Today -100: April 20, 1925: I am not the class murderer which I am pictured

Bulgaria is trying all public order offences in military courts, resulting in death penalties galore, some of which, possibly hundreds, are being immediately carried out.

Paul von Hindenburg, “77 years old and looking it,” gives the opening speech of his presidential campaign in Hanover. He complains about his candidacy being portrayed as signaling “imminent military reaction” (imminent military reaction is the worst sort of military reaction) and looks back fondly to the period when “I had the good fortune to hold the enemy back from our borders with a united nation behind me.” And a large heap of dead soldiers in front of him. He does acknowledge the Weimar Constitution, semi-believably. “I am not a militarist,” he says, not especially believably. “Also I am not the class murderer which I am pictured.”

Tonight is... the night they raided Minsky’s (not the first nor the last time). I’ve recently rewatched that movie and realized I’ve been mixing up Britt Ekland and Elke Sommer my entire life.

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Today -100: April 19, 1925: Of cavaliers, dragons, aviatrixes, and shallow ponds

Bulgaria is said to be rife with fighting, assassinations, and plundering, but who knows since the government imposed censorship and cut off all communications with the outside world. It’s afraid the church bombing was the signal for the start of a revolution. Martial law is declared, and house-to-house searches commence in Sofia. One theory: this is all about Yugoslavia trying to absorb Bulgaria. But there many other conspiracy theories making the rounds. The leaders of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, which probably doesn’t rhyme so delightfully in Bulgarian, supposedly disappeared days before the explosion. Bulgaria asks the Powers to allow it to increase the size of its army, which is limited by the Neuilly peace treaty to 30,000, and to lend Bulgaria some planes so they can bomb Communists.

The National Bureau of Information and Education protests to Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot against the planned execution of William Cavalier, now 15 but 14 when convicted of murdering his grandmother.

Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson and 2 others are indicted for 1st degree murder of Madge Oberholtzer (the 1st-degree part is that they didn’t get her to a doctor after she took poison after D.C. raped her).

The NYT says that Jews in Eastern European countries are stuck there, given the limited capacity of Palestine and the US’s immigration quotas. So Jews and their Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Romanian neighbors “must make up their minds to live together.”

The French Federation of Aeronautics bans women pilots and demands that Adrienne Bolland return her license. She tells them to suck it.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: April 18, 1925: A most difficult period

The left-centrist candidate for president of Germany, Wilhelm Marx, comes out for annexation of Austria. That’s... new.

Bulgarian PM Aleksandar Tsankov says “Bulgaria is passing through a most difficult period,” blaming the various assassinations and bombings and shit on Communists supported by Russia. Which is actually true.

I can’t find a date for this more specific than April, so I’ll just stick it here. The Crisis quotes Sen. Coleman Blease (D-SC): “I think the greatest mistake a white man ever made was to put his hand in his pocket to educate a nigger. You can’t educate a horse or a mule or a cow, and you can’t educate a nigger. They weren’t made to be educated. We don’t need them for lawyers or pharmacists and all that. They were made to cut wood, draw water, and work in the fields.”

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Today -100: April 17, 1925: A cunning plan

Remember the assassination of Gen. Konstantin Georgiev in Sofia, Bulgaria a couple of days ago? Turns out it was bait. During his funeral, attended by many generals and the Cabinet, the roof of the St Nedelya Church is blown up by an “infernal device” (which is the worst sort of device), killing 213 people, including Sofia mayor Paskal Paskalev; Gen. Stefan Nerezov, chief of Staff of the Bulgarian Army; former minister of war Kalin Naydenov; and several other generals and MPs. Cabinet members, who the positioning of the bomb suggests were the primary targets, escape because of the timing of the explosion. There was a large crowd in part because the Bulgarian Communist Party forged invitations and sent them out. Tsar Boris missed the funeral fun, at least that particular funeral fun, as he was attending the funerals of the people who died in the assassination attempt on himself.

The new Painlevé Cabinet in France will no longer have a “Ministry of the Devastated Regions.”

Opponents of the Cabinet, and of Joseph Caillaux in particular, plan to ask him, the first time he appears in the Senate, “Who started the war?”

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Today -100: April 16, 1925: Of diplomatresses, caillauxes, and singing sargents

Lucile Atcherson, 30, is appointed 3rd secretary of the US legation at Berne. A suffragist activist back in the day, Atcherson was the first woman in the diplomatic service, in 1923. Naturally, the NYT spells her name wrong. In 1922, Harding nominated her to the foreign service, but the Senate rejected her, considering it unseemly for a single woman to travel abroad. In a few years, lack of promotion (job assessments said the Swiss diplomats wouldn’t invite a mere woman to their reindeer games), a transfer to Panama, and an impending marriage will force her resignation.

The French United Socialists won’t join a Paul Painlevé-led government but agree not to block it either, as they would with Briand, so we’re a go. Painlevé asks Joseph Caillaux to be finance minister for what would be the third time, although the first since his wife shot the editor of Le Figaro dead and since he was convicted of treason. He asks Aristide Briand to be foreign minister, which should be fun because Briand is NOT a fan of Monsieur Caillaux. C’s ministership will not make it any easier to get approval of the of the government from the Senate (which was the body that held his treason trial). The right has never forgiven him for not starting a war with Germany when he was PM in 1912.

Maryland will stop hindering tourists driving home from vacations in Florida.

Gay or bi or whatever painter John Singer Sargent dies at 69.

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Today -100: April 15, 1925: Clipped!

Headline of the Day -100:

Shots are fired at Tsar Boris III’s car, killing the director of the Bulgaria National Museum and a servant but not his tsarishness. “The King’s experience was a thrilling one...” One interesting detail: he and the remaining members of his entourage returned fire. Does the tsar carry a gun? 

Elsewhere on Assassinations Day, which is evidently a Bulgarian national holiday, Gen. Konstantin Georgiev, one of the leaders in the 1923 coup, is shot dead as he goes to his church in Sofia with his granddaughter for services. (Spoiler Alert: ... ... nah). His assassin, Atanas Todovichin, will escape to the USSR, where he’ll be executed in 1938, as was the custom.

Madge Oberholtzer, who was assaulted by KKK leader D.C. Stephenson, dies of the poison she took after the attack a month ago (the Grand Lizard, or whatever his current title is, prevented her getting medical assistance). She was 28.

Aristide Briand fails to form a French cabinet after the United Socialists refuse to participate, so the task ping pongs back to Paul Painlevé. It’s believed that if Painlevé fails again, Briand will be given a chance to fail again.

Georgia Superior Court Judge Ogden Persons rules that a man can spank his wife.

Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, my favorite of his films, opens.

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Today -100: April 14, 1925: Of industrial relations and license plates

The US Supreme Court overturns Kansas’s law requiring compulsory arbitration of labor disputes before the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations, saying it violates liberty of contract and property rights. AFL president William Green applauds the decision, so maybe I’m not understanding what’s going on here.

German republicans spread a rumor that Hindenburg’s presidential campaign is bankrolled by former kaiser Wilhelm. Probably not true. Probably. In response, the monarchist right accuses republicans of taking “foreign bribes.”

Temporary automobile license plates issued by Florida to tourists are not being honored by Maryland, so tourists driving through the state on their way home are being soaked for temporary MD plates and are getting stuck in their cars overnight waiting for offices to open or, if they’re really pissed off, taking the train to their home state and coming back with a plate.

The film The Wizard of Oz is released, starring Dorothy Dwan as Dorothy and Oliver Hardy as the Tin Woodman and, evidently, a “trained duck.” It doesn’t sound like it resembles the 1939 movie at all. The NYT says it’s “the type of rough and tumble farce that sends bright faces from the theatre.”

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Today -100: April 13, 1925: Painlevé feels the... levé

Paul Painlevé gives up on forming a French government, so it’s Aristide Briand’s turn to make an attempt.

Last Friday, Coolidge opined that the French government’s financial difficulties were not Herriot’s fault but inherited by him from previous governments. The French consider this unacceptable interference in their politics. (Of course these days J.D. Vance, if that is his real name, can lecture European countries on being unfair to fascist parties).

Newfoundland women get the vote from the age of 25 (men have it at 21).

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Today -100: April 12, 1925: Painlevé brings the... levé

Paul Painlevé of the Parti républicain-socialiste will be the next French prime minister, a job he briefly held in 1917. Aristide Briand, another former PM (I mean, who in the Interwar period wasn’t prime minister at some point?), will be foreign secretary.

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Today -100: April 11, 1925: Rolling eggs? In this economy?

The traditional White House Easter egg roll will take place this year, despite being on the birthday of Calvin Coolidge Jr., who died last July.

The Earl of Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, is greeted in Damascus by a riotous mob which forces him to skedaddle out of town.

French PM Édouard Herriot resigns after losing a vote in the Senate on exceeding the legal limit on the circulation of bank notes. He was in office 10 months.

Roberto Farinacci, secretary of the National Fascist Party of Italy and basically the #2 man in Italy after The Duck, for now, responds to recent Fascist-Communist violence by calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty and for exile “to one of Italy’s islands” for enemies of Fascism. He names several deputies and senators he’d like arrested.

More violence in Herrin, Illinois, in the lead up to the mayoral election, but it’s Klan-on-Klan violence, so that’s okay. The store of Marshal McCormack, a kluxer candidate opposed by other kluxers, is dynamited.

Klansmen in Jasper, Alabama are being sentenced for flogging a hotel clerk who “talked about” the Klan.

The National Geographic Society thinks the Arctic expedition it’s sponsoring, led by Donald MacMillan, will find a whole new continent somewhere between Alaska and the North Pole. The use of Navy planes will make possible a summer Arctic trip, which should make visibility much easier (Spoiler Alert: it won’t).

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Today -100: April 10, 1925: Of typical expressions, confidence, copyrights, and boats against the current

The German right-wing parties know that the best way to keep presidential candidate Field Marshal von Hindenburg popular is to keep him quiet, so he’ll only be making a few speeches, mostly in Bavaria. Nationalists surround his house to keep reporters away from him – when did Hindenburg start to go visibly senile, anyway? surely not this soon? The NYT observes: “Political sentimentality is not lacking. ‘Our father Hindenburg, like children he led us back from the war-torn front to our homes and it is thanks to him that civil war was avoided in Germany,’ is a typical expression.” Ludendorff seems to have given up his own presidential run to back his former boss, presumably after the Bavarian Nazis decline to nominate him.

French PM Édouard Herriot wins a vote of confidence, though with a large number of abstentions, after a fight in the National Assembly over the increase of currency and Herriot saying he was bound to secrecy not to disclose that the government account at the Bank of France was over the legal limit and... oh, more stuff like that.

The 6th Court of Appeals in Cincinnati rules that radio stations can’t infringe copyrights on songs. It rules against the argument that radio broadcasts are not performances in the legal sense. Consider yourself warned, WKRP.

London theatres are experiencing a shortage of blonde chorus girls, as the trend toward bobbing means fewer women are dyeing their hair.

Speaking of bobbed hair, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is published. Spoiler Alert: 

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Today -100: April 9, 1925: Each year there are a million more Poles in the world

Paul von Hindenburg will run for president of Germany after all, backed by all the right-wing monarchist parties. He evidently agreed only after receiving a letter from ex-kaiser Wilhelm, which is believed to have relieved him of his oath to the monarchy. The Deutsche Volkspartei of Gustav Stresemann and is brought into line behind the former field marshal by threats from the big financial interests to destroy the party.

French PM Édouard Herriot threatens to resign after losing a vote in the Senate he had made a matter of confidence – a $20,000 appropriation for secondary scholarships, of all things – but then fails to resign. The Cabinet spends the evening discussing the price of bread, “which tends to show that whatever else Premier Herriot has lost he has preserved his sense of humor.” Really, all of Herriot’s financial plans, including a forced levy on capital, look like failing.

Polish War Minister Władysław Sikorski says Poland won’t give up an inch of its territory to either Germany or Russia and “gave an enthusiastic account of the ability of Poland to protect herself.” For example, “each year there are a million more Poles in the world. ...it will not be easy to crush Poland, with her 30 million inhabitants.”

Labor Secretary James “Puddler Jim” Davis foresees a time when labor and management understand that strikes and lock-outs are just silly. It’s all cooperation now, he says.

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Today -100: April 8, 1925: Of tariffs and women’s suffrage

Coolidge seems to be content – I started to write happy, but it’s hard to picture Silent Cal as happy; oo, complacent, that’s better – about the existing rate of tariffs and rejects increasing them still further.

The French Chamber of Deputies votes 389 to 140 to give women the right to vote in municipal and cantonal elections, and to hold office. Now it’s up to the Senate, which has always killed women’s suffrage bills in the past, and will kill this one.

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Today -100: April 7, 1925: Of thrilled dark Africans, petty motives, and hindenburgs

Headline of the Day -100:

The prince of Wales in Sierra Leone. That didn’t start out well with “Dark Africa,” but “mammies with babies”? Jesus.

The Earl of Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, visiting Palestine, says it is “preposterous that Jews and Arabs were unable to live together in harmony,” and any controversy comes from petty motives and should be stopped at once, at once I say.

Western Australia votes against prohibition, 65% to 35.

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg says he won’t run for president of Germany after hearing that Gustav Stresemann, former chancellor and current head of the Deutsche Volkspartei, won’t back him. So the right-wing is stuck with Karl Jarres, maybe?

Hitler formally renounces his Austrian citizenship. He is now stateless.

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Today -100: April 6, 1925: Of anthropoid apes and the divorce evil

North Carolina University cancels a planned series of lectures by U. of Berlin prof Wolfgang Köhler on “The Intelligence of Anthropoid Apes,” afraid that the subject might be close enough to evolution to provoke members of the Legislature. The University of Tennessee also cancels lectures, I think also by Köhler, who will emigrate permanently to the US, and a professorship at Swarthmore College, in 1935 after his refusal to begin his lectures with a Nazi salute and his public opposition to the firing of Jewish professors doesn’t go over so well.

A New Jersey Knight of Columbus calls the Ku Klux Klan cowardly and suggests they do something about “the divorce evil,” by which they mean the recent addition of cruelty as a ground for divorce in the state.

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Today -100: April 5, 1925: Of crown princes and fair bathers

The right-wing German parties unite behind Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg for the 2nd round of the presidential election. He was not in the first round and in fact has not dabbled in politics since the end of the war, but he is thought to be a stronger candidate than Karl Jarres, who won a plurality in the 1st round. Also, some Bavarian monarchists wouldn’t get behind Jarres. Hindenburg is 77.

One source of chaos in the German right has retreated, a bit: Bavaria’s Prince Rupprecht

backs off his claim to the German throne (but will retain his claim to be King of Bavaria until his death in 30 years). He admits that the north wouldn’t put up with a Catholic kaiser. So the monarchists are now united behind former crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm.

Atlantic City Mayor Edward Bader says this summer women won’t be required to wear hosiery on the beach, though their skirts must be at least 11 inches long. He sees his as a concession to “contrary” “fair bathers.”

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Today -100: April 4, 1925: Of sex-klansmen, student rioters, and lily white primaries

NYT Summary of the Day -100: 

D.C. Stephenson, former Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan but not an ex-klansman, having formed his own Klan in the mid-western states, which have the largest number of kluxers. Also, “prominent in Republican circles” downplays his power; he has the same relationship to the Republican Indiana government as Elon Musk has to the Republican national government. Anyway, Stephenson has been indicted for the kidnapping and assault & battery (rape) of Madge Oberholtzer last month. More on this anon.

The chief justice of the DC Supreme Court throws out the indictments against former interior secretary Albert Fall and oil barons Sinclair & Doheny for bribery and defrauding the US government, on the grounds that Assistant Attorney Gen. Oliver Pagan (!) was in the room with the special grand jury investigating the Tea Pot Dome leases.

Some of the striking university students in Paris are tried for rioting. Students sentenced to brief prison sentences will be given political-prisoner status.

The NAACP will challenge the 1923 Texas law banning negroes voting in the Democratic primary (I didn’t mention it here, which I suspect means the NYT didn’t cover it). It will sue on behalf of a black doctor, Lawrence Nixon. In 1927 the US Supreme Court will rule that the law violated the 14th Amendment, so Texas will change the law so that parties, rather than the Legislature, could set their own racist rules. The Supreme Court (1935) will have no problem with this, though it will reverse itself in 1944 (when Dr. Nixon will vote in the Democratic primary).

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Today -100: April 3, 1925: Of bank notes, idiots, coalitions, and deaf drivers

French Finance Minister Etienne Clémentel resigns after announcing without authorization that the government will increase the number of bank notes in circulation (which the Cabinet had decided on) (this is about a genuine practical need for more notes, not a Weimar-type inflationary thing). This is more important than it sounds. Probably.

There’s a fistfight in the Italian Parliament, as was the custom. First an ex-Fascist deputy complains about Fascist violence at a local election, then punches a Fascist who yells “Idiot” at him. Then yadda yadda yadda, biff bash boom, resulting in 6 challenges to duels.

The German Social Democrats (SPD), Democrats (DDP), and the Catholic Zentrum party agree to unite as the “Weimar Coalition” behind Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum) in the 2nd round of the presidential election, although the SPD is holding off making it official to ensure the other 2 parties back Otto Braun in tomorrow’s vote for PM of Prussia.

The New Jersey attorney general says deaf people can get driving licenses.

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Today -100: April 2, 1925: Of thurtles and worthingtons

The federal Prohibition Unit and the enforcement units of the Coast Guard and Customs will be consolidated under Ass’t Treasury Secretary Col. Lincoln Clark Andrews.

French university students declare a strike in 18 universities over the suspension of the dean of the Paris Law Faculty, who doesn’t want a strike and says his suspension was kinda justified. Sometimes I think French students just like to strike.

The House of Commons votes 320-156 to reject an amendment offered by a Labour MP with the unfortunate name Ernest Thurtle (Angela Lansbury’s uncle) to abolish capital punishment in the army. Mr. Thurtle points out that the argument that the threat of execution is needed to keep the troops in line under fire is refuted by the exemplary performance during the Great War of soldiers from Australia, whose government blocked capital punishment. Secretary of State for War Sir Laming Worthington-Evans responds... you know, I don’t care what he said, I just wanted to get that name in here.

The House of Assembly of Bermuda, which still has a property-owning qualification for the franchise, rejects an act to establish women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: April 1, 1925: Of bear ribs, Herriot’s Trump moment, states of debauchery, and super-persons

Rumors from Russia, of the sort that the NYT loves to publish with no collaboration, say that Trotsky has been permanently disappeared. The government is putting out a story that he’s escaped the country, but those rumors say this is just a smokescreen. None of this is true.

Curious just which North Dakota Indian tribe adopted Pres. Coolidge under the name “Bear Ribs,” I quickly gave up when my web search turned up actual recipes.

There’s been rioting, actual rioting, in the Latin Quarter of Paris – I assume the slogans were all shouted in Latin – over the Ministry of Education appointing Georges Scelle to a lectureship on international law at the Paris Law Faculty, slightly bypassing seniority. SLIGHTLY BYPASSING SENIORITY! His lectures have been disrupted by the proto-fascist Action Française’s student group, who claim favoritism and of course that the Masons were behind the appointment, leading the Ministry to close the faculty and suspend the dean for failing to keep order. In the National Assembly discussion of this, Prime Minister Édouard Herriot loudly comments about a deputy who is shouting and “gesticulating freely,” calling him “epileptic,” without, he claims, realizing it’s a guy who had a head injury during the war. Hilarity ensues.

Sen. Burton Wheeler says the witnesses against him at the grand jury were “herded into a hotel by Government agents who fed them booze and drank with them to a state of debauchery” for 3 weeks, during which the foreman was arrested for drunk driving. I guess that explains the odd pause in the hearings.

The 6th International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference closes with a resolution that “persons whose progeny give promise of being of decided value to the community should be encouraged to bear as large families, properly spaced, as they feasibly can.” Roswell Johnson, the geologist who offers the resolution, says “super-persons” have a moral responsibility to have children. Margaret Sanger criticizes Theodore Roosevelt Jr. for calling birth control advocates hoggish, selfish and bad citizens (I can’t verify Tee Arr Jay Arr’s exact original words).

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