In “Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn,” Cox, former congressman and former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, demonstrates that the 28th president was the nation’s nastiest. Without belaboring the point, Cox presents an Everest of evidence that Wilson’s progressivism smoothly melded with his authoritarianism and oceanic capacity for contempt
George F. Will, At last, Wilson’s reputation gets dismantling it deserves.
Commorating the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, whereby the NPS relieved the United States Army, which was pretty busy with other things, of the duty of patrolling the parks (the Park Service campaign hat recalls the Army's M1911 campaign hat.
The Park Service and the parks themselves are one of the great things about the United States. If you have nothing on the plate today, and have a park nearby, go check it out if you can, unless of course you live in Utah, in which case you can sit in side your hovel and imagine a future in your state in which all the lands have been sold to big money.
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The Polish uprising commenced in Warsaw. A massive uprising, and part of a series of the same, it was the most tragic of the group. The Red Army, which was already on the outskirts of the city, and which had been advancing, ground to a halt and allowed the insurrection to go on for 63 days.
The Philadelphia Transit Strike of 1944 began.
British scientists announced that DDT was an effective insecticide.
Manuel L. Quezon, age 65, died and Sergio Osmeña thereupon became the 4th President of the Philippines.
The film Wilson, about the 28th President, which is nearly a piece of hagiography, was released.
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Adolfo de la Huerta and his staff withdrew by boat to Mérida, Yucatán, after federal troops recaptured Veracruz.
Italy recognized the Soviet Union.
Around this time, Colt began to ship what is called the "Colt Transition Model 1911", which were actually the first of the M1911A1s.
The Colt M1911 is a John Browning designed semi-automatic pistol that can legitimately be regarded s the greatest handgun ever made, although there are, or perhaps more accurately were, a few other contenders. Other than the mostly John Browning Designed Hi Power, none of the other contenders remain in service somewhere however and the M1911 has by far the longest period of service.
Adopted by the U.S. on March 29, 1911, in 1923 the handgun received some minor modifications, the most significant of which is a curved spring housing which changed the profile of the grip. The trigger was also shortened. In 1924 the modified design started to ship, this month, from Colt. The M1911A1 designation came in 1926.
Large quantities of M1911s were made in World War One, and even larger quantities of M1911A1s were made during World War Two. So many were in fact made that no new orders were placed for M1911s through the rest of its primary service life, up to when the M9 Beretta 9mm handgun was ordered to replace it.
The M9 actually failed to completely replace the M1911A1, although it nearly did so. Some small quantities of M1911A1s that had been issued to officers remained in ongoing use. In addition, the pistol never ceased being used by special troops, who favored it over the 9mm M9 due to its larger .45ACP cartridge. The Marines nearly immediately resisted the change and adopted a reworked and custom-built M1911, with flat spring housing, as the MEU(SOC) pistol for close combat, taking in quantities of M9s at the same time.
There were protests outside the German Embassy due to the legation refusing to offer condolences for the death of the late President. It also refused, at first, to fly its flag at half staff.
Later that day it relented and the flag was at half staff.
Calvin Coolidge.
While we keep harping on it, and yes medicine has really advanced since 1924, Wilson's death at age 67 wasn't surprising then, and really isn't now. He was old, by age 67. Electing a President older than that is foolish.
Alimony, a film, was released.
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Like many films of this era, the plot is melodramatic and a bit hard to follows. Apparently, the female protagonist sells her inventor husband's nifty invention to a wealthy oilman who covets her. She leaves her husband due to a made up affair, demanding a huge alimony, which she obtains. However, she wasn't fooled, and goes on to marry him again on her terms, whatever that means.
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Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr., better known by his pen name, Richard Hooker, was born in New Jerseay. A physician who practiced in Maine, he's remembered for his novel M*A*S*H which was based on his experiences as an Army doctor during the Korean War.
Hachikō (ハチ公) an Akita, was born. The dog would return daily to wait for his deceased owner to return from work for over nine years, living to be eleven years old.
The Saturday magazines were on the stand.
Crown Prince Wilhelm of German returned to Germany from the Netherlands.
Ludendorff was released on parole, demonstrating one of the problems Weimar Germany had with suppressing anti-democratic uprisings. . . the tendency to let those on the right, go.
Mr. President, Gentlemen of the American Bar Association:
I am very deeply gratified by the greeting that your president has given me and by your response to it. My only strength lies in your confidence.
We stand now in a peculiar case. Our first thought, I suppose, as lawyers, is of international law, of those bonds of right and principle which draw the nations together and hold the community of the world to some standards of action. We know that we see in international law, as it were, the moral processes by which law itself came into existence. I know that as a lawyer I have myself at times felt that there was no real comparison between the law of a nation and the law of nations, because the latter lacked the sanction that gave the former strength and validity. And yet, if you look into the matter more closely, you will find that the two have the same foundations, and that those foundations are more evident and conspicuous in our day than they have ever been before.
The opinion of the world is the mistress of the world; and the processes of international law are the slow processes by which opinion works its will. What impresses me is the constant thought that that is the tribunal at the bar of which we all sit. I would call your attention, incidentally, to the circumstance that it does not observe the ordinary rules of evidence; which has sometimes suggested to me that the ordinary rules of evidence had shown some signs of growing antique. Everything, rumor included, is heard in this court, and the standard of judgment is not so much the character of the testimony as the character of the witness. The motives are disclosed, the purposes are conjectured, and that opinion is finally accepted which seems to be, not the best founded in law, perhaps, but the best founded in integrity of character and of morals. That is the process which is slowly working its will upon the world; and what we should be watchful of is not so much jealous interests as sound principles of action. The disinterested course is always the biggest course to pursue not only, but it is in the long run the most profitable course to pursue. If you can establish your character, you can establish your credit.
What I wanted to suggest to this association, in bidding them very hearty welcome to the city, is whether we sufficiently apply these same ideas to the body of municipal law which we seek to administer. Citations seem to play so much larger a role now than principle. There was a time when the thoughtful eye of the judge rested upon the changes of social circumstances and almost palpably saw the law arise out of human life. Have we got to a time when the only way to change law is by statute? The changing of law by statute seems to me like mending a garment with a patch, whereas law should grow by the life that is in it, not by the life that is outside of it.
I once said to a lawyer with whom I was discussing some question of precedent, and in whose presence I was venturing to doubt the rational validity, at any rate, of the particular precedents he cited, "After all, isn't our object justice?" And he said, "God forbid! We should be very much confused if we made that our standard. Our standard is to find out what the rule has been and how the rule that has been applies to the case that is." I should hate to think that the law was based entirely upon "has beens." I should hate to think that the law did not derive its impulse from looking forward rather than from looking backward, or, rather, that it did not derive its instruction from looking about and seeing what the circumstances of man actually are and what the impulses of justice necessarily are.
Understand me, gentlemen, I am not venturing in this presence to impeach the law. For the present, by the force of circumstances, I am in part the embodiment of the law, and it would be very awkward to disavow myself. But I do wish to make this intimation, that in this time of world change, in this time when we are going to find out just how, in what particulars, and to what extent the real facts of human life and the real moral judgments of mankind prevail, it is worth while looking inside our municipal law and seeing whether the judgments of the law are made square with the moral judgments of mankind. For I believe that we are custodians, not of commands, but of a spirit. We are custodians of the spirit of righteousness, of the spirit of equal-handed justice, of the spirit of hope which believes in the perfectibility of the law with the perfectibility of human life itself.
Public life, like private life, would be very dull and dry if it were not for this belief in the essential beauty of the human spirit and the belief that the human spirit could be translated into action and into ordinance. Not entire. You cannot go any faster than you can advance the average moral judgments of the mass, but you can go at least as fast as that, and you can see to it that you do not lag behind the average moral judgments of the mass. I have in my life dealt with all sorts and conditions of men, and I have found that the flame of moral judgment burned just as bright in the man of humble life and limited experience as in the scholar and the man of affairs. And I would like his voice always to be heard, not as a witness, not as speaking in his own case, but as if he were the voice of men in general, in our courts of justice, as well as the voice of the lawyers, remembering what the law has been. My hope is that, being stirred to the depths by the extraordinary circumstances of the time in which we live, we may recover from those depths something of a renewal of that vision of the law with which men may be supposed to have started out in the old days of the oracles, who communed with the intimations of divinity.
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President Wilson declared a national day of prayer for the end of World War One.
PROCLAMATION OF PRESIDENT WILSON FOR DAY OF PRAYER. By the President of the United States of America. A PROCLAMATION.
Whereas great nations of the world have taken up arms against one another and war now draws millions of men into battle whom the counsel of statesmen have not been able to save from the terrible sacrifice; And whereas in this as in all things it is our privilege and duty to seek counsel and succor of Almighty God, humbling ourselves before Him, confessing our weakness and our lack of any wisdom equal to these things; And whereas it is the especial wish and longing of the people of the United States, in prayer and counsel and all friendliness, to serve the cause of peace :
Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do designate Sunday, the 4th day of October next, a day of prayer and supplication and do request all God-fearing persons to repair on that day to their places of worship there to unite their petitions to Almighty God that, overruling the counsel of men, setting straight the things they can not govern or alter, taking pity on the nations now in the throes of conflict, in His mercy and goodness, showing a way where, men can see none, He vouchsafe His children healing peace again and restore once more that concord among men and nations without which there can be neither happiness nor true friendship nor any wholesome fruit of toil or thought in the world; praying also to this end that He forgive us our sins, our ignorance of His holy will, our willfulness and many errors, and lead us in the paths of obedience to places of vision and to thoughts and counsels that purge and make wise.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fourteen, and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and thirty-ninth.
Woodrow Wilson. By the President: William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State.
Ninety Three German scientists signed a proclamation in support of Germany and the war. The document was met with consternation outside of Germany.
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President Wilson ordered American forces out of Veracruz.
The pro German Boer Maritz rebellion started in South Africa when Commandant General of the Union Defence Force Christian Frederic Beyers resigned from his commission in protest of the South African government's decision to provide military support to the British Empire.
Beyers, along with General Koos de la Rey then traveled to the armory at Potchefstroom to meet with commanding officer Major Jan Kemp. De la Rey was killed by police fire on the way.
Allied forces in France commenced digging trenches, the first ones dug in the Great War.
Gertie, the Wonderfully Trained Dinosaur, premiered.
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Wilson had already noted American neutrality, but today he formally declared it in an address to the nation through an address to Congress.
My Fellow-Countrymen:
I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has asked himself, during these last troubled weeks, what influence the European war may exert upon the United States, and I take the liberty of addressing a few words to you in order to point out that it is entirely within our own choice what its effects upon us will be and to urge very earnestly upon you the sort of speech and conduct which will best safeguard the Nation against distress and disaster.
The effect of the war upon the United States will depend upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. The spirit of the Nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by what individuals and society and those gathered in public meetings do and say, upon what newspapers and magazines contain, upon what ministers utter in their pulpits, and men proclaim as their opinions on the street.
The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among them with regard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. Those responsible for exciting it will assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people of the United States, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to its Government should unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and affection to think first of her and her interests, may be divided in camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war itself in impulse and opinion if not in action.
Such divisions among us would be fatal to our peace of mind and might seriously stand in the way of the proper performance of our duty as the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend.
I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men's souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.
My thought is of America. I am speaking, I feel sure, the earnest wish and purpose of every thoughtful American that this great country of ours, which is, of course, the first in our thoughts and in our hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar trial a Nation fit beyond others to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the dignity of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a Nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.
Shall we not resolve to put upon ourselves the restraints which will bring to our people the happiness and the great and lasting influence for peace we covet for them?
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The Lincoln County School District requested a "lady teacher" from the University of Wyoming for the Cumberland Mining Camp. (UW History Calendar).
Lincoln County is remote now, and it would have been even more so in 1914.
The Imperial Russian Army invaded the Austrian Crownland of Galicia, or Austrian Poland (it's now in Poland and Ukraine.
The French captured bridges over the Rhine as well as taking large numbers of German soldiers in Alsace.
President Wilson declared the United States to be strictly neutral in the war developing in Europe and spreading the globe.
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