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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