Today -100: December 11, 1920: Of blockades, unauthorized uniforms, bombs, and is there a doctor in the house

The League of Nations Assembly decides that each nation may decide whether or not to participate in blockades. So the League is now essentially toothless. This is another Big State/Small State conflict, with the big states wanting sole control, through the Council, of when to impose a blockade.

Martial law is declared in Cork, Limerick, Kerry, and Tipperary. Irish people must hand in weapons and “unauthorized uniforms” or face the firing squad. But Lloyd George offers safe passage to London to any Sinn Féin MPs whom he does not deem criminals.

Someone throws a bomb at the Romanian Senate, killing a senator, a bishop/senator, and the justice minister, and wounding others. The government will use this as an excuse to arrest every communist they can find.

Federal prohibition enforcement agent Benson Laverty is sentenced to 18 months for extortion. Laverty says he was drunk at the time he took $200 from the owner of a road house in Queens, which may not be the defense he thinks it is.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: December 10, 1920: Ireland has always wished for peace, but Ireland is not the aggressor

Huh. The NYT only finds out about the Treaty of Alexandropol between Armenia and Atatürk’s renegade Turkish nationalist forces more than a week after it’s signed. Armenia gives up more than half its territory.

Bulgaria will join the League of Nations, despite being on the Wrong Side of the war.

Five men are executed at Sing Sing in a sing-single day, “one of the most trying days the prison officials have ever endured.” I hope the prisoners apologized for putting them through such a trying day. Two were insane and/or of “feeble mentality.”

In a letter to the Irish Bulletin, Michael Collins says that in the absence of Sinn Féin leaders De Valera (in the US) and Griffith (in prison), others “rush in to talk of a truce and willingness to have peace. Ireland has always wished for peace, but Ireland is not the aggressor. Her acts of force are acts of self-defense.”

Three “gangsters” accused of murdering a sheriff and a couple of detectives are lynched in Santa Rosa, California.

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Today -100: December 9, 1920: Of occupations, periods of quiet, bootleg evils, women students, and disarmament

The British military evicts Dublin city government departments (treasury, public health, etc) from their buildings to use them as officers’ barracks. Subtle.

Britain blocks the Villard Committee, a US group investigating conditions in Ireland, from sending investigators there. The British Embassy says the truth about those conditions can’t be established until after the Irish insurgency has been crushed and there’s been “a period of quiet.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

Cambridge University rejects allowing women students equal admission, with degrees and everything. They’ll have to wait until 1948.

The Greek government asks Constantine to abdicate the throne he doesn’t currently occupy in favor of the crown prince.

In Massachusetts elections this week, all women candidates for local office failed.

Woodrow Wilson declines the League of Nations’s offer for him to send a representative to its disarmament commission because, he points out, the US is not a member of the League of Nations.

Ohio Gov. Cox offers, if Harding wants to leave the Senate now and get on with president-electing, to replace him with a Republican, former Governor Frank Willis, who is senator-elect for the other seat. Harding says he wants to talk to Willis first. Also, Willis’s father is dying, so maybe not the best time.

Also dying: Augusta Victoria, the former kaiserin of Germany (i.e., Wilhelm’s missus). The Reichstag is discussing whether or not to pass a sympathy resolution when she does. The Socialists are opposed.

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Today -100: December 8, 1920: I thank no one for refraining from murdering me

Woodrow Wilson’s last State of the Union Address calls for Philippines independence, a loan to Armenia, tax reform, federal licensing of corporations engaged in interstate commerce, and rehabilitation and training for disabled vets, but nothing about the Peace Treaty (it’s still unknown whether he intends to re-submit it to the Senate).

Warren G. Harding leaves his card at the White House.

Several members of Dublin city council, supposedly IRA members, are arrested. From hiding, Michael Collins, head of the IRA, denies reports that an agreement to start peace talks includes a guarantee of his safety. In fact there is no such agreement, he says, and his personal safety “does not matter and does not count as a factor in the question of Ireland’s rights. I thank no one for refraining from murdering me.”

The Jersey City police chief orders all suspicious-looking negroes who are out at night rounded up. There have been no fewer than 3 crimes committed by black people recently “and it has got to stop,” says the chief.

Woodrow Wilson’s getting a Nobel Peace Prize, presumably because he kept us out of war. Wait...

Rep. Isaac Siegel (R-NY) objects to the bill suspending immigration for 2 years having passed through the Immigration Committee without a hearing. He says the bill is the result of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic propaganda. He wants immigrants “Americanized” from the minute they arrive, and for them to be steered away from the big cities.

A bill in the Philippines Territorial Senate would require the wearing of trousers in public, under penalty of 5 years in prison. The senator proposing it says “The appearance of half-naked pagans is a most shameful exhibition, and is capitalized by the opponents of Philippine independence as demonstrating the incapacity of the Filipinos for self-government.” The government would distribute trousers free.

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Today -100: December 7, 1920: Of oligarchies and censorship

Harding is back in Washington. He visits the Senate to say goodbye (he’s not planning to resign as senator until next month) and give a little farewell speech, in which he says there is no such thing as a “Senatorial oligarchy” (there is totally such a thing as the senatorial oligarchy). Yesterday, he sounded ambivalent about reports that Wilson wanted to meet with him, saying he hadn’t actually received an invitation. Today, Mrs. Harding has tea with Mrs. Wilson at the White House but their husbands do not meet.

I didn’t know that Harding was the first senator elected president.

The Pennsylvania Board of Censors bans movies that glorify crime or make criminals fascinating or alluring.

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Today -100: December 6, 1920: Of lynchings and attempted lynchings, pockets, and kings

A black man is lynched in Holdenville, Oklahoma.

An attempt to storm the Wise, Virginia jail to lynch a black man is thwarted by the sheriff, who has a machine gun mounted on the jail. One of the lynch mob is killed. Good.

The police in Macroom, County Cork, issue a proclamation banning men from appearing in public with their hands in their pockets, on pain of being shot.

The Greek plebiscite massively supports the return of former king Constantine, ousted by the Allies in 1917. The ballot is not secret.

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Today -100: December 5, 1920: Of soviet republics, high heels, and moonshiners

Russian troops capture Armenia’s capital Yerevan. Armenia is now a Soviet Republic.

Argentina withdraws from the League of Nations until its demands are met for restructuring the League to remove the structural dominance by the big states and its status as a Great War victors’ club.

The 19th annual convention of the Massachusetts Osteopathic Society decides to seek a law against high heels.

An “expedition” of Federal prohibition agents into the Kentucky hills results in a major gun battle with moonshiners.

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Today -100: December 4, 1920: Of motorcycles, breeding places of iniquity, elementary duties of civilization, and simple spelling

Headline of the Day -100:  

In response to complaints from Canadian Christian missionaries operating in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Japan says it only burned churches and schools if there was proof positive that they were “breeding places of iniquity.” Also, soldiers had to execute villagers without even a court-martial, but took utmost care to avoid indiscriminate massacres. So that’s okay then. Also, if British missionaries keep supporting Korean malcontents, Japanese Buddhists are entitled to assist anti-British elements in India.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George says his political opponents are using the Irish reprisals as an excuse to attack him and that while “the police are discharging those elementary duties of civilization,” they are entitled to the support of every honest citizen, and Liberals should really be denouncing Sinn Féin.

The announced day for Fiume’s war on Italy to commence has come and gone without any actual war.

The Allies tell Greece, two days before the plebiscite, that if Constantine becomes king again, all financial support will end.

Republican NY Gov.-Elect Warren Miller wants the Socialists elected to the Assembly to be allowed, this time, to take their seats.

The Navy reverses a 1905 order allowing simplified spelling (“thru” for “through,” etc).

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Today -100: December 3, 1920: Of women’s work, champagne, bets, Jewish suffrage, and immigration

Speaker of the House Frederick Gillett offers the sole woman rep, Alice Robertson, the job of running the House restaurant. 

That’s not even slightly subtle, is it?

Countess Constance Markievicz, the first woman elected to the British Parliament, is being tried by court-martial for promoting the murder of police and military in Ireland and inciting disaffection (disaffection in Ireland? unpossible!). They claim when arrested she said she had once murdered English soldiers (presumably during the Easter Rising).

60,000 bottles of champagne are coming from France, authorized by the US government for medicinal purposes.

Britain, France and Italy send Greece a note saying they really don’t want Constantine restored to the throne.

Clarence Burk is joining the army because he lost a bet with his brother that if Cox lost the election, he’d enlist for 3 years. Had Cox won, his brother would have had to join the navy for 4 years.

This may be a rumor: the Hungarian political parties agree to deprive Jews of the vote.

The House Immigration Committee approves a bill to pause immigration for two years except for relatives of aliens currently residing in the US and seeking US citizenship.

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Today -100: December 2, 1920: IT’S WAR!

Headline of the Day -100:  

This is the poet-aviator’s response to Italy ordering the military men who’ve defected to Fiume to return to their units. Italy is also threatening a blockade, and it sounds like they might actually mean it this time. D’Annunzio’s announcement pencils in the start of that war for two days later. What sort of monster starts a war on a Friday?

Former kaiser Wilhelm demands one billion marks, which is the equivalent of some money, in compensation for the loss of lands, his civil list allowance, and an art gallery. Some of those properties actually belong to the Prussian/German state.

General Alvaro Obregón is sworn in as president of Mexico, using his left hand because he lost part of his right arm, shot off or something, which will naturally lead to a debate over whether that even counts.

Philippines Governor-General Burton Harrison says the Philippines are ready for independence.

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Today -100: December 1, 1920: Of burnt cork, secret meetings, mediation, and ponzis

Buildings, businesses, and Sinn Féin clubs are being burned in Cork, although two attempts to destroy the City Hall fail. Uniformed men in masks (is that a new thing?) prevent firemen from putting out fires by, you know, shooting at them. Corkahoovians are fleeing the town, while those who stay are showing increasing incidents of heart disease, admission to insane asylums, goiters, and St Virtus dance among children.

There’s a “secret meeting” of 3,000 Irish people, admission by password, at the Central Opera House, New York City. It forms the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic; everyone has to sign a pledge of support or be ejected, although it sounds like only one woman was.

Woodrow Wilson agrees to the League of Nations’s request to mediate between Armenia and Atatürk’s renegade Turkish nationalist forces.

Eugene Chafin, Prohibition Party candidate for president in 1908 and 1912, dies ten days after setting his clothes on fire trying to light a gas heater.

Charles Ponti pleads guilty to using the mails to defraud, and is sentenced to 5 years.

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Today -100: November 30, 1920: The boys of Kilmichael

At Kilmichael, County Cork, a large number of Sinn Féiners ambush 17 police auxiliaries (a goon squad of military vets not unlike the Black and Tans) who were patrolling in two trucks, killing all but one. 3 on the Sinn Féin/IRA side are also killed. This is retaliation for the Croke Park massacre. There is, of course, a song commemorating it.

Chief Secretary for Ireland, Sir Hamar Greenwood, giving Parliament some questionable details about the ambush, says he cannot ask the men trying to put down such murders to stop to make inquiries about burning of houses and whatnot. Greenwood is getting less and less reticent in support of retaliation. And retaliation has already started...

The Houses of Parliament are closed to the public to prevent Sinn Féin outrages.

Notre Dame halfback George “The Gipp” Gipper (or whatever) is ill with pneumonia.

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Today -100: November 29, 1920: God help our country, moaning under the affliction of this competition in murder

A bunch of fires are started by Sinn Féin in Liverpool. Warehouses, timber yards, etc. Arsonists are stopped in London before setting fires.

There’s also quite a bit of arson on the other side, in Cork, including the Sinn Féin Club, which... how is there a Sinn Féin Club building in the first place?

A letter from Cardinal Michael Logue is read in all Armagh churches condemning Sinn Féin assassinations but saying the Croke Park massacre was worse. “God help our country, moaning under the affliction of this competition in murder.”

There’s a coup, or something, in Tabasco State, Mexico. The backers of Gen. Carlos Greene Ramírez, who was recently removed as governor after his soldiers assassinated two members of the Chamber of Deputies and is currently awaiting trial, install Tomás Garrido Canabal as the new governor. Canabal will run the state as a dictatorship for many years, with proto-fascist Red Shirts and murderous persecution of the Catholic Church.

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Today -100: November 28, 1920: Of immigrants, an Oxford comma joke that seemed cleverer when I first thought it up, refugees, and tigers on ice

The American Federation of Labor wants Congress to suspend all immigration for two years to alleviate unemployment. It seems particularly worried about the influx of... Dutch people.

France and Britain decide not to try to block the return of Greece’s former king Constantine to the throne if the plebiscite supports him.

Poet-Aviator-Duce Gabriele d’Annunzio complains to Italy, again, about the Rapallo Treaty, which fixed Fiume’s borders without its consent and which refers to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which Fiume doesn’t recognize (they’re big fans of the Oxford comma in Fiume and are incensed at its absence. It’s a whole thing). Notwithstanding the little duce’s intervention, the Italian Chamber of Deputies votes 221-12 to ratify the treaty.

Britain wants to relocate refugees who fled the Crimea after the defeat of the Whites to somewhere in North Africa. At least the ones who wound up in Constantinople, which can’t handle the numbers (30,000).

The small nations in the League of Nations want to begin the process of disarmament. The large nations do not.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100:  

Sadly, the Princeton hockey team, not actual tigers.

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Today -100: November 27, 1920: Of murder gangs, dancing teachers, and zorro marks

Arthur Griffith, the acting president of the Irish Republic (while De Valera is in the US), and several members of the Dáil Éireann (Irish republican Parliament) are arrested, possibly to be interned without trial. There are rumors that Lloyd George was not consulted and is not pleased by the arrest of the relatively moderate Griffith.

A wall is being built to keep the public and Irish bombers out of Downing Street. And Cork will pay for it.

I see that an official report issued by the British Embassy to the US refers to the “Sinn Féin murder gang.”

The Methodist Episcopal Church refuses to lift its ban on dancing teachers joining the church.

The premiere of Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro. Very athletic, lots of jumping around. The non-action scenes are not great. Also, Zorro is supposed to have a mustache and Fairbanks is supposed to have a mustache, but he doesn’t have one in this film.

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Today -100: November 26, 1920: Of mediators, mandates, dead legs, and flags

The League of Nations asks the US to mediate between Armenia and Atatürk.

Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby says the US has a right to be consulted on the terms of League of Nations mandates. To put it another way, the US wants some of that sweet, sweet Mesopotamian oil. 

How is an article entitled “Death Certificate for Leg” not more interesting?

In NYC, 5,000 supporters of Irish independence, leaving a service in St Patrick’s for Terence MacSwiney, demand the Union Club on 5th Avenue remove the British flag flying alongside the US and French flags. When the Club refuses, they throw bricks and stones at the clubhouse. “The sight of the gray-haired men in the club who seemed coolly indifferent to the stones landing close to them, roused still higher the anger of the rioters.” The police break it up, under orders not to use their clubs. 3 in the crowd are arrested along with one club member, the latter for having a concealed weapon. A sword-cane, if you were wondering what sort of club the Union Club was (and is).

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Today -100: November 25, 1920: Who is for the Empire and who is for assassination?

The 33 remaining imprisoned conscientious objectors from the war are released, including one who was hunger striking.

Connecticut now has 5 women in its Legislature, the highest number in the country, followed by Kansas with 4 and 3 in California.

Ireland Secretary Sir Hamar Greenwood claims in Parliament to have captured IRA plans to blow up the Liverpool docks and Manchester’s water and power plants, among other things. Greenwood says, “There is only one issue left. That is, Who is for the Empire and who is for assassination?” Like they’re mutually exclusive. Former Prime Minister Asquith’s resolution condemning reprisals is defeated 303-83.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Don’t you hate it when that happens? In Georgia, a lynch mob hangs and shoots up the brother of the man they actually meant to lynch.

Russia plans to abolish money by January 1st.

Some federal government departments gave employees the afternoon off for Thanksgiving but Woodrow Wilson rescinds the permission.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Mexico will take in 10,000 Russian Mennonites. The colonists will run their own schools.

Germany asks the Allies to be allowed to keep some war materials to turn them into church bells (which were seized during the war to make war materials). There are also complaints in the Reichstag about how much they’re being charged to maintain Allied occupying forces in the Rhineland. And that some of them are black.

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Today -100: November 24, 1920: Of escaping prisoners, states of rebellion, and lynchings

Calvin Coolidge says the election results showed the country expressing its opinion against organized labor. He doesn’t think it was much about the League of Nations. 

Three Sinn Féin prisoners are shot dead at Dublin Castle, supposedly while trying to escape, as was the custom. The ridiculous story is that they were kept lightly guarded in a room filled with bombs, loaded rifles, etc and attempted to take advantage of the situation.

War Minister Winston Churchill, asked whether the Irish situation is in fact a war, says “Ireland is in a state of rebellion, which imposes many hardships upon our troops.”

Churchill notes that Britain is currently engaged in warlike operations in Persia, Mesopotamia, India, and around Constantinople.

Ireland Secretary Sir Hamar Greenwood says he hadn’t heard that a machine gun was used on the Croke Park crowd and he doesn’t believe that a 10-year-old was bayoneted to death.

A black man accused of assaulting a white woman is lynched in Tylertown, Mississippi, dragged to death behind a car, then hung and shot repeatedly, two weeks after his brother was also lynched. There is one bright spot: one of the lynchers is accidentally shot.

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Today -100: November 23, 1920: The League intervenes meekly, and Bloody Sunday aftermath

The League of Nations Council decides to intervene in the war between Armenia and Turkish nationalist forces, although only through negotiation with Atatürk (France’s position), rather than crushing him like a bug (Britain’s).

Following Bloody Sunday, Dublin is in lockdown, with a curfew, all trains suspended, raids and mass arrests. The city halls of Cork, Waterford, and Kilkenny are raided and documents seized. The government seems to be having trouble proving their claim that Sinn Féin gunmen started the shooting at Croke Park.

The House of Commons has to be suspended when a fight breaks out during questioning of the chief secretary for Ireland by Joseph Devlin. Lady Astor tells squabbling MPs to “behave yourselves.”

De Valera issues a statement saying British soldiers are engaged in massacres of an unarmed populace and Irish people are justified in killing them. He compares Croke Park to the Amritsar Massacre.

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Today -100: November 22, 1920: Of bloody Sundays, united communists, wars, and railway track

Yesterday, “Bloody Sunday,” Sinn Féin hit squads killed 14 officials connected with courts-martial, some in the Gresham Hotel, Dublin and some in their homes in simultaneous raids coordinated by Michael Collins. Several hours later the police, army and Black and Tans supposedly track some of them to Croke Park stadium and are shot at – well, that’s their story, anyway – so they open fire, indiscriminately, on the football spectators, killing 14. A couple of people are then trampled to death in the panic.

Dublin Castle insists the assassinations were an act of desperation because the Irish administration has been closing in on them, arresting the usual suspects and collecting intelligence, so the raids were intended to disrupt that process and destroy evidence.

I’ve just run across a description of the Black and Tans in Roy Jenkins’ biography of Churchill: “a sort of Freikorps of those for whom the war had not provided enough violence or the peace enough employment opportunity.”

Edward Brennan of the Justice Dept’s Bureau of Justice (the proto-FBI) says there’s a massive underground United Communist Party, with Russians in control.

Lithuania demands the League of Nations invoke Article 16 of the Covenant and put an economic blockade of Poland for going to war with Lithuania without first trying not to go to war with Lithuania.

Four men posing as railroad officials in Transylvania steal an entire line of track (the article doesn’t say how long it was).

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Today -100: November 21, 1920: Of infantile disorders, bourgeois parliaments, and pocket knives

Lenin’s book “‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder” is published in England. He attacks Labour Party leaders as “hopelessly reactionary” but accuses Sylvia Pankhurst of being too rigid ideologically – yup, our Sylvia is now to the left of Lenin. She’s against compromise, but Lenin thinks the hopelessly reactionary Labour leaders should be supported into power so everyone can see them fail, like the Mensheviks in Russia. 

A 3-month-old letter from Lenin to the Austrian Communist Party has surfaced. He ordered it not to boycott the elections to the “bourgeois parliament,” but to “work against it from within and without.” They followed his advice and participated in the elections and elected zero MPs.

Greece will hold a plebiscite on the 28th on whether Constantine can return to the throne (Update: it will be delayed a week). France is really not happy with the idea.

Fashion Tip of the Day -100: pocket knives are getting thinner, because men’s pockets are getting smaller.

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Today -100: November 20, 1920: Funny how occupations always lead to murder, huh?

Corp. Freeman Lang denies he killed Haitian prisoners, well except that one he machine-gunned, but he was totally trying to escape. He admits to a little light electrocution-torture of prisoners. He explains the many accusations against him: you know what those Haitians are like, soooo prone to exaggeration.

Former British Prime Minister Asquith says the policy of reprisals in Ireland is bad. He says something called The Weekly Summary, which is (exclusively?) circulated among the Royal Irish Constabulary, cites the Federal Order issued in 1864 by Unionist Gen. Burbridge calling for the execution of 4 Confederate prisoners for every Unionist citizen killed.

That said, the threat of reprisals if the kidnapped Cork jail warder wasn’t released does result in his release.

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Today -100: November 19, 1920: Of new armies, lynchings, freemen, regimes of arrest and murder, and typhoid

The League of Nations will send its very own army, sort of, to Lithuania to oversee the plebiscite in the Vilna area on whether the area goes to Poland or Lithuania. The army will consist of British, French, Belgian and Spanish troops (Spain will quickly reverse itself).

Headline of the Day -100:  “Negro Woman Lynched.” Actually three negroes were lynched, including her husband and another black man were also lynched, in Douglas, Georgia. The couple were Minnie Ivory and Willy Ivory, which I’m sure you’ll agree were delightful names.

The naval court of inquiry into US actions in Haiti hears about a Marine corporal, one Freeman Lang, who tortured and murdered several Haitian prisoners.

Dimitrios Rallis takes office as Greek prime minister, purges the civil service, demands the resignation of the regent, and says his election victory was a “revolt against the regime of arrest and murder which has been in power for the past three years” and against the “foreign domination” supporting Venizelos (who has wisely fled the country).

Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood tells Parliament that he intercepted a Sinn Féin document about infecting British troops with typhoid and their horses with glanders. 

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Today -100: November 18, 1920: Of royal plebiscites, poison gas, and where to go to get murdered

Deposed king Constantine of Greece says he doesn’t want to be the head of any political party, so if he is to graciously agree to return to the throne, there should be a plebiscite. “If the people of Greece want me I shall return to Athens, unless, of course, prevented by unjust force.” He wants to go home because Switzerland is too fucking cold, he says. The next prime minister, Dimitrios Rallis, tells the Allies that Constantine is “more pro-Greek than pro-German. He is also something of a militarist.” Keep that one in mind.

70,552 US soldiers were gassed during the war, of whom 1,221 died and 2,803 injured enough to be discharged.

The most murdery city in the US over the last decade was Memphis, at 55.9 homicides per 100,000. Which was actually an improvement. The safest city is Milwaukee, at 2.5.

Russia legalizes abortion.

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Today -100: November 17, 1920: Of secret commissions, monarchist revolutions, and returning champs

The League of Nations sets up 6 commissions to do the actual work and make the actual decisions, with representatives of all 42 nations (wasn’t it 41 yesterday?), whose meetings are to be held in secret and with no minutes taken (there’s a fight about this).

Supposedly a right-wing revolution is brewing in Bavaria, aiming to make the state independent and restore its monarchy, and to negotiate not having to pay German war indemnities.

Dimitrios Rallis will be the new Greek prime minister, and by new I mean old; this is his 4th time in the job since the 1890s.

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Today -100: November 16, 1920: Of landslides, leagues, armistices, and chemical warfare

Greek elections produce a result no one, but no one, expected: Venizelos is out, the monarchist supporters of deposed king Constantine are in.

The League of Nations convenes. “All important countries of the world were represented in that Hall of Nations, except unhappy Russia, unrepentant Germany, uncertain America, and unasked Mexico.” 41 nations, count ‘em, 41.

Armenia and Turkey have an armistice, very much not in Armenia’s favor.

Russia captures Sebastopol. 

Fiume – pardon me, the Italian Regency of Quarnero – says the Treaty of Rapallo doesn’t count because it wasn’t represented. It expresses its own views as to what the border between Italy and Yugoslavia should rightfully be. Poet-Aviator-Duce Gabriele d’Annunzio personally leads his forces into Susak.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George defends his country’s continued work in chemical warfare in violation of the Treaty of Versailles (news of which just leaked) by saying one country not in the League of Nations, which he doesn’t name, is also doing poison gas experiments (is it Mexico? it’s probably Mexico, right?).

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Today -100: November 15, 1920: Of unacceptable treaties, the Third International, refugees, and great train robberies

As the Rapallo Treaty is being signed, Poet-Aviator-Duce Gabriele d’Annunzio announces plans to seize some islands and other territory from Yugoslavia. The Fiume regime says Rapallo is unacceptable.

Achille Richard, who d’Annunzio once offered the post of foreign minister, says d’A will probably retire to a monastery. Spoiler Alert: no.

The Communist International sets hard-line rules for national communist parties wishing to join. There must be a “complete breach” with reformism and “center elements” and “social pacifism” and “notorious opportunists” (some of whom it names, including Karl Kautsky and Ramsay MacDonald). The Communist press must be under the complete control of the party executive, and all parties must be called the Communist Party of (Insert Country Here). CPs must support every movement for freedom in the colonies. Also centralism, iron discipline, purges of petit-bourgeois elements, blah blah blah.

Brazil offers free land to 2,500 Jewish Ukrainian refugee families in Romania.

Jewish organizations in the US call for Jews to resist a proselytization scheme by the Presbyterians in NYC.

A train robbery outside Omaha, Nebraska, nabs a US Mint shipment. The government denies this was a gold shipment. It was totally a gold shipment. The robbers are said to have gotten at least $20,000. In fact, it was in the millions. And none of them older than 17 (they haven’t been caught yet).

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Today -100: November 14, 1920: Cork will remember his abduction

The League of Nations will convene Monday at a converted skating rink in Geneva. Swamped by delegates and their entourages, the good burghers of Geneva are price-gouging to the limit.

There’s a rumor that Britain will make Prince Albert, the Duke of York (the future George VI), the king of Ireland.

White general Pyotr Wrangel takes refuge in the Crimea on a French warship. The Russian Civil War is almost over. Wangel will live the rest of his life in exile in Turkey, Serbia, and Belgium, dying in 1928.

A notice signed “by order of the Black and Tans” is posted on the front door of the Cork Examiner offices, threatening that if a Cork Gaol warder kidnapped a month ago isn’t released within 48 hours, “Cork will remember his abduction.”

The NAACP says 30 to 60 black people were killed during election riots in Florida, and says the Justice Dept should annul the state’s vote.

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Today -100: November 13, 1920: The nation got value for his life

The 9 remaining hunger-strikers in Cork Gaol (2 died) give up their hunger strike on the 94th day under instruction from Sinn Féin, prodded by the Bishop of Cork, who said MacSwiney’s death had attracted world attention and “The nation got value for his life, but the continuance of the present strike is only a waste.” Oddly economistic language for a bishop.

The use of private automobiles in Ireland will be limited from December 1st, not allowed to be used at night and only within 20 miles of the owner’s home. In January existing permits expire and may not be renewed.

The British military will take over parts of the Irish railway system, which keeps firing employees who refuse to run trains carrying military or munitions and now has, like 5 employees left.

Col. Cecil L’Estrange Malone, an MP elected at the last election as a Liberal but is now the first Communist Party MP, is arrested in Dublin for a speech he made last week at the Albert Hall calling for revolution:“What are a few Churchills or Curzons on lamp posts compared to the massacre of thousands of human beings? What are a few Churchills or Curzons against a wall compared to the bombing of harmless Egyptians, compared with reprisals in Ireland?” He is let out on bail on condition he not make similar speeches. “He can, however, say what he likes in the House of Commons.” He will be sentenced to 6 months in prison for sedition and bound over. The prosecutor will say that Malone’s audience included many weak-minded aliens who might be inspired to loot, burn and murder.

Austria applies to join the League of Nations. Germany does not, but France would veto it anyway.

The marriage of Ann Wong Kee, age 12, who was sold by her foster mother to a laundryman in Binghamton who is described as elderly for $700, is annulled.

Mildred Harris and Charlie Chaplin are officially divorced. She gets a reasonably large settlement ($200,000) and agrees not to call herself Mildred Chaplin professionally.

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s almost dramatic enough to make me read an article about baseball. Almost.

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Today -100: November 12, 1920: Of unknown soldiers, home rule, Rapallo, and grateful and contented Haitians

France buries an Unknown Soldier and Britain buries an Unknown Soldier.

The Irish Home Rule Bill passes its 3rd Reading in the House of Commons, with a lot of talk about Armistice Day and reconciliation. Hey, says PM Lloyd George, that unknown soldier might even be Irish (there was no Armistice Day celebration in Dublin, although Belfast had a small, presumably celebratory, riot). Ireland, LG says, “should not in a moment of anger” – a several-hundred-year-long moment – “cast away an inheritance which is as much hers as ours, but join in the empire it helped to build and adorn.” He also claims to have documents proving that Sinn Féin was involved in a German plot in 1918, which he says proves that Britain has to keep complete control of Irish harbors forever. Also, a conscript army in Ireland would be a danger to Britain, and Ireland can’t be permitted a navy either. 

President-Elect Harding gives an Armistice Day speech in Brownsville, Texas. He says the US was not, in fact, fighting to make the world safe for democracy or for humanity’s sake, but only for our national rights (sending ships carrying munitions to one side in a war without getting blowed up, you know, those national rights). I know Woodrow Wilson gave self-righteous idealism a bad odor, but wow.

Italy and Yugoslavia have more or less completed negotiations for a treaty (Rapallo). Italy gives up Dalmatia (Italy already contains more Slavs than it feels comfortable with), Fiume is independent (for now) but contiguous with Italy, Italy gets a bunch of small islands in the Adriatic.

Rear Admiral Harry Knapp, who was sent to Haiti to “investigate” conditions under US occupation (he was the US’s military governor in St. Domingo, so, you know, totally objective). His investigation consisted of going, “unannounced,” to military camps and having commanders invite chosen Haitian citizens to meet him. They all expressed “gratitude” and “contentment.” So that’s okay then.

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Today -100: November 11, 1920: Of flags, shop closings, duels, and Chicago crooks

At the Capitol Theatre on Broadway a group of protesters trying to remove the British flag (among flags of other Great War allies) get into a fight with the police.

British troops tell owners of Dublin shops which closed for Terence MacSwiney’s funeral that they’d better also close for Armistice Day or their shops will be wrecked. And the British Embassy asks the US State Dept to do something about a cable sent by J.V. O’Connor, president of the Amalgamated Irish Societies of America, to the chief secretary for Ireland, I think, promising reprisals against English citizens in the US if there are any more reprisals in Ireland, at 3:1. It’s quite possible that neither J.V. O’Connor or the Amalgamated Irish Societies of America actually exist.

Rep. Finis Garrett (D-Tenn.) is arrested for driving drunk and running over a Post Office clerk.

Léon Daudet, monarchist member of the French Chamber of Deputies and a frequent duellist before the war, declines a challenge from another deputy, saying “Dueling is a foolish practice and there is no place for it in France since the war.”

Chicago Mayor Big Bill Thompson fires Police Chief John Garrity and appoints his own secretary for the purpose of “ridding Chicago of crooks.” Who would that leave? Chicago cops are being investigated for providing protection for saloons.

What to See: George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House at the Garrick, reviewed by Alexander Woollcott.

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Today -100: November 10, 1920: Violence is the sad inheritance of war

Headline of the Day -100:  

In Texas, he lands a seven-foot tarpon, except when he restaged the struggle for the movie cameras the fish got away. That may be some sort of metaphor.

Japanese PM Hara plays down California’s latest racist land law, saying it’s just a sectional agitation that won’t affect relations between the two countries.

Only a few people are killed and only a few bombs thrown during Italy’s elections. PM Giolitti says “Violence is the sad inheritance of war.”

Immigration Commissioner Frederick Wallis claims that 25,000 “Soviet propagandists” are trying to come to the US via the Netherlands. They’re coming as stowaways or seamen in order to avoid the questions asked of immigrants at Ellis Island.

8 dead French soldiers are dug up at Verdun so that one can be chosen as the Unknown Soldier. The other seven will be dumped in the Seine at midnight, I’m assuming. Each unknown is coming from one of the 9 sectors of the Front (they’re skipping the 9th sector, where French and German bodies are mixed together in mass graves).

The pope saw an Italian movie called The Holy Bible (I can’t find it on imdb) and was shocked by seeing Adam and Eve naked, so he tried to get the film destroyed and, failing that, bans Catholics from seeing it.

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Today -100: November 9, 1920: You are hiding the republic behind the body of a dead soldier

The Supreme Court rules that liquor for personal use may legally be stored in a warehouse and transported. However some states, such as Illinois, have their own laws against this.

In Parliament, Prime Minister David Lloyd George calls the shooting dead of a pregnant woman holding a baby by police in Keltaran, County Galway, “one of those unfortunate accidents that always happen in war.” Queried about the war thing, he says “It is war on the other side. It is rebellion.”

The laughable Irish Home Rule Bill is working its way through Parliament, with the government adding provisions that if half the members of the two devolved parliaments (North and South) aren’t properly elected or fail to show up the bodies can be dissolved and their powers given to a committee named by the Lord Lieutenant. Both parliaments can set up an upper house (or not, it sounds like). The usual oath to the Crown has been dropped.

The French government decides that the unknown soldier to be buried on Armistice Day will go under the Arc de Triomphe rather than the Pantheon. At the same time the heart of long-dead prime minister Léon Gambetta will go the Pantheon. In the National Assembly, socialist Alexandre Bracke-Desrousseaux objects to the funding for the unknown soldier: “You are hiding the republic behind the body of a dead soldier.” Worst. Game of Hide and Seek. Ever. His complaint is that the anti-republican Right forced this amalgamation of Armistice Day with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Third Republic, which should have been celebrated in September.

D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, that novel about Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling nekked, is published in New York but not London because its predecessor The Rainbow is still banned in Britain. I don’t seem to have underlined any passages in my copy (also, I can’t believe I was ever able to read such tiny print; jesus, Penguin).

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Today -100: November 8, 1920: Reds shall not pass

Turkey says it won’t ratify the peace treaty for the foreseeable future.

Cops shot in Londonderry, retaliation arson on alleged Sinn Féiner-owned properties. And rioting in Belfast.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Spoiler Alert: The Reds shall totally pass.

Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes says the League of Nations will not be allowed to complain about the White Australia policy, which is as necessary to Australia’s defense as the Monroe Doctrine is for the US or freedom of the seas to the British. 

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Cheer up, Donnie, there are worse ways to be removed from public life

(I originally composed this post, prematurely, on November 2, 2004. I was very cross that I didn't get to use it.)

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Today -100: November 7, 1920: We can’t do much worse than the men

Asquith calls for a truce in Ireland, which “has become the worst form of civil war.” Opposition to the policy of reprisals is growing, including from Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat).

Yoncalla, Oregon, pop. 323, votes out the city council in favor of an all-women ticket. They organized secretly, so the election results are a complete surprise, including to Mayor Jess Lasswell, whose wife is elected to the council. Another council member is also displaced by his wife. (A recent Atlantic article finds this story a little too pat to be true). Mayor-elect Mary Burt says “At the worst, we can’t do much worse than the men.”

Fess Whitaker, a county jailer in Letcher County, Kentucky, currently serving time in his own jail for a street fight, is elected county judge, so Gov. Morrow pardons him.

Alexander Woollcott reviews Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, which opened last week at the Provincetown Playhouse, NYC. He likes the play, hates the clumsy production, but likes the actor playing Brutus Jones, Charles Gilpin. Who is black. Eventually Gilpin will clash with O’Neill over the latter’s insistence on using the n–word (a lot), and will be replaced by Paul Robeson, who also starred in the abbreviated 1933 film version (which deployed the word 29 times). There’s a good but not great recent movie about the play and Gilpin, The Black Emperor of Broadway (could have used a different actor as O’Neill).

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Today -100: November 6, 1920: Of cycling, hip flasks, show trials, spheres of influences, and samoas

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100:  

Actually MOTORcycling, which is somehow so much less interesting a story. Anyway, 4 men are arrested and two are shot dead “attempting to escape,” as was the custom.

Chicago District Attorney Charles Clyne – which is a Chicago district attorney kind of name – threatens to close down cabarets that allow customers to bring in hip flasks.

The Russian government is collapsing, because the Russian government is always collapsing. The NYT claims that Lenin was put on trial, or a sort of trial in a theatre (yes, we’re all thinking it), by Bolsheviks who accuse him of graft and trying to make himself absolute ruler. This is supposed to have happened last month, but the outcome is not known. Another totally true report says 100 to 300 people are executed every day in Moscow.

France, Britain and Italy sign an agreement setting out their spheres of influence in Turkey. How very nineteenth-century of them. Oh wait, they signed it 3 months ago and it’s not a secret treaty but just happens to have been kept secret since August, got it.

Warren Terhune, governor of American Samoa, was suspended pending an investigation into his heavy-handed approach to the natives. Three days before a battleship bringing a Naval Board of Inquiry is due to arrive, he kills himself.

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Today -100: November 5, 1920: Of deceased leagues, evaders not crusaders, pardons, pot-pourris of indiscretions, and ethnic cleansings

Harding says the League of Nations is “now deceased.”

Massachusetts voted Tuesday to legalize the sale of light wines and beer.

William Jennings Bryan, ever full of helpful advice, suggests that Woodrow Wilson should resign immediately, then Veep Whatsisname should appoint Harding as his secretary of state and then resign so that Harding becomes president next month instead of in March (the order of succession was different in 1920 than it is now). Then Harding could get on with that “association of nations” and world peace would be assured. Bryan is an idiot. He says that the reason he made no speeches during the campaign season was that the Democratic Party “has become a party of evaders and not crusaders.” He says Cox’s problem was that he was a prohibitionist in the West and a wet in the East.

Former Vermont Governor Horace F. Graham is convicted of embezzling state funds (when he was state auditor, before he was governor), and sentenced to 5-8 years. By the end of the day, his successor Gov. Percival Clement pardons him. They’re both Republicans. 

Margot Asquith, wife of the former prime minister, has written an autobiography, which has to be a first. Supposedly when she told Herbert she was getting £13,000 for it, he said “I hope they’re not worth all that!” Winston Churchill writes a review for The Daily Mail and questions are asked in the House about whether the secretary of state for war doesn’t have more important duties to attend to. The London Times calls the book “a scandal which cannot be justified or excused.” A “pot-pourri of indiscretions,” the Daily Chronicle calls it.

Cork Deputy Lord Mayor Donal O’Callaghan replaces the late Terence MacSwiney as lord mayor. Don’t know much about him, except he’s also Sinn Féin and doesn’t die in office, which must have made a nice change.

Blacks are fleeing Ocoee, Florida. White people are having to harvest the citrus crop, which is what happens when you drive the cheap labor out.

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Today -100: November 4, 1920: Of extreme voter suppression, and radium

In Ocoee, Florida, a black man is prevented from voting because he hasn’t paid the poll tax. He returns with a shotgun but is fought off. He comes back at night with a few of his friends, and a race war commences. A couple of the white posse are shot dead and 20+ buildings burned down with black people inside. The prospective voter, July Perry, is lynched. Several dozen blacks will be murdered and the remaining ones will be driven out of the town, never to return.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: November 3, 1920: Pleased but not exultant

Headline of the Day -100:  

Harding gets 60.2% of the popular vote, a record, 16,152,200 votes to Cox’s 9,147,353.  Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs gets nearly 1 million votes, 3.4%.

Harding says he is “more given to prayer to God to make me capable of playing my part.” Spoiler Alert: God will say no.

Debs, from prison, says Socialists will sweep the 1924 elections. Spoiler Alert: yes, that will totally happen.

It’s a landslide for Republicans everywhere.

Thirty-four governorships were up for grabs. Republicans capture twenty-five. Alfred E. Smith, future Democratic candidate for president, loses his re-election bid for governor of New York to Nathan Miller (he’ll get it back in ‘22). 4 of the 5 Socialists the NY Legislature keeps refusing to take their seats are elected again (um, I think this is wrong), but the state senate gets its first Socialist ever, Edmund Seidel. The strong opposition of women who remembered US Sen. James Wadsworth Jr (R)’s vociferous opposition to women’s suffrage does not prevent his re-election.

In the House of Representatives, R’s gain 61 seats. They will have 299 v. 131 for the D’s. Socialist Victor Berger, expelled by the House in 1919, loses for re-election, but will be back. Meyer London of Manhattan is now the only Socialist. Other D’s losing their seats: former Speaker of the House Champ Clark, future secretary of state Cordell Hull.

Rep. Andrew Volstead (R-Minn.) of Volstead Act fame is re-elected. I must have missed this: he actually lost his primary, but the winner was disqualified for having libeled Volstead.

There’s a woman in the House again, the second after Jeanette Rankin, Oklahoma’s Alice M. Robertson, a 66-year-old spinster former teacher in Indian boarding schools and, um, president of the state Anti-Suffrage Association. Campaign motto: “I am a Christian. I am an American. I am a Republican.” She will serve one term.

The Republican majority in the Senate, slight in the 66th Congress, expands to 59-37.

In New Jersey, only one Democrat, Harry Runyon of Warren County, is elected to the Legislature’s lower house, meaning he’ll be on every single committee.

Eleanor Roosevelt casts her first vote.

Election judges in Savannah, Georgia, ignore the ruling that the registration period doesn’t apply to women this time and refuse to let black women vote. Why just black women, beyond the obvious? Evidently no white women showed up at the polls.

KDKA Pittsburgh begins operating, the first commercially licensed radio in the US (give or take), whose first broadcast is the election results.

California overwhelmingly passes the racist Alien Land initiative, making it illegal to lease to Japanese people or companies owned by them. It will be overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1952. A California ballot measure to ban vivisection fails. One to add kindergartens to the public school system succeeds.

Baron Pyotr Wrangel, the last White general standing, is carrying out a “strategic retreat.”

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