The Allies tell Poland that they won’t accept any armistice deal between it and Russia that entails the dismemberment of Poland, or a change in Poland’s form of government, or a border less favorable to Poland than the one Lloyd George drew on a map. Hungary has asked permission to reform its army and attack Russia. Hungary may be planning to ally with Latvia, Finland and Romania to go to war with Russia.
The number of Charles Ponzi’s investors wanting their money back seems to have dwindled. The feds will now join the state of Massachusetts in auditing his books, but Ponzi says the secret whereby he made his money will not be discovered that way.
Gen. Cuthbert Henry Tindall Lucas escapes from the Sinn Féin, who kidnapped him in Ireland a month ago. A two-hour gunfight between SFers and some soldiers who picked Lucas up (he ran across a patrol after removing the bars on his window and fleeing into the night) leaves two of the soldiers dead, which is why you shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers. Lucas says he has no complaints about his treatment; he was even allowed to go fishing.
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, meeting Unionist members of the Houses of Commons and Lords, suggests, contra Sir Edward Carson’s latest theory, that “we should make a mistake if we came to the conclusion that the Sinn Féin is purely a Bolshevist conspiracy against Great Britain.”
Okuma Shigenobu, the former prime minister of Japan, says a war between Japan and the US is practically impossible.
Negro Edgar Caldwell, an army sergeant, is hanged, publicly, in Anniston, Alabama for the murder of a street car conductor who, with a motorman, attacked Caldwell for sitting in the white section (it’s a pretty clear case of justified self-defense) (I couldn’t find out whether he was in uniform). He gives a speech to the crowd on the dangers of whisky, cigarettes, and... carrying firearms. Unusually, this death sentence took two years to be carried out. The NAACP (which often focused on lynchings and legal lynchings like this against returning black veterans) became involved and the case went up to the Alabama and US Supreme Courts; at one point Pres. Wilson asked for a postponement in order for the Justice Dept to investigate (the state of Alabama naturally ignored him).
A character from two of my earliest Today -100 posts re-emerges. Arthur Everton, hypnotist extraordinaire, is arrested by Dry agents with $6,000 worth of liquor in his Newark apartment, which is located above a saloon. “When asked why he did not work a spell on the agents, Everton replied: ‘I wouldn’t do that. I am a law-abiding citizen.’” We first came across Everton in 1909, when a man died while under his hypnotic spell during a show. Still one of my favorite stories.
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