Today -100: July 27, 1926: Of shaws, assassination-magnets, and dark bread

At his 70th birthday dinner, George Bernard Shaw gives the speech which the postmaster general refused to let the BBC broadcast because Shaw wouldn’t promise not to be controversial. His subject: censorship.

He comes out in favor of the Labour Party for, I think, the first time.

Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of Honest Abe, dies at 82. He was secretary of war 1881-5 and ambassador to Great Britain 1889-93, later becoming president of the Pullman Company. He rejected many offers to run for higher office. While he was not, as the NYT asserts, at Ford’s Theatre during his father’s assassination, he was a witness to the assassination of Pres. Garfield and was close to McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition when he was assassinated. Dude was just bad luck, is what I’m saying. An amateur astronomer, he built his own personal observatory. 

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson will keep her pledge to resign if she lost the Democratic primary, which she has. Or will she? I thought she was supposed to resign immediately, but she’s calling a special session of the Legislature in September and talking about maybe quitting Nov. 1 if she’s completed all her work. 

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: July 26, 1926: Of militias, illegal fractional meetings, and controversy

The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, a pro-Weimar militia composed mostly of veterans, previously unarmed, will now arm its members with rifles, a few hundred thousand of them. The government says it has no objections. France might have some.

Grigory Zinoviev is also ousted from the Politburo, and Mikhail Lashevich is fired as assistant war minister for their “illegal conspirative” opposition campaign, including an “illegal fractional meeting” in the woods outside Moscow (which to be fair is exactly what they were engaged in).

George Bernard Shaw’s 70th birthday will be celebrated tomorrow by a dinner chaired by Ramsay MacDonald. It was supposed to be broadcast on the BBC, but Postmaster General Sir William Mitchell-Thomson refuses permission unless Shaw promises not to say anything “controversial.” Shaw responds that everything he says is highly controversial.

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Today -100: July 25, 1926: I will offer him a drink and take one with him even if it gags me

Grigory Zinoviev is ousted as chair of the Comintern after opposing Stalin. Who will have him executed in about a decade.

Col. Ned Green, Prohibition Administrator for Northern California and Nevada, is suspended for, among other things, holding parties in his office in which seized alcohol was served. Government agents go to his hotel room to seize his alcohol, although he points out that some of it is pre-Volstead and it isn’t illegal to have booze in your home and offer it to your guests. In fact, he claims not to know who keeps sending him all that liquor, it just kinda shows up. “If any friend or stranger calls on me I will offer him a drink and take one with him even if it gags me.” US Attorney George Hatfield says he’ll indict Green.

The new Poincaré Cabinet unveils its secret plan to stabilize French government finances: ask people to pay their taxes a bit before they’re actually due.

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Today -100: July 24, 1926: Unexcessive aspirations are the best kind of aspirations

Mussolini says Italy must expand “culturally and economically beyond her borders,” “but our imperialism presents no threat to the world’s peace” because surely no nation “would want to assume the grave responsibility of obstructing the achievement of such legitimate and, in reality, such unexcessive aspirations.”  “Our colonial aspirations do not constitute a menace for any one.” He plans to fulfill these aspirations through deals with other European colonial nations; he makes literally no references to the natives of these potential colonies and whatever their aspirations might be. He says the US resembles the Fascist State more than liberal democratic European nations: “Popular sovereignty is tempered by strong governmental authority. Universal suffrage elects the Government, but cannot interfere with its work”.

Raymond Poincaré succeeds in forming what could be called a government of national union. His cabinet includes 6 former primes minister and a broad range of parties; tomorrow the NYT will describe it as “largely composed of men who have in turn thrown each other out of office because of their opposition to the other’s proposals.”

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Today -100: July 23, 1926: Of tourists, free rides, beating roulette, and fly balls

French resentment against having to pay war debts is being taken out in Paris on British and American tourists, with jeering and the occasional beating. I KNOW, Parisians being rude to tourists!

The French deputies who yesterday asked Pres. Doumergue for a government of national union tell the man he chose to lead that government, Raymond Poincaré, no, not you, we didn’t mean you. The largest party in the Chamber, the Radical Socialists, thinks one of their own should be PM. Poincaré wants to reduce the size of the cabinet from something like 19 to something like 8 so that it can maybe get some things done for a change.

The Italian Fascist regime wants to popularize civil aviation, so it’s offering anyone who hasn’t previously ridden in an aeroplane a free ride.

Margaret Bondfield (Labour), who has been an MP before, is elected in the Wallsend by-election. Parliament now has 6 women MPs.

Prince Nikolai Massalski of Russia, in prison in Berlin awaiting trial for passing bad checks, has not wasted his time behind bars, inventing a sure-fire system for beating roulette, but the judges won’t let him out to use it to win enough money to cover his checks.

Babe Ruth catches a ball dropped from an airplane, which is a first. It takes a few tries before a ball isn’t blown off course on its way down.

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Today -100: July 22, 1926: It didn’t.

Édouard Herriot is defeated in the Chamber of Deputies, his government having lasted, what, 2 days? After he hands in his notice, 302 deputies petition Pres. Gaston Doumergue to form a government of national union, which they promise to actually support for once. So he asks Raymond Poincaré to do that. The government is seriously running out of funds and the condition of the franc is such that stores are closing rather than have to sell stuff for them.

Stephen Golombo of Paterson, NJ hangs himself because he thought his death would bring the end of the world.

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Today -100: July 21, 1926: Live your life so your obituary doesn’t contain the words “monster of iniquity”

Felix Dzerzhinsky, 48, head of the Soviet secret police under its various names, dies of a heart attack after giving a long speech to the Bolshevik Central Committee. He died doing what he loved, denouncing enemies of the state.

An unsigned Chicago Tribune editorial alliteratively titled “Pink Powder Puffs,” complains that the men’s room of a public ballroom has a face powder dispenser. “In a men’s washroom! Homo Americanus! Why didn’t someone quietly drown Rudolph Guglielmo, alias Valentino, years ago? ... It is time for a matriarchy if the male of the species allows such a thing to persist. Better a rule by masculine women than by effeminate men.” Valentino, who is genuinely deeply upset, challenges the author to a duel, maybe boxing or wrestling, since more lethal forms of dueling are sadly illegal in the US. The author will not respond.

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Today -100: July 20, 1926: Doing the best with the material left

Édouard Herriot succeeds in forming a cabinet, the 14th since 1920, which will surely last a super-long time. It’s not the government of aaalllll the parties he promised (not all deputies from even his own Radical Party back it), and most of the major French leaders remain outside. The NYT’s very sceptical Edwin James notes that Herriot’s invitation was refused by Poincaré, Briand, Tardieu, Marin, and Barthou: “Therefore Herriot has probably done the best he could with the material left.”  It doesn’t inspire confidence in the financial sector and the franc continues its plunge. Radio stations are prohibited from broadcasting exchange rates and market prices, to prevent the spreading of panic.

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Today -100: July 19, 1926: In which is revealed what is the greatest threat to the republic

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho), hoping to ride a dry wave into the White House (to use a terrible metaphor), says the only way to take Prohibition out of politics is to enforce it. Attempts to repeal it, he says, are really attacks on the Constitution and nullification and are the greatest threat to the republic.

Édouard Herriot will attempt to form a government consisting of aaalllll the parties. He’s having some difficulty accomplishing that.

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson is still leaving almost all her campaigning for re-election to her husband, impeached former governor James F., who is giving her credit for removing evolution from school textbooks and says Attorney Gen. Dan Moody “runs with the Ku Klux Klan at night” (he does not, but James wants to keep the Klan issue before the public so he can use it as a cudgel when he runs for US senator).

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Today -100: July 18, 1926: Boycotting ice cream? Ice cream?

The French Chamber of Deputies refuses Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux’s demand for fiscal dictatorial powers, 288-243. Aristide Briand’s Cabinet resigns. After formally resigning at the Presidential Palace, Briand says “Now I am a free man and I am going fishing tomorrow.”

The archbishop of Mexico City and others call for an economic boycott to start when the Calles decree comes into effect on the 31st. They are to refrain from coaches, fruit, ice cream, movies, lottery tickets, and non-religious schools, use as little electricity as possible, etc. etc.

Lithuania’s newish Populist-Socialist government lifts the 4-year-old state of siege, ends censorship of the mails, and releases all political prisoners.

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Today -100: July 17, 1926: Of rapes and marbles

Italy’s Fascist press is pointing to the demands of French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux and Belgium’s King Albert for dictatorial powers to deal with the fall of their respective francs as demonstrating the failure of parliamentarism and the rise of fascist methods.

The Kenya Legislative Council passes a law imposing the death penalty for assaults on white women by native men. Black men can still rape black women with close to impunity, the Archdeacon of Kavirondo notes in letter to the London Times; last year a magistrate refused to convict in one case, saying rape was so common it was almost a tribal custom.

Alexander Philadelpheus, the most prominent Greek archaeologist, is campaigning for the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles.

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Today -100: July 16, 1926: Which is the best kind of dictator

Albert, King of the Belgians, is “expected to be a good-natured dictator”.

The Aimee Semple McPherson grand jury hearings figure it out:  a gas station attendant in Salinas identifies her and Kenneth Ormiston, a former operator for her temple’s radio station, as having gotten gas 11 days after her alleged kidnapping. From there, they checked into a San Luis Obispo hotel (no, not the Madonna Inn, that didn’t exist yet) under false names. Other witnesses place her at locations that don’t fit her narrative.

I.F. Andrews, who was the drummer boy who played taps at Lincoln’s funeral, dies. After the war, he became a professional musician.

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