by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

The War Lineup

Austria – Vienna claims Austrians captured Russian trenches near Zakliczyn, Russians say Transylvania campaign proceeding satisfactorily.

Turkey – Despite numerical superiority, Russian attempt to outflank Turks in Caucasus defeated, Constantinople claims.

Belgium and Alsace – Fog and snow hampering operations.

Execution Stay For Leo Frank

The paper reported that the U. S. Supreme Court stayed the execution of Leo Frank, which had been scheduled for the following week.

Leo Frank, superintendent of a pencil factory was accused in the murder of Mary Phagan. The trial was notorious and front page news. Frank, a prominent resident of Atlanta and Jewish was charged with the murder of 13 year old Mary Phagan. The trial was controversial for its racist and anti-semitic overtones.

There would be local outrage at the stay and at charges there had been any miscarriage of justice. In August of 1915, a group calling themselves the “Knights of Mary Phagan” kidnapped and lynched Leo Frank. Among the group responsible for his lynching included a former governor of Georgia, a police officer, the former and current mayors of Marietta, three current or former deputy sheriffs, a superior court judge.

Long Trenches and Secreted Batteries Protect Gateway to Paris

Reporting the new geography of war, the paper reports that “elaborately constructed forts of steel and concrete are not protecting the corner of the eastern gateway to France. Trenches are now doing the work of permanent fortifications. Extending for miles beyond the forest are artillery and infantry positions dug into the earth and concealed in the woods” The paper reports that trenches were constructed as a response to the destructive nature of the German 42 centimeter shells which were so destructive of the fortresses.

By November of 1914, trenches began to be built and which soon extended from Nieuport on Belgian coast 400 miles to the Swiss border.

SECRECY AS TO NATIONAL DEFENSE

The issue of secrecy and congressional interference with the conduct of foreign affairs is not limited to issues relating to Syria or Iran. Here is the editor commenting on secrecy and national defense:

Senator Lodge and his son-in-law, Congressman Gardner, are spoiling for a fight with Great Britain, and at the same time want Mexico invaded, and would not mind taking a whirl at Germany and the other belligerent European nations. They are making things as unpleasant as possible for a national administration which is trying its best to preserve strict neutrality and prevent a deluge of bloodshed in the, new world like that which has engulfed the nations across the sea.

They are especially criticising Secretary Garrison for his reply to the congressman’s resolution in regard to national defense. The secretary is accused of withholding from the public information to which it is entitled and of assuming in general a public-be-damned policy.

We do not so construe Secretary Garrison’s statement. If he should make public the details of our national defense, it would place in possession of possible enemies of the country information that otherwise they might not be able to obtain. On the other hand, the people of this country are not so unpatriotic as to place the desire for intimate knowledge against the danger involved in its dissemination to the nations of the world.

If Secretary Garrison wanted to play politics at the expense of divulging important national secrets, he would have made a far different reply to Congressman Gardner and at the same time place himself under an odium that will not now attach.

This is entirely beside the question of national preparedness; but the poorer we are prepared the less we should tell the other fellow about it. At any rate, men like Lodge and Gardner are pestiferous little runts in a time of world-wide crisis, when so much is at stake, and it is necessary for public officials to weigh carefully every act and official utterance.

Passing Through The Great Crisis

In another editorial, Passing Through The Great Crisis,the editor summarized the economic consequences of the war on America by quoting from the annual issue of Dun’s Review:

“After passing, between July and December, through nearly every possible experience of adversity, except that of complete collapse, the new year opens with business in the United States rising above depression and confronting the future with new confidence, and with clear signs of developing activity. Since the beginning of the modern system of credits in the middle of the seventeenth century there has been a succession, at regular cycle intervals, of financial upheavals, but nothing approaching in violence and extent the overwhelming convulsion of the markets in 1914 as the result of the sudden outbreak of the European war. Moratoriums in practically every nation abroad; the closing of the stock exchanges in every important city; confusion in all the processes of money and exchange; the commerce of the world demoralized; 5,000,000 tons of shipping withdrawn from the ocean thoroughfares of trade these were some of the instant developments of the war, the declaration of which led at once to a gold run on the historic Bank of England, stopped onlv bv the prompt action of the British government.

The United States, although a neutral country, suffered almost as much in a business way as the nations actually engaged in the conflict. Three things rendered our position especially serious. The first was that this is a debtor nation, vast quantities of the stocks and bonds of our corporations being held abroad; the second was that we had practically no merchant marine in the foreign trade, and our commerce seemed to be threatened with complete extinction, while our principal crop – cotton – though large beyond precedent, was cut off from its greatest foreign consuming markets. But with admirable self-control, courage and wisdom, the national government, with the patriotic cooperation of bankers and merchants, at once planned and carried into effective execution great, measures of relief. Foreign ships were admitted to American registry; government war risk insurance was instituted; a $100,000,000 gold pool was formed to protect the foreign exchange market; another fund of $130,000,000 was raised to facilitate the carrying and marketing of cotton, and other emergency steps were taken. ‘While these heroic measures were being conducted, the nation proceeded the establishment of its new federal reserve bank system, which was successfully inaugurated with all its facilitates for the conservation of reserves and the. wider extension of commercial credits. Feeling its way cautiously. the securities market gradually overcame its early prostration, and in December the New York and other stock exchanges of the country were reopened without evidence of extensive liquidation, while the cotton and coffee exchanges also resumed business. Money became easy and exchange more normal, and the whole financial machinery of the country resumed its regular and orderly movement.

The nation’s response to the economic consequences of war in 1914 again contrasts with similar circumstances in 2008.