Monday. June 11, 1921. The truce between Ireland and the United Kingdom ends the Anglo Irish War.

The flag of Ireland.

Hannah Carey, a 48 year old waitress in Killarney, was killed by a shot fired from a Royal Irish Constabulary truck.  She was likely not a victim of murder, but of an accident, as the RIC was reacting to an IRA attack upon a British Army unit just minutes prior.

She was the last causality of the Anglo Irish War.

On this day in 1921 the Anglo Irish War came to an end under an agreement between the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the putative Irish Republic. The agreement had not only included an agreement to end the fighting, but also to engage in talks that would obviously outline the formalities, and there were indeed many to work out, of the existence between the two countries.   The Irish delegation would leave for London on July 12, the following day.

The history of the English presence in Ireland is a complicated and not really subject to easy summation.  England was a more powerful nation, comparatively, to Ireland dating back to the early days of the English kingdoms and as England's rule began to consolidate in a single king, that king often made claims of authority over Ireland even though they really were incapable of being enforced.

In 1169 the Normans, who were then into a century of their rule over England, having conquered the English thrown in 1066, invaded Ireland.  The invasion started in the form of an Anglo Norman mercenary intervention on behalf of one of the Irish kings but grew in scale until the English crown intervened against both the Irish kings and the Anglo Norman mercenaries.  The Crown then preceded over a period of years to consolidate its power in Ireland.

It is therefore commonly claimed that the Anglo Norman Invasion brought about "800 years of English rule" but it is not really true.  Even after the invasion, direct English rule was somewhat weak and grew weaker. The Anglo Normans assimilated surprisingly rapidly and by the 15th Century English rule was mostly titular with Ireland ruled by its own parliament and the Crown largely ignored.

The Reformation, however, rapidly changes this and in 1542 King Henry VIII, not content with all of the other destructive things he was doing, proclaimed himself the King of Ireland.  This was backed up by English military might and the contest took on a religious aspect given the English separation from Rome.  Indeed, the British effectively chose to fight out some of their contests for power on Irish ground.  Real British rule in Ireland, therefore, really dates to 1542.

In 1801 Parliament consolidate the rule with an Act of Union, making Ireland part of the United Kingdom. This was a political development that had been ongoing in Great Britain and had already brought about the union between Scotland and Wales that still exists.  This union was more problematic in Ireland, however, given that Ireland's population was overwhelmingly Catholic and Catholics were repressed in the United Kingdom.  The union was never really accepted by the Irish and a series of moves towards regaining independence occurred in following years.

Prior to World War One a strong move towards "home rule", which would have essentially granted Ireland regained independence in association with the Crown, leaving the British Parliament with authority on foreign policy, gained grown. These moves were strongly supported and strongly opposed.  They were gaining enough strength prior to the Great War that, had the war not broken out, Ireland would have obtained home rule prior to 1920, and the following Irish history would likely have developed differently.

As it was, moves towards an open civil war were already afoot prior to World War One and indeed they caused an infamous mutiny within the ranks of the British Army in Ireland which looked as if it would oppose any sort of Irish political freedom.  The British were still dealing with the aftermath of this mutiny when the Great War broke out, and the war quickly set all of these issues aside.

As we've been dealing here, the one group that didn't put them aside were Irish republicans, which struck during the late stages of the war itself in open rebellion.  This move was very unpopular inside of Ireland whose sons were fighting in France, but it did gain international attention. At the same time, the republicans took the wise course of action of forming their own putative representative government, setting up rival institutions to the official British ones where they could, and declaring themselves to be the legitimate government of the nation.

Following the Great War the British government was wise enough to see the handwriting on the wall, even though surrendering one of the major portions of the United Kingdom was a gigantic concession.  To some degree, much of recent UK history has stemmed from this, as the UK has slowly devolved rule to the other nations that remain in the United Kingdom.

This was of interest, to say the least, to the Irish American community in the United States.  An article on how this was reported on can be read here:

American reporting of truce in Ireland, July 1921

Former President and current Supreme Court Justice William Howards Taft was sworn in as the Chief Justice.

On the same day, President Harding signed a new Naval Appropriations bill that reduced spending for the Navy by $80,000,000 for the upcoming year.

In fairness, the US was still winding down from World War One and now had a gigantic surplus of ships.  The American people, for their part, were growing into disillusionment about their recent role in the Great War and the thesis that it was all a big plot by industrialist was starting to gain steam.

Perhaps related, or not, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor concluded a meeting with a call for global disarmament by 1923.

The Bogd Khan was restored to titular head of Mongolia by Mongolian revolutionaries.

He was a Buddhist monk whose claim to power, or perhaps burden of it, was similar to that of the Dali Lama's and in fact he'd been born in Tibet and proclaimed the Bogd Khan in the presence of the Dali Lama and the Panchen Lama.  He had ruled the country as its theocratic head since the onset of the Chinese revolution in 1911, but his powers were limited due to his religious position.  During his first reign he'd been the subject of a propaganda campaign lead by the Chinese who wished to remove him and install a communist government.

In 1919 he was removed by the Chinese government as the crisis on the border with the infant Soviet Union developed.  Showing his position in the country's people, he was reinstalled, ironically, by the communist revolutionaries on this day in 1921 and would retain his position, being the last to occupy it, until his death in 1924.

Sunday July 10, 1921. Bloody Sunday.

This day became known as "Bloody Sunday" in the Anglo Irish War, but its just one of several days termed that in association with Irish conflicts

Tensions were high leading into the agreed to July 11 cease fire between the UK and the leadership of Dáil Eireann, the putative legislative body of Ireland, with some protestants in Northern Ireland feeling they'd been sold out as the British clearly intended to come to an agreement resulting in Irish independence.  In the early morning hours of the 10th the Royal Irish Constabulary attempted to launch a raid on Republican sites in advance of the truce, but the Irish tactic of blowing whistles and banging on things, used for decades, frustrated the attempt and the IRA ambushed a RIC truck.  General violence broke out in the city thereafter.

Elsewhere, and unconnected with Belfast, a group of IRA men caught and executed four British soldiers in what seems to have been a reprisal for an earlier British killing of an IRA man.

The events perhaps indicated that while arriving on a negotiated treaty giving Ireland independence was now inevitable, in some quarters of the country some level of violence might occur in the future.

Also, like a lot of events of the Anglo Irish War, while the occurrences were really horrific, the level of death that's associated with them by myth isn't as high as it was in reality, which none the less doesn't reduce its tragic nature.

Friday July 8, 1921. Whiskey in some jars but not others. End of the Anglo Irish War, Prohibition, and the formation of Land o Lakes.

On this day in 1921 the Irish Republicans and the British government agreed to a truce in order to commence discussions concerning Irish independence.  The truce was to go into effect on July 11.

De Valera's note to David Lloyd George at the conclusion of the meetings read:

Sir, The desire you express on the part of the British Government to end the centuries of conflict between the peoples of these two islands, and to establish relations of neighbourly harmony, is the genuine desire of the people of Ireland. 

I have consulted with my colleagues and secured the views of the representatives of the minority of our Nation in regard to the invitation you have sent me. 

In reply, I desire to say that I am ready to meet and discuss with you on what bases such a Conference as that proposed can reasonably hope to achieve the object desired. 

I am, Sir, Faithfully yours, Eamon de Valera

With this, a major mental impasse had been reached in the conflict with the British all but agreeing to some form of Irish independence.

Land o Lakes agricultural co op was formed.  We noted their formation date, and the controversy surrounding their former promotional image, here:

Exit Mia.

On July 8, 1921, Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association, a dairy cooperative, formed for the purpose of marketing their products.  They didn't like the name, however, and held a contest that ended up selecting a submission made in 1926, that being Land O Lakes, noting the nature of Minnesota itself, although we don't associate lakes much with dairy.    In 1926 the coop received a painting of an Indian woman holding a carton of their butter, looking forward at the viewer, with lakes and forests in the background.  They liked it so much they adopted it as their label and while they had it stylized by Jess Betlach, an illustrator, the image itself remained remarkably consistent with the original design, which says something as illustrations by Betlach sometimes approached the cheesecake level and depictions of Indian women in the period often strayed into depictions of European American models instead of real Indian women.

For reasons unknown to me, the depiction of the young Indian women acquired the nickname "Mia" over time.

And now she's been removed from the scene, quite literally.

In 1928 the Land O Lakes dairy cooperative hired an advertising agency to come up with a logo for them. The logo that was produced featured an Indian woman kneeling in front of a lake scene, with forests surrounding the lake, and holding a box of Land O Lakes butter in a fashion that basically depicted the woman offering it to the viewer.  From time to time Land O Lakes actually changed the logo on a temporary basis, but it always featured Mia, but not always in the same pose.  On at least one occasion she was shown in profile near a lake and seemingly working (churning) something in a pot.  On another, she was rowing a canoe.

Frederic Remington nocturn, The Luckless Hunter.  This is a fairly realistic depiction of a native hunter in winter, on the typically small range horse of the type actually in use on the Northern Plains.

The adoption of Indian depictions and cultural items as symbols in European American culture goes a long ways back, so Land O Lakes adopting the logo in 1928 was hardly a novelty.  In ways that we can hardly grasp now, European American culture began to admire and adopt Indian symbols and depictions even while the armed struggle between the native peoples and European Americans was still going on.  Frontiers men dating back all the way to the 18th Century adopted items of native clothing, which may be credited to its utility as much as anything else.  In 1826, however, a tribe was romantically treated in Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, which virtually defined the "noble" image of the Indian even as the "savage" image simultaneously kept on keeping on.  The popular genre of Western art continued to do the same in the last half of the 19th Century, and often by the same artists (with Russel being an exception, as he always painted natives sympathetically, and Shreyvogel being the counter exception, as always did the opposite).  Cities and towns provided an example of this as their European American settlers used Indian geographic names from fairly early on, after the original bunch of European place names and honorifics ceased to become the absolute rule, with some western towns, such as Cheyenne, being named after Indian tribes that were literally being displaced as the naming occured.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, i.e., Sitting Bull, in 1885, the year he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.  Sitting Bull received $50.00 per week, as sum that's equivalent to $1,423.00 in current U.S. Dollars.  He worked for the show for four months, during which time he made money on the side charging for autographs.  This came only nine years after he was present at Little Big Horn and only five years before his death at the hands of Indian Police at age 59, just two weeks before Wounded Knee.

The entire cultural habit took on a new form, however, in the late 19th Century, just as the Frontier closed. Oddly, the blood was hardly frozen at Wounded Knee when a highly romanticized depiction of American Indians began.  Starting perhaps even before the last major bloodletting of the Frontier had occurred, it arguably began with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, which employed Indian warriors who had only lately been engaged in combat with the United States.

The principal Indian performers, if we wish to consider them that, were men, as were most of the performers.  But women had a role in Wild West shows as well,  as did children.  As Cody was not unsympathetic to Indians in general, his portrayals of Indian women and children were not likely to have been too excessive, but this is not true of all wild west shows of the era, some of which grossly exaggerated female Indian dress or which dressed them down for exploitative reasons.

Nonetheless, as this occurred, a real romantic view of Plains Indians arose and white performers affected Indian dress or exaggerated Indian dress and an entire romanticization of a people who were still very much alive and not living in the best of circumstances oddly took off.  White performers made the circuit performing as romantic Indian couples and an adopted romanticized Indian culture seeped into the general American culture in various ways, including in the form of depictions and ritual.

Camp Fire Girls in 1917.  The first half of the 20th Century saw the rise of the scouting movment and in the English speaking world this spread to girls after it has become very successful with boys.  The Boy Scout movement had military scouting and hence military men as the model for its idealized muscular Christianity movement, but no such equivalent existed for girls.  In the US this came to be compensated for, however, by the adoption of the Indian woman as the model, as she was outdoorsy and rugged by default.

This saw its expression in numerous different ways, including in its incorporation into the Boy Scout inspired female scouting organizations and in popular "Indian maiden" literature.  But it also saw the development of the use of depictions of Indians in advertising and popular culture.

Out of uniform Girl Scouts in 1912 in clothing and hair styles that were inspired by presumed native female dress.

In 1901 one of the legendary American motorcycle companies simply named itself "Indian", for example.  Savage Firearms named itself that in 1894, with there being no intent to demean Indians but rather to name itself after Indian warriors.  Cleveland called its baseball team the "Indians".  The NFL being a late comer to American professional sports, the Washington football franchise didn't get around to naming itself the "Redskins" until 1932 in contrast.

The psychology behind this cultural adaption is an interesting one, with a conquering people doing the rare thing of partially co-opting the identify of the conquered people, even as those people remained in a period of trying to adopt to the constantly changing policy of the post frontier American West.  Celebrated in their pre conquest state, and subject to any number of experiments in their day to day lives, it was as if there were two different groups of people being dealt with, the theoretical and the real, with the real not doing so well with the treatment they were receiving.  Indeed, that's still the case.

Following World War Two this began to be reconsidered, with that reconsideration really setting in during the 1970s.  Books and films, and films based on books, that reflected this reconsideration became widely considered. Thomas Berger's brilliant Little Big Man remains in its brilliant and accurate reflection of Plains Indian culture what True Grit is to the culture of the southern American European American West.  Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee destroyed any remaining claim the Army had to the event being a battle definitively.  The 1973 American Indian Movement occupation of Wounded Knee brought the whole thing into sharp focus.  Kids who had gone to school their entire lives with Big Chief writing tablets would finish the decade out with Son Of Big Chief, who looked a lot more like he'd been with AIM at Wounded Knee or maybe even at Woodstock.

American Indian Movement flag.

As this occured, people questioned the old symbols and depictions. But it wasn't really until the late 1990s that the commercial and popular ones began to go.

Slowly, and sometimes controversially, after that time, people began to reconsider the depiction of people it had used in advertising where those people had been minorities.  It didn't just apply to Indians, of course, but too all sorts of things.  Sombrero wearing Mexican cartoon characters and bandits disappeared from Tex-Mex fast food signs.  Quaker Oats' "Aunt Jemima went from being a woman who was clearly associated with Southern household post civil war servants, who had only lately been slaves, in an undoubtedly racist depiction, to being a smiling middle aged African American woman whom Quaker Oats hoped, probably accurately", would cause people to forget what being an "aunt" or "uncle" meant to African Americans.  As late as 1946 Mars Inc. would feel free to do something similar but without the racist depiction and use the "uncle" moniker  and a depiction of  well dressed elderly African American for Uncle Ben's Rice, something they've kept doing as they'd never gone as far as Quaker Oats.  And these are just common well known examples.  There are leagues of others.

But removing labels and depictions has been slow.  The Washington football team remains tagged with the clearly offensive name "the Redskins".  Cleveland finally retired the offensive Chief Wahoo from their uniforms only in 2018.

So what about Mia?

She started leaving, sort of, in 2018 when the logo was redesigned so that the knees of the kneeling woman were no longer visible, in part because in the age of easy computer manipulation she became a target for computer pornification by males with a juvenile mindset. That fact, however probably amplified the criticism of the logo itself, which was changed to being just a head and shoulder depiction.  Now, she's just gone.

But did that really make sense, or achieve anything, in context?

A literal association between Native Americans and dairy would be odd and was probably never intended.  While native agriculture varied widely, no Indian kept cattle until after they'd been introduced by European Americans and cattle are, of course, not native to North America.  Indians did adapt to ranching in the West, something that's rarely noted for some reason, and indeed the entire Mexican ranching industry is a mestizo one and therefore a blending of two cultures by definition.  On the northern plains some Indians were working as cowboy and even ranchers by the early 20th Century and Southwestern tribes had adopted livestock in the form of sheep by the mid 19th.

But dairy cattle are a different deal and there's no, in so far as I'm aware, Native American association with it.  Indeed, 74% of Native Americans are lactose intolerant.*  This isn't surprising as its fairly well established that lactose tolerance is a product of evolutionary biology.  By and large, the vast majority of cultures have had no reason over time to consume the milk of cattle they were keeping, which were kept first for food, and then for labor, and then as things developed, for labor until they could not, at which time they became food.  Milk wasn't high on the list.  And for Native Americans, being one of the three inhabited continents in which cattle were not native, it was obviously off the list.**

Some critics have called the imagery racist. North Dakota state Rep. Ruth Buffalo, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, says it goes “hand-in-hand with with human and sex trafficking of our women and girls, by depicting Native women as sex objects".  But that comment seems misplaced with this logo. She's definitely not the odd blue eyed "Navajo" woman wearing blue beads that still appears on the doors of the semi tractors of Navajo Express.

Indeed, the irony of Mia is that in her last depictions she was illustrated by Patrick DesJarlait, who was a Red Lakes Ojibwe from Minnesota.  He not only painted her, but he painted her wearing an Ojibwe dress.  So she was depicted as an Indian woman, by an Indian artist.

It's hard to see a man panting a woman of his own tribe, fully and appropriately dressed, as being a racist or exploitative act.

Indeed, the opposite really seems true.  The original dairy co-op was really trying to honor their state in the name and they went the next step and acknowledged the original owners.  Mia was the symbol of the original occupants.

And now she's gone, and with that, the acknowledgment of who was there first.

Which doesn't seem like a triumph for Native acknowledgment.

________________________________________________________________________________

*As are 70% of African Americans and 15% of European Americans. Surprisingly 53% of Mexican Americans are, in spite of dairy products being common to the Mexican dietary culture.  A whopping 95% of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant.

Just recently I've come to the conclusion that I'm somewhat lactose intolerant myself, something I seem to be growing into in old age.  Only mildly so, and I've only noticed it recently.  My children, however, have problems with dairy.  My wife does not. So they must get that via me.

***Cattle are not native to the new world or Australia, but are found just about everywhere else.

Prohibition raids were going on in the Washington D. C. era on this day a century ago.

Pouring whiskey into a sewer

In legal proceedings elsewhere, French observers at German warc rime trials departed after declaring the German proceedings "a farce".

Monday, July 4, 1921. Independence Day.

July 4, 1921, was a Monday, and a day of celebratory parades across the nation.

There were some protests too, including this protesting parade float from that day, protesting Prohibition.

Source:  Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today Subreddit.

Walter Reed Hospital had a parade.

And in the Petworth District of Washington D. C. there was also a cebration.

Events in Vienna Virginia featured a horse race.

In Ireland, Eamon de Valera held a peace conference in Dublin.  Various southern Unionist attended, but James Craig, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, refused as his invitation was wrongly addressed.

The U.S. Navy took stations off of Tampico in anticipation of rioting due to refineries being shut down as a result of the recent Mexican tariff on oil exports increase.

Thursday, June 30, 1921. Former President Taft becomes the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

 William Howard Taft was nominated, and confirmed, as Chief Justice of the United States.

It's a position that, unlike the Presidency, he'd very much wanted.  In fact, he'd been lobbying behind the scenes for it and believed he'd been promised the position during Harding's campaign.  Harding had in fact promised to another person, a Senator, as well.

The United Kingdom released a number of IRA prisoners from prison in anticipation of opening talks with Sinn Fein.  On the same day, Sweden abolished the death penalty.

General Electric, RCA and AT&T entered into an agreement with Westinghouse to develop common technologies for radios in an effort to boost that budding technology.

Tuesday, June 28, 1921. Gatherings.

The Parliament of Southern Ireland attempted to convene, but failed as only four members showed up.  The failure signified the transfer of loyalties to the putative Irish Republic by the residents of the southern Irish counties.

General Pershing was photographed with General Harford.

I don't know who Harford was. Usually details on a U.S. Army senior commander of this period are easy to find, but in this instance, I'm drawing a blank.  He was in the 2nd Division at some time, which we can tell as he's wearing its divisional patch.

Harford on the same day:

The British Air Navigation and Transport Act took effect, giving the United Kingdom the authority to regulate air travel in the Commonwealth.  And the Kingdom of Yugoslavia adopted its first constitution.

Saturday, June 25, 1921. Peace feelers.

 

On this day in 1921, Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent an invitation to Eamon de Valera, putative president of the self declared Republic of Ireland, to discuss peace.  De Valera would accept the following day.

Oil production commenced in the Los Angeles Basin.

Wedesday, June 22, 1921. Reducing the Army, Hope for Ireland.

President Harding signed a bill reducing the size of the U.S. Army from 220,000 to 150,000 men.

Virginia National Guard being inspected at Camp Meade, July 23, 1921.

Given the events that would occur twenty years later, the reduction of the size of the inter bellum army has often been criticized, but it's frankly highly unwarranted.  You will often hear things like "In 1939 the U.S. Army was smaller than that of Romania.

Well, sure it was.  The US in 39 was a giant democracy with a large militia establishment bordered to the north by the world's most polite people and to the south by a nation that troubled us, but which was unlikely to attack us.

The US had always maintained a very small peacetime Army and that had, frankly, been conducive to its development as a stable democracy.

Indeed, the traditional military structure of the United States had been based on a professional Navy, a large militia establishment controlled principally by the states, and a small standing army.  Very early on the standing army had been so small it basically didn't exist at all, but that had proven impractical so a tiny professional army became the rule.  After the War of 1812 the peacetime army slightly expanded in size and continued to do so after the Army obtained a frontier policing role following the Mexican War, but it was never overall very large.  

It also lacked any sort of foreign deployment application prior to the Spanish American War.  The Army was thought of as mostly defensive in nature, in case of a foreign invasion, save for the potentiality of trouble with our immediate neighbors.  When the need to deploy ground troops overseas occurred prior to the 1890s, which it occasionally did, it was the Marines, a small force that was part of the Navy, and not the Army, that was used.

Large mobilizations did come during times of war and the size of the Federal Army was always expanded during them by necessity. The use of large numbers of mobilized militia were also a feature of such wars.  Really large mobilizations were very rare, and occurred only during wartime, with the Civil War being the outstanding example prior to World War One.

World War One had been a test of a major reorganization of the Army in the early 20th Century when Congress officially made the National Guard the organized reserve of the Army.  The Army itself had been enormously opposed to what became known as the "Dick  Act" after its sponsor, Congressman Dick, who himself was a longtime member of the National Guard.  For years before World War One the National Guard had sought this status while, simultaneously finding itself frequently used as state police.  Perhaps the defining moment in that is when the Colorado National Guard found itself being called out for that purpose to break a strike at Ludlow, Colorado, a use that ended up being bloody and which necessitated the deployment of the U.S. Army as a result.

 Colorado National Guardsmen at Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914.

That event came a good decade after the Dick Act, but it symbolized what Guardsmen hoped to avoid.  In 1916 things began to change for good when the crisis on the Mexican border necessitated the mobilization, in stages, of the entire National Guard, followed by its demobilization just weeks before the U.S. declaration of war on Germany.  

The start of the Great War none the less saw a resumption of the struggle with some in the Regular Army actually arguing that the Guard should not be deployed, a biased, and frankly stupid, argument.  In the end, the Guard basically saved the American involvement in World War One and rendered it effective as the Regular Army was far too small to provide any immediate assistance anywhere.  While the Regular Army remained biased against the Guard, and would all the way into the early 1980s, the direction was set.  Following World War One a major reorganization of the National Guard commenced with state units for the first time starting to be assigned roles by the U.S. Army that contemplated full mobilization in time of war.

In 1921 that full mobilization was something that was regarded as possible, but not immediately likely. Already by that time some visionaries worried themselves about a resurgent Germany, although Germany in 1921 was on the floor.  Many in the military establishment were worried about Japan, which was beginning to flex its naval muscles in a fashion that clearly demonstrated its resentment at not being accorded great power status by other nations.  It is not true that American thought no future war was possible, they did, but they thought that a large militia establishment, a strong navy, and a small army, could rise to any challenge.  In that they were prove correct.

On this day in 1921, John Garfield Emery, the head of the American Legion, had his portrait taken.

The American Legion was a very powerful institution at the time, far more so than now.  The voice of Great War veterans, it represented a group that had come out of the Great War determined not to be forgotten, and not to be silent.

King George V opened the new Parliament of Northern Ireland with a speech calling for Irish reconciliation.

King George V.

His speech stated:

Members of the Senate and of the House of Commons 

For all who love Ireland, as I do with all my heart, this is a profoundly moving occasion in Irish history. My memories of the Irish people date back to the time when I spent many happy days in Ireland as a midshipman. My affection for the Irish people has been deepened by the successive visits since that time, and I have watched with constant sympathy the course of their affairs. 

I could not have allowed myself to give Ireland by deputy alone My earnest prayers and good wishes in the new era which opens with this ceremony, and I have therefore come in person, as the Head of the Empire, to inaugurate this Parliament on Irish soil. 

I inaugurate it with deep-felt hope, and I feel assured that you will do your utmost to make it an instrument of happiness and good government for all parts of the community which you represent. 

This is a great and critical occasion in the history of the Six Counties, but not for the Six Counties alone, for everything which interests them touches Ireland, and everything which touches Ireland finds an echo in the remotest parts of the Empire. 

Few things are more earnestly desired throughout the English speaking world than a satisfactory solution of the age long Irish problems, which for generations embarrassed our forefathers, as they now weigh heavily upon us. 

Most certainly there is no wish nearer My own heart than that every man of Irish birth, whatever be his creed and wherever be his home, should work in loyal co-operation with the free communities on which the British Empire is based. 

I am confident that the important matters entrusted to the control and guidance of the Northern Parliament will be managed with wisdom and with moderation, with fairness and due regard to every faith and interest, and with no abatement of that patriotic devotion to the Empire which you proved so gallantly in the Great War. 

Full partnership in the United Kingdom and religious freedom Ireland has long enjoyed. She now has conferred upon her the duty of dealing with all the essential tasks of domestic legislation and government; and I feel no misgiving as to the spirit in which you who stand here to-day will carry out the all important functions entrusted to your care. 

My hope is broader still. The eyes of the whole Empire are on Ireland to-day, that Empire in which so many nations and races have come together in spite of ancient feuds, and in which new nations have come to birth within the lifetime of the youngest in this Hall.

I am emboldened by that thought to look beyond the sorrow and the anxiety which have clouded of late My vision of Irish affairs. I speak from a full heart when I pray that My coming to Ireland to-day may prove to be the first step towards an end of strife amongst her people, whatever their race or creed. In that hope, I appeal to all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation, to forgive and to forget, and to join in making for the land which they love a new era of peace, contentment, and goodwill.

It is My earnest desire that in Southern Ireland, too, there may ere long take place a parallel to what is now passing in this Hall; that there a similar occasion may present itself and a similar ceremony be performed. 

For this the Parliament of the United Kingdom has in the fullest measure provided the powers; for this the Parliament of Ulster is pointing the way. The future lies in the hands of My Irish people themselves. 

May this historic gathering be the prelude of a day in which the Irish people, North and South, under one Parliament or two, as those Parliaments may themselves decide, shall work together in common love for Ireland upon the sure foundations of mutual justice and respect.

His speech came at least a decade too late. By 1921 Ireland was irrevocably on the path of independence, save for a massive British military crackdown that the British, to their credit, did not have the stomach to make.

The United Kingdom was, it might be noted, not only about to endure defeat in Ireland, it endured defeat at the International Polo Cup on this day in 1921, with the victory going to the United States in a game that could hardly be regarded as an American forte.

President Harding was photographed with what were termed a group of "Georgia Peaches".

The photograph was no doubt completely innocent, but based on what we now know about Harding, it's hard not to get a certain icky feeling with photos of this type.

Monday, June 6, 1921. College pudding.

Caption says it all, from this day in 1921.

Bill Gatewood of the Detroit Stars pitches the first no-hitter in the history of the Negro National League, defeating the Cuban Stars, 4 - 0.  The black leagues are now incorporated into the National League for history and statistical purposes, an omission that was only recently corrected.

Gatewood was already 39 years old at the time and had been involved in baseball for many years.  He'd go on to be a manager in the black leagues but at some point he slipped into obscurity.  He died in 1962 at age 81 and was buried in an unmarked grave, something that was only corrected in 2010.

On this day, the British government declared an end to reprisal burnings of houses in Ireland as they tended to end up burning manor houses, which tended to belong to wealthy Protestant loyalist.

Oops.

Veterans of the Great War, in the US, were already turning into "old vets" and participating in those things that old vets participate in.

 

Veterans of 2nd Div. Reviewing Division, at Camp Travis, Texas, June 6th, 1921.

Somewhere, probably outside of Washington D. C., the DAR was adding an annex.

Passengers onboard the Canadian Pacific's Melita ship, yes the CP had ships, had this menu for this Monday in 1921.

 

Menu from Reddit's Menu subreddit.

College pudding?   A recipe is here:  Foods of England.

June 2, 1921. Riding the tiger.

The United States Naval Academy's Class of 1921 graduated on this day.  Dignitaries included President Harding and Gen. Lejeune.

The class was the last of the Great War accelerated classes to graduate and, given the date of its graduation, those who remained in the service were right at the twenty year mark, when military retirement was first changed to allow for retirement at that age in an effort to encourage the retirement of older officers as the US built up its military for World War Two.  Not surprisingly, therefore, this class saw a significant number of combat losses due to World War Two, although it also saw a surprisingly large number of losses due to interwar accidents as well.  

The disastrous violence in Tulsa hit the news everywhere on this day in 21.  

The IRA emerged victorious from one of the numerous raids that were a feature of the Anglo Irish War, a guerilla campaign that saw more raiding than Customshouse burnings.  In this instance, the Royal Irish Constabulary suffered 8 killed and 16 surrendered.

On the same day J. C. Leyendecker's Life magazine illustration featured a comely lady wearing what we'd call a bikini top, sitting on tigers.  Ostensibly an animal trainer, the riding the tiger and salaciously depicted female figure seems now like a sign of the oncoming, and long range, times.

May 25, 1921. The burning of the Customs House.

On this day in 1921 the Irish Republican Army occupied and burned the Customs House in Dublin.  It was a pyrrhic victory in which they lost five men dead and eighty captured.

It remains one of the most famous events of the Anglo Irish War.

May 25, 1921. Road construction.

 Locomotive pulling cars, possibly during road construction.  May 25, 1921.