Today -100: August 12, 1921: Of whisky and famines

Magistrate Gundy of the Windsor court rules that Ontario’s temperance act does not ban the exportation of booze to foreign countries. Already orders from the US are, as it were, pouring in. Canadian customs officers are simply letting ships and speedboats take their cargo across the border.

Maxim Litvinov says Russia must be in charge of famine relief, so control won’t be ceded to outside groups like Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration (Hoover is trying to do famine relief without having to acknowledge the existence of the Soviet government). Russia wants to limit the number of Americans in the country and retain the right to expel any of them. Litvinov says the famine has “strengthened the bonds between the government and the people.” So that’s nice. Poland, on the other hand, is offering Hoover the use of its railroads to get food to Russia.

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