Monday, March 6, 1922. The dawn of the cartoon magazine.

Maj. Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, eccentric cavalryman, at that time, and founder of D C Comics was photographed.

Wheeler-Nicholson came from an unusual family, and he was an unusual character.  He achieved success very early as a cavalryman in the U.S. Army, and then went on to command infantry in the US military mission to Siberia during World War One.  He became an author in this time period but he seems to have struck people the wrong way and ended up in disputes inside the Army, one of which lead to his court marshal during this time frame. Adding to his problems, he was shot by an Army sentry shortly after this in an incident in which the sentry through he was trying to enter another officer's home, but which his family maintained was an Army sanctioned assassination attempt (which it surely was not).

In 1923 he'd leave the Army and become a pulp fiction writer.  Ultimately, he founded a franchise which essentially created the modern cartoon magazine.  Nonetheless, he never really profited from his efforts and lived in financial straights the rest of his life.

April 18, 1921. Service.

On this Monday, April 18, 1921, Edith Barnett, who had died serving as an American nurse in far off Siberia, was remembered with a tombstone marked in English and Russian.  She had died of Typhus while serving as a Red Cross nurse there.

Some Gave All: April 18, 1921. "Grave of Edith Barnett of New Yo...:  

April 18, 1921. "Grave of Edith Barnett of New York City. An American Red Cross nurse who died in Siberia, Aug. 15, 1919. Monument placed at Tomsk, Siberia on April 18, 1921. Photograph taken on April 19, 1921"

Ontario voted, in a plebiscite, to ban the sale and importation of alcohol by a 60% margin.  An attempt at repealing the ordinance the following year by the same means failed.

How would you have voted?  I'm not a teetotaler, but I'm sure I would have voted for the measure.

Jacksonville Florida was photographed from the St. John's Bridge.

View of the Jacksonville Florida St John's Bridge, April 18, 1921.

President Harding seems to have had a busy day greeting groups.

Harding with Community House Kids.  I'm not sure who they were, but it appears to probably be a church based group.

Harding and Women's Commission for World Disarmament.  The group obviously did not succeed in its goals.

Gen. Herbert Lord of the Quartermaster Corps received an award consisting of draft horseshoes.

I don't know the actual occasion, but it may have been recognizing his service which was principally in administering its budget.  He'd go on to occupy the position of head of the OMB, although under a different title at the time, in the Harding Administration.

January 8, 1921. The death of Lt. Langdon.

On this day in 1921 Japanese sentries shot and killed United States Navy Lieutenant Warren H. Langdon in Vladivostok as took leave from a group of Russian friends who were celebrating Christmas on the Orthodox calendar.  

Langdon was walking down the street at night with a "hand lantern" on his way back to the USS Albany when he passed by a Japanese post. A Japanese soldier stopped him and Langdon, dressed in his uniform, identified himself and proceeded. The Japanese soldier shot him in the back, killing him.

USS Albany, a "protected cruiser".

Japan apologized for the incident and court martialed the soldier involved.

Japan had a significant military mission in Siberia at the time and was aggressive in its presence there.  The overall military mission of the Allies in Siberia had always been vague, but Japans had territorial asperations as a backdrop and they retained a presence there long than other Allied nations from World War One.

April 5, 1920. Strife.

John D. Rockefeller photographed in Washington D.C. today where he spoke at the opening of the Interchurch movement campaign to raise a fund of $350000.

John D. Rockefeller was in Washington D.C. on this Easter Monday of 1920, speaking as part of an Interchurch effort to raise funds.

Group of Metlakahtlans (Native Alaskans), photographed on April 5, 1920. Note members of Salvation Army in this group.  They're native to the Southern Alaska and northern British Columbia region.

In southern Alaska, a group of Metakahtlan Pacific Coast natives was photographed, with some wearing the uniforms of the Salvation Army, which those individuals must have been members of.

Across the Pacific, the Japanese Army and the Russian Reds struggled for control of Vladivostok, with the Japanese prevailing.  And that was just one of the dramatic and violent events of the day.

Irish Republicans used the prior day to mark the anniversary of the Easter Rebellion in actions that saw a large number of British government establishments hit on the same day. 

Hit in the United States was rail service in Chicago, with railroad employees walking out on strike.

And France prepared to send her troops into the Ruhr as Germany, in an effort to suppress the Communist rebellion ongoing there, sparked by the Kapp Putsch, had sent its forces and the Freikorps into the region in violation of the Versailles Treaty.

Closer to home, the sad fate of Mrs. Roy Bergstrom, 18 years old, who was shot and killed at the entry of her lawyer's office as she went to see him about a divorce from her husband of just five months, was headline news in Cheyenne.  It had been headline news in Laramie the day prior.

Mrs. Bergstrom's name was Carrie.  Roy Bergstrom had served in World War One and was convicted of her murder in October. His defense argued that he was insane but the jury found the opposite, but also found that he should be sentenced to life imprisonment rather than receive the death penalty.  Something must have occurred thereafter as he was sent to the state mental hospital as a prisoner in any event.  In 1922 his mother asked that he be pardoned, which was opposed by the prosecutor of his case.  He was not, but he was transferred to an asylum in Wisconsin, where he was from, with a provision that he be returned to Wyoming to serve his sentence should he later recover his sanity.

February 25, 1920. The Mineral Leasing Act becomes law

The Casper Daily Tribune was exactly correct, the measure built the way for the oil industry in Wyoming.

Prior to the Oil Leasing Act oil prospects were located, where the Federal government owned the resource, though the Mining Law of 1872.  The act changed the location system to the benefit of both production companies and the Federal government by allowing the resource to be leased through the much simpler leasing system.  Ultimately, this benefited the state through allowing this simpler system to be utilized and by allowing non appropriated lands to remain solidly in the Federal domain, as the Mining Law of 1872 allowed lands to be patented and become private through location.

This is, of course, still the system that's used today.

Elsewhere, the American mission to Russia was coming home, including the Red Cross mission, from which a party of nurses arrived in San Francisco.

Ten of the Red Cross women workers with the A.R.C. Commission to Siberia waving their greetings to their homeland as the transport "Sherman" docked in San Francisco Harbor February 25, 1920.

January 17, 1920. And then the entire nation was dry forever. . .

or so it seemed.

The Wyoming State Tribune, which was united with the rest of the press in seeing Prohibition as a great advance, counselled that eternal vigilance would be necessary to keep the nation dry.

An article in Colliers already used the term "moonshine" in connection with bootleg liquor, and featured this illustration with a young boy confronting "Revenues".

January 10, 1920. Germany signs the Protocol and the Great War officially ends (except for the U.S.). . .

And thereby avoids an Allied occupation.

It read:

PROTOCOL SIGNED BY GERMANY JANUARY 10, 1920

At the moment of proceeding to the first deposit of ratifications of the Treaty of Peace, it is placed on record that the following obligations, which Germany had undertaken to execute by the Armistice Conventions and supplementary Agreements, have not been executed or have not been completely fulfilled:
(1) Armistice Convention of November 11,1918/5 Clause VII; obligation to deliver 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 wagons. 42 locomotives and 4,460 wagons are still to be delivered;
(2) Armistice Convention of November 11, 1918, Clause XII; obligation to withdraw the German troops in Russian territory within the frontiers of Germany, as soon as the' Allies shall think the moment suitable. The withdrawal of these troops has not been effected, despite the reiterated instructions of August 27, September 27 and October 10, 1919;
(3) Armistice Convention of November 11,1918, Clause XIV; obligation to cease at once all requisitions, seizures or coercive measures in Russian territory. The German troops have continued to have recourse to such measures;
(4) Armistice Convention of November 11, 1918, Clause XIX; obligation to return immediately all documents, specie, stocks, shares, paper money, together with plant for the issue thereof, affecting public or private interests in the invaded countries. The complete lists of specie and securities carried off, collected or confiscated by the Germans in the invaded countries have not been supplied;
(5) Armistice Convention of November 11, 1918, Clause XXII; obligation to surrender all German submarines. Destruction of the German submarine U.C. 48 off Ferrol by order of her German commander, and destruction in the North Sea of certain submarines proceeding to England for surrender;
(6) Armistice Convention of November 11, 1918, Clause XXIII; obligation to maintain in Allied ports the German ~arships designated by the Allied and Associated Powers, these ships being intended to be ultimately handedover. Clause XXXI; obligation not to destroy any ship before delivery. Destruction of the said ships at Scapa Flow on June 21, 1919;
(7) Protocol of December 17, 1918, Annex to the Armistice Convention of December 13, 1918; obligation to restore the works of art and artistic documents carried off in France and Belgium. All the works of art removed into the unoccupied parts of Germany have not been restored;
(8) Armistice Convention of January 16, 1919/6 Clause III and Protocol 392/1 Additional Clause III of July 25, 1919; obligation to hand over agricultural machinery in the place of the supplementary railway material provided for in Tables 1 and 2 annexed to the Protocol of Spa of December 17, 1918. The following machines had not been delivered on the stipulated date of October 1, 1919. 40 "Heucke" steam plough outfits; all the cultivators for the outfits; all the spades; 1,500 shovels; 1,130 T.F. 23/26 ploughs; 1,765 T.F. 18/21 ploughs; 1,512 T.F. 23/26 ploughs; 629 T.F. 0 m. 20 Brabant ploughs; 1,205 T.F.o m. 26 Brabant ploughs; 4,282 harrows of 2 k. 500; 2,157 steel cultivators; 966 2 m. 50 manure distributors; 1,608 3 m. 50 manure distributors;
(9) Armistice Convention of January 16, 1919, Clause VI; obligation to restore the industrial material carried off from French and Belgian territory. All this material has not been restored;
(10) Convention of January 16,1919, Clause VIII; obligation to place the German merchant fleet under the control of the Allied and Associated Powers. A certain number of ships whose delivery had been demanded under this clause have not yet been handed over;
(11) Protocols of the Conferences of Brussels of March 13 and 14, 1919; obligation not to export war material of all kinds. Exportation of aeronautical material to Sweden, Holland and Denmark.
A certain number of the above provisions which have not been executed or have not been executed in full have been renewed by the Treaty of June 28, 1919, whose coming into force will ipso facto render the sanctions there provided applicable. This applies particularly to the various measures to be taken on account of reparation.
Further, the question of the evacuation of the Baltic provinces has been the subject of an exchange of notes and of decisions which are being carried out. The Allied and Associated Powers expressly confirming the contents of their notes, Germany by the present Protocol undertakes to continue to execute them faithfully and strictly.
Finally, as the Allied and Associated Powers could not allow to p'ass without penalty the other failures to execute the Armistice Conventions and violations so serious as the destruction of the German fleet at Scapa Flow, the destruction of U.C. 48 off Ferrol and the destruction in the North Sea ofcertain submarines on their way to England for surrender, Germany undertakes:
(1) A. To hand over as reparation for the destruction of the German fleet at Scapa Flow: .
(a) Within 60 days from the date of the signature of the present Protocol and in the conditions laid down in the second paragraph of Article 185 of the Treaty of Peace the five following light cruisers:
Konigsberg,
Pillau,
Graudenz,
Regensburg,
Strassburg.
(b) Within 90 days from the date of the signature of the present Protocol, and in good condition and ready for service in every respect, such a number of floating docks, floating cranes, tugs and dredgers, equivalent to a total displacement of 400,000 tons, as the Principal Allied and Associated Powers may require. As regards the docks, the lifting power will be considered as the displacement. In the number of docks referred to above there will be about 75 per cent. of docks over 10,000 tons. The whole of this material will be handed over on the spot;
B. To deliver within 10 days from the signature of the present Protocol a complete list of all floating docks, floating cranes, tugs and dredgers which are German property. This list, which will be delivered to the Naval Inter Allied Commission of Control referred to in Article 209 of the Treaty of Peace, will specify the material which on November 11, 1918, belonged to the German Government or in which the German Government had at that date an important interest;
C. The officers and men who formed the crews of the warships sunk at Scapa Flow and who are at present detained by the Principal Allied and Associated Powers will, with the exception of those whose surrender is provided for by Article 228 of the Treaty of Peace, be repatriated at latest when Germany has carried out the provisions of Paragraphs A. and B. above;
D. The destroyer B. 98 will be considered as one of the 42 destroyers whose delivery is provided for by Article 185 of the Treaty of Peace;
(2) To hand over within 10 days from the signature of the present Protocol the engines and motors of the submarines U. 137 and U. 138 as compensation for the destruction of U.C. 48;
(3) To pay to the Allied and Associated Governments before January 31, 1920, the value of the aeronautical material exported, in accordance with the decision which will be given and the valuation which will be made and notified by the Aeronautical Inter-Allied Commission of Control referred to in Article 210 of the Treaty of Peace. In the event of Germany not fulfilling these obligations within the periods laid down above, the Allied and Associated Powers reserve the right to take all military or other measures of coercion which they may consider appropriate.
Done at Paris, the tenth day of January, one thousand nine hundred and twenty, at four o'clock p.m. [For Germany:] V. SIMSON FREIHERR VON LERSNER

The ongoing refusal of the United States to ratify the Versailles Treaty meant that for the U.S., World War One technically remained ongoing.

Today, due to the treaty, was the beginning date for the League of Nations, which technically remained in existence until 1946.

Senate Minority Leader, Oscar Underwood.

In the U.S., the House of Representatives refused to seat Victor L. Berger, a duly elected member from Winsconson, who had been convicted under the Espionage Act.  Berger was an Austrian American member of the Socialist Party whose newspaper had been opposed to the war. The Supreme Court would overturn his conviction in 1921.

 Victor L. Berger after Congress refused to seat him in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1920.

World War One, therefore, remained very much a thing.

In Washington D. C., representatives of the Soviet Union were in town.

Mr. L. Martens, Representative of the Russian Soviet Republic and his party photographed in Washington, D.C., January 10, 1920. Left to Right Mr. G. Nuorteva, Secty. Mrs. Nuorteva, their son Matti Nuorteva, Kenneth Durant Publicity Representative and Mr. Martens.

In Russia, a platoon of American soldiers under Sheridan Wyoming's 2d Lt. Paul Kendall defeated an attack by a Soviet armored train near Posolyskaya, Siberia (entry from WyoHistory.org).  Armored trains had become a strange but big feature of the Russian Civil War.

Kendall had been born in Kansas but raised in Sheridan.  He entered West Point in 1916 and graduated in 1918, due to the shortened class cycle World War One caused.  He received the Distinguished Service Cross for his action in Siberia on this day.

Kendall would go on to a career in the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of Lt. Gen., commanding troops in World War Two and the Korean War.  

August 7, 1919. Big Springs to Kimball, Nebraska. 86 miles in 11 hours.

On this day in 1919, the Motor Transport Convoy picked up speed and made 86 miles in a little over 11 hours.

Not that the day was without trouble.  The tarpaulin on a Liberty Truck caught on fire as it pulled into camp.

Lunch was had at Sydney Nebraska, now famous as the home of Cabelas.  When I was a university student at the University of Wyoming, we thought Sydney sufficiently close to Laramie to drive there, although it made for a really long day.  Looking it up now, it was 148 miles. . . further away than I'd bother to drive to look at a store today. The store at that time was the old Cabelas, in downtown Sydney, not the big one by the Interstate that people visit today.

After lunch, the convoy trekked on to Kimball, Nebraska.

Cheyenne was anticipating their arrival.

On the same day, in eastern Siberia, the U.S. Army and the Red Army came to blows when respective patrols made contact.  The Red Army unit attacked at Novo Litovoskaya with the result that the they sustained significant casualties while the Americans took none.  The action featured the bravery of Cpl. Frankenfield who overran a Russian position single handedly armed only with his M1911 pistol.

June 23, 1919. The collapse of things German.

On this Monday in June 1919, the German government confirmed it would sign the Versailles Treaty.

The German government had collapsed, as we've seen, over the issue which had required the Reichstag to form a new government.  In so doing, that body formally voted to accept the treaty by a comfortable margin.

It didn't happen, of course, before the German Navy took steps to sink itself, which was still in the headlines.  Less noted, German airmen took the same step with Zeppelins on this day, which was more in the nature of an act of defiance.  As it was, it hardly mattered as the day of the airship as an offensive weapon of war was over.

A person could debate these sentiments, but in the next war they wouldn't occur  Aircraft were advancing too fast and there was no escape from the carnage anywhere.

It was a day of defeat of German interest in general, as Estonian and Latvian forces defeated the Baltic German Landswehr, which had been their allies in their wars against the Reds but which had then gone on to install their own pro German government in Latvia, at the Battle of Cēsis. 

Member of the Baltic Landswehr carrying German equipment and uniformed in the German style.

This would end the Baltic German bid for control of the region and bring to an end a process that had started in the Medieval era.  Oddly,as the German empire collapsed German military interest had fought on, and then turned their effort over to the local Germans, with vague imperial aspirations in mind.

Baltic Germans would hang on the region thereafter but a series of resettlement programs commenced in 1939 and carried through during the Soviet administration of the in cooperation with Nazi Germany. Even after the Nazis captured the region after attacking the Soviet Union Baltic Germans were not allowed to return and by the wars end additional efforts were made to take them out, given the fate that the Nazis had dealt them. Today some Baltic Germans remain in the region but the numbers are quite small.

The day is celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia, which also traditionally celebrates the day as St. John's Day, an event that stands as a major holiday on the calendar in the region.  The day traditionally marks the commencement of summer.

Elsewhere in the north, more or less, Czech forces were being pulled out of Vladivostok.

Czechs on a tug in Vladivostok harbor waiting to board the Archer on their way out of Russia and war.

May 2, 1919. At Ease, In Distress, Distressing news in Central America, and in the United States

The day after the Red May Day, things were more normal, and not.

American officers posed for a portrait in Germany:

Commanding officer staff, 42nd Division.  Maj. Gen. C. A. F. Flagler, Lt. Col. Stanley M. Rambaugh. Col William N. Hughes, Jr., Cpt. James M. Boyd, Maj. E. H. Bertram, Maj. Robert J. Gill and Lt. H. W. Fletcher.  New York Tribune, May 2, 1919. Taken at headquarters at Ahrweiler.

Elsewhere in Germany, or more particularly in Munich, the Freikorps advanced riding with Death's Head, a symbol that dated back to German military antiquity, but which became increasingly associated with Germany's right wing.

The Freikorps had, of course, crushed the nascent Bavarian Soviet, a Communist state that exhibited typical Communist brutality in going down in defeat.  In Russia, however, the Whites were exhibiting some problematic behavior of their own.

The families of Bolshevik prisoners outside of the prison at Ekaterinburg with food for their relatives. North Platte Semi Weekly Tribune, May 2, 1919.

While that was going on, the United States was supporting the Whites against the Reds, or not, or was, or was not.  We really couldn't make up our minds.

J. K. Caldwell looking studious and calm as Russia disintegrated.  He was the American counsel in Vladivostok.  May 2, 1919.

Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, today a vacation haven, Gen. Manuel Choa, late of Pancho Villas' forces, and former Catholic Priest, the Belgian educated Jorge Volio Jimenez, stumbled into rebellion against the country's leadership.

The Cheyenne State Leader couldn't help but note the events of May 1.

The reference to Lenin in Denver was surprising, but then Denver has always had some oddities. At the start of the Civil War a party tried to declare Denver for the Confederacy.

The Laramie Boomerang had given up on peace, it seemed.  It would prove correct in that view.

The Wyoming State Tribune was more optimistic.

Sunday, April 27, 1919. Movie releases, Marching Americans in Russia, Disbanding Reds in Limerick, Wyoming National Guardsmen to Remain In Germany

It was a car racing movie.

As we've noted here before, in the teens it was common to release movies on Sunday, taking advantage of the fact that most people had the day off.  The Roaring Road was an exciting car racing movie, in which the protagonist pursued his love interest and auto racing with equal vigor, showing how automobiles were really coming in.

If car racing wasn't your thing, on the same day Select Pictures released "Redhead".

I suspect that this is a lost film as details on the film are really sketchy, but movie taglines for it are really odd.  Alice Brady's character is described as such a tantalizing beauty that men "didn't care what color her hair was".  Eh?  And an alternative poster states "This is the girl he found himself married to".

I suppose a person would have to see it to figure that one out.

Other romances were also released to the sliver screen on this day.

Wow.  What a turgid plot.

Comedies were also in the offering, including a short featuring a wealthy man whose is a victim of mistaken identity.

Well, while people back in the states were seeing the latest pictures, soldiers were doing what they have for time immemorial.  Marching.

31st Infantry marching near Vladivostok.

The area around Vladivostok in this photo looks a lot, quite frankly, like winter scenes in Wyoming.

Those same troops had recently been fighting.  And fighting was still going on most definately, including between the Estonians and the Reds.

Anton Irv

Estonian officer, and former Imperial Russian enlisted man and then officer, was killed in action on this day in 1919 in that conflict.  He'd been one of the organizer of Estonia's armored trains, something that featured prominently in that war and in the Russian Civil War.  In the East, armored trains would continue to be a feature of conflict into World War Two.

Elsewhere some other Reds or proto Reds went home.

Members of the Limerick Soviet

The goofball Limerick Soviet came to an end after a little over week of being in existence when the local mayor and the local Bishop asked them to knock it off. They then voluntarily closed up shop.

Readers of the Cheyenne papers learned that Wyoming artillerymen would not be coming home soon.

Among other things they also read that Carranza could not hold out much longer.  The author of that article suggested American help to keep him in office would be required, which was a shockingly bad suggestion.

Chicago had its selection of Sunday cartoons of course, including ones that were not really intended to be funny.

I's interesting that even in 1919, gas mileage was a topic.

And some folks in Alaska had their portrait taken.

April 11, 1919. Lens Destroyed, Trooping the Colors, Threatened Mutiny, Bandit(?) Zapata reported killed, Domestic discord.

All photographs of Lens, France, taken on April 11, 1919.

The disaster the war had brought to Lens, France, was the subject of a photographer's work on this day in 1919.  His images speak for themselves.

The British 78th Battalion was trooping the colors on the same day.

Elsewhere, the Casper paper was reporting on Emiliano Zapata having been assassinated in Mexico, using the pejorative "bandit" to describe him, which he certainly was not.  The press tended to term all Mexican revolutionaries with that term at the time, which was only somewhat true of Pancho Villa and not really even completely true of him.

The papers were also reporting on a near mutiny by American troops in Russia, who were conscripted soldiers who were growing weary of what seemed like a forgotten and endless commitment.  Apparently the mutiny did not fully develop, but clearly things were amiss.

The Munsell's, whoever they were, had the misfortune of having their divorce become front page news, something that would be pretty unlikely to occur now.

The Cheyenne paper made fun of the difficulties of office romance.  That may not seem remarkable at first, but if we consider that the introduction of women into offices was very recent. . . being a secretary had been a male job very recently, that cartoon memorializes an ongoing revolution that some like to claim came about after World War Two, but which had its roots much earlier.

Indeed, by this time, the female secretary was very much a common thing, which only shortly before, it had not been. Women in office work was now common.

And with alcohol now gone, there was a campaign against tobacco, coffee, and tea ramping up.