Today -100: February 9, 1920: Of hoovers and fugitives

Herbert Hoover says he’s not seeking the presidency. Which is not the same thing as saying he wouldn’t accept the nomination. He’s also not saying whether he’s a D or an R, saying he wants to see what the parties stand for first. He does say he’d support whichever party favored the League of Nations.

Some of the Germans deemed war criminals by the Allies are slipping into Switzerland to avoid possible extradition. There’s no Swiss law against fugitives entering the country.

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Today -100: February 8, 1920: Of reservations, doctrines, suffrage, piracy, and breakers of marriage

Sen. George Hitchcock (D-Neb.) shares with the Senate a letter Pres. Wilson wrote him a couple of weeks ago accepting Hitchcock’s proposed compromise reservations to the League of Nations.

Since the US got a mention of the Monroe Doctrine included in the League of Nations Covenant, some Latin American countries are putting off joining the League until the US explains exactly what the Monroe Doctrine entails.

Nevada ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment. 28 down, 8 to go.

D’Annunzio’s men capture a destroyer and a food train.

Soviet Russia now has an official “Breaker of Marriages” to grant divorces, and he’s breaking hundreds of marriages a week. “All that appears to be required is the signature of the person desiring freedom from matrimony,” the scandalized NYT reports from its fainting couch.

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Today -100: February 7, 1920: Of johnsons and wood, campaigns, cooperatives, and suffrage

The US State Department claims that Russia is planning a campaign against India, using Turkestan as a base. Actually, reading on, it sounds like they just mean a propaganda campaign. Big deal.

Not sure what the thinking is here, but the Russian Soviet government takes control of cooperatives, just as the West was prepared to resume economic relations with Russia as long as it was with the cooperatives and not the government.

The Virginia State Senate rejects the women’s suffrage Amendment, 24-10.

Dirty Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: February 6, 1920: Of impossible demands

The German government says the Allied demand for 890 alleged war criminals is “impossible.” Chancellor Gustav Bauer says, yeah we did sign that treaty that required the extradition, but we didn’t think you meant it.

The Allies supposedly accept that war crimes trials will never happen, but wants Germany to accept the list and the theoretical guilt of the 890 and the Allies’ theoretical right to put them on trial. Of course France will insist on continuing to occupy the Rhine until the extraditions it knows will never happen happen.

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Today -100: February 5, 1920: Of plebiscites, submarines, extraditions, and rockets

Schleswig-Holstein will shortly hold its plebiscite on what country to be a part of. Non-residents (i.e. Germans and Danes) have been banned from participating in electioneering.

Three of Poet-Aviator-Pirate Gabriele D’Annunzio’s men are caught trying to steal an Italian submarine.

The Allies hand the list of 890 alleged war criminals to the head of the German delegation, Baron Kurt von Lersner. Or try to, since Lersner immediately informs them that he has resigned and no other German official will help with the extraditions, so there. It’s unclear whether he’s acting on his own or under orders.

A Capt. Claude Collins of the New York City Air Police, which I don’t think is actually a thing, volunteers to be on the first manned rocket to Mars (the Robert Goddard rocket). He doesn’t want any pay, just life insurance.

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Today -100: February 4, 1920: Of narrow escapes, books of hate, flags, and cheek and jowl shuffles

Pres. Wilson has had a “narrow escape from influenza,” according to his doctor. The president’s health is said to be steadily improving. The president’s health is indeed always said to be steadily improving. For four months now. He should be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound at this point.

The list of alleged war criminals the Allies want Germany to hand over – deemed by the Germans that “book of hate” – now contains 890 names, including Hindenburg and Ludendorff, many generals, Adm. Von Tirpitz (for submarine warfare), former Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg (for invading Belgium), three Hohenzollern princes and one Bavarian one, Baron Von der Lancken (for the execution of the nurse Edith Cavell), and a bunch of U-boat commanders. The only woman on the list is an attendant at an internment camp, Elsa Schneiner. The British put 97 names on the list, France 334, Italy 29, Belgium 334, Poland 51, Romania 41, and Yugoslavia 4. The US and Japan added none.

The NY Assembly, investigating (again) the patriotism of the 5 elected Socialist members it keeps excluding, hears the testimony of a 17-year-old girl that Assemblyman Charles Solomon once spat on the American flag.

Congressional Republicans remove mandatory military training for males from the military bill on grounds of cost.

An association of Pittsburgh dance hall owners will ask the city council to ban “jazz” dances, including the shimmy and the cheek and jowl shuffle.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: February 3, 1920: Are ghosts kosher?

Germany asked that the Allies not demand that “war criminals” be handed over as specified in the Treaty of Versailles, as it might cause a counter-revolution to break out. The Allies tell them to suck it and hand over 780 men.

France is still executing wartime spies, in this case an Austrian who was in Paris during the war and reported to Germany where its long-range shells were hitting.

The French, as usual, are concerned about the country’s low birth rate and its effect on military readiness. There is now a “Supreme Council of Natality,” because of course there is.

Russia asks Poland if it would like to put an end to all the fussin’ and feudin’.

Estonia has made peace with Russia. Estonia is an independent country. For now.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Charles Thomas, president of the Commonwealth Trust and Security Company of Chicago, is arrested for having a hip flask, but are the trousers he kept it in a “vehicle” under the dry law, and therefore subject to seizure and sale? Federal prohibition agents will argue before the US District Court that they are.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: February 2, 1920: FDR does crimez

The Russian Soviet government gives permission for Russian cooperatives to trade with companies in foreign countries, evidently dropping its previous demand for an armistice before the resumption of commercial relations.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt tells a meeting that after the US entered the Great War, he did lots of totally illegal things to prepare the Navy, including spending $40 million for guns (presumably cannons on ships) that had not yet been authorized by Congress. That seems to be the only crime to which he specifically admits.

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Today -100: February 1, 1920: Of poles, arrests, and low bodies.

40,000 Poles have applied to leave the US, most stating as their reason, you guessed it, prohibition.

The British arrest dozens of Sinn Féin leaders, including the just-elected members of the Dublin council and Lord Mayor Tom Kelly, whose office makes him an ex officio captain in the British Army. And they’ve finally caught up with Michael Collins.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Low bodies” is a typo, tho’ a fun one; they meant low bodices. One anonymous French doctor says today’s fashions allow a salutary “double aeration of the skin”.

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Today -100: January 31, 1920: We will make you chew wood

The bipartisan Senate talks about the peace treaty collapse, with Henry Cabot Lodge refusing to contemplate any compromise on his reservations.

The forces of Gabriele D’Annunzio kidnap an Italian general who’s been critical of the Poet-Aviator.

The new Cork and Limerick Corporations (city councils) declare allegiance to the Irish Republic. And the council of Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland elects its first Nationalist and its first Catholic mayor, Hugh O’Doherty, as audience members taunt the Ulsterites, “Derry has surrendered. We will make you chew wood.” Jennie Wyse Power, a member of Dublin Corporation is disqualified by the town clerk for signing the roll in Gaelic.

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Today -100: January 30, 1920: What wine goes with pneumonia?

French spies have allegedly uncovered a Bolshevik plot for an uprising in India.

Russia, making an offer to Poland to discuss peace, accuses the agents of Churchill and Clemenceau of inciting a “senseless, criminal war against Soviet Russia” (it’s funny cuz it’s true).

The feds announce rules for the use of liquor for medicinal purposes (i.e. the spreading influenza outbreaks): doctors and pharmacists with permits may dispense no more than one pint per patient within ten days. There’s no set limit on wines.

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Today -100: January 29, 1920: Of signals from Mars, secret treaties, and referenda

Marconi is still investigating those mysterious signals or whatever that wirelesses are picking up. He says he can’t exclude them being extraterrestrial in origin.

The Allies gave Yugoslavia an ultimatum to accept their proposed revision of its borders with Italy (Fiume, Dalmatia, etc) or they will implement the Treaty of London with the bribes offered to Italy to enter the war in 1915. Yugoslavia says no, pointing out that it doesn’t even know what it’s being threatened with, since the treaty was a secret one and its terms have still never been officially published.

Meanwhile, an Italian ship en route to Albania with stores for the Italian occupation soldiers there as well as pay for those soldiers of 2 million lire, which is roughly the equivalent of some money, sails instead to Fiume, where Poet-Aviator-Pirate Gabriele D’Annunzio seizes the cargo and the money.

Mississippi, like Virginia, will punt on the question of women’s suffrage, putting the federal Amendment up to a popular vote – in November. The South Carolina Legislature rejects it outright.

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Today -100: January 28, 1920: Of women’s suffrage and aliens

Wyoming ratifies the federal women’s suffrage Amendment. 27 down, 9 to go. Or possibly 26. Did I miss one?

Marconi wirelesses have been experiencing interference. Could they be signals from aliens? Sir Frank Dyson, the Astronomer Royal, thinks they might.

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Today -100: January 27, 1920: Of treaties, assassination attempts, Americanization, and anti-gas

Hungary will refuse to sign the peace treaty, which would limit its army to 35,000, which it says is too small.

German troops are occupying parts of Berlin to prevent a royalist outbreak on the ex-kaiser’s birthday. Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger is shot in the shoulder by a would-be assassin with a small-calibre gun (one bullet was deflected by a button). Erzberger was leaving court, where he is suing former Vice Chancellor Karl Helfferich for libel. Erzberger is a hate figure for the far right, due to his financial policy and his role in signing the peace agreement. A more competent assassin will find him in 1921.

The Senate votes an “Americanization” bill, providing $6,500,000 to teach English to aliens and illiterate Americans. States accepting the money would have to make it compulsory for people aged 16 to 21 to take 200 hours of instruction in English a year.

The French are working on measures to counteract poison gas attacks. “Naturally the French chemists are guarding closely the secret of this anti-gas.” They’re also working on developing shells to fire at enemy planes to poison the air around them.

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Today -100: January 26, 1920: It is always well for men to walk humbly

Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge says he’s not a candidate for president, without quite saying that he would object to someone nominating him at the Republican Convention. He says he doesn’t want anyone to be able to say that he used the office of governor to influence the selection of Massachusetts’s delegates. He says “The curse of the present is the almost universal grasping for power in high places and in low to the exclusion of the discharge of obligations. It is always well for men to walk humbly.”

The Soviets announce that they have captured not only Irkutsk, but Adm. Kolchak and his government as well. The latter is true, the former is not.

The French winners of Nobel prizes in economics and medicine decline to accept the award because the chemistry prize went to Fritz Haber for his work on nitrogen, um, something or other, which is important in producing fertilizer but which he also put to use during the war in developing chemical weapons. (Update: or possibly this story is complete horseshit - see comments).

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Today -100: January 25, 1920: Of medicinal whisky, destroying the state in open combat, and armistices

As influenza spreads in New York and elsewhere, Assistant Supervising Federal Prohibition Agent James Shevlin says that “most druggists have little desire to handle whisky because of the legal restrictions, but that an appeal was being made to them on the ground that they were in duty bound, as purveyors of medicine, to carry a stock of liquor.” (I asked my GP about this a couple of weeks ago. He seemed to think using whisky to treat flu and pneumonia is a bad idea.)

Secretary of Labor William Wilson decides that membership by aliens in the Communist Party is a sufficient ground, all by itself, for deportation, because the Party is “seeking to destroy the State in open combat.”

The Allies (not including the US) are trying to resume commercial relations with the Soviet Union without actually recognizing the Soviet Union by dealing directly with Russian cooperatives. But Russia says that unless there is a military armistice first, it will sink any ships arriving at Russian ports.

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Today -100: January 24, 1920: Of emigration, extradition, and ugly duchesses

Japan is prohibiting emigration to Mexico, because of an “understanding” with the US.

The Netherlands refuses to extradite former kaiser Wilhelm. In truth, the demand by the Allies’ Supreme Council was a bit bizarre, saying that, had Willy remained in Germany, the peace treaty would have required Germany to extradite him, so, um, Holland should. The Dutch point out that they aren’t a party to the Versailles treaty because they weren’t actually, you know, in the war, and that there’s no international court to try war crimes anyway.

Quentin Matsys’s 16th-century painting The Ugly Duchess sells at Christie’s for 880 guineas.

The painting is now (2020) in the National Gallery in London.

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Today -100: January 23, 1920: Root and branch

Herbert Hoover is seriously considering running for president without committing himself as to which party’s banner he’d run under. This would be accomplished by the formation of Hoover clubs, dominated if not entirely comprised of business men. He would then  publish a platform, and either party would be free to adopt both him and it.

The mayor of Camden, New Jersey appoints a black man, Dr. Clement Branch to the city’s Board of Education. Immediately, the president of the board and another long-time member resign, with more threatening to do so, although no one’s admitting that Branch’s appointment is the reason.

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Today -100: January 22, 1920: Of communist laborers, flu, women’s suffrage, and whipping

A Chicago grand jury indicts 39 Communist Labor Party leaders, including John Reed (who is in Russia) and William Bross Lloyd, for conspiracy to overthrow the government by force.

Influenza is rearing its head again and the main problem is the difficulty in getting whisky for, you know, medicinal purposes.

The lower house of the Mississippi Legislature rejects the federal women’s suffrage Amendment.

Atlanta City Council orders an end to the whipping of women prisoners at the city stockade.

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Today -100: January 21, 1920: Of weak, doubtful, second-class men, and open arms

The Allied Supreme Council breaks up without resolving the status of Fiume. It sounds to me like Yugoslavia conceded to Italy almost everything it demanded, but that’s still not good enough for Italy.

The NYT editorial page expresses confidence that the Republican party will choose Henry Cabot Lodge as its presidential candidate. “The Republican party is not going to foist upon the country any weak, doubtful, second-class man.” (They’re being sarcastic).

Russia has evidently decided to accept all 249 deported radicals. As Maxim Gorky’s wife tells them, “Russia opens her arms to all who are politically persecuted.” Um, yeah, that’s totally what Russia does (I’m being sarcastic).

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