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

Headline of the Day -100: 

So, no Easter Rising II then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headline of the Day -100: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald marries Zelda Sayre.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bad-Ass of the Day -100:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hermann Müller forms a new government in Germany.

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

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

Headline of the Day -100: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headline of the Day -100: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headline of the Day -100:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headline of the Day -100: 

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

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

Ad of the Day -100:

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

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

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

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

Headline of the Day -100: 

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

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

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

So the US is still technically at war with Germany.

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

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

Headline of the Day -100: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Today -100: March 18, 1920: Kapp doffed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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