Christmas Every Day

Canadians were also willing to set the Kaiser to rights, according to his piece of sheet music.

I always thought that “Yanks” and “doughboys” were the nicknames for American soldiers in World War I. Who knew that there was a brief craze for “Sammies” as in “Uncle Sam’s boys”?

Apparently, they liked to smoke.

Two observations about this one: (1) those are awfully effeminate-looking warriors (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and (2) they were incorrectly using apostrophes to pluralize even back then.

Here an Uncle Sam in shirt-sleeves uses a left jab to give it to the Kaiser. How merry it must have been to sing this around the parlor piano.

Here a French and American officer look approvingly on a group of American enlisted men who appear to be practising the French national anthem, so as to pass it on to “the Hun”. The Germans had a number of nicknames in World War I: “Fritz”, “the Boche”, “the Heinies”, but the most offensive was “Hun”. Kaiser Wilhelm had urged his troops being sent to China to quell the Boxer Rebellion to behave like Huns, and the name stuck.

We all rightly the lament the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family by his Bolshevik captors in 1918 but we forget that his overthrow in February 1917 was widely hailed in the West. Here is some sheet music that celebrated the toppling of the Romanov dynasty.

Everybody Took a Kick at Nicholas

Mister Romanoff who was the Russian ruler,/Now is roamin’ off to where the weather’s cooler;

Just twinkle little Czar,/We’re glad you’re where you are.

Every gate is locked up with a big Kerens key,

He’s all alone,/Nick and his Queen, his old Czardine

Were thrown off the throne.

Everybody took a kick at Nicholas/He was kicked in the nick of time.

They took his motor car,/Drove him far,

Let him in the woods and said,/“Now there you’se are.”

Left-o-witch or Right-o-witch took all his coins away,

I really don’t know which is which but that is what they say;

That “every body took a kick at Nicholas/And Nicholas is nickeless now.”

Nick once sat upon a throne and gave out orders/Now he’s got a 12-room flat and takes in boarders;

And that Rasputin gent,/Owes Nick a whole month’s rent.

Mister Nick is married to the Kaiser’s sisters/She cooks his meals

Where sauerkraut, pushed in his mouth/Just think how poor Nick feels.

Now the Czarine says, “there’s no disputin’ why I cry,

It’s all because I miss the way Rasputin winked his eye.”

So “everybody took a kick at Nicholas/And Nicholas is nickeless now.”

Free trade (or Reciprocity) between Canada and America has always been a hotly-debated issue. Here is an 1876 cartoon in which a Canadian trade representative, Joseph Xavier-Perrault, secretary of the Canadian commission at the Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition in 1876, brings goods to the US and Uncle Sam vows to retaliate. The captions reads: “Uncle Sam: “Wah! Yeuo aire a bringin deown a might sight o’things, ain’ t yer?” — Secretary Perreault: “Yes, Sir! We are going to show you what we can do up our way in various lines of growth, manufacture, and art. We will astonish you!” — Uncle Sam: “All right young man. (Aside) Just what I want. Then I’ll know better what to fetch up and undersell them across the line 45.”

The stuff you find lying around while you are poking your nose into things historical. Here is an 1892 love poem to Canada from America — hoping his affection will lead to annexation. John Bull in the last verse is the personification of Britain, much as Uncle Sam is of the USA or Johnny Canuck is of our own dear land.

LOVE-SONG
Charles Henry Phelps
Century Magazine

Ten reasons why October 19 was a very bad day, (or a good day, depending on whose side you are on.) Certainly it was a very consequential day.

• 202 BC Scipio Africanus and his Roman legions defeat Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. Game over for the Carthaginian Empire.

• 439 Vandal barbarians take Carthage. Persecution of Catholics ensues.

• 1812 Napoleon begins his disastrous retreat from Moscow. His Grande Armée will be destroyed on their way back.

• 1914 First Battle of Ypres. 10 million German and Allied soldiers square off. (see illustration above)

• 1921 Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Granjo murdered in a coup.

• 1933 Nazi Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.

• 1943 The merchant ship Sinfra is sunk off the coast of Crete. 2,098 Italian prisoners of war drown or are shot by their German guards.

• 1950 The Chinese Communist conquest of Tibet begins.

• 1950 500,000 Chinese Communist “volunteers” pour across the Yalu River to join in the Korean War and save North Korea from a U.N. army.

• 1984 Catholic priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, who had been working with the Solidarity trade union movement, is murdered by the Polish secret police.