Saturday, November 25, 1944. Heavy resistance on Leyte, V2 attack in London.

Two V-2 rockets hit London, resulting in 174 deaths in a rocketry terror attack.

Much like what the Russians are doing to Ukraine now.

Destroyed German Panthers in France, November 25, 1944.  Contrary to the common myth, armor attrition in World War Two was horrific, just like it is today.

Japanese defenses arrested US progress on Leyte.  Japanese resistance had been consistently very stiff.

The British crossed the Cosina River in Italy.

Soldiers of a reconstituted Dutch Army training, November 25, 1944. They're armed with US M1917 Enfield rifles, and wearing US M1 helmets.  Their uniforms suggest obsolescent patterns of the US Army.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis died at age 78.  He was the first Commissioner of Baseball, having been appointed to that position in 1920, and still occupied it at the time of his death.

Last edition:

Today in World War II History—November 24, 1939 & 1944 (Friday November 24, 1944). Terrace Mutiny,

Thursday, July 26, 1923. Harding visits Vancouver.

President Harding disembarked at Vancouver, becoming the first U.S. President to visit Canada.   While there, he delivered this speech:

Citizens of Canada: I may as well confess to you at the outset a certain perplexity as to how I should address you. The truth of the matter is that this is the first time I have ever spoken as President in any country other than my own.

Indeed, so far as I can recall, I am, with the single exception of my immediate predecessor (Woodrow Wilson), the first President in office even to set foot on a politically-foreign soil. True, there is no definite inhibition upon one doing so, such as prevents any but a natural born citizen from becoming President, but an early prepossession soon developed into a tradition and for more than a hundred years held the effect of unwritten law. I am not prepared to say that the custom was not desirable, perhaps even needful, in the early days, when time was the chief requisite of travel. Assuredly, too, at present, the Chief Magistrate of a great Republic ought not to cultivate the habit or make a hobby of wandering over all the continents of the earth.

But exceptions are required to prove rules. And Canada is an exception, a most notable exception, from every viewpoint of the United States. You are not only our neighbour, but a very good neighbour, and we rejoice in your advancement.

I need not depict the points of similarity that make this attitude of the one toward the other irresistible. We think the same thoughts, live the same lives and cherish the same aspirations of service to each other in times of need. Thousands of your brave lads perished in gallant and generous action for the preservation of our Union.

Many of our young men followed Canadian colours to the battlefields of France before we entered the war and left their proportion of killed to share the graves of your intrepid sons. This statement is brought very intimately home to me, for one of the brave lads in my own newspaper office (Harding owned the Marion, Ohio Star) felt the call of service to the colours of the sons of Canada. He went to the front, and gave his life with your boys for the preservation of the American and Canadian concept of civilization.

When my mind reverts and my heart beats low to recollection of those faithful and noble companionships, I may not address you, to be sure, as “fellow citizens,” as I am accustomed to designate assemblages at home, but I may and do, with respect and pride, salute you as ”fellow men,” in mutual striving for common good.

What an object lesson of peace is shown today by our two countries to all the world! [Applause.] No grim-faced fortifications mark our frontiers, no huge battleships patrol our dividing waters, no stealthy spies lurk in our tranquil border hamlets. Only a scrap of paper, recording hardly more than a simple understanding, safeguards lives and properties on the Great Lakes, and only humble mile-posts mark the inviolable boundary line for thousands of miles through farm and forest.

Our protection is in our fraternity, our armor is our faith; the tie that binds more firmly year by year is ever-increasing acquaintance and comradeship through interchange of citizens; and the compact is not of perishable parchment, but of fair and honourable dealing which, God grant, shall continue for all time. 

An interesting and significant symptom of our growing mutuality appears in the fact that the voluntary inter-change of residents to which I have referred, is wholly free from restrictions. Our National and industrial exigencies have made it necessary for us, greatly to our regret, to fix limits to immigration from foreign countries. But there is no quota for Canada. [Applause.] We gladly welcome all of your sturdy, steady stock who care to come, as a strengthening ingredient and influence. We none the less bid Godspeed and happy days to the thousands of our own folk, who are swarming constantly over your land and participating in its remarkable development. 

Wherever in either of our countries any inhabitant of the one or the other can best serve the interests of himself and his family is the place for him to be. [Applause.] A further evidence of our increasing interdependence appears in the shifting of capital. Since the armistice, I am informed, approximately $2,500,000,000 has found its way from the United States into Canada for investment.

That is a huge sum of money, and I have no doubt is employed safely for us and helpfully for you. Most gratifying to you, moreover, should be the circumstance that one-half of that great sum has gone for purchase of your state and municipal bonds, — a tribute, indeed, to the scrupulous maintenance of your credit, to a degree equalled only by your mother country across the sea and your sister country across the hardly visible border.

These are simple facts which quickly resolve into history for guidance of mankind in the seeking of human happiness. “History, history!” ejaculated Lord Overton to his old friend, Lindsay, himself an historian; “what is the use of history? It only keeps people apart by reviving recollections of enmity.”

As we look forth today upon the nations of Europe, with their armed camps of nearly a million more men in 1923 than in 1913, we cannot deny the grain of truth in this observation. But not so here! A hundred years of tranquil relationships, throughout vicissitudes which elsewhere would have evoked armed conflict rather than arbitration, affords, truly declared James Bryce, “the finest example ever seen in history of an undefended frontier, whose very absence of armaments itself helped to prevent hostile demonstrations;” thus proving beyond question that “peace can always be kept, whatever be the grounds of controversy, between peoples that wish to keep it.” 

There is a great and highly pertinent truth, my friends, in that simple assertion. It is public will, not public force, that makes for enduring peace. And is it not a gratifying circumstance that it has fallen to the lot of us North Americans, living amicably for more than a century, under different flags, to present the most striking example yet produced of that basic fact?

If only European countries would heed the lesson conveyed by Canada and the United States, they would strike at the root of their own continuing disagreements and, in their own prosperity, forget to inveigh constantly at ours. 

Not that we would reproach them for resentment or envy, which after all is but a manifestation of human nature. Rather should we sympathize with their seeming inability to break the shackles of age-long methods, and rejoice in our own relative freedom from the stultifying effect of Old World customs and practices.

Our natural advantages are manifold and obvious. We are not palsied by the habits of a thousand years. We live in the power and glory of youth. Others derive justifiable satisfaction from contemplation of their resplendent pasts. We have relatively only our present to regard, and that, with eager eyes fixed chiefly and confidently upon our future.

Therein lies our best estate. We profit both mentally and materially from the fact that we have no “departed greatness” to recover, no “lost provinces” to regain, no new territory to covet, no ancient grudges to gnaw eternally at the heart of our National consciousness. Not only are we happily exempt from these handicaps of vengeance and prejudice, but we are animated correspondingly and most helpfully by our better knowledge, derived from longer experience, of the blessings of liberty. 

These advantages we may not appreciate to the full at all times, but we know that we possess them, and the day is far distant when, if ever, we shall fail to cherish and defend them against any conceivable assault from without or from within our borders.

I find that, quite unconsciously, I am speaking of our two countries almost in the singular when perhaps I should be more painstaking to keep them where they belong, in the plural. But I feel no need to apologize. You understand as well as I that I speak in no political sense. The ancient bugaboo of the United States scheming to annex Canada disappeared from all our minds years and years ago. [Applause.] Heaven knows we have all we can manage now, and room enough to spare for another hundred millions, before approaching the intensive stage of existence of many European states.

And if I might be so bold as to offer a word of advice to you, it would be this: Do not encourage any enterprise looking to Canada’s annexation of the United States. [Laughter.] You are one of the most capable governing peoples in the world, but I entreat you, for your own sakes, to think twice before undertaking management of the territory which lies between the Great Lakes and the Rio Grande. 

No, let us go our own gaits along parallel roads, you helping us and we helping you. So long as each country maintains its independence, and both recognize their interdependence, those paths cannot fail to be highways of progress and prosperity. Nationality continues to be a supreme factor in modern existence; make no mistake about that; but the day of the Chinese wall, inclosing a hermit nation, has passed forever. Even though space itself were not in process of annihilation by airplane, submarine, wireless and broadcasting, our very propinquity enjoins that most effective cooperation which comes only from clasping of hands in true faith and good fellowship. 

It is in precisely that spirit, men and women of Canada, that I have stopped on my way home from a visit to our pioneers in Alaska to make a passing call upon my very good neighbor of the fascinating Iroquois name, ”Kanada,” to whom, glorious in her youth and strength and beauty, on behalf of my own beloved country, I stretch forth both my arms in the most cordial fraternal greeting, with gratefulness for your splendid welcome in my heart, and from my lips the whispered prayer of our famed Rip Van Winkle: “May you all live long and prosper!” 

He gave the speech at Stanley Park, and attended a state dinner at 7:00.  After that, he reembarked on the USS Henderson and must have remained hungry, as he dined on some crab while the ship steamed to Seattle and shortly thereafter became very ill.

High waters brought disaster near Shoshoni.

The Tribune also reported that the French had lifted the blockade of the Ruhr, and they updated the curious case of Father Grace, who apparently objected to prohibition to some extent.  He had apparently forged an order for ten barrels of whiskey for the J. H. Mullen Home for the Aged in Arvada, Colorado.  He was turned over by another Priest.  Fr. Grace was the pastor at St. Anne's in Arvada, having been installed at the newly built church on July 4, 1920.

Catholic theology would hold that under some circumstances there's no obligation to comply with an unjust law and Fr. Mullen did not seem to be, at least at first, sorry for his act.  Maybe there's more to this story than it might at first seem.  This story isn't one that's easy to follow, however, so what became of him and what he later thought, we don't know.

Rennovating the University of Wyoming law school?

And, we might note, to the tune of $30,000,000, at least if what reports from a recent event I went to indicate.  The public, i.e., State of Wyoming money, portion of that is $10,000,000, which is important to keep in mind, although that's wroth pondering in and of itself. That means anyway you look at it that 2/3s of that come from donations, which is amazing, if accurate.  

UW's summation of the project is as follows:

A 19,300sf, two-story addition will wrap the northwest end of the existing building. 25,000sf of the existing facility will be renovated creating spaces for clinics, accessible restrooms and improved vertical circulation. The facility expansion and improvements will bring the College of Law into compliance with American Bar Association standards, centralize College of Law clinics with the broader legal education program and allow students, professors, and the community better access to resources. The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming.

Super nifty, eh?

Hmmm. . . maybe not so fast.

First, as is so often the case, a little history.

1926 University of Wyoming debate team.  I wanted to put up a photo of the 1923 College of Law graduating class, which I think would be the first one, but I couldn't find one.

A big renovation that occurred some years after I went there also was to "bring the College of Law into compliance with American Bar Association standards. . . "

At least if this goes forward, and it seems like it certainly shall, the 1970s styling of the current law school will be abandoned for a more traditional look.  That's good, as the current law school is really ugly.

Apparently, the new structure will look like this:

And apparently it will include something called the Alan K. Simpson Center for Clinical and Experiential Learning.¹ 

And as a graduate of the institution, I'm thrilled. . . . well, like a lot of lawyers if you talk to them quietly. . . I'm not.

Why are we doing this?  And don't give me the "ABA says. . . ".  If it's the case that the school falls out of ABA compliance on a fairly regular basis, there's either something systemically wrong with the school, or the ABA standards.

The law school was founded in 1920 and was the first professional degree program offered by the University of Wyoming, if "profession" is constrained to its original meaning, that being an occupation that professes by its nature, it would include only law, divinity and medicine.  That definition is probably too narrow by contemporary terms, but it would still be limited, in spite of the American social trend to define everything as a profession, to the law, divinity, broadly defined medical occupations (human medicine, veterinary medicine dentistry) and accounting.  Looked at this way, FWIW, the medical fields have expanded their knowledge and reach, taking over two areas that were formerly practiced by tradesmen (dentistry and veterinary medicine) and accounting has become so complicated that it's a subspecialty of the law in reality. 

I'd be tempted, I'd note, to add engineering, which is now a licensed profession.  It isn't the only one, however, by any means.  Teaching is subject to licensure as well, and so now is being a geologist, which it was not when I graduated back in the dawn of time with a Bachelor's of Science in Geology (the earth was still cooling back then).

So my definition may, I'll confess, be too narrow.

The law school originally held classes on a floor in the old UW library building, meaning that two of the lawyers I once practiced with had gone to the school there.  It was moved to a separate building in 1953, and I practiced with some lawyers who went there at that time.  The current building was opened in 1977, with additional library space added in 1993, after I went there.

Somewhere I have some photos of the pre 93 building, but I've never uploaded them.

The move in 1953 makes sense, and the move in 1977, even if the latter's 1970s architecture leaves a person less than inspired.

But this?

I don't really know why the University added a law school in 1920, but I can guess. UW is a land grant university and was seen as a big step towards statehood when it was formed in 1886.  As that 86 date indicates, it predates statehood.  Land grant universities tended to focus on what was deemed necessary for the state.  I don't know what classes were offered in the early days, but they probably were ones that focused on agricultural and industrial areas that were vital to the state.

Law is vital to the state.  

Indeed, it's vital to a civil society.  It's indeed remarkable that lawyers were the only institution in the entire state that bucked the "election stolen" myth when 41 of them, followed by 52, dared to take on Trumps anointed Harriet Hageman, herself a graduate of the University of Wyoming College of Law, on her backing the stolen election lie.

Law isn't the only thing vital to the state, however, and this is frankly a bit much.

For that matter, I thought the post 93 renovations, while nice, were a bit much.  You can see a little bit of them here:

University of Wyoming College of Law Large Moot Court, Laramie Wyoming

This is the large Moot Court Room for the University of Wyoming.  Having been in most of the courtrooms in the state I can safely say that its one of the nicest in the entire state.

The back half, or gallery half, of the courtroom has a moveable wall that can open up to allow greater space, or perhaps just more conventional space in the courtroom and also allow the courtroom to function as a lecture hall.  Viewed as a courtroom, what we see here in front of us is the bar of the court.

When I went to UW's College of Law it didn't have a moot courtroom at all, now it has two, a large one and a small one (I have yet to see the small one).  This particular room was the large classroom at the time.  It is quite a facility and I guess it demonstrates how much the physical assets of the College of Law have improved in the past three decades.

According to the University, the College of Law will allow the courtroom to be used by the state courts upon request, if it is not already in use.

Indeed, the degree to which a law school is necessary is pretty open to question now.  When I got out of the College of Law in 1990, it was still the case that the state had a state specific section of the bar exam. Since that time, the Supreme Court caused the State Bar to go to the Uniform Bar Exam.  This was controversial at the time, as it should have been.  The net impact of it was to allow out of state lawyers to easily transfer their licenses to Wyoming, which was pretty easy to do beforehand.  Now the floodgates are open. The current exam has no state section whatsoever, and therefore it's just as easy to get a degree from the University of Ohio, or whatever, and hang out a shingle as a "Wyoming lawyer".  Indeed, lawyers who are members of any of the state legal organizations will inevitably find out of state, usually Colorado, lawyers in positions in those organizations.

Indeed, it should be noted that part of the propaganda for the law school renovations is 

The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming.

That really should be read as:

The project will greatly enhance the recruitment of potential out of state students and faculty to the College of Law and support the public legal service the University of Wyoming provides to the citizens of Wyoming in the form of aid to the those on the lower rung of society.

Now, let me note, helping those on the lower run of society is a good thing, but that's what law school clinics do.  That's fine.

But recruitment of out of state students?  That's a byproduct of a collapsing enrollment base.  

Indeed, there have been persistent rumors ever since the Supreme Court mandated the UBE that this was done to try to aid UW and that UW's College of Law wanted it.  The thought, the rumor maintains, was that the UBE would help UW graduates go to Colorado or elsewhere, and thereby boost the school by divorcing it from the practice inside the state.  If that was the thought, it achieved the polar opposite and didn't really help the school.

It also didn't help the school when a former Dean of the Law and a former, then new, UW President got into an enormous spat over the focus of the school. The students sided with the Dean, but they had little knowledge on what they were really achiving. The Dean, at that time, was really focusing on small time law, seemingly haveing given up on the long history of big time law inside the state. The President wanted to link the law school's focus to the energy industry. The Dean resigned and the President failed.

What all this gets to is this.  When the state had a state focused bar exam almost all the students know that they were going right into practice with Wyoming firms and the like.  Now, many leave, sometimes nearly half.  Going to UW still provides a direct link to Wyoming firms, but not the hard and fast way that it used to.  It's signficant, but reduced.

Given all that, the point of having a law school is now somewhat debatable.

Alaska doesn't have one.

Now, this is not to say that most Wyoming lawyers aren't from UW, they still are, which speaks for its survival. And it should also be noted that while law is a profession, it's also sort of a trade, and a law school in Laramie serves as sort of a trade school.  Graduaing from there means you are respected by Wyoming firms.

Indeed, the law has long been an occupation for polymaths to a degree, and even more than that, an occupation for lost polymaths.  The law is full of people who liked lots of stuff but not one thing in particular, or who couldn't make a living in that one thing they really liked.  But to be brutally frank, it's also a haven for people who'd reached career dead ends early in life and found the back alley of the law an easy one, or maybe the only one, to duck into.  Sure, there are those who "always wanted to be a lawyer", but right now, of the state's entire population, that's five people.

And the law school also serves as a place that people end up in as they're Wyomingites, have a degree, and have nowhere else to turn to.

Now, that's not intended as a slight to lawyers. Lots of lawyers who really would have preferred to be something else in their young lives are great lawyers.  Some of these, indeed many, so take to the law that, as noted in our recent threads on retirement, can't leave it or won't.  

But we have a law school and $30,000,000 is a lot of money.

It should be used for something else.

A veterinary school would be my choice.  We don't have one, but we sure have a lot of animals in this state, and a lot of those animals are agricultural animals  Wyoming veterinary students have to go somewhere else for their studies.  That speaks of their dedication, but it also speaks to the state's neglect.

A dental college also strikes me as a good idea. Not every resident in Wyoming has legal problems, but they all have teeth.

Massively expanded law school?  Don't need it.

We'll get one anyway.

Footnotes.

1. This would suggest that perhaps the Simpson family or his firm had some role in the donations.  That's just a guess.  He's a 1958 graduate of the UW College of Law.  His father Milward was a 1925 graduate of the Harvard College of Law.  His father, William, was also a prominent Wyoming lawyer, having read the law, rather than going to law school, under two other lawyers.  Alan Simpson's sons are also lawyers, one of whom is a currently sitting judge.

This is remarkable in that this means that the currently actively practicing members of the family are fourth generation lawyers.

Tuesday, September 22, 1942. Top elevated

The basic insignia for the rank of First Sergeant at the E-8 grade, shown with the unofficial summer colors of khaki on OD. This color scheme was common for the summertime khaki uniform, but never approved.  The proper colors were OD stripes on a black background.

Today in World War II History—September 22, 1942: Germans split Soviet 62nd Army in Stalingrad and occupy the southern half of the city. US Army raises grade of first sergeant to that of master sergeant.

From Sarah Sundin's blog

Clearly, the item about the Battle of Stalingrad is the important item, but I've linked this in here due to the item on U.S. Army ranks.  On this day in 1942 the grade of the rank of First Sergeant was made equal to that of Master Sergeant.

We've discussed enlisted Army ranks here before, indeed more than once, I think.

First Sergeant are the senior enlisted NCO's in a company, battery or troop.  It's an important rank, and it's been around for an extremely long time.  He is, literally, the "first" sergeant and for enlisted soldiers often the most senior soldier they typically engage with, commonly nicknamed "top".

When the Army was reorganized in 1920, 1st Sergeants were given the grade of E-6.  That would surprise modern soldiers, as that's the grade now held by Staff Sergeants, who at that time held the grade E-5.  E-5 today is held by the rank of Sergeant, but at that time, Sergeants were E-4s, as they still are in the Air Force.

Master Sergeants, that title indicating a senior status to that sometimes indicated for master tradesmen, were E-7s. Today, that grade is held by the rank of Sergeant First Class.  That rank didn't exist in 1920.

On this day in 1942 the Army adopted a new enlisted structure, changing some of the enlisted ranks.  Technician grades, which we've earlier discussed, were adopted, foreshadowing the later introduction of Specialists.  Enlisted ranks remained the same up through Staff Sergeant.  First Sergeants were moved from E-6 to E-7, making them the equivalent of Master Sergeants, and an additional rocker was added to their insignia to indicate their equivalency.  In the E-6 position the rank of Technical Sergeant, which had already coexisted with First Sergeant, remained.

This basic structure remained until 1948 when technicians were eliminated, but new rank insignia were introduced for non combatant NCO's, only barely distinguishable from those of combatants.  Technical Sergeant, at that time, was renamed to Sergeant First Class.  Moreover, the rank of "Recruit" was introduced for what had been "buck privates", and introduced at the E-1 level, making there three grades of privates.  The rank of Staff Sergeant was eliminated, and buck Sergeants took their insignia.

Specialists were added in 1955.

n 1959 a jump in grades happened in enlisted ranks overall. Staff Sergeants were reintroduced as E-6s, acquiring their prior insignia, and Sergeants became E-5s and reacquired their three chevron and no rocker insignia., Sergeants First Class took the E-7 grade and First Sergeants (and Master Sergeants) E-8s.  The rank of "Recruit" was renamed Private E-1.  Privates at the E-3 level worse the single chevron, as they had since 1948.  This is basically the structure we've had since then, except that PFC's obtain a rocker in 1968, and Private E-2 reclaimed the single stripe insignia that they hadn't had since 1948.  
The upper Specialists insignia over E-4 have also largely disappeared.

As this recitation also notes, the Technician grades were introduced during the same year as Top got a promotion and pay raise. They'd existed since January.

In a manner that only made sense to the Army, two stripe technicians were introduced at the grade of E-3, but with the title of Technician 5th grade.  If that doesn't quite made sense, its because the "E" structure that I've been using here wasn't introduced until 1949.  Prior to that, while the E grades noted here offer equivalency, so that it's easy to tell the actual changes over time, pay grades went by a simple number.  Pay grade 7 was the lowest, and it was the one that applied to buck privates, or what we'd later refer to, most of the time, to Private E-1s. Pay grade 1 was the highest, which was equivalent to the post 1949 E-7.

That right there helps explain some of this evolution, by the way.  There was nothing higher than pay grade 1, in enlisted ranks, and that was equivalent to E-7.  Now, the highest enlisted grade normally encountered is E-8, which Master Sergeants and First Sergeants occupy, as of 1959.  In that same year, 1959, the rank of Sergeant Major was introduced at E-9, as was Specialist E-9.  E-9 remains the highest enlisted grade today, although there are several different types of Sergeant Majors that occupy it, some being exceedingly rare.

Anyhow, back to technicians.  Introduced in January, right after the war started, their existence reflected the much more technical Army of 1940 as compared to earlier.  The creation of the rank was an attempt to create a rank and pay scheme for men who were not combatants.  Something had to be done, but the experiment wasn't really successful, leading to the change to combatant and non-combatant ratings in 1948, and ultimately to the not hugely successful creation of specialists ranks in 1959.  On that latter creation, the number of specialist ranks was already being reduced by 1967 and was further cut back in 1978. When I joined the National Guard in 1981, there were still Specialist E-6s, but in 1985 that was changed so that only Specialist E-4 remained.  At the same time, however, the increasingly professional nature of the Army after the elimination of the draft meant that the number of men occupying lower enlisted ranks increased, and therefore the Army reduced the number of Corporal E-4s in favor of Specialist E-4s, the distinction being that Corporals are NCOs and Specialists are not.

Prior Related Threads:

Timeline of U.S. Army Enlisted Ranks, 1920 to Present

The Infantry Company over a Century. Part 1. The Old Army becomes the Great War Army.

Pinks and Greens

Thursday, August 10, 1922. Cork taken and burned.

The Irish army, having made seaborne landings the day prior, took Cork, although the withdrawing IRA set it on fire first.  The city had been burned during the Anglo-Irish War two years prior.

One of my great-grandmother's was from Cork, although she would have left the city, at age three, well before this time period.

On the same day, IRA men Joseph O'Sullivan and Reginald Dunne were executed in London for the June 22 assassination of Sir Henry Wilson.

The Sammarinese Fascist Party was founded by Giuliano Gozi.  It would rule San Marino for twenty years, falling during the end of the Second World War, during which San Marino was a neutral tiny power.

Saturday December 3, 1921. Treaty offers.

 The Saturday magazines were out, with a skunk family on the cover of The Country Gentleman, and a female gold panner on the cover of Colliers.

Irish delegates to the peace conference in London rejected the British offer of Dominion status as it still required an oath of allegiance to the British crown for government officials and members of the Irish parliament, as well as partitioning Ulster away from southern Ireland.

The public was following the Arbuckle trial.

Saturday, October 29, 1921. The birth of Bill Mauldin.

On this day in 1921, Bill Mauldin, the great World War Two illustrator (cartoon doesn't suffice to describe his work) was born in New Mexico.

Mauldin while a Stars and Stripes cartoonist.  Mauldin was a tiny man and always looked younger than his hears.  Here he's wearing a mixed uniform, including the wool lined zipper pattern field jacket that some mistakingly now refer to as a "tanker's jacket", a khaki shirt, OD trousers, and paratrooper boots. The boots were a gift from paratroopers.

Mauldin would ultimately become a Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist for the Chicago Sun Times, but he had an archetypical Western upbringing that impacted much of his personality. His father, Sidney Albert Mauldin, was the dominant person of his youth and was somewhat unstable.  A streak of instability existed in his mother's side of hte family as well.  His father, called "pops", was a very intelligent man but was given to starting and abandoning projects.  Mauldin claimed Native American heritage on his mother's side, and his own appearance suggested that the claim was well-founded.  It was noted in later years that the two characters of his World War Two cartoon series, Up Front!, resemlbed figures from his own family.

His father had served as an artilleryman in World War One and went on to be a farmer, but one who frequently started and abandoned projects of all types  His father's adoptive grandfather had been a civilian scout with the Army during the Apache Wars.  His parents ultimately divorced and Mauldin and his brother Sidney moved to Phoenix Arizona in 1937 to attend high school, with his brother as the primary caretaker, which unfortunately lead to at least an element of delinquency.  Mauldin started illustrating at that time and made money illegally painting pinups on spare car covers.  He did not graduate from high school and, like many men  his age, joined the local National Guard unit, in his case the New Mexico National Guard, when conscription commenced in 1940.  His talents quickly lead him to be an Army newspaper illustrator, and he is most famously associated with The Stars & Stripes.

Mauldin was a great cartoonist and illustrator, but he had a troubled life, probably caused both by his unstable youthful years and the Second World War.  He married his first wife Jean prior to shipping overseas in the war, but he was not faithful to her during the war, and she wasn't faithful to him.  This lead to a post-war divorce, although the marriage actually endured for well over a decade after the war, with the couple having several children.  He married twice more, but perhaps showing the true nature of his first marriage, his wife Jean returned to take care of him as he was invalided in his final months.

"Me future is settled, Willie. I'm gonna be a professor on types o' European soil."

Mauldin's wartime cartoons underwent a rapid evolution in every sense.  They were good early on, but perhaps not really notably different from cartoons that appeared in other military papers and magazines.  In North Africa, however, they suddenly changed and the brush and ink illustrations became very accurate illustrations, while still having a speaking cartoon element.  They were so accurate that only the outright illustrations of William Brody, which have no cartoon element to them at all, surpass them as American Second World War war art.

Yank magazine medic illustration by William Brodie

Indeed, Mauldin's illustrations are so accurate that a person can trace the introduction of uniforms and equipment, and when they were first used at the front, through his cartoons.  Zealous in his work, he traveled to the front for material and was wounded at Monte Cassino as a result, and therefore had the Purple Heart.  A few of his cartoons were censured by the Army for showing new equipment before its knowledge was widely known.

Mauldin's "dog faces" were not glamorous in any sense, and were routinely dirty and unshaven.  They complained about service life and about some things, such as the lack of new uniforms as they were introduced, frequently.  This famously lead him to be the focus of a blistering ill-advised lecture from Gen. George Patton, who hated his cartoons.

During the war Mauldin's Stars & Stripes illustrations were picked up by American newspapers, and he found that he was returning to a ready-made career.  He was uncertain of it however, and at first his cartoons focused on the lives of his two central characters as they went back into civilian life. Those cartoons always had a bit of a false nature to them, however, as it was clear that Willie and Joe only really knew each other due to their being in the Army, and having them as central cartoons in a civilian cartoon didn't make much sense.  Mauldin's cartoons had always had a bit of an "editorial" nature ot them anyhow, and soon he switched to editorial cartoons, although there was no clear demarcation line from one genre to the other.  AS this happened, however, his cartoons lost circulation.

They were good cartoons, however, and ultimately the St. Louis Post Dispatch picked them up.  In later years the Chicago Sun Times did, and he was associated as a first rate editorial cartoonist with both papers.  In retirement, after having been marred three times, he moved back to his native New Mexico.  

World War Two veterans never forgot him and the memory of his wartime cartoons remained fresh throughout his life.  He obtained the status as the greatest military cartoonist of all time, replacing Bruce Barnesfeather in that status during Barnesfeather's own lifetime.  His fame was such that he himself became a reoccurring topic in the great cartoon series "Peanuts", with the character Snoopy visiting him in the cartoon every Veteran's Day.

Colliers ran the following cover:

The Soviet Union announced that it would honor most of Imperial Russia's debt obligation.

The USSR, in spite of the image it was trying to portray to the world, was an economic mess and as continuing to face armed resistance within its borders.  Indeed, just earlier in the week it had been invaded by Ukrainian insurgents who were advancing in the Ukraine, having crossed the Polish border.  None of its neighbors was sympathetic to it, and it was desperately reaching the point where it was trying to secure foreign funding to rescue its economy and save it from starvation.

Sunday August 7, 1921. The waiters go on strike.

 In the Netherlands, that is.

The Waitress

Delia Kane, age 14.  The Exchange Luncheon, Boston.  January 31, 1917.

They were seeking an end to the tip system and established regular wages.

April 23, 1921 Perceptions from the past

The Saturday Evening Post depicted a teamster hauling salt, or maybe ice, worrying about rain, something that wouldn't be obvious to most people now.  

Every see anyone haul salt?
 

In an era in which police are much in the news, Judge depicted a comical scene of a classic police child interaction.  Such depictions are much rarer today.  Stylistically, frankly, this depiction is somewhat odd.

The Saturday Evening Post depicted a miserly traveler with a lot of luggage stiffing a porter, tip wise.  This depiction today would also convey racial overtones which were in fact likely there, albeit unconsciously, in the original, given that in many areas porters were more likely to be black than white.

Tipping is a distinctly American custom, we'd note, and often baffling to foreigners who are not accustomed to it, and to Americans who don't travel much or encounter tipped classes much.  Not knowing who to tip, or how much, is a perennial problem for such folks.

March 2, 1921. Doomed rebellions and protomonarchies.

Anti Bolshevik sailors took the Kronstandt fortress, on an island, but accessible from the mainland in February due to frozen ice.

Striking miners in the Italian occupied Croatian city of Labin declared a communist republic for the town.  The rebellion is regarded as the first anti fascist rebellion in the world, but the reason for it being so regarded really isn't clear.  The city was under Italian governance at the time, but while fascism was rising in Italy, it had not yet come into control of the Italian monarchy.  The rebellion would last until April 8 when the Italian government put it down.

Abdullah I bin Al-Hussein relocated to Amman in anticipation of ruling the Emirate of Transjordan

Time is a lot shorter than we imagine.

In looking at the old newspapers I sometimes put up here, I saw in a local paper that the building that I work in was sold this past week. . . 100 years ago.  It made the front page as it was one of the few "skyscraper" buildings in town at the time.  Maybe the only one.

That is, news of that sale hit the front page on December 31, 1920.   The building was 103 years old at the time. The new owner soon changed the name of the building to what it is today.

Yesterday I had a man in the office who was 93 years old. He asked about some details of the building and lawyers who had practiced in it in the past.  We spoke about the sidewalk out front and that some odds and ends.  He noted that out in front, on the street, "there were probably horses back then".  

No doubt there were some.

He was ten years old when this building was 13 years old. That struck me at the time.

The building was built in 1917 and first occupied in 1918.  I don't know when he first saw it, but it would have been in its early history.  That's stuck with me.  I can recall things easily back when I was ten.  He may have recalled this building when it was only a little over 20 years old, maybe even earlier than that.

For that matter, I recall this building being here, and my father having business in it, over 40 years ago, maybe 50 years ago, when the building was less than 50 years of age itself.

I've worked in the building for 30 years.  It was 73 years old when I started working here.  The man I was talking to was 63 then.  My father would have been 59, two years older than I am now.  He died at age 62.

Time just gets away from us.

The last dialogue from True Grit.

December 31, 1920. Review of the Year.

 

December 30, 1920. Criminals

The body of Monk Eastman, notorious criminal, receives a guard of honor from the New Yor, National Guard.

 

On this day in 1920, the remains of New York criminal, and heroic World War One veteran, Monk Eastman received a guard of honor on his way to his funeral

Eastman was a well known New York thug in an age filled with Empire State thugs.  He was 44 or 45 at the time of his death, making him an old soldier at the time of his enlistment.  He served heroically in the Great War and received a pardon from the Governor of New York before resorting to his prior life of crime.  He was gunned down by a criminal confederate after an argument about bootlegging proceeds, with the gunman claiming he feared for his life.

He was a bad man in an age filled with really bad men, and a good soldier.

The USS John D. Ford was commissioned.

The Clemson Class destroyer would serve through World War Two, but was sold for scrap prior to the Korean War.

An unknown Vietnamese Communist, Nguyn Ai Quoc, would address the French Communist Party on this day.

He would later be known as Ho Chi Minh and was one of a collection of nationalist, by not all means Communist, figures who would oppose the Japanese occupation and then the French return following World War Two.  A central figure in the Vietnamese Communist Party in the 40s and 50s he'd help shove aside the non Communist nationalist and thereby set his nation up for rivers of blood that would follow the French expulsion.

He deserves to remembered in unending infamy today, less bloody than Moa or Stalin, but still a figure representing a collection of real bastards.

On this day in 1920, coincidentally, Yugoslavia outlawed the Communist Party.  Outlawing a stupid idea rarely works, and instead causes it to fester, and following World War Two it would reemerge, although in a less virulent form than in the USSR, or for that matter Vietnam.

December 29, 1920. Death and taxes.

On this day in 1920 the Congressional Income Tax Committee met.

 

The oddball effort to make Fiume some sort of independent Italian state came to an end as Italian forces occupied the city.

December 28, 1920. Famous Aviator and Aviatrix, Committees, Soviet Subjugation, the Roar from the 20s.

On  this day in 1920 a young Amelia Earhart rode in an airplane piloted by Frank Hawks at the California State Fair in Los Angeles.  She was 23 years old and her father paid the $10.00 charge for the ten minute flight.

Earhart in 1928.

It was the beginning of her interest in aviation.

We're all familiar with the Earhart story, of course, so I'll not go into it here.  Frank Hawks, however, is likely less well known to a modern audience, and of course there's no enduring mystery surrounding his death.

Frank Hawks.

Hawks had been an aviator in World War One and then was a record setting aviator after the war.  He retired from air racing in 1937 to become an executive in the Gwinn Aircar Company, being in charge of sales.  He flew around the country in that capacity demonstrating the safety features of the aircraft, but died in 1938 piloting one.

Gwinn Aircar.

Only two of the aircraft was ever made, and the Gwinn company subsequently folded.

Women in Washington D.C. who were on the inaugural committee were photographed.

Unlike now, the inauguration was in March at the time.

On the same day the Ukrainian communist party surrendered its independence to Russia's, which it probably had little choice but to do, in the Workers Peasant Union Treaty.  

Self determination of nations was a declared policy of Lenin's, but it was clearly not one that the Russian Reds meant.  At this point in time they were busy reassembling those portions of Imperial Russia that they could grab, and Trotsky was already proposing that the revolution should be taken to neighboring states.

General John T. Thompson received the first of his patents on his submachine gun.  The gun would go into production the following year but initial sales were poor.  The U.S. military did buy some, and it was intended as a military weapon, but overall it was a new gun in an era which didn't seem to require it.  The first real military application by the United States of the initial model, the M1921, came at the hands of the Marines in the Banana Wars.  The United States Postal Service bought some for guards and there were some police sales.  An early indication that it might acquire some infamy came in the form of sales that ended up being for the Irish Republican Army.

1921 advertisement for the expensive Thompson Sub Machine Gun.   While the gun may have been advertised as "sold only to law and order", it quickly came to be used by the unlawful and disorderly.

It would be the spate of Prohibition related crime, followed by Depression era crime, that would make the gun famous and which would in part lead to the National Firearms Act regulating the sales of automatic weapons.  A new improved version was introduced in 1928 which is the most famous various of the gun, outside the M1 version used during World War Two.

Lance Corporal of the British East Surry Regiment with M1928 Thompson Sub Machine Gun.

Of interest here, in redesigning the weapon for military use during World War Two it was discovered that part of the patented mechanism in the gun was unnecessary and it was omitted.  By that time soldiers were stripping the "H piece" from the earlier variants and leaving it out given that this slightly reduced the weight of a very heavy weapon.  M1A1 Thompsons remained expensive to produce and the military sought to supplant them during the war, but some remained in use as late as the Vietnam War.

And the Laramie Boomerang (from Wyoming Digital News Paper Collection) let the public know that it was flu season.

Christmas, December 25, 1920.

The 25th was a Saturday in 1920, which means that the Saturday weekly magazines hit the stands on that day.  The Saturday Evening Post chose to go with a holiday theme, which makes sense for a magazine coming out on Christmas Day.

Then, as now, some people work on Christmas Day, and that included this group of Dominican National Guardsmen who were lined up for chow.

The Dominican Republic was under American occupation, which had been a campaign issue in the 1920 election.  William Harding was opposed to continuing the occupation, as were most Americans.  Be that as it may, it would take some time to wind it down and during that time, as this photograph makes clear, the National Guard was very much under American influence.
 

Blog Mirror: 1920 Marconigrams

 

1920 Marconigrams

Blog Mirror: 1920 School Christmas Party

 

1920 School Christmas Party

Christmas Eve, December 24, 1920. Fiume and Crowds.

On this day in 1920 Italy began its military occupation of Fiume.

The spat over Fiume is almost incomprehensible today, featuring an effort by Italian patriots to seize the city for Italy in spite of it having a mixed population.  62% of the town's residents were, however, of Italian ethnicity.  Italy negotiated around the problem of the city and it became a "free city" as a result, with the accompanying result being that the Italian leaders within the city declared war on Italy, a moronic move under the circumstances.  On this day the Italians, who had enough of it, started to occupy the city leading to what was called "Bloody Christmas" as the occupation did result in some loss of life.

Today the city is known as Rijeka and is in Croatia.

On the same day, Enrico Caruso gave his last public performance at the Met in New York.

The 48 year old Caruso was not well and would die that following August.

Elsewhere, the day before Christmas looked much like it normally does.

December 20, 1920. Too late and very large.

On this day in 1920 the day late and dollar sort Government in Ireland Act received Royal Assent. King George V wrote, in giving it his assent:

I deplore the campaign of violence and outrage, whereby a small section of my subjects seek to sever Ireland from the empire, and I sympathize with the loyal servants of the crown who are endeavoring to restore peace and maintain order under conditions of unexampled difficulty and danger... I sincerely hope that this act, the fruit of more than thirty years of ceaseless controversy, will finally bring about unity and friendship between all the peoples of my kingdom.

The King's hopes were well wished, but things were now too out of hand and it was simply too late. 

On the same day, a couple of people at the American Forestry Association decided to put out a display.

 

 American Forestry Association, December 23, 1920.

And a gigantic painting of Woodrow Wilson, who was serving out his last term (until March, at that time) was revealed.