Today -100: September 24, 1919: Of medals, cyclonic furies, the impulses of courage and cowardice, and medicinal whisky

Gabriele D’Annunzio issues bronze medals to the invaders of Fiume, “by national decree”. What nation? Does he think he runs Italy now?

Er, evidently yes. Evidently last week (I assume it’s Italian censorship that’s making some of the news from Fiume arrive days late) the poet-aviator called for the overthrow of the Italian government.

Steel strike: more fighting between cops and strikers at various locations, mostly in Pennsylvania, more dead. From his prison cell, Eugene Debs says the strike could expand to miners and railway workers. He says workers, pissed off at the killings by company guards, may “be swept into a revolution with cyclonic fury.”

Hearing that some Democratic senators are now supporting reservations to the peace treaty, such as Hiram Johnson (R-Cal.)’s amendment giving the US equal votes in the League of Nations Assembly with Britain and its dependencies’ six, Woodrow Wilson, in Salt Lake City,  says such reservations would force the treaty back to the Peace Conference for renegotiation. He says his tour has shown him that “the people are against changes.” He figures 80% are in favor of the League, but “All the elements that tended [during the war] toward disloyalty are against the League,” thereby serving Germany’s goal of disuniting the Allies. He escalates his criticism of his senatorial critics:

I am not afraid to go before the jury of mankind at any time on the record of the United States with regard to the fulfillment of its international obligations; and when these gentlemen who are criticizing it once feel, if they ever should feel, the impulse of courage, instead of the impulse of cowardice, they will realize how much better it feels.

If that doesn’t win them over, I don’t know what will.

The majority of Mormons are in favor of the League, the NYT thinks.

In Haiti, which the US still occupies, two marines shoot and kill two other marines they thought were bandits.

Headline of the Day -100:  

A federal judge in Pennsylvania tells a jury that it’s legal to sell whisky for medicinal purposes, so they acquit a bartender who sold whisky to someone who said it was for... a sick friend.

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