Today -100: April 19, 1920: Of conferences, kapps, and black shames

The San Remo conference is set to start. Yugoslavia is boycotting it because it couldn’t come to an agreement in advance with Italy over their territorial disputes in the Adriatic. This means the conference won’t be able to consider those disputes. The United States will send observers (although the US ambassador to Rome is running late due to a railroad strike in Italy) but won’t participate. The delegates will hold their sessions in private.

Another Mexican state, Michoacan, is in revolt against the central government. Its pro-Obregón governor flees the capital, taking the contents of the treasury with him, as is the custom.

Wolfgang Kapp of Kapp Putsch fame finally turns up, in Sweden, where he arrived by plane a day ago. He was arrested, but is being allowed to stay in a hotel, with a police guard. Sweden will evidently refuse to extradite him.

France withdraws half its troops occupying Frankfort, including all the non-white ones the Germans have been loudly  bitching about (Die Schwarze Schmach, the black shame, in their words).

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Today -100: April 18, 1920: Of overallers, assassinations, and cabreras

Overall Headline of the Day -100: 

“The mysterious blue overall, which has been reported in various sections of the country, made its appearance in Times Square yesterday, where it was seen, touched, examined and verified by hundreds of persons.” The president of the Cheese Club, which organized this event,  Thomas Oliphant, who has very possibly never left the island of Manhattan in his life, says “Many of you have seem them before, covering honest hearts in New England melodramas. ... I am informed that they are a common sight on the streets in some parts of the country.” And then it rained, and people found out why you don’t wear expensive silk shirts underneath overalls in the rain.

Other Overall Headline of the Day -100:  

Rep. William Upshaw  (D-Georgia) comes to Congress dressed in $4 overalls, as does some judge in Cleveland. But North Carolina (not Virginia, NYT, jeez) Gov. Thomas Bickett thinks all this will do is drive up the price of overalls for those who actually need them.

The Cork coroner’s jury inquest into the assassination of Tomás Mac Curtain, Lord Mayor of Cork, brings charges of willful murder against Lloyd George, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Viscount French, former Chief Secretary for Ireland Ian Macpherson, and various members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, which they correctly accuse of carrying out the murder.

Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen rules that even after the federal women’s suffrage Amendment passes, women won’t actually be able to vote in in the state until there’s a state constitution amendment, which would take at least 2 years, or until there’s an act of Congress.

Guatemalan president/ex-president Estrada Cabrera surrenders after his forces are surrounded by Unionist forces.

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Today -100: April 17, 1920: Of strikes, stairs, overalls, and shortcuts

The wildcat railroad strike is disintegrating in the face of threats by the owners and lack of assistance from the unions.

17,000 elevator starters and elevator operators go on strike in New York. Many stairs are climbed. So many stairs. The Building Managers and Owners’ Association says if they wanted better pay, they should have chosen harder jobs, like longshoreman or something.

France and Britain will tell Germany that if it establishes a reactionary government opposed to the Versailles Treaty, all food aid will be cut off.

Prince Joachim Albrecht is fined 500 marks, which is the equivalent of some money, for starting that fight in the Hotel Adlon. Two of his confederates, Capt. Baron von Platen and Prince (take a deep breath here) Hohenlohe-Langenburg, are also fined for assault. This is the first time a member of the Hohenzollern dynasty has been charged in a criminal court. “A cordon of soldiers protected the court building from a mob that did not appear.” The prince claimed not to know that the people he attacked for refusing to stand for Deutschland Uber Alles were French.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Switzerland will ban automobile travel on Sundays, except for doctors, from May through September. Sunday strollers were complaining about the dust. People driving through the country, from France to Italy say, will just have to wait at the border.

The Mexican government asked the US to allow it to send troops through US territory to attack Sonora. That was a couple of days ago and the US still hasn’t answered.

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Today -100: April 16, 1920: Overalls over all

Dirty-Sounding Headline of the Day -100: 

Volunteer scabs against the railroad strike, along with their male counterparts, including Princeton and Rutgers students. The owners’ association demands that strikers return to work within 48 hours or else, although they reserve the right to fire strikers guilty of violence, intimidation, or... seditious utterances. The teamsters call off their sympathy strike after winning wage increases, averting the threat of a butter and milk famine in NYC. The feds arrest a bunch of railway union leaders in Chicago. Special Assistant Attorney General Harry Mitchell says they interfered with the health of the entire nation by stopping food shipments and prevented industry getting fuel and it’s probably “a conspiracy to aim a blow at the government.” 

In other “strike” news, people (mostly college students, it sounds like) objecting to high clothing prices are wearing overalls in protest. This movement, originating in Florida and the South, has reached New York. There will be a march on Broadway today, weather permitting.

Sen. Warren G. Harding admits that his presidential campaign committee is spending quite a lot of money, but he says it’s probably not corrupt and he thinks there are no corporate donors. He objects to Sen. Borah’s bill to limit campaign spending to $10,000 per state, because he only plans to campaign in 2 or 3 states.

Margaret Bondfield, who will eventually be the first woman member of the British Cabinet, loses a by-election in Northampton.

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Today -100: April 15, 1920: No patriotic American could decline to serve

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer blames the railroad strike on the IWW as part of a world-wide communist conspiracy, as was the custom. The government thinks the railway workers will go back to work once the government informs them they’ve been duped. Palmer says the strike is part of a program “to capture the political and economic power, to overthrow the Government and to establish a dictatorship on the part of what they call the proletariat, and transport to this country the exact chaotic condition that exists in Russia.”

Gen. Pershing says that he’s not running for president, buuuuut “no patriotic American could decline to serve” if The People called him. Just couldn’t do it.

The Irish 89 hunger-striking prisoners are suddenly released, possibly because a general strike was called demanding it (I think this was its first day). The authorities had tried to divide the prisoners, releasing only some of them. And it tried to release them on license, to return to prison after their health recovered, under the Cat and Mouse Act brought in in 1913 for hunger-striking suffragettes. The prisoners rejected both proposals.

Mexican presidential candidate Gen. Álvaro Obregón flees the capital. And there was an assassination attempt against Pres. Carranza. Federal troops are moving into position to invade the now-independent Republic of Sonora.

Striking railroaders deny that they are revolutionaries. They just want better wages and shit.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Sadly, in an outrigger, not on a surfboard.

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Today -100: April 14, 1920: Of booze, wood, and meat

NY State Senator George Thompson claims that during the Assembly debate on expelling the 5 elected Socialists, assemblymen were plied with liquor by a lobbyist to win their votes, or at least their unconsciousness. Several had to be carried out of the chamber, Thompson says.

Gen. Leonard Wood leaves the presidential campaign trail temporarily to resume his day job in the army to deal with the rail strike. It’s not like he could take the train to his speeches anyway.

Ominous-Sounding Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 13, 1920: Of plagues, overalls, and metros

As the railroad strike continues, threatening NYC’s food supply, Health Commissioner Royal Copeland warns of possible outbreaks of cholera, typhus and bubonic plague because everyone will be starving and become susceptible to disease. This is the guy who kept saying the Spanish Flu was no biggie. He wants to get in contact with the leaders of the strike, but doesn’t know who they are.

Men have started wearing overalls to fight the high cost of clothing. The idea began in Tampa, and the Overall Club of Birmingham has 4,000 members.

The president of Guatemala, Estrada Cabrera, shells Guatemala City after the National Assembly removes him from office for mental incompetence.

The general in charge of the self-described Republic of Sonora says 13 other states have seceded from Mexico, but he doesn’t say which ones.

Headline of the Day -100: 

A US Army Sgt. Bender denies having sold a bridge over the Seine but admits selling the subway. To whom is not disclosed. Or for how much.

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Today -100: April 12, 1920: Of toads and baffling peasants

French PM Alexandre Millerand threatens not to attend the San Remo conference to draw up a peace treaty with Turkey unless Britain rejoins the Committee of Ambassadors.

The wildcat railroad strike is still going on. Samuel Gompers calls it an “outlaw” movement (as does the NYT). Big Bill Haywood of the IWW calls Gompers a toad.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 11, 1920: Of hunger strikes, sonoras, treaty infractions, and plebiscites

104 hunger-striking prisoners in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin are said  to be near death. After just 6 days, really? They are striking for political-prisoner status, like the suffragettes before them and Bobby Sands after them. The position of Lord Lieutenant Viscount John French in refusing to extend political-prisoner status, as I understand it, is that it doesn’t apply to unconvicted prisoners, and since they’re being held without charges under the Defence of the Realm Acts...

Sonora State secedes from Mexico after Pres. Carranza orders federal troops into the state to fuck with Gen. Álvaro Obregón’s presidential campaign.

French PM Alexandre Millerand gives a statement defending his sending troops into the Rhine. The oddest thing is his suggestion that “the sending of troops into the Ruhr [by Germany] was not necessary in the interest of public order. They were being sent there simply as an infraction of the treaty.”

Hungary threatens not to sign any peace treaty that doesn’t provide for plebiscites in all the territories detached from it. The argument is that Hungary has no authority to dispose of those territories without the consent of their peoples, who are no longer represented in the Hungarian National Assembly, so what else is there except plebiscites?

Herbert Hoover’s wife Lou does not approve (her words) of the Herbster running for president.

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Today -100: April 10, 1920: Of hoovers, ending wars, enforcing peaces, and reeds

The chairman of the Massachusetts Democrats asks Herbert Hoover if he would accept the Democrat nomination if it was offered to him. No, no he wouldn’t.

The House passes the resolution to declare the war with Germany over, 242-150, not enough to override a veto. Claude Kitchin (D-NC), the former House majority leader and a huge racist, gives an impassioned speech against the resolution, then promptly has a stroke.

Britain tells France that if it continues to act unilaterally in “enforcing” the Versailles Treaty, as it did in occupying the Rhine, Britain will withdraw from the Committee of Ambassadors that oversees the treaty. Belgium, not surprisingly, will join France with a battalion.

A wildcat railroad strike is spreading in the US.

Unconfirmed and wrong reports say John Reed has been executed in Finland. He was caught stowing away on a ship trying to get from Russia back to the US, carrying diamonds and possibly microfilm.

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Today -100: April 9, 1920: Of occupations, training, and Martian signals

France’s allies (Britain, Italy) will not be joining it in sending troops to occupy the Rhine.

Congressional advocates for universal military training give up, lacking the votes.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 8, 1920: Of scintillas of legality, sneers, and certain ferments

Banned from picketing the British Embassy in Washington, the women protesting British Irish policy are now picketing the State Department, with banners containing quotes from a speech Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby made 4 years ago, such as “There is not a scintilla of legality in England’s claim to rule Ireland.” Awkwaaaard.

Police in Ireland claim to have evidence that Sinn Féin was negotiating with Germans to acquire arms.

Georgia Republicans are split, and rival delegations (for Gen. Wood & Frank Lowden) will go to the national convention. Awkwaaaard.

Headline of the Day -100: 

German newspapers are saying that France is in effect protecting Bolshevism and anarchy and red terror in the Ruhr.

They’re also shooting Rhinelanders. “Colored” (Moroccan) French soldiers fire on a threatening mob in Frankfort, killing 7, one of them a child. Gen. Jean Degoutte, commander of the French Army of the Rhine says the first day of the occupation went fine, but then “suddenly, on orders from Berlin, a certain ferment seized the population,” leading to the incident.

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Today -100: April 7, 1920: Of Whites, militarism, and pickets

Anton Denikin resigns as commander of the anti-Bolshevik forces and flees on a British warship.

German Chancellor Hermann Müller, mirroring French PM Alexandre Millerand’s comments yesterday about German militarism, says the French occupation of Rhine cities is “a fresh attempt of Gallic militarism on the peace of the world.” Germany claims to have fewer troops in the Ruhr than the 17,500 they have permission for; France says there are 38,000. Millerand says Germany will have to pay for France’s occupation costs. In the five occupied cities, the French army posts notices saying that “The French troops do not appear as conquerors, but as troops of occupation.” So that’s okay then.

Police remove all the war exhibits in the Belfast Museum – machine guns, mortars, etc. Some Sinn Féin prisoners are on hunger strike.

Herbert Hoover tried to register in California as a Republican, but his form arrived too late.

Since police ban those women picketing the British Embassy in Washington over the Irish issue, they drop leaflets on it from a plane. Four picketers are arrested for insulting diplomats from foreign countries, which is evidently a felony.

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Today -100: April 6, 1920: Of racing, coercive and precautionary measures, soviet plans, and political general strikes

Headline of the Day -100: 

So, no Easter Rising II then.

French Prime Minister Alexandre Millerand issues a note explaining the French occupation of Rhineland towns. It accuses Germany of yielding to militarist pressure in sending troops into the Ruhr. France’s military actions are not of course spurred by militarists; “The sole object of these measures is to bring Germany to a due respect of the treaty; they are exclusively of a coercive and precautionary character.” (Tomorrow’s paper will translate this as “restraint” rather than “coercive,” which seems a bit different; I don’t know which French word was used).

The Republican congressman from Ohio who rejoices in the name Simeon Fess (and will head the RNC during the Hoover administration) accuses Woodrow Wilson of displaying “marked socialism” and “partiality to the Soviet plan.”

The general strike in Denmark is called off after King Christian X agrees to dismiss the cabinet he unilaterally named and give amnesty to all political prisoners.

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Today -100: April 5, 1920: Tax records on fire is the best kind of tax records, ammiright?

Latest Sinn Féin tactic: attacking tax offices, a lot of tax offices, burning tax records.

France will occupy four cities on the west bank of the Rhine in retaliation for Germany sending troops into the Ruhr to suppress the general strike, and to secure the coal France is owed as reparations. This is a unilateral action by France, which is not going over well with Britain and the US. Germany is now moving to crush resistance in the Ruhr quickly so it can declare victory before the French arrive.

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Today -100: April 4, 1920: Of risings, lepers, and divorces

British soldiers pour into Irish cities, expecting another Easter Rising. They’re searching hay carts.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Paris and Vienna, not for the first and not for the last time, are wrong.

Obit of the Day -100:  Mark Lee, a Chinese leper, “Passaic’s only leper for ten years,” dies in the shack in the woods to which he’s been confined/imprisoned for 10 years, with his food served through the window and the head nurse of the Isolation Hospital trying to convert him to Christianity.

Kit Dalton, last surviving member of the James Gang (you know, Jesse and Frank James), dies.

The Nevada attorney general will file suit to overturn Mary Pickford’s divorce because she took an oath that she intended to become a resident of Nevada and he thinks she didn’t mean it. If he succeeds, the divorce decree will be set aside, which would be a bit awkward. Her manager says that if her subsequent marriage to Douglas Fairbanks is declared null she would do what any decent woman would do under the circumstances, whatever that means.

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Today -100: April 3, 1920: Of sieges, reigns of terrors, lynchings, duels, princes, and jazz-age marriages

Sinn Féin has a new tactic: its recent raids on police barracks have focused on destroying the buildings.

Women picket the British embassy in Washington with signs reading, “England, American women condemn your reign of terror in the Irish Republic,” “America cannot continue relations with an England ruled by assassins,” “England has perpetrated eighty military murders in Ireland,” etc.

A black man, George Robertson, is lynched in Laurens, Georgia, after allegedly cutting 3 white boys. He’s hanged from a bridge and used for target practice.

Former president of Uruguay José Batlle y Ordóñez kills Washington Beltrán Barbat, a newspaper editor and deputy, in a duel after an editorial about the last elections called Batlle the “champion of fraud.” This is not the first time Batlle has fought a duel with an editor of El País, but it is the first he has won (the last was with swords, this one with pistols).

Warren G. Harding withdraws his name from the New Jersey ballot, saying he doesn’t have enough money, so he’s only running in the Ohio and Indiana primaries (note that only 21 states have primaries).

Prince Joachim Albrecht, who started that fight in the Hotel Adlon which served as a pretext for the Kapp Putsch, is released from prison and banned from living in Berlin.

F. Scott Fitzgerald marries Zelda Sayre.

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Today -100: April 2, 1920: Delaware was like the battle of the Marne

The Delaware Legislature’s lower house rejects the federal women’s suffrage Amendment 26-6. Mary Kilbreth, president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage says “Delaware was like the battle of the Marne. The suffragists, like the Germans, waged a campaign of frightfulness and threatened members of Legislatures with political reprisals. It needed only a few courageous men to block them, and those were found in Delaware.”

The NY State Assembly (again) votes to expel the 5 elected Socialist members and declares their seats vacant. Two of the not-assemblymen issue a statement: “A bi-partisan combination has overthrown representative government. ... The Constitution has been lynched... If the people are to be driven from the ballot box, where shall they go?” Where indeed. The NYT calls the decision “an American vote altogether, a patriotic and conservative vote.” The Judiciary Committee recommends that the Socialist Party be banned from the ballot until it stops being naughty; legislation is being drawn up to that effect, directing against any party that includes aliens on its governing committees (or even as members); is a member of the Third Internationale; requires pledges of members elected to office, such as not to vote for military spending; or has a policy of using general strikes & sabotage for political ends.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee votes 12 to 6 for the resolution declaring the war with Germany over, with no Democratic support.

Woodrow Wilson fails to respond to Georgia Democrats asking if he’s running again, so some of them remove their names from the petition to put his name on the ballot, and it will not appear.

Herbert Hoover’s name, on the other hand, will appear on both the R and D ballots in Michigan, the D’s having put him on it before he announced that he’s an R. The D’s worry that he’s so popular that many D’s will vote for him anyway.

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Today -100: April 1, 1920: Of not-war, women’s suffrage, and Danish kinks

Republican in Congress think they can get around Wilson by voting that the state of war with Germany is at an end. Which is not the same as saying that there is a state of peace, which only the president has the legal authority to negotiate. If the move succeeds, it will automatically end all the wartime laws and presidential proclamations that were supposed to end when the war ended.

So much for Mississippi being the state to put the Anthony Amendment over the top. The Legislature’s lower house rejects ratification 94-23.

A general strike is called in Denmark protesting King (or, in a particularly enjoyable typo, “the Kink”) Christian X’s firing the government and replacing it with a temporary “business cabinet” (insert lego joke here).

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Today -100: March 31, 1920: I cannot refuse service

Herbert Hoover says “While I do not and will not myself seek the nomination, if it is felt that the issues necessitate it, and it is demanded of me, I cannot refuse service.” The issue he considers most important is the need to enter the League of Nations, with reservations. He is positioning himself against fellow Californian Hiram Johnson, who is very anti-League. Republican pooh-bahs grimly remember that when Hoover was Food Czar in 1918, he endorsed Wilson’s call for the election of a Democratic Congress.

Sen. Warren G. Harding gives some of his ideas, although he says the Republican platform should “represent the convictions, conscience and aspirations of the thinking Republicans of America,” which obviously leaves him out. He wants an “ample army” and air force, military training for young men paid for by the government but not compulsory, and to “get away from abnormal conditions of war”.

France, not able to get Britain and Italy to be as tough on Germany as it would like, is going to enforce the Versailles Treaty, as it interprets it, all by itself, and plans to occupy Frankfort and Darmstadt to ensure that German troops leave the Ruhr after putting down the armed strikers.

The Mississippi State Senate ratifies the federal women’s suffrage Amendment, reversing last month’s vote. Will the House follow suit?

Oxford University abolishes the compulsory study of ancient Greek for some students (math, science, law). Obviously this is the beginning of the end of the British Empire.

Bad-Ass of the Day -100:

Mary Pickford marries Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford got divorced just 3 weeks ago, Fairbanks last year. Both “are said to be wealthy.”

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Today -100: March 30, 1920: Of hoovers, white primaries, lynchings, coups, and barbarous words

Herbert Hoover refuses permission for his name to be put on the Oregon Democratic primary ballot.

The Alabama Democratic Party decides that blacks will not be allowed to vote in the party’s primary in May.

A black man, Grant Smith, is kidnapped by a lynch mob in Paris, Kentucky. His lynching is not yet confirmed.

King Christian X of Denmark fired the Social Liberal-Social Democrat government in a dispute over whether to demand the Schleswig port city of Flensburg, which voted to remain German but conservatives and the king say fuck that plebiscite). King Chris then chose a conservative government not representative of parliament (the Rigsdag) – his choice of prime minister isn’t even a member of parliament. Crowds are in the streets of Copenhagen, demanding a republic.

The British Parliament debates Lloyd George’s Irish Home Rule Bill.  Ian Macpherson, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, refers to “the era of that barbarous word, self-determination.” T.P. O’Connor predicts the bill will pass without a single Irish vote.

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Today -100: March 29, 1920: Or storms and very attractive dieticians

A series of storms and tornadoes hit the Midwest and the South but... is it necessary to specify this, NYT?

Budapest elects the first woman member of the Hungarian Diet, Margit Slachta. We are informed that she is “very attractive.” She very attractively saved a bunch of Jews during World War II.

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Today -100: March 28, 1920: Of red-displacement and javelins

Hermann Müller forms a new government in Germany.

An order is issued for the arrest of all Russians in Berlin, because all the unrest on the left is obviously down to Russians.

Einstein’s theory of relativity gets further proof: something about the red-displacement of spectral lines.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: March 27, 1920: That’s the worst kind of saturnalia

German Chancellor Gustav Bauer fails to form a new cabinet. So Pres. Ebert calls on Hermann Müller to give it a shot. He refuses, so Ebert calls on Carl Legien the chair of a trade union confederation who directed the general strike against the Kapp Putsch. Update: and by update, I mean the NYT tacked it onto the end of this article: Müller agrees to form a government after all.

Another thing the German government hasn’t managed to do is arrest the leaders of the Kapp Putsch. Kapp is laying low but Lüttwitz just went home.

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) worries about war profiteers buying control of both parties’ national conventions in a “saturnalia of corruption.” He seems to be especially concerned about Gen. Leonard Wood, whose campaign is paying Indianahoovians $2.50 for testimonials. If they’re paying that much just for testimonials, “what would they not pay for votes?” Borah asks. He will introduce a bill to cap primary candidates at $10,000 per state, with disclosure of donors.

In Dublin, Resident Magistrate Alan Bell is dragged from a tram car by a group of armed men and shot dead. This might be a response to his investigation of banks’ relationships with Sinn Féin and the Irish republican parliament (the banks refused to answer any questions and the inquiry was dropped).

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Today -100: March 26, 1920: Of red armies, Berlin herself, preserving industrial peace at the point of the bayonet, and furtive excitements

The NYT repeats the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant’s story that Russian Red Army officers are controlling the Spartacists in Germany and planning to capture Germany by July.

The Ebert government has been requesting the Allies’ permission to send troops into the Ruhr to fight the workers on strike. France has been... sceptical.

Headline of the Day -100: 

At the inquest into the assassination of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás Mac Curtain/Thomas MacGurin, a witness says he saw 8 men carrying rifles, but not in uniform, enter the police barracks. Yup, that’s the assassins, all right.

By the way, the Black and Tans are arriving in Ireland about now.

Remember Stewart McMullin, the federal prohibition agent who shot a bootlegging cabby during an arrest or... something? Well, since the local judge refused to give him bail, the feds show up with a writ of habeas corpus, the first time in New York City history in which the feds have tried to override local authorities on a murder case. The feds say McMullin was acting as a federal agent, the locals say that since he never announced himself as such he was not a federal official at the time. They’re pretty convinced McMullin was actually conducting a holdup. You say potato...

James Cox, Democratic governor of Ohio, says Republicans plan to win the White House by raising huge sums from industry to elect a president who “will preserve industrial peace at the point of the bayonet.” He says he’s kept the peace in Ohio for years without a shot fired. He complains that both the wets and the drys think he’s on the other side, and he thinks that the Volstead Act will be amended to allow for beer and light wines.

Lady Cynthia Curzon is engaged to Lt. Oswald Mosley, MP. This seems to be the first time the future fascist leader is mentioned in the NYT.

F. Scott Fizgerald’s This Side of Paradise is published. The newness of the ‘20s is set out against the Olde Times:

All in all Beatrice O’Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about; a culture rich in all arts and traditions, barren of all ideas, in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud.

Amory saw girls doing things that even in his memory would have been impossible: eating three-o’clock, after-dance suppers in impossible cafes, talking of every side of life with an air half of earnestness, half of mockery, yet with a furtive excitement that Amory considered stood for a real moral let-down.

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Today -100: March 25, 1920: Of Spartacists and Misseses

The US chargé in Berlin claims that Spartacists hold half the city. He calls for Americans to leave.

The British novelist Mrs Humphry Ward (that’s how she gives her name on the covers of her books) dies at 68. She was acclaimed for Robert Elsmere (1888), a novel about a clergyman’s crisis of faith and therefore a best-seller for some reason. She was the niece of Matthew Arnold and the aunt of Aldous Huxley, who was not a fan. Nor am I, from the one novel of hers I’ve read. In the Edwardian period, as her novels came to be seen as old-fashioned, she was better known as the most prominent female anti-suffragist (where she signed herself Mary Augusta Ward), although she was a feminist in other ways, strongly advocating higher education for women. John Sutherland’s biography is worth reading. She is survived by her idiot husband and wastrel son.

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Today -100: March 24, 1920: Of suffrage, general strikes, and sawing

The Delaware Legislature looks unlikely to ratify the federal women’s suffrage Amendment as another No is heard from, Rep. Silas J. Warrington of Sussex County. Actually, despite “Silas J. Warrington of Sussex County” being the most anti-suffrage name ever, Silas J. Warrington of Sussex County claims to support suffrage himself but his district really hates women, so.

Live by the general strike, die by the general strike: the German government, restored to power by the refusal of workers and much of the bureaucracy to work with the Kapp Putsch regime, gives in to various demands of the left. Noske resigned yesterday but now the entire cabinet will be Socialist until general elections can be called.

Headline of the Day -100:

The Chief Secretary for Ireland, Ian Macpherson, claims it was the crowd that opened fire on the soldiers, not the other way around.

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Today -100: March 23, 1920: Spelling patriotism with a p-a-y

Washington State ratifies the federal women’s suffrage Amendment. 35 down, 1 to go. And here’s where it gets complicated. The Delaware Legislature has been called into special session specifically for this purpose, but it’s faffing about with other issues instead. Also, Ohio’s ratification is being challenged before the US Supreme Court next month after state courts insisted that there be a referendum. In light of that, suffragists are thinking that, just to be safe, they should get 37 states to ratify. 35 down, 2 to go.

British War Sec Winston Churchill proposes cutting down on the costs of “guarding” Mesopotamia by doing it primarily with aeroplanes. Guess how long it will take for him to start dropping bombs on Iraqis.

The New York branch of the American Legion is divided, as is the entire Legion, over whether veterans should be paid a bonus, whether it should be restricted to the disabled, or whether the demand should be repudiated because it means “spelling patriotism with a p-a-y,” as one delegate put it.

German Defense Minister Gustav Noske resigns, just like the left demanded.

The Senate finally confirms Bainbridge Colby as secretary of state, by voice vote.

King Faisal of Syria, as he calls himself, decrees a boycott of the occupying countries, Britain and France. The Syrian Congress asks foreigners to leave Syria.

The assassinated Lord Mayor of Cork Tomás Mac Curtain/Thomas MacGurin is buried, with a long funeral procession including Republican Volunteers marching in uniform. In Parliament, T.P. O’Connor suggests that the search of Mac Curtain’s home immediately after the murder, and by soldiers rather than police, might give rise to the suspicion that they were destroying evidence. Cries of “Monstrous!” greet this almost certainly accurate suggestion.

In Dublin, 300 British soldiers returning from the theatre, singing “God Save the King” in the streets, according to one account (the NYT just decided to print several conflicting versions and let God and its readers sort them out), clash with a crowd and open fire, as was the custom. 2 dead. “[T]here is considerable excitement in Dublin.”

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Today -100: March 22, 1920: I am optimistic enough to think that the damage has not been catastrophal

Pres. Ebert and the cabinet return to Berlin. Ebert says “I am optimistic enough to think that the damage has not been catastrophal, and that is also the opinion of the Cabinet. I am sorry the events of the last few days have proved there are still circles in Germany that think the distress of the last war was not great enough.” He plans treason trials, lots of treason trials, and maybe some executions.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The Dutch have been keeping a close watch on him since the start of the Kapp Putsch to make sure he doesn’t return to Germany to resume kaisering.

Women vote for the first time in primaries (just Democratic?) in the Philippines.

Ad of the Day -100:

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Today -100: March 21, 1920: Of new berries, general strikes, straddling chairs, and bolshy monkeys

Sen. Truman Handy Newberry (R-Michigan), a former secretary of the Navy, is convicted, along with 16 co-defendants, including his brother and his campaign manager, of screwing with the election process in 1918. The senator is sentenced to 2 years and a $10,000 fine. He says he plans to appeal and to continue senatoring.

The general strike that helped defeat the Kapp Putsch is still on, even though Kapp is gone. Strike leaders have a few demands, including democratization of the bureaucracy, an entirely Socialist cabinet, punishment for those who led or supported the putsch, and the firing of War Minister Gustav Noske, who oversaw the bloody suppression of the Spartacists last year.

The AP reports that the events of the last week have made former kaiser Willy nervous and sleepless, and he’s taken to day-drinking and “his nervous habit of straddling chairs has increased.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

The circus arrives in New York. Elephants! Clowns! Freaks! (When did Barnum & Bailey stop having “freaks,” I wonder?) But what I found of etymological interest in this article is an uncooperative monkey being referred to with the adjective “bolshy.”

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Today -100: March 20, 1920: Has President Wilson changed his mind, or has his mind changed him?

The Senate again fails to ratify the Peace Treaty, 49 voting in favor, 35 against. It then adopts a resolution to return the treaty to the president, meaning there can be no more consideration of the treaty in the Senate. At one point in the debate, Irvine Lenroot (R-Wisconsin) complains that Pres. Wilson used to say that Article XI was the heart of the League of Nations Covenant but more recently has been assigning that role to Article X: “The president’s illness has affected either the president’s recollection or his judgment. Has President Wilson changed his mind, or has his mind changed him?” Wow.

So the US is still technically at war with Germany.

The Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás Mac Curtain/Thomas MacGurin, a Sinn Feiner veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising, is assassinated, shot dead in his home in front of his family by masked men. Cops, they’re cops.

The Kapp putschists, especially its Baltic soldier supporters, were responsible for anti-Semitic leaflets and speeches.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The federal prohibition commissioner for Mississippi accuses state legislators there of “openly and brazenly” purchasing liquor and asks them to stop it please. Last week the Legislature rejected a bill to fund prohibition enforcement.

Consuelo Spencer-Churchill, a Vanderbilt, sues her husband, the Duke of Marlborough (Winston Churchill’s cousin) for restitution of conjugal rights. She is trying to establish desertion as cause for divorce, which she will in fact get next year, ending one of the crappiest of those rich-American-impecunious-British-aristo marriages.

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Today -100: March 19, 1920: Of self-determination

The US Senate passes a reservation to the Peace Treaty in favor of self-determination for Ireland and its joining the League of Nations once it’s independent. Britain would have to agree to any reservation, so... 

Henry Cabot Lodge is furious that this got tacked on to his reservations, not because he is opposed to Irish aspirations, but because he is opposed to the doctrine of self-determination. After all, the US fought for 4 years against the doctrine of self-determination (i.e., the Civil War).

Speaking of self-determination, Britain and France refuse to recognize Syria’s declaration of independence.

The NYT claims that ex-kaiser Willy and the ex-Crown ex-Prince knew about the Kapp Putsch beforehand and contributed money. “Wilhelm has lately felt himself neglected by the reactionary cliques”. As Kapp’s Baltic soldiers leave Berlin, crowds jeer them, so naturally they open fire.

The Chicago City Council raises the height limit for buildings to 260 feet, up from 200.

Presidential candidate Gen. Leonard Wood says critics of his appearing  in his military uniform at campaign events insult the memory of every dead American in France.

Two sisters, Phoebe and Ada Brush, 68 and 56 years old respectively, are released from a lunatic asylum 10 years after they were placed there by relatives after their money on a 10-day temporary commitment. There was never any subsequent committal process, and they seem to have always been entirely sane.

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Today -100: March 18, 1920: Kapp doffed

Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz resign or give up or retire or whatever you do when you leave an office you claimed to have taken over. He says the government has agreed to his demands, so his mission is fulfilled and the threat from “the annihilating dangers of Bolshevism” (a national uprising is rumored) requires national unity. And then he flees Berlin. The leaders of the general strike also declare victory and call for the strike to end.

There was (supposedly) a Spartacist uprising in Westphalia, a Soviet republic declared in Frankfort, and increasingly bloody clashes between Kapp’s soldiers and crowds in Berlin, Leipzig, Essen and elsewhere. I guess these are those annihilating dangers of Bolshevism.

The Allies (France, Britain, Italy) occupy Constantinople, meeting relatively little resistance (a few killed when they took over the Ministry of War). Various military commanders and a prince and others are arrested.

Pres. Wilson allows photographs and moving pictures to be taken of him for the first time in six months, as he drives past reporters.

What To Watch: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring John Barrymore, premieres.

This is the first of three film adaptations of the Robert Louis Stevenson story opening this year, including The Head of Janus, a lost film by F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu), starring Conrad Veidt.

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Today -100: March 17, 1920: Of leaves, grave concerns, putsches, and blizzards

Gen. Leonard Wood gets a two-month leave of absence from the Army so he can campaign for president.

Republican senators come up with a compromise reservation to the Peace Treaty: if the “freedom and peace of Europe” is again threatened, “the United States will regard such a situation with grave concern, and will consider what, if any, action it will take”. Not sure you really need a formal treaty to promise to regard a situation with grave concern. Oh, and St Patrick’s Day is coming up, so there WILL be talk in the Senate about recognizing the Irish Republic. And maybe Korea. And Egypt.

The Kapp regime is reportedly bombarding Kiel, where there has been fighting. The Imperial Finance Minister, following Pres. Ebert’s orders, refuses to pay the troops acting for Kapp. The general strike is spreading. Lüttwitz, Kapp’s defense minister, threatens to execute anyone fomenting the strike. Hindenburg (finally) announces that he has nothing to do with the putsch. Pres. Ebert denies that he is negotiating with Kapp.

Hiram Johnson wins the North Dakota Republican primary, which takes place in a blizzard, as is the custom. He was the only candidate on the ballot.

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Today -100: March 16, 1920: Of reservations, developments, secretaries of states, and dry killings

The Senate votes in favor of Lodge’s reservation to Article X of the Peace Treaty, specifying that the US military can only be used to defend other countries if Congress votes for it. The vote is 56-26, 14 D’s voting with all the R’s for the reservation, going against Pres. Wilson’s position. The treaty is thus, again, dead. Which also means that the US will not be participating in negotiating Turkey’s peace treaty.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George tells Parliament that he will “await developments” in Germany. Those developments suggest the Kapp Putsch regime is spreading, with copycat military coups in many towns.

There are rumors that the competing Ebert and Kapp regimes are negotiating. Or at least that Kapp has offered to let Ebert remain in office, with a cabinet of technocrats, until new elections are called in the very near future. Water has been restored in Berlin, but not electricity, gas, or newspapers.

The second Schleswig plebiscite is held, in zone 2, which includes the port of Flensburg.  Zone 2 decides to stay attached to Germany.

The Senate has sat on Wilson’s nomination of Bainbridge Colby to be secretary of state, and the term of the acting secretary has just expired, so there is no longer anyone at the head in State. This means, among other things, that there’s no one authorized to receive a ratified 19th Amendment. Also, new passports can’t be issued. And at the time secretary of state was next in succession to the presidency after Veep Whatsisname.

Stewart McMullin, the federal prohibition agent being held for shooting a cabby during an arrest, refuses to tell prosecutors whether or not he’s the same person as a former prison inmate. In fact, his real name is John Conway, maybe... well it’s certainly one of the names he’s used. He has served time for armed robbery, forgery, and didn’t serve time for involuntary manslaughter (at 14!) (he beat in some guy’s skull with a rock and got a $50 fine). He was recruited by the feds while still in Dannemora because of his helpfulness as a jail-house stool pigeon. Later this year he’ll be acquitted for the murder by a jury that evidently ignored all the evidence, although he is then immediately arrested for breaking parole in Indiana. Not sure what happened to him after that.

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Today -100: March 15, 1920: We do not want revolution, but a reconstruction

The Kapp coup regime has gotten no further in consolidating power. Right-wing political leaders are not rallying to it, so its power-base is almost entirely military and para-military. The Kappists, if I may, are stressing that they are not reactionaries looking to restore the monarchy. According to one of their leaflets, “We do not want revolution, but a reconstruction.” Kapp tells foreign reporters the republic is not being overturned and there’ll be new Reichstag elections... some time. The water supply to Berlin has been shut off. All the cafes are closed. Most state governments are opposed to the putsch, though August Winnig, Social Democratic governor of East Prussia, recognizes the Kapp regime.

Gen. Baron Walther von Lüttwitz, Kapp’s defense minister, says he took part in the putsch to protect all of Europe from Bolshevism. “Prussia must take a hand in it.”

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Today -100: March 14, 1920: Not a hand must move

Wolfgang Kapp (not von Kapp, NYT) declares himself chancellor of Germany and Gen. Baron Walther von Lüttwitz Defense Minister and dissolves the Reichstag as troops join his coup attempt and enter Berlin.

The Kapp regime announces that “The overthrow of the Government must not be taken as reactionary. On the contrary, it is a progressive measure of patriotic Germans of all parties, with a view to re-establishing law, order, discipline and honest government in Germany.” So that’s okay then. Kapp tells the foreign press that his coup is not monarchist (he knows that nothing will bring foreign military intervention faster than trying to put a Hollenzollern back on a restored throne) and that Germany will enforce the peace treaty... well, the “just” provisions of the peace treaty.

Various German state governments denounce the putsch, which for now seems to be confined to Berlin. President Friedrich Ebert and various cabinet members flee Berlin (some have been arrested), going to Dresden or somewhere. Ebert and the Social Democratic Party call for a general strike. The Social Democratic Party says “We did not make the revolution in order to recognize again today the bloody government of mercenaries [meaning the Freikorps].” “Paralyze all economic life. Not a hand must move. No proletariat shall help the military dictatorship.”

I would imagine the designation of these events as the “Kapp Putsch” was retrospective, but a word about that word: the German “putsch,” meaning roughly the same thing as coup d’etat, with an emphasis on suddenness, entered the English language with the Kapp Putsch. The German word originated in Swiss German, entering German German through reports of Swiss uprisings in the 1830s.

Woodrow Wilson sends the Allies a plan to resume trade with Russia without recognizing its government.

William Jennings Bryan says he’d accept the nomination for president if it was demanded of him, although he doesn’t think that will happen. He does want to go to the Convention as a delegate, to oppose “the reactionaries and friends of the saloon.”

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Today -100: March 13, 1920: Of kapps, coercing Turks, bachelor taxes, dry killings, and thrilling jewel robberies

German War Minister Gustav Noske orders the arrests of Capt. Waldemar Pabst (whose name the NYT has wrong) and bureaucrat Wolfgang Kapp of the Deutsche Vaterlandspartei for attempting a reactionary putsch, using the arrest order for Prince Joachim Albrecht for getting into a fight with French officers at the Hotel Adlon as a pretext. Well, it’s more about orders to demobilize the Freikorps, but close enough.

With the Allies thinking about how to force Turkey to stop killing Armenians (or Christians, as the AP chooses to identify them), US Sen. Lawrence Sherman (R-Illinois) introduces a resolution to end Turkish rule “over Christians everywhere”) and prevent the Young Turks returning to power, Greece generously

Gen. Álvaro Obregón, running for president in Mexico, offers a campaign promise not to start a revolution if he loses.

The French Parliament is working on a tax bill which will include a 10% tax on the incomes of bachelors. They’re really serious about having enough cannon fodder for the next war.

Stewart McMullin, the Internal Revenue prohibition enforcer who shot cabby Henry Carlton in the first enforcement death of the Prohibition era, will be prosecuted. Witnesses refute his story that he acted in self-defense, say that Carlton had in fact surrendered and that the dry agents failed to identify themselves, so Carlton probably thought he was being ripped off. Which may well have been what was actually going on. Also, the knife McMullin claimed Carlton brandished cannot be found.  Carlton was shot in the back of the head at close range, as was the custom.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sadly, no Alexander Woollcott review.

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