Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Today -100: November 27, 1919: Of reservations, military control, firing squads, pan-Germans, and opera


China says if the US is allowed to add reservations to its signature on the peace treaty, it should be too.

The 15th Cavalry seize 52 foreign striking miners from a mining camp in Wyoming. Evidently they can do that because the state is “under military control.” In Monarch, WY, the soldiers round up miners and force them to vote to return to work. Secretary of War Newton Baker evidently had no idea this was going on, says it’s “inconceivable” that an army officer would order the arrest of strikers, but he’s waiting for an official report.

Mexico, after taking a long time to reply to the US’s demand, refuses to release consular agent William Jenkins, pointing out that there is no principle of international right behind the US demand and that the decision is up to the courts and the state of Puebla, not the federal government.

Mexico executes Gen. Felipe Ángeles, who defected to Pancho Villa in 1914 and again in 1918, by firing squad, as was the custom.

Britain bans Sinn Féin and associated groups in Ireland. The government is finally planning to go ahead with its mutilated Home Rule legislation, and is worried that SF, by far the most popular party in Ireland, won’t cooperate. Or that it will use the Dublin Parliament to declare independence.

Where Labor Secretary William Wilson suggested a 31% pay increase for coal miners as equitable given cost-of-living increases, Fuel Administrator Harry Garfield (son of the former president) thinks 14% is plenty, and also that mine owners should absorb it without increasing prices to the public. The unions prefer 31% and dismiss Garfield out of hand.

Gen. Erich Ludendorff graciously agrees to help lead the Pan-Germans. He gives a speech at the Potsdam Garrison Church attended by many soldiers garrisoned in Potsdam on “Militarism as a School for Moral Qualification of Successful Men.” Correspondent George Renwick insists that “the silly goings on of Ludendorff and people like him... are not even the prelude to a counter-revolutionary coup.” Spoiler Alert: well, not a successful one.

The House of Commons rejects a bill to allow peers to give up their peerages and allow Viscount Astor in particular to remain eligible to sit in the Commons. Mrs Astor had said if she was elected to his seat and this bill passed, she’d resign in his favor. The Commons also agrees with the decision the Lords made not to let girls in, we’re looking at you Viscountess Rhondda.

German opera is once again nipped in the bud in New York. The North German Society of Queens had plans to perform Strauss’s “Der weiße Hirsch” in Astoria, but American Legionites surrounded the hall...


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