Today -100: July 15, 1922: My voice is too feeble to be heard, so I used the gun

Another day etc.: At the Bastille Day military review in Paris, Gustave Bouvet – “a pale, emaciated youth of the type so common among militant anarchists” – takes a couple of shots at President Alexandre Millerand’s carriage. Well, the carriage he thought was carrying President Alexandre Millerand. It was actually the police prefect’s carriage, but the assassin missed him too. One bystander’s arm was slightly burned. Bouvet, who is subdued by the crowd, first admits trying to kill Millerand, then says he wasn’t really trying to kill anyone, just to “make a demonstration that would attract attention to the condition of the proletariat.” “My voice is too feeble to be heard, so I used the gun.” He’ll be sentenced to 5 years in prison plus 10 years’ banishment, but will only serve 25 months, released partially paralyzed. He will die in 1984.

Armed men on horseback invade Radin/Radun in Poland (now Belarus), round up the Jews, flog and rob them. It’s a famously Jewish town, at least for the next 20 years; now it has no Jews.

The Hague Conference ends (give or take a few more recriminations) with a failure of the Western powers and Russia to come to any agreement. Russia refuses to restore nationalized foreign-owned property and everyone else refuses to offer credits to Russia.

H.G. Wells will accept an invitation to run for Parliament as a Labour candidate for the University of London seat (voted for by graduates of the university).

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