Today -100: March 31, 1923: Hypnotism is responsible for sooooo many marriages

More anti-Semitic rioting in Bucharest. Students attack the Jewish Theatre. The government, naturally, closes the theatre.

France threatens to expel all railroad workers in the Ruhr & Rhineland who don’t return to work. The striking men are being paid by the German government, but they’ve been demanding higher pay to do nothing because of inflation. The French are upping the pressure because they think Germany can’t afford to fund the resistance much longer, given the complete failure of a loan attempt, probably because the Reparations Commission said that Germany could issue bonds but not repay them without permission.

Russia commutes the death sentence imposed on Archbishop Zepliak to 10 years in solitary, but says Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch will be executed (Spoiler Alert: And he will be).

After a case of whiskey is discovered in an Oklahoma Legislature committee room, the speaker places armed guards in the building. The House then votes to remove them.

Lenin is again said to be dying, as was the custom, and will supposedly be replaced by a military dictatorship led by Trotsky.

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Today -100: March 30, 1923: Men nowadays are tired of liberty

French troops seize Ruhr vineyards owned by the Prussian state.

Mussolini writes that “men nowadays are tired of liberty.” Russia and Italy have proven “that it is possible to govern outside, above and against all liberal ideas. Neither communism nor fascism has anything to do with liberty.”

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Today -100: March 29, 1923: Of suicides and dots

The US protests the death sentences on Archbishop Zepliak, et al, through the US ambassador to Germany, since the US has no diplomatic relations with Russia. Russia may exchange the archbish for Communists in prison in Poland. The pope claims that they should be freed because they are his subjects. Somehow I don’t think the Soviet Union recognizes the Vatican as a country.

The Save-a-Life League reports that there were 12,000 suicides in the US in 1922. 79 of them were millionaires, one-third were women. In NYC, an increasing number of suicides are throwing themselves in front of trains or jumping off tall buildings.

The Texas Republican Party says it will get KKK members employed by the federal government in Texas fired. Do they have the power to do that?

Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty’s son Draper is a suspect in the murder of Dot King (which sounds like the lamest Batman villain). That’s bad, right? Actually, it seems not to have come to anything, although his wife does have him committed next month. Looking into that, I found that Harry Daugherty’s 1932 book The Inside Story of the Harding Tragedy was ghost-written by Thomas Dixon, the racist author of the books Birth of a Nation was based on.

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Today -100: March 28, 1923: Of stamps, Marxistic-Jewish-international pigsties, and driving saloons

Russia postpones the executions of Catholic Archbishop Zepliak and Monsignor Butchkavitsch.

French PM Raymond Poincaré says Germany will yield on the Ruhr by the end of May. Meanwhile, French forces raid the Dortmund Post Office and steal some stamps.

The French seize Otto Steinbrinck in Düsseldorf. He was captain of the U-boat that sank the Sussex, a French cross-channel ferry, in 1916, so he’s on the French “war criminal” list. I don’t think anything will come of this, but Steinbrinck will be convicted of war crimes, which seem to consist of involvement in munitions production, after the next world war.

The Munich Post accused Hitler of having only spent a couple of weeks at the front. The Austrian responds, “I have never combated the republican democratic form of State because I regard the present German Reich as neither a democracy nor a republic, but a Marxistic-Jewish-international pigsty.” That’s the worst sort of pigsty, er, probably. The far-right Bavarian government ridicules the federal government’s worries about a possible Nazi putsch last Sunday, saying they merely held “athletic exercises in the open, which they had a right to do without asking special permission”.

The left-wing Saxon government bans the Nazi party.

The Prince of Wales falls off a horse, as is the custom.

Gov. Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania signs a bill to “drive saloons out of the state.” He does know that saloons are, like, buildings, right?

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Today -100: March 27, 1923: Well, she always did play the shit out of a death scene

French actor Sarah Bernhardt dies at 78. At the time of her death, she was filming a Sacha Guitry play in her house, playing a paralytic. The film, La Voyante (The Clairvoyant), will be completed, but is considered a lost film, not that that stops people rating it on IMDB.

The Soviet Supreme Court sentences the head of the Catholic Church in Russia, Archbishop Zepliak (also spelled Cieplak) and Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch (aka Budkiewicz) to death and a bunch of priests to prison terms for opposing the Soviet government. A choir boy is acquitted.

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Seems there was a burglar alarm, which he did not hear, just as he never heard cops approaching him prior to some of his other arrests.

British Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law will have a little lie-down during the Easter recess. He has a “minor throat affection,” which is presumably a misprint of a) throat infection, b) throat affliction), or c) cancer. Which is the thing he has.

A French court-martial in the Ruhr sentences a German official to 6 months in prison for reading the Deutsche Allegemeine Zeitung newspaper.

A grand jury investigating last year’s trial of Illinois Gov. Len Small hears from retired saloonkeeper William Riley, who admits paying $350 to one of the jurors.

A resolution is introduced in the Oklahoma Legislature to divide the state in two, with the new eastern state called Tulshoma.

You're doin' fine, Tulshoma! Tulshoma, TS!

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Today -100: March 26, 1923: It’s always absinth o’clock somewhere

A huge crowd gathers outside the French Embassy in Berlin to sing “Deutschland Über Alles” at it, accompanied by a 70-piece brass band, as was the custom. Berlin police disperse them.

The French government decides to compromise on the daylight saving thing, turning clocks ahead 30 minutes permanently, without a seasonal change. This isn’t quite Strasbourg time, which is 31 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, nor the old pre-war Paris time, which was 10 minutes ahead of GMT. How trains didn’t crash into each other all the time is beyond me.

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Today -100: March 25, 1923: Of revolt alarms, Mussolini frowns, and killer comedies

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Prussian police are warned to be on their guard for a possible invasion of Prussia by Hitler’s Bavarian forces. The tone of the article, perhaps reflecting sentiment in Prussia, is that Prussian Interior Minister Carl Severing is just being hysterical.

The French military authorities knew in advance of the putsch plot, the Chicago Tribune says, and had “taken every precaution”. I’m guessing they didn’t bother informing the German government, so not every precaution.

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An article by George Raffalovich in the NYT Sunday Magazine section describes Frowny Mussolini’s Italy as undergoing “a new Renaissance.” Yes, it’s another
NYT tongue-bath for the Duck.

Elsewhere in the dictator-heavy Magazine is an article about how Stalin is beginning to look like a possible successor to Lenin.

An old man “laughs to death” in a London movie theatre watching some American comedy and... the story doesn’t even tell us what this dangerous film is?

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Today -100: March 24, 1923: Will that dangerous man ever be arrested?

Prussia bans the (deep breath...) Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (Freedom Party), saying they were planning for a putsch on the 31st and the assassinations of various officials. And as during the Kapp Putsch, “the sinister figure of [Gen. Erich] Ludendorff was again in the background, traveling from one headquarters of the conspiracy to another, encouraging the revolt by letter and in speeches, but always in language that allowed several interpretations.” As Prussian Interior Minister Carl Severing reports all this to the Prussian Diet, someone is heard asking, “Will that dangerous man ever be arrested?” No spoilers.

Anti-Semitic students in Budapest and elsewhere in Hungary have been attacking newspapers considered pro-Jewish. So the government bars Jewish students from high schools & universities.

In the French National Assembly, Communist deputies accuse PM Raymond Poincaré of forming his Ruhr policy out of fear that the royalists will expose... something... about his private life. Hilarity ensues. Poincaré denies that there are “abominable dossiers” against him and his family. Abominable dossiers are, of course, the worst kind of dossiers.

During a House of Commons debate on an animal cruelty bill, Pat Collins (Lib-Walsall) says many of those speaking know nothing about the subject, while he owns 20 or 30 lions (his company runs fairgrounds).

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Today -100: March 23, 1923: Surpassing relativity

Albert Einstein has a new theory that he says is even better than relativity, but he won’t say what it is yet. It came to him at sea (he’s been in Japan).

The German police raid the (deep breath...) Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (translated here as Germany Liberty Party), which is allied with the Nazi Party. Twenty people are arrested for intriguing against the Weimar Republic, plotting to murder anti-monarchists like Communist Reichstag member Clara Zetkin and to stir up violent resistance to the occupation of the Ruhr. A couple of Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei deputies expecting to be arrested, Reinhold Wulle and Wilhelm Henning, hole up in the Reichstag, where they can’t be arrested.

I’ve been meaning to mention the recent proliferation of stories about dance records/marathons, but I can’t pass up the news that a new record, 25 hours, is set in Britain by... wait for it... Victor Hindmarch.

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