Tuesday, July 20, 1926. Turning up the heat.

 

Coolidge gave a press conference at White Pine Camp.

Secretary Davis and I discussed only incidentally the question of munition depots. He said that there was a location in Utah that would he available, but the expense of moving our munitions out there would be pretty heavy. I think he said that none of the munitions that belong to the War Dept. have been exploded. What he did say which was of most importance was that careful studies were being made to make the locations of munitions as safe as possible.

I am not just certain when I shall go to Plymouth. I had rather expected that I might go last week some time, but I wasn’t able to get away. I haven’t any definite plan about it. What would the members of the conference prefer, to go by automobile or by train?

Press: Train.

President: Seems to be unanimous. Well, I think I can arrange to take you over there by train, if that would suit you better. I will do what I can in that direction. I suppose I will have to set down a time when I have made up my mind to go and then stick to it. Otherwise there is something coming up all the time that seems to make it desirable for me to be here. I got word that the Secretary of War was coming up, and now the Secretary of State is coming up here later in the season. He is going to speak at Plattsburg at the celebration there of the MacDonald victories on Lake Champlain.

The resignation of Commissioner Fenning is in the hands of the Attorney General. It was received just about the time we were leaving Washington. He has some small matters that we wish to have him clear up before he relinquishes the office. That will take but a few days and then he is to retire. I suppose that he would have given in his resignation any way, but I did send a request to him that he should retire.

Press: Was that request since you have been up here?

President: Why no, I said I got the resignation just as I was leaving. The request was made just before I came away.

There isn’t any particular significance in the visit of Senator Fess. He told me while I was in Washington that he was to be in the Adirondacks this summer. He has some friends up here. I think he makes it a practice to come up here every summer. They are located within 30 or 35 miles. I understood he was to be at Tupper Lake, but he is at Loon Lake. Perhaps he was going to Tupper Lake later, and I told him of course that if he was here I hoped very much ae would have a chance to come and stay a day or two with me.

I am not expecting to speak at Plattsburg at the unveiling of the MacDonald monument. As I indicated before, the Secretary of State will be there. I understand there will be some representatives of the Canadian Government there, which makes it especially appropriate for the Secretary of State to be present.

Press: Do you think you will go over, Mr. President?

President. No.

I haven’t any information about what Chairman Parker or other members of the House Commerce Committee are contemplating in relation to coal legislation for a conference with the coal operators and coal miners during the vacation. I knew that Representative Parker had prepared a bill, or that his Committee had, I coal legislation, which they were proposing to take up immediately on the convening of Congress. There didn’t seem to be time to take it up at the last session. I think I have said enough to make that plain. I didn’t know anything about a plan for trying to make an adjustment between the operators and miners, other than what I have seen in the press. I think I indicated at a conference that was held long ago that perhaps the railroad legislation which was passed at the last session might furnish a foundation principle for legislation and adjust in the coal industry. There are two or three things that I wanted as coal legislation. The first was the opportunity to call in a temporary Board to adjust differences whenever an emergency might arise, and the second was an opportunity have a coal administration whenever a scarcity was threatened. Those are the principal things.

There isn’t any comment that I can make on the fall of the French Cabinet. It is hardly appropriate to comment on a matter of that kind.

I hope that I may have a chance to go to the training camp at Plattsburgh some time during the summer. That is about 50 miles away and I judge we could go over in the morning and return in the afternoon.

If I go by train to Plymouth I shall go to Ludlow, and I think the members of the press would find accommodations at Ludlow or at Tyson, which is about 6 or 7 miles from Plymouth. It i s in the town of Plymouth, but that is post office name, 5 miles toward Plymouth from Ludlow. There Is a very good hotel there that was opened long ago but has been closed quite a good deal and reopened last summer. I went down there to lunch with Secretary Mellon and Senator Smoot when they came to Plymouth to confer with me relative to the Belgian Debt settlement, so that I know that it is a very comfortable place. And there is also at Woodstock a very good Inn that some of you are already acquainted with.

I haven’t had any report from the Secretary of Agriculture relative to his work in putting into operation the bill that was passed at the last session relative to cooperative marketing.

And I haven’t any information other than that which has appeared in the press about bank failures in southern states. That seemed to be due to some local conditions there. It i s my understanding that those were mostly state banks and not national banks.

I also expect to visit the Saranac Veterans Bureau Hospital for tubercular patients while I am here.

The Adirondacks climate is very much like that with which I am acquainted over in Vermont. I noticed that a number of the old-timers over here came from Vermont. Paul Smith came from Milton. A man named Plumbley, a very famous Adirondack figure for a good many years, came from Suesbury, next to Plymouth. Suesbury is even more like the Adirondacks region than Plymouth is. The fishing is better here than it is in Vermont.

I have an inquiry about the appropriations. If anyone is interested to analyze the increased appropriations for the present year you will find that there is a very complete study of that in the remarks of Martin B. Madden, as you know, the Chairman of the Appropriations on the part of the House. It is in the Congressional Record for Monday, July 12, 1926, beginning on Page 13,006. Of course our Post Office Department is a growing Department. We mean to keep it practically self-sustaining. Sometimes there is a deficit. There has been all the time since I have been President. Wages have been greatly increased in the Post Office Department since 1914, increased about 50%. Those that were getting $1400 at that time are now getting $2100, and the general average of increases in the postal service is very close to 50%. That accounts for a very large part of the increase in the appropriations for 1926 and 1927, that is the budget that has just passed. The Government expenditures are $273,000,000 greater. There is $100,000,000 of that which is accountable for on account of the adjusted compensation, or the bonus law. The first year that it went into effect it was estimated that the expenditure would not be known and that an appropriation I believe of $50,000,000 would take care of it , so that for this year we made up that deficiency with $100,000,000 I think put in the regular appropriation for the bonus bill. As I recall, it was $125,000,000. I won’t be sure about that. I know it is $100,000,000 extra we had that we put in. So that the Veterans Bureau has $173,000,000 more in the present budget than it had in the last budget. Than there was a great deal of money that came due on the matter of roads. We had been making appropriations that took care of the current needs, but last year there were very large bills that came in, so that the appropriation for this year is $26,000,000 greater. Than we have adopted the public buildings bill. Haven’t had a public buildings bill for 12 years, and that accounts for $14,000,000 more. Prohibition costs are $13,000,000 more. Rivers and Harbors carries $10,000,000 more. That is for special work that is being done in the Mississippi Valley, notably from Kansas City, or rather from St. Louis to Kansas City going up the river, or from Kansas City to St. Louis down. If you are reporting for the Kansas City papers it would be Kansas City first, if you are reporting for St. Louis papers St. Louis first. Than there were some refunds, $5,000,000 of refunds on cigars taxes and automobiles. We have increased pensions for Civil and Spanish War veterans $5,000,000. The Arlington Bridge $2,250,000. Then we have begun construction of military posts to replace the temporary housing erected during the war. That doesn’t come out of tax money really, but of course it does appear as an appropriation item. That is $2,250,000. We passed a law that as that military land was sold off the proceeds might be taken to make better housing facilities for our military posts. And the Sesquicentennial is $2,000,000. Judgments against the Government in the Court of Claims and other judgments are nearly $9,000,000. The total increase outside of the Post Office, of which these are the principal items, is $273,000,000. I think these items that I have given you figure up to about $260,000,000. But there are some other small items of one kind or another and you can refer to this little table here in the Congressional Record to give you a very complete explanation of it if you wish to. Now, some of those of course are permanent. The public buildings program runs for five years. The Veterans Bureau bill for the next year won’t be nearly as big. The cost for the Post Office next year I should expect would not be as large public buildings will be larger next year because we expect to appropriate about $25,000,000 a year, but we found that $14,000,000 was all that we could expend advantageously this year. It takes so long to make plans and lay out the work. It is difficult to make any estimate about pensions. The Civil War veterans are dropping away very fast. That item which now runs about $2,000,000 will naturally decrease. Of course the country is a growing country. It keeps expanding all the time and there is tremendous pressure on the Federal Government to take on new activities which the Congress resists as well as it can and which I resist as well as I can. As we pay off the national debt of course the expenses are going to be reduced for interest, but I think the plan is that as interest charges are reduced more money will go into the sinking fund. That isn’t spoken of here, but it is my recollection that there is $30,000,000 more in the sinking fund for the present year than last year. That means we are using that to pay off the public debt.

Soviet monster Felix Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack at age 48.

French General Auguste Dubail of France and British Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson reached an agreement for a joint plan to mobilize 150,000 men in the event that Germany declared war on either nation.

Rebels in Haiti captured Cap-Haïtien.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 17, 1926. Boicotear

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Boycott, Catholic, Christianity, Cristero War, Mexico, Plutarco Elías Calles, religion, Taxes

Tuesday, July 9, 1776. Troops read the Declaration of Independence.

Continental Army soldiers on Lower Manhattan were assembled under orders of Gen. Washington to hear the Declaration of Independence read, the first they would have been aware that they were fighting for an entity that had declared itself independent of the United Kingdom.

British troops were being assembled on Staten Island for an offensive.

That evening a gilded lead statute of King George III was toppled in Bowling Green, New York, and melted into musket balls.

Last edition:

Monday, July 8, 1776. Declaration of Liberty read.

Labels: 1770s, 1776, American Revolution, Declaration of Independence, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)

Saturday, June 29, 1946. Operation Agatha.

The British Army launched Operation Agatha, the arrest of suspected Jewish terrorist in Palestine.  The Haganah escalated terrorist attacks in response.

It was a Saturday.

Last edition:

Friday, June 28, 1946. First Hāfu (ハーフ).

Sunday, March 31, 1946. Arresting Nazis, Russia pays up, you have to wonder about Дональд, Field Marshall Gort passes.

7,000 Allied soldiers served warrants on Nazi officials.  Ausgezeichnet!

The first Greek elections since 1936 took place, with the Communist Party of Greece refusing to participate.  

Russia, as a political subdivision of the USSR, paid its U.N. dues of $1,725,000, under the thesis that the USSR had multiple representation in the UN.

Trump would probably support an effort of Russia not to pay, which was feared at the time, sending the leader of the nation a Я люблю тебя, Дональд note, like he does in an implied way to the current leader of Russia constantly.

What's up with that?

Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort became yet another World War Two senior officer to die following the war, albeit his death was due to liver cancer.

He was a recipient of the Victoria Cross in World War One.

Last edition:

Monday, January 14, 1946. Wartime and Post War foodstuffs.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Army, Cartoons, Iran, J.R. Williams, Mountain Troops, Personalities, The Cold War, U.S. Navy, United States, USSR, World War Two

Wednesday, March 24, 1976. Passing of Field Marshal Montgomery.

Bernard Law Montgomery died at age 88.

Of Scots Irish descent, he was born in Kennington, England to a Church of Ireland cleric and grew up principally in Australia when his father was appointed Bishop of Tasmania.  He was commissioned an Army officer in 1908.  He became a British Field Marshall during World War Two and is justifiably famous.  He was deputy commander of NATO until 1958, when he retired at age 70.

Isabel Peron was deposed.

Last edition:

Tuesday, March 16, 1976. Wilson resigns at the point where Trump should have.

Labels: 1970s, 1976, 2020s, 2026, Cowards, Harold Wilson, John Barrasso, John Thune, Old Age, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, This is why we can't have nice things, United Kingdom

Thursday, March 9, 1916. Germany declares war on Portugal,

Germany declared war on Portugal.

The Germans attacked the commune of Cumières-le-Mort-Homme from Béthincourt, France.

The Italians launched an offensive around Gorizia and Tolmin.

The Western Frontier Force left Sidi Barrani and marched to capture Sollum, Egypt from the Ottoman Empire and their Senussi allies.

Arnold Spencer-Smith of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition died while en route to Hut Point for medical treatment for exhaustion and scurvy.

And peace was about to end for the United States:

Remembering Pancho Villa’s attack on Columbus, N.M.

 

Thursday, March  9, 1916. The Raid On Columbus New Mexico. 

And with this entry, the day to day tracking of events from January 1, 1914, up to the this date in 1926, is complete. There won't be any daily updates for 1916 hereafter, as we've already done that.

Anyone tracking this in the future will note that our styles changed over time.  Indeed, considerably.  For one thing, on later posts you can always look back and see the post right before it in a link.  When we started these daily entries in 2016, that wasn't the case.  In some instances, however, that feature has been later added.

Additionally, as with the entries from March 9, 2016, we often did more than one, if there was more than one thing to feature for the day.  At some point we stopped doing that.

You'll still find, for the time being, daily updates, when there's something worth noting, for 1876.  We're unlikely to carry that past the summer, however, as the 1870sn are really outside the focus of the blog.  I've thought about stopping it earlier, and may do that.

You will likely still see events carrying forward from 1901, which started with 1900.  This is backfill, frankly, for the 1910 to 1920 period that is the focus of the blog. The same is true for the 1911 entries, which are backfilling up to 1914.  As 1911 is already within the Mexican Revolution period, that will carry on, even though the first decade of the 20th Century may very well not.

We don't post many entries from the 1920s now that we're up to 1926, although we do occasionally. This is really outside the focus period of the blog and by 1926 the country was on to a new era.  The same is true for the 1940s, now that we're past the Second World War, although we still post a few.  The fifty years ago entries, now into 1976, are few and far between as well as there just aren't that many things I find interesting from that period, historically, which of course I have a personal memory of.

Anyhow, I hope the readers enjoyed reading the daily entries from March 9, 1916 up to March 9, 1926, and enjoyed the backfill that brought in the rest of World War One and the daily happenings as it was going on.  The immediate prewar era, 1910 to the end of 1913, will still be getting backfilled, which we hope you also enjoy.

Last edition:

Wednesday, March 8, 1916. Villa crosses the border.

Labels: 1910, 1916, Battle of Columbus, Battle of Dujaila, British Army, Columbus New Mexico, Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Iraq, Mexican Border War, Ottoman Army, Pancho Villa, The Punitive Expedition, World War One

Wednesday, March 8, 1916. Villa crosses the border.

Pancho Villa and about 400 of his men crossed the Mexican border near Columbus New Mexico.

The town had a U.S. Army garrison of 600.  

The town was also the home of Sam Ravel, a man to whom Villa had given money to buy arms but who had not delivered, although that is unlikely to have been the reason for the attack, as we discussed here:

The Columbus Raid. Why did it occur?

Ottoman forces stopped a much larger British force attempting to relieve Kut.

The sledging party of the second arm of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was reduced to three walking members during their return trek from Mount Hope in the Antarctic.

Last edition:

Tuesday, March 7, 1916. Villa close to the border.

Labels: 1910s, 1916, boats and ships, British Army, Egypt, Mexican Border War, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pancho Villa, Royal Navy, Senussi

Saturday, November 17, 1945. Charles De Gaulle says Non to the Communists.

Charles de Gaulle made a broadcast to the people of France announcing that he rejecting the position of president of FRance due to the "excessive demands regarding ministerial posts."  He further announced that he would continue serving but would refuse to appoint any  Communist to "any post related to foreign affairs."

Communist had done extremely well in the recent election and were a major component of the coalition government, taking more votes that any other party.  The French Section of the Workers International, a French Socialist Party, had done very well also, coming in third.  Coming in just behind the Communists, however, was the Catholic Popular Republican Movement. All three parties were in coalition that dates back to the election, with the coalition having De Gaulle's support at the time.

France was, quite frankly, on the very verge of becoming a Communist state, given the strong left wing turnout in the election.  If it had, it would have been a disaster of epic proportions for the West.  Most people looking at it objectively would have supposed that France would fall to the Communist.

This helps put in context, to a certain extent, the degree to which French military and political figures were proactive in trying to reestablish French colonialism, which was cast, with some credibility, as a war between Western ideals and Communism, although only imperfectly so. That France didn't go into a civil war is in no small part due to DeGaulle.  DeGaulle would whether the leftist Third Republic, after which France would pull back from the brink. Still, having said that, why France fought it out in Indochina, and Algeria, makes a lot more sense if that history is grasped.

Josef Kramer, Irma Grese, Dr. Fritz Klein and eight others were sentenced to death by a British military court as Nazi war criminals for their roles in the concentration camps.  

Kramer had come up in the concentration camp system, having been in the SS prior to World War Two.He was the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen.

Grese was 22 years old making her the youngest person to die under British law in the 20th Century. She'd joined the  Bund Deutscher Mädel in 1937 at age 13, causing a rift with her father who did not approve of the Nazi Party. She left home at age 14 and entered the SS at age 18, having already worked for Karl Gelbardt by that time.  In the camps she gained responsibility and became incredibly sadistic as well as extremely perverted perverted sadistic bisexual who had affairs with imprisoned Jewish women, and who is rumored to have a had one with Josef Kramer, until he learned of that. She was a sadist, and clearly an extremely tortured soul mentally. 

Regarding her, inmate Auschwitz Romanian Jewish gynecologist Gisella Perl stated:

She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. And yet, Irma Greze was the most depraved, cruel, imaginative sexual pervert I ever came across.

Perl relocated to Israel after the war with her daughter, whom she hid from the Naizs, and died there on December 16, 1988, at the age of 81

Kramer and Grese, August 8, 1945.

Frankly, a lot of Nazism was an absolute perversion.

News of Grese's death sentence hit the front pages in the United States. The Sheridan newspaper used one of her two common nicknames, the Beast of Belsen (the Hyena of Belsen was the other), its story on her.

The ongoing investigation on Pearl Harbor also made the front news, as did the French political scene.

A selection of Saturday cartoons from the paper:

The Saturday Evening Post ran a cover with a hunting and puppy theme.

This would be subject to copyright, but we run it here under the fair use exception to note how common hunting themes were at the time.

Last edition:

Friday, November 16, 1945. UNESCO founded. USS Laramie decommissioned.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, boats and ships, Dwight Eisenhower, Iran, Scientific and Cultural Organization, The Cold War, United Nations, United Nations Educational, USSR

Thursday, November 8, 1945. British ultimatum in Indonesia.

British commander in Indonesia E. C. Mansergh ordered Indonesians to surrender their arms by 18:00 or face  "all the naval, army and air forces under my command".  Sukarno appealed to President Truman and Prime Minister Attlee to intervene.

Former Hungarian Prime Minister László Bárdossy was sentenced to death.

August von Mackensen, age 95, famous German Field Marshal, died, which seems somehow fitting, not only because of his advanced old age, but also because the Germanys he served had effectively died as well.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 4, 1945. Independent Smallholders Party win the Hungarian parliamentary elections.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Agrarianism, Communism, Culture, Hungary, hunting, It was because of World War Two, Urbanization

Wednesday, September 19, 1945. Kim Il Sung returns to Korea.

Kim Il Sung arrived at Port Wonsan and began to organize the Communist Party of Korea.

Kim was born into a Presbyterian family.  He fled to Manchuria in 1920 after being involved in anti Japanese activities.  He was in  his mid teens at the time and then attended military schools.  It was while he was in China that he became interested in Communism.  He was a figure in the Chinese Communist Army during the pre World War Two Chinese Civil War and then again during World War Two, crossing into the Soviet Union in 1940.  He then joined the Red Army. The Soviets chose Kim in order to have a Communist figure to introduce into Korea even though he was poorly educated and by 1940 his Korean was very poor.  His early life is not very well known.

Navy aircraft over Inchon, September 1945.

The US banned reporting on the atomic bombs in Japan.

British and French troops complete the suppression of the Việt Minh in Saigon.

New Zealand ratified the UN Charter.

William Joyce was sentenced to death.

The British announced that Indian would shortly be granted home rule.

Shirley temple married Sgt. John Agar, a fellow actor.  She was 17 years old. Agar was 25.

The marriage wouldn't last.

Agar had a real drinking problem, although he amazingly lived to age 81.  Apparently he's associated with B science fiction movies, but I always associate him with John Ford westerns.  He also appeared in The Sands of Iwo Jima.  He met Shirley Temple in 1943 when he escorted her to a Hollywood party.  She would only have been 15 years old at the time.

His second marriage lasted 49 years.

He had a remarkably long film career, although many of his roles were very minor.  In World War Two he served first in the Navy, joining in 1941 and then in the Army Air Force as a physical instructor.  He was discharged from the Navy due to an ear infection.

Shirley Temple in 1943.

Temple is a film legend, of course, but had trouble transitioning from being a child actress to adult film roles, even though the ones she appeared in showed her to be a very talented adult actress.  This would lead to an early retirement from film, something that was hastened by a negative reaction to being propositioned by MGM figure Arthur Freed and Louis B. Mayer on the same day, when she was only 12, leading to her returning to Fox from MGM without much success.  She later became the US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the Reagan Administration.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 18, 1945. The first desegregation student protest.

Labels: 1910s, 1940s, 1945, 1945 at the movies, actors and actresses, Chinese Civil War, Education, Henry L. Stimson, Indiana, Movies, Nationalist Chinese Army, People's Liberation Army, Racism, Roosevelt, Rust Belt, Taft

Wednesday, August 29, 1945. The USS Missouri arrives at Tokyo Bay.

Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek met for talks to avert civil war, which was already going on, between the Communists and the Nationalists in China.  The Xinghua Campaign began on the same day.

Japanese troops in Southeast Asia, numbering around 740,000 surrendered to the British.

The Royal Navy arrived to reestablish British control of Hong Kong.

The USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay.

US military investigations on the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor were released.  They contained criticism of former Secretary of State Hull, General Marshall and Admiral Stark  Truman objected to the findings on Marshall and Hull.

The musical State Fair was released.

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 28, 1945. U.S. Troops in Japan.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, baseball, Chinese Civil War, Communists, Ethnicities, Hermann Göring, Ho Chi Minh, Japan, Nuremberg Trials, Occupation of Japan, Red Army, Sakhalin Island, Vietnam, War Crimes, World War Two

Saturday, August 4, 1945. Tibbets briefs his crew.

Paul Tibbets briefed his crew on the upcoming bombing mission to Hiroshima, telling the crew that the bombs would be immensely powerful and "something new in the history of warfare".  No specifics were provided.

Tibbets had entered the Army in 1937 in order to become a pilot after dropping out of medical school.  He died in 2007 at age 92.

The U.S. Army Air Force continued to drop leaflets over Japan warning of the destruction of cities.

British troops in Lower Sittang cleared the Japanese from the Pegu-Martaban railay at Abya.

Japanese troops executed seven captured American airmen in Singapore.

The Soviet Union gifted the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow with a bugged plaque.

On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe by Johnny Mercer was number one on the music charts.

Last edition:

Friday, August 3, 1945. The end for Japan in Burma.

Labels: 1940s, 1942, 1945, Burma, China Burma India Theater, Czechoslovakia, Ethnicities, French Navy, World War Two