Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Catholic Church of the Ascension, Hudson Wyoming

Churches of the West: Catholic Church of the Ascension, Hudson Wyoming:

This Catholic Church in Hudson Wyoming was built in 1917.  In a way, it shows the limitations of travel at the time, as Hudson is quite near Lander, where there is another Catholic Church. At the time this church was built in 1917, however, travel between the two towns would have been time consuming.

Wilson delivers his "Peace Without Victory" speech

Woodrow Wilson delivered his "Peace without victory" speech to the United States Senate on this day in 1917.  In it he stated:

Gentlemen of the Senate:

On the 18^th of December last, I addressed an identical note to the governments of the nations now at war requesting them to state, more definitely than they had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace.  I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy.

The Central Powers united in a reply which state merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace.  The Entente powers have replied much more definitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement.  We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war.  We are that much nearer the definite discussion of the international concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace.

In every discussion of peace that must end this war, it is taken for granted that the peace must be followed by some definite concert of power which will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again.  Every love of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take that for granted.

I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I owed it to you, as the counsel associated with me in the final determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my mind in regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations.

It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in that great enterprise.  To take part in such a service will be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their government ever since the days when they set up a new nation in the high and honourable hope that it might, in all that it was and did, show mankind the way to liberty.

They cannot in honour withhold the service to which they are now about to be challenged.  They do not wish to withhold it.  But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state the conditions under which they will feel free to render it.

That service is nothing less than this, to add their authority and their power to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world.  Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed.  It is right that before it comes this Government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a League for Peace.  I am here to attempt to state those conditions.

The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candour and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it makes a great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended.  The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of mankind, not merely a peace that will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations engaged.

No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war; and yet there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing.  The elements of that peace must be elements that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American governments, elements consistent with their political faith and with the practical convictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend.

I do not mean to say that any American government would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace the governments now at war might agree upon or seek to upset them when made, whatever they might be.  I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves.  Mere agreements may not make peace secure.  It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations could face or withstand it.  If the peace presently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind.

The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured.  The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe.  There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.

Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on this point.  The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists.  But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to all-may not be the same on both sides of the water.  I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be.

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory.  It is not pleasant to say this.  I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought.  I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments.  Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished.  It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand.  Only a peace between equals can last.  Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.  The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.

The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak.  Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend.  Equality of territory or of resources there of course cannot be; nor any sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves.  But no one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights.  Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among organized nations.  No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.  I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.

I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an abstract political principle which has always been held very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty in America but for the same reason that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to me clearly indispensable-because I wish frankly to uncover realities.  Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably be upset.  It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind.  The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the world will sympathize.  The world can be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right.

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea.  Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will assure the peace itself.  With a right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world's commerce.

And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free.  The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and cooperation.  No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto thought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling.  There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them.  The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development.  It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.

It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe.  And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programs of military preparation.  Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost candour and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings, and come to stay.

Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice.  There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating armaments are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained.  The statesmen of the world must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry.  The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and utterance.  Perhaps I am the only person in high authority amongst all the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back.  I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of a great government, and I feel confident that I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to say.

May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every program of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear.

And in holding out the expectation that the people and government of the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named I speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear to every man who can think that there is in this promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfillment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven for.

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions of power; catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without.  There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power.  When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.

I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.

These are American principles, American policies.  We could stand for no others.  And they are also the principles and policies of forward looking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community.  They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.

Poster Saturday: Pour La France.

I understand what this poster was for, "Combat gold for Victory", but my gosh its odd.

Senator Bebout reads the tea leaves

Yesterday, after the Inauguration, Senator Bebout announced that he was killing the proposed public lands transfer constitutional amendment by refusing to assign it for consideration. That's his option as President of the Senate.

He acknowledged, in doing that, the full force of public opinion, although he maintained that the whole effort was misunderstood.

To the extent it is misunderstood, and that wouldn't be misunderstood much, it would apparently be by our Senators and Congresswoman back in Washington D.C., who still appear to be clueless on this.  Faced with a public revolt, Bebout took the wise and politic route and sidetracked it before the legislature and individual legislators had to pay a price for refusing to listen to the public.  Located more remotely, we haven't seen any similar reactions out of D. C. yet.  But that may be coming . . . if people like holding their seats.

The Sunday State Leader for January 21, 1917. US Withdrawing from Mexico

The plant to withdraw from Mexico hit the press, along with a prediction that Villa would fill the vaccum.

Wyoming Guardsmen got high praise however.

And the Legislature was looking at Blue Laws.

Small Arms of WWI Primer 002: French Berthier Rifles

Small Arms of WWI Primer 001: Rifle Modèle 1886 M93 "Lebel"

Part of the series we started doing on weapons of the 1910s, given on our focus on that era.  The WWII era "Lebel".

I'll confess that I know very little about French weapons, other than they're odd looking.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20. The Legislature sends Prohibition to the voters.

People tend not to think of Wyoming in the context of Prohibition, but the state was part of the big sweep that lead to it.  Indeed, while the story lays in the future from this post, Wyoming would push prohibition over the top with Sen. Francis E. Warren's vote in favor of the Volstead Act.

On this day, a century ago, the Legislature, which was predicted to pass a pro-Prohibition bill, did:

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20:

1917   Legislature passed an act submitting an act for a constitutional amendment that would allow people to vote on prohibition. Attribution:  On This Day.

The introduction of the bill had been widely predicated by the Cheyenne newspapers, in the form of predicting some bill.  That it would have taken the form, in 1917, of a proposed amendment to the state constitution is a bit of a surprise, but that would have served the dual purpose of making anything that passed really difficult to get rid of and, additionally, sort of passing the buck to the voters, as such an amendment requires the voters to approve it.

Which they didn't.

I'm not certain how it played out, but if the regular process took place, the voters rejected the measure that following fall.  Wyoming was the last state in the Rocky Mountain region to adopt Prohibition and the proposed amendment did not become law.

Which might have been a sign of things to come. While the state did pass Prohibition into law voluntarily, and in fact pushed it over the top nationally, it took to violating it nearly immediately.  Indeed Western Wyoming would become a bootleg liquor center, with wine being fermented in the Italian sections of Rock Springs and, ironically, heavily Mormon Kemmerer becoming a location for the distillation of high quality bootleg whiskey made with locally grown grain.

As outlined by Phil Roberts in an excellent article in Annals of Wyoming recently, Prohibition did break the back of the saloon trade in Wyoming, which in the end was a good thing. When alcohol returned in the 1930s it was stepped in over time, and with a new system which we retain today. That system, oddly enough for "free enterprise" Wyoming, runs all alcohol through the State Liquor Warehouse, which is the wholesaler for Wyoming, with no legal exceptions.

Prohibition would have the unfortunate impact of killing off a lot of local breweries, including those in Wyoming.  This has changed only recently, although there are quite a few small breweries now and even two distilleries.

A bottle of Wyoming Whiskey.  Something the legislators of 1917 would probably not have appreciated seeing at the time.

Blog Mirror: Friday Farming: The Salt: The Lost Ancestral Peanut Of The South Is Revived

The Salt

What's On Your Plate

Foodways

The Lost Ancestral Peanut Of The South Is Revived

Vice President Marshall receives California Electoral Vote, January 20, 1917

Vice President receiving the official California votes.

Why it was received so late, I have no idea.  And why the Vice President received it I don't know either, other than this was the same day that Admiral Dewey's funeral occurred on and I suspect that President Wilson was at that.

Admiral Dewey laid to rest.

Admiral George Dewey, who died on January 16, 1917, was laid to rest on this day.

Dewey was critical to the US's rise to power as a naval power during the Spanish American War.  In some ways the results of that rise were about to play out on an even bigger world stage.

The escort here is an Army and Navy one, with his coffin born on a caisson.

Suffragette pickets at the White House, January 20, 1917

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Today Mostly Fact – Not Much Fiction

From Wyoming Fact and Fiction, a difficult question:

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Today Mostly Fact – Not Much Fiction: The news dominating Wyoming right now   -  The Legislature is in session, I hope to visit in the next couple of weeks and sit in on some ...

Military Small Arms of the 10s: Small Arms of WWI Primer 014: Canadian Ross Rifle Mark III.

I've been dealing, of course, with the 10s a lot recently.

Well, always actually.

But more specifically, starting in March, I started dealing with 1916 a lot, and now with 1917.  And more specifically than that, while I've been trying to give a lot of contemporary events from a century ago, a lot of those events were military events. 

So, I may provide a few details on the weapons of the period, which were making a lot of noise, literally and figuratively, and for no particular reason, I'm starting here, as it was an easy video to find.

Yes, this doesn't have much to do with any store we've followed closely, except slightly with the Irish Canadian Rangers, but I'll add more details on that later.

Admiral Reginald Hall of the Royal Navy reveals the Zimmerman Note to Edward Bell . . .and the telegram makes it to Mexico City.

Royal Navy Admiral Reginald Hall, who was involved with British signals intelligence in World War One, after the British spent a couple of days pondering what to do with the information, revealed the contents of the Zimmerman Telegraph to Edward Bell, Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in the UK.  Bell at fist refused to believe the note was genuine but then became enraged upon changing his mind.

Admiral Hall.

Hall would informally present the contents of the telegram to American Ambassador Walter Hines Page the following day.  Arthur Balfour would formally give the deciphered and translated text to Hines on February 23, who reported the same to Woodrow Wilson.

Ironically the first news of the telegram was provided to the United States, albeit informally, on the same day that it arrived in Mexico City. Given the nature of wire communications at the time, it didn't arrive in Mexico City until February 19.

The Somme viewed from the air, January 19, 1917

Secretary of War Newton D. Baker informs Maj. Gen Frederick Funston that the US withdrawing from Mexico.

The caption says it all.

Newton D. Baker.

Frederick Funston.

Well, I suppose it might not if you don't know  who Frederick Funston was.  He was the commander of American forces in the Southwest and in overall  charge of the forces then in Mexico, contrary to it being John Pershing, whom people typically imagine to have been in overall charge.  Pershing was the commander in the field, and Funston was his superior.

Confessions of a Writer of Westerns: Writing Short

Confessions of a Writer of Westerns: Writing Short: Books seem to be getting smaller, at least that is what I have been reading. Many traditional publishers, in their author note sections, ar...

Wednesday, January 17, 1917. Joint Mexican American Committee Concludes

 

Mexican refugee entering the United States.  In spite of the caption, his wealth is probably all on this horse.  Part of the tragedy that involved both the United States and Mexico for well over a decade.

The Joint Committee between the US and Mexico concluded its business.  With the agreement of December 24, 1916 having been made, with Carranza having refused to sign it, and with events overcoming the United States that would give Carranza the result he wanted anyway, there was no more work to be done.

 

Porfirio Diaz in full military costume.  The collapse of his rule lead to the long civil war in Mexico.

Some have stated that the mere existence of the Joint Committee was a success in and of itself, and there is some truth to that.  The committee worked for months on an agreement and came to one, and even if Carranza would not execute it as it didn't guaranty the withdraw of American forces, the fact that the country was now hurtling towards war with Germany made it necessary for that to occur without American formal assent to Carranza's demand.  By not agreeing to it, the US was not bound not to intervene again, which was one of the points that it had sought in the first place. Events essentially gave both nations what they had been demanding.

 

 Revolutionary, intellectual, and radical. General Carranza.  His government fought Villa and Zapata successfully, but he'd go down in a coup lead by his own general, Obregon some years later. 

Even if that was the case this step, the first in the beginning of the end of the event we have been tracking since March, has to be seen as a Mexican Constitutionalist victory in the midst of the Mexican Revolution.  At the time the Commission came to the United States it represented only one side in a three way (sometimes more) Mexican civil war that was still raging.  Even as Carranza demanded that the United States withdraw his forces were not uniformly doing well against either Villa or Zapata.  Disdaining the United States in general, in spite of the fact that Wilson treated his government as the de facto government, he also knew that he could not be seen to be achieving victory over Villa through the intervention of the United States, nor could he be seen to be allowing a violation of Mexican sovereignty.  His refusal to acquiesce to allowing American troops to cross the border in pursuit of raiders, something that the Mexican and American governments had allowed for both nations since the mid 19th Century, allowed him to be seen as a legitimate defender of Mexican sovereignty and as the legitimate head of a Mexican government.

 

More typically imagined in a sombrero, General Francisco Villa.  The colorful, erratic, and perhaps somewhat mentally unstable Villa would attempt to retire to a ranch he acquired after his surrender to Obregon and Carranza, but he ended up being assassinated under cloudy circumstances in 1923.  His killer would live into the 1950s and declare at the end of his life that he'd rid the world of a "monster".

 Emiliano Zapata and his staff.  Zapata was an agrarian and looked the part, which we in turn tend to confuse with the look of the Mexican Revolution.  As with many leaders of the Mexican Revolution, Zapata was assassinated, although unlike Villa he still commanded an army in the field at the time of his death.

As will be seen, even though the war in Mexico raged on, events were overtaking the US and Mexico very quickly.  The Constitutionalist government was legitimizing itself as a radical Mexican de jure government and would quickly become just that.  Revolutions against it would go on for years, but it was very quickly moving towards full legitimacy.  And the United States, having failed to capture Villa or even defeat the Villistas, and having accepted an effective passive role in Mexico after nearly getting into a full war with the Constitutionalist, now very much had its eye on Europe and could not strategically afford to be bogged down in Mexico.  A silent desire to get out of Mexico had become fully open.  The rough terms of the agreement arrived upon by the Committee, while never ratified by Carranza, would effectively operate anyway and the United States now very quickly turned to withdrawing from Mexico.

 

Alvaro Obregon, whose competence and study of military tactics lead to the defeat of Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte.  He'd ultimately become present of Mexico following his coup against Carranza.  Obregon would serve one term as president of Mexico, and was elected to a second term to follow his successor Calles, but he was assassinated prior to taking office.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Related threads:  The Mexican Revolution.

Last Edition:

January 16, 1917. Admiral George Dewey dies

Labels: 1910s, 1917, Civil War, Personalities, Politics, Spanish American War, U.S. Navy

Lex Anteinternet: Civil Holidays. Their observance, or lack thereof. A Wyoming Equality Day observation.

This is an old post that I've bumped up in this fashion on at least one prior occasion.

Lex Anteinternet: Civil Holidays:  Leann posted an item on her blog about Columbus Day, urging Congress to consider changing it to Indigenous Peoples Day .  I

I was reminded of it as it's both Martin Luther King Day nationally and Wyoming Equality Day in the state, but outside of state and Federal employees, it's not observed much here. That doesn't mean its not observed at all, but not much.  To the extent it is observed it tends to be observed almost ethnically or politically.  Indeed, people were slow to get to the office today and I had two employees ask me "Is this a holiday?"  It is, but not one that anyone takes off.

I'm not sure of what to make of that.  But I do know that if civil holidays aren't observed by employers there not really holidays.  That may sound harsh, but that's the reality of it.  It's just a day at work without mail.  In some cases, like Veterans' Day, its a day where things might be observed in some fashion; a lot of businesses give breaks to veterans and the movie channels run war movies non stop, but still, a holiday that businesses don't take off isn't a real holiday.

And that's a shame.

If these days are important, well, they should be observed. But unless the government affirmatively requires them to be taken off, most will not be.  Only the self employed who are very secure about their place in the world is going to observe some of them.  But in the United States, which has an aggressive attachment to concepts of free enterprise in the current era, a legal effort to require that business stand down would not go anywhere and would instead be controversial.

And, indeed, this has spread even to weekends, which used to be very widely observed, or at least Sundays were.  Even around here, in a region that notoriously has not had blue laws, it used to be almost impossible to get much more than basic grocery services on Sundays.  As a kid I recall you could not find an open gas station here on a Sunday.  On the 4th of July weekend you had to buy your gasoline early if you intended to go anywhere, or you were going nowhere.

I'm not sure the change has been for the good.