August 24, 1920. The first issuances of Palestine postage stamps.

 

August 20, 1920. Football, News Radio, Ships and Transjordan

On This Date in Sports August 20, 1920, the American Professional Football Association, precursor to the NFL, formed.

The Akron Pros, one of the teams in 1920.

I don't care anything about football, but a lot of people do, and this marks a notable event.  Note that one of the players on the champion 1920 team depicted above, was black, meaning that in that very early season, football was integrated.  The drafting of the first black athlete into the NFL is generally regarded as having occurred in 1949, but in fact very early on blacks were part of the professional sport.

Advertisement for 8MK from August 31, 1920.

The first commercial radio station in the United States, 8MK (at the time) began broadcasting on this date in 1920.  The radio station, now WWJ, first broadcast on an amatuer license out of Detroit, where William E. Scripps, the newspaper publisher, started the station as a new radio station.

It's still in business and its still news radio for the Detroit area.

In the Great Lakes area, on the same day, the SS Superior City collided with the Willis L. King in Whitefish Bay, resulting in the loss of 29 lives.

Far outside the United States, the British representative in Palestine announced a proclamation extending his governance into Jordan. The British rapidly repudiated the effort and denounced it.

[August 20, 1920]  The high commissioner's first visit to Transjordan. Reading of "The Durbar", a proclamation annexing Transjordan, in Es-Salt

April 25, 1920. Settlements that didn't settle.

Attendees at the San Remo Conference on this date in 1920.  Matsui, Lloyd George, Curzon, Berthelot, Millerand, Scialoja and Nitti.

This was the last day of the San Remo Conference in which the victors of the Great War, absent the United States, met to determine the fate of various territories left in their hands or at least believed to be left in their hands.  On this day, the issued the San Remo Resoution, which stated,

It was agreed –

(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.

(b) that the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:

The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The boundaries of the said States will be determined, and the selection of the Mandatories made, by the Principal Allied Powers.

The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

La Puissance mandataire s’engage a nommer dans le plus bref delai une Commission speciale pour etudier toute question et toute reclamation concernant les differentes communautes religieuses et en etablir le reglement. Il sera tenu compte dans la composition de cette Commission des interets religieux en jeu. Le President de la Commission sera nomme par le Conseil de la Societe des Nations.

The terms of the mandates in respect of the above territories will be formulated by the Principal Allied Powers and submitted to the Council of the League of Nations for approval.

Turkey hereby undertakes, in accordance with the provisions of Article [132 of the Treaty of Sevres] to accept any decisions which may be taken in this connection.

(c) Les mandataires choisis par les principales Puissances allies sont: la France pour la Syrie, et la Grand Bretagne pour la Mesopotamie, et la Palestine.

In reference to the above decision the Supreme Council took note of the following reservation of the Italian Delegation:

La Delegation Italienne en consideration des grands interets economiques que l’Italie en tant que puissance exclusivement mediterraneenne possede en Asie Mineure, reserve son approbation a la presente resolution, jusqu’au reglement des interets italiens en Turquie d’Asia.

As noted, above, the Italian delegation reserved its assent given that the conference hadn't reached a resolution on its interests in Asia Minor.

The results of the conference were momentous and continue to play out today  The British took Palestine as a mandate and the French Syria.  The borders of these mandates were not determined.  The Turkish delegation purported to accept the decisions made at the conference.  The conference also, although not reflected in this resolution, accepted the independence of Armenia and set the monetary amount of annual German reparation payments.

While the US was not there, it continued to exhibit an influence, as the conference also accepted Wilson's proposal on Fiume, even if the Italians really didn't.

As the Cheyenne paper made plain, scandals that are more commonly associated with later eras in fact occurred in earlier ones. And Texas said no to Carranza.

In just a few short months the French would sustain a military defeat against insurgent Syrians and the British would accordingly rush to draw the borders of Transjordan, which is Jordan today, out of concern that the rebellion would spill into territory it was administering. That would set the borders for Palestine.  An insurgency already underway in Turkey would cause the decisions of any Turkish delegation to be questionable, but it did not act in any fashion to attempt to assert any claim to Mesopotamia (Iraq), or its former colonies to the south.  It would not accept, however, the independence of Armenia, which the conference had separately recognized, or the Greek role in Anatolia, which had been assured by the conference.  And Carranza's bid to control who became his successor was turning disastrous for him.

World War One's results were playing out in a different fashion at the Battle of Koziatyn, Ukraine in which a Polish cavalry division penetrated deep behind the Soviet lines.  Over two days it would envelop Soviet forces and destroy two Red Army divisions.

Elsewhere movies with rural settings were being released, both dramatic and comedic.

April 8, 1920 More Strife

On this day in 1920, the British were confronting riots in Jerusalem.

British troops at the Jaffa Gate, April 8, 1920.

Things had been building up for awhile as competing interests struggled concerning the future of the city and who would be allowed to live there and who control things there, while the British struggled to keep a lid on it all.  The British ended up declaring martial law to calm the violence.

One place the British had determined not to struggle was in the Ruhr. They informed the French that they would not be entering into Germany. Only Belgium agreed to assist the French.  Germany appealed to the League of Nations but, as it was not yet a member, its appeal was rejected.  The German government in turn voted to withdraw from the region in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, which it shortly accomplished, but its entry had already accomplished it goal of suppressing the Communist rebellion there.

In Central America, Tragic Week commenced which saw the country in revolutionary turmoil as rebels seized the capitol and the government in turn shelled it.  Ultimately, rebel forces would overturn the government, which was militarist in nature.

April 2, 1920. The end of the Ruhr Uprising, Irish Republican protests in Washington, Processions in Jerusalem.

The Reichswehr and the Freikorps entered the Ruhr in earnest, and in violation of the Versailles Treaty, on this day in April, 1920.

The German government could not secure permission for their entry but it had little choice but to send them.  The Ruhr Uprising by this point was only successful as it had no armed opposition inside most of the Ruhr.  The entry of the German Army ended that.

Ebert promised no retaliation, but in fact the German government and government aligned forces executed a large number of German Reds who fell into their hands. The revolution was crushed, but the French would occupy some German cities in retaliation for their refusal to allow German forces in the Ruhr being ignored.

On the same day, for the second day in a row, there were female protests in Washington D.C. in support of an independent Irish republic.

And also on that day, the country that was not yet providing for that Irish independence leant a military bad to a procession in Jerusalem that was otherwise made up of locals of that city, including a boy scout troop.

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.

The Secondary Waves of the Great War.

World War Two, for obvious reasons, looms large in our imagination as the biggest event of the 20th Century.  The biggest, and the most significant.

But are we wrong?  

It seems lately that the echos of World War One are resounding pretty loudly.

World War One smashed the old order and demolished the borders of centuries.  The interbellum tried to reconstruct them, but did so in a metastasized and imperfect form, giving rise to new malignant orders that sought to fill the voids left by the death of the old imperial ones.  World War Two pitted three forces against each other, fascism, communism, and democracy, with democracy and communism ultimately siding with each other against fascism. After the war, the results of the Second World War gave rise to a contest between the two victors, communism and democracy, against each other until the vitality of free societies and free markets drove the rigidness of communism to and beyond the breaking point.

And now that communism is dead and gone, buried alongside its evil cousin fascism, the old unsolved questions of the Great War are back.  The rights of small nations, including those with out countries, against the possessions of older larger ones.  The demise of great empires giving rise to smaller ones.  Nationalism of all stripes against everything else.

It's 1919 all over again.

Turkey didn't sign the Treaty of Sevres.

Indeed, rather than do that, it fought it out.

It can't be blamed.  The Greeks had a quasi legitimate claim to Smyrna, but only quasi. A lot of ethnic Greeks lived there, which is no surprise as Anatolia had been Greek. The Ottoman's were invaders to the region, finally taking it in the 1450s.  But it had a large Ottoman population that they were bloodily brutal towards and they engaged in conquest, with the help of their Western allies, in Anatolia proper, seeking in a way to reverse what was lost centuries prior.

The Italian claim, moreover, to islands off of Turkey was absurd.

But the Armenian claims to their lands weren't.

The region sought of Armenia marked for a plebiscite is Kurdistan.  The Syria that ran to the sea and down to Palestine was an Ottoman province carved away from the Empire.  So was the Mesopotamia, i.e., Iraq, that appears on the map.

In 1990, the United States intervened in the Middle East to force Iraq, the British post World War One creation, out of Kuwait, a desert province that the British had protected during their stay in the Middle East, launching operations, with the assistance of others, from that region of Arabia named for the Sauds, that Arabian family that spent the Great War and the immediate interbellum consolidating power at the ultimate expense of the Hashemites, that Arabian noble family who had made war on the Turks.  The British dolled out kingdoms to that family as consolation prizes, with the Hashemites taking Iraq and the Transjordan.  The French got to administer Syria, a region that it claimed an historical affinity to, with the British taking administration of Palestine and Egypt, both of the latter having been Ottoman provinces although Egypt was long administered by the British in an arrangement that nobody can possibly grasp.

And so now, the old fights, and the interbellum struggles, reappear.  The peoples not accorded nations would like to have them. The old empires would like to keep their domains.  Borders drawn by European nations, with the help of Woodrow Wilson, are treated as real, when perhaps they were never correct.

December 10, 1918. Watering in the Rhine, Welcoming the Troops Home, Massacre in Palestine, Bolsheviks worry about Russians.

Cpt. M. W. Lanham, 2nd Bde, 1st Div, waters his horse "Von Hindenburg", in the Rhine.  Ostensibly Von Hindenburg was the first American horse to drink from the Rhine.

Back home, Casperites were learning what locals and friends of locals had done during the war. . . and a big party was being planned for the returning troops.

Note making the news, a terrible massacre was perpetrated by New Zealand troops, and a few Australians, in the town of Surafend Palestine in reprisal for the murder of a New Zealander soldier.  At least 40 male villagers of that town were killed in the event.

And the Bolsheviks, a movement that had long depended upon revolutionary citizenry, made its fear of that citizenry plain when it ordered that civilians turn in their arms.  Even edged weapons were included in the decree, although shotguns were not.

With the British forces in Palestine. Red Cross attendants giving aid to an Anzac soldier overcome on the march towards the Holy City. This photo was made between Khan Younous and Jaffa about six miles west of Jerusalem. August 16, 1918.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East . . .

. . . prisoners of war, including German prisoners of war, were coming into Jerusalem following yesterday's Battle of Abu Tellul, on the West Bank of the Jordan River, which had seen Empire troops defeat Turkish and German troops.

The action had featured significant cavalry action by both the Turks and the Empire forces.

With all that was going on in France and Italy at the time, you have to wonder how much attention this was getting now outside of Constantinople, Cairo and Jerusalem.

Just in case you thougth that surely, with the German offensive still in full swing, all military effort was focused in France. . .

on this day in 1918, British Empire forces commenced the Second Transjordan attack on Shunet Nimrin and Es Salt in an effort to take control of the Jordan Valley.

Ottoman prisoners of war caught as part of this operation.

While the operation, which lasted several days, met with some initial success, Ottoman and German counterattacks would render it a tactical defeat with the captured ground being yielded.

Australian Light Horse following the retreat.

At least casualties were light, unless of course you were one of them.

And in the former domain of Imperial Russia, the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic in Crimea came to an abrupt end when Ukraine invaded it with German backing.  A person would think the Germans too distracted to undertake something like that, but then as it was a Ukrainian enterprise and they were there already, perhaps not.

The territory today is officially part of the Ukraine but is occupied by Russia.

Meanwhile, in the desert. . .

While we've been focusing, recently (in terms of World War One), on the tense situation in Europe,  HRH the Duke of Connaught held an investiture in the old Turkish barracks in Jerusalem. The Commander in Chief, General Allenby, received the insignia of a Knight of grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem.  Other Empire officers were decorated as well.

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. January 14, 1918.

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.  Palestinian woman in foreground.  January 14, 1918.

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: General Edmund Allenby Enters Jerus...

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: General Edmund Allenby Enters Jerus...: 100 Years ago tomorrow, Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby entered Jerusalem as its conqueror.   General Allenby was 56 years...

Field Marshall Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem. December 11, 1917.

On this date in 1917, Edmund Allenby, the victorious British commander of the recent campaign to take Jerusalem, entered it.

Allenby, who was a cavalryman by branch, approached the city on horseback in an era when all professional officers not only knew how to ride, their occupations required that they in fact ride in the service.   But, cognizant of the slight given the city by the Kaiser's mounted entry into it in 1898, he and his party dismounted and walked into the city.

Allenby and his staff enter through the Jaffa Gate on foot.

As Allenby recounted it:

...I entered the city officially at noon, 11 December, with a few of my staff, the commanders of the French and Italian detachments, the heads of the political missions, and the Military Attaches of France, Italy, and America... The procession was all afoot, and at Jaffa gate I was received by the guards representing England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, India, France and Italy. The population received me well...

The population of the city did in fact appreciate the dismounted entry.

 Allenby and his staff receive the city notables, note the camera photographing the event.

Allenby, who was quite religious himself, was careful to respect the religions in the city, sending Muslim troops under his command to guard Islamic holy sites.  He is even reputed to have even stated "only now have the crusades ended."  Use of the word "crusade" or "crusader" was in fact banned in his command in order to not associate the English and Allied cause with a religious one in the Middle East.

Reflecting the diverse nature of the city, a Franciscan Monk reads the Allied decree on the city in French and Italian.  The city hosted Arab, Jewish, Greek and other populations and had religious cites that were maintained by Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox bodies.

Of course, as pointed out the other day, the initial local goodwill would not be infinite and the League of Nations Mandate giving the British a protectorate status over Mandatory Palestine would become sufficiently unpopular by the 1930s to lead to an Arab revolt in Palestine, followed of course by the troubles that followed World War Two as the British struggled to resolve the national aspirations of the Arab and Jewish populations.

 

Jerusalem surrenders to the British, December 9, 1917

Ottoman forces had withdrawn the day prior, but the town surrendered on December 9, 1917.

The Mayor of Jerusalem with two British sergeants.  It must have been muddy, based on the appearance of everyone's shoes.

The capture of the city marked the hallmark of Gen. Allenby's first campaign in the Middle East, which had seen a lot of dramatic fighting over the past two or so months.  It wouldn't be the culmination of Allenby's efforts by any means, but it was his first indisputable major success.

 

Crowd viewing the entry of British officers near the Jaffa Gate 

It also put the British in a sensitive position which they were never really able to work out, and which in some ways has never been worked out.  Alleby was sensitive to being seen as a crusader by the Arab population of the multi cultural city and strove to avoid that.  Be that as it may, it can't be ignored that an English, Christian, army was entering a mostly Arab, Muslim, town that had been evacuated by a Turkish Muslim leader who claimed to rule a caliphate.

British rule would prove to be relatively short, a little over thirty years, but controversial.  Prior to Allenby's entry the British had already extended promises to both the Arab Muslims as well as to the Jews regarding the ultimate fate of Palestine, promises which they were not later successful in reconciling.  The British promises extended to two out of the three major religions that have holy sites in the city, and perhaps tellingly the British, a Christian people not wanting to seem to be Crusaders, but an officially Protestant nation as well, did not seek to make promises of the same type to the minority Orthodox or Catholic populations, although they did of course protect the religious sites of all the religions located there.  The city had, at the time, a Muslim majority.

And as the British did not reflect either of those cultures themselves, their rule grew to be unpopular in various quarters with both.  Prior to World War Two the British would find themselves forced to put down an Arab independence movement and following World War Two it was faced with a Jewish independence movement in its League of Nation's mandate.  That was accompanied by growing Muslim unrest as the Jewish population of the mandate increased by the influx of Jewish refugees caused by World War Two.  Ultimately they simply left, which was probably the only thing they really could do.

 British guard at the Jaffa Gate

Even now, of course, the echoes of 1917 can still be heard.  The city was split between Israel and Jordan until the Six Day War in 1968, at which time Israel occupied the entire city.   Israel proclaimed the city as its capitol as early as 1949 but most nations have not recognized that claim.  The US recognized it in 1995, by Congressional resolution, but also provided that the embassy could only be moved after certain conditions were realized.  The Palestinian National Authority claims the eastern half of the city as its capitol while recognizing the western half of the capitol as the Israeli capitol.

 Turkish prisoners of war.

Just this past week President Trump declared that the American embassy would in fact be moved, fulfilling a campaign promise made by various Presidents before him, as well as by him, but which is guaranteed to be massively unpopular and likely result in violent protests.

And it all started on this day, in 1917.