Today -100: March 11, 1920: Now commences war

Poet-Aviator Gabriele D’Annunzio is irate that Italy is blocking entry to children being sent from starving Fiume. He threatens to use a warship to land them at Venice. He compares this to Italy’s sheltering starving children from Vienna. “I will not tolerate this infamy. I am preparing the roughest-edged tool to brand it. ... Yes, now commences war.”

The Ulster Unionists decide to accept Lloyd George’s Home Rule Bill. They still don’t like Ireland having any form of self-government, but will accept separate treatment for “Ulster,” even if it’s just 6 rather than 9 counties.

Norway and Denmark agree to join the League of Nations after getting assurances that they won’t be required to maintain a standing army ready to join in possible League military actions. Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands will also join.

West Virginia State Senator Bloch arrives at Charleston from his winter home in Pasadena (no word on whether he accepted the plane booked to get him part of the way) in time to vote for the federal women’s suffrage Amendment. Also, an Anti senator who no longer lives in the state is unseated, so ratification passes. 34 down, 2 to go.

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Today -100: March 10, 1920: Of independent progressives, retiring from public life, and #NegotiationFail

Gen. Leonard Wood wins the New Hampshire Republican primary. Herbert Hoover seems to have won the Democrat primary. Hoover writes to some California Republicans who want him to run as an R, saying he is an “independent progressive,” equally opposed to the reactionary wing of the R’s and the radical wing of the D’s. Also, too, he’s not running for office. But... he seems to leave open the possibility of being drafted into office, which the NYT will characterize as “Mr. Hoover will accept a nomination, but he will not lift a hand to get one.”

The Duchess County, NY Democratic Committee endorses Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt for US Senate. FDR is not actually running for Senate, and says he wants to retire from public life.

Negotiations between Italy and Yugoslavia fail. Yugoslavia is now demanding that if Italy gets part of Albania, Valona (or Vlorë, as the Albanians call it), it wants Scutari (or Shkodër, as the Albanians call it). No one seems to be asking Albanians what they think. No one ever does.

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Today -100: March 9, 1920: Does any one really want to see the old game played again?

The West Virginia State Senate is evenly divided on the federal women’s suffrage Amendment, which the lower house has already passed. The suffrage side are trying to get Sen. Bloch (this article has his first name as William, a later one says Jesse) back from California, hiring a plane to take him the Chicago-to-Cincinnati leg of the trip. Assuming they can get him on a plane.

Pres. Wilson (or whoever) writes to Sen. Hitchcock, rejecting any and all reservations to the Peace Treaty – “I hear of reservationists and mild reservationists, but I cannot understand the difference between a nullifier and a mild nullifier.” He declares Article X (mutual self-defense and renunciation of war) “the essence of Americanism.” “The reservation proposed would perpetuate the old order. Does any one really want to see the old game played again?”

The Supreme Court rules that stock dividends are capital, not income, and therefore not subject to the income tax. The stock market tanks on the news after Dow-Jones and other news agencies initially report the exact opposite.

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg announces that he is running for president of Germany. His supporters are claiming his is a non-partisan candidacy and are trying to convince voters that he would uphold the Republic (naturally he privately got permission to run from former kaiser Wilhelm).

Wilhelm’s cousin, Prince Joachim Albrecht, has taken to going around Berlin restaurants and paying the orchestra to strike up Deutschland Uber Alles. After doing so at the Hotel Adlon, he led an attack on two out-of-uniform French officers who failed to stand. When German patrons tried to stop him, telling him to at least remember that Germany lost the war, he insisted, “No! We won it.” His arrest has been ordered by the minister of defense.

Headline of the Day -100: 

“Her inhabitants do not promenade or saunter; they walk straight ahead with preoccupied, downward gaze and with definite if unhasty footsteps.”

Cardinal O’Connell, Archbishop of Boston, attacks “false feminism”: “The women are becoming masculine, if you please, and the men are becoming effeminate. This is disorder.”

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Today -100: March 8, 1920: Of home rules, you sunk my battleship, train robberies, and love

Sir Edward Carson, Ulster Unionist leader and treasonist, urges acceptance of Lloyd George’s Home Rule Bill, because it’s better than the alternative of the 1914 Home Rule Act coming into effect.

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and the Senate Navy Sub-Committee are squabbling over whether awards should be given to officers whose ships were sunk.

The Allies are planning, or at least threatening, to occupy Constantinople to pressure Turkey to stop killing Armenians. They may also make the peace treaty terms harsher.

A band of Hungarians attempt to kidnap former dictator Béla Kun from his hospital bed in Austria. A watchman they bribed finks them out to the cops.

Pancho Villa is being blamed, maybe even correctly, for leading the robbery of a train in which 33 people (19 soldiers, 10 bandits, 4 civilians) are killed and others held for ransom.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Whereupon the Young Men's Bible Class to which John D. Jr. addressed these words beat him to death, I assume.

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Today -100: March 7, 1920: Of hoovers, borders, Magyars, overstuffed chickens, and America’s Sweetheart

Herbert Hoover informs California Democrats that he is not a candidate for president, and please don’t put his name on the ballot.

Poland says it will only negotiate with Russia on the basis of the 1772 borders. Poland’s army is currently occupying parts of Russia well beyond the borders drawn by the Peace Conference along more or less ethnographic lines (that is, the Polish state should contain Poles and not too many Russians). The Allies tell Poland to knock it off.

The Czech Ministry of Education bans the word “Hungary.” It should henceforth be known as Magyar or Magyar Land (the case being that the old multi-ethnic Hungary is gone, replaced by a smaller mono-ethnic state).

Headline of the Day -100:

Also sand, wheat, and gravel. Legally they’re only allowed one ounce.

Hollywood Headline of the Day -100:

Well, not this month week anyway.

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Today -100: March 6, 1920: I didn’t know Prussia had a pre-nup

The German Reichstag is considering reimbursing the Hohenzollerns for their nationalized property. The Socialists think they should only be compensated for what they brought into Brandenburg-Prussia in 1415.

Chief Secretary for Ireland Ian Macpherson defends government repression in Ireland, saying Sinn Féin has at least 200,000 men prepared to commit murder at any time.

NYC Assistant District Attorney James Smith claims to have a list of 500 apartments in Manhattan used by women for immoral purposes. Mayor Hylan asks for a copy of the list for, ah, reasons.

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Today -100: March 5, 1920: Of reservations and prohibitions

Senators trying to negotiate a compromise on Sen. Lodge’s reservations to Article X of the Peace Treaty send Sen. Carter Glass (until last month the Treasury Secretary) to the White House to ask Pres. Wilson for his views. He is turned away.

The House of Representatives rejects a motion to repeal the Volstead Act, 254-85 and a measure to kill the $4.5 million appropriation to enforce Prohibition.

The state of New Jersey files suit in the Supreme Court to have the 18th Amendment declared null and void. It argues that since Congress has no power under the Constitution to regulate morals, no Amendment can amend powers it does not have. NJ further argues that the Volstead Act to enforce this Amendment is void for that reason and for interfering with internal state matters, etc.

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Today -100: March 4, 1920: Of women’s suffrage, newspapers, and America’s Sweetheart

The West Virginia State Senate defeats ratification of the women’s suffrage Amendment, 15-13, after the House of Delegates votes 47-40 in favor.

There’s a bill in the Senate to remove foreign-language newspapers’ second-class mail privileges.

Mary Pickford divorces Owen Moore in Reno. She had to pay him off to the tune of $100,000.

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Today -100: March 3, 1920: Of shadows, false teeth, and simpletons

Headline of the Day -100: 

The proposed peace treaty will reduce Turkey’s population from 30 million to 6 million and practically eliminate its navy. The Allies might not be feeling too generous towards Turkey thanks to reports that it’s resumed massacring Armenians.

Schleswig-Holstein declares independence, which I’m pretty sure isn’t what was supposed to happen when the provinces separated from Prussia/Germany.

False teeth makers in NYC go on strike.

Headline of the Day -100:  

‘S a horse.

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Today -100: March 2, 1920: Of anti-saloonery, Jewish wine, palmers, and trusts

The West Virginia State Senate rejects the women’s suffrage Amendment, although it may be brought up again.

The New York State Assembly votes to investigate the political spending of the Anti-Saloon League.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George is asked in Parliament whether he’d appoint women as diplomats. No.

The government will allow Jewish families 15 gallons of wine per year for religious purposes.

Senators now all agree that the Peace Treaty can’t pass.

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer announces he is running for president. He says the people of Georgia, where he is being put on the ballot, should have a chance to vote on the Wilson Administration’s policies. So he’s running as a Wilsonian, which everyone assumes means Wilson isn’t running for a 3rd time and D’s who’ve been holding back can now enter the race.

The Supreme Court rules that US Steel is not an illegal trust, even though it obviously is. The majority cite the disorderly effects that would arise from dissolving the company as a reason to ignore the law.

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Today -100: March 1, 1920: Everyone seems to be afraid of everyone

Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane resigns because he is broke (and possibly for reasons of health). He writes to Wilson about the state of Washington DC: “it is poorly organized for the task that belongs to it. ... Everyone seems to be afraid of everyone. The self-protective sense is developed abnormally, the creative sense atrophies. ... there are too few in the Government whose business it is to plan. Every man is held to details, to the narrower view which comes too often to be the department view or some sort of parochial view.” He thinks helium will be very important in the future. He wants to stop the “drift to the cities,” in part by giving former soldiers farms; “The life of the great city is feverish and wars with that severity of spirit in which calm judgments are come at”.

A sheriff’s posse that invaded Mexico from Arizona looking for two Mexican bandits who killed a man and wounded his brother in Arivaca, AZ after robbing their store, returns after failing to find anyone.

Italy imposes an “iron blockade” of Fiume. Poet-Aviator Gabriele d’Annunzio orders Croats and other “foreigners” who are “pernicious by their presence for the proper defence of the city” deported. Also socialists.

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Today -100: February 29, 1920: Of treaties, women’s suffrage, arks, trapehooters, and anthills

Woodrow Wilson stomps on a move by some Democratic senators to accept the Lodge reservations to the peace treaty. He says if the reservations are attached, he will refuse to deposit the treaty. Can a president veto a ratified treaty? Or do amendments turn it into a different treaty?

Everyone in Ireland hates hates hates Lloyd George’s Home Rule Bill.

Oklahoma ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment, following a squabble over whether there should be a referendum. 33 down, 3 to go.

The Japanese government, afraid the Diet will vote to expand the franchise, asks the emperor to dissolve it. He does so.

Pres. Wilson ignores demands from railroad and other unions that he veto the bill returning railroad lines to private ownership. They particularly object to a board to establish wages which would have representatives of the companies, the workers, and the general public. The unions think the latter will side with the owners; Wilson says people hostile to labor shouldn’t be appointed. That’s totally reassuring, I’m sure.

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer says there will soon be more Soviet Arks carrying deportees to Russia. He alternates, in a speech to the Women’s Democratic Political League, between saying that there is absolutely no threat from Red Radicals, and that the situation is very serious indeed. He claims that thousands of propagandists had been sent to the US by the Soviets to teach the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat “in a land that had no proletariat.” He insists that the bomb thrown at his house was not aimed at him, but was an attempt to destroy the US government, presumably because he thinks no one could possibly have anything against him personally.

Columbia University European history professor Charles Downer Hazen has a long book review of John Maynard Keynes’ The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which was published in December, but whose US edition is just out, I believe. The review is a bit of a hazen, calling it “a very angry book.”

Thanks to a misspelling in the NYT Index, I’ve just  spent way too much time trying to figure out what a trapehooter might be. Someone who hoots trapes, presumably.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: February 28, 1920: People who don’t want women in public life are too late

The US position is to completely ignore Soviet Russia’s latest peace feelers. The State Dept won’t even release it to the public, because it’s all propaganda, man. Russia is requesting that other nations just stop trying to overthrow its Bolshevik government militarily, and it will even pay 60% of the foreign debt run up the tsars (this is aimed at France, which is strongly against recognition and holds most of that debt).

French railway workers striking for state ownership of the railroads are conscripted into the army.

The British Labour Party offers a bill to amend the Representation of the People Act of 1918 to give the vote to women at the same age as for men (at 21 instead of 30). Nancy Astor supports the bill, not for the sake of the women, she says, but for the sake of the country. “People who don’t want women in public life are too late,” she adds, no doubt pointing at herself and winking.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George publishes his Irish Home Rule Bill. There would be two anemic parliaments for the North and South, which would each name half the members of a Council for Ireland, which might turn into a real all-Ireland parliament, unless it were somehow obstructed by Ulster, which has, to reiterate, half its members. It’s hard to believe this is a serious proposal that LG or anyone thinks is workable.

The House Naval Committee is investigating the presence of under-age boys in the Navy. The commandant of the Marine Corps tells the committee that a battleship captain complained that half his crew were “worthless boys under 17 years old.”

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Today -100: February 27, 1920: Washington called us off

Woodrow Wilson’s letter to the British and French prime ministers repeats his threat to withdraw the peace treaty with Germany and the defensive treaty with France from Senate consideration if they try to impose an Adriatic settlement on Yugoslavia, especially if they invoke the secret 1915 treaty with Italy. He will give up his idea of a free Fiume, but only if Italy and Yugoslavia agree. He opposes compensating either country with territory from Albania. The whole correspondence with the Europeans is released, which the US had been pushing for.

Maj. A.V. Dalrymple, Supervisor of Prohibition Enforcement for the Central Division, retreats from Iron County, Michigan, with only a few smashed wine barrels and no prisoners to his credit. “Washington called us off,” Dalrymple says. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer issues a warning to dry agents, in general terms but obviously aimed at Dalrymple, not to arrest anyone or seize evidence without warrants.

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Today -100: February 26, 1920: Of present political affiliations, the draft, by-elections, opium, shackles, and glue

Woodrow Wilson nominates Bainbridge Colby as secretary of state, which official Washington finds just as unfathomable as his firing of Robert Lansing, because, despite Bainbridge Colby having a very secretary-of-stateish name, he has no diplomatic experience. Also, he’s been a Republican, a Bull Mooser, and an Independent; “He declined to answer a question as to his present political affiliations.” Democratic senators especially are grumbling at the appointment.

Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey and his manager will be indicted for draft-dodging. He got out of the draft by saying he had dependents; the government says he didn’t, since he wasn’t paying alimony to his ex-wife.

Former British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, who lost his parliamentary seat in the 1918 general election, wins a by-election in Paisley, Scotland.

The Chinese authorities seize and burn a shipment of opium worth $150,000. It came from the US which, unlike Britain, has not banned the opium traffic to China.

Sen. Warren G. Harding (R-Ohio) says it is time to “unshackle” US industry from wartime regulations.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premieres in Berlin.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Ben and Jerry’s worst flavor ever.

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Today -100: February 25, 1920: He kept his American head

The Maryland Legislature, following up on its, ahem, dickishness in rejecting women’s suffrage, votes to send a delegation to Virginia to urge its legislature to do the same.

The Allies decide to resume economic relations with Russia, but without recognizing its government until “the Bolshevik horrors have come to an end.” They will get the League of Nations to send a commission to investigate whether this has happened.  Also, they will no longer advise states bordering on Russia (Poland etc) to continue to make war on Russia, “which may be injurious to their own interests.”

Maj. Dalrymple, Supervisor of Prohibition Enforcement for the Central Division, arrives in Iron County, Michigan intending to arrest State Attorney Martin McDonough and various police officials for obstructing prohibition agents. McDonough, naturally, swears out his own warrant for the major, for malicious libel.

First Sentence of the Day -100: “The cut of General Pershing’s coat and trousers was debated today in the House.” Evidently it’s too European. Rep. Otis Wingo (D-Ark) points out that “He kept his American head, but I, too, noticed that his tail was very English.” Worst mythological creature ever.

In other news, there was a member of Congress named Otis Wingo. After he died in 1930, his seat was won by his widow, Effiegene Wingo. Sound like characters in a W.C. Fields movie.

Interestingly, Otis died exactly two weeks before the 1930 election, so the ballot included elections for both the remainder of his term (until March 1931) and the next term, 1931-3. Effigene won both.

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Today -100: February 24, 1920: Me no drink, me no fight the United States

The “rum rebellion” (wine, but the press is going with the alliteration; there are also lots of references to the Whisky Rebellion) in Iron County, Michigan subsides in the face of the threat of military action. Many in the county are moving their booze to hiding places in the hills, though some are simply pouring out barrels of wine. “Me no drink, me no fight the United States,” one veteran of the 32nd Division and Italian stereotype says.

Britain will end conscription at the end of the month, retaining a 220,000-strong volunteer army (not counting the army in India). War Secretary Winston Churchill notes that Britain tried to get other nations to agree to end conscription generally, but with no takers, including the US.

France will retain an army of 1 million, which they figure they need in part because they can’t depend on the US.

The German Workers’ Party changes its name. It is now the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei aka the NSDAP aka the Nazi Party.

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Today -100: February 23, 1920: Hummmmmm

Anti-Semites, including soldiers, attack a meeting in Berlin, beating up the speaker Hellmut von Gerlach (not a Jew, but a pacifist).

In Iron County, Michigan, a mining area with a lot of wine-loving Italians, cops and sheriffs supported by the county’s state attorney, Martin McDonough, clashed with federal dry officers and took back wine they’d seized without a warrant, and then threatened to arrest them for... transporting liquor. So Major A.V. Dalrymple, Supervisor of Prohibition Enforcement for the Central Division, declares the county to be in revolt against Prohibition and asks permission to lead a military force to crush the rebellion. Attorney General Palmer grants it. Dalrumple promises to “make things hum.”

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Today -100: February 22, 1920: Of gum, regents, and rabies

Italy is trying to dodge blame for the Allied ultimatum to Yugoslavia, saying that Prime Minister Francesco Nitti signed it without knowing what was in it, specifically League of Nation supervision over Fiume, because... it was in English and he can’t read English.

Some Spanish doctors think the Spanish Flu came from badly manufactured chewing gum.

Adm. Miklós Horthy is named Regent of Hungary by the Hungarian Assembly. Horthy says he plans to hand power over to Charles Habsburg whenever he becomes king, which will be over our dead bodies, say the Allies. Horthy was in charge of the Austro-Hungarian Navy at the end of the war and led the coup against Béla Kun last year.

Police in Alabama shoot dead a black man who had rabies. As you do.

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Today -100: February 21, 1920: Of eclairs, explorers, and archangels

Headline of the Day -100: 

I had a dream once in which I was attacked by an eclair. Sooooo chocolate.

Robert Peary, the explorer who in 1909 was the first to reach the North Pole, or so he claimed, dies at 63.

The Soviets capture Archangel.

After a cop is killed in Dublin, a raid is carried out, with tanks and everything, and a curfew is ordered.

A naturalized Italian-American in Indiana, Frank Pedroni, got into an argument with a man who, in the course of a heated discussion of Austro-Italian disagreements, said “To hell with the United States.” So Pedroni shot him dead. He is acquitted of murder, the jury taking two minutes.

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