Monday, August 10, 2020

Today -100: August 10, 1920: We oppose a mere period of coma in our national life


Franklin D. Roosevelt, the recently resigned Assistant Secretary of the Navy, accepts the Democratic party’s nomination for vice president in Hyde Park, NY from “the largest front porch which has yet appeared in the campaign”. He says Harding’s message is “We are tired of progress, we want to get back to where we were before, to go about our own business, to restore normal conditions – I mean conditions of normalcy.” Oo, making fun of Harding’s favorite non-word.

And what do the Democrats oppose? “Our  opposition is to the things which once existed, in order that they may never return. We oppose money in politics. We oppose the private control of national finances. We oppose the treatment of human beings as commodities, we oppose the saloon-bossed city, we oppose starvation wages, we oppose rule by groups or cliques. In the same way we oppose a mere period of coma in our national life.”

Lloyd George has decided not to go to war with Russia to defend Poland, quite yet. This may be because the labor movement has made it very clear it will use strike and other action to prevent it. French Gen. Maxime Weygand offers to take command of the Polish Army (which is what he thought was going to happen when he went to Poland last month). They say no thank you. The Polish government is retreating from Warsaw.

The Massachusetts state bank commissioner orders Charles Ponzi’s bank to stop honoring his checks, since he is overdrawn (which he denies). Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen says there is no evidence that the vast sums Ponzi says he is sending to, and receiving from, Europe actually exist.

The Evening Standard (London) claims that Sinn Féin has a $500,000 slush fund to influence the US presidential election, and a further $1 million to work for US recognition of the Irish Republic. Irish President De Valera admits to having funds for the latter but denies trying to buy himself a US president.

Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix’s ship arrives off the Irish coast, and he is taken off it by a freaking destroyer, one of several deployed for the purpose, so that he won’t set foot on Irish soil. Mannix says the government “are putting me to a little inconvenience, but are making themselves very silly.” The Lord Mayor of Dublin says the action shows the government “are in a state of nervous prostration.”


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