Showing posts with label Chanak Crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chanak Crisis. Show all posts

Friday, September 23, 2022

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.

Thursday, September 15, 2022

Friday, September 15, 1922. Foreign Affairs

The USGS was at it again, taking photos on the Colorado.

I have to say, as somebody who started off in geology, this is leaving me envious.



Turkish forces on this day, fresh from defeating Greece, and followed by the murder of Armenians, approached Çanakkale and advanced on the Allied positions there.

The British government reacted with backbone, issuing an ultimatum. But the British commander on the location did not deliver it.  British Conservatives, moreover, did not support going to war against Turkey over the issue, contrary to British Liberals Lloyd George and Winston Churchill (yes, at this point in time Churchill was a Liberal).  The French did not a war either, nor did the Canadians, whose significant Dominion status mattered given that the British felt that they needed Dominion support.  Having defeated the Greeks, the Turks quickly backed down, defusing the crisis, but contributing to  one for Lloyd George.

In another Dominion, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and two associates suspended habeus corpus in Ireland due to the Irish Civil War.

Firestone commenced production of rubber tires in Canada.  Oddly enough, on the same day William and Alfred Billes combined their savings to purchase the Hamilton Tire and Garage Ltd. which would be multiple retail lines company Canadian Tire.

Back to Turkey, the Turkish Orthodox Church was formed.  The church is not recognized by the Eastern Orthodox.  Pavlos Karahisarithis was the first Patriarch of what was termed the Autocephalous Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate, which he presided over until 1962.   The church principally consistgs of Orthodox Karaman Turks and numbers 47,000 adherants today.

The Council of Foreign Relations commenced publication of Foreign Affairs.