Countdown on the Great War, November 10, 1918: A Socialist Provisional Government forms in Germany, the Naval War continues on, and Mildred Harris weds.

American engineers constructing a bridge in a ruined French city.  November 10, 1918.

1.  The HMS Ascot, a minesweeper, was sunk by the UB-67 with the loss of 51 hands.  The HMT Renarro, a British Navy trawler hit a mine and sank as did the Italian 36PN torpedo boat.

2.  Romania, which earlier surrendered to Germany, came back into the war in order to retake territory it had lost in the peace to Bulgaria. Allied forces entered Svishtov and Nikopol in Bulgaria.

3.  The Council of the People's Deputies becomes the provisional government of Germany with the aim of negotiating a peace with the Allies.  It's membership is completely comprised of members of the Social Democratic Party and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, making it a highly left wing ruling body, which came about when the SDP, which had evolved into a much less radical party in recent years, co-opted some revolutionary councils the day prior after it found it could not stop them from pushing forward.  The inclusion of the USDP was a distasteful necessity at first, even though the SDP did not see eye to eye on most things.

This essentially meant that to a degree the aims of the German revolutionaries had been partially recognized and in fact a government partially installed by them was in power, although one that had, due to the SDP, much less radical aims than the USDP.  The government would sweep away Germany's tiered franchise and introduce many liberal reforms before yielding to the Reichstag in 1919, by which time the USDP had pulled out of the government and the SDP was ruling alone.   The SDP under Friedrich Ebert, it's leader, would find itself thereafter increasingly aligned with Germany's conservative elements and it even would rely upon the Freikorps to take on left wing revolutionaries during the German civil war.

4.  With the war winding down, even celebrity news, albeit local celebrity news, started to reappear on the front page of the papers.

The Cheyenne girl was Mildred Harris.  As we've reported on her before:

Mildred Harris.  Her entry in Today In  Wyoming's History:  

1901  Mildred Harris, movie actress, born in Cheyenne.  She was a significant actress in the silent film era, having gone from being a child actor to a major adult actress, but had difficulty making the transition to talking pictures.

Harris is also evidence that, in spite of my notation of changes in moral standards elsewhere, the lives of movie stars has often been as torrid as they are presently.  Harris married Charlie Chaplin in 1918, at which time she was 17 years old and the couple thought, incorrectly, that  she was pregnant.  She did later give birth during their brief marriage to a boy who was severely disabled, and who died only three days after being born.  The marriage was not a happy one.  They divorced after two years of marriage, and she would marry twice more and was married to former professional football player William P. Fleckenstein at the time of her death, a union that had lasted ten years.  Ironically, she appeared in three films in 1920, the year of her divorce, as Mildred Harris Chaplin, the only films in which she was billed under that name. While an actress probably mostly known to silent film buffs today, she lived in some ways a life that touched upon many remembered personalities of the era, and which was also somewhat stereotypically Hollywood.  She introduced Edward to Wallis Simpson.

She died in 1944 at age 42 of pneumonia following surgery.  She has a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  A significant number of her 134 films are lost or destroyed due to film deterioration.  Her appearances in the last eight years of her life were minor, and unaccredited, showing the decline of her star power in the talking era.

Stories like hers, however, demonstrate that the often held concept of great isolation of Wyomingites was never true.  Harris was one of at least three actors and actresses who were born in Wyoming and who had roles in the early silent screen era.  Of those, she was arguably the most famous having risen to the height of being a major actress by age 16.