The fateful 1919 baseball season opened on this day in 1919, with the Brooklyn Robbins (what the Dodgers were before they were called that) defeating the Boston Braves twice in a double headers.
J. C. Leyendecker graced the cover of The Saturday Evening Post with a spring centered illustration. Easter Sunday for 1919 was the following day.
Easter was directly recalled on the cover of The Country Gentleman, but with an illustration featuring a little kid with chicks. This is a traditional Easter theme, but one I've always found a bit odd.
On this day in 1919, Polish forces entered Vilnius in an event that wasn't Easter focused by any means.
Vilnius in some ways symbolizes the nature of post war Eastern Europe, and indeed to some extent Europe in general. The Poles entered it as part of their war against the Russian Reds. The town had been of course in the Russian Empire. It's population was both Polish and Lithuanian and nationalist from both countries saw it as theirs. In the context of Russian imperial rule, its mixed population hadn't created nationalist problems, but now it was.
Pilsudski took quick steps to try to make it plain that the sovereignty of the region would be determined by plebiscite which he hoped would result in support for a federal union he envisioned which would have included Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, as well as some other regions in some versions of the plan. The Poles and the Ukrainians are in fact very close in ethnicity, although they are somewhat religiously divided. The Poles and the Lithuanians, however, are largely Catholic, but the Lithuanians were not close to the Poles in ethnicity. A newly independent Ukrainian government was horrified by the thought of the town being anything but Lithuanian, and Polish nationalist weren't keen on that thought. The right to include the city within respective national boundaries lead to the Polish Lithuanian War shortly thereafter. Ironically, it was only Polish success in the Russo Polish War which kept Lithuania from being invaded by the Soviets and at the conclusion of the Russo Polish War it was included within Poland. The Lithuanians, however, never accepted that fact and did not establish diplomatic relations with Lithuania until 1938.
Today Vilnius is the capitol of Lithuania, but that reflects the results of World War Two. After the invasion of Poland by the Germans and the Soviets in 1939, the city was turned over to Lithuania but then shortly thereafter Lithuania was invaded by the Red Army. It was subsequently invaded by the Germans in Operation Barbarossa, and during their occupation most of the large Polish population and the Jewish population was removed from the city. Today its ethnically a Lithuanian city, the result of German oppression of the Poles and Jews.
On this day in 1919, the Holy See announced plans to raise funds to repair the 1,300 churches in France damaged during the Great War.
Class in Plainfield, New Jersey, snipping filling for pillows for the Red Cross.
The Red Cross was still at work in Europe and of course in Russia and therefore efforts to support it kept on.
Red Cross headquarters in Archangel.
In Washington D. C. Belgian troops who had been in the United States in support of a Victory Loan campaign paraded to the Keith Theater in Washington D. C.
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