Saturday, May 29, 1943. The "real" Rosie the Riveter

The Saturday Evening Post ran Norman Rockwell's illustration of Rosie the Riveter.

I wrote about this earlier here, although I did not post the iconic image as it's copyrighted:\

Sarah Sundin's blog has a number of interesting items in it:

J. Howard Miller's little seen "We Can Do It" poster.  Note the "Post Feb. 15 to Feb 28" notation on the poster.

Today in World War II History—February 15, 1943: J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It” poster, now identified with Rosie the Riveter, is first posted at Westinghouse for a two-week in-house campaign.

The poster is one of the most recognizable in history now.  Ironically, it was little known to the World War Two generation itself, and only became widely known some forty years later.  In this sense, it's much like the "Keep Calm And Carry On" British poster, which was so rare in World War Two that it's debated if it was put up at all.

The poster, which is in fact not particularly skillfully executed, was limited to 1,800 runs and 17" x 22" in side.  In its original posting, it was put up only in Westinghouse factories, and in fact the female subject in the image wears a Westinghouse Electric floor employee badge. The workers who would have seen it were engaged in making helmet liners, and the poster was part of a gentle effort, in part, from dissuading strikes.  It was part of a 42 poster series by Miller.

Miller himself may be regarded as a somewhat obscure illustrator.  He was busy during World War Two and issued other posters that had an industrial theme.

Miller's female worker was based on a photograph of Geraldine Doyle, nee Hoff or Naomi Parker, it isn't really clear which, although some claim that it's definitely Parker.  It might have been both women, and more than just the two. The poster was painted from a photograph or photographs, and not a live model.

During the war itself, the Rockwell Saturday Evening Post illustration of a stout, defiant female riveter was the accepted depiction of Rosie the Riveter.  Rockwell, with his keen eye for detail, had painted "Rosie" on her lunch box.  

The name, Rosie the Riveter, was first used in a song by that name by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, recorded by The Four Vagabonds, which came out prior to Rockwell's May 1943, illustration.  The song, in turn, had been inspired by a newspaper column about 19-year-old Rosalind P. Walter who had gone to work as a riveter in Stratford Connecticut as part of the war effort. The model for the Rockwell painting was not an industrial worker, but a telephone operator, Mary Doyle Keefe, née, perhaps ironically, Doyle, who was Rockwell's neighbor.  She actually posed for a photograph for Rockwell's photographer, rather than for Rockwell live.

Keefe, who was not yet married, didn't like the painting as Rockwell had made her image so beefy, for which he apologized.  She attended Temple University, became a dental hygienist, married and passed away in 2015 at age 92.  Rosalind P. Walter went on in later life to become quite wealthy and was a noted philanthropist, particularly supporting public television.  She died in 2020 at age 95.

J. Howard Miller lived until 2004, but remained obscure, unlike his famous poster.

It should be noted that the depiction of the women and their story itself is interesting.  Vermonter Keefe was the daughter of a logger, but was obviously from a solid middle class Catholic family, something that would not have been surprising in any fashion at the time. As noted, she was not an industrial worker herself.  Geraldine Doyle worked only very briefly as an industrial worker in 1942, quitting as she feared injuring her hands as she was a cellist.  She later married a dentist later in 1943.  They met in a bookstore.  While her association with the painting is disputed, her World War Two factory photograph is remarkably similar to the poster.  Parker was employed in a factory prior to the war and continued to be during it.

The Miller image is used for a sign on the outside of the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in California, a Federal park dedicated to the World War Two home front.  World War Two, immediately following the Great Depression, had an enormous and permeant (and probably not good, really) impact on California, so the location is well placed.

The Rockwell image is, in my view, so much better than the poster variant that's come to be lionized it isn't even funny.  I'm not saying the Miller version is bad, but it doesn't compare to the Rockwell illustration that appeared the day before Memorial Day, 1943. 

Note also that the Saturday Evening Post went with something bold and defiant, and actually female, rather than the endless maudlin posts you'll see this Memorial Day.  Indeed, offhand, I can't find any of the national media that sought to inspire guilt, as current recollection so often do.

Monday, May 28, 1923. Mutiny on the Merret.

 The Merret was a U.S. Army, not a Navy, transport.  It was transporting refugees when the protest broke out, which would be resolved by the next day.

Corner Crossing Upheld in a victory for sportsmen, public lands, and Wyomingites in general

I've posted on this a number of times, most recently here, where I gave the details:

The Invaders

The Oil City News broke the story of the Federal District Court having issued its ruling, last Friday, although not until yesterday. Not surprisingly, the declining Tribune didn't get it into their Sunday edition.

At any rate, the Federal Court held corner crossing is not trespass.

Ultimately, I'm sure, there will be an appeal, but this is a major victory for sportsmen, the public lands, and Wyomingites.

 

Best Post of the Week of May 21, 2023

The best posts of the week of May 21, 2023

Logic, the 2nd Amendement, and the 14th.

Upon reaching 60

They are out.

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XIII. The Economic Doomsday Clock

Going Feral: They are out.

Going Feral: They are out.:  

They are out.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVII. Aging, Russian military culture, Cinematic explortation of the 60s and 70s, The King of Canada.

Older America.

The median age of Americans is now 38.8, a figure brought up from last decade's 37.2 due to the obvious advance in aging of the Baby Boomers and the decline in the birth rate.

This is not a surprise, nor a disaster, contrary to how it seems to be sometimes portrayed.  The median will obviously advance into the 40s shortly.

This brings up this next item, from the Adam Smith blog:

Older World

Fertility rates and the conflict with the liberal vision

That headline wouldn't seem to make sense at first, but it actually does in context.

One of the things that people are wringing their hands about is the declining birth rate all over the world.

This brings up piles of incorrect analysis and ignored facts.  In the short term, by which we mean very short term, you can find plenty of pundits, often of the environmentalist inclination, still giving Malthusian warnings that we're about to breed ourselves into oblivion.  In fact, the data shows that in most regions of the glob, the trend is reversing, and in some very much reversed.

Which brings up the next example of hand wringing.   Conservatives at first, but now liberals as well, are worried about the demographic death of entire societies.  Some countries are now at the point where they're doing something that hasn't been done for eons, which is to take official measures to encourage couples to have children.

The Adam Smith institution isn't worked about it. They state:

This past century has included glorious events - the economic liberation of women for one. The result of that freedom and liberty is fewer children. Oh well, that’s just what humans want to do with their freedom and liberty.

It’s therefore the politics that needs to change, nothing else. For the people have spoken in their most intimate acts and decisions.

It might well be true that some don’t like that aggregate result, the society that results from freedom. But bully for the complaint, not the acts.

And there's a lot to that statement.

Frankly, almost all the angst over declining birth rates is misplaced.  Some of it isn't, but much of it is.  We're about to enter an era in which there will be much reduced employment in advanced societies, for one thing. Another is that frankly, societies with smaller populations are much nicer to live in, something that politicians in the US don't seem to grasp.  Lots of countries passed the level in which they were really nice to live in some time ago, including for that matter much of the US.  An overall declining population reverses that.

And it doesn't cause economic disaster, as so often predicted.  

At any rate, no matter how a person feels about it, what Adam Smith notes is in fact the case.  Reversing the trend at the present time is darned near impossible.  I think it will reverse, or stabilize, but not during my lifetime.  Probably when, for example, Europe reaches an overall population below 200,000,000, and North America's is about the same.   That's quite a ways off.

I'm not commenting, I'd note, on the moral aspects of this, which is in fact an aspect of it. But in an era in the West, at least, that large sections of the population can no longer actually tell what is naturally male and female, and we're back to the era in which "science" supports a societal movement that's wrong, much like it once did with Eugenics, race science, and many other now despised movements of the past that claimed scientific basis, we're probably not going to see much progress in this area, whatever progress would mean.

Speaking of a country with a declining population, and a tradition of baby bonuses, we have Russia, which gives us this. . . 

Field Wife

Not really a surprise.

'Field Wife': Officers Make Life Hell For Women In Russia's Military, A Female Medic Says

As with all things Russian military, pretty horrific, but with long-standing precedence in the Russian military.

We have a long paused thread on women in armed forces which will be unpopular, but we'd start off with this.  Mistreatment of women in any military is very common.  The conditions are prefect for it.

They're also perfect for giving rise to temptations that are hard to address and are embarrassing to address when they arise.  The U.S. Armed Forces have been working on this for decades, presenting it mostly as a male abuser on female victim situation, which is large true, but it wasn't all that long ago that the Marines had to come in and order female Marines to quit posting nude photos of themselves on line, such as a photo of a group of female Marines stationed in the Middle East running on a beach naked.  Everyone knows where this is going.

Suffice it to say, the circumstances of military life.  In spite of ongoing American hagiography about servicemen, Kipling's 1890 poem Tommy remains just as true for U.S. troops on some things, including this:

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too, 

But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you; 

An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints, 

Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints; 

This doesn't excuse the conduct, but eradicating it would require eradicating the situation, which we're not going to do.

And we aren't the Russians. The Russians aren't going to do any such thing with their military.

The recent war in Ukraine has shown, to a very large degree, that the Russian Army is the Red Army, and the Red Army was an overrated armed gang for parts of its history, and just overrated when that wasn't true.  It was an armed gang in the immediate post Civil War period, and certainly during the Second War.  Its aura of greatness was heavily impacted by Soviet propaganda.  In reality, rape was a common thing once it crossed out of Soviet territory and the taking of "field wives" very common.  So much so that it was a major source of domestic strife in the post-war Soviet Union, as men's actual wives knew that their husbands had engaged in both behaviors.

Believing that your enemy is impressive is wise, but in realty, the Red Army was not all that good in the Cold War, and the Russian Army isn't now.

We'll get back around to the Russian Army momentarily.  Sticking with our current theme. . . 

Exploitation suit dismissed.

I was going to report on this headline some time ago.

Olivia Hussey, then 15 and now 71, and Leonard Whiting, then 16 now 72, filed the suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud.

This in regard to their nude scenes in Romeo & Juliet.

They basically alleged that they were told that nudity they posed for would not actually be shown, when Hussey's breasts briefly were, and Whiting's butt was as well, and that they suffered years of shame as a result.  The suit sought punitive damages for an act which was illegal, at the time, under California's law, but which obviously nobody did anything about at the time.  They were asking for $100 million in punitive damages, but theoretically could receive more than $500 million to match what the film has earned since 1968, apparently.

If you are wondering how this could be brought now, California temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for older claims of child sexual abuse, which expired at the end of 2022.

This is an interesting development for a number of reasons.

One is that the nude scenes were noted at the time, but obviously, nothing was done about it.  Indeed, while the scenes noted above are the ones that have been picked up by the press, Hussey's also had at least one scene in which she rolls over while inclined, exposing her full bare back and rear.  At least one poster for the movie depicts an illustration of a nude Hussey on a nude Whiting, although you can't see the generally forbidden features.

This film isn't really unique in this regard.   A little later, but not much, a genuinely shocking scene was included in 1976's Ode To Bobby Joe, which is an overall horrifically bad film, but which had some popularity at the time.  The whole film is incredibly stupid, but it also features a nearly nude scene. The actors were in fact in their majority when it was filmed, but they're portraying, at least in the case of the female lead, underage teenagers.  It's really pretty sick overall.  

And recently, because of her bringing it back up, the public has had the opportunity to ponder the films Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon.  Ick.

If nothing else tells us something about the moral depravity of the late 60s and the entire 1970s.

Anyhow, I don't know much about Whiting, but Hussey went on to be a famous actress, somewhat discrediting the claim that they subsequently lost roles.  Indeed, given the moral climate of the late 60s and entire 70s, I doubt it.  Her career actually goes back to 1964, at which time she was very clearly still a child, and she was cast as the Virgin Mary in 1977, when she still would have been quite young.  Interesting, FWIW, her age in Romeo & Juliet would have been closer to what Mary's is speculated to have been at the time of the birth of Jesus, but the point is that her reputation hadn't been so tarnished as to keep her from getting the role of the most significant of all the female saints.

Oddly, FWIW, my high school English teacher, who later was arrested and convicted on what we might call a morals charge, didn't like her portrayal of the Virgin Mary, but did like the portrayal in Romeo & Juliet, in part due to his perception that her depictions in both were juvenile.

I haven't seen Jesus of Nazareth, that latter film, and I've only seen part of Romeo & Juliet.  I don't like Romeo & Juliet, the play, as it strikes me as boring and juvenile, and the parts of the movie I've seen, years ago, struck me as boring at the time.

Hussey also portrayed, Mother Teresa in a 2003 television movie,

Anyway, I feel they were exploited, if they brought their suit to address it a bit late. The California judge did not, stating that they, "have not put forth any authority showing the film here can be deemed to be sufficiently sexually suggestive as a matter of law to be held to be conclusively illegal.”

Too bad, in my view.

Maybe just bringing it to light, however, served an overall good purpose.

Let's go back to topics Slavic.

Where's the offensive?

In much of the Northern Hemisphere, it's late Spring, and we were expecting a Ukrainian offensive.

Well, maybe we'll get one, or maybe not (we probably will), but what seems to be the case is that spring came late to Ukraine, and everything is really muddy.  Therefore, the Rasputitia is still ongoing.

The Ukrainians, in the meantime, are using the time, it appears, to their training and logistical advantage.

Without getting into it too deeply, the Ukrainians also seem to have managed to cause the Russians to fight a 2023 version of the Battle of Khe Sanh.

Speaking of things with a long past. . . 

Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Canada and His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth.’

Canada has changed the honorifics for the King, or Queen.  

The late Queen was known as ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

Changing the titles of people in this fashion says something.  And in this case, not something good.

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVI . To what extent is that new?

Wednesday, May 26, 1943. Edsel Ford passes. Canada rations, Barclay stays,

Today in World War II History—May 26, 1943: Edsel Ford, President of Ford Motor Company, dies, age 49; his father, Henry Ford, resumes the presidency. Canada begins meat rationing.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

Ford, a major philanthropist, died of stomach cancer.

Edsel Ford with his wife Elanor.

Edsel had taken the company into aviation, over the objections of his father, which was foresighted at the time.  This allowed the company to engage in aviation manufacture during World War Two.

Like his father, his reputation in not wholly unblemished.  There are some reasons to suspect that he sympathized with the Germans in World War Two early on.

Edwin Barclay, the President of Liberia, visited President Roosevelt and spent the night, at the Executive Mansion, the first black to do so.  On the same day, Roosevelt ordered striking workers at rubber plants in Akron, Ohio to return to work.

U.S. Troops at Massacre Bay, Attu, May 26, 1943.

The Japanese attached Chinese forces at Pianyan in Hubei Province, but were repelled. the Japanese force of 4,500 men sustained 3,000 casualties.

The Germans ordered that concentration camp inmates cease being given sequentially numbered identification numbers in order that the number of murder victims could be concealed.

My father celebrated his 14th birthday.

Saturday, May 26, 1923. The Twenty Four Hours of Le Mans

The first Le Mans automobile race took place.

The French executed some Germans who were committing acts of sabotage and the like against their occupation of the Ruhr.

One of the terrorist was one Albert Leo Schlageter, a former German officer of the Great War and a Freikorps officer who had engaged in acts of sabotage against the French.  He was not a "Red" and would go on to obtain mythic status in the German far right, including the early Nazis, who in fact murdered his betrayer.  The killers of that individual were one Rudolf Höss and Martin Bormann, who would later go on to roles in the Third Reich.  They were first captured and sentenced for their role in the murder.  

Bormann is well known, but Höss less so.  He was Auschwitz's longest commanding officer and was executed in 1947.  Facing execution, he came to see his actions as gravely immoral and wrote this out to his wife prior to his execution:

My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.

On this same day, a Communist lead strike in the Ruhr expanded.

The British made the Emirate of Transjordan autonomous, but not independent of British oversight. It would achieve full independence in 1946.

Turkey waived reparations claims against Greece at Lausanne in exchange for the Thracian territory.

Upon reaching 60

That's how old I am today.

When I was young.  I was about three when this photos was taken, maybe two.  My father was 36 or 37.

Americans like to debate at what age you are "old", with that benchmark, and the one for middle age, moving over the years to some extent.  Some go so far as to claim that the term doesn't mean anything. 

It does, as you really do become older and then old, at some point.

The United Nations categorizes "older" as commencing at age 60, something, given their mission, that would encompass the totality of the human race.  Some polling you'll see suggests that Americans regard it actually starting at 59 or 57.  Pew, the respected polling and data institution, noted the following:

These generation gaps in perception also extend to the most basic question of all about old age: When does it begin? Survey respondents ages 18 to 29 believe that the average person becomes old at age 60. Middle-aged respondents put the threshold closer to 70, and respondents ages 65 and above say that the average person does not become old until turning 74.

Interesting.

It is not like flipping a switch, and it doesn't really happen to all people at the exact same time.  I'm often reminded of this when I observe people I've known for many years.  Men in particular, I used to think, aged at a much different rate than women.  I knew a few of my contemporaries who were getting pretty old by the time they were in their 30s, and I know a few men in their 70s who are in fantastic shape and appear much younger than they really are.  I recall thinking, back when I was in my late 20s, that my father was getting older, but wasn't old, right up until the time he died at age 62.

Having said that, I’m often now shocked, I hate to admit, by the appearance of women my own age, again that I knew when they were young.  It's not like I know every girl I went to high school with, but I know a few of them, and some of them have held up much better than others.  In that category, some of my close relatives have really held up well.

Up until recently, I could say that I've held up well, but this past year has been really rough health wise. First there was colon surgery in October, followed by a prolonged medical addressing of a thyroid nodule which was feared, at first, to be aggressive cancer. Working that out is still ongoing, but that now appears much less likely, meaning that only half the thyroid will need to be removed.  

All of that has reminded me of Jesus' address to Peter:

Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.

John, Chapter 21.

Peter, by the way, was between age 64 and 68 when he was martyred.  St. Paul was over 60, it's worth noting, when he met the same fate.

It's been rough in other ways as well.  One thing is that, in spite of what people like to claim, your fate is really fixed by age 60.  You aren't going to leave your job as an accountant and become an Army paratrooper.¹ If you are a paratrooper, you're going to retire now, as 60 is the military's retirement cutoff age.  If you've spent decades in the Army, and retire at 60 (most servicemen retire before that), you aren't going on, probably, to a career you don't have any strong connection with.

In my case, as I started to type out here the other day and then did not, as it didn't read the way I really wanted it to, I can now look back on a long career, over 30 years, and largely regard it as a failure, even though almost everyone I know would regard it as a success.  I won't get over that.  I'd always hoped to make the judiciary, but I'm not going to, and there's no longer even any point in trying.  I'm reminded of this failure every time I appear in front of one of the new judges and see how incredibly young they now are, and also when I listen to suggestions that the retirement age for judges be raised up to the absurdly high 75.

At age 60, if I were to go to work for the state (which I'm also not going to), I couldn't really ever make the "Rule of 85" for retirement.  As a lifelong private practice attorney, I'm now actually at the age where most lawyers look at their career, and their income, and decide they can't retire, some retreating into their office personality as the last version of themselves and nothing else.  I'm not going to become a member of the legislature, something probably most young lawyers toy with the idea of.  I'm not going to become a game warden, something I pondered when young.²  I'm way past the point where most similar Federal occupations are age restricted, and for good reason.

This is, work wise, pretty much it.

I said to myself, this is the business we've chosen; I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!

Hyman Roth, to Michael Corleone, in The Godfather, Part II ,

I'm also never going to own my own ranch, which was a decades long career goal.  I have acquired a fair number of cattle, but my operation is always going to be ancillary to my in laws at this point.  When I was first married my wife and I tried to find our own place, with she being much less optimistic about it than I. There were times, when the land cost less, that we could almost make, almost, a small place. We never quite did, and now, we're not going to.

Indeed, thinking back to St. Peter, I'm now at the age of "you can't", with some of the "can'ts" being medical.  I could when I was younger, but now I can't, or shouldn't.  Others are familial.  "You can't" is something I hear a lot, pertaining to a lot of things, ranging from what we might broadly call home economics, in the true economic sense, to short term and long term plans, to even acquisitions that to most people wouldn't be much, but in my circumstances, in the views of others, are.  Some are professional, as ironically it's really at some point in your 50s or very early 60s where you are by default fully professionally engaged, with that taking precedence over everything else, including time for anything else.

One of the most frustrating things about reaching this age, however, is seeing that you probably will never see how some things turn out, and you don't seem to have the ability to influence them.  I'm not, in this instance, referring to something like the Hyman Roth character again, in which he hopes to see the results of his criminal enterprise flourish but fears he won't live long enough to.  Indeed, I find myself curiously detached from concerns of this type that some people have.  I've noticed, for instance, the deep concern some aging lawyers have about their "legacy" in the law, which often translates to being remembered as a lawyer or their firm's carrying on.  I don't have those concerns, and indeed, taking the long view of things, I think it's really vanity to suppose that either of those wishes might be realized by anyone.

No, what I mean is that by this age there are those you know very closely, and you have reason to fear for their own long term fate, but you really don't have much you can do about it.  People who seem to be stuck in place, for instance, seem beyond the helping hand, and more than that, they don't really want, it seems, to be offered a hand.  People who have walked up to the church door but who won't go in as it means giving up grudges, burdens or hatreds, can't be coaxed in, even it means their soul is imperiled.  It recalls the last final lines of A River Runs Through It. .

I remember the last sermon I ever heard my father give, not long before his own death:

Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives, look upon a loved one in need and ask the same question: We are willing Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true that we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give, or more often than not, that part we have to give… is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us… But we can still love them… We can love—completely—even without complete understanding….

I guess that's about right. 

Footnotes:

1.  Or, I might note, a Ukrainian Legionnaire.  You are too old to join.

Interestingly, I recently saw an article by a well known, I guess, newspaper reporter who attempted to join the U.S. Army in his upper 40s.  He apparently didn't know that you are well past the eligible age of enlistment at that point.  He was arguing that there should be some sort of special unit made for people like himself, or like he imagined himself, well-educated individuals in their upper 40s.  Why should there be if you can recruit people in their 20s?

2. Wyoming Game Wardens were once required to retire at age 55, but a lawsuit some decades ago overturned that. It, in turn, was later overruled, but by that time the state had changed the system. Since that time, it's set it again statutorily, with the age now being 65 by law.  There aren't, therefore, any 67-year-old game wardens.

Statutorily, the current law provides:

9-3-607. Age of retirement.

(a) Any employee with six (6) or more years of service to his credit is eligible to receive a retirement allowance under this article when he attains age fifty (50).

(b) Effective July 1, 1998, any employee retiring after July 1, 1998, with twenty-five (25) or more years of service may elect to retire and receive a benefit upon attaining age fifty (50) as described in W.S. 9-3-610.

(c) Repealed by Laws 1993, ch. 120, §§ 1, 2.

(d) Any employee in service who has attained age sixty-five (65), shall be retired not later than the last day of the calendar month in which his 65th birthday occurs. 

Age limitations of this type are tied to physical fitness.  But what about mental fitness?  As mentioned here before, Gen. Marshall forcibly retired most serving U.S. Army generals, or at least sidelined them, who were over 50 years of age during World War Two, and that had to do with their thinking.  We now allow judges to remain on the bench until they are 70.  Would 60 make more sense?  And can the same argument be made for lawyers, who are officers of the court?

Tuesday, May 25, 1943. Conferences and riots.

Today in World War II History—May 25, 1943: 80 Years Ago—May 25, 1943: At the Trident Conference, Allied Combined Chiefs decide to plan for a 1 May 1944 invasion of Europe.

So notes Sarah Sundin, who also noted race riots that occurred in Mobile, Alabama in which white workers rioted over the promotions of twelve black workers, all of whom were injured in the riots.

Mid Week At Work. And it proves true in other countries as well.

The Times:

Brexit is about to give us a problem with this, though. Karl Marx was right: wages won’t rise when there’s spare labour available, his “reserve army” of the unemployed. The capitalist doesn’t have to increase pay to gain more workers if there’s a squad of the starving eager to labour for a crust. But if there are no unemployed, labour must be tempted away from other employers, and one’s own workers have to be pampered so they do not leave. When capitalists compete for the labour they profit from, wages rise.

Britain’s reserve army of workers now resides in Wroclaw, Vilnius, Brno, the cities of eastern Europe. The Polish plumbers of lore did flood in and when the work dried up they ebbed away again. The net effect of Brexit will be that British wages rise as the labour force shrinks and employers have to compete for the sweat of hand and brow.

In spite of what economists like Robert Reich like to admit, and pundit Chuck Todd freely does without realizing what he's saying, is that the old "Americans won't do that job", or in this case, the British, simply isn't true.  Britain's reserve army of workers was in Poland, and the U.S. all over the globe but particularly in Central America.  COVID dried that supply up, and US wages rose.

Some, at least, of what we are seeing in terms of inflation, while inflationary, is actually caused by wages adjusting to their natural level.  Economist always like to maintain this isn't true, but the actual experiment on it shows it is, in fact.

May 24, 1943. Dönitz recalls the U-boats

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz recalled the German fleet of U-boats following the reduction by 1/3 of that force in May, 22 out of 60, due to Allied action.  All together, 41 German U-boats would be lost in May.

Germany had effectively lost the Battle of the Atlantic.  While the submarines would redeploy, they'd never again pose the threat they had up to May, 1943.  This also meant the effective victory for the Allies against the Germans in a second front, although the fighting would go on, with the first being in North Africa.

Sarah Sundin notes the event on her blog, also noting that rationing of cheese in the US expanded to include all but cream and cottage cheese.

Josef Mengele was posted to Auschwitz.

Thursday, May 24, 1923. The IRA ordered to lay down its weapons.

Éamon de Valera and Frank Aiken ordered IRA volunteers to lay down their arms and return home, causing an "official" end to their rebellion against the Irish Free State. 

Chief of Staff Frank Aiken's order, recalled in history as the Dump Arms Order, read:

Comrades — The arms with which we fought the enemies of our country are to be dumped. The foreign and domestic enemies of the Republic have for the moment prevailed. But our enemies have not won. Neither tortures nor firing squads, nor a slavish press can crush the desire for independence out of the hearts of those who fought for the Republic or out of the hearts of our people. Our enemies have demanded our arms. Our answer is, 'We took up arms to free our country, and we'll keep them until we see an honourable way of reaching our objective without arms'. There is a trying time ahead for the faithful soldiers of Ireland. But the willing sacrifices of our dead comrades will give us the courage to face it in the knowledge that these sacrifices have ensured the ultimate victory of our cause. Their examples and their prayers will help us to be like them, faithful to our ideals unto death.

De Valera's order stated:

Soldiers of liberty! Legion of the rear guard! The republic can no longer be sustained successfully by your arms. Further sacrifices on your part would now be in vain. The continuance of the struggle in arms is unwise in the national interest," and added, "You have saved the nation's honor and left the road open to independence. Laying aside your arms now is an act of patriotism as exalted and pure as your valor in taking them up

Ireland would come, in fact, to have very strict gun control, something that reflected Irish independence having come about through an armed Irish minority and the ongoing fear that an armed Irish element would oppose the government. 

The ethos of the IRA at the time can perhaps best be summarized by the statement of Liam Lynch, a general of the IRA,, who stated:

We have declared for an Irish Republic.

We will live by no other law.

Be that as it may, the IRA's fight against the Irish Free State was a dishonorable affair, and one tinged with radicalism.  Asserting a fight for liberation and democracy, it was in the end undeniably sectarian in ignoring the wishes, no matter how despised, of Ulster protestants who did not wish to leave the United Kingdom and the majority of southern Irish who were content with the Free State.

It was also naive to think that it could force British separation of Ulster through fighting the Free State.

The San Pedro Maritime Strike in San Francisco came to an end.

The French government resigned, and then unresigned, over the Senates decision not to put Communist Marcel Cachin, a member, on trial.

Logic, the 2nd Amendement, and the 14th.

Folks like Robert Reich and other pundits who are not in the far right "let's default on the debt and destroy the global economy" camp are quoting the 14th Amendment a lot right now.

Why?

Well, consider this, it states:

Amendment XIV

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The argument is logical enough, and pertains to this:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, . . . shall not be questioned.

A cap on debt that operates to dishonor the debt, intentional or not,  as long as it was authorized by law, cannot be questioned.

The stupid debt caps call it into question.

Clearly, they are unconstitutional, just as pundits, including those on the left, note.  And firebrands on the right who hold otherwise are demonstrating contempt for the constitution.

So let's next consider this.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The same thing is at work here.  Not infringing, means not infringing.

The point here isn't to argue the policy or wisdom of either provisions.   Rather, you don't get to depart from the logic train once you board it.  Or, in other words, if you are a guy like Robert Reich, you can't argue that you can go ahead and infringe the Second Amendment, as it doesn't mean what it says, while arguing that you must apply the 14th Amendment, as it means what it says.  Nor can you be Kevin McCarthy, and argue that the Second Amendment is plain in its meaning, while turning a blind eye to the 14th Amendment.

They both mean what they say, but if you argue one, you must accept the other.  If you can logically argue to depart from the text of one, you must do the same as they're both so plain.

Sunday, May 23, 1943. Tragedy at the Kielce Cemetery.

The heaviest air raid of the war to date took place, with the RAF raiding Dortmund, breaking a record it had set as recently as May 12 in a raid on Duisburg.

The Luftwaffe raided Bournemouth, Hampshire with FW190s.

German police killed 45 Jewish children in the Kielce cemetery.  They had been the survivors of their parent's prior murder and aged from 15 months to 15 years old.

France-Amérique, a pro Free French English language newspaper, started publication in New York.  It's still in print.

Saturday, May 22, 1943. Comintern dissolves.

The Comintern was dissolved in Moscow.

The Soviet Union had already betrayed the propaganda associated with the entity by being an ally of Nazi Germany until attacked by Nazi Germany.  The move was interpreted as a feeler towards the Western Allies, in that the Comintern had been dedicated to supplanting any government that wasn't a communist one.

Sarah Sundin's blog reports:

Today in World War II History—May 22, 1943: USS Bogue’s TBF aircraft damage German U-boat U-569, which is scuttled by her crew, the first victory for an Allied escort carrier unassisted by surface ships.

She also noted that Luftwaffe General Adolf Galland flew the ME262 on this day and was impressed by it, as anyone would have had to have been.

Long Range Desert Group, No. 2 Commando and the No. 43 (Royal Marine) Commando raided the Yugoslavian island of Mljet.   The raid was a substitute for ones early planned, and was supported by the OSS which had agents on the island.

Helen Taft, former First Lady, died at age 81.

Tuesday May 22, 1923. Baldwin rises, Cavalry Bandits caputured, Bryan Anti Evolution Measure voted down, Mark falls, D.C. Golf.

 

Stanley Baldwin became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following Bonar Law stepping down due to rapidly failing health.

The Distillery Bandits, who were apprehended after a gun battle, were all veterans of the U.S. Army's cavalry branch.

William Jennings's Bryan's motion that the Presbyterian General Assembly cut off financial support for any Presbyterian body teaching evolution was voted down.

The Mark dropped enormously.

The President played in a newspaper golf tournament.

James Brown

There's been a lot of news on the passing of Jim Brown, the legendary running back.

Brown was a fantastic running back, and even in old clips it's impressive to watch him.  A nice retrospective of his life appears here:

Jim Brown, 1936-2023

I'll be frank, the thing that stands out in my mind about Brown were the allegations of assault against him, and then his featuring as one of the people, like Bill Cosby, that frequented the Playboy mansion in the big party days of that depraved institution.  That's hard to get around, and the stories that were related in the Secrets of Playboy are pretty much impossible for me to get around. 

One thing I didn't know about Brown was that he'd been commissioned into the Army Reserve and ultimately made Captain.  He enrolled in ROTC while in university and was inducted into the Army ROTC Hall of Fame (which I didn't know existed) some years ago.  Perhaps that military experience is why he appeared to be a natural in uniform in The Dirty Dozen.

So what to make of Brown and his life?  Well, I don't really have to make anything of it, but perhaps with such notable public figures we should.  His accomplishments were very real and cannot be denied.  He did act as a champion for civil rights, using his fame for that purpose.  He did translate a successful football career into other successful endeavors.  Like Bill Cosby, he's associated with the deprivations of the celebration of sexual exploitation brought about by the Sexual Revolution and advanced by Hugh Hefner.  Perhaps that's proof of just how corrosive the tolerance of that institution and acceptance of its perversion has been.

Friday, May 21, 1923. German murders and attempts to murder.

Bulgaria yielded to German pressure and agreed to turn 25,000 Bulgarian Jewish residents of Sofia over to the Nazi's, who were busy losing World War Two but which had ramped up extermination efforts.

It actually would not occur, as Bulgarians organized massive protests to prohibit it.  They Jewish Sofians were put in Bulgarian labor camps, but they were not turned over to German executioners.

Bulgaria attempted to navigate its own course in the war.  It was, at this point, a declared belligerent in the war against the Western Allies, but not the Soviet Union.

Busk, Ukraine's centuries old Jewish population was exterminated by the Nazis.  The towns' first synagogue had been built in 1502.

Radio Tokyo announced the "gallant death" of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.  Franklin Roosevelt was subsequently asked by reporters about the event, and simply stated, "Gosh!".  He had, of course, approved the assassination.

On reporters, perhaps this was at the press conference noted in the busy government schedule for that day.   Here's the only text from that press conference, however.

Q. Mr. President, you have had a number of recent conferences with Dr. (T. V.) Soong. Is there anything you can tell us about that?

The President: I don’t think so. There isn’t any particular news, one way or another.

Q. I wondered if there was anything special you had up between you?

The President: No. I suppose the—the principal thing relates to getting war materials of all kinds into China.

Q. Did you say more material?

The President: War materials—and medical things—things of that kind. That is going along pretty well.

Q. Mr. President, is there anything you can tell us about the visit of Prime Minister Mackenzie King (of Canada) here?

The President: I don’t think so. He is just—just down here on the same—same thing that everybody else is here—furtherance of the war. I am seeing him again this morning.2

Q. Mr. President, back to Dr. Soong, we have noticed that he has been in here, particularly since Prime Minister Churchill arrived. Could you say if your talks with the Prime Minister concerned something about China?

The President: Oh, sure. We talked about China. It isn’t the only place we have been talking about.

Q. Mr. President, when you referred to the majority of our forces, you were speaking then of a majority of these forces which are outside the continental United States?

The President: Yes, yes.

Mr. Godwin: (aside) How about it?

Q. Mr. President, any sort of progress report you can give us on your talks with the Prime Minister (Churchill)?

The President: Well, I suppose the best way to put it is this: that, so far, most of the work has been done by the Combined Staffs. And they have been at it, and we expect to get some preliminary recommendations from the Combined Staffs—you might call them tentative recommendations—probably in tonight’s meeting. Then those will be gone over—and I might say the Combined Staffs have been getting along extremely well—and then over the weekend we will be going over them, and take up the preliminary recommendations next week and iron out any kinks that are in them and make them final.

Q. Mr. President, has any consideration been given to the political future of Italy?

Mr. Godwin: (aside) What?

The President: Unconditional surrender. I think that—

Q. (interposing) Thank you, Mr. President.

The President: (continuing)—speaks for itself.

Q. Thank you.

Q. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. Godwin: Italy?

The President: What?

Mr. Godwin: Italy?

The President: Italy.

Mr. Godwin: He asked about Italy?

The President: Unconditional surrender.

 

Patrol Torpedo Boat PT-30 off Sand Island during operations at Midway, May 21, 1943.  She's be stricken as obsolete in March, 1944, the entire concept really being obsolete by that time.