February 2, 1920. Changes.

Siberian girls pose for camera, February 2, 1920.   Their world was in a state of massive change at the time this photograph was taken.

Monday, February 2, 1920, saw the implementation of changes here and there. Some great, some small, in context, and others temporary.

Chief Clerk R.M. Reese of the Dept. of Agriculture administering the oath of office to Edwin T. Meredith the new Sectary today. On Mr Meredith's right is Mr Houston former Sectary.  Meredith is wearing a decidely modern type of suit showing how the patterns of Edwardian suits were taking a modern form.  The U.S. was slipping into a major depression lead by a major decline in the agricultural section as this photo was snapped.

A new Secretary of Agriculture was sworn in for the United States.

Meanwhile, in Baltimore, the gallant, or self sacrificing, Guy Spiker traveled with his sister in law to meet with Emily Knowles.  Knowles, we are now informed, appeared here for the first time two days ago when she was described as a girl whose relationship with the married Lt. Pearly Spiker had resulted in her pregnancy.

While she was earlier a "girl", we now know that she was a member of the British Women's Auxiliary service, a type of wartime British quasi military body formed to relieve men of some of the service roles they held  normally, thereby relieving them for service elsewhere.  That more easily explains how Lt. Spiker and Miss Knowles met, and as we learned from the entry the other day, it would also explain how she met the man she would, a year later, leave Guy Spiker for, and also abandon her association with her infant as a result of that.  So she turns out, at least, not to be as young as we might fear.

The Casper paper also reported on a perennial problem, that being that graduates of the high school in Casper were expressing a desire to take off as soon as they graduated.  Wyoming continues to suffer this problem today.

In 1919 they could hardly be blamed in some ways.  Casper was a boom town with that boom (about to be a bust) all centered on oil production.  It was busy, dirty, and dangerous, and featured a large district dedicated to vice of the classic types.

In far off Central Asia the Russian protectorate Khanate of Khiva came to an end when its last hereditary ruler abdicated.

The deminished Khiva in 1903

It had existed since 1511.

Khiva (Karasm) in the 18th Century.

Khiva had fallen to Russian aggression in the early 18th Century after which it became a protectorate, becoming increasingly smaller, until the Soviets just wiped it out as an entity entirely.

On the same day as the last Khan resigned in Khiva, the Soviets recognized the independence of Estonia.

Signing of the treaty recognizing Estonian independence.

The Soviets would get over that in 1940.

In the same region, under the Treaty of Versailles, the French occupied Memel, the eastern most region of East Prussia.

Memel was effectively the German frontier in the Baltic's and had long had a mixed population.  Given the German influence in the Baltic's, that in and of itself was a problem of sorts.  The French occupation would have given some time for these issues to be sorted out and in fact an Memel independence movement, an odd thought given its small size, developed during the brief French occupation.  However, in 1923 it became Lithuanian by way of a Lithuanian revolt in the region which the French did not suppress.  Indeed, the French were on their way out due to their occupation of the Ruhr at the time.  The region would become German again in March 1939 when the Nazi German state demanded its return and the Lithuanians acquiesced.  It changed hands again as a result of World War Two and it remains Lithuanian today, with its formerly significant German population having been largely expelled by the Soviets following the war.