Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Tulsa Oklahoma

Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Tulsa Oklahoma:

First Baptist Church in Tulsa Oklahoma, demonstrating an unusual combination of Romanesque styling and modern office building styling.

France signals that its going to say "non" to the German peace proposal.

Earlier in the day, and set out just below here, Secretary of State Robert Lansing telegramed his ambassadors.  Before the day was out he had information, albeit in the form of a reply to a telegram of December 16, 2016, from the American Counselor of the Embassy in France, Robert Woods Bliss indicating how things were likely to go.

 Robert Woods Bliss.  Note the sharp spats.

Paris, December 18, 1916, 11 p. m.

1750. Your circular telegram December 16, 5 p. m. With the Ambassador’s approval, in his temporary absence, I handed communication to Monsieur Cambon at Foreign Office this evening embodying text of note from German Government, and read the latter part of your telegram, leaving with him at his request copy thereof, calling his attention to your desire to receive confidential intimation as to the reply the French Government would make. He answered that he would be glad to comply as soon as possible although he could make no answer at this time. The inference was that the proposal of the Central powers would not be accepted. It is probable that the President of the Council will refer to the subject when presenting the new ministry to-morrow before the Senate, when he is expected to be strongly attacked by the opposition led by Monsieur Clemenceau, former President of the Council.

Bliss

The United States instructs its Ambassadors to approach the Belligerent Countries with a a suggestion.

The newspapers we've been posting the past few days have been full of stories about the Central Powers sending peace feelers through the US.  There was some suggestion that the US was not acting on them, but in fact it was.  On this date, Monday December 18, 1916, Secretary of State  Robert Lansing communicated the following message to ambassadors in the "Belligerent Countries"

Robert Lansing

It's interesting to note how the nation's official focus was switching very much to the war in Europe even while the US had not managed to extract itself from near war in Mexico.

The Secretary of State to the Ambassadors and Ministers in Belligerent Countries

Washington, December 18, 1916, 9.30 p. m.

The President directs me to send you the following communication to be presented immediately to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the government to which you are accredited, and he requests that you present it with the utmost earnestness of support. He wishes the impression clearly conveyed that it would be very hard for the Government of the United States to understand a negative reply. After yourself reading it to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and making the oral representations suggested, please leave a copy of this paper with him:

The President of the United States has instructed me to suggest to (substitute name of government to which you are accredited) a course of action with regard to the present war which he hopes that the (substitute name of government to which you are accredited) will take under consideration as suggested in the most friendly spirit and as coming not only from a friend but also as coming from the representative of a neutral nation whose interests have been most seriously affected by the war and whose concern for its early conclusion arises out of a manifest necessity to determine how best to safeguard those interests if the war is to continue.

The suggestion which I am instructed to make the President has long had it in mind to offer. He is somewhat embarrassed to offer it at this particular time because it may now seem to have been prompted by the recent overtures of the Central powers. It is in fact in no way associated with them in its origin, and the President would have delayed offering it until those overtures had been answered but for the fact that it also concerns the question of peace and may best be considered in connection with other proposals which have the same end in view.1 The President can only beg that his suggestion be considered entirely on its own merits and as if it had been made in other circumstances.

The President suggests that an early occasion be sought to call out from all the nations now at war such an avowal of their respective views as to the terms upon which the war might be concluded and the arrangements which would be deemed satisfactory as a guaranty against its renewal or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future as would make it possible frankly to compare them. He is indifferent as to the means taken to accomplish this. He would be happy himself to serve or even to take the initiative in its accomplishment in any way that might prove acceptable, but he has no desire to determine the method or the instrumentality. One way will be as acceptable to him as another if only the great object he has in mind be attained.

He takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world. Each side desires to make the rights and privileges of weak peoples and small states as secure against aggression or denial in the future as the rights and privileges of the great and powerful states now at war. Each wishes itself to be made secure in the future, along with all other nations and peoples, against the recurrence of wars like this and against aggression or selfish interference of any kind. Each would be jealous of the formation of any more rival leagues to preserve an uncertain balance of power amidst multiplying suspicions; but each is ready to consider the formation of a league of nations to insure peace and justice throughout the world. Before that final step can be taken, however, each deems it necessary first to settle the issues of the present war upon terms which will certainly safeguard the independence, the territorial integrity, and the political and commercial freedom of the nations involved.

In the measures to be taken to secure the future peace of the world the people and Government of the United States are as vitally and as directly interested as the Governments now at war. Their interest, moreover, in the means to be adopted to relieve the smaller and weaker peoples of the world of the peril of wrong and violence is as quick and ardent as that of any other people or government. They stand ready, and even eager, to cooperate in the accomplishment of these ends, when the war is over, with every influence and resource at their command. But the war must first be concluded. The terms upon which it is to be concluded they are not at liberty to suggest; but the President does feel that it is his right and his duty to point out their intimate interest in its conclusion, lest it should presently be too late to accomplish the greater things which lie beyond its conclusion, lest the situation of neutral nations, now exceedingly hard to endure, be rendered altogether intolerable, and lest, more than all, an injury be done civilization itself which can never be atoned for or repaired.

The President, therefore, feels altogether justified in suggesting an immediate opportunity for a comparison of views as to the terms which must precede those ultimate arrangements for the peace of the world, which all desire and in which the neutral nations, as well as those at war, are ready to play their full responsible part. If the contest must continue to proceed towards undefined ends by slow attrition until the one group of belligerents or the other is exhausted, if million after million of human lives must continue to be offered up until on the one side or the other there are no more to offer, if resentments must be kindled that can never cool and despairs engendered from which there can be no recovery, hopes of peace and of the willing concert of free peoples will be rendered vain and idle.

The life of the entire world has been profoundly affected. Every part of the great family of mankind has felt the burden and terror of this unprecedented contest of arms. No nation in the civilized world can be said in truth to stand outside its influence or to be safe against its disturbing effects. And yet the concrete objects for which it is being waged have never been definitively stated.

The leaders of the several belligerents have, as has been said, stated those objects in general terms. But, stated in general terms, they seem the same on both sides. Never yet have the authoritative spokesmen of either side avowed the precise objects which would, if attained, satisfy them and their people that the war had been fought out. The world has been left to conjecture what definitive results, what actual exchange of guaranties, what political or territorial changes or readjustments, what stage of military success even would bring the war to an end.

It may be that peace is nearer than we know; that the terms which the belligerents on the one side and on the other would deem it necessary to insist upon are not so irreconcilable as some have feared; that an interchange of views would clear the way at least for conference and make the permanent concord of the nations a hope of the immediate future, a concert of nations immediately practicable.

The President is not proposing peace; he is not even offering mediation. He is merely proposing that soundings be taken in order that we may learn, the neutral nations with the belligerent, how near the haven of peace may be for which all mankind longs with an intense and increasing longing. He believes that the spirit in which he speaks and the objects which he seeks will be understood by all concerned, and he confidently hopes for a response which will bring a new light into the affairs of the world.

Lansing

Boston Newsies. December 18, 1916.

LOC Title:  Group of newsies (youngest 10 years) selling Boston papers at noon. In Barre and Montpelier newsies are excused from school a little early at noon and at night in order to get to their papers earlier. December 18, 1916.

Movies In History: The Company

Coincidentally I've been reading a lot about espionage recently so it was timely when I saw that this entire mini series was being run back to back on television the other day.  I'd seen part of it before, but I'd never had the chance to see the entire series.

This series is an examination of the Central Intelligence Agency from its founding in the wake of the wartime Office of Strategic Services up until the 1990s.  It tracks the major events of the 40s, 50s, 60s, and on into the 70s in the context of one of the central characters manic devotion to revealing a mole inside the CIA.

If that sounds far fetched, many of the main characters in the series, which is based upon a book by the same name, are based on real characters and the manically devoted character, James Angleton, was in fact a real individual within the CIA who was in fact fully convinced that there was a mole inside the organization, which is referred to as "The Company" by people within it.  While I know little about the real Angleton, his portray as an unpopular, chain smoking, singularly minded and fanatic CIA agent appears to be quite correct. 

Leaping back and forth from field operations to the drama inside the CIA, the plot involves real events such as the 1958 Hungarian uprising and the Bay of Pigs invasion and weaves it with the story of a possible mole.  The story also leaps back in time to the 1930s when several of the central characters are in Yale University. 

The story is very well developed and fascinating.  The plot is, if anything, subdued in the context of what we now actually know about Soviet penetration of the US government in the 1930s and 1940s, including the OSS, although there is no actual evidence that CIA was ever penetrated by the Soviets.

Sunday State Leader for December 17, 1916: Measles killing Guardsmen at Deming.

Not the only news of the day, but two Arkansas Guardsmen died from the measles at Deming, New Mexico, news that surely worried Wyomingites with family members serving in the Guard at Deming.

William F. Cody  was reported very ill at his sister's house in Denver.

And death claimed the life of a former Rough Rider living in the state as well.

The State Health Officer reported, in cheerier news, on the state's healthful climate.

Carranza rejects the protocol

We've run a lot of newspaper articles on the negotiations between the United States and Mexico, or perhaps more accurately between the United States and the Constitutionalist government of Mexico lead by Venustiano Carranza

 Carranza

On this day he ended the doubt, he refused to sign it.

Carranza was a tough minded individual.  He never liked Woodrow Wilson and he had a grudge against the United States.  Irrespective of what may seem to be the advantages of the proposals that were made, he wouldn't agree.

And he never did.  Carranza never executed a protocol with the United States.

By this point the United States clearly wanted out of Mexico.  The intervention had bogged down to an uneasy occupation since the summer and was going nowhere.  Carranza guessed correctly that the United States would be leaving no matter what, although that did not mean that the US would be passive in protecting its interests.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 17, 1916. Inter Ocean destroyed by fire.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 17:

The Inter-Ocean

1916   Inter-Ocean Hotel in Cheyenne destroyed by fire.  Attribution; Wyoming State Historical Society.

The Inter-Ocean was one of several Cheyenne hotels that were big deals and major watering holes, something very common in that era and for decades thereafter (and still somewhat true in larger cities today).  It's remembered to Western History for being the location referenced by Tom Horn in his famous conversation with  Joe LeFors.

If you go to the Inter-Ocean to sit down and talk a few minutes some one comes in and says, 'Let us have a drink,' and before you know it you are standing up talking, and my feet get so *&^*&^^  tired it almost kills me. I am 44 years, 3 months, and 27 days old, and if I get killed now I have the satisfaction of knowing I have lived about fifteen ordinary lives.

Horn was in fact arrested outside of the Inter-Ocean.

The hotel had been built by Barney Ford, a businessman who had been born a slave, a status that he escaped from.  His father was the white plantation owners where his black mother was enslaved.  After escaping he lived an adventuresome life and rose to great wealth in Colorado.

He apparently liked the name "Inter-Ocean" as he built another hotel in Denver's 16th Street by that name.  Like the Cheyenne hotel, it is no longer there, which is a real shame as funky buildings like this are all the rage in Denver now..

Denver's Inter-Ocean

Morris Levine, newsboy. December 17, 1916.

LOC Title:  Morris Levine, 212 Park Street. 11 years old and sells papers every day--been selling five years. Makes 50 cents Sundays and 30 cents other days. Location: Burlington, Vermont / Lewis W. Hine. December 17, 1916.

Last day of the season.

What I meant to be doing yesterday.

What I was doing.

Oh well.  I'd forgotten when I planned on making a last attempt on Thursday that I'd scheduled a meeting that day last week.

The Cheyenne State Leader for December 16, 1916: Villa proposes deal with US?

Rumors were circulating that Villa had proposed a deal with the US, and Pershing stood to be promoted.

The Wyoming Tribune for December 16, 1916: Home folks send boxes to border

Care packages were being sent to Wyoming National Guardsmen in New Mexico.

The mysterious apperance of John J. Hawes

The national press was reporting this day that John J. Hawes, an American businessman with connections in Mexico, had announced himself as a emissary from Villa with proposals for peace.

Hawes is an enigmatic figure.  He was a legitimate, but apparently somewhat slick, businessman who operated to make money on the war in Mexico.  His connections with Villa were vague at the time and remain that way.

Still, his assertions that Villa was resurgent were not without some credit, given that Villa had gone from desperate back in March to a serious opponent, once again, of Carranza with an army in the field that had to be taken seriously by November.

This wouldn't be Hawes sole appearance in the Mexican drama and as matters progressed, while he gathered skepticism, he also seems to have gathered some support here and there from American business interests and even a few political figures.  In the short term, we can expect his name to appear in the local papers the next few days as the Press continued to attempt to follow what was going on south of the border.  Suffice it to say, while the drama seemed to be concluding in some ways, it would become all the odder in others.

2ième Bataille Offensive de Verdun

The 2ième Bataille Offensive de Verdun, a second French offensive at Verdun, a battle that had been running for months, commenced at 10:00 on this day in 1916.  A German barrage designed to halt a ground attack commenced too late to stop it.

Map depicting french gains from December 15 (15/12), 1916 to December 18 (18/12), 1916.

The artillery phase of the offensive preceded the ground assault by several days, with artillery duels occurring as a result.  

The offensive would run until the 18th and gain up to about five miles in some locations, taking some very strategic position in its course and resulting in significant German losses.  The French would take 11,000 Germans as prisoners alone.  The halt of their advance on the 18th marked the end of the siege of Verdun.  In the total siege the French sustained about 400,000 casualties and the Germans about 300,000.

Lex Anteinternet: And then the shoe dropped. (But not when thought). Ryan Zinke nominated to the Interior

Just recently I reported on Cathy McMorris Rodgers being nominated, in anticipation style, to be Secretary of the Interior by President Elect Donald Trump:

Lex Anteinternet: And then the shoe dropped.: Yesterday I published this item: Lex Anteinternet: Whining, crying, panic in the editorial room of th... : Following the flood of analys...

I don't know what happened, but in the end, she wasn't.

When the announcement was made it turned out to be Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke.

And I think that's a good thing.

I know very little about Zinke, but I do know that the Republican Montanan is opposed to the transfer of Federal lands, which was something that was much less certain about Rodgers.  And I also know that as he comes from Montana, he'll be familiar with the situation and conditions down here in Wyoming, which are very similar.  Moreover the former Navy SEAL is a lifelong hunter and fisherman.  He's drawn some initial praise from sporting quarters.

A good turn of events.  In some ways, I feel like we may have dodged a bit of  a bullet on this one.

The Submarine H3 runs aground, leading to the ultimate loss of the USS Milwaukee.

The U.S. submarine the H3, operating off of Eureka California with the H1 and H2, and their tender the USS Cheyenne, went off course in heavy fog and ran aground on this date (although some sources say it was December 16, this seems the better date however).

The H3 during one of the recovery attempts.

She'd be recovered and put back in service, although it was a difficult effort and would not be accomplished until April 20, 1917.  In the process, the USS Milwaukee, a cruiser, was beached and wrecked on January 13, 1917, making the relaunching of the H3 somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory.

The wrecked USS Milwaukee.

USS Cheyenne, which had been originally commissioned as the monitor USS Wyoming.  Truly an odd looking ship to modern eyes.

 The USS Cheyenne with the H1 and H2.  The Cheyenne had been decommissioned in 1905, after having served since only 1900, but she was recommissioned in 1908.  She was the first fuel oil burning ship in the U.S. Navy after having been refitted prior to recommissioning.  She was refitted as a U.S. Navy submarine tender, as a brief stint in the Washington Naval Militia, in 1913.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 14: Quebec prohibits women from practicing law.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 14:

Elsewhere:  1916:  In strong contrast to the State of Wyoming,  Quebec bans women from entering the legal profession.

This was in contrast with progress in suffrage elsewhere in Canada that year, but it wasn't terribly unusual for the time.  Note that the first Woman admitted to the bar in Wyoming had only been admitted two years earlier in spite of suffrage dating back to the late 19th Century and in spite of women already having served as justices of the peace and jurors. Having said that, every US state would have admitted at least one woman to the bar by the early 20th Century and many in the late 19th Century

Clara Brett Martin, the first female lawyer in the British Empire.

In these regards the entire British Empire trailed somewhat behind as the first female lawyer in the Empire, Ontario's Clara Brett Martin, wasn't admitted until 1897 after a protracted struggle to obtain that goal.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 14: Former Governor John Osborne steps down as Assistant Secretary of State for the Wilson Administration.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 14:

John E. Osborne at the start of his service as Assistant Secretary of State.

1916  Former Governor John Osborne concludes his service as Assistant Secretary of State for the Wilson Administration.

It had been rumored for weeks that the former Democratic Governor would step down, with motivations being various cited as an intent to run for the U.S. Senate and a desire to return his Western holdings.   All of that may have been partial motivators.  He did retain agricultural and business holdings in Wyoming and a 1918 run for the Senate showed he had not lost interest in politics.  However, he also found himself in increasing disagreement with his employer on Wilson's policies in regards to the war in Europe.  So, at this point, prior to Wilson's second term commencing, he stepped down and returned to Wyoming with his wife Selina, who was twenty years his junior.

Osborne would live the rest of his life out in the Rawlins area, ranching and as a banker.  While twenty years older than his wife, he would out live her by a year, dying in 1943 at age 84.  She died the prior year at age 59.  Their only daughter would pass away in 1951.  In spite of a largely Wyoming life, he was buried with his wife in their family plot in Kentucky.

First American Board Certified Physicians, December 14, 1916.

The American Board of Ophthalmology certifies a group of physicians after an examination at the University of Tennessee.  This is the first time a board has certified a group of physicians in the US, making those doctors the first "board certified" American physicians.

Mid Week At Work: Big Metal Bird: Episode 4 – Network Operations