Today -100: March 19, 1924: We deserved to be shot if we had any other intention

The Soldiers’ Bonus Bill passes the House 355-54. It would provide $50 for short-termers and $1 a day for longer-serving soldiers for each day of home service and $1.25 overseas, to a maximum of $625, in the form of a 20-year endowment policy. It would cost $2 billion with a b over 20 years. Coolidge is expected to veto it.

In the Senate, Pres. Coolidge is accused of, among other things, watching a screening of the Carpentier-Dempsey fight at the home of WaPo publisher Edward McLean, which is a crime.

Questions are asked in the House of Commons about the Prince of Wales’s habit of falling off horses. The subject has also been much discussed in the papers.

At the Beer Hall Putsch trial, Hitler proudly proclaims that his intention was to march on Berlin and overthrow the Republic. Co-defendant Ludendorff denies having had any such plans. The prosecutor upbraids Hitler for the serious consequences of the putsch, to which he responds, “Naturally it had serious consequences. That was the idea. We deserved to be shot if we had any other intention.”

Eugene O’Neill complains about the “irresponsible gabble of the sensation-mongers and notoriety hounds” complaining about his play “All God’s Chillun Got Wings,” which hasn’t opened yet but will star Paul Robeson and Mary Blair as an interracial couple. He asks for a fair hearing by people who’ve actually seen it performed and says it will offend no one. He is wrong about that, of course.

The Senate votes 63-7 for a constitutional amendment to move the presidential inauguration to January from March.

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