Today -100: July 7, 1921: Of virtual defeats, soluble problems, and Trotsky in chains

The Senate is debating a Bonus Bill for veterans, giving them $1 a day for each day of service, $1.25 for each day overseas. That money would be paid in installments starting in 1922, the 2nd installment coming conveniently right before the Congressional elections. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon denounces the idea, saying it would “virtually defeat the Administration’s program of economy and retrenchment,” hamper re-financing the national debt, create inflation, and somehow, the veterans would lose more from it than they would gain. There’s a lot of bullshit from senators about how the soldiers didn’t fight for money (especially the 25¢ a day 

difference between service in the US and service in the trenches). Mellon refers to “a sacrifice that can never be measured in terms of money.” Well not with that attitude, mister.

Right next to that story on the front page of the NYT is this one:

South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts says that Ireland is totally “soluble,” and he knows this because “If ever this problem of the subjection of one people to another presented a hopeless view it was in South Africa” but “we solved the problem, and today South Africa is one of the happiest countries in the Empire.” Of course, the people who were under subjection in that formulation were the Boers; the majority black population of his country literally don’t enter into his thinking. One of the happiest countries in-fucking-deed.

Latest completely unconfirmed rumor about Russia that the NYT nevertheless publishes: Lenin has imprisoned Trotsky.

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