Thursday, April 29, 2021

Today -100: April 29, 1921: We are going to do the German people a favor


French Prime Minister Aristide Briand tells reporters that the German offer is just one more sign of German bad faith. He says that in occupying the Ruhr, “We are going to do the German people a favor in helping them to get rid of those men who paraded themselves at Potsdam the other day, those men who learned nothing from the war, to whom defeat gave no lessons.” He’s referring to the kaiserin’s funeral, after which an American couple were beaten up by a crowd that thought they were French. Briand says Germany “has neither good faith nor good will and she plans revenge in her heart.” Note that he’s referring to “Germany” as a whole here.

Lloyd George calls the German offer “thoroughly unsatisfactory.”

A jury in Deming, New Mexico rather quickly decides to acquit 16 Mexicans for the 1916 raid by Pancho Villa’s troops on Columbus, New Mexico.

The British execute 4 more Irish nationalists in Cork after a military trial.

Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood tells Parliament that the IRA are murderers who are targeting Protestants.

So far two cases have been tried under NY’s new dry law, and both ended in acquittals. Just getting a jury has proved troublesome: in the case of a bartender, 57 prospective jurors said they were against enforcing the law. The grand jury has been dismissing cases of people arrested for possession of a hip flask.

The Daily Chronicle (London) reviews the language of Harding’s address to Congress, sneering at phrases like “illy prepared for war’s aftermath,” “ready... to approximate disarmament,” “fritters energies,” and his coinage (which is not actually his coinage) of “hospitalization.” They’re still shuddering at “normalcy.”

Madrid police put up posters threatening punishment for men who accost women in the streets.

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