100 Years Ago - the Great War and Votes for Women

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-01-28/register/famine-with-plenty-in-russia-kmphx76xk

january 28, 1917

Famine with plenty in Russia

Russia is experiencing famine in the midst of plenty. The scarcity of food is the one thing talked of throughout the land. Last summer the poorer people took up their positions outside the Petrograd municipal meat shops at 10 o’clock in the evening. The sun had hardly set over the Elagin Island, where fashion and wealth enjoyed their ease and the wonders of the white nights, before the poor, basket in hand, began their weary vigil. Some waited 10 and 12 hours for a morsel of meat. Since then we have seen queues become the rule — for meat, for bread, for milk, for vegetables, for sugar, people wait in long “tails”. Rich and poor participate, the latter in person, the former by proxy through their servants. With the thermometer sometimes at 20 below zero Fahrenheit, people have to wait hours outside each shop to get daily necessities. The writer of this article saw a “tail” of more than 1,200 people outside the cooperative shop for railway employees at Kosloff waiting for white flour. Kosloff had then been without flour for 10 days, though half a dozen of the largest flour-mills in Russia are within a 250-mile radius of the town.


Probably there is sufficient food in the country to feed the population for the next two years. The problem to solve is how to distribute it. The Department of Provisions has borne the burden of supplying the Armies in the field since July, 1915. As time went on the deficiency in provisioning the civil population increased. The Ministry of Trade and Industry considered the question and appointed committees, but there the matter rested. Now its efforts have completely ceased.


Throughout the war the railways have supplied the Army with all that is needed or was available. This shows some organization; but it was done at the expense of starving traffic to the capitals and large provincial towns. With thorough, or even partially, efficient organization the great towns and manufacturing centres could have been supplied with all necessities in sufficient quantities if ordinary care had been taken in the use of goods trucks. Organization and co-ordination are, however, essential if Russia is to cope with her food problem; and it is for this reason that the absence of a strong, capable, and united Ministry has been felt during the past year.

100 років тому

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/venice-in-wartime-75xm2jdjh

january 26, 1917

Venice in wartime

Venice has been attacked from the air 21 times since the outbreak of the war. In 1915 there were eight bombardments, last year 13. These were made either by daylight or when the moon defined the position of the city on its lagoon and canals. It seems that some attempt has been made to aim at specific points — the arsenal, the station, the cotton mill — except during the violent assault which followed the fall of Gorizia, when bombs were sprinkled freely all over the town; but, in any case, the height at which the aeroplanes fly makes the incidence of the bombs a matter largely of chance. As to actual damage, it is surprising that there has been so little. Many of the bombs fell in the water and were comparatively harmless, but neither the Venetians nor their enemies can tell what precious monument may not be sacrificed in some future raid. The raid of October 20, 1915, demolished the roof of the Scalzi Church, near the railway station, with the ceiling by Tiepolo representing the Translation of the Holy House. Though the fresco was not one of Tiepolo’s finest works, it can never be replaced. On August 9 of last year incendiary bombs were used, and the roof of S Maria Formosa, the Shrine of Palma’s Sta Barbara, was completely burned, except for a fragment over the north transept. The August attacks wrought the greatest havoc, but on September 4 an incendiary bomb fell in the Piazza, only a few yards from the facade of S Marco. This naturally roused great alarm for the safety of the Ducal Palace and the Basilica. The bronze horses from the facade of S Marco are stabled in the Atrium, and covered with sandbags. The facade has disappeared behind a huge screen of timber. Inside, the church, on sunless days, is almost pitch-dark. The windows of the cupolas have been removed and, during a raid, are all left open. To prevent rain from entering, they have been filled with screens of rough, brownish cloth. The effect on the interior is most surprising. When the sun is shining the light coming through is of a soft, diffused yellow. This exactly hits the key of the mosaics, which are illumined by it, till each cupola shimmers and gleams like an inverted saucer of molten gold. It is a revelation of the mosaics of San Marco; they have never been seen like this before.

100 років тому - доля полонених

BRITISH PRISONERS OF WAR IN GERMANY SETTING OUT FOR WORK

WITTENBERG CAMP










PARCELS FROM HOME










A SPORTS GROUND, BUT NO SPORT.






http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-and-german-prisoners-6mgxsrm23

British and German Prisoners

The British prisoners appear to be singled out from those of other nationalities for harsh and humiliating treatment

April 12, 1915

The treatment accorded to prisoners of war, and particularly to wounded prisoners of war, is justly regarded as a test of the civilization which exists amongst their captors. The savage regards his captives as objects upon which it is his right and his pleasure to exercise his cruelty and his hate. The nations of Christendom, whose customs in warfare are still largely based upon the traditions of chivalry, look upon their prisoners as honourable foes, against whom they cherish no personal ill-will, and to whom honour and self-respect oblige them to extend all the consideration and the courtesy compatible with safe keeping.


The gradual amelioration in the lot of the captured, like the growth of other humane practices in the conduct of war, has been hitherto considered by all peoples who have emerged from barbarism as amongst the chief tokens of the progress of the world. The regulations annexed to The Hague Convention of October 18, 1907, were welcomed by them, as giving a solemn international sanction to principles and practices which the most cultivated nations have long followed during hostilities as a matter of course. It was with wonder and, indeed, with a large measure of incredulity, that the English peoples received the first reports which reached them that the Germans had flung these traditions to the winds, that they were treating British prisoners, and even wounded prisoners, with cruelty and insult, and that they were showing the same contempt for The Hague regulations as for other “scraps of paper”.


We may hope, even still, that some of the stories which have been received are exaggerated, and that the worst conduct described in them has not been general. It seems, however, impossible, in the face of the evidence contained in the recent White Paper, and strongly corroborated from other sources, to doubt that Germany, with all her Kultur, has relapsed into brutalities towards her English captives, without parallel in the modern history of war.


Sir Edward Grey’s dispatch of December 26 and the papers annexed to it, especially Major Vandeleur’s reports, appear to be conclusive in this respect. Major Vandeleur is himself an escaped prisoner, who speaks of what he himself saw and heard. Sir Edward Grey expresses his conviction that the American Ambassador, to whom he forwarded the paper, could not fail to be impressed by its “evident veracity and sincerity”. All who read it, we imagine, will share this impression. The most painful part of the report is that which relates to the journey of the prisoners from the front into Germany. They were constantly abused and reviled. One German officer showed his manliness and breeding by spitting upon a defenceless British officer. Officers and men were herded together into foul horse-boxes. All along the line German officers as well as soldiers cursed them. Their greatcoats were stolen in the bitter cold, and their guards opposed the charitable efforts of the French Red Cross to supply them with food. At one Station Major Vandeleur was dragged out of the wagon, cursed in filthy language by another of these German “gentlemen” wearing the Kaiser’s coat, and then kicked at this brute’s orders by a common soldier. Such are the humanity and the politeness, of which the German military caste, the men who exact from mere civilians amongst their own countrymen cringing respect for their uniform, are capable towards a wounded and defenceless English gentleman.


Only once did Major Vandeleur hear an officer try to restrain the curses of his men. The prisoners were cooped up in these over-crowded and unventilated wagons for three days and three nights. In the Crefeld Camp, where Major Vandeleur was confined, no gross physical hardships are complained of. The officers were overcrowded, and they had, for the most part, to make their own beds and to black their own boots. The treatment of the rank and file imprisoned at other places is described as “barbarous”.

Major Vandeleur’s information in regard to it comes from British orderlies transferred to Crefeld as officers’ servants, and from English and French medical officers. The men were deprived of their greatcoats and their money, and often of their tunics. All the orderlies reached Crefeld crawling with vennin and many were suffering from the itch. They said that they were half-starved, and they looked half-starved. One of the reports by Americans appended to the dispatch declares they are “kept on very short commons”; another that they are pale from want of food and “vermin-ridden”, while the floors of their tents are “a mass of mud”.


Sir Edward Grey draws attention to the fact that the British prisoners appear to be singled out from those of other nationalities for harsh and humiliating treatment. This view is fully borne out by Major Vandeleur. The French prisoners were fed on the terrible journey from the front; the British got the leavings. All the menial and dirty work of the camps is assigned to our countrymen, and Major Vandeleur declares it to be his strong opinion that the particular brutality shown to them on the way there “is deliberately arranged for by superior authority”. The French officers, he states, “were treated quite differently”. This view is supported by the evidence of a Russian doctor and of a French priest.
The report of Mr John B Jackson, of the American Embassy in Berlin, upon the position of German prisoners and interned Germans in this country forms a contrast to these statements, upon which we may look with satisfaction and with pleasure. It shows that we have not been unmindful of what we owe to ourselves and to our opponents. The German officers without exception told Mr Jackson that they “had always been treated like officers and honourable men,” and many of the soldiers informed him that British soldiers had protected them from insult as they passed through France. Nowhere did this neutral observer, who had the fullest opportunities for conversing with the prisoners apart, discover any signs of a desire to make their condition harder or more disagreeable than was necessary. As to “Donington Hall,” it is, he declares, “a beautiful place”. That is the way in which England treats her German prisoners. It is the way in which she would have expected Germany to treat captive Englishmen.


That expectation has been disappointed. Germany has shown no respect for misfortune or for suffering, for rank or for the uniform which, in the past, has everywhere appealed to soldiers’ hearts. She has striven in many cases, and striven, it must be feared, of set purpose to inflict needless pain and undeserved humiliation on our brave countrymen. The degradation is not theirs, but her own.
She has heaped fresh disgrace upon her name, and disgrace which we should have supposed would have been felt with peculiar keenness by a military nation. She has shown that she disregards the common humanities and the honourable courtesies of soldiers to each other, as utterly as she despises the rights of civilians and the obligations of international law.

До питання помешкань на території Києва у часи Володимира

Ну ви зрозуміли, до чого я :) А фото - із музея народної архітектури та побуту у Переяславі (зроблені навесні минулого року)

100 років тому - флот

COALING AT SEA

OIL-FIRED BOILERS.

Photographed while the ship was running at full speed

OIL-MOTOR ROOM OF A GERMAN SUBMARINE




OIL BUNKERING IN PORT

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-visit-to-the-grand-fleet-lmbmnsrnr

A visit to the Grand Fleet

Count Alexis Tolstoy contributes a further article to “ The Times” giving some of his impressions of the recent visit paid by the Russian authors and journalists to the Grand Fleet

March 9, 1916

By Count Alexis Tolstoy.


It all passed before our eyes like a dream. In the evening we took our places in a special sleeping-car. Wo engaged in conversation about trifles. That was not surprising after a week of uninterrupted banquets, receptions, reviews, calls, and interviews. We smoked till the air became unbearable, and then retired to our berths, agreeably lulled by the rattle of the rain on the carriage roofs.


When morning broke our train was steaming through the snowclad hills of Scotland. Here And there streams of water were coursing down the white valleys. Slowly a long viaduct passed, and was hidden behind the hill. High up an old tower peeped above the ruined walls of a castle adorning the crags. A stag lazily shifted from the immediate vicinity. of the train, and, turning his antlers, gazed after us.


At a deserted wayside station two Scotsmen in plaid stood regardless of frost and bare knees. They are a well-grown, incredibly hardy people. Like the ancient Romans they consider it a disgrace to wear trousers. Suddenly ahead of us appeared the sea. From the snowy hills we descended into a green, damp valley, and stopped in an old-world, clean-swept town, spaciously paved, composed of two-storey dwellings built, as the custom goes in Scotland, of brownish-grey stone. On all sides we saw bright gardens, comfortable cottages, and low walls of lichen-covered stone. Over the still waters of the little harbour flocks of screaming seagulls whirled. Trucks carried all sorts of war material, huge floats, and wire-netting for the capture of submarines.


A red-faced warrior with a turned-up nose and attired in the fashion of the days of Ossian walked backwards and forwards with fixed bayonet guarding the precious trucks, and the wind blew about the ribbons of his bonnet and the tartans of his kilt. From a crane alongside depended a projectile which looked as big as the Scottish sentry. Slowly it began to descend into the hold of a vessel, whero rows of similar projectiles were being laid. Each one of these missiles would have blown to pieces a five-storeyed house.

THE GUARDIAN WARSHIPS.


Continuing its course our train frequently sallied on to the sea-shore. A smart breeze was blowing, and the foaming waves broke merrily on the weed-grown rocks beneath us. On many a green meadow the sheep were grazing. An old man was bending to the plough, while overhead a swarm of white gulls hovered over the black furrows. Clouds darkened the hill-tops and suddenly down came a strong, slanting shower, obscuring the sea-line and almost concealing the huge squat forms of the guardian warships.


We spent the whole time sitting in red-velveted armchairs, at the windows of the dining car which was to accompany us to the end of our journey and back. Everything had been arranged for our comfort. We had only to converse and look out of the window. The Senior Naval Officer met us at N-, and took us home to his cottage, which stands in a garden full of snowdrops. On the following day our hostess thoughtfully provided each of us with a bunch of these flowers. After tea we wandered about the seashore gazing at the waters which, like everything in the North, the houses, the rocks, and the hills, reflected a brownish yellow tinge. Huge clouds loomed in the distance over rockbound islands. The inrushing tide moaned on the rocks below.


In the morning our captain, armed with huge leather gauntlets, muffled up in a heavy scarf, offered me a seat beside him in his motor-car. We went ahead of the others along a frost-bound causeway skirting the coast, towards a cove where we could see the dark hull of a destroyer, whose captain was pacing the shore awaiting our arrival. I used to think that such sailors lived only in the pages of a novel. The peak of his cap slightly raised, he stood facing the keen wind in a light jacket, an extraordinarily handsome figure with eyes the colour of sea water, his sunburnt shaven face breathing, good nature and energy. In two years he had been absent on leave for only one day. Answering the question “How did he bear the hardships of sea service complicated by constant hunts after German submarines?” he smilingly remarked that it was all easy enough if you took things cheerfully.


The others having arrived, we were invited to go on board the destroyer. Her men donned oilskins and sou’westers. The engines started, we cast off our moorings, and the destroyer, leaving her berth, turned her head towards the wind and waves. Nabokoff, Choukovsky, and I hauled ourselves up on the bridge. Throughout the ensuing run we were drenched by the flying spindrift. Gazing aft I saw the narrow snaky body of the destroyer settling lower in the waves as we speeded up. The crew on deck were being freely dowsed. We were flying through the water faster than some express trains travel on land.

100 Years Ago

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/story-of-german-raider-0jx8qrmk0

january 19, 1917

Story of a German raider

The Admiralty reports that 10 vessels (including eight British boats of large tonnage) have been sunk. The Dramatist sighted a vessel on December 28 going the same way and closing in. At 1.15pm the vessel came alongside, broke out a German naval ensign, and signalled “Stop immediately”. The side of the German vessel under the forecastle bulwarks was dropped, revealing two guns of 2½in calibre, trained on the Dramatist, which stopped and surrendered. Armed crews boarded, and the crew were conveyed to the raider. At 7 o’clock the steamer was sunk. The crew were transferred to the Hudson Maru, with others from sunken vessels — in all 237 — with instructions to follow the raider to Pernambuco. When any vessel was sighted all on deck were driven below and the watertight doors were locked. The heat was stifling. The men heard from the raider’s crew that had a British cruiser been met they would not have been allowed a chance of saving themselves.


The raider looks like an ordinary cargo steamer. When passing neutral vessels she hoists British colours. When she sights a British vessel she hoists the German ensign. The captain stated that he did not intend to sink passenger steamers; he did not wish to kill women and children; he only wanted to sink big cargo boats. One of the crew of the Minieh states that the officer of the raider asked for papers. When he was told that they had been destroyed he laughed, and said: “Well, it can’t be helped you have played the game.”


The Radnorshire’s experiences were similar to those of the Dramatist. The captain was told, when asking what the raider would do with his Indian firemen, that they would be kept at work aboard and sent with the next batch of prisoners. The captain was informed that if he had fired a gun, he would have been sunk with all hands. “When the raider was near I gave the alarm and everybody donned lifebelts. Six German officers and 20 men boarded us and assumed charge. After seizing all the coffee and food they planted two bombs on each side of the vessel, but we were given time to remove our personal necessaries. After we left the bombs were exploded. We were kept in the raider’s port bow practically without air, and compelled to sleep for five days with “roughnecks”.

100 Years Ago - VCs

V.C.'S AT THE PRESENT A TION IN HYDE PARK, JUNE 2, 1917.

In khaki, left to right: Private Hughes, Private Cunn:ngham, Capt. White, Col. Bradford,

Lieut. Palmer, and Capt. Alien.

MRS. MOTTERSHEAD RECEIVES FROM THE KING THE V.C. WON BY HER

HUSBAND, SERGEANT THOMAS MOTTERSHEAD, R.F.C.

BT. MAJ. WM. LA TOUCHE CONGREVE,

D.S.O., M.C., Rifle Brigade

SERGT. W. E. BOULTER,

Northamptonshire Regt., receiving the congratulations of his friends


http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-king-and-his-brave-subjects-qzlgb539t

The King and his brave subjects

A widow came next to take the Victoria Cross from the hands of the King, Mrs Lilian Mottershead, whose husband, Sergeant Thomas Mottershead, VC, Royal Flying Corps, died of burns after bringing back his blazing aeroplane and saving the life of his observer

June 4, 1917

There has been little or no pageantry connected with this war. Battle pictures, parades, guard mountings are all studies in drab colours, and always the unimpressive khaki note predominates. Much ceremony has gone by the board. But on Saturday there was held one of the most impressive military functions of the last three years, when the King decorated over 300 of his sailor and soldier subjects and 50 relatives of men who have died after winning decorations for valour. Twelve nurses also received the Royal Red Cross.

Early in the afternoon there was a bustle and a stir round Buckingham Palace and Wellington Barracks, and at 2 o’clock a detachment of Scots Guards, headed by the massed bands of the Brigade of Guards, marched up Constitution Hill to Hyde Park Comer and so along the Row to the enclosure fenced in for the investiture. There was a soft wind blowing, just enough to straighten out the folds of the Colour carried by a tall lieutenant of the Scots Guards.

The Colour party entered the Park to the music of brass and reed instruments, but they marched along the Row to the skirl of the pipes. It was a scene to remember. Overhead there was a blue sky, blocked in with great white masses of clouds. The trees, in their best leaf and not yet spoiled by the dust of summer, made a cool canopy. The Row itself was lined with an expectant crowd, and the massed bands in their scarlet uniforms, the gold-laced coats of the drum-majors, and the line on line of bearskin busbies, made a fine showing by very contrast with the khaki of the guard. The pipers, each with the wonderfully worked silken bannerette fluttering from the drone, and the drummers with their painted drums, looked the proudest men in the procession.

With a right wheel the party swung into the enclosure and the lines of sentries presented arms to the colours. The tune they marched in to was an American one, and the compliment was appreciated to the full by the little group of United States Army nurses and men of the medical corps to the right of the dais. The scene was changed from moment to moment during the next half-hour, but by half-past 2 most of the spectators had settled into their places.

To the right of the dais as one fronted it was a gay group of military uniforms with much gold oak-leaf braid, many medal ribbons and red tabs. On the other side were the representatives of the Navy, while farther to their right again were the American nurses in their sober blue uniform and workmanlike wide-awake hats. Just near them was a splash of colour made by the scarlet cloaks of a group of children from the home for soldiers’ orphans. The main colour of the big circle was blue, for on each side, sitting in chairs and lying full length on the grass, there were 300 wounded soldiers in their hospital kit. The bright blue tunic with its white lapels and lining and the scarlet ties gave a most pleasing effect.

100 Years Ago

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/the-reply-to-the-wilson-note-rwpvbw252

january 12, 1917

The reply to the Wilson note





Courteous and friendly in tone, clear and positive in statement, closely reasoned, and animated by the lofty ideals of politics and of morals to which the people of the United States have always paid homage, the Reply of the Allies to Mr Wilson’s Note must command the approbation of the great nation across the Atlantic.

The German Government curtly refused the information for which the President asked. They made no “avowal of their views as to the terms upon which the war might be concluded”, and they told him, in substance, that he had mistaken the road to peace. The Allies do not pretend to be at present in a position to state all their war aims in detail. These cannot be set out in full until the moment for negotiation has been reached. But they declare their general objects with more amplitude and more precision than in any statement yet made. First among them, it need hardly be said, ranks the restoration of the small nations whom Germany has trodden under her heel. Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro must be set free, with the compensations owed them. The liberation of the occupied portions of France, Russia, and Rumania, with reparation for the damage done them, is equally imperative.


The peace which they desire must be based on the right of “all peoples, small and great”, to full security and to liberty of economic development. It must ensure the liberation of the Italians, Slavs, Rumanes, and Czecho-Slovaks and the risorgimento of Poland; it must free the populations under Turkish tyranny and end for ever the rule of the Ottoman in Europe.


The Allies appreciate the lofty sentiments which make the United States eager to cooperate, as Mr Wilson declares, in considering the formation of a league of nations to ensure peace and justice throughout the world. They heartily associate themselves with the plan, but point out that discussion of it presupposes a satisfactory settlement of the war. Anxious as they are for peace, they sadly acknowledge that they are at present unable to see any prospect of bringing about the only kind of peace they can accept. These things cannot be safeguarded without securing the reparation, the restitution, and the guarantees which they claim.

100 Years Ago

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-01-06/register/health-of-the-field-armies-hfnjrndb7
january 6, 1917
Health of the field armies
In his dispatch Sir Douglas Haig made a statement which is among the most sensational ever put forth by a Commander in the field. He said: “The health of the troops has been most satisfactory, and, during the period to which this dispatch refers, there has been an almost complete absence of wastage due to diseases of a preventable nature.”

That boast is unique in the history of the world. Ten years ago it would have been regarded as evidence of mental instability to suggest that preventable disease could be expelled from any army. The old wars were the starting-points of plagues and epidemics. The history of war was also the history of disease, nor were these two ever separated. Whole armies were swept away by the unseen foe; the hand of pestilence was more to be feared than the onrush of the enemy.

Nor do we need to look far back for examples of the double horror of war and disease. In the Spanish-American War thousands of young men were swept away by typhoid fever. In our own South African War the same disease destroyed battalions. We congratulated ourselves in those days that we had coped successfully with the problem of field hygiene, and yet out of every 100 men lost to the forces only 20 fell to the weapons of the enemy. The unseen foe was responsible for 80 per cent of the total casualties. Pestilence walked with the marching men and brought the strength of the strongest to ruin.

Looked at from the vantage ground of this tremendous war, all these other wars seem insignificant. Yet this war, in which pestilence might have been expected to work almost universal destruction, has been, so far as the Western theatre is concerned, a war without pestilence. The man who has done this is the scientist — the man who has been reviled as an experimenter and torturer of animals, a callous seeker after worthless knowledge, who has nearly always had to face great difficulties, has almost invariably been underpaid, and, as these things are measured nowadays, has had only second-rate honours doled out to him. He is the man who has saved battalions to the Army, preserved countless homes from bereavement, husbanded the young strength of the country, and by so doing sharpened all the weapons of war.