Today -100: February 28, 1920: People who don’t want women in public life are too late

The US position is to completely ignore Soviet Russia’s latest peace feelers. The State Dept won’t even release it to the public, because it’s all propaganda, man. Russia is requesting that other nations just stop trying to overthrow its Bolshevik government militarily, and it will even pay 60% of the foreign debt run up the tsars (this is aimed at France, which is strongly against recognition and holds most of that debt).

French railway workers striking for state ownership of the railroads are conscripted into the army.

The British Labour Party offers a bill to amend the Representation of the People Act of 1918 to give the vote to women at the same age as for men (at 21 instead of 30). Nancy Astor supports the bill, not for the sake of the women, she says, but for the sake of the country. “People who don’t want women in public life are too late,” she adds, no doubt pointing at herself and winking.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George publishes his Irish Home Rule Bill. There would be two anemic parliaments for the North and South, which would each name half the members of a Council for Ireland, which might turn into a real all-Ireland parliament, unless it were somehow obstructed by Ulster, which has, to reiterate, half its members. It’s hard to believe this is a serious proposal that LG or anyone thinks is workable.

The House Naval Committee is investigating the presence of under-age boys in the Navy. The commandant of the Marine Corps tells the committee that a battleship captain complained that half his crew were “worthless boys under 17 years old.”

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