Crisis on the border. Roots, origins, angst, and what is to be done.

May 13, 2023

Mexican Border Crisis

The predicted chaos did not ensue yesterday, which doesn't mean it's not arriving.

Those seeking asylum, FWIW, are required to have first applied in the countries from which they are departing, or online, or if they traveled through another country or countries, those places.  The problem remains of dealing with the requests of those who are allowed in.

Most of the migrants are fleeing economic distress or violence in their homelands, the product of a wide-ranging number of things, and which varies by countries.  Haiti, for example, remains impoverished as a legacy of paying its original French slaveholders upon achieving independence long ago.  Almost all of the Central American and South American states contributing to the human flood also suffer from the legacy of Spanish Colonialism, which saw its original liberators largely act in the name of their own self-interest rather than that of the native populations.  Stable Central American states, looked at with a long lens, have a single stable government example, which also contributes to the flood due to being in an unstable neighborhood.  The existence of multiple Central American states in the first place is nonsensical and is a symptom of failed policies itself. They should really all be part of Mexico, which in fact was at least partially the plan early on.  Repeated efforts to reunite into one state have failed, leaving tiny rump states that have been corruptly ruled and which have fallen into the control of criminal gangs, something the US's unending appetite for illegal drugs, a symptom of its own failed American Dream, fuels.

Marines in Nicaragua, 1932.

Central Americans have lived in fear of US intervention for decades, although that seems to have ceased, as has U.S. intervention.  Unfortunately, the region is terribly governed, with Socialist ineptitude governing in some places (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela), to simply featuring failed states in others.  The US has repeatedly tried a "good neighbor" policy of non-intervention, and it retains guilt over supposed "American colonialism"  for intervention.  The US last put troops on the ground in Panama when it deposed the Panamanian leader during the Reagan Administration and then went right on to invade Grenada.

The problem remains that the neighbor analogy may be too appropriate.  It might be neighborly to ignore your neighbor's dissolute living for a while, but when it turns violent, do you?

It's clear something has to be done to address the root problems of what's being seen. But what is that?

Lex Anteinternet: The Punitive Expedition: The Battle of Parral. Cpl. Tannous

Lex Anteinternet: The Punitive Expedition: The Battle of Parral. A...:       

The Punitive Expedition: The Battle of Parral. April 12, 1916

 Corporal Richard Tannous, 13th Cavalry, wounded at Parral.

More on Tannous:  Tannous.

Sunday, February 19, 1922. A revolution in Mexico?

Officially, by this date in 1922, the Mexican Revolution was over.

On the ground in northern Mexico, and at the border, things didn't quite appear that way.

Or at least to the press. 

The recent invasion of Mexico from the United States side, at Columbus, was only 30 men in strength.  The Obregón government, which had been consolidating power, strongly reacted, however.  And not just in this instance.

The United States Bureau of Prohibition successfully interdicted the British rum runner Annabelle with aircraft, the first successful use of its new fleet of eleven airplanes.

WJZ in New York made the first broadcast of a live radio entertainment program. Comedian Ed Wynn reprised his "Perfect Fool" character with difficulty, given as he lacked the reaction of a live audience.

Political cartoon by Clifford Berryman, published in the Washington Evening Star on 19 February 1922.

Jazz had come to Washington, D.C.

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.

April 29, 1921. "16 Raiding Villistas Not Guilty"

News hit in Cheyenne that a jury in Deming had acquitted some accused of crimes during the Columbus raid. As noted yesterday, this wasn't the first trial, and in fact this one was remarkably late.  Indeed, so late that a person really has to wonder about the justice involved in holding prisoners for six years before going to trial.  And we learn from this article that these sixteen men had been tried and convicted previously, and then pardoned, and the rearrested on new charges.  A pretty questionable set of events.

It was news in other venues as well.

The long delay may have worked in these prisoners favor as well as obviously evolving views on their role in the raid. Those tried rapidly were tried in the heat of the immediate events, which as we know included these men, received much less favorable results.

President Harding had spoken the day prior and that was front page news everywhere, including on the USS Arizona.

On another note, grocery prices for this day in 1921.

April 28, 1921. Jury Acquits Defendants on the Columbus Raid

Jury Acquits 16 Mexicans of Columbus Raid Murders

So read the headlines of the New York Times on this day in 1921.

This is an aspect of the raid, which started off the day by day habit here, i.e., posts in "real time", a century removed, that we still haven't broken.  We probably should have considered it before.

Villa declared the raid a success in that his forces took over 300 longarms, 80 horses, and 30 mules, from Columbus and Camp Furlong by way of the raid.  While that may be so, he directly lost 90 to 170 dead, thereby paying a steep price for low returns it its considered that the raiding force had been made up of 484 men.  Sixty-three of his men were killed during the raid and the remainder died of their wounds thereafter, explaining the imprecise tally.

Some were captured and tried rapidly, with six being sentenced to death.

Other captured men, however were tried later on with differing result, but the overall results are, unfortunately, quite unclear to me.  It hadn't occurred to me that any were tried at all, as I would have regarded Villa's army as that, an army, albeit an irregular one.  Prisoners from armies aren't tried and aren't executed for simply participating in a military action, irrespective of the action itself being illegal.

Indeed, that logic later caused at least one prisoner to have a death sentence commuted to a life sentence. But there were at least three trials and many of the men tried were those who had been taken prisoner by the Army following the launching of its expedition into Mexico.  As far as I can tell, some death sentences were carried out.  A shocking number of the prisoners simply died in captivity due to the horrible condition, in part, of the county jail in which they were held.  We have to recall here that the 1918 Flu Epidemic was ongoing.  

As things moved along there came to be a fair amount of sympathy for the prisoners, some of whom  were in bad physical shape, and many of whom had only vague connections with what had occurred.  Soldier witnesses for the trial ended up being deployed to France so conducting the trials became difficult.  One defendant was only twelve years old and was released.  

Other than the citation to this headline, I can't find any evidence of trials occurring as late as 1921, but apparently they did.  By this time, it was probably too late to really convict many.  In this trial, apparently there were twenty defendants, and sixteen were found not guilty by the jury.

Should any have been tried at all?

Well, some appear to have been tried because of direct murders of civilians, something that's illegal in any war.  That's another matter. But the wisdom of trying soldiers, at least one of whom was a conscripted Carranzaista who was sent into action on that day without ammunition, is and was questionable.  What to do with them no doubt was also problematic, something we've learned again in recent years due to our wars with the Taliban and Al Queda.

On this same day President Harding, who seems to have been photographed with visitors nearly every day, posed with Pop Anson and Anson's daughters.  Adrian "Pop" Anson had been a professional baseball player and later a vaudeville performer.  In his vaudeville role, he performed with his two daughters depicted here, Adele and Dorothy.  Anson would have been about 68 at the time this photograph was taken, and both of his daughters were in their 30s.  Anson died the following April at age 69.

The dog was Laddie Boy, an Airedale.  He was the first White House dog to be followed by the press.  He wasn't even one year old when photographed here, and would outlive his master.

The Infantry Company over a Century. Part 1. The Old Army becomes the Great War Army.

A note about this entry.  Like most of the items posted on this blog that pertain to the 1890-1920 time frame, this information was gathered and posted here as part of a research project for a novel.  As such, it's a post that invites comment.  I.e., the comments are research in and of themselves and its more than a little possible that there's material here that might be in need of correction.

Company C, Wyoming National Guard (Powell Wyoming), 1916.  Note that seemingly nearly everyone in this photograph is a rifleman.  Also of note is that these Wyoming National Guardsmen, all of whom would have come from the Park County area (and therefore were probably of a fairly uniform background and ethnicity) are using bedrolls like Frontier infantrymen, rather than the M1910 haversack that was official issue at the time.

Infantry, we’re often told, is the most basic of all Army roles.  Every soldiers starts off, to some extent, as a rifleman.  But save for those who have been in the infantry, which granted is a fair number of people over time, we may very well have an wholly inaccurate concept of how an infantry company, the basic maneuver element, is made up, and what individual infantrymen do today. 

And if that's true, we certainly don't have very good idea of how that came to be.

And we’re also unlikely to appreciate how it’s changed, and changed substantially, over time.

So, we’re going to go back to our period of focus and come forward to take a look at that in a series of posts that are relevant to military history, as well as the specific focus of this blog.

Prior to the Great War, the Old Army.

U.S. Infantry in Texas early in the 20th Century.  I'm not sure of the date, but its a 20th Century photograph dating after 1903 as all of the infantrymen are carrying M1903 rifles.  It's prior to 1915, however, in that they're all wearing late 19th Century pattern campaign hats of the type that came into service in the 1880s and remained until 1911.

Much of this blog has focused on the Punitive Expedition/Border War which ran up to and continued on into World War One.  As we've noted before, that event, the Punitive Expedition, was one in which the Army began to see the introduction of a lot of new weaponry.  While that expanded the Army's capabilities, it also, at the same time, presented problems on how exactly to handle the new equipment and how its use should be organized.

Historians are fond of saying that the Punitive Expedition served the purpose of mobilizing and organizing an Army that was in now way ready to engage in a giant European war, and that is certainly true.  But the fact of the matter remains the infantry that served along the Mexican border in 1916 (the troops who went into Mexico were largely cavalry) did not serve in an Army that was organizationally similar at all to the one that went to France in 1917.

American infantrymen became riflemen with the introduction of M1855 Rifle Musket.  Prior to that, the normal long arm for a U.S. infantryman was a musket, that being a smoothbore, and accordingly short range, weapon.  Rifles had been issued before but they were normally the weapon of specialists.  Starting in 1841, however, the Army began to make use of rifle muskets which had large bores and shallow rifling, combining the best features of the rifle and the musket and addressing the shortcomings of both.  The advantages were clear and the rifle musket rapidly supplanted the musket

Civil War era drawling showing a rifleman in a pose familiar to generations of combat riflemen up to the present day.

For a long time, prior to the Great War, infantry companies were comprised entirely or nearly entirely of riflemen, with their officers and NCO's often being issued sidearms rather than longarms, depending upon their position in the company. As with the period following 1917, companies were made up of platoons, and platoons were made up of squads, so that part of it is completely familiar.  Much of the rest of it would strike a modern soldier, indeed any soldier after 1917 as odd, although it wouldn't a civilian, given as civilians have been schooled by movies to continue to think of infantry this way.  Even in movies showing modern combat, most infantrymen are shown to be riflemen.

Squads at the time, that is prior to 1917, were formed by lining men in a company up and counting them out into groups of eight men per squad.  Each squad would have a corporal in charge of it and consist of eight men, including the commanding corporal.  The corporal, in terms of authority, and in reality, was equivalent to a sergeant in the Army post 1921.  I.e., the corporal was equivalent to a modern sergeant in the Army.  He was, we'd note, a true Non Commissioned Officer.

There were usually six squads per platoon.  The squads were organized into two sections, with each section being commanded by a sergeant.  The sergeant, in that instance, held a rank that would be equivalent to the modern Staff Sergeant, although his authority may be more comparable to that of a Sergeant First Class.

The platoon was commanded by a lieutenant. One of the company's two platoons was commanded by a 1st lieutenant, who was second in command of the company, and the other by a 2nd lieutenant.  The company was commanded by a Captain, who was aided by the company Field Sergeant, who was like a First Sergeant in terms of duties and authority.  The company staff consisted of the Field Sergeant, a Staff Sergeant and a private.  The Staff Sergeant's rank is only semi comparable to that of the current Staff Sergeant, but he did outrank "buck" Sergeants.

Sergeants were, rather obviously, a really big deal.

Spanish American War volunteers carrying .45-70 trapdoor Springfield single shot rifles and wearing blue wool uniforms.

While this structure would more or less exist going far back into the 19th Century, the Army had undergone a reorganization following the Spanish American War which brought to an end some of the remnants of of the Frontier Army in some ways and which pointed to the future, while at the same time much of the Army in 1910 would have remained perfectly recognizable to an old soldier, on the verge of retirement, who had entered it thirty years earlier in 1880.*  This was reflected by an overhaul of enlisted ranks in 1902 which brought in new classifications and which did away with old ones, and as part of that insignia which we can recognize today, for enlisted troops, over 100 years later.  Gone were the huge inverted stripes of the Frontier era and, replacing them, were much smaller insignia whose stripes pointed skyward. The new insignia, reflecting the arrival of smokeless powder which had caused the Army to start to emphasize concealment in uniforms for the first time, were not only much smaller, but they blended in. . .somewhat, with the uniform itself.

New York National Guardsmen boarding trains for border service during the Punitive Expedition.  They are still carrying their equipment in bed rolls rather than the M1910 Haversack.

The basic enlisted pattern of ranks that came into existence in 1902 continued on through 1921, when thing were much reorganized.  But the basic structure of the Rifle Company itself was about to change dramatically, in part due to advancements in small arms which were impacting the nearly universal identify of the infantryman as a rifleman.

Colorado National Guardsman with M1895 machinegun in 1914, at Ludlow Colorado.

Automatic weapons were coming into service, but how to use and issue them wasn't clear at first.  The U.S. Army first encountered them in the Spanish American War, which coincidentally overlapped with the Boer War which is where the British Army first encountered and used them.  The US adopted its first machinegun in 1895.  The 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, which fought as dismounted cavalry in Cuba during the Spanish American War, used them in support of their assault of Kettle Hill, although theirs were privately purchased by unit supporters who had donated them to the unit.   The Spanish American and and Boer Wars proved their utility however and various models came after that.  They were, however, not assigned out at the squad level, but were retained in a separate company and assigned out by higher headquarters as needed.  There was, in other words, no organic automatic weapon at the company level, and certainly not at the squad level.

African American infantryman in 1898, carrying the then new Krag M1986 rifle.  This soldiers is wearing the blue service uniform which, at that time, was being phased out in favor of a khaki service uniform.  Most of the Army had not received the new uniform at this time and, in combat in  Cuba, most wore cotton duck stable clothing that was purchased for the war.  Some soldiers did deploy, however, with blue wool uniforms.  In the field, this soldier would have worn leggings, which he is not in this photograph.

There also weren't a lot of them.  Running up to World War One the Army issued new tables of organization for National Guard units, anticipating large formations such as divisions.  Even at that point, however, there were no automatic weapons at the company level at all.  The infantry regiment table provided for a Machine Gun Company which had a grand total of four automatic rifles. 

M1909 "Machine Rifle".  It was a variant of the Hotchkiss machinegun of the period and was acquired by the Army in very low quantities.

Just four.

Most men in a Rifle Company were just that, riflemen.  Automatic weapons were issued to special sections as noted.  Rifle grenadiers didn't exist.  Most of the infantry, therefore that served along the border with Mexico was leg infantry, carrying M1903 Springfield rifles, and of generally low rank.**

New York National Guardsmen in Texas during the Punitive Expedition.

That was about to change.

Well, some of it was about to change.  Some of it, not so much.

So, in 1916, anyhow, where we we at.  A company had about 100 men, commanded by a captain who had a very small staff.  The entire company, for that matter, had an economy of staff.  Most of the men were privates, almost all of which were riflemen, and most of who's direct authority figure, if you will, was a corporal. There were few sergeants in the company, and those who were there were pretty powerful men, in context.  There were some men around with special skills as well, such as buglers, farriers, and cooks.  Cooks were a specialty and the cook was an NCO himself, showing how important he was.  Even infantry had a small number of horses for officers and potentially for messengers, which is why there were farriers.  And automatic weapons had started to show up, but not as weapons assigned to the company itself, and not in large numbers.

A career soldier could expect himself, irrespective of the accuracy of the expectation, to spend his entire career in this sort of organization, and many men in fact had.  Some men spent entire careers as privates. Sergeants were men who had really advanced in the Army, even if they retired with only three stripes.  Corporals had achieved a measure of success.  Most of the men lived in common with each other in barracks.  Only NCO's might expect a measure of privacy.  Only sergeants might hope to marry.

Machine gun troops of the Punitive Expedition equipped with M1904 Maxim machinegun and carrying M1911 sidearms.

That, of course, was the Regular Army.  The National Guard was organized in the same fashion, but there was more variance in it.  Guardsmen volunteered for their own reasons and had no hope of retirement, as it wasn't available to them.  Some were well heeled, some were not, but they were largely armed and equipped in the same manner, although they received new material only after the Army had received a full measure of it first. Their uniforms and weapons could lag behind those of the Regular Army's.  And some units who had sponsors could be surprisingly well equipped, some having automatic weapons that were privately purchased for the unit and which did not fit into any sort of regular TO&E.

And then came the Great War.

Footnotes:

*Thirty years was the Army retirement period at the time.

**We've dealt with the weapons of the period separately, but in the 1900 to 1916 time frame, the Army adopted a new rifle to replace a nearly new rifle, with the M1903 replacing the M1896 Krag-Jorgensen, which was only seven years old at the time.  While M1896 rifles remained in service inventories up into World War Two, to some degree, is field replacement was amazingly rapid and by World War One there were no Regular Army or National Guard units carrying them.  

In terms of handguns, of which the US used a lot, in 1916 the Army was acquiring a newly adopted automatic pistol, the M1911.  Sizable quantities had been acquired but stocks of M1909 double action .45 revolvers remained in use. The M1909, for that matter, had been pushed into service due to the inadequacies of the M1892, which was chambered in .38.  The M1892 had proven so inadequate in combat that old stocks of .45 M1873 revolvers were issued for field use until M1909s were adopted and fielded.  Given this confusion, and rapid replacement of one revolver by another in 1916, there weren't enough M1911s around, and some soldiers went into Mexico with M1909s.

Related threads:

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition.

November 22, 1920: Violence and Echoes of Violence

An almost indescribable slate of violent events made the Monday morning headlines on this day in 1920. 

Of interest, and probably depending upon whether  you were receiving a morning or evening newspaper, the violence in Ireland may have focused on one side, or the other, in the strife going on there.

On the same day Woodrow Wilson, acting as the arbiter on where the boarder between Turkey and Armenia was to go, issued his decision.  It was a moot point, the Turks, who had prevailed in their war against Armenian, would dictate where that border would be to Armenia's detriment.

DuPont bought a giant share of General Motors.

Governor Octaviano Larrazola pardoned sixteen Mexicans who had been imprisoned for the March 9, 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico noting that they appeared to have no real connection with Villa and were press ganged by the Villista's at the time of the raid and forced to participate.

Governor Larrazola had been born in Mexico to then wealthy parents who had suffered under the French rule and who ultimately went bankrupt.  He entered the United States with a Catholic Bishop as a teenager intending to study theology, which he did do, and then become a Priest.  Ultimately, he determined he was not called to the Priesthood and became a teacher in El Paso, Texas.  In El Paso his focus turned to the law which he studied and then stood for the bar in Texas.  He moved to New Mexico in 1895 where he practiced law and entered politics, becoming the state's Governor in 1918.  He'd ultimately serve a term in Congress.  As he was highly independent and tended to anger his own party, his political career was intermittent.

June 3, 1920. Matters military.

The USS Tennessee.

On this day in 1920, the USS Tennessee was launched.  She was at Pearl Harbor in 1941 but was not sunk as the bombs that hit her failed to perform correctly.  She was damaged and pinned in her moring, but was released from being pinned on December 9 when repairs and updating commenced. She served through the war and was decommissioned in 1947.

The Navy was receiving a fair number of new ships, which wasn't surprising given that ships started during World War One were still being completed. But it was the situation south of the border that was drawing attention of the type that would involve the Army, if something was to really occur.  There was in effort in that vein to place Mexico's conduct towards foreign nationals in the Republican platform for 1920, an act that would require military intervention as part of a political platform if the perception of Mexican recalcitrance remained.  

March 10, 1920. Border Trouble. Harding runs.

It read like papers a decade prior, trouble on the border.

And, while we haven't been covering it much, there was plenty of ongoing trouble in Mexico.  Woodrow Wilson may have declared Carranza the legitimate head of state, but there were still armed contestants on that claim and they were pretty active.  For that matter, Carranza's regime was shaky internally.  Mexico remained troubling and in trouble.

And Senator Harding  of Ohio was entering the fray. . .

He actually already had, but after New Hampshire, where Gen. Leonard Wood had taken the first victory of the season, Harding was in the west, in Denver specifically, drawing attention to his campaign.

March 8, 1920. Villa back in the headlines, Syria declares a putative state, Allies and Turks clash, Motoring hazards.

Pancho Villa was back in the headlines on this day in 1920, seemingly back to his old habits.

And the unfinished results of World War One were in the headlines in regard to Turkey, whose new government was fighting the Allied powers that were in the country and seeking to redraw its map.

Part of that map had already been redrawn as imperial possessions of the Ottoman Empire were severed from it. What would become of them wasn't quite known at the time, but the Syrian National Congress thought it knew what should happen to that part which was Syrian.  On this day in 1920 it declared Syria to be an independent Arab kingdom with Hashemite Emir Faisal, famous for his role in the Arab Revolt during the Great War as its king.

King Faisal I of Syria.

Syria had been regarded as the prize by Arab revolutionaries during World War One and Faisal's ascendency of its thrown was therefore a personal ascendency as well.  It would be instantly challenged by France, which felt itself to have a special role in Syria dating back to the Middle Ages.   This was known to the  Syrians at the time, and indeed Faisal had already entered into an agreement with France which more or less made Syria a French protectorate. That agreement was massively disliked in Syria and was renounced by Faisal prior to his being declared the king.  The declaration of independence would shortly lead to the San Remo Conference which would decide Syria's statuts, at least for the short term, as well as the status of Faisal's claim to a Syrian throne.

Also in the Middle East on this day, there were protests in Jerusalem.  

Protests at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

The protests would keep on and would soon turn violent.  Their focus was opposition to Jewish immigration into Palestine but the motivation for protests on this day and the day prior were sparked by the Syrian National Congress declaring the existence of the Syrian state, which claimed British controlled lands within its boundaries.

On a lighter note, Gasoline Alley pondered one of the hazards of the motor age.

I was actually in a motor vehicle accident in the late 1980s when a kid doing something just such as this rear ended my 1954 Chevrolet sedan.

Raid on Ruby Arizona, February 27, 1920

A small raid, which may have been simply a raid by bandits, but which is sometimes associated with Villistas, took place near Ruby Arizona.  Three Americans died in the raid, which had the attributes of a robbery.

The raid was actually on a store in Ruby which had just sold to John and Alexander Frazer.  They wer both shot and killed by the raiders.  The raiders also destroyed the telephone wires for the town's only telephone and that horses had been stolen from a local ranch.  A posse lead by Sheriff Raymond Earhart tracked the raiders, determined to be two in number, but failed to catch them.  By means that are unclear to me, they were later identified and one of them was killed in October in a gunfight in Pima County, Arizona and the other ultimately jailed for crimes in Mexico.

December 15, 1919. No peace, no booze. Colorado approves the 19th Amendment.

The United States Supreme Court, on this day, made it plane.

No peace, no booze.

Of course, the reprieve that striking down provisions of the war time prohibition bill, which was always subject to questions about what it really applied to, would have been temporary anyhow  Nationwide prohibition was coming in next month with the application of the Volstead Act.  And many states, Wyoming and Colorado included, had voted in state prohibition anyhow.

The written opinion would actually be released the following day, Decmeber 16, and find that the prohibition authority was valid under Congress' war powers. The text of the short opinion was as follows:

Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Co., 251 U.S. 146 (1919)
Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Company
No. 589, 602
Argued November 20, 1919
Decided December 16, 1919
251 U.S. 146

Syllabus
The power to prohibit the liquor traffic as a means of increasing war efficiency is part of the war power of Congress, and its exercise without providing for compensation is no more limited by the Fifth Amendment than a like exercise of a state's police power would be limited by the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 251 U. S. 164.

The War-Time Prohibition Act, approved ten days after the armistice with Germany was signed, Act of November 21, 1918, c. 212, 40 Stat. 1046, provided:

"That after June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and nineteen, until the conclusion of the present war and thereafter until the termination of demobilization, the date of which hall be determined and proclaimed by the President of the United States, for the purpose of conserving the manpower of the Nation, and to increase efficiency in the production of arms, munitions, ships, food, and clothing for the Army and Navy, it shall be unlawful to sell for beverage purposes any distilled spirits, and during said time no distilled spirits held in bond shall be removed therefrom for beverage purposes except for export."

Held, in respect of liquors in bond, even if belonging to one who made and owned them before the act was passed and paid revenue taxes upon them since June 30, 1919:

(1) That the act was not an appropriation of such liquors for public purposes. P. 251 U. S. 157.

(2) That the time allowed for disposing of all liquors in bond on November 21, 1918, could not be declared unreasonable as a matter of law, even if they were not sufficiently ripened or aged to be disposed of advantageously during the period limited. P. 251 U. S. 158.

(3) That the prohibition was not in violation of the Fifth Amendment as a taking of property without compensation. P. 251 U. S. 157.

(4) That it was within the war power when passed (notwithstanding the cessation of hostilities under the armistice) as a means of war efficiency and for the support and care of the Army and Navy during demobilization. P. 251 U. S. 158.

A wide latitude of discretion must be accorded to Congress in the exercise of the war powers.

The court cannot inquire into the motives of Congress, in determining the validity of its acts, or into the wisdom of the legislation, nor pass upon the necessity for the exercise of a power possessed. 

It is settled that the war power carries with it the power to guard against immediate renewal of the conflict and to remedy the evils which have arisen from its rise and progress. Id.

Assuming that the continuing validity of an act passed under the war power may depend not upon the existence of a technical state of war, terminable only with the ratification of a treaty of peace or by a proclamation of peace, but upon some actual war emergency or necessity, the Court cannot say that the necessity for the prohibition had ceased when these suits were begun in view of the facts that the treaty of peace has not been concluded, that various war activities -- among them, national control of railroads -- continue, and that the manpower of the nation has not been completely restored to a peace footing.

The Eighteenth Amendment did not operate to repeal the War-Time Prohibition Act.
In defining the period of the prohibition, Congress, in the War-Time Prohibition Act, doubtless expecting that the war would be definitely ended by a peace under a ratified treaty or a proclamation before demobilization was complete, intended that the prohibition should continue until the date of the termination of demobilization had been definitely ascertained by the President and made known by him through a proclamation to that end.

The reference to the "demobilization of the army and navy" in the President's message communicating his veto of the National Prohibition Act, is not the proclamation required by the War-Time Prohibition Act.

In an exact sense, demobilization had not terminated then or when these suits were begun, as shown by the report on the subject of the Secretary of War, made to the President and transmitted to Congress; nor does it appear that it has yet so terminated.

There was good news for some Americans being held by Pancho Villa, they were let go.

And there was good news for women voters in Colorado as Colorado ratified the 19th Amendment, the last state to do so in 1919, and over a month before Wyoming, where women could already vote, did so.  Wyoming's Gov. Robert Carey would have had to call a special election in order to achieve this, which he repeatedly indicated he would not do.

The Non Partisan League, which put out the paper The Nonpartisan Leader, put out its December issue, featuring a rather over the top view of farmers.

The NPL was a semi socialist branch of the Republican Party that dated back to 1915.  It can, therefore, be regarded as a really radical branch of Republican Progressivism from that era.  It advocated for state control of grain mills and the like, and indeed it was influential in the upper Midwest where policies it advocated were put into effect during the Great Depression.  By that time it was part of the Democratic Party, having made the switch in 1920.

December 5, 1919. One Crisis with Mexico Diffused, another Occurs

Diplomatic officer Jenkins was released by the Mexican judicial system on this day in 1919, which was also the same day that Mexican bandits staged a cross border raid.  At least the release brought the two countries back from the brink of war.

On the same day, Laramie was looking at closing buildings due to the strike induced national coal shortage.

December 1, 1919. The border arms, industry meets.

1920 was threatening to be a repeat of 1916, based upon the late 1919 headlines.

Mexico was reported to be rushing troops to its border in anticipation of the United States moving troops south.

Meanwhile, in Washington D. C. the Second Industrial Conference was meeting to discuss the post war economy.

Members of the Second Industrial Conference.