Today -100: January 10, 1923: Of coal defaults, race massacres, and caliphates

The Reparations Commission, as expected, declares Germany in voluntary default of coal reparations deliveries (16% shy of the demands), with France, Belgium & Italy voting against Britain. Roland Boyden, the American observer, says Germany defaulted because the commission and indeed the Treaty of Versailles put an impossible burden on it.

The Supreme Court is hearing cases brought by the NAACP about the death sentences on 12 black men for the race conflicts in Elaine, Arkansas in 1919, when a meeting in a church about farm conditions (i.e., peonage) was shot up by a white “posse.” The state has been claiming that the posse thwarted a plot to massacre white people, ginned up by one man purely to make money, who “played upon the ignorance and superstition of a race of children”. The NAACP notes that the men were railroaded, tortured into false confessions, and subjected to one-hour trials before being sentenced to death.

The All-India Caliphate Conference threatens that if the Lausanne Conference breaks down and Britain goes to war with Turkey, Muslims in Indian will back the latter and launch a civil disobedience campaign.

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