzal manifestations”? Did he even have the Spanish flu? Barry thinks so. 

Sources:

Barry, John. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. Viking Press, New York, NY: 2004. Also available as an audiobook.

National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine

A New Set of My Favorite World War One Posters

 I can't help myself, I love these.  MH

Click on the Images to Enlarge

"The Great Offensive in France"

"National War Relief Exhibition, Pozsony"

Europe's Stunning 19th Century Population Growth and the Coming of the Great War

Paris, c. 1810

Take-Off

With the flourishing of the Industrial Age in Europe, mortality rates began significantly declining  because of a combination of improved agricultural methods and distribution, and of improved health practices, such as water and sewer sanitation and quarantines in time of epidemics. With fertility rates remaining high, those advances yielded the double benefit of decreased mortality for infants and longer life spans. 

An accelerated population growth  created a 19th-century surge in manpower that led to mass flight from farms to cities providing the workers for greater industrialization.  The competition for resources that ensued intensified imperial rivalries, nationalism, and geopolitical instability. 

The growth pattern was not uniform, though, throughout the century.  Dense urbanization led to a poorer quality of life and the new industries created arduous working conditions, so the rate of population growth leveled out during the middle 1800s.  But then, in the last third of the nineteenth century a ‘medical revolution’ that took place thanks to the works of Pasteur, Lister, and other scientists who identified various pathogens, discovered the microbial nature of infectious diseases, and effectively used their discovery in preventive medicine and treatment of infectious diseases. By 1900, the continent had more than doubled in population from 1800.

The Numbers

For the future belligerents of 1914 the 1800–1900 growth patterns most are impressive, although France is a special case discussed below:

• Europe as a whole: 180M to 390M

• Great Britain: 10.5M to 37M

• France: 30M to 40M 

• Russia: 37M to 125M

• Italy (Unified 1861, joined war 1915): 19M to 32.5M

• Austria-Hungary:  24M to 46-50M

• Germany (Unified 1871): 23M to 56.4M

Some Notes:

1.  Even more remarkably, as the war approached, Europe's population exploded from 390M to 450M by 1914.

2.  These figures, for the most part however, underestimate the levels of growth for some countries because they do not include the outflow to the New World.  During the same period, the U.S. population grew from  6 million in 1800 to 76 million in 1900 – largely due to migration of Europeans. 

3.  Most important—This growth was not distributed evenly. Germany’s population grew incredibly fast, rising from 41 million in 1871 to nearly 65 million by 1914, surpassing France's stagnant population of around 40 million.  France had suffered a massive loss of men in the Napoleonic Wars,  and its post-Revolutionary, secular society was more inclined to adopt birth control methods. This demographic dominance gave Germany a larger pool of conscripts and immense industrial capacity, which deeply alarmed France.  Russia's growth was even greater and this alarmed Germany. It's population grew from about 74 million in 1861 to over 160 million by 1913.

Vienna, c. 1890

The Growing Populations Fueled Both International Competition and Internal Instability

Massive population growth led to rapid urbanization as people moved from farms to factory cities. It allowed nations to fund and man enormous standing armies and new fleets of dreadnoughts. Nations thought they needed overseas empires to secure raw materials and new markets for their rapidly growing populations. They also provided an outlet for the sorts of ambitious, educated young people discussed below.

The recent work of historical complexity researcher Peter Turchin sheds some light on an important by-product of such a population surge. In such a period of growth, the in absolute number of educated, motivated, and ambitious individuals surpasses the limited number of openings in the "elite" class, the small number of individuals, who hold economic and social power. (For example, a government only needs  a fixed number of cabinet ministers, no matter what the population.) Those striving, but failing, to join this highest echelon of leadership, "elite-aspirants", can become a great source of instability for a nations. Partly due to this, from 1815 to 1914, Europe was continually rocked by internal revolutions, assassinations, and roiling political discontent. Turchin, for example, points out the over-abundance of underemployed trained lawyers, who became invested in revolutionary politics.  

The rivalries, the alliances, diplomatic crises, and "small" wars, that emerged in the early 20th century out of this dynamic of exploding populations were managed by the Great Powers so that general war was avoided.  Then in July 1914 a crisis came that could not be resolved, and war came.  David Stevenson does an excellent job of sorting the reasons for this in his Roads to the Great War article HERE. 

Sources: "Population Demographics, Salt Lake Community College'; The Demographic Transition in the First World War:  The Nineteenth Century, Zinka et al in Globalistics and Globalization Studies, 2017 

Remembering a Veteran: Leonard H. Nason: The King of World War One Pulps

Leonard H. Nason 
Pulp Writer Par Excellence

Leonard H. Nason (1895–1970) was a highly popular American novelist and magazine writer best known for his vivid, realistic fiction about World War I. A veteran of both World Wars, he drew on his own military experiences to capture the humor, tragedy, and gritty reality of the American Expeditionary Forces.

In 1917, he enlisted in the American army in the army and fought in France with the 76th Field Artillery of the 3rd Division.  He was cited for gallantry and received the Silver Star and a Purple Heart  after becoming disabled  in the opening of the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918 while "persistently carrying messages under heavy shell fire to maintain the liaison between his battalion and the 7th Infantry. . . and in repairing the telephone line which was repeatedly cut by enemy shells." He was transported to the 68th field hospital in Nevers and, eventually, rotated home for further care. 

Postwar, he took up a job as an insurance adjuster with the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company in Chicago. He began writing while still at this job. He was a self-taught writer, and naturally took up the "pulp" style of writing.  Pulp works are fast-paced, action-oriented with bold plots, and larger-than-life characters. The name "pulps" for this styler originating from the cheap wood-pulp magazines of the early to mid-20th century.  World War I pulp writing was very popular among the veterans of the war and there were a number of talented practitioners in the market place. Nason, however, stood out for his authenticity. Not only was he a combat veteran of the war and a born storyteller, he also had a tremendous eye for the details of soldiers' lives, both the hard scrabble misery and the utterly silly stuff. 

The 1920s were his most prolific period, with over a hundred stories published mostly in Adventure and the Saturday Evening Post. From 1926 to 1930, five books of his were published in hardcover, most of them collecting what he had written earlier for Adventure.  His most famous WWI titles from this period were Chevrons, published in 1926; his collected trio of novellas,  Three Lights from a Match, 1927; and The Man in the White Slicker, 1929 

Take it from me, these are delightful reads and can still be found online.

Chevrons (HERE)
Three Lights from a Match (HERE)
The Man in the White Slicker (HERE)

The old veteran returned to the Army after Pearl Harbor and served with an armor unit in North Africa and later returned stateside to train tankers at Fort Knox.  He wrote a few more magazine articles but wrapped up his writing career by the end of the 1940s. Leonard H. Nason died in 1970 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

In Memory of Our Old Friend Roger Jones, Who Introduced the Great War Society to WWI Pulps.

Sources:  NY Times Obituary, 1970; Pulpflakes Blog; Nasson Silver Star Citation

Bombs Away! (April Fool's Day - 1915)

I guess, I should have waited until next April 1st to publish this article, the substance of which I just discovered, but I couldn't wait. MH

On 2 August 1915, the Atlantic Constitution published this report:

Source: The Museum of Hoaxes