Monday, September 11, 1922. The Turkish Massacre of Smyrna's Armenians.

Turkish troops massacred Armenian residents of Smyrna Province.  It was a systematic murder of that city's ancient Armenian population.  Ultimately the Turks would set on fire the Armenian quarter of the city and end its eons old Armenian heritage.

Allied troops landed at Canakkale to set up a neutral zone between Greece and Turkey.

Seeing a split of the Communist Party in Russia coming, Lenin proposed that Trotsky become Lenin's Sovnarkom deputy.  Trotsky declined.

Herman Silverman, right, in his effort to hike around the world.  He was a bantamweight fighter who was doing the same in order to get into condition, and as part of the fulfillment of a wager.  Note the Montana Peak style hat.

Curtiss had a glider out.

The USGS was out again with their cameras in the Glen Canyon area.

Maidenhair Canyon. A beautiful side canyon which enters the Colorado from the west at a point below San Juan River.

Maidenhair Canyon enters the Colorado from the west at a point two miles below San Juan River.

Oak Creek dam site on the Colorado River, seven miles below San Juan River. Left abutment wall.

Sunday, September 10, 1922. The Murder of Bishop Chrysostomos.

The very first Our Gang, an episode entitled One Terrible Day, was released.

I reported on this event earlier, but I apparently had the wrong event for the terrible occurrence.

As these photos show, the Red Cross reported to assist at the mine.

Greek Orthodox Bishop Chrysostomos of Smyrna was lynched by a mob after the Turks took the city.  What exactly occurred is not known, but the Bishop, who was a Greek nationalist, refused to evacuate and reported to congratulate the Turks on their victory.  He was horribly murdered and is regarded as a Saint by the Greek Orthodox.

Not sure how that happened, but the Bishop was murdered on this day.

The USGS expedition on the Colorado, which we featured yesterday, was still in progress.

Saturday, September 9, 1922. The Turks enter Smyrna.

On this day in 1922 the Turkish Army entered Smyrna, which would be renamed Izmir, ending hte military phase of the Greco Turkish War with a final Turkish victory.

By that afternoon, Turkish troops had started to riot.  Bad went to worse, and massacres of the Armenians then commenced, with it being cut off from entry by Turkish troops.  The Armenian Bishop Ghevont Tourian sought asylum in a Catholic institution.

It would get worse.

The third  Dáil Éireann, the parliament of the Irish Republic, convened after long delay to ratify the treaty with the United Kingdom, which was a foregone conclusion.

A United Stated Geological Survey expedition was exploring the area around Glen Canyon.

First camp, Colorado River opposite mouth of Escalante River

In the "Hole in the Wall" looking toward Colorado

"Hole in the Wall" on west side of Colorado River six miles above the San Juan.

"Hole in the Wall" on west side of Colorado River six miles above San Juan River.

Friday, August 25, 1922. Highest scoring baseball game ever.

The Cubs held off the Phillies 26-23 in Wrigley Field after being up by 19.  The game remains the highest-scoring game in major-league history.  Marty Callaghan of the Cubs batted three times in a single inning.

W. T. Cosgrave became Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State, replacing Michael Collins in that role.

An earthquake occurred in the Tel Atlas region of Algeria.

A couple of interesting items. . .

 to ponder.

View from the S H Knight (geology) Building in 1986.

Recent research has indicated that humans reached the Faeroe Islands at least 300 years prior to the Vikings doing so.

This doesn't surprise me a bit, and apparently it's been more or less known for some time, and its what I would have expected, but new studies, involving obtaining DNA from the bottom of a lake, has proven it conclusively.

Evidence of really old sheep defecation was found down there.  Maybe sort of gross sounding in a way, but really cool nonetheless.  So not only was early colonization much earlier than guessed at, but it was true colonization.  I.e, we know about this place and we're bringing our sheep.

Really cool, in my opinion, is that part of the groundbreaking research was done by Dr. Lorelei Curtin of the University of Wyoming. She is a post-doctoral researcher at the university's Department of Geology and Geophysics, of which I'm a graduate.

She specializes, I'd note, in climate research and another study just out notes that global cooling seems to be brought about by global warming. Something I was taught when a student in that department some 35 or so years ago.

Graduates of the other department that I'm a graduate of, the College of Law, have not pegged me out on the pride meter much as time has gone on, but the Department of Geology and Geophysics is different.

Well, go Pokes.

I'll note this as well. The Vikings first settled Iceland starting in 874 and Greenland around 980.  I'm guessing that the last date is correct, but I'll bet that somebody was on Iceland by 874. Rather obviously, the Vikings weren't great at recording who exactly was where they went, when they got there, as the Faeroe Island discovery more or less proves.

Saturday December 13, 1941. The Niihau Incident.

The Niihau Incident, in which a Japanese pilot on Niihau secured the assistance of Japanese residents of that island to secure his release from captivity, and which saw a conflict develop between native Hawaiians and resident Japanese, came to an end when the pilot Shigenori Nishikaichi (西開地 重徳) was killed and the man aiding him killed himself.

The incident became significant in bringing the US Government to internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans.  

Niihau was inhabited primarily by native Hawaiians who spoke the language, and owned by a white family that generally precluded access to it to outsiders.  It had three Japanese residents, however, and all three helped 西開地 重徳 in his efforts after he crashed landed on the island.  

The incident had seen Hawila Kalehano, a native Hawaiian, disarm the Japanese pilot as he was concerned about the surprising event, but he otherwise treated him well.  The Hawaiians sent for Ishimatsu Shintani who was marred to a Hawaiian so he could translate.  Shintani didn't want to perform the task and only briefly spoke to the pilot. Thereafter, the Hawaiians sent for Yoshio Harada who had been born in Hawaii.  Harada was informed by Nishikaichi of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The Harada's, husband and wife, decided to aid the pilot in recovering his papers and escaping.

That night the Hawaiians learned of the attack on a battery power radio.  They then confronted the pilot, and it was decided to hold the pilot and turn him over to the islands' owner, who was due to arrive the next day from Kaua'i.  The owner, Aylmer Robinson, did not arrive, however, as the military had stopped boat traffic after the attack.  The pilot was therefore put under guard in the Harada's house.  

On December 12 Shintani attempted to buy the pilot's papers but failed.  On the same day the Harada's and Nishikaichi attacked their guards and armed themselves, taking a hostage.  They confronted Kaleohano who ran and was shot at.  During the night, the escaped pilot and confederates torched the Japanese airplane.

During the night they took additional hostages but became aware that they were being deceived by the Hawaiians and that it was likely that they were going for help.  Ultimately a struggle developed in which the pilot shot one of the Hawaiians three times, but was nonetheless overpowered and had his throat slit.  Harada killed himself after the pilot was killed.  

Shintani returned to the island after the war, after spending the rest of it in an Internment Camp, and lived there the rest of his life.  Irene Harada was held as a prisoner until 1944.  She moved to Kaua'i and lived the rest of the war there, stating in a 1992 interview that she felt sorry for the pilot and wanted to help him.  In an interesting twist, the Japanese government thanked her in later years for her efforts on behalf of the pilot, in spite of her resistance to their doing so.

Authorities, already distrustful of those of Japanese ancestry in the US, were shocked by how quickly all of the Japanese residents of the small island went over to aid the Japanese pilot which had a role in helping to convince the authority to intern the Japanese and Japanese Americans on the continental United States.  They were not interred on the Hawaiian islands where they made up 1/3d of the population, but it was felt that it was not economically possible to do so nor that they constituted a danger because of the islands isolation.

Pacific Aviation Museum: The Ni'ihau Zero Incident

Indeed, the incident remains problematic to the social history of World War Two as it does demonstrate that in at least some instances some Japanese and Japanese Americans retained sufficiently strong loyalties to Japan that it could in fact override loyalty to the United States.  That does not excuse internment, but it makes it less irrational that it is sometimes portrayed to be.  The US and Canada had a long problematic relationship with their Japanese residents as it was in which they both unfairly constantly suspected them of being hostile aliens and had often thought of them as a potential fifth column.  The incident gave a real world example of this actually occurring.

The desperate quality of the pilots actions remain curious.  The Japanese Navy had designated the island as one to land on in an emergency, as they believed it to be uninhabited.  But how anyone who landed there was to be rescued is a mystery.  It would have required either a fellow pilot to land there at the time, which was a possibility, and take the others on, or it would have required rescue by a plane designated to that task, which would have been unlikely to have been dispatched.  In this case, the pilot attempted to use the plan3's radio to radio for help, but was unsuccessful.

The Royal Navy sank three Italian cruisers off of Tunisia in the Battle of Cape Bon.

Hungary declared war on the United States.

The United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa declared war on Bulgaria.

Honduras declared war on Germany and Italy.

The Today In World War Two blog has some interesting items, including the destruction of American airpower in the Philippines.

Today in World War II History—December 13, 1941

A glacier collapse caused 4,000 to 6,000 deaths in Peru when it fell into a lake and caused a morraine landslide.

Wednesday, November 23, 1921. Geology in Sheridan County, Welfare in the United States, Murder in Ukraine

Charles Russell illustrated letter of today's date.

On this date, we're reminded that Wyoming is tectonically active:

Today In Wyoming's History: November 23, 1921:

1921  An earthquake shook Sheridan County.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

Earthquakes in Wyoming are not at all uncommon.

The Sheppard-Towner Act, which we dealt with earlier, that provided funding for maternity and child care, as signed into law by Republican President, Warren G. Harding.

Harding knew a little about childcare. At this point his illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth Ann Britton was a little over two years old.  She was not acknowledged, and the public had no idea.

In Bazar, Ukraine, the Red Army executed 359 Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered to them.

Geologists, do you still use them? Brunton Compass

Lex Anteinternet: Brunton Compass: 

Brunton Compass

Brunton Pocket Transit, folded for carrying.

March 27, 1921. Imperial struggles.

On this day in 1921, deposed Austro Hungarian Emperor Charles I arrived at his former palace in Hungary and attempted to persuade the regent, Admiral Horthy, to return the thrown of Hungary back to him.  Horthy declined.  Charles would try again, and fail, later that year.

Charles I as an archduke.

There's some interesting religious elements to this in the background, although they are in the background.

Charles I, who came to power in 1916 and who worked for peace while the Emperor, was a devout Catholic and a cause for his sainthood has been established (he has been declared "blessed" by the Church).  Horthy was a protestant and from a prominent Hungarian protestant family, in a country not associated with protestantism.  Indeed, two of his sons, in exile after World War Two, would be associated with Catholic scouting organizations even though they were also protestants.

Horthy was being realistic in his assessment of the times and while there are those who at the time accused him of treason, in reality, the country had endured a civil war against Communist only three years prior and the status of the government was not so well established that a return of a king was realistic.

On the same day, an earthquake in Tokyo destroyed 1,000 buildings.

Moroccan independence leader Mouha ou Hammou Zayani died in battle.  While he was famous for fighting the French, the battle in which he died was against forces under the command of his son, who has surrendered the forces under his control to the French.

February 9, 1971. Satchel Page inducted, Apollo 14 returns, San Fernando hit by earthquake.

Satchel Page was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first black player to receive that honor.

The Apollo 14 mission returned to Earth.

An earthquake killed 58 people in San Fernando, California.  It measured 6.5 of the Richter Sale.

December 20, 1940. The world recoils.

 

"Behind this eight-foot concrete wall some 500,000 Jews will begin a new life in Warsaw's ghetto. By German decree, all Warsaw Jews are required to reside in the district, located in the central part of the conquered city. It surrounds more than 100 city blocks and closes off 200 streets and even street car lines."  New York World Telegram, December 20, 1940.

With the Christmas Season approaching, it was a grim day in many places where there were those who weren't acknowledging the message of the Price of Peace.  You can read more about that here.

Day 477 December 20, 1940

On this site we recall that already the Germans were butchering the Poles, and as can be seen from above, they were beginning a more systematic butchering of European's Jewish population.

The Germans also commenced the Liverpool Bitz, three days of horrific bombing of the city.

Post bombing photograph of Liverpool.

Even the Earth seemed to recoil against the violence. The first of two earthquakes occurred in New Hampshire.

Monday Morning Repeats for the week of June 28, 2009. 1920, law, and the Geology Museum

 A repeat from over a decade ago that sounds like it could have been written now:

1920, law, and the Geology Museum

It's odd to see that eleven years ago I was then noting the near centennial, but not that near, of the law school's founding.  I also see that's when I learned of its age.

And the budget problems UW was then having. . . well they're worse now.

Indeed, frankly, everything about the this topic has grown worse over the past decade.  Wyoming's economy is showing real systemic problems, and its government by extension.  Politics has become more polarized.  The university is suffering from the problems of the pandemic. And the law school's purpose has become questionable in the wake of the UBE.

And now, Mt. Krakatoa is erupting. . .

or actually Anak Krakatau, which means, in the Indonesian language, the child of Krakatoa.  That latter volcano, of course, blew itself off the face of the earth in 1883, destroying half of the island that it had formed, and leaving a subsea caldera. That in turn depressed the temperature of the planet by .72F, darkened the skies and caused a year of spectacular sunsets and sunrises.  It also resulted in the direct deaths 36,417 people.

Ash plume from Anak Krakatau in 2010.

Anak Krakatau came up out of its caldera in 1927 in the the destructive process of rebuilding the island, making the distinction between Anak Krakatau and Krakatoa merely one of human perception.  The volcano's 2018 eruption produced a deadly tsunami that killed over 400 people.  No deaths have been reported this year, but the ash has ascended to 50,000 feet.

The Ghosts of Prior Careers

On a Saturday, while working on my now very long term one of nearly thirty years.

August 2, 1918. The odd war news.

In a lot of ways, the news of August 2, 1918, was the same in character as for other days, but with a slightly odd (and also, we'll note, period racist) tinge.

The article on the bottom right brings this paper here.  That must have been an awkward family reunion.

Sad news from Laramie on this day.  A professor of my former department at the University of Wyoming, the geology department, had died of disease while serving in France.  As he was a professor of "economic geology" at a later school, we can take it that he was a professor of economic minerals.  The war was taking quite a toll in all age ranges.

Evidence of that toll and the scale of the war is in this paper.  Every military age male, according to this Cheyenne paper, was now in service.

And the Onondaga had declared war.

On this paper, the terms used here are clearly racists in regard to African American soldiers.  It's odd, to say the least, to see headlines of this type in a newspaper in common circulation, giving us an idea of how deeply ingrained racists ideas were at the time.

Mid Week At Work: Professor Almon Harris Thompson with his horse "Old Ute." Utah. 1872.

December 4. Predictions and Predicaments old new.

I'm not putting this copy of The Wyoming Tribune up for the story about President Wilson's speech, although that was an important story.  No, rather I'm putting this one up because a story that appears here recalls one on the front page of this paper ran this weekend in the Casper Star Tribune, that being; "Says Oil In Backyard Of Cheyenne".  This weekend there was a story in the Tribune about people who live just north of Cheyenne and who are worried about oil production north of the town.

I'm not commenting on that specifically.  There is oil north of Cheyenne and that doesn't seem like a surprise to me.  It's a bit surprising that it took so long to start developing it, but then the technology has developed to where that is easier to do. Just south of Cheyenne the Denver Basin has been in production for decades.  Anyhow, I'm only noting it as L. D. Thompson proved to be absolutely right in his prediction, although he didn't live to see that prediction come true.

Russia's backing out of the war, which wouldn't really bring peace to Russia which went into a civil war, made the headlines.  People reading it had to be worried what that would mean for the war in the west.

Wilson's State of the Union address read as follows:

Gentlemen of the Congress:

Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing you. They have been months crowded with events of immense and grave significance for us. I shall not undertake to retail or even to summarize those events. The practical particulars of the part we have played in them will be laid before you in the reports of the Executive Departments. I shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast affairs, our present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold always in view.

I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germany have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every true American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider again and with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of discussion here in this place is action, and our action must move straight towards definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win the war; and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth while asking and answering the question, When shall we consider the war won?

From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental matter. I do not doubt that the American people know what the war is about and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization of their purpose in it. As a nation we are united in spirit and intention. I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent; who does not? I hear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and troublesome. I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature not the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy hour and be forgotten.
But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be for and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people and they have a right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose. They are impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise--deeply and indignantly impatient--but they will be equally impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace by arms.

I believe that I speak for them when I say two things: First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force which we now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed and, if it be not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendly intercourse of the nations; and, second, that when this Thing and its power are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discuss peace--when the German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe and when those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world--we shall be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay it ungrudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will be full, impartial justice--justice done at every point and to every nation that the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends.

You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in the air. They grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the war shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is this thought that has been expressed in the formula "No annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities." Just because this crude formula expresses the instinctive judgment as to right of plain men everywhere it has been made diligent use of by the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Russia astray, and the people of every other country their agents could reach, in order that a premature peace might be brought about before autocracy has been taught its final and convincing lesson, and the people of the world put in control of their own destinies.

But the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just idea is no reason why a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be brought under the patronage of its real friends. Let it be said again that autocracy must first be shown the utter futility of its claims to power or leadership in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any standard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and undefeated as the present masters of Germany command. Not until that has been done can Right be set up as arbiter and peace-maker among the nations. But when that has been done--as, God willing, it assuredly will be--we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is the time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free to base peace on generosity and justice, to the exclusion of all selfish claims to advantage even on the part of the victors.

Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and immediate task is to win the war, and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be devoted to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the war as won only when the German people say to us, through properly accredited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based upon justice and the reparation of the wrongs their rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium which must be repaired. They have established a power over other lands and peoples than their own--over the great Empire of Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey, and within Asia--which must be relinquished.

Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by enterprise we did not grudge or oppose, but admired, rather. She had built up for herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of the world. We were content to abide the rivalries of manufacture, science, and commerce that were involved for us in her success and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative to surpass her. But at the moment when she had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw them away, to establish in their stead what the world will no longer permit to be established, military and political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.

We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of foreign courts or parties.

And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a like kind. We intend no wrong against the German Empire, no interference with her internal affairs. We should deem either the one or the other absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we have professed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout our life as a nation.

The people of Germany are being told by the men whom they now permit to deceive them and to act as their masters that they are fighting for the very life and existence of their Empire, a war of desperate self-defense against deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost openness and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its falseness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with our own--from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. No one is threatening the existence or the independence or the peaceful enterprise of the German Empire.

The worst that can happen to the detriment of the German people is this, that if they should still, after the war is over, continue to be obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of the world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the world's peace. That partnership must be a partnership of peoples, not a mere partnership of governments. It might be impossible, also, in such untoward circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic intercourse which must inevitably spring out of the other partnerships of a real peace. But there would be no aggression in that; and such a situation, inevitable because of distrust, would in the very nature of things sooner or later cure itself, by processes which would assuredly set in.

The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have to be righted. That of course. But they cannot and must not be righted by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies. The world will not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a means of reparation and settlement. Statesmen must by this time have learned that the opinion of the world is everywhere wide awake and fully comprehends the issues involved. No representative of any self-governed nation will dare disregard it by attempting any such covenants of selfishness and compromise as were entered into at the Congress of Vienna. The thought of the plain people here and everywhere throughout the world, the people who enjoy no privilege and have very simple and unsophisticated standards of right and wrong, is the air all governments must henceforth breathe if they would live. It is in the full disclosing light of that thought that all policies must be conceived and executed in this midday hour of the world's life. German rulers have been able to upset the peace of the world only because the German people were not suffered under their tutelage to share the comradeship of the other peoples of the world either in thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion of their own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for those who exercised authority over them. But the congress that concludes this war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the hearts and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will run with those tides.
All these things have been true from the very beginning of this stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been made plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the Allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting union of purpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very moment of their revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief since, the sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of their affairs towards an ordered and stable government of free men might have been avoided. The Russian people have been poisoned by the very same falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, and the poison has been administered by the very same hands. The only possible antidote is the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or too often.

From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be my duty to speak these declarations of purpose, to add these specific interpretations to what I took the liberty of saying to the Senate in January. Our entrance into the war has not altered our attitude towards the settlement that must come when it is over. When I said in January that the nations of the world were entitled not only to free pathways upon the sea but also to assured and unmolested access to those pathways I was thinking, and I am thinking now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone, which need our countenance and support, but also of the great and powerful nations, and of our present enemies as well as our present associates in the war. I was thinking, and am thinking now, of Austria herself, among the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equality of rights can be had only at a great price. We are seeking permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of the world and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right will prove to be the expedient.

What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a thorough hand all impediments to success and we must make every adjustment of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and force as a fighting unit.

One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way is that we are at war with Germany but not with her allies. I therefore very earnestly recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United States in a state of war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange to you that this should be the conclusion of the argument I have just addressed to you? It is not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her own mistress but simply the vassal of the German Government. We must face the facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment in this stern business. The government of Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings of its own peoples but as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its force with our own and regard the Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfully conducted in no other way. The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are the tools of Germany. But they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our necessary action. We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us, but it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical considerations lead us and not heed any others.

The financial and military measures which must be adopted will suggest themselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I will take the liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of legislation which seem to me to be needed for the support of the war and for the release of our whole force and energy.

It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the legislation of the last session with regard to alien enemies; and also necessary, I believe, to create a very definite and particular control over the entrance and departure of all persons into and from the United States.

Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal offense every willful violation of the presidential proclamations relating to alien enemies promulgated under section 4067 of the Revised Statutes and providing appropriate punishments; and women as well as men should be included under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien enemies. It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will be willing to be fed and housed at the expense of the Government in the detention camps and it would be the purpose of the legislation I have suggested to confine offenders among them in penitentiaries and other similar institutions where they could be made to work as other criminals do.

Recent experience has convinced me that the Congress must go further in authorizing the Government to set limits to prices. The law of supply and demand, I am sorry to say, has been replaced by the law of unrestrained selfishness. While we have eliminated profiteering in several branches of industry it still runs impudently rampant in others. The farmers, for example, complain with a great deal of justice that, while the regulation of food prices restricts their incomes, no restraints are placed upon the prices of most of the things they must themselves purchase; and similar inequities obtain on all sides.

It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of the full use of the water power of the country and also the consideration of the systematic and yet economical development of such of the natural resources of the country as are still under the control of the federal government should be immediately resumed and affirmatively and constructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more obvious.

The legislation proposed at the last session with regard to regulated combinations among our exporters, in order to provide for our foreign trade a more effective organization and method of cooperation, ought by all means to be completed at this session.

And I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in any but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent to return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all appropriation bills through a single committee, in order that responsibility may be centered, expenditures standardized and made uniform, and waste and duplication as much as possible avoided.

Additional legislation may also become necessary before the present Congress again adjourns in order to effect the most efficient coordination and operation of the railway and other transportation systems of the country; but to that I shall, if circumstances should demand, call the attention of the Congress upon another occasion.

If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the omission. What I am perfectly clear about is that in the present session of the Congress our whole attention and energy should be concentrated on the vigorous, rapid, and successful prosecution of the great task of winning the war.

We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation; because we know, and all the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very institutions we live under from corruption and destruction. The purposes of the Central Powers strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take our very territory away from us and disrupt the Union of the States. Our safety would be at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt were we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence of democracy and liberty.

It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in which all the free peoples of the world are banded together for the vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that which is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of like motive and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we entered the war and for this cause will we battle until the last gun is fired.

I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the time when it is most necessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know that even in the heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole thought is of carrying the war through to its end we have not forgotten any ideal or principle for which the name of America has been held in honor among the nations and for which it has been our glory to contend in the great generations that went before us. A supreme moment of history has come. The eyes of the people have been opened and they see. The hand of God is laid upon the nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear heights of His own justice and mercy.

Those concerns probably motivated the large headline in the Cheyenne State Leader, but that is also not the reason I'm putting this one up.  Rather, even though it had happened a couple of days prior, the news of the border skirmish on the border with Mexico had finally made it to the front page. Again, with the nation engaged in sending men to Europe, renewed clashed on the Mexican border couldn't have been welcome news.

Looking back at your vocation. If it were a century ago, would you be doing it?

I know that I wouldn't.  At least I think I wouldn't.

Which puts me into sort of an odd situation vis-à-vis the purported purpose of this blog.But its something worth considering in general for the folks who like to ponder such "what ifs".

We claim, after all, this blog to be about the following:

Lex Anteinternet?

The Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, back when it was new.

What the heck is this blog about?

The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book I've been pondering. And part of it is just because I'm curious. Hopefully it'll generate enough minor interest so that anyone who stops by might find something of interest, once it begins to develop a bit.

I started practicing law in 1990 after having graduated from the University of Wyoming's College of Law that May.  But I only entered the law school as an intended career in geology didn't work out.  Having said that, as I've noted here before, I had it in mind (thanks, I guess, Jon Brady), prior to that.  Indeed, all the way back when I was in Casper College.

But would I have done that in 1917?

I very much doubt it.

Which puts my central protagonist, assuming that I'm incorporating some of my own experiences in the work, which I now know will require my retirement in order for me to finish, in an odd position.

If it were 1917, rather than 2017, I could still homestead. And frankly, that's likely what I would have done.

 Canadian homestead, 1917.

Now, I realize that's an easy thing for a person to say.  After all, if you look at photos of homesteads in 1917 (although not the very nice one above), a lot of them were dirt poor.  Indeed, they were so poor that even the dirt was richer.

Okay, now I'm exaggerating, particularly about 1917.  World War One was actually the height for American (and Canadian. . . and Australian) homesteading. The big spat in  Europe had a lot to do with that and people were getting rich from farming, which was a rarity.  Having said that, up until 1919 American farmers tended towards economic parity with people in urban areas. They never have since that year.

Droughted out post World War One homestead.  The teens were wet. The 20s were not  The 30s were bone dry..

But it's not the money that would have attracted me.  It would have been the independent outdoor life.

That's all but impossible now.  

You can't homestead, obviously, and you likely can't buy enough land to be a working rancher.  If you can, that's because you are rich.  And I'm not.

So that's a career field, on a full time basis, fully closed to me and to most people.  

But I've always been cognizant of having that outdoor yearning.  And its one of the ironies of my being a lawyer.  It's an indoor occupation.  Perhaps that's been why I've always been keener on site visits and the like than other lawyers I know.  It gets me out there (which isn't the only reason or even the conscious reason I do it).  So I'd have homesteaded.

I know some families here whose ranches started in this era.  Indeed, I once knew one such homesteader.  He was a soldier in World War One and came out, right after the war, and homesteaded.  He ranched with his son (World War Two U.S. Navy) who never married.  His sister inherited the place and now one of his nieces runs it.  It's quite small, but its a beautiful place.  I used to hunt deer there every year.

An accountant I once sort of knew had a similar story.  His father had taken a train while on leave, while in the U.S. Navy, during World War One, to Natrona County Wyoming, and he filed on a homestead. Rather obviously, by the time he got back to his Navy base he was AWOL, but apparently that was forgiven.  That place became a combined farm/ranch.

A high country homestead in the Laramie Range, in Albany County.  A  sign indicates that the homestead was filed in 1910, which would explain the high altitude nature of the homestead.  This one must have been occupied until fairly recently, and might still be during part of the year given the modern plate steel sign.  At least one of the outbuildings appears to probably date from at least as recently as the 1950s.

Now, there are other outdoor occupations.  I considered, for example, becoming a Game Warden.  At least one other lawyer I know is appalled by this suggestion, even though he considered it himself. A European immigrant, he's fully of the mind that a contemplate person has, as options, careers in the clergy and the law and that's just a crazy concept on my part.  But it is an outdoor career.  At least one other practicing lawyer I know started off in that direction as well.  I did focus on that for a time, and my chance to work for the Game & Fish came after I was already a  practicing lawyer and engaged, and the poor pay deterred me as a responsible, soon to be married man (perhaps my European friend is right).  Still, I tinge with envy every time I see that Game Warden Green truck in the field.

Game Wardens existed in my state in 1917, but there weren't very many of them and their job was pretty darned tough and dangerous.  The job appealed to me when I was in my 20s (heck, it appeals to me now) but it likely would not have in 1917.

Of course, going back to agriculture, a person could work as a full time cowboy in 1917, and you still can in 2017.  For some reason, however, except when I was right out of high school, that line of work isn't something I would have been likely to do in this era, or probably a century ago.  I love ranching, but I probably would not have liked ranching or farming for somebody else.  Indeed, John K. Rollinson, who left two really good written accounts of life in Wyoming around the turn of the prior century, went down this trail and left it.  Coming into Wyoming as a runaway from his home in Buffalo, New York, he worked for the Two Bar and other ranches until becoming a Federal ranger in the Yellowstone Timber Reserve in 1907.  He worked that steady job, but with a massive region to patrol, for several years until going to work for the Painters at a dude ranch. Finding that he wanted to marry the ranchers daughter, which was complicated by a series of things, and feeling that he could never afford to ranch himself, he pulled up stakes and relocated to California where he became a patent medicine salesman, a position he occupied until his death.

So, as we can see, things don't always work out.  Rollinson's range legacy is made up of his books. But in terms of work, he worked in the second half of his life in a completely different occupation, finding the doors he hoped would be open, one of which I'm citing as something that was open in 1917, to be closed.

That may have been because homesteading was expensive.

So maybe that too is unrealistic on my part.  Some successful homesteaders spent years acquiring the assets to get a start.  Others didn't seem to.  Many failed.  I'm pretty cautious.  I could see myself starting out in something else with the idea that I'd start homesteading and then never get around to it.

Maybe I would have started down that geologist track and have made it work.  In 1917, the Wyomign oil patch was booming.

Of course, it's booming in 2017 and I am a geologist by training (but I have no license, something that came in later), so I'd really have to look at 1886 to determine what I would have done with that, or indeed with any career. Would I have pursued geology in the early 1880s?  That strikes me as unlikely.  And I frankly don't know how much work there was for a geologist in the 1880s, for that matter.

Oil strike, Oil City Pennsylvania, 1880s.

I suspect that being a soldier would have appealed to me in the 1880s, and it still does now for that matter. The difference is that soldiers moved around less at the time then they do now.  That's the part of being a serviceman that deterred me from entering that field.  I don't like moving much, or at all. For that matter, I'm very provincial and Wyoming is my home.  I likely would have had similar views at the time.

1886 or so would have been right before the close of the Frontier Era.  So its odd to think that, if I had done that, I'd have still been serving in 1917, but I would have.  Older officers of World War One, by which I mean men in their 50s (and they were all men) had started their service before the Frontier was closed, had seen service during the Spanish American War, had served in the Philippines, probably, and then closed out their careers with the Great War.  That is a lot of moving. Maybe that's not that different from now.

Maj. Gen. Harry C. Hale, commander of the Army's 84th Division, during World War One. He'd entered the service in 1884 and had demonstrated great heroism in 1890 by entering a camp of Sitting Bull's, decked out for war, alone to discuss their coming in.  We don't tend to think of the officers who lead the American Army during World War One as having cut their teeth in the Frontier Army, but the older ones did.

Of course, there were a whole range of jobs that existed in 1917 that do not now.  Jobs like farriers were once common, for example.  I'd likely not have done that, but I have always found their work to be interesting.  Another one that existed were market hunters and trappers.  The elimination of market game hunting is correctly seen as a real triumph in the conservation movement, and a great thing for the average hunter, and I'm glad of that, but in 1917 that profession may very well have called to me.  I love hunting.  Of course, by my current age, 54, I'd likely have to be looking for retirement from it as its days were closing out. And there was never that much of it in Wyoming, frankly.

There were full time "wolfers" here, however.  Those were men who were employed, often by the Federal Government, in hunting wolves.  They lived out on the range in sheepwagons and devoted their lives to that. While some now would find looking at that romantically as hopelessly odd, for some of us it doesn't seem that way.  Indeed, while a law student employed to research the topic of wolf reintroduction in Wyoming (which hadn't yet been done) I learned about wolfers and was fascinated by their job.  I remain fascinated by it.  I can actually see myself having done that, living in wolf hunting poverty.

Wolfer, North Dakota, 1904.

Or so says I.  Animal Damage Control still exists and I'm not working for them.  Indeed, Federal and county trappers are still around, but I'm not one.

Trapping, I should note, as a market enterprise was still a big thing a century ago and would be for a long time thereafter.  There were full time trappers at least up until World War Two.  Now, save for the far North, that's pretty much a thing of the past.

Native trapper, early 20th Century.

Of course, there are a lot of jobs that people occupy today that didn't exist a century ago.  Those of you occupying them would have had to have done something else, like it or not. What would that have been?  Give us your thoughts (please).

And women, of course, had a lot of doors closed to them a century ago.  There were a few, but very few, women lawyers.   There were only a few women doctors. Even female secretaries were brand new at the time.  Most women worked in their homes, or their parents homes, like that or not.  Women did work, of course, and in all classes, but most working women were likely from the poorer classes and employed in roles that few would wish to do today. . . save for those who remain in that class and occupy those roles for the same reason their ancestors in occupation did in 1917.

Well, I'm still think the homesteading thing would have called.  How about for you?