Today -100: May 10, 1925: Of imperial colors

Evidently the oath Hindenburg will have to swear is not only to the Weimar Republic’s constitution but also to its flag, so republicans are arguing that monarchist plans to display banners for his inauguration in the imperial colors (black, white, red) are inappropriate. Berlin police ban carrying arms in the celebratory events.

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Today -100: May 9, 1925: Multi-fasching

The Coast Guard claims that rum-runners are sabotaging its vessels, which keep mysteriously blowing up. They’re setting the stage for a shoot-to-kill policy.

Accumulating more and more government posts, Mussolini names himself Minister of the Navy. He is also currently in charge of foreign affairs, the army, and the air force.

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Today -100: May 8, 1925: Of anti-Reds, refugees, and duties

Bulgaria is trying to start a Balkan anti-Red union. Looks like Bulgaria is taking advantage of the attack on the Sofia church to try to assert leadership in the region, like after the First Balkan War when it thought it was going to lead a Balkan Empire and even started designing royal crests, only to have all the other countries turn on it in the Second Balkan War.

Austria refuses to expel political refugees from Vienna, as has been requested by neighboring countries complaining about Communist plots.

The British Parliament restores the duties, originally imposed by the last Liberal government and then dropped by the last Labour government, on motor cars, musical instruments, films and timepieces. Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill says too much fuss is made about duties and he only reimposed them because Philip Snowden’s cancelling of them was a partisan act and he (Churchill) wants to underline that. Churchill is accused in return of being forced to do this to prove his new loyalty to the Tories.

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Today -100: May 7, 1925: In which we learn what job has no place in a republican form of government. Is it a king? It’s probably a king.

The German Social Democrats call for the election of Paul von Hindenburg as president to be annulled because of election irregularities. Schools in Prussia will close for Field Marshal H’s inauguration.

Michigan Gov. Alex Groesbeck vetoes a bill allowing him to appoint a state poet laureate, calling it a “monarchical custom” which “has no place in a republican form of government.” 

By arrangement, Dayton, Tennessee teacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching evolution.

An anti-evolution bill is being considered in Florida, whose ban on evolution-teaching would include universities that receive state funds, which I believe the Tennessee law does not.

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Today -100: May 6, 1925: Altruistic twaddle is the... you know, I don’t know

NYC Mayor John Hylan announces his bid for re-election for a third term. He is currently resisting the state government and indeed state law in attempting to dig a Staten Island tunnel that can accommodate freight cars; the state insists it be used only for passenger train service. Although ground was broken in 1923, that dispute will have halted work by the end of the year. The incomplete tunnel is still down there. Other Hylan issues are also mostly public transportation things, which he expresses in slogan form as the five-cent fare, the traction trust, the billion-dollar prize, and the subsidized press. The “billion-dollar conspiracy” consists of “the traction ring” scheming to replace the current Board of Estimate so it can increase fares, take over the transit system and profit from giving out bus routes.

Bulgaria outlaws Communists, who are being hunted and killed, and killing government forces in return.

Washington Gov. Roland H. Hartley (R) refuses to name a delegate to a national conference on child welfare, saying children are “being made to pay the penalty for an overabundance of altruistic twaddle.” We should “stop a lot of this uplift gush. ... Can we wonder that our children go wrong? Petted, pampered, educated at the expense of the State, robbed of self-reliance and independence, we send them forth as weaklings to take up the rugged path of life for themselves.” Probably best not to google “uplift gush.” I mean I don’t know that for sure, taking my own advice, but you do you.

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Today -100: May 5, 1925: Or burnings at the stake

France bans any Joan of Arc Day parades in Paris on Sunday because they might lead to violent clashes.

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Today -100: May 4, 1925: Klux around and find out

King Alexander of Yugoslavia orders his brother Prince George interned as insane. George is given to wild behaviour and in 1909 George was forced to renounce any claim to the throne after he kicked a servant to death. He’ll remain incarcerated until freed by the Germans during World War II. After the war, He’ll be the only member of the royal family not banished by Tito (or assassinated earlier, like King Alex) and will die in 1972 at the age of 85.

El Salvador’s Congress passes a motion banning entry by non-whites.

Another attack on a Klan rally. Protesters throw stones at the kluxxers as they leave a field outside Berlin, Massachusetts. And in Baldwin, Massachusetts, Arthur Baker is hit by a stone while leading a Klan parade. I strongly condemn this action because, and only because, they might have hit the horse he was riding. He & 2 others are arrested for holding a parade without a permit.

Britain’s Prince Edward wins over Boer nationalists in Cape Town by speaking to them in Afrikaans, having painstakingly memorized and haltingly recited, “Meneere, ek is baie bly julle vanaant te ontmoet, en ek bedank julle nogmals vir julle warme welkom!” (“Gentlemen, I am very pleased to meet you tonight, and I thank you again for your warm welcome!”). Eddie didn’t like the “Dutch” at all, as letters to his mother show, but hid it well.

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Today -100: May 3, 1925: When you’re tired of Morocco, you’re tired of life

Headline of the Day -100:

President Primo de Rivera thinks subjugating Spanish Morocco, which Spain has been signally failing to do, is a waste of time because it will never pay off economically.

The ACLU places an ad in the Knoxville Journal calling for any Tennessee teacher to volunteer to be a test case of the new anti-evolution law.

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Today -100: May 2, 1925: Of non-riots, tunnels, subversive opinion and unscrupulous propaganda, and circuses

Yesterday was May Day and, sadly, there were no proper riots anywhere.

Coolidge wants business to be “undisturbed” by the government during the congressional recess (until December), with no announcements or agitation. He’ll be leading his fellow politicians by example by taking a six-week vacation during which he will say and do nothing.

Bulgaria claims to have thwarted another attempt to assassinate Tsar Boris by tunneling under the royal palace and blowing it up, as you do.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill gives a speech complaining about “subversive opinion and unscrupulous propaganda” coming from outside the country (from you-know-where). He accuses the Labour Party, which he calls the Socialist Party, of “having needlessly and wantonly corrupted...” – that’s the worst kind of corrupting – “...large masses of the British nation” with doctrines that would “starve a large proportion of the population of this crowded island.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Al Smith and the freaks. But I repeat myself. No explanation is given for his failure to bring any girls. Aren’t they entitled to gape at the freaks as well?

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Today -100: May 1, 1925: Of murderous vaccines, dole habits, bibles, and murder rates

14 people have died of a highly lethal strain of smallpox in D.C. since the start of the year. Government employees are being asked to get the vaccine. Pres. and Mrs. Coolidge are believed to have done so. So there are picketers outside government buildings with signs saying that hundreds have been “murdered by vaccines.”

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill continues to defend his budget in Parliament, making himself no friends on the Labour side by suggesting unions should discourage “the dole habit.”

Ohio Gov. Vic Donahey (D) vetoes the alliterative Buchanan Bible Bill, which is backed by the alliterative Ku Klux Klan and would have required mandatory daily Bible-reading (of at least 10 verses) in public schools and for 4th-graders to memorize the 10 Commandments. Donahey’s veto message mentions religious freedom and the US & Ohio constitutions, but points out that local school boards can just ignore that shit and mandate Bible-reading.

Field Marshal Hindenburg will take his presidential oath in civilian dress after all.

NYC Police Commissioner Richard Enright, responding to remarks by Harold Aron, chair of the Republican Publicity Committee, denies that the murder rate in the city has increased substantially since Mayor Hylan appointed him in 1918 and denounces people (Republicans) who claim the NYPD is inefficient, saying they’re greater foes to society than the criminals. He says there haven’t been 1,900 murders, there were only 1,747 (he doesn’t count accidental or justifiable homicides or infanticide). He blames the recent increase on the Tong War and bootlegger contretemps. He criticizes juries who acquit criminals because “their confessions under certain circumstances cannot be used against them”.

Don Okle resigns as an undercover federal Prohibition agent in San Francisco because his job entailed taking 50 drinks a day on average “to obtain evidence.”

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Today -100: April 30, 1925: Of rich man’s budgets, plots, and smells

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill presents his budget to Parliament. His Labour predecessor in the job, Philip Snowden, calls it “the worst rich man’s budget ever presented.” It indeed drastically reduces income tax for the super-rich.

The British Foreign Office denies newspaper stories that there’s a “Red plot” to assassinate Foreign Minister Austen Chamberlain.

Indiana’s new prohibition enforcement act admits as evidence cops’ claiming that they smelled liquor.

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Today -100: April 29, 1925: Of war games, world mental poise & equilibrium, uniforms, and fines

War games in Hawaii indicate that an enemy could capture the territory’s naval bases if they have good enough weather.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill announces that Britain will return to the gold standard. Adolph Miller of the US Federal Reserve says this is a great step “toward establishment of a world mental poise and equilibrium.”

Hindenburg is trying to decide whether to wear his military uniform or civvy clothes when he’s sworn in as president in the Reichstag, where it is against protocol to wear a uniform, but right afterwards he’ll review a military parade, where it is against protocol for the former field marshal not to wear a uniform.

150 Klansmen hold a meeting in a field in Northbridge, Massachusetts, then are blocked from leaving by a larger group of anti-kluxxers.

A Sunday school class in Mount Holly, New Jersey pays $25 towards the fine of bootlegger Mary Storline, who told the court at her trial in November that she was supporting her 5 children and a sick husband. The judge remitted the rest of the $350 fine.

I’ve been noticing that the “Great War” is increasingly being referred to as “The World War.”

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Today -100: April 28, 1925: A defiance of the Allies and a defiance of Europe and America

The French are not best pleased by the election of Hindenburg as German president. Le Temps says, “It is because the German people seek to wipe out the memory and sentiment of their defeat that they have given this honor to the great defeated of 1918. ... The election of Field Marshal Hindenburg is a defiance of the Allies and a defiance of Europe and America.”

Former kaiser Wilhelm, on the other hand, is quite pleased, and says he would also be quite pleased to return from exile and resume his kaisership if, and only if, he’s invited (according to a vaguely sourced story).

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Today -100: April 27, 1925: Oh the huma... no that doesn’t really work

Paul von Hindenburg wins the German presidential election run-off (can it be called a run-off if he wasn’t in the first round?) with 49.3%, Wilhelm Marx getting 45.3%, and Communist candidate Ernst Thälmann getting 6.4%. The field marshal did well in right-wing areas like East Prussia, as expected, but also in Bavaria, where some expected the Catholic Marx to do better.

The NYT says Washington is “unperturbed” by the election of the monarchist militarist.

Women in the Communist “Red Cat organization” ride around Berlin on trucks singing “the famous Miau-Maiu song,” whatever that might be (it can’t be the Rossini thing, right? that would make no sense at all).

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Today -100: April 26, 1925: Of trials, huge boys, and straw hats

Franz Kafka’s The Trial is published, posthumously, in German. It won’t be translated into English for more than a decade.

Headline of the Day -100:

Well, a huge boys’ waddle.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: April 25, 1925: My most sacred hope is to banish the horrors of war

The prospects of a Bulgaria-Yugoslav war seem to be fading, as France and Britain tell them to knock it off.

London police are pretending to think that the Reds will do a Sofia St. Nedelya Church thing and blow up the church where the service will be held for Gen. Lord Rawlinson, the commander-in-chief of the Indian Army since 1920, whose body has been returned from Delhi. The cops are inspecting every inch of St. Margaret’s Church for infernal devices, not neglecting the organ’s pipes.

Sen. Burton Wheeler is acquitted of the bullshit charge of representing an oil company before the Dept of Interior. The jury deliberated 10 minutes. They got dinner first. A minute later Wheeler got a telegram informing him that his wife had given birth back in DC while he was stuck in Montana with this nonsense.

German presidential candidates Hindenburg and Wilhelm Marx both make 15-minute radio addresses to the nation. The field marshal: “I proclaim to the world my most sacred hope is to banish the horrors of war”. Oh sure, you say that AFTER you lose a war.

The German republicans have been claiming that the US will halt loans to Germany if Hindenburg wins.

Outside a political meeting in Montmartre, a clash between Communists and Nationalists (probably Action Française or a similar nationalist/proto-fascist group) leaves 3 of the latter dead, allegedly shot from behind. In the National Assembly, the Right demands the suppression of Communist organizations.

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Today -100: April 24, 1925: Some good ones

Calvin Coolidge meets Will Rogers for 10 minutes at the White House. Afterwards, Rogers says Cal does have a sense of humor and has “some good ones,” but gives no examples. (I do know that Cal liked to buzz for the Secret Service, then hide under his desk while hilarity ensued).

5 British Fascisti are acquitted for the kidnapping last month of Harry Pollitt to keep him from a Communist-adjacent conference. I guess they portrayed it as a jolly jape and the jury swallowed it.

Fayette Avery McKenzie resigns as president of historically black Fisk University. He’s spent his presidency cracking down on the students, closing their newspaper, abolishing the student council, banning students from walking with students of the opposite sex, etc., and students and alumni are suggesting maybe replacing him with an actual black person. The first black president will in fact take office in 1947.

Wilson Godfrey Harvey, governor of South Carolina for 8 months in 1922-3, is convicted of violating banking laws at his Enterprise Bank (possibly for accepting deposits after he knew the bank was going bankrupt) and sentenced to either 4 months in the pokey or a fine of $400. He opts for the latter.

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Today -100: April 23, 1925: Something something cheese

The Wisconsin attorney general decides that the Ku Klux Klan cannot incorporate within the state.

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Today -100: April 22, 1925: If you can’t trust a poet to forecast elections, who can you trust?

In the Montana trumped-up trial of Sen. Burton Wheeler, the government sprung a surprise witness yesterday, George B. Hayes – not to be confused with George “Gabby” Hayes – a lawyer who claims that Interior Dept solicitor E.S. Booth, acting for Wheeler, called him to ask him to meet Wheeler at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Wheeler asked him to intervene with the Land Office re oil & gas prospecting permits. Wheeler is calling a Bell Telephone employee to come from DC to Montana to testify that there was no such phone call.

The NYT goes to the experts for intel on the forthcoming German presidential elections: passengers on a ship arriving from Hamburg. Evidently, Hindenburg is gonna lose, at least according to a couple of bankers and the poet Christoph Kaergel.

Headline of the Day -100:

The Puerto Rican Legislature passed a bill legalizing cockfighting. The ASPCA is lobbying Gov. Horace Towner to veto it.

Some time earlier this month, The Lost World was shown on a plane flight between London & Paris, the first feature-length in-flight movie.

It is pointed out to NYC Mayor John Hylan that the reason people keep getting run over crossing the street to get to the 4th Street entrance to the subway in Brooklyn is that it’s IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING STREET.

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Today -100: April 21, 1925: We are destined to live in peace for all time

The Bulgarian army, despite its treaty-limited size, seems perfectly capable of killing suspected Communists on the street by the hundreds.

Bulgarian police kill Capt. Ninkoff, the supposed Communist ringleader of the St Nedelya Church bombing – which I don’t think he was – “resisting arrest.”

A US Navy cruiser lands at Ceiba, Honduras. I guess there’s a revolt going on.

Japanese Ambassador to the US Tsuneo Matsudaira tells the Harvard Club that war between the US & Japan is “a matter of physical impossibility, and we are destined to live in peace for all time.” So that’s reassuring.

The Treasury Dept says it’s pretty much stopped rum-running.

The Associated Press, which has hitherto banned the broadcast of its articles on radio, will now allow it for news “of transcendent importance.”

Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson is finally in prison, awaiting trial. I’m expecting intensive coverage, as previewed by the NYT describing his first prison meal: fried liver and gravy, mashed potatoes, bread & water. He enjoyed it.

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