Thursday, November 10, 1922. Erskine Childers arrested by the Free State.

Erskine Childers, Ango Irish, English-born, Protestant, Irish Republican, was captured by the Irish Army in a nationwide roundup of IRA members.  

Childers was an Irish revolutionary figure who went from being an ardent supporter of the British Empire who served in the Boer War, into a revolutionary.  He was a member of the Anglo Irish aristocratic class, a lawyer, and a writer, who originally fit into the classic role of the period of English Empire loyalists, a view which he moved away from following the Boer War.

He helped smuggle German rifles into Ireland before the Great War, as he was by that time a supporter of home rule. When World War One came he was recalled into service and served first in the Royal Navy and then in the Royal Air Force.  His nationalism known, he was already a figure in Irish efforts to secure independence, and following the war he ended up the secretary of the delegation which negotiated with the British for independence.  He was an ardent opponent of the treaty with the UK.

He followed De Valera out of the Dail and published a pro-Republican journal following that while being a figure within Irish Republicanism.  He was not popular, however, among the Republican rank and file who regarded him as English, not without some good reasons. He was not trusted with a military role in spite of being vastly experienced in the same.

He was arrested for carrying a .32 handgun and put to death under the Army Emergency Powers Resolution which made carrying a firearm without a license a capital offense, a supremely ironic law for a government that had come into existence through doing just that.  He was executed on November 24, in what should be regarded as a supremely unjust act.  He was 52 years of age 

The Greek city of Saranta Ekklisies ("Forty Churches") in Thrace was turned over to the Turks, who renamed it at first "Kirk Kilise" ("Forty Churches").  Today it is Kirklareli, "The Place of 40"

The Marine Corps League was established.

The US released twenty vessels seized on the seas for carrying alcohol.

Saturday, September 23, 1922. Unintended paths.

The Saturday Evening Post went to the stands with a Coles Phillips illustration entitled "The broken heel hop".  The woman in the illustration still looked more cheerful than Muriel MacSwiney, who was photographed in New York City on the same day.

Mrs. Muriel MacSwiney appeared in the photograph with the then Miss Linda Kearns.  Both of them had been involved in a jailbreak that freed Irish prisoners, something that the British tended to suffer with such frequency that it raises real questions about the extent to which they were actually trying to retain them

MacSwinney was the widow of the Lord Mayor of Cork, who had died in a hunger strike.  She was the first woman to be given the Keys (Freedom) of New York.  She never recovered from her husband's death, even becoming estranged from her young daughter, Máire. She remained an activist for the rest of her long life, becoming increasingly left wing as time went on.  In the early 1920s, after this period of time, she left her daughter Máire, in Germany while she traveled Europe, losing custody of her in 1932 to the girl's aunt, who saw the completion of her education in Ireland and Germany.  In the meantime she took up with left-wing French intellectual Pierre Kaan, which produced a second daughter, Alix in 1926.  Kaan died in a German concentration camp during World War Two.

She remained an activist until the end of her life in 1982 at age 90, and ironically died in England, where she had taken up residence near her second daughter Alix.  Máire MacSwiney, went on to marry a significant Irish politician and died in 2012 at age 93.

MacSwiney's life isn't atypical of revolutionaries of the period, who often started off basically in the middle of a movement and then evolved into leftwing movements in general, losing themselves to the movement.  She started off as a Catholic Irish nationalist, which she likely would have remained, had her husband not died of the dubious revolutionary act of self starvation.  From there, she ended up becoming so involved in increasingly left wing causes that she more or less removed herself from the life of her daughter with her husband, and had a second by a left-wing intellectual whom she ultimately did not make a life with.  It's hard to admire her.

Kearns was an Irish nurse and Fianna Fáil politician.  She died at age 62 in 1951.

The C-2 airship completed the first transcontinental airship flight across the United States, landing at Ross Field in Arcadia, California.  The trip had started on September 14.

Allied representatives sent Turkey a proposal to hold a conference to resolve the Chanak Crisis.

Tom Lovelace of the Pittsburgh Pirates made his first, and only, appearance in Major League Baseball, breaking his leg sliding into first base in the ninth inning.  He went back into the minors, where he played until 1932.

Tuesday, August 22, 1922. Michael Colllins Killed.

Boston Post via Wikipedia..

Michael Collins, a principal architect of the frankly terrorist strategy of the Irish Republicans, and now Commander In Chief of the Irish Free State's army, was ambushed and gunned down at Béal na Bláth.

Collins' body in the hospital.

With the Irish Civil War seemingly winding down, the former guerilla leader, was touring the country inspecting regions which the Irish Free State had regained control of.  His trip on this occasion, through IRA stronghold Cork, was advised against, but Collins, perhaps being fatalistic, and having survived numerous prior attempts on his life, went ahead anyway.  Along the way his party stopped at Long's Pub and asked directions of a man standing at the crossroads who turned out to be an IRA sentry who recognized Collins. An ambush was set up for his return trip to Cork City.

When the ambush occurred, the Free State commander for the county ordered the convoy forward, but Collins, demonstrating a poor understanding of the proper tactics when ambushed, ordered the convoy stopped to fight the ambushers.  Collins was supposedly killed in the engagement by Denis "Sonny" O'Neill, a former Britsh Army sniper, not without irony as O'Neill had obviously answered the United Kingdom's call when Collins had opposed it.  Indeed, O'Neill had previously been a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary before the war.

There is some doubt, however, about this version of events, however, as O'Neill, while regarded as a fine shot, had been wounded in action in 1918 and made a prisoner of the Germans.  He was unable to resume employment with the Constabulary due to his injuries and was regarded as disabled at the time.  He was, however, granted a captain's military pension under DeValera's government in the 1940s.

Given all of this, and even at the time, conspiracy theories abound as to who actually killed Collins.

Whoever did, Collins' while widely admired, provides an example of living by the sword and dying by it.  Collins, more than any other man, was the architect of modern terrorist warfare.  He may have died a leader of a conventional army, but his most notable success was not as the leader of one.

Another view with more biographical details:

August 22, 1922: The Assassination of Michael Collins

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.

Wednesday, May 17, 1922. The British Army leaves the Irish Free State.

The British Army, on this day in 1922, turned over possession of Portobello Barracks in Dublin to the Irish Free State Army, brining to an end British military presence in southern Ireland.

Irish Free State Army cap badge.

Manchester England's first commercial radio station, 2ZY, commenced periodic broadcasting.  It remains in operation today as BBC Radio Machester.

Saturday, January 14, 1922. Hays dives into the movie industry.

William H. Hays resigned as Postmaster General in order to become head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors.  In that role he would end up associated with an effort to clean up, if you will, the movie industry, which would lead to him being somewhat misremembered today.

Hays would bring in the Hays Production Code, which was effectively a code of self-censorship for the movie industry. The draft code stunned critics of film, who were advocating state and Federal  restrictions at the time.  As the code basically gave them what they wanted, they were satiated by it and ceased their efforts for the most part.

The things that brought about the concern were real.  While we have a conceptual draft of a related topic, what had basically occurred is that film, both still and moving pictures, brought in the ability to portray topics, and by that we can largely say the topic was young women, in an easy to do and lurid manner.  Such things has always existed, of course, to a degree, but when illustrated magazines largely relied on illustrators, many of whom have been featured here, the effort and public reaction generally tended to preclude too much cross over from pornography and near pornography into popular media.

Film started to erode that significantly, and the real erosion really took off in the movie industry.  There were not controls on the production of movies at all, and as a result, starting almost from the onset of film, moviemakers found that they could insert some degree of pornography and get away with it.  Only partially obscured bathing scenes, or ones that weren't obscured at all, made their way into dramas.  Even famous producers, like Cecil B. DeMille, made silent films that were wholesale lurid, with a DeMille example ironically supposedly being one about early saints, the same featuring scenses of chained writhing nude women.

This has promoted an effort to do something about it, but the cross-over of private scandal into the news, coming from the movie industry, really pushed it over the top.  Divorces and scandalous deaths became headline news.  When Fatty Arbuckle was arrested it provided the final push.

Arbuckle would, of course, later be acquitted, but the scandal did give an unseemly look into things that people would no longer tolerate.  No matter what the truth of the tragedy was, it did feature a story of illicit sex (it seems) and scandalous behavior.  People had enough.

Faced with this, the movie industry organized and Hays was brought over. The Production Code would stave off the disaster and for around forty years keep American film from sinking into the moral sewer.  In the late 1960s the industry, looking at the time, calculated that they could break free from it, and they did, although not to their credit or to that of the arts.

On this day in 1922, the Anglo-Irish Treaty officially went into effect.  In a really confusing technicality, the Irish had two governments during this period, one being a provisional government that was to rule for the remainder of the year until the full transition into a Free State was accomplished.  However, as the Irish already had formed a Parliament, the existing Dail, and simply kept it in existence and perhaps can be regarded as the real government.  The Dáil Éireann was the technical successor to the Dáil of the Irish Republic, which had ceased to exist in December 6, 1921.  While De Valera claimed that it remained in existence after he lost what amounted to a vote of no confidence, nobody had challenged the transition up to that point.  Technically the current Dáil dates to 1937, when Ireland adopted a constitution declaring itself to be a republic,  and the Dáil Éireann became its lower house.

Members of the provisional government were, in fact, members of the Dáil Éireann, so in reality the latter rather than the former was the government.  Michael Collins, the famous republican guerilla (terrorist) leader of the Anglo Irish War was made the chairman of the Provisional Government.  He had been instrumental in negotiating the treaty with the United Kingdom.

The President of the League of Nations called for the evacuation of 120,000 Armenian Christians from Turkey.

Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post illustration featured a boy looking at stereographs.  Not one of his better illustrations in my view.

Judge was looking for smiling faces, and featured an alluring young woman coming out of a makeup case.

On the same day, The Country Gentleman gave us a different portrayal of a young woman with an illustration by Katherine R. Wireman.

I like that illustration better.

Mary Plant and Leicester Faust, the latter part of the Busch brewing family, married in St. Louis.

Friday December 16, 1921. Animals at work and leisure

Secretary to the U.S. disarmament conference, Basil Miles, and his dog. /

Elanor Bulter Roosevelt, wife of Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (the son of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Moving kiosk in front of White House.

Parliament approved the creation of the Irish Free State by approving the recently negotiated treaty. The Dail had yet to convene on the matter.

 

Wednesday, December 7, 1921 Peace and Violence.

President Harding at Red Cross meeting.

On this day in 1921 King George V summoned parliament while President Eamon de Valera summoned his cabinet, both to approve the Anglo-Irish Treaty securing independence for Ireland as a dominion within the British Commonwealth.  Norther Ireland's Stormont was asked by its head, Sir James Craig, to delay action on the agreement.

A riot ensued in Chicago when police attempted arrest striking meatpackers.  360,000 people would become involved in the riot.

Farmers group meeting with President Harding at the White House.

Monday December 5, 1921. Reflections from a distant mirror.

A Joint Congressional committee called upon President Harding to inform him of the opening of the 67th Congress.

The 67th Congress of the United States convened.  It had been elected more than a year earlier, so suffice it to say, things were not going swimmingly, something we can appreciate now.

The first bill they considered was the budget for the following year, which ran a deficit, something we're also familiar with now.

In London, Irish delegates met with British ones and came to a compromise in which Northern Ireland could choose to remain separate from Southern Ireland and an oath of allegiance would only be administered to members of the Irish parliament.  Ireland would accept dominion status.

The Irish negotiators were in the difficult position of receiving very little in the way of instruction from the Irish President Éamon de Valera who remained in Ireland during negotiations and who simply gave the negotiators nearly carte blanc authority.  The compromise reached was a real one, giving up on dreams of an Irish republic and accepting an ongoing connection with the United Kingdom, although that no doubt reflected the wishes of most of the Irish.

The British football association banned women from the game.

 

The United States Supreme court upheld picketing during labor strikes as an exercise of the 1st Amendment.

December 4, 1921. Stalled

The Irish delegation rejected British proposals for dominion status for Ireland, partition of Ulster away from southern Ireland, and administration of an oath of allegiance to Irish governmental employees and members of the Irish parliament.

And it looked like the Arbuckle jury was having trouble reaching a decision.

Ataturk was reviewing his army.

Ataturk, December 4, 1921.

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.

Thursday December 1, 1941. Lighter than air.

The US airship C-7 flew from Hampton Roads, Virginia to Washington D.C. filled with helium, rather than explosive hydrogen, making it the first airship to use that gas.

This was a large event given that helium, of which the United States has a large supply, is so much safer in this use than hydrogen.

The Federal Government was dealing with other modes of transportation on this day as well.  The task was to find a safer way of delivering the mail, in light of robberies which had been occuring.

Postmaster General Will Hayes and other Post Office officials and a Marine inspecting new armored trucks proposed as a means of protection for the mails.

On the same day, the Federal government imposed regulations on the right to radio broadcast commercially. The regulations required a license and set aside two specific AM frequencies for their operations.

The United Kingdom announced that it intended to offer dominion status to Ireland, but that it intended to retain Ulster.  Talks between Irish Republicans and the British had become dangerously stalled, with there being predictions of a resumption of fighting between the two forces.

The US was looking to introduce a new silver dollar design for 1922.

Director of the Mint, Raymond T. Baker, and Anthony de Francisci examining model of new silver dollar to be issued by Jan. 1st.

A statute to Date was unveiled in Washington D.C. on the 600th anniversary of his birth.

All things Italian remained in vogue at the time.

Friday, November 25, 1921. Horses in town.

President Harding and his secretary, George Christian went horseback riding in Washington D. C.

I'm not a big Harding fan, to say the least, but the thought that he did this, raises him up a little bit in my esteem.

Harding, fwiw, was 55 years old at the time these photos were taken, giving us an insight into how people of that era frequently looked considerably older to us than those at the same age today.  He was just two years away from dying at age 47 at this time.

Negotiations between Irish representatives and English ones broke down over "the oath", i.e., the British requirement that Ireland be made a dominion and that members of its parliament take an oath of allegiance accordingly.

The United States began the withdrawal of its occupation forces in Germany.

Crown Prince Hirohito became the Regent of Japan, occupying the position in light of his ailing father's inability to do so.

Arnold Genthe, well known portrait photographer, who also frequently tended to photograph portraits of young women wearing little in the way of clothing, took a nice portrait of Miss Elanor Clack.

Thursday, November 24, 1921. Thanksgiving Day.

 

Today was Thanksgiving Day across the nation, the day falling on the same point in the calendar in 1921 which it now does.  As readers here know, during the Great Depression the day was moved, much to the consternation of some.

The news on the day included news of war and peace, with fears that negotiations to end the Anglo-Irish War, and grant Ireland independence, were about to collapse.

The day saw an inspection of Troop 2 of the Boy Scouts in Casper, with that troop having just received honors as noted.  This is of interest in that the newspaper didn't really bother to take much note that the troop was associated with St. Mark's Episcopal Church.  The association of the Boy Scouts with churches was so strong, it being part of the Muscular Christianity movement, that this was simply assumed.

I'm surprised, frankly, that this troop wasn't Troop 1, given that the Episcopal Church was very much a major American protestant denomination in an era in which protestant denominations were culturally dominant.

Interesting that gasoline prices were an issue.  As of January 2020, the price would be roughly equivalent to the current one, but with the current inflationary cycle the country is now in, that would be difficult to really determine now.

Disaster struck in Gillette:

Today In Wyoming's History: November 24: 1921

1921  A serious fire in Gillette, WY destroyed several of the towns landmark buildings.

Thursday September 29, 1921. The forgotten depression of 1920-22.

 

Mrs Jos. Leiters shop, in Washington D. C. on this day in 1921.

On this day in 1921 the US government released a report showing record unemployment, something no doubt influencing shops like the one depicted above.  

The end of World War One was really the cause, which had sent the country into a depression.  It was about to reverse with a boom.

Senator Richard P. Ernst taking some time out to go fishing in Washington D.C. on this day in 1921.

The record unemployment is what caused the government to sponsor a conference, depicted here the other day, although at the time the Federal Government took little direct involvement in the economy.

Most Rev. Archbishop Sekizru Arae was visiting Washington D.C. on September 29, 1921.

In some ways, the slump would be permanent for agriculture with farmers never returning to agricultural parity with other occupations thereafter.

On this day in 1921, David Lloyd George invited Eamon de Valera to engage in new negotiations regarding the status of Ireland.  De Valera accepted the following day.

Sunday September 4, 1921. Replies.

On this day in 1921, Eamon de Valera replied to the British proposals for dominion status, agreeing to it but on the basis co equal to that of other dominions such as Canada, and including full union with Northern Ireland.

The first Italian Grand Prix race was also held on this day.
 

Monday, August 15, 1921. News from the old country.

 

Wednesday July 20, 1921. Attacking the Ostfriesland.

The Army Air Corps sank the Ostfriesland, the largest German vessel to be subject to the Air Corp's aerial bombing experiment.

It was also the last vessel to be sunk.

The SMS Ostfriesland was a 1908 vintage German battleship and its use as demonstration proved to be a bit more accurate than had been planned for.  The effort was watched by the Secretaries of War and the Navy and Gen. John J. Pershing and only 13 of the 52 bombs launched from Army Air Corps airplanes struck her, a not atypical ratio.  This was, of course, before dive bombing and torpedo runs became the areal norm for attacking surface vessels.

Worse yet, only four of the bombs detonated.

A second run, using two 2,000 lbs bombs, occurred the following day, which did finally sink the former German dreadnought.

While the experiment confirmed what had already been proven, that aircraft could sink any surface ship, it also showed that some ships weren't easy to sink and that conventional bombing, such as engaged in by the Air Corps, had its limitations  In the following years before World War Two the Navy would take this to heart and develop specialized aircraft and weapons for attacking both surface ships and submarines.  The Air Corps, however, continued to take the view that bombers were effective against surface ships, which would prove to be in error in World War Two.

Parliament approved Prime Minister David Lloyd George's peace proposal to the Irish Republicans. The authorization envisioned an offer which granted Ireland complete domestic government, Dominion status, but which reserved defense and foreign relations to the United Kingdom.

If this seems rather limited, it was actually the status that other British Dominions, such as Canada and Australia, had at the time.  It was not until the Statute of Wesminster of 1931 that the Dominions obtained control of their own foreign relations, including the ability to declare war.

Thursday July 14, 1921. Sentences, reports and passings.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were found guilty of the murder of Frederic A. Parmeter and Alessadro Bernadelli in a robbery.

Vanzetti and Sacco.

Both men were Italian born anarchists. Their trial was problematic to the degree that it can be regarded as potentially fatally flawed, although historians have concluded that both men were probably involved in the anarchist plot that resulted in the crime even if they were not the murderers.  Of course, their involvement may have been tangential, and nobody should receive the death penalty for a crime they did not commit.

The trial was not the celebrated cause it is now immediately at the time, but problems with the trial soon became evident, and it then became widely known.

Eamon de Valera met with Prime Minister David Lloyd George in London.  Following the two-hour meeting, Lloyd George met with King George V concerning the earlier meeting.

Morgan Bonaparte Mizell, made famous through a Frederic Remington illustration, died at age 58.  He was a hard living Florida "cracker" cowboy.

Wednesday July 13, 1921. A rump Irish Parliament meets, a treaty ends, layoffs at the War Department, sinking empty ships, request for nature funding.

The Southern Ireland Parliament, that body set up by the British Parliament for Irish self rule in the south, convened, but only twelve Senators and two members of the House of Commons attended.  This was likely no surprise as the British had entered into an armistice with the Dáil Éireann a few days prior, that being the self-declared legislative body of Ireland that had declared independence.

The Dáil Éireann had made use of British election laws when the Sinn Fein ran members for Parliament in 1919.  They did well and those members refused to take their seats in Parliament, declaring instead that they were the Irish Parliament.  It was, at the time, a unicameral body with only the equivalent of a House of Commons. A Senate would be added in 1922, thereby effectively duplicating the structure of the anticipated Southern Ireland Parliament.

Fifteen-year-old Jimmie Bradley testified in front of Congress in support of funding for nature study.

The Anglo Japanese Alliance, entered into in 1902, expired.

The alliance had been the legal basis of the Japanese Empire entering World War One on the Allied side, although it can be debated whether or not the Japanese would have entered anyway.  At any rate, they did as a British ally.  The alliance had served Japan well in its naval development but at the time the Pacific members of the British Commonwealth were increasingly worried about Japan as a potential enemy.  Indeed, a conference of Commonwealth members was ongoing at the time the treaty was allowed to expire.

On the same day, the U.S. War Department laid off 21,174 employees as a cost savings measure.

Harding reviewed a portrait of Gen. Pershing, the hero of the recent war, from the U.S. prospective.

The United States Army Air Corps sank the German destroyer SMS G102, a war prize ship, from the air.  The Air Corps, under Billy Mitchell, was busy proving its ability to sink ships, which would soon prove to be to the irritation of the Navy.

President Harding was given a chair made from the remnants of the USS Revenge, a pre War of 1812 warship.

Laddie Boy got to sit on it too.

The ship only served six years before running aground off of Rhode Island in 1811.  Its remains may have been located about a decade ago.