Tuesday, April 29, 1924. The Townsend Fire.

In Casper, the well known fire in the Townsend Building broke out.

The building still stands, and still looks largely the same as it did in 1924, although its exterior would be renovated in 1934.

This building is not, of course, to be confused with Casper's Townsend Hotel, which is now the Townsend Justice Center.

And Councilman Royce was struggling to retain his position.

There was a huge tornado outbreak in the southern United States.

"His Master's Voice", Chicago Tribune, April 29, 1924.

Southern Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe, elected its first colonial legislature, with voting restricted to whites.

Last prior edition:

Monday, April 28, 1924. Another West Virginian Coal Mine Disaster.

1920s, 1924, 1930, 1930s, Coal, Crime, Disaster, Herbert Hoover, Indiana, Ku Klux Klan, Mining, West Virginia

Wednesday, September 11, 1923. The British Empire in Southern Africa.

Southern Rhodesia became a British colony when the British government took it over from the British South Africa Company due to a 1922 referendum.  Prior to that time, it had been informally been known as Zambesia, based on the Zambezi River. It would form a government on October 1 and would retain its status, sort of, as a British colony until 1964.  

Flag of Southern Rhodesia.

Southern Rhodesia, massively British in terms of its colonial character, saw itself in that fashion, and its white residents had been highly supportive of World War One.  They would be again of World War Two.

Flag of Northern Rhodesia.

In 1953, it was confederated by the British with Northern Rhodesia, which had a larger landmass.  In the 1950s, it began to fall apart with the rise of African nationalism.  Northern Rhodesia became independent and changed its name to Zambia in 1964, interestingly changing its name during the course of the Olympics, and therefore entering the games with one name and exiting it with another.

Flag of Zambia.

When Northern Rhodesia became independent, with the cooperation of the British government, it struck fear into Southern Rhodesian whites, and the country, which was controlled by them, issued its Unilateral Declaration of Independence as Rhodesia in 1965.  The winds of change already well set in, Rhodesia, while it had cooperation from various countries, was unrecognized by any.  It fought an increasingly losing battle against African nationalist forces in the 60s and 70s, and returned to British colonial status brief in 1979, before becoming the current state of Zimbabwe.

Rhodesian flag.

Unfortunately, since independence its history has not been a happy one, as it fell to one party rule under Robert Mugabe, something it only recently overcame.  Zambia, spared a post-colonial war, has fared better, and indeed uniquely for a post colonia African nation, had an Acting President in recent memory who was of European (Scottish) descent.

Finnair, the Finnish national airline, was incorporated as Aero O/Y.

The Convention for the Suppression of the Circulation of and Traffic in Obscene Publications was signed in Geneva by members of the League of Nations. The anti pornography treaty is still in effect, accepted and amended by the United Nations, although a person would hardly know it.

Bulgaria arrested 2,500 Communist suspected of plotting an uprising.

Honesty and suffering Wyoming.

I should note here that I'm cynical about politicians and politics once a person leaves the local realm.

Now, I don't feel that way about politicians at the local level.  The ones I've known personally were genuinely engaged and had entered into politics as they had real concerns about their communities, or schools, etc.

And, of the few state legislators I've known, most fit that same description.

Theodore Roosevelt, long before he ever ran for the Oval Office, once rebuked a reporter for suggesting that he might some day occupy it.  In doing so, he stated that a person must never tell a politician, which he already was, being in the New York Assembly, that he might some day be President as he'd quit being his natural self and alter positions so that he could obtain that goal.  

There's really something to that.

Harriet Hageman is in the category of politicians I've met and sort of once somewhat knew.  

During the recent race, I was frankly shocked by a lot of her conduct, which I at first attributed to her simply wanting to be in Congress. Since that time, I've come to wonder if in fact she may believe the positions she's taking, in which case that's scarier yet.  That would likely mean that of our three person Congressional delegation, she's the only true ideologue, and not in a good way.

Back in April, Harriet Hageman spoke in Powell and made this statement:

I’ve really got a dog in this hunt, I’m from Wyoming. My family’s from Wyoming … Wyoming is my passion. The way that I put it is that when Wyoming prospers, my family prospers. But when Wyoming suffers, my family suffers.¹

That's the very first thing I've seen attributed to Hageman which would give a person a reason to vote for her.  That same reasoning applied to the primary candidates who ran against Cheney when she first ran, and won, which of course means that a lot of the people who might find this view appealing now, apparently weren't all that worked up about it back when, including Hageman who at one time supported Cheney.  None of which means that it isn't a good point.

Mind you, there are a lot of reasons not to have voted for Hageman, although most Wyoming voters who participated in the off year election did. The big reason for that is that most Wyoming voters bought the Trump lie that didn't sell nationwide this election, that the election was stolen.  

Wyoming's voters, frankly, have been buying a lot of cheap fibs and obfuscations in recent years, so perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised.

So we should hope that Hageman really means what she says, and that she remains capable, as an attorney should be, of analyzing the facts.  Given her age and status, she won't be personally culpable for failing to do so.  I.e, if what she has been selling turns out to be a bill of goods, well she'll go on to retire and not bear the brunt of it.

Hageman says she has a dog in the "hunt" as she's from here and her family is too.  And she is from the Ft. Laramie region and her family is here, in agriculture, although unlike those of us who have kids who to worry about for the future decades hence, she has no children, so that's really worrying about her extended family.  I have no reason to believe that she doesn't genually bear them in her heart.

In any event, however, worrying about what happens when Wyoming suffers means, more than anything else, looking at the world honestly, and not at some romanticized past that never existed and which, to the extent it did, is evolving.

In 1960 Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, addressed the reality of the state of British colonialism to the South African parliament, stating:

The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it. 

Macmillan was right, and there was no holding back the change those winds brought.  But he had a concern beyond that, and stated:

As I see it, the great issue in this second half of the twentieth century is whether the uncommitted peoples of Asia and Africa will swing to the East or to the West. Will they be drawn into the Communist camp? Or will the great experiments of self-government that are now being made in Asia and Africa, especially within the Commonwealth, prove so successful, and by their example so compelling, that the balance will come down in favour of freedom and order and justice?

Not everyone was willing to accept the storm that had arrived.  Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of Rhodesia, did not, and took his country out of the British Empire.

Rhodesia no longer exists. Zimbabwe, a wreck of a country, exists in its place.  Many of the departing African colonies have had terrible post-colonial histories, but Zimbabwe has one of the worst.  It's story is complicated, but in part that disaster can be put at Smith's feet.  MacMillan proved correct, Smith's actions gave strength to Marxist revolutionaries, who won, and who effectively destroyed the country's economy.

Elections have consequences, as they say, and so does ignoring reality.  Wyoming has a lot of going for it, but it doesn't control every trend in the United States or globe.  Every time somebody says "electric cars will never work here", they cast a vote for fantasy.  That's a minor example, but it's a relevant one.  Harriet Hageman claimed, back in April when she gave her speech in Powell, that her first act in Congress would be to introduce a bill requiring the United States to use American energy.

Well fine, pass that bill (it won't pass), but what she means is almost certainly petroleum oil and coal.  California, with a population dwarfing ours, is already legislatively phasing out the use of petroleum.  Congress isn't going to be able to mandate a change in course that's already been taken, and not just here, but all over the globe and in the hearts of minds of consumers.

Wyoming has a lot going for it economically, and a lot of that predates its oil and coal history.  But will it value it, or will it insist that we return to the 1980s and expect others to go along?  I fear the latter is almost certain.

In addition to that, when Hageman claimed nativist grounds for people to vote for her, she ironically pointed out something that's very much impacted our recent political history.  Yes, Cheney was not from Wyoming but John Barrasso isn't either.  Foster Freiss, whom the far right here adored, very much was not.

Nor are a host of Wyoming political figures, some of whom are angry relocates from points further east.

The point isn't that you have to be born here to win elections or to run, but rather this. We should be very careful about taking our political views from out of state imports, whose presence is usually temporary.  In recent years, particularly in the COVID era, we've received a lot of new people, but the backstory is a lot of them leave pretty quickly.  The myth of Wyoming is that "everyone is so friendly", which isn't really true.  It's easy to mistake politeness and curiosity for friendly.

Wyoming is a hard place to live and work.  A lot of people flood in when the price of oil is high, and then hang for a while when it drops until they chase the dollar somewhere else. A lot of those people bring their views, often from the west of the Missippii, south of the Picket Wire region, and that temporarily impacts views here. Freiss, when he ran for office, had a campaign style that somewhat resembled something out of 1970s Alabama, for example.  When they leave, that view usually goes with them.

Likewise, Wyoming throughout its history has had influxes of outsiders, people born well outside the region, who prove to be temporary.  Nice summers are attractive at first, but long winters, no services, and the howling wind take their toll after a few years, and they move on. Something like 50% of people who move here just to move here move on in less than a year.

At the end of the day, Wyomingites, those born here who stayed, and those who moved here, mostly from neighboring states that have a lot of the same character, are invested in the state in ways that others aren't and want its character preserved. That means its entire character.  You can't be the Congressman from the Oil Industry, or the House member from Coal, or the Representative from farmers in Ft. Laramie.  It's the whole smash, and those who have lived and endured here, rather than those taking up temporary residence of a fictional Wyoming that exists only on Yellowstone or Longmire, do have opinions that matter more than those moving through.

That means being honest.  Honesty starts with being honest to yourself first, and then to everyone else.  It's a character trait that's really departed from national politics to a massive degree in recent years.

So, don't make Wyoming suffer, starts with being honest.

Footnotes

1. There's's a mixed metaphor at work here.  The dog/hunt line is usually "that dog doesn't hunt", which is a phrase given to dismiss an argument that doesn't work.  The other line, which Hageman must have been recalling, is "I don't have a dog in that fight", which means that you aren't betting on a dog in a dog fight.  I.e., you have no personal interest in the outcome.

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Friday, October 27, 1922. Horse events, funerals, savings certificates. And the March on Rome begins.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 27: 1922  The Schwartz Brothers Haberdashers store opened in Cheyenne.   Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

A military horse show took place in Washington, D.C. on this day in 1922.

Billy Mitchell was one of the competitors.

 Elsewhere, a military funeral was also conducted.

Andrew Mellon was issuing new Treasury saving certificates.

Southern Rhodesia, which later became Rhodesia, and which is now Zimbabwe, held a referendum on joining South Africa.  Voters rejected the proposal.

Italian Fascists took possession of cities around Italy as the March on Rome began.  The mach was a mass demonstration that was also a slow rolling coup in progress intended, ultimately, to put so much pressure on the Italian government that it would fall, and the Fascists take control of the government.  It would succeed in that aim.

Lex Anteinternet: MUGABE FALLS! ZIMBABWEAN ARMY STAGES COUP. Or maybe it sort of kind of does.

Lex Anteinternet: MUGABE FALLS! ZIMBABWEAN ARMY STAGES COUP: The Zimbabwean Army deposed Robert Mugabe, a horrible human being and one of the worst leaders in Sub Saharan Africa. Mugabe epitomize...

Like a scene out of Monty Python.

Oh, I was always hoping for too much. Zimbabwe is barely a real country to start with, and with no real democratic history or even a history of a national government to look back up.  It's not like, say Romania, which prior to its long Marxist nightmare was a series of governments, not all of which were very admirable by any means, but they were real anyhow.

Or maybe that's a bad example. . . or a good one in this context in that it would serve as a bad example.  One of those Romanian governments was pretty fascistic.  And during World War Two Romania went berserk in regards to its Jewish population.  Not very admirable, to say the least.

But, whatever the case may be, when the Communist fell in Romania, they fell.  Not like what we have going on in Zimbabwe where the Marxist geriatric is hanging on refusing to leave like the Black Knight in Monty Python while the Army refuses to push him.  And I probably shouldn't have supposed they would. Today's Zimbabwean army is really the heir to one of the two communist guerilla armies of the Bush War period, not a real national army, in spite of the attempt to make it one, that we might wish for.  The army pushing out Mugabe would be asking for too much, even though they're attempting to do so.  They're according him way too much respect.

Which isn't to say that I want more blood spilled in an already bloody land. But I'd be for trying Mugabe for his crimes against his nation.   He richly deserve the judgment in fact that history will ultimately give him.

But instead his hold on his nation lingers on even in a deposed state, as his cold "comrades" negotiate for him to gracefully leave.

A trip on Air Koryo anyone?

MUGABE FALLS! ZIMBABWEAN ARMY STAGES COUP

The Zimbabwean Army deposed Robert Mugabe, a horrible human being and one of the worst leaders in Sub Saharan Africa.

Mugabe epitomized the "one man, one vote, once" Africa that followed the fall of colonialism, except that he was much worse than that. Coming to power on the strength of his faction and suppressing all others, his government was corrupt and ruined the economy of what had been a once prosperous nation.

That it took the Zimbabwean Army this long really says something about the level of his control.

May he be remembered for the horror he was and may he live long enough (he's in his 90s) to see the success of his rivals and repent of his horrible deeds.

Conscription in the English Speaking World. Passing an Anniversary

We've been posting some on conscription and today is a World War One conscription anniversary.

 

The Irish Canadian Rangers, a unit raised, but not fully filled, in Quebec, drawing from Irish Canadians.  It had to be filled out by Irish recruits from Ireland, and then was folded into another Canadian unit.  In some ways, its story is emblematic of the situation in Quebec during the Great War.

Not in the United States, however. Rather, its the centennial of the Military Service Act which, ineffectively, ushered in conscription in Canada for the Great War.

Canada was a country with a population of only 8,000,000 people during the great war.  It's almost a shock to realize how small the population really was.  23% of that population was made up of the Quebecois.  During the war 400,000 Canadians, more than a few of whom were English immigrants, although the majority were not, volunteered to serve in Canadian army.  Full mobilization, for countries with universal conscription, is usually regarded as 10% of the population, all male in the traditional form of conscription.  So Canada mustered men at the rate of 5% of the population.  Pretty darned impressive really for an all volunteer force. And that doesn't include those contributions from Prince Newfoundland, and Labrador, which were not part of Canada at the time.

Royal Newfoundland Regiment crossing the Rhine, 1918. This is not the Canadian army.

By 1917 the well had somewhat run dry in Canada. And in these regards it was facing the difficult choice that other English speaking countries had already faced.

Conscription was not a strong land army tradition in any of them.  The English had never had conscription for ground troops in modern times, although it did have it for sailors in the 18th and early 19th Century.  Indeed, conscription of sailors gave rise to the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom as the Royal Navy felt free to remove Englishmen from American ships to serve in the ongoing war with Napoleonic France.  There's more to that to be said, but given as this isn't an entry on the War of 1812 of the Napoleonic Wars I'll forgo telling it.  Anyhow, that did mean that England had a bit of a tradition of conscription, but not for land armies. That came to an end with the British Military Service Act of 1916 which made men from age 18 to 40 liable for service in the English Army.

The application of that act, of course, gave rise to the Easter Rebellion in Ireland which ultimately lead to the Anglo Irish War and an independent Ireland.  Conscription in Ireland was pointless, really, as the Irish were already serving in such high numbers.  In the end, conscription was likely necessary for the British in the war, but the cost proved to be great in terms of permanently severing the UK's political ties with Ireland.  Perhaps an added element of irony in regards to that is present however as the UK would resort to conscription very early in World War Two and the Irish, now citizens of the "Free State", once again volunteered to serve in the British Army in high numbers.  Very unusually, and in recognition of the Cold War, the UK would reinstate conscription in peacetime in 1948 but would phase it back out a decade latter and official end it in 1960.

Australia put conscription up for vote twice during the Great War, and both times it was defeated, although narrowly.  Australia would contribute 416,809 men to the Australian army during World War One, a massive contribution given its also small population.

An Australian pro conscription poster.  The Australians weren't persuaded and while plenty of Australians went to help, they were all volunteers.

Australia's conscription story was more complicated for World War Two during which it first made all unmarried men of 21 years of age liable for military training.  In 1942 it introduced conscription, but it wasn't until the end of the war that Australia deployed conscripts overseas.  Australian soldiers who were conscripts stand apart ab bit, during World War Two, as they did not measure up to the same aggressive quality, at first, that Australian volunteers did.  Australia twice reintroduced conscription after the World War Two, once for the Korean War and once for the Vietnam War, but unlike other nations that kept prolonged peacetime drafts, they kept them tied to the wars themselves.

New Zealand had a friendlier view towards compulsory military training than Australia, having had a militia history that is somewhat analogous to that of the United States. While almost every English Commonwealth nation had been looking at compulsory military training prior to World War One, that movement was fairly well received in New Zealand. New Zealand, therefore, had started compulsory military training for teenagers in 1909, exempting conscientious objectors.  Conscientious objectors, however, were not well regarded.  Having already established compulsory military training and having effectively created an army reserve prior to the war, it is not surprising that New Zealand followed the UK by enacting conscription in 1916.

That brings us back to Canada.

Canada had a vigorous militia system prior to the Great War and readily adapted that enthusiastically to its army that went overseas in World War One.  It was an all volunteer system, however.  Noticeably absent amongst the volunteers were the Quebecois.

There are undoubtedly a variety of reasons for this but chief amongst them were that the Quebecois, a sizable minority of the Canadian population at 23% of that population, but concentrated in Quebec where they were a majority, did not regard the United Kingdom as the mother country and had a distance and separate history from France, having been severed from Imperial France during France's royal Bourbon period.  They did not see the war in Europe as their war and were not keen in serving in it.  Their view cannot be regarded, quite frankly, as unreasonable.  By 1917 the Canadian government was ready to attempt to force the issue which was largely unsuccessful. There was large scale opposition to conscription in Canada and in the end only 24,132 conscripts were sent to France.  The word "only" has to be used with some caution, of course, as that's over a division of men and 124,000 men were drafted and therefore added to the army.  Not everyone in a North American army in any war has made it overseas, so perhaps this contribution was more significant than supposed.

Canada would repeat this history during World War Two. Canada enacted conscription at the start of the war but it was overwhelmingly opposed in  Quebec.  As a compromise Canadian conscripts were not liable for overseas service at first but by late 1944 this was changed.  During World War Two only 12,908, contemptuously called "zombies" were sent by order overseas, although quite a few draftees volunteered for overseas service.  The repeat of conscription during World War Two, however, served to worsen relations between the Quebecois and English speaking Canadians which would have an impact after the war.  Canada has not attempted to enact conscription since the war.

Other Commonwealth nations had other experiences with conscription.  I do not believe that it was attempted in the Union of South Africa during World War One or Two, no doubt because of lingering resentment against the British amongst the Afrikaans population during that period.  In 1967 the country started to conscript white men over the age of 16, a young age for conscription by that time, and then phased it back out in 1993 after the collapse of apartheid. The country has toyed with reintroducing it in recent years.  It's neighbor to the north, Rhodesia, enacted conscription following its declaration of independence from the UK modeling it on the British system.  I don't know if Zimbabwe retains it today.

Which leaves us with the US.

We've explored that a bit in recent posts.  Conscription was not a popular concept going into World War One by any means, having only strictly existed during the Civil War.  The Wilson Administration was so concerned it would be poorly received that it attempted to camouflage its nature by calling it "Selective Service", a name it still officially retains in the United States, under the theory that the country would be fooled that the country was simply selecting volunteers, more or less.  Nobody was fooled.

 Selecting the first U.S. draftee during World War One.

Generally, Americans volunteered enthusiastically, and enthusiastically accepted the draft, during the Great War.  Nonetheless that well known story isn't as simple as it is often related to be. There were two uprising amongst southern yeoman populations against conscription during the war, one of which we've already discussed.  These were serious armed uprisings, not mere protests.  And hard left organizations, which were in some ways at the peak of their popularity in the country, were dead set against conscription.  Organizations like the IWW actively campaigned against it.

The US did have compulsory militia duty on the part of military aged males from the colonial period up until after the Civil War, and that's a type of conscription, so this story isn't quite as clear as it might at first seem.  That had passed away by the late 1800s, however, and the memory of it seems to have been largely forgotten.  So the World War One draft was an unusual event.  After the war conscription was halted, only to be reintroduced just prior to World War Two, but with very narrow support.  It went away again after World War Two but, just as in the UK, it came back in 1948 with the need to form a large Cold War Army.  It was retained in the US up until 1975, although nobody was conscripted after 1973.

Jeffrey Mellinger, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1972 and who remained in the Army until he retired in 2011, making him the last American serving who entered the military as a conscript.

While the world is wringing its hands over a Zimbabwean lion. . .

the horror of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe goes on largely without notice.

This story broke while I was away from the news for an extended time (which I have come to more and more appreciate).  So, I return to the news with the story in full swing.  Many are in a frothy righteous indignation over the shooting of "Cecil the Lion".

I haven't followed the story that closely, but it does appear that the stalking of this lion was out of bounds.  He appears to have been tagged and if what little I know about the story is correct, it was an illegal hunt.  But the real news broke because the lion was known and so it's a convenient foil for the "animal rights" movement, a deeply unnatural, indeed anti natural, movement that despises people, and animals as they really are.

But the really amazing aspect of this is that people are seriously stating that the alleged law breaker should be extradited to Zimbabwe.  Seriously? People didn't work themselves into a lather about Amanda Knox, who is accused of killing a human being, in such a fashion and demand that she be extradited to democratic Italy, and they're arguing somebody should be extradited to the madness of Zimbabwe?

If anyone should be extradited in association with Zimbabwe, it's the president of that failed pathetic state, Robert Mugabe.  Mugabe took over the leadership of the country when Rhodesia surrendered itself to the inevitable, and the country looked to be full of democratic promise.  He took a prosperous land, with multiple ethnicities, and has presided over a government that has used violence against its political opponents (including his movements former brothers in arms), and which has engaged in the expropriation of land. He's destroyed the economy and made life miserable for its inhabitants, so that a person can truly say that, unlike South Africa, the country was truly better off before the revolution.

Africa has progressed enormously over the past 30 years.  Zimbabwe, however, has regressed and is a joke.  Extradite?  Yes, do so, but extradite Robert Mugabe to the Hague.

How is that people can care so much for one animal, while ignoring so much about their fellow human animals?  And how is it that people can stand, at least in theory, for the bringing of democratic rule to a nation, and then care so pathetically little when it fails to take root?  Africa is full of hope, Zimbabwe full of despair, and we should be full of shame over our misdirected priorities.