Today -100: October 19, 1920: Of Democratic orgies, too much johnson, scurvy, and informal spokesmen

Headline of the Day -100: 

He’s just hurt he wasn’t invited. This is Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer demanding that San Francisco acting mayor Ralph McLeran prove his statement that Palmer knew about all the booze at the Democratic Convention.

Editorial Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s what she said.

Terence MacSwiney, on the 67th day of his hunger strike, has scurvy. Prison doctors are threatening to feed him if he becomes unconscious.

Pres. Wilson sends a letter to Harding asking if it is correct that the senator had informal contacts with representatives of the French government. He makes it clear that he’s checking the quote so that he can call Harding a liar. The French embassy and Foreign Office have denied sending anyone to speak with Harding. Harding responds that he didn’t say the French government approached him (he did say that, though adding “informally”), just that, because he’s on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has spoken with people who “spoke the manifest sentiment of the people of France,” you know, “spokesmen,” and that he made that clear in his speech (he very much didn’t). Cox thinks this “informal envoy” from France was the writer/humorist Maurice Dekobra and that Harding’s remarks were the result of his giving an extemporaneous speech away from his usual handlers.

Journalist John Reed (“Ten Days That Shook the World”) dies of typhus in Moscow, as was the custom. He was 32 and did not look much like Warren Beatty. 

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