Today -100: October 17, 1920: This thing of trying to wriggle into the presidency will not do

Sen. Warren Harding claims that “France has sent her spokesman to me informally asking America in its new realization of the situation to lead the way for an association of nations.” Whatever that means.

Gov. James Cox accuses Harding of now taking his 12th position on the League of Nations, but “It pays to be square with the people. This thing of trying to wriggle into the presidency will not do.”

Asked about Japanese immigration, Cox says “this is a white man’s country and the yellow man cannot run it.” And the federal government should let California decide whether to ban Asians owning or leasing land.

George Clark, chairman of the Ohio Republican Committee, accuses D’s of spreading malicious falsehoods about Harding, via paid people going house to house, no less. His Democratic counterpart responds yeah, tell us what malicious falsehoods, exactly, we’re spreading. I’m pretty sure this is the thing about Harding being one-eighth black.

Harding is against independence for Puerto Rico.

Big coal strike in Britain. Prime Minister David Lloyd George accuses miners of trying to “gain their ends by force.”

British Secretary for War Winston Churchill says the strain on soldiers in Ireland is far higher than in World War I (he doesn’t mention that they’re only getting peacetime pay), “But we are going to break up this murderous gang, and it will be broken up absolutely and utterly, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.”

50-75,000 veterans parade up 5th Avenue in New York for a bonus.

An article about Terence MacSwiney by Dr. Benjamin Harrow describes his 63-day (so far) hunger strike as “a ‘Babe Ruth’ record” and attempts to explain, badly, how it is possible.

Supposedly, the MacSwiney family have heard from a churchman who saw Pope Benedict that he regards the hunger strike  as not being suicide since the motive is not to die per se. I’m dubious about this report, but during the 1980-1 IRA hunger strikes (Bobby Sands etc), the Catholic Church in Ireland generally held that the strikes did not constitute suicide, the Catholic Church in England that they did.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Sunday NYT has a review of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.

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