Wounded French Soldier at Grand Palais, April 16, 1918.

A History of Wyoming Law

A History of Wyoming Law.

The first indoor species.

Now that's a scary thought.

Not REI advertising.  No, that we're the "first indoor species", as their advertisement, set out below, in part, notes:

LEARN ABOUT DIVIDEND

Polytechnic Institute, Auburn, Alabama, April 15th, 1918

Surprised? No, we knew that all along.

The January issue of the Smithsonian magazine has an article with this headline:

New Research Dispels the Myth That Ancient Cultures Had Universally Short Lifespans

The article starts off with:

After examining the graves of over 300 people buried in Anglo Saxon English cemeteries between 475 and 625 AD, archaeologist Christine Cave of the Australian National University made a discovery that might surprise you. She found that several of the bodies in the burial grounds were over 75 years old when they died.

Yawn.

We knew this all along, and we've said this numerous times before here.

Yup, we have:

The suggestion of the letter writer was that human beings live longer than they used to. This is a common belief, people state that all the time, but it simply isn't true. People live the same number of years that they always have. That number of years varies by population and culture, but it's generally between 60 and 120 years. Extreme old age generally seems to cap out at an absolute maximum of 120 years, a span that's actually mentioned in the Old Testament, interestingly enough. The longest any human in modern times has been recorded to have live is 122 years. There are claimed examples of people living in excess of this number of years, but they lack verification and tend to be subject to serious questioning. This is not to say, of course, that anyone can live to 120 years. Far from it. Only a tiny minority of people shall ever approach that age. But instances of advance years in any one era are quite easy to find. Chief Washakie, for example, lived to be 99 or 100 years of age and was not the only Native American of that to have done so. Adams and Jefferson lived into their 80s. And so on.

And now to that list we can add some disinterred Anglo Saxons.

So the origin of the "myth".  Well, we repeat what we noted before:

So what does all this mean? Perhaps not that much, but the common modern assumption that we're living longer is simply incorrect. Things aren't killing us before we reach our natural end of life. That's what is occurring.

The US, UK and France hit Syria. Will it work?

 The Al Assad family.  Snappy dressers and head of a murderous regime.  The current dictator is in the upper row, second from the left.

And by work, I guess, I mean will it deter Assad from gassing his people in the future?

I doubt it.

Assad is essentially a species of murderous fascist propped up by a tottering theocracy and an oligarchic corruptocracy.   But for Iran and and Russia, he'd still be struggling as the leader of one faction against a host of others. The others, for their part, vary from semi quasi democratic Kurds, Not Communist but you can see it from there Kurds, Socialist, and Islamist.  None of them, except perhaps the Kurds, can get along with each other and nobody can form a government that anyone else will tolerate.

Syria is a real mix. It's home to Sunnis, Shiia, Alawites, and Christians.  And its broken.  Ruled now by the Baathists, who are basically a regional fascist party, and by Alawites who are Baathist at that, it's a house of cards and hopelessly broken for the near and middle term.  Iran, for that matter, also is.

It can't be put back together.

Preventing further gassing would be nice.  And it has to be tried.  And the raids, therefore, had to be done.  But it's not going to work.

What would replace these folks (ignoring what we'd get in their place)?  It's hard to say. But with Iranian and Russian backing, they'll be staying in place.  Iran will take care of itself, as the Iranian regime is on the guillotine reading Archie cartoons.  Russia?  Much harder to say.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First United Methodist Church Laramie, Wyoming

Churches of the West: First United Methodist Church Laramie, Wyoming:

This is the First United Methodist Church in Laramie, Wyoming.  I know very little about this church, but the design in striking.  When I livedin Laramie I used to pass by it often on the way to school and often thought that the church resembled the keel of a ship, upturned.

Best Posts of the Week of April 8, 2018.

The Best Post of the Week of April 8, 2018.

A busy week here on the old LexA.

Orthodox Easter, 2018.

St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City Utah

Big Horn Hot Springs, Thermopolis, Wyoming. April 8, 1918.

This photograph was taken a century ago, today.

If it looks familiar, perhaps that's because we use it as the flagship photograph for our Railhead blog, dedicated to railroad themes. 

The Kaiserschlacht Continues. April 9, 1918. Operation Georgette

Troops to the Mexican Border?

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Two

The National Mid Terms, 2018

Syria. We told you so.

The dinner plate on the Home Front. When things were so tight it was a good idea to go Chinese. 雜碎

A Gun Culture that nobody worries about. Switzerland

A Gun Culture that nobody worries about. Switzerland

 Swiss Ruetli match.  Oh my. . . that guy is shooting a Stg57 semi automatic rifle that was probably truly converted from the true assault rifle version.

We've been running a lot of posts on firearms recently in reaction to the movement that has convinced itself that simply banning certain categories of them, categories which, at least mechanically, are nothing new (but see our posts on ARs), while ignoring the fact that whatever is going on is clearly societal in nature.

But ignoring societal problems, or at least making them superficial is, as we've also noted, what usually happens in such debates.  If they're addressed, responsibility rears its stern head and modern American culture, if anything, has been dedicated to avoiding personal responsibility. . . heck any kind of responsibility, at all costs, at least since the 1970s.

So its worth noting that there are plenty of other cultures that have a "gun culture", as the media likes to portray it.  Indeed, as we've also noted gun ownership is nearly universally allowed globally, although varying degrees of control vary widely.

Anyhow, Switzerland is worth looking at. Switzerland has a gun culture.  Indeed, target shooting is the national sport.  A national referendum recently to try to restrict firearms resulted in an overwhelming defeat with lots of language that Americans would easily recognize coming into play.  But Switzerland also has a very low crime rate and none of the types of problems we've seen recently in the US (which has a declining rate of violence, as we've noted before).

Time magazine looked at this awhile back with an eye towards explaining it and one of the things they came up with was this?

One of the reasons the crime rate in Switzerland is low despite the prevalence of weapons — and also why the Swiss mentality can’t be transposed to the current American reality — is the culture of responsibility and safety that is anchored in society and passed from generation to generation. Kids as young as 12 belong to gun groups in their local communities, where they learn sharpshooting. The Swiss Shooting Sports Association runs about 3,000 clubs and has 150,000 members, including a youth section. Many members keep their guns and ammunition at home, while others choose to leave them at the club. And yet, despite such easy access to pistols and rifles, “no members have ever used their guns for criminal purposes,” says Max Flueckiger, the association’s spokesperson.

“Social conditions are fundamental in deterring crime,” says Peter Squires, professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Brighton in Great Britain, who has studied gun violence in different countries and concluded that a “culture of support” rather than focus on individualism, can deter mass killings.

“If people have a responsible, disciplined and organized introduction into an activity like shooting, there will be less risk of gun violence,” he tells TIME.

Swiss youth target shooting course.  These kids are shooting .22 LR rifles

There's a lot that's telling here, including, amongst other things, that Time magazines reporter had an element of denseness in his comments, while at the same time he may have picked up on something that's quite correct.

Okay, on what's correct.  There likely is something about a generation to generation passing on of firearms "culture" that makes these sorts of violent acts unlikely in a society that does that. What Time missed is that in fact this has been  the rule in the United States, and Canada, up until very recently.

Switzerland, in spite of being a European nation, has been a nation with an agrarian culture to a large extent.  That's easy to miss, but it's true. While Switzerland has large cities, it also has the Alpine pattern of settlement in which the defining nature of the country is the numerous small villages and towns in Alpine valleys.  These are rural by their very nature.  Switzerland also has a "right to roam", as many European countries do, a strong hunting culture, and a very strong militia history and culture which made shooting the national sport for men and women.  Unlike other nations which have sought to restrict what people could have at home, Switzerland has required its men to keep their service arms at home, including true assault rifles.  Retiring militia men can opt to keep their service weapons, both rifles and pistols, after their service is done.  Purchasing semi automatic rifles, even for non Swiss citizens, is fairly easy.  Support for firearms ownership is high even amongst those who don't shoot.

This isn't all that unusual either for European nations, although Switzerland provides the most prominent example.  Shooting sports are popular in Scandinavia, which does feature greater controls by various nations, but only recently, rural Germany, Eastern Europe and the Czech Republic.  Indeed, the latter nation nearly amended its constitution last year to insert a right to keep and bear arms in it.  Iceland has a very high firearms ownership rate and almost, we might note, no homicide whatsoever.

Where the reporter was off the mark, likely as he has little experience outside of the concrete world, is that in a lot of the United States outside of the large metropolitan areas what's describe in the Time article is exactly what occurs in the US, and has occurred for eons.

 Female teenage 4H competitive shooter.

4H, the youth agricultural organization, has had a shooting sports program that goes back to the 1970s.  It's spread across the United States and exists everywhere, teaching very young shooters up to 18 year olds how to shoot on the range, including the rifle range, the pistol range, and the trap shooting range.  The Boy Scouts also have such a program (and maybe the Girl Scouts too, I'm less familiar with them).  At one time JrROTC had such a program for high school aged kids and when I went to high school they shot in a rifle range in the basement of the school with .22s.  My late office neighbor was on a regional champion JrROTC rifle team which shot the M1903 rifle, the .30-06 service rifle then in use, when he was in high school.  Now the JrROTC teams compete with air rifles, which is sort of sad, but at the same time I'd note that 4H, in addition to .22 LR also has air rifle teams.

The much maligned by the press National Rifle Association sets the disciplines used in all youth shooting in the United States, outside of the service rifle and pistol disciplines, and sponsors some of its own clubs youth teams.  So that makes at least four different youth groups that have rifle teams in the US.  Additionally, in my region, a local club sponsors a youth biathlon team.

So, what's the point?  Well, that "culture" that the Time reporter noted does in fact exist in the United States, outside of the steel and concrete nightmare that the our "modern" economy continues to rush to create. The byproduct of that corporate capitalist world seems increasingly to be an environment which has a byproduct of disorder and unhappiness.

That may very well be the real problem.

Poster Saturday. More American Reserve Power

Friday Farming News: Rhode Island directly purchases farms to preserve farming. Midwestern farmers worry about trade wars

Rhode Island farm, 1917

In an effort to preserve its farms and to allow young people to get into farming, the State of Rhode Island is buying farms that are for sale, irrespective of their inflated development value, and then reselling them to young farmers at their agricultural value with restrictive covenants on future development.

Good for Rhode Island.

The development pressure in a place like Rhode Island, one of the most densely populated states in the union, have to be intense.  But none the less there remain young people there who desire to farm.  Their farming efforts, based on the article I read about this new program, are market farms, or market gardening type farms, on very small acreages. The price of land is intense.  A real uphill battle.  I'm glad the state recognizes the value of having land preserved in this fashion and give them a lot of credit for taking this on.

Not everyone is.  One older farmer complained that "this is what the Communist did".

Nope, that's not what the Communist did at all.  

This is what those with an eye towards the future, with an agrarian eye, and a Distributist eye do in the present, in Rhode Island, and hopefully more places in the US in the future.

Driving pigs, 1916.

If politicians back east are worrying about the fortune of farming in their states, at least in one case, in the Midwest they're worrying about a trade war with China.

Well, all the way into the West, it turns out.

China in recent years has become an enormous importer of American pork and it was just set to become a major importer of American beef.  With the US set to ramp up tariffs on Chinese steel and other products China is retaliating, or threatening to, with tariffs on food imports to that country from the United States.

The wisdom of putting tariffs on food imports is really questionable, but it would hurt beef and pork producers to be sure.  All of this is a lesson on how ignoring a trade problem in its infancy, and we definitely have a long running one with China, is a really bad idea.

China is an international trade menace as it doesn't play fair and it steals information from other nations.  It should be slapped down, but that slapping should have occurred a decade ago.  We didn't do that, and as the GOP and the Democrats have been complicit in a cheap goods policy that basically encouraged the exporting of manufacturing overseas (one of the major factors that lead to the rise of Trump) they jointly had low motivation to address it.

Cheap goods, of course, are fine if you have the money to buy them from your good paying job, but once you have no jobs, that's pretty academic and that's what's happened in a lot of the American Rust Belt.  Those folks are mad, and Trump is their herald.  So we're hurtling towards a belated trade war that may very well be way too late and rather economically bloody, something that Trump should rethink and the suit and tie class, including the last couple of Presidents, ought to be berated for allowing to be set up.

A real oddity of it, however, is than it this process the American economy started to rhyme with the economy of the late 19th Century.  Not duplicate it, but mirror it.  The US was always a major agricultural producer but in the declining era of heavy manufacturing that sector of the economy has improved and become more important. . . sort of like it was prior to the 1890s.

Now, things are changing again as some manufacturing is returning to the US.  Trump has been getting credit for this, but that takes years to occur and likely reflects the cycle of manufacturing development.  So things are bouncing back in a more high tech fashion as the US has kept the lead there, a byproduct of a bunch of things but particularly of a good university system that, while it supports piles of fluff, does the important stuff really well.  Contrary to widespread "progressive" views the US is very near the top in producing university graduates. So much so that a lot of them can't find work in their chosen fields.

Anyhow, shades of the early 1890s here. . . which isn't good.  

Recall the Depression of 1893?

Control that Sugar Intake for Your Country, Darn it!

Another great post from A Hundred Years Ago.

Sugarless Sweets?? Sugar Substitutes During WWI

What the heck?  Early shades of a nanny state watching your waste-line?

Nope.

Ships.

Of course, it wasn't just ships, but also the need to conserve white sugar for the use in food that was being supplied to the military.

Take a look at the substitutes on the link, it's fascinating. All the substitutes were in fact sugars, just in other forms.  I note that as today we have a lot of sugar substitutes that aren't sugar. . .they aren't even all natural. 

The dinner plate on the Home Front. When things were so tight it was a good idea to go Chinese. 雜碎

 Early morning photograph of JS Chinese Restaurant in Casper, Wyoming.  I don't know how long a Chinese restaurant has been at this location, but it's a long time.  This location was originally something called "The Green Derby", and when I was a kid, the sign for The Green Derby was still there, but it was, none the less, a Chinese restaurant even then.

Eh? 

Or, perhaps more appropriately, 什么？

Well, let us explain.

1918 Chop Suey Recipe from the Kansas State Council of Defense

This introductory paragraph from this entry at A Hundred Years Ago explains it:

In 1918, World War I was raging. There were food shortages, and the U.S. government was shipping wheat and other foodstuffs to the troops in Europe. To help cooks on the home front use “conservation as far as possible of food which can be sent abroad,” the Kansas State Council of Defense published One-Dish Meals.

And Chop Suey turned out to be one of those dishes.

I have to say that this really surprised me as I just don't think of there being Chinese dishes in the US in 1918, let alone ones like Chop Suey.  I'm far from an expert on Chinese food, but my understanding is that Chop Suey is a Chinese American dish invented by Chinese restaurateurs in the US for the American diner.  Wikipedia, notes, however, that one E. N. Anderson, a scholar of Chinese food scholar (how come I don't have a job like that?) claims the dish descends from tsap seui (杂碎, "miscellaneous leftovers"), common in Taishan County in Guangdong province which provided many early Chinese migrants to the US.  One Dr. Li Shu-fan of Hong Kong recorded it as being on tables in Toisan in the 1890s.  So maybe it really is Chinese in origin, which would be nice.

Take that Gen. Tso.

 Zuo Zongtang, Marquess Kejing (Tso Tsung-t'ang), Chinese military leader who coordinated Qing forces to attack the Taiping rebels with support from British and French forces in the 1860s.  He lived in Hunan and had nothing to do with any chicken dishes that were subsequently named in his honor in Chinese American cuisine.

Anyhow, it obviously was well enough know by 1918 for the State of Kansas to include it in a recipe books, which means it had obviously crossed the nation.  I was, nonetheless, surprised.

But then, I was also surprised to see chili in the Army cookbook from the second half of the 19th Century, meaning the well known Mexican dish was pretty common by then, even if the recipe isn't quite what we'd expect today.

 1896 U.S. Army recipe for chili.  Is this what you'd regard as chili?

1916 recipe, with beans.  This looks quite a bit more familiar. Is anyone else surprised by some of the entrees in this Army cookbook?  Roast goose? Roast duck? Tamales also show up in the book.

By the way, the Chop Suey recipe looks pretty darned good.  I may have to try it.  Up to now, the limit of my Chinese food experimentation, in terms of my actually trying to cook it here at home, has been limited to Crispy Duck.

And for a dish that's a "time of want" dish, I have to note that the variety of ingredients is impressive.

It omits, however, wheat. And as we know from other posts here, wheat was a "fighting food" that the nation was trying to conserve.  Rice wasn't in as great of demand.

By way of a no doubt odd comment, one thing that disturbed me here is the use of the term "One-Dish Meal".  There's nothing wrong with One Dish Meals, but the term is quite similar to one used by the Nazi German government as food grew tight in World War Two, that being "One Pot Meals". The Nazis would actually send flunkies around to make sure that people were sticking to one pot meals, and hence conserving food, but that same task was also likely served the scarcity of food items in Germany as the war went on.  In looking it up, I did oddly find a reference to German One Pot Meals, for which I was hoping to find a period depiction to post, and instead found this item on a recipe page:

This is the easiest meal anyone could make! I learned how to make this from my first mother-in-law many years ago. The marriage didn't last, but the recipe did! As a young bride, I wanted to make good meals and this dish was a favorite!

 That's the only reference I found which, while it shouldn't, does make me wonder where that person's "first mother in law" learned the recipe. . .

Well, anyhow, back to Chop Suey.

Chop Suey was once such a popular dish that apparently quite a few Chinese restaurants were simply called that, according to Wikipedia.  I think I may have seen signs advertising it in San Francisco's China Town the first time I was there, in the mid 1980s, but I can only dimly recall that.  I didn't take any photos there, and should have.  Anyhow, as the dish arose in the Chinese American restaurant trade that raises the other surprising fact, to me, that there must have been sufficient Chinese restaurants in the U.S. at the time such that the dish was well known.  I don't know why that surprises me, but it does, and it makes me wonder how many other ethnic restaurant types existed in the US by that time.  Italian restaurants must have been common, at least in big cities.  I wonder what else was common?

Indeed, this is one of those areas that shows how similar, rather than dissimilar, the past is from the present, while also showing the opposite.  A familiar food item today, which we wouldn't expect, but at the same time in a setting that isn't familiar to us as well.

Anyhow, we'll conclude with Louis Armstrong's Cornet Chop Suey, which in case you wonder as to why it is titled that, is a musical mix.

o^.

Syria. We told you so.

Long time readers here will recall that we were opposed to intervening in the Syrian civil war back during President Obama's presidency.   My reasoning is that it was folly in the extreme to believe that there was a western rebel force that was going to turn Syria into a democracy.  Like it or not, the Assad regime actually is the most western force in the region, fascist though it is.

An added set of fears was that getting into the Syrian civil war in a halfway sort of way would prop up incompetent forces against less incompetent ones, prolong the war and open the Syrian government up to increased cooperation with Iran and Russia.

All of this has come true.

We would have been better off just pounding ISIL targets in Syria.  If we were going to go beyond that, we should have given massive support to the Kurds. Enough that they could bloody not only Damascus but Istanbul if need be.

Well, here we are.

Now for the second time in a year Damascus has used chemical weapons.  Last time we struck back. We're going to have to now.

And when we do, we should contemplate the extent to which a second rate power ruled by a tin pot dictator, Vladimir Putin, is responsible for this to some degree.  We opened the door, at least a bit, to the Russians coming in, and they did.  They seem to still fight, everywhere they fight, as if it's 1944, not 2018.  Military advisors are likely telling the President to make sure he doesn't hit any Russian targets in Syria.

But the Russians and Iranians went in and they're propping Assad up.

Should their interests be considered?  Should the Russian military, which is hardly the first rate power its portrayed to be, be given a pass?

And what about the Kurds.  Why aren't they entitled to a state, if we must stay in and try to sort out this mess.

112th Military Police, Col. Tom O. Crossan, commanding, Camp Sheridan, Alabama, April12, 1918

Miss Beatle, American Red Cross. April 12, 1918.

Natrona County Tribune, April 11, 1918. US troops engage Mexican raiders

Of course most of the news was on the war in Europe, where it was reported that Americans were being committed to battle in the British sector, the British and the Portuguese now being pressed, as we know, by Operation Georgette.

But the Tribune, which unlike the other Casper paper wasn't completely dominated by oil news on the cover, also reported that there had been a skirmish with Mexican forces of some sort, probably raiders, along the border.  One of the Cheyenne papers also included this on the front page, so the troubles to the south managed to reappear even in the midst of the massive 1918 German Spring Offensive.

As it turned out, this skirmish was only that, with American troops apparently repulsing an attempted raid into Texas by Mexican forces of some sort.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the Fair Housing Act).

President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

It was one of his hallmark achievements.

On this day, in 1968, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 into law.  The act prohibited discrimination in housing rentals and sales based on race, religion or national origin.  

Prior to this bill such discrimination had been common.  Indeed, restrictive covenants in deeds for entire subdivisions commonly did just that.  One such example in Casper, Wyoming, which we would not normally think of in this context, prohibited the sale of houses to "Mongolians".

Montgomery Alabama., Capital grounds, flag dedication, April 11, 1918

The Military Service (No. 2) Act, 1918 attempts to extend conscription to Ireland. April 9, 1918.

And would, accordingly, prove to be a big mistake.

The Irish had volunteered in large numbers to serve in the British Army during World War One, which of course was their army as they were part of the United Kingdom.  In spite of that, this did not mean by any means that all was well with the relations between Ireland and London.  It had never been, although that relationship had improved greatly over the last couple of decades.

The improvement of that relationship lead to a movement towards home rule that would have almost certainly caused Ireland to be self governing on domestic maters, while still part of the United Kingdom, by 1915 but for the arrival of World War One.  At that point all discussion on this topic was surrendered for the duration of the war.  Parliament had been cognizant, however, that Ireland's situation was fluid and it had not extended conscription to Ireland.  The strained relationship had, of course, lead to the Easter Rebellion of 1916, but that uprising had not been supported by the majority of the Irish and indeed was unpopular at the time.

Faced with the crisis of the German Spring Offensive and a severe immediate military crisis, Parliament finally acted to extend conscription to Ireland on this date.  

That would prove to be a grave error, just as it would prove to be in Canada.

Troops to the Mexican Border?

 U.S. Army patrol along the Mexican border (in this case artillery in the field), in 1916.

I woke up to the news recently (this post was a draft for a while) that President Trump, in frustration with there being no progress on his campaign promise to build a wall along the Mexican border, has determined to patrol it with the military.

What this means wasn't exactly clear.  According to the broadcast television news, the proposal was to patrol it with, as stated, "the military".  According to the New York Times, the proposal was to patrol it with the National Guard.  We now know that the proposal is to patrol the border with 2,000 to 4,000 National Guardsmen, presumably drawn from the border states (although that isn't exactly clear).  If the Guardsmen are all drawn from the border states we can presume that we're now set up for a contest between California Governor Jerry Brown and the President Trump.

This puts a a blog like this one into sort of a unique position as we deal here with the Mexican border a lot. . . .albeit the Mexican border in in the 1910s. . . not so much the 2010s.  Anyhow, maybe we're nearly relevant . . . or not.

Before we go further, we should mention the legality aspect of it.  The military can't be used as a police force under what some people like to call the Posse Comitatus Act, mostly because that's fun to say. The original text of the act stated:

Sec. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section and any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.

In spite of this text, the US military has been active on the border numerous times since the 1878 passing of this act, which was designed to keep the Army from being used again for something like Reconstruction.  It was, basically, part of the deal the GOP made with the South to end Reconstruction, and while I'll be perfectly frank that I feel that Reconstruction didn't go anywhere far enough, and was ended too soon, I'm sympathetic with the underlying point of the act. We really don't want soldiers acting as police or in policing roles.  For that matter, I'm not too keen on the modern trend of the militarization of the police which I think has gone way too far.  Policemen are not soldiers and vice versa, and their roles shouldn't cross.

 Extremely strange allegorical print on Reconstruction from 1867.  I'll be frank that in my view Reconstruction didn't go far enough, by a long shot.  The use of the Army in Reconstruction, which was necessary, did prove to be a major issue with Southerners after they got over the fact that they'd lost the war.

Anyhow, be that as it may, the active duty and the military have both been used, even in recent years, on the border in various roles, so this isn't that much of a departure from what's occurred both in the past and in fact recently.  That doesn't make it a good idea, it just means it isn't that novel.

It might surprise folks to know that at one time the U.S. military did in fact act as the Border Patrol, more or less, legal problems to that notwithstanding.  It was one of the two policing roles done by the U.S. Army in the past that it started to pull out of, due to the creation of other agencies, in the 10s and 20s.  The other prominent one was the patrol of the National Parks, which was an Army function.  That ended in the teens with the creation of the National Park Service and that's why, FWIW, Park Service uniforms strongly recall the Army's uniform of that era.

 Mexican migrant in 1912 near Laredo, Texas, before there were any real controls at all, but just at the time concern was beginning to build due to the increase of migrants caused by the Mexican Revolution.

The story about the border is a bit different.  The Army, combined with various state police forces, and during the crisis with Mexico the National Guard and at least the Texas State Guard patrolled the border and acted basically as the Border Patrol.   The Border Patrol itself was authorized on May 28, 1924 and started operating that June.  But it didn't replace the Army completely until after World War Two.  In the latter years, including on into World War Two, cavalry patrolled the border once again, in partial fear of which way Mexico may have decided to go during the war until Mexico entered the war on the Allied side. Beyond that, however, the last of the Apache Scouts, a mere handful of men, continued to patrol the border in a role that they'd had since the late 19th Century and which crossed the military/police line, with no apparent concern regarding that. 

Authorities, likely a Border Patrol officer and a railroad detective, checking boxcars for illegal Mexican migrants in 1938.  The Great Depression caused the United States to reduce the number of legal migrants considerably and to greatly increase immigration enforcement in general.

Following World War Two that ended and only in the last couple of decades has that occasionally been reversed.  That's always accompanied by assurances that the military is being used in a "support" rather than policing role, but the distinction can get blurred and things can occur.  A couple of decades ago, for example, a U.S. Marine shot and killed a teenage goat herder along the border when the Marine was deployed on some sort of drug smuggling interdiction mission.  Ironically, both were U.S. citizens and both were Hispanic, which I suppose may provide some sort of additional message but which is truly tragic.

The National Guard has been called out by at least of the border states, Arizona, to patrol the border in what amounted to a bit of a protest during President Obama's administration.  The Texas State Guard, which of course is a State Guard not the National Guard (I've dealt with State Guards in other posts) had a long border patrol mission of some sort in the last decade which was under reported (I knew a fellow in the Texas State Guard so I knew a little about that at the time).  The Texas State Guard, readers here will recall, also patrolled the border during World War One after the National Guard had been Federalized, in a mission that supported the Army on the Mexican border.

Are these missions effective?  Well, I suppose you'd have to look at each one to know the answer.  In prior eras when the border was truly wide open they probably were more effective than not doing anything.  Now, however, what this would seem to suggest is that there's a crisis going on and the Border Patrol is understaffed.  The Border Patrol, however, has been hiring during the Trump Administration and if its understaffed, it shouldn't be for much longer.  And illegal crossings are at their lowest point since the 1970s, a trend line that started during the Obama Administration.  The Trump Administration claims that within the last month there's been a 200% increase in crossings, which may be true but would raise the question as to why that's the case.  In the immediate term, however, we now live in an era in which more Mexicans return to Mexico than enter the United States.

Who will go, from the Guard? Well, maybe nobody. The promise is to call up that number of Guardsmen, but it hasn't happened yet.  If it does, it's likely to be the Guard from the border states although a Trump spokesman says he expected the majority of Governor's to support this task and send their Guards.  The entire Guard hasn't served on the border since 1916-17, and that's not going to happen now.  Indeed, that would be a huge deployment.  But that would suggest that they'll ask for support troops in small numbers, perhaps helicopter crews or something.

Is it necessary? That's definitely debatable.  If there's a huge serge in crossings, perhaps it is, on a temporary basis.  But so far, I haven't heard the story behind the numbers.  Unfortunately, if that's correct, it's an immediate need as its occurring now, prior to the annual spring increase in illegal crossings (truly, there is such a thing), but then if that's the need, the Guard isn't likely to be able to help, as they'd have to be deployed right now, which won't happen.

The Kaiserschlacht Continues. April 9, 1918. Operation Georgette

Operation Georgette

 

 Looking at the map again, now we are looking at the Second German Drive, listed here as the Lys Offensive.  Much further to the north than the first drive on the Somme, the twenty day operation in Flanders was a German drive to the sea.  It presented a desperate situation for the British and it destroyed the Portuguese Army on the Western Front.

By April 5 the Germans were aware that Operation Michael had failed, or at least would be a failure if it wasn't resumed in some other fashion.  That became Operation Georgette.  On April 9, Operation Michael was joined by Operation Georgette, somewhat of a resumption of Michael but aimed at a new location in the British sector where the front was manned by the Portuguese.

Georgette pitted the Germans, at first, against the Portuguese as they were being replaced by troops of the BEF.  Fighting was hard and desperate. The Portuguese forces were destroyed.  Field Marshall Haig issued his famous "backs to the wall" order, stating "With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end."

Here too, logistics defeated the Germans. They advanced, but not as expected, and their renewed offensive came to a halt on April 29.  The offensive had cost the Allies about 82,000 men, and the Germans about the same number.

Here too, the Germans could not stop or the entire effort resulting in over 300,000 casualties and the destruction of many elite units was all for naught.  After a brief lull, the Germans turned their attention to the French.

Panoramic views, Camp MacArthur, Waco, Texas, April 9th, 1918

Big Horn Hot Springs, Thermopolis, Wyoming. April 8, 1918.

This photograph was taken a century ago, today.

If it looks familiar, perhaps that's because we use it as the flagship photograph for our Railhead blog, dedicated to railroad themes.

Orthodox Easter, 2018.

St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City Utah

National Beer Day.

 A glass of Mishap! Brewing Company's dark double IPA in a Seward Alaska Brewing Company glass. A Wyoming beer in an Alaskan glass, sort of a small scale Distributist brewing triumph on National Beer Day.

Today, as it turns out, is National Beer Day.

National Beer Day?

Yes, it's National Beer Day.  

According to Time magazine, this day came about  as it was the day when the first step out of Prohibition, the Cullen-Harrison Act, came into effect. As time notes, about that act, and the day.

National Beer Day’s origins go as far back as 1919, when Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the sale, transportation, and production of alcohol in the U.S. This marked the start of the Prohibition era, which made many Americans turn to creative ways to enjoy their illicit beverages.

But 14 years later, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office, Americans were in for a change when he signed into action the Cullen-Harrison Act, which once again made selling and consuming low-alcohol beverages like beer and wine legal in the U.S.

And so, the day is celebrated on April 7, the first day you could pour a glass of amber goodness into a glass, legally, for fourteen years.

The Volstead Act and the supporting Constitutional amendment, as noted, came in during 1919, so we're almost at the centennial of that.  That certainly has its lessons, not all of them obvious, but here on National Beer Day we might note that Prohibition was arguably a byproduct of World War One, although there'd been a strong movement in that direction for decades.  The war, however, pushed Prohibition over the top for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that there was a strong fear that American troops would come back from the war exposed to all sorts of terrible things, such as death, violence, French women, and wine.  There wasn't much that could be done about death, violence and French women, but there was something that could be done about wine and everything alcoholic, so Prohibition got a bit boost.

Added to that, beer was associated, somewhat unfairly, with enemies of the Allies, most particularly the Germans, but also Irish nationalist. Everything German was really getting dumped on during the Great War, and only Irish resilience and the fact that the Irish were clearly fighting with the Allies even if some were fighting against the British kept that from occurring to them.  And the fact that the United States was going through a grain conservation mania also weighed in.  So, beer, along with every other form of alcohol, became a casualty of the war, although it was taking hits before.

But beer would be the first back, and nearly everywhere, as Prohibition started getting stepped back out following the election of Franklin Roosevelt.  Nonetheless, it was pretty wounded.  Piles of regional and local breweries died with Prohibition came in, their brews, and the jobs they'd provided to brew them, gone with the Volstead Act.  American beer, which didn't have the greatest reputation in the world anyhow, but which had developed some strong regional brews of quality, really took a pounding and when it came back out of Prohibition there was much less variety.  Indeed, American beer wouldn't be much to write about until the local micro brew boom of the 1980s, a good fifty years after it became legal to brew it once again.

Now, of course, the story is radically changed and the United States is the center of beer experimentation.  Weird brews take their place along side every variety of traditional European brews including a good many the average European has no doubt never tried.

So, here's to the revival of American beer. Better than it ever was.

German artillery commenced a barrage on the evening of this day, Sunday, April 7, 1918. . .

near the towns of Armentières and Festubert that would carry through until April 9.

German 21cm Morser being moved into position, March 1918.

Something must have been up. . . .

Lyndon B. Johnson declared the day a National Day of Morning. . .

for the loss of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on this day in 1968.