French forces number 14,000 men attacked the Moroccan stronghold of Mouha ou Hammou Zayani at Khenifra, Morocco.
Franklin Roosevelt gave his State of the Union Address for 1944. The speech was wide-ranging, but is remembered for his call for a "Second Bill of Rights", which were:
To the Congress:
This Nation in the past two years has become an active partner in the world's greatest war against human slavery.
We have joined with like-minded people in order to defend ourselves in a world that has been gravely threatened with gangster rule.
But I do not think that any of us Americans can be content with mere survival. Sacrifices that we and our allies are making impose upon us all a sacred obligation to see to it that out of this war we and our children will gain something better than mere survival.
We are united in determination that this war shall not be followed by another interim which leads to new disaster- that we shall not repeat the tragic errors of ostrich isolationism—that we shall not repeat the excesses of the wild twenties when this Nation went for a joy ride on a roller coaster which ended in a tragic crash.
When Mr. Hull went to Moscow in October, and when I went to Cairo and Teheran in November, we knew that we were in agreement with our allies in our common determination to fight and win this war. But there were many vital questions concerning the future peace, and they were discussed in an atmosphere of complete candor and harmony.
In the last war such discussions, such meetings, did not even begin until the shooting had stopped and the delegates began to assemble at the peace table. There had been no previous opportunities for man-to-man discussions which lead to meetings of minds. The result was a peace which was not a peace. That was a mistake which we are not repeating in this war.
And right here I want to address a word or two to some suspicious souls who are fearful that Mr. Hull or I have made "commitments" for the future which might pledge this Nation to secret treaties, or to enacting the role of Santa Claus.
To such suspicious souls—using a polite terminology—I wish to say that Mr. Churchill, and Marshal Stalin, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek are all thoroughly conversant with the provisions of our Constitution. And so is Mr. Hull. And so am I.
Of course we made some commitments. We most certainly committed ourselves to very large and very specific military plans which require the use of all Allied forces to bring about the defeat of our enemies at the earliest possible time.
But there were no secret treaties or political or financial commitments.
The one supreme objective for the future, which we discussed for each Nation individually, and for all the United Nations, can be summed up in one word: Security.
And that means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors. It means also economic security, social security, moral security—in a family of Nations.
In the plain down-to-earth talks that I had with the Generalissimo and Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill, it was abundantly clear that they are all most deeply interested in the resumption of peaceful progress by their own peoples—progress toward a better life. All our allies want freedom to develop their lands and resources, to build up industry, to increase education and individual opportunity, and to raise standards of living.
All our allies have learned by bitter experience that real development will not be possible if they are to be diverted from their purpose by repeated wars—or even threats of war.
China and Russia are truly united with Britain and America in recognition of this essential fact:
The best interests of each Nation, large and small, demand that all freedom-loving Nations shall join together in a just and durable system of peace. In the present world situation, evidenced by the actions of Germany, Italy, and Japan, unquestioned military control over disturbers of the peace is as necessary among Nations as it is among citizens in a community. And an equally basic essential to peace is a decent standard of living for all individual men and women and children in all Nations. Freedom from fear is eternally linked with freedom from want.
There are people who burrow through our Nation like unseeing moles, and attempt to spread the suspicion that if other Nations are encouraged to raise their standards of living, our own American standard of living must of necessity be depressed.
The fact is the very contrary. It has been shown time and again that if the standard of living of any country goes up, so does its purchasing power- and that such a rise encourages a better standard of living in neighboring countries with whom it trades. That is just plain common sense—and it is the kind of plain common sense that provided the basis for our discussions at Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran.
Returning from my journeyings, I must confess to a sense of "let-down" when I found many evidences of faulty perspective here in Washington. The faulty perspective consists in overemphasizing lesser problems and thereby underemphasizing the first and greatest problem.
The overwhelming majority of our people have met the demands of this war with magnificent courage and understanding. They have accepted inconveniences; they have accepted hardships; they have accepted tragic sacrifices. And they are ready and eager to make whatever further contributions are needed to win the war as quickly as possible- if only they are given the chance to know what is required of them.
However, while the majority goes on about its great work without complaint, a noisy minority maintains an uproar of demands for special favors for special groups. There are pests who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the cocktail bars of Washington, representing these special groups as opposed to the basic interests of the Nation as a whole. They have come to look upon the war primarily as a chance to make profits for themselves at the expense of their neighbors- profits in money or in terms of political or social preferment.
Such selfish agitation can be highly dangerous in wartime. It creates confusion. It damages morale. It hampers our national effort. It muddies the waters and therefore prolongs the war.
If we analyze American history impartially, we cannot escape the fact that in our past we have not always forgotten individual and selfish and partisan interests in time of war—we have not always been united in purpose and direction. We cannot overlook the serious dissensions and the lack of unity in our war of the Revolution, in our War of 1812, or in our War Between the States, when the survival of the Union itself was at stake.
In the first World War we came closer to national unity than in any previous war. But that war lasted only a year and a half, and increasing signs of disunity began to appear during the final months of the conflict.
In this war, we have been compelled to learn how interdependent upon each other are all groups and sections of the population of America.
Increased food costs, for example, will bring new demands for wage increases from all war workers, which will in turn raise all prices of all things including those things which the farmers themselves have to buy. Increased wages or prices will each in turn produce the same results. They all have a particularly disastrous result on all fixed income groups.
And I hope you will remember that all of us in this Government represent the fixed income group just as much as we represent business owners, workers, and farmers. This group of fixed income people includes: teachers, clergy, policemen, firemen, widows and minors on fixed incomes, wives and dependents of our soldiers and sailors, and old-age pensioners. They and their families add up to one-quarter of our one hundred and thirty million people. They have few or no high pressure representatives at the Capitol. In a period of gross inflation they would be the worst sufferers.
If ever there was a time to subordinate individual or group selfishness to the national good, that time is now. Disunity at home—bickerings, self-seeking partisanship, stoppages of work, inflation, business as usual, politics as usual, luxury as usual these are the influences which can undermine the morale of the brave men ready to die at the front for us here.
Those who are doing most of the complaining are not deliberately striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices- that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off. But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives in Berlin and Tokyo—and by the sum of all the perils that lie along the way.
Overconfidence and complacency are among our deadliest enemies. Last spring—after notable victories at Stalingrad and in Tunisia and against the U-boats on the high seas—overconfidence became so pronounced that war production fell off. In two months, June and July, 1943, more than a thousand airplanes that could have been made and should have been made were not made. Those who failed to make them were not on strike. They were merely saying, "The war's in the bag- so let's relax."
That attitude on the part of anyone—Government or management or labor—can lengthen this war. It can kill American boys.
Let us remember the lessons of 1918. In the summer of that year the tide turned in favor of the allies. But this Government did not relax. In fact, our national effort was stepped up. In August, 1918, the draft age limits were broadened from 21-31 to 18-45. The President called for "force to the utmost," and his call was heeded. And in November, only three months later, Germany surrendered.
That is the way to fight and win a war—all out—and not with half-an-eye on the battlefronts abroad and the other eye-and-a-half on personal, selfish, or political interests here at home.
Therefore, in order to concentrate all our energies and resources on winning the war, and to maintain a fair and stable economy at home, I recommend that the Congress adopt:
(1) A realistic tax law—which will tax all unreasonable profits, both individual and corporate, and reduce the ultimate cost of the war to our sons and daughters. The tax bill now under consideration by the Congress does not begin to meet this test.
(2) A continuation of the law for the renegotiation of war contracts—which will prevent exorbitant profits and assure fair prices to the Government. For two long years I have pleaded with the Congress to take undue profits out of war.
(3) A cost of food law—which will enable the Government (a) to place a reasonable floor under the prices the farmer may expect for his production; and (b) to place a ceiling on the prices a consumer will have to pay for the food he buys. This should apply to necessities only; and will require public funds to carry out. It will cost in appropriations about one percent of the present annual cost of the war.
(4) Early reenactment of. the stabilization statute of October, 1942. This expires June 30, 1944, and if it is not extended well in advance, the country might just as well expect price chaos by summer.
(5) A national service law- which, for the duration of the war, will prevent strikes, and, with certain appropriate exceptions, will make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult in this Nation.
These five measures together form a just and equitable whole. I would not recommend a national service law unless the other laws were passed to keep down the cost of living, to share equitably the burdens of taxation, to hold the stabilization line, and to prevent undue profits.
The Federal Government already has the basic power to draft capital and property of all kinds for war purposes on a basis of just compensation.
As you know, I have for three years hesitated to recommend a national service act. Today, however, I am convinced of its necessity. Although I believe that we and our allies can win the war without such a measure, I am certain that nothing less than total mobilization of all our resources of manpower and capital will guarantee an earlier victory, and reduce the toll of suffering and sorrow and blood.
I have received a joint recommendation for this law from the heads of the War Department, the Navy Department, and the Maritime Commission. These are the men who bear responsibility for the procurement of the necessary arms and equipment, and for the successful prosecution of the war in the field. They say:
"When the very life of the Nation is in peril the responsibility for service is common to all men and women. In such a time there can be no discrimination between the men and women who are assigned by the Government to its defense at the battlefront and the men and women assigned to producing the vital materials essential to successful military operations. A prompt enactment of a National Service Law would be merely an expression of the universality of this responsibility."
I believe the country will agree that those statements are the solemn truth.
National service is the most democratic way to wage a war. Like selective service for the armed forces, it rests on the obligation of each citizen to serve his Nation to his utmost where he is best qualified.
It does not mean reduction in wages. It does not mean loss of retirement and seniority rights and benefits. It does not mean that any substantial numbers of war workers will be disturbed in their present jobs. Let these facts be wholly clear.
Experience in other democratic Nations at war—Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand- has shown that the very existence of national service makes unnecessary the widespread use of compulsory power. National service has proven to be a unifying moral force based on an equal and comprehensive legal obligation of all people in a Nation at war.
There are millions of American men and women who are not in this war at all. It is not because they do not want to be in it. But they want to know where they can best do their share. National service provides that direction. It will be a means by which every man and woman can find that inner satisfaction which comes from making the fullest possible contribution to victory.
I know that all civilian war workers will be glad to be able to say many years hence to their grandchildren: "Yes, I, too, was in service in the great war. I was on duty in an airplane factory, and I helped make hundreds of fighting planes. The Government told me that in doing that I was performing my most useful work in the service of my country."
It is argued that we have passed the stage in the war where national service is necessary. But our soldiers and sailors know that this is not true. We are going forward on a long, rough road- and, in all journeys, the last miles are the hardest. And it is for that final effort—for the total defeat of our enemies-that we must mobilize our total resources. The national war program calls for the employment of more people in 1944 than in 1943.
It is my conviction that the American people will welcome this win-the-war measure which is based on the eternally just principle of "fair for one, fair for all."
It will give our people at home the assurance that they are standing four-square behind our soldiers and sailors. And it will give our enemies demoralizing assurance that we mean business -that we, 130,000,000 Americans, are on the march to Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo.
I hope that the Congress will recognize that, although this is a political year, national service is an issue which transcends politics. Great power must be used for great purposes.
As to the machinery for this measure, the Congress itself should determine its nature—but it should be wholly nonpartisan in its make-up.
Our armed forces are valiantly fulfilling their responsibilities to our country and our people. Now the Congress faces the responsibility for taking those measures which are essential to national security in this the most decisive phase of the Nation's greatest war.
Several alleged reasons have prevented the enactment of legislation which would preserve for our soldiers and sailors and marines the fundamental prerogative of citizenship—the right to vote. No amount of legalistic argument can becloud this issue in the eyes of these ten million American citizens. Surely the signers of the Constitution did not intend a document which, even in wartime, would be construed to take away the franchise of any of those who are fighting to preserve the Constitution itself.
Our soldiers and sailors and marines know that the overwhelming majority of them will be deprived of the opportunity to vote, if the voting machinery is left exclusively to the States under existing State laws—and that there is no likelihood of these laws being changed in time to enable them to vote at the next election. The Army and Navy have reported that it will be impossible effectively to administer forty-eight different soldier voting laws. It is the duty of the Congress to remove this unjustifiable discrimination against the men and women in our armed forces- and to do it as quickly as possible.
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.
One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of "rightist reaction" in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called "normalcy" of the 1920's—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
I ask the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights- for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress so to do. Many of these problems are already before committees of the Congress in the form of proposed legislation. I shall from time to time communicate with the Congress with respect to these and further proposals. In the event that no adequate program of progress is evolved, I am certain that the Nation will be conscious of the fact.
Our fighting men abroad- and their families at home- expect such a program and have the right to insist upon it. It is to their demands that this Government should pay heed rather than to the whining demands of selfish pressure groups who seek to feather their nests while young Americans are dying.
The foreign policy that we have been following—the policy that guided us at Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran—is based on the common sense principle which was best expressed by Benjamin Franklin on July 4, 1776: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
I have often said that there are no two fronts for America in this war. There is only one front. There is one line of unity which extends from the hearts of the people at home to the men of our attacking forces in our farthest outposts. When we speak of our total effort, we speak of the factory and the field, and the mine as well as of the battleground -- we speak of the soldier and the civilian, the citizen and his Government.
Each and every one of us has a solemn obligation under God to serve this Nation in its most critical hour—to keep this Nation great -- to make this Nation greater in a better world.
TBFs from the USS Block Island (CVE-21) made the first aircraft rocket attack on a German (Type VIIC) U-boat, U-758.
The Japanese cruiser Kuma was sunk by the British submarine Tall7-Ho off of Penang, Malaya.
The Soviet government issued a statement through TASS disputing Polish territorial claims and insisting that the Soviet-Polish border had been determined through a democratic 1939 plebiscite. It also declared that the Polish Government in Exile was "incapable of establishing friendly relations with the USSR, and has also shown itself incapable of organizing active resistance against German invaders inside Poland. Moreover, by its erroneous policy it has often played into the hands of German invaders."
So, quite clearly, a war that had been started as an attempt to protect Polish integrity didn't look likely to end that way.
P-51s started escorting US bombing missions over Germany, joining P-47s and P-38s which already had that role.
From Sarah Sundin's Blog:
Today in World War II History—January 11, 1944: In a US Eighth Air Force raid on Brunswick, the 94th Bomb Group makes a rare second run on the target and receives the Distinguished Unit Citation.
The Moroccan Nationalist Movement issued its Proclamation of Independence demanding a united Morocco independent of France and Spain.
The Hitchcock movie Lifeboat was released.
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The members of the Fascist Grand Council sentenced to death by the rump Italian puppet Italian Social Republic were executed. They included Mussolini's son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano.
Some news that read like news of the decade prior, and some that was truly horrific.
A murder simply over a man staying at a hotel.
Farmer James D. Cummings and draftsman J. Earl McLeod of Washington, Kansas, filed the patent application for the bulldozer.
It's amazing to think that bulldozers did not exist before that time.
The Tangier Protocol was signed between France, Spain and the United Kingdom, creating the Tangier International Zone in Morocco. It governed the international zone of the city, and would exist until 1956 when Morocco became independent.
Andrew Volstead of Volstead Act fame told a law enforcement conference that the American public was working around towards supporting prohibition.
The German National Socialist Party, the NASDP, commonly called the Nazi Party, held its first party congress. It was held in Munich, where the party was centered at the time, and drew 6,000 members.
The tiny Republic of San Marino was forced by local fascists into union with Italy. The micro state has since regained independence.
The Republic of the Rif released the remaining 326 prisoners of war it held to Spain, in exchange for 4,000,000 pesetas. 261 POWS had died in Rifian captivity.
The Country Gentleman had an age-old theme.
Of interest, that style of winter hat is still very popular with outdoorsmen and agriculturalist. I have two of them.
The Saturday Evening Post had an extraordinarily boring cover.
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A Chinook wind caused an increase in temperature in Spearfish, South Dakota, in which the temperature went from -4F to 45F in two minutes. It ultimately went up to 54F over two hours, then dropped back below 0 in 30 minutes, all of this in a single morning.
Papua was liberated from the Japanese, becoming the first territory they had captured from which they'd been completely expelled.
Japan's losses on the island were 13,000 in number, compared to 2,000 for Australia and 600 for the United States.
On the same day, the British 8th Army took Tripoli.
According to many sources, today, not yesterday, was the date on which the Germans lost their last airfield at Stalingrad.
French police and German forces began the Marseilles Roundup, the gathering and deportation of the city's Jewish population. The action would result in the deportation of 1,642 people, the displacement of 20,000 and the arrest of 6,000. The Old Port district was destroyed.
Margaret Bourke-White flew in a U.S. bombing mission over Tunis in the B-17 Little Bill. The photographer and reporter was the first woman to do so.
Bourke-White was already a famous photographer by that time, having photographed extensively during the Great Depression and having photographed the Soviet Union prior to World War Two. She died at age 67 in 1971 of Parkinson's Disease.
Franklin Roosevelt dined with Moroccan Sultan Mohammed V, during which he expressed sympathy for post-war Moroccan independence.
Roosevelt was always solidly anti-colonial, a fact that became an increasing problem for the British as the war went on and which would impact the immediate post war world.
France's Rhineland High Commission ordered French troops in the Ruhr to seize customs receipts and mine taxes and to take over the forests. France seized German coal trucks, and French and Belgian authorities banned singing German patriotic songs, displaying flags, or wearing the national colors in buttonholes.
Meanwhile a massive riot broke out in the French Chamber of Deputies over the topic of suspending French Communist leader Marcel Cachin in order that he could be arrested for treason. Cachin had denounced occupying the Ruhr and Morocco.
The U.S. landed troops on Amchitka. It was an unopposed landing, as the Japanese had chosen not to occupy it. Weather was bad and unpredictable and the USS Wordon was swept into rocks and ultimately broke up. Fourteen of the crew died and the commanding officer was swept off the ship, but survived, while it was being abandoned. The Japanese learned of the landing several days later when weather cleared sufficiently for a scout plane to overfly the island.
The island was used as an airbase by the U.S. in spite of the horrible weather it experiences, and set the stage for the US assault on Kiska.
The island is large by Aleutian standards, consisting of 116 square miles. Not too surprisingly, given its size, it was historically occupied by the Aleuts but there has been no population on the island since 1832. It's tectonically unstable.
Because of its uninhabited status, it was chosen by the US for underground detonation of nuclear weapons in order to test seismic detection, with nuclear weapons being inserted in bore holes in 1965, 1969 and 1971.
The parents of the Sullivan Brothers were informed for the first time that their sons, who had gone down in action in November, were missing in action.
In our last entry we noted the ship named in honor of the Sullivan brothers, the USS Sullivans. Oddly enough, it was in the news yesterday after taking a huge haul of Iranian AKMs that were being shipped to Yemen.
Winston Churchill departed for Morocco to meet with Franklin Roosevelt, who had left the day prior. Their departures were obviously kept secret.
The Soviets launched Operation Iskra aimed at breaking the German's siege on Leningrad.
Pierre Laval concluded a deal with Nazi Germany, allowing the Germans to administer the Departments du Nord and Pas de Calais. France, under the arrangement, also pledged to provide 400,000 skilled workers to Germany and to essentially provide the remaining elements of its navy to Germany. France retained the policing role in the German administered territories.
President Roosevelt addressed farmers for Farm Mobilization Day.
January 12, 1943
All over the world, food from our country's farms is helping the United Nations to win this war. From the South Pacific to the winter front in Russia, from North Africa to India, American food is giving strength to the men on the battle lines, and sometimes also to the men and women working behind the lines. Somewhere on every continent the food ships from this country are the life line of the forces that fight for freedom. This afternoon we have heard from some of the military and civilian righters who look to us for food. No words of mine can add to what they have said.
But on this Farm Mobilization Day I want to round out the picture and tell you a little more about the vital place that American farmers hold in the entire war strategy of the United Nations.
Food is a weapon in total war- fully as important in its way as guns or planes or tanks. So are other products of the farm. The long-staple cotton that goes into parachutes, for example, the oils that go into paints for the ships and planes and guns, the grains that go into alcohol to make explosives also are weapons.
Our enemies know the use of food in war. They employ it cold-bloodedly to strengthen their own fighters and workers and to weaken or exterminate the peoples of the conquered countries. We of the United Nations also are using food as a weapon to keep our fighting men fit and to maintain the health of all our civilian families. We are using food to earn the friendship of people in liberated areas and to serve as a promise and an encouragement to peoples who are not yet free. Already, in North Africa, the food we are sending the inhabitants is saving the energies and the lives of our troops there. In short we are using food, both in this country and in Allied countries, with the single aim of helping to win this war.
Already it is taking a lot of food to fight the war. It is going to take a lot more to win the final victory and win the peace that will follow. In terms of total food supply the United Nations are far stronger than our enemies. But our great food resources are scattered to the ends of the earth—from Australia and New Zealand to South Africa and the Americas- and we no longer have food to waste. Food is precious, just as oil and steel are precious. As part of our global strategy, we must produce all we can of every essential farm product; we must divide our supplies wisely and use them carefully. We cannot afford to waste any of them.
Therefore the United Nations are pooling their food resources and using them where they will do the most good. Canada is sending large shipments of cheese, meats, and other foods on the short North Atlantic run to Britain. Australia and New Zealand are providing a great deal of the food for American soldiers stationed in that part of the world. Food from Latin America is going to Britain.
Every food-producing country among the United Nations is doing its share. Our own share in food strategy, especially at this stage of the war, is large, because we have such great resources for production; and we are on direct ocean lanes to North Africa, to Britain, and to the northern ports of Russia.
American farmers must feed our own growing Army and Navy. They must feed the civilian families of this country and feed them well. They must help feed the fighting men and some of the war workers of Britain and Russia and, to a lesser degree, those of other Allied countries.
So this year, as never before, the entire Nation is looking to its farmers. Many quarters of the free world are looking to them too. American farmers are a small group with a great task. Although 60 percent of the world's population are farm people, only 2 percent of that population are American farmers. But that 2 percent have the skill and the energy to make this country the United Nations' greatest arsenal for food and fiber.
In spite of the handicaps under which American farmers worked last year, the production victory they won was among the major victories of the United Nations in 1942. Free people everywhere can be grateful to the farm families who made that victory possible.
This year the American farmer's task is greater, and the obstacles more formidable. But I know that once more our farmers will rise to their responsibility.
This farm mobilization is the first day ever dedicated by a President to the farm people of the Nation. I know that the whole country joins with me in a tribute to the work farmers already have done, in a pledge of full support in the difficult task which lies ahead for farmers, and in a prayer for good weather to make farmers' efforts more fruitful.
Our fighting men and allies, and our families here at home can rely on farmers for the food and other farm products that will help to bring victory.
First of all, let me note that I made an error in my review of The Maltese Falcon. The 41 variant of that film was released first, not Casablanca. I don't know why I reversed the order, but I did.
William Howard Taft was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on this day in 1921. He's been named to the position that prior June.
A live baseball game was broadcast for the first time when KDKA broadcast the Pirates v the Phillies. The Phillies won, 8 to 5.
Mustafa Kemal is elected to the position of generalissimo for a period of three months by the Turkish National Assembly.
The Rif forces took Nador and Selouane. The Spanish forces in Selouane had numbered 200, of which only nine survived the event.
The Chicago trial of the Black Sox ended with an acquittal. Major League Baseball nonetheless judged the accused as sufficiently convicted it in its eyes and continued their lifetime ban from baseball.
On this Tuesday, this first week of August 1921, Riffian forces took Nadar and Selouane in Morocco.
The Spanish presence in Morocco was effectively collapsing.
Enrico Caruso, legendary opera singer, then age 48, died of peritonitis in Naples.
The U.S. Coast Guard seized the British schooner Henry L. Marshall twelve miles off of New Jersey, i.e., international waters, where it was found to hold, upon boarding, 12,000 cases of liquor. The boat was one of several owned by the McCoy brothers who had turned to liquor smuggling with the advent of Prohibition. Of them, William McCoy is the best remembered, with his refusal to cut what he was shipping leading to the phrase "the real McCoy".
Ironically, Daytona Beach based McCoy was a teetotaler.
McCoy's strategy relied upon his being in international waters. His ship didn't run booze into Atlantic City itself, but rather transferred to smaller boats that came out to it.
Margaret Gorman, Miss Washington D. C. was photographed.
Gorman was regarded as a great beauty and would go on that year to be crowned Miss America. She married a few years later and lived happily the rest of her life in Washington D.C, noting in later years that she'd become bored with her beauty pageant history.
Spanish forces in Morocco, fighting in the Rif War, sustained a defeat at the Battle of Annul. The defeat was crushing and involved the loss of the entire Spanish command right down to senior leadership. Only a cavalry unit was able to maintain order and extract itself in a fighting retreat. Most of the command being made up of Spanish conscripts, they lost order quickly and were mowed down by Moroccan forces.
On this day in 1921 the legendary Douglas Aircraft Company was founded in Santa Monica, California.
A manufacturer of legendary aircraft, particularly the DC-3, the company merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967. The new McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997.
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.
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.
French colonial troops attacked Zaian rebels near Khenifra contrary to orders, and ended up in an engagement that would cause them to be annihilated.
France was attempting to negotiated a peace at the time.
Last edition:
Germans, unaware that their nation would be bled white, and unalterably changed, celebrated the arrival of war.
All Germany's political parties supported the entry into the bloodbath.
And they were fighting for . . .what?
Germany replaced gold marks with paper marks for the duration of the war.
German Communists Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin co-founded with others the Spartacus League.
Germany invaded Belgium, once again bringing up its war guilt. Belgium had done nothing to offend Germany. It was invaded for tactical reasons as the Von Schlieffen Plan required it as part of a wide swinging German right flank invasion of France.
The German army shelled Kaisz, Poland to suppress a civil uprising there.
Imperial German Navy cruisers Goeben and Breslau shelled Algerian ports of Bône and Philippeville, defying orders to proceed straight to Constantinople.
The United Kingdom declared war on Germany, taking Canada, Australia and New Zealand into war with it, as legally, the UK declared war for its dominions at the time. The Canadian government passed the War Measures Act, suspending some civil liberties.
The British government took control of British railways.
Retired British Admiral Charles Cooper Penrose-Fitzgerald formed the Order of the White Feather to persuade women to offer white feathers to men not in uniform to shame them into enlisting.
The United States declared neutrality.
Andrew Carnegie continued with an international peace conference he had organized of religious leaders in Belgium.
The organization it created became the Church Peace Union and is now the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
Zayanes in Morocco launched a siege on Khenifra, Morocco, taking advantage of with French troops being withdrawn for service on the continent.
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French troops and Zayanes fought a major battle in Morocco, with the French losing 17 dead and 77 wounded and the Zayanes 140 dead.
While the French were fighting in Morocco, German Undersecretary of State Arthur Zimmermann, who would later be associated with a series of really bad ideas, addressed requests by Austro-Hungaria and Germany for investigation into the Archduke's assassination which were rejected by Serbia.
The U.S. sold the USS Mississippi and USS Idaho to Greece.
Veteran Alberta was established.
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100 Ottoman Greeks were murdered by Turkish irregular troops at Phocaea.
The French cabinet dissolved for a second time in a week.
French forces entered an abandoned Khenifra, Morocco.
A message in a bottle was recovered by a fishing vessel which had been intentionally released 99 years and 43 days prior to its discovery as a scientific experiment.
The University of Wyoming graduated 33 students.
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