Today -100: May 3, 1923: Half an hour’s martial law and half a minute’s rifle shooting

The “Clean Books” censorship bill dies in the NY Senate, getting only 15 votes. Leading the fight against it is future NYC mayor Jimmy Walker. “No woman was ever ruined by a book,” he says. He notes the same hypocrisy as with the hard-drinking supporters of the Volstead Act: “Some of the best tellers of shabby stories in this Senate have been worrying their hearts out during the debate today about somebody reading something which may not have been good for him or her.”

Germany proposes a total reparation figure of 30 billion marks, which is the equivalent of some money, in installments (funded by foreign loans) (and if those aren’t forthcoming???). This is contingent on no further seizures of securities. And passive resistance will continue as long as the occupation does.

When people are forced out of Mussolini’s government, such as the Catholic Party members last month, he tends to simply abolish their positions. So too the office of Undersecretary of Finance Minister Cesare Maria de Veechi, pushed out for a speech in which he said, “Everything could be right in Italy with half an hour’s martial law and half a minute’s rifle shooting.” He’s a general of the national militia (and helped lead the March on Rome), a position he isn’t leaving, so any such rifle shooting would be under his command. De Veechi says he wasn’t speaking for the government, just saying the direction he wanted it to take. Swell. He’ll be named governor of Italian Somaliland later this year.

The Irish Dáil Éireann, while ignoring Éamon de Valera’s peace proposal, votes that hunger-striking prisoners should not be released from prison. Two more rebels are executed.

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