Friday, August 22, 2014
Saturday, August 22, 1914. British at Mons.
Austro Hungaria declared war on Belgium.
The French lost 10,000 colonial troops dead at the Battle of Rossignol.
The British Expeditionary Corps reached Mons. Cavalryman Captain Charles Beck Hornby was the first British soldier to kill a German soldier using his sword. Drummer Edward Thomas of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards was the British solider to fire a shot, becoming the first British soldier to do so on the European mainland for 99 years.
That even 99 years prior was at Waterloo, also in Belgium.
The Germans finished destroying Kalisz, Poland.
Combined British and French forces defeated the Germans at Chra, Togoland. The Germans suffered largescale desertions.
Last edition:
Friday, August 21, 1914. Zapata warns about Carranza.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Friday, August 21, 1914. Zapata warns about Carranza.
Emiliano Zapata wrote to Lucio Blanco:
that this Carranza does not inspire much confidence in me. I see in him much ambition, and an inclination to fool the people.
Blanco and staff, 1913. Blanco was an artillery officer, and the first of the Mexican revolutionary commanders to redistribute hacienda land to peasantry. He was murdered in Mexico's revolutionary strife in 1922.
Zapata also wrote to Pancho Villa to warn him that Carranza's ambitions were dangerous and likely to another war.
The French fought the Germans in the Ardennes, Luxembourgian border and on the Sambre River in Belgium.
A German night attack on Dinant lead the German forces to erroneously believe that the city was full of hostile civilians.
The Germans lost two zeppelins on their first mission, making it three zeppelins lost in a row. French cavalry actually attacked and looted one of the crashed zeppelins.
German colonials troops captured Laï from the French in what is now Chad.
Pvt. John Parr, a 17 year old reconnaissance bicyclist, became the first British soldier to be killed on the Western Front when he was killed in an encounter with German cavalry.
Albanian rebels took Vlorë.
Captain Robert Bartlett met Burt McConnell, secretary for Canadian Arctic Expedition leader Vilhjalmur Stefansson, at Point Barrow, Alaska, who exchanged information on the stranded and missing.
Boston Red Sox.
There was a solar eclipse.
Last edition:
Thursday, August 20, 1914. Carranza enters Mexico City. The Germans enter Brussels.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Thursday, August 20, 1914. Carranza enters Mexico City. The Germans enter Brussels.
Venustiano Carranza and his supporters entered Mexico City to set up a new Mexican left wing Constitutionalist government, backed by Álvaro Obregón. Residents of the city turned out in mass to see the procession head to the Presidential Palace.
The Germans entered Brussels.
The Siege of Namur began. So did the Battles of Sarrebourg, Morhange and Gubinnen.
The Germans ordered the evacuation of East Prussia.
St. Pope Pius X died. His last words were "Together in one: all things in Christ," referencing his motto.
Born in an Italian speaking region of the Austro Hungarian Empire which is now part of Italy he was a strong opponent of modernist interpretation of theology, he initiated the preparation of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. He was responsible for the lowering of the age for First Communion and promoted a Thomist approach to philosophical inquiry in Catholic institutions.
Last edition:
Wednesday, August 19, 1914. Sitting it out.
Today In Wyoming's History: History in the Making: The 2014 Primary Election
Today In Wyoming's History: History in the Making: The 2014 Primary Election: The 2014 Wyoming Primary occurred yesterday. The election was one of the most remarkable in recent history in that it featured the near co...
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Wednesday, August 19, 1914. Sitting it out.
Wilson had already noted American neutrality, but today he formally declared it in an address to the nation through an address to Congress.
My Fellow-Countrymen:
I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has asked himself, during these last troubled weeks, what influence the European war may exert upon the United States, and I take the liberty of addressing a few words to you in order to point out that it is entirely within our own choice what its effects upon us will be and to urge very earnestly upon you the sort of speech and conduct which will best safeguard the Nation against distress and disaster.
The effect of the war upon the United States will depend upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. The spirit of the Nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by what individuals and society and those gathered in public meetings do and say, upon what newspapers and magazines contain, upon what ministers utter in their pulpits, and men proclaim as their opinions on the street.
The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among them with regard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. Those responsible for exciting it will assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people of the United States, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to its Government should unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and affection to think first of her and her interests, may be divided in camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war itself in impulse and opinion if not in action.
Such divisions among us would be fatal to our peace of mind and might seriously stand in the way of the proper performance of our duty as the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend.
I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men's souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.
My thought is of America. I am speaking, I feel sure, the earnest wish and purpose of every thoughtful American that this great country of ours, which is, of course, the first in our thoughts and in our hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar trial a Nation fit beyond others to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the dignity of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a Nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.
Shall we not resolve to put upon ourselves the restraints which will bring to our people the happiness and the great and lasting influence for peace we covet for them?
Last edition:
Tuesday, August 18, 1914. Lady Teacher for Lincoln County. Neutrality for the US.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Fancy?
Every summer there's some song that hits and becomes the big song of the summer. This summer it seems to be "Iggy" Azalea's "Fancy".
I only note this due to the odd use of terms and the way their conceived of. This is a hip hop song, I guess, and that's not a genera that I've ever liked, save for a couple of odd instances. I don't like this song, and I wouldn't under probably under any circumstances. But Fancy?
Notable in the work are the following lyrics: "Let's get drunk on the mini bar."
That's not fancy. That's trashy. There is a difference
Tuesday, August 18, 1914. Lady Teacher for Lincoln County. Neutrality for the US.
The Lincoln County School District requested a "lady teacher" from the University of Wyoming for the Cumberland Mining Camp. (UW History Calendar).
Lincoln County is remote now, and it would have been even more so in 1914.
The Imperial Russian Army invaded the Austrian Crownland of Galicia, or Austrian Poland (it's now in Poland and Ukraine.
The French captured bridges over the Rhine as well as taking large numbers of German soldiers in Alsace.
President Wilson declared the United States to be strictly neutral in the war developing in Europe and spreading the globe.
Last edition:
Monday, August 17, 1914. Russia invades Prussia.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Monday, August 17, 1914. Russia invades Prussia.
The Russian First Army invaded Prussia.
The French First Army took Sarrebourg.
Last edition:
Sunday, August 16, 1914. Not going according to plan.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Things I've learned from being an author
As some might know, a while back a book of mine was published. Just a minor work, but nonetheless. I'm trying to finish another, but work has been setting me back.
My book.
Having had a book published has taught me a few things, some of which reinforced what I already knew, and other things which I did not. Here's a few observations.
Writing is hard work.
I write all the time. I'm nearly compulsive at it. From time to time people will ask me, for example, how much time I spend writing these blog entries. Next to none is the answer. I'm an extremely rapid typist and generally know what I'm going to say before I say it, so it doesn't take much time at all. Most of these entries are written early in the morning after I've had breakfast and before I go to work, which itself is pretty darned early as a rule.
At work, as I'm a trial lawyer, I write a lot as well. I have a lot of days where I basically write all day long until I get home from work.
But, what surprised me, is that writing a book, on your own time, takes piles of discipline. And it's often the case that after a full day at work, I can hardly sit down in the evening and write a sentence.
I'm an extremely shy person.
People who've known me since I was a kid know this. I'm an introvert and I'm shy. And by that I mean I'm genuinely shy.
What people often fail to appreciate about shy people is that almost all of them can, and do, check their shyness at their occupational door and proceed through their tasks unhindered. That's why there are a lot of people in public roles who are rip snorting shy, but that's generally unknown. There are shy actors, shy musicians, shy public persons. Actor James Garvin, for example, who recently died was quite shy.
In my case, I meet with a lot of people in an average week and I'm told that I seem really interactive and talkative with my clients. I don't observe that to be the case myself, but I suspect that's true. My father was a very shy man but he interacted with people all the time, and I can vividly recall him doing that, which he did on a daily basis.
Where it catches up with you, basically, is on your off time. That's where the shyness comes back in. And I've learned that here as I'm not only shy, I'm pretty modest.
A modest person shouldn't really claim to be modest, but if its a genuine attribute, you might be modest and be aware of it. I have a relatively good idea of what I've done and accomplished, but I don't really say a whole lot about it, that's the combination of shyness and modesty. Years ago, for example, I was in the start of a trial and an opposing lawyer, who had studied up on me, asked me if I was part of a group that had tried a certain number of cases. I'm not. "How many cases have you tried?" was her then question. "I don't know" was the answer. I really don't. I could figure it out, and have from time to time, and its a large number. But I don't keep a running tab, to paint on the side of my fuselage like I'm a P-51 Mustang pilot in World War Two or something. That lawyer was amazed. She later noted "You try everything". I don't, but I have tried a lot of cases to juries and interact with them pretty well, but don't talk that up. The point being, that you can know what you've done without talking it up much.
But I didn't think that most folks I know would realize I'd written a book, but they figured it out pretty quickly. And so I'm asked a lot about it, and it always embarrasses me. Some tease me in a good natured way. I have a hard time talking to anyone about it.
I have also found that I have a very hard time being in a public setting regarding my work. That's odd, but true. As an author you have to do that, which I didn't really realize, and its an odd experience for me. It's one thing to be in a courtroom on another's cause, it's another thing to be signing your own works or talking about them.
Today In Wyoming's History: On C-Span Today
Today In Wyoming's History: On C-Span Today: I'll be on C-Span today, at 10:00 MST (along with a lot of other people), in their Casper Weekend. Not that this is significant in anyway. Just noting it.
This is in the context of local history, and I'm only one of several people.
This is in the context of local history, and I'm only one of several people.
A second look at one of this season's bad political ideas. "Taking back" the Federal land
Recently I posted here an item noting Tom Lubnau's op ed in the Tribune on the bad idea of "taking back" the Federal lands. Let's take a little closer look at it, as it reveals how little this is actually thought out.
Mixed private and public land in Natrona County, Wyoming.
Now, this idea is currently popular with that section of the GOP that's in the "tea party" end of things locally, but that doesn't make it unique to them. A couple of decades ago it was circulated in the "Sagebrush Rebellion", so it's a species of perennial bad idea, now matter what a person's political stripes may be.
Okay, let's start with the basic premise.
!. We're going to "take them back".
Well, you can't take back, what you didn't own. That'd be something like theft, and the state never owned the lands.
This part of this debate, to the extent that there is one, is one of those odd deals that gets tied up in myth. A lot of people in the "take back" end of this have a zealous belief that there was a duty on the part of the Federal government to give the land to a new state. There never was such a duty, the fact of the matter is that the Federal government never gave any new states all of the land within a state upon becoming a state. The Federal government always "reserved" some of the land for itself, depending upon what it through it needed for its own purposes. The reason that most of the land was conveyed to the states prior to the Civil War was that most Americans were farmers and it was a good way for the states to encourage farming. During the Civil War the Federal government, however, entered that scene itself, as in the arid Western regions the inducement of cheap land was no longer significant enough to draw homesteaders in, hence the "Homestead Act", which provided direct inducements to emigration.
If you really want to look at the legal theory of it, as opposed to the mythical version that some letter writer in the Tribune has today, this is it.
The Federal Government adopted the Crown's view that all land in North American belonged to the native inhabitants under what was called "Aboriginal Title". Tribes were, and still are, regarded as sovereigns. As they were a sovereign of superior nature to a state, whose sovereignty devolved from the greater sovereigns, only the greater sovereign, the United States, could legally deal with an Indian Tribe. And therefore only Congress cold extinguish ore acquire Aboriginal Title, by Congressional fiat, war, treaty or purchase. The U.S. Supreme Court, in fact, struck down the State of Georgia's attempt to acquire Indian lands by treaty directly. Only true sovereigns may deal with one another.
Therefore, once that was done, the United States acquired title to the land. Not the states. Anything a state acquired was a grant from the soverign, and the sovereign had no duty to convey land to any state.
So, sorry "take backers", the Federal government has absolutely no legal duty to give Wyoming any lands, and an acquisition of Federal lands wouldn't be taking it back, it be acquiring something new entirely.
2. So purchase then?
In fairness, nobody proposes this, but it's really remarkable and revealing that we don't.
So what the proposal is, is that we buy them, right? After all, the same segments of the political demographic demanding that we "take them back" claims to be in favor of a "free market economy" (it isn't, but it claims that).
So, what we'd do is buy 47% of the State at the fair market value? Um. . . well . . . no. We wan the Federal government to give the land to us.
Give? What? What are we, a bunch of freeloaders?
Well, in fact, yes we would be. Wyoming already takes in more in Federal tax dollars than it pays out. And this would be the biggest freeloading proposal of them all. Wyoming, with its handout, would be demanding a gift. Pretty unseemly.
Moreover, if a person is really true to their freemarket convictions, why wouldn't they just propose, as horrible of idea as it is, that the public domain just be sold tot he highest bidder? Wyoming could bid, then, on the lands it wanted, right?
Well, of course, it couldn't afford to buy anything, and the 47% of the land now owned by the Federal government would pass out of public hands into remote hands for the most part, a true disaster for the state. But at least it would be an intellectually honest disaster.
3. Our right?
Now, wait a minute, you may be thinking, we're just asking for what the Federal government gave the other states, darn it. It's our right. I've heard at least a couple of shades of this line of thought.
Well, not so fast. It isn't true that the other states all got their Federal lands. Nevada didn't. Arizona didn't. Montana didn't. Colorado didn't. Alaska didn't. Idaho didn't. New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and so on. . well you get the point. The western states, save for those that came in early like California, did not.
Even the Eastern states really didn't. There are a lot of "Federal Reservations" in the east, where the government kept what it thought it needed. The only real exceptions to this story are Texas and Hawaii, which were sovereign nations that asked, in their sovereignty, to become states. But there's a lesson here (we'll look at below) of bitter unhappiness that should forewarn of not wanting to go this route anyhow.
4. The Feds just got greedy, right?
Well, that's just because the Feds were a punch of party poopers after the Civil War, right?
This has been addressed a bit above, but no, it's because the Federal domain was open to every citizen for homesteading, and the the states were just peachy with that. This had come about as the old system, with states selling off the public land, wasn't working for the arid West.
Beyond that, by the 1860s it was clear that the onset of the industrial revolution meant that the country needed to do something to encourage mining on the vast public tracts that were not attracting development, and that resulted in the Mining Law of 1872, which give the mineral industry, one of Wyoming's most favored industries in terms of public sympathy, the right to enter in and occupy lands in a manner that was superior to any other claim. As I don't want this to turn into a treatise on the public lands, I'll stop there, but this is what established the system we basically have today. And this was a system the state were perfectly fine with, and in Wyoming's case a private war was actually fought in the 1890s in an effort to preserve it.
Beyond that, in Wyoming's case, it's because we had such a small population we had to bribe the Federal government for statehood. We doubleed our voters by granting women the right to vote, and then we promised the Federal government we wouldn't ask for anything, small poulation state that we were. We even put it in our state constitution.
Oops.
5. Our own self interest
Well, 1890 was a long time ago, and this would be in the best interest of the state today, right? Let's ingore the history and grab what we can, and we'll all be better off.
Not hardly.
First of all, something Wyomingites fail to appreciate is that the Federal government actually manages the land much more lightly than the State. A Wyomingite can pretty much go where he wants and do what he wants on the public lands, in spite of the oil wells, cattle and sheep.
Not so on State land. State land is specific for its leased use, and you really have fewer rights on the State land. People simply ignore that, as they're unaware of that. If the state acquired the land, the state would either have to take up ignoring that, or would make people mighty unhappy.
Assuming the state kept the land, which is a doubtful presumption. The State of Wyoming already has a history of disposing of the land it has, often for values which seem doubtful at least from the outside. With more land to dispose of, there's no reason to believe that market pressures, and the cost of now having to manage the land itself, wouldn't cause it to sell a lot of it off, maybe darned near all of it off.
And the primary beneficiaries of that would be out of state wealthy interests. Some imagine a mythical world of renewed small homesteading. Well, that's not going to happen. Millionaires from St. Louis would be more likely to acquire the land than the existent tenants or average Wyomingites.
And some imagine that if the Federal government could be cajoled, coaxed or sued into giving us the lands, it would be a boon to those sectors of the mineral industry that aren't doing as well as they once were, like the coal industry. Well, guess again. Inside the industry the Federal government isn't regarded as a particularly harsh landlord and frankly its easier to get along with than private landowners generally are. Indeed, if the State sold the land industry would likely have to compete, in some instances, with environmental groups that would claim an equal right to bid on the land, something they've done before with oil and gas leases, if they could.
The net result, moreover, would be to make us a Western state like Texas, or Hawaii, where the native inhabitants look out on a state that they live in, but largely cannot access. Texans might like to point towards their Western cowboy heritage, but there aren't many of them living it. How could they? They have no right to go on the soil of most of Texas, most of which is privately held. In Hawaii feelings are so bitter in some sectors that there's a nativist independence movement which would take the state and its lands back for the original inhabitants.
We should be thankful that the Federal domain is Federal.
Sunday, August 16, 1914. Not going according to plan.
The Germans took the last of Belgium's military forts after an eleven day effort which was supposed to have taken two.
Serbian forces pushed the Austro Hungarians off of Cer Mountain.
The Austro Hungarian battle cruiser SMS Zenta was sunk by the Allies in the Adriatic.
The SMS Goeben and Breslau were transferred to the Ottoman Navy.
British 2nd Lt. Evelyn Perry of the Royal Flying Corps was killed in a plane crash over France, making him the first British office to die in the war.
John Redmond, in a public address in Maryborough, Ireland, stated to assembled Irish Volunteers:
[F]or the first time in the history ... it was safe to-day for England to withdraw her armed troops from our country and that the sons of Ireland themselves ... [would] defend her shores against any foreign foe.
He was really pushing his point.
The Polish Temporary Commission of Confederated Indepence Parties in Austro Hungaria formed the Polish Supreme National Committee.
Japanese writer Takeshi Kanno with his wife, sculptor Gertrude Farquharson Boyle, August 15, 1914. They'd divorce the next year. Few Japanese/Western marriages do survive, and she held fairly pronounced left wing views.
Last edition:
Saturday, August 15, 1914. The Panama Canal opens for traffic.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Saturday, August 15, 1914. The Panama Canal opens for traffic.
The Panama Canal opened for traffic.
The SS Ancon, pictured above on this day, was the first ship through.
Theodore Roosevelt, who would only have been in his 60s, who had caused it to be built, didn't live to see the great event. Neither did Woodrow Wilson, who had carried through with it. William H. Taft, however, remained very much alive.
Sgt. Patrick N. Cullom of the Colorado National Guard testified that the soliders in his company had shot and killed Union activist Louis Tikas and two others at Ludlow. He testified they were attempting to escape at the time.
Last edition:
Friday, August 14, 1914. First bombing raid.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Friday, August 14, 1914. First bombing raid.
The French First Army advanced on German forces near Sarrebourg, Lorraine, France.
Albanian rebels attacked Durrës, the capital of Albania, but were driven back by Romanian volunteer forces, showing how confusing the Great War already was.
The first real bomber, the the French Voisin III, made its first combat run. An attack on German airship hangars at Metz-Frescaty Air Base in Germany.
The Austro Hungarian steamer SS Baron Gautsch struck a mine off of Croatia and sank, killing 150 passengers.
The German light cruiser SMS Emden left the rest of the German Pacific squadron to raid shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean.
Last edition:
Tuesday, August 13, 1914. The Teoloyucan Treaties
Labels: 1910s, 1914, Álvaro Obregón, Austro Hungarian Navy, Bicycles, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, panoramic
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Tuesday, August 13, 1914. The Teoloyucan Treaties
Álvaro Obregón signed one of the documents related to dissolving the Mexican regime and allowing leaders of the Constitutionalist to create a new government.
The Austro Hungarian troopship SMS Baron Gautsch struck an Austrian mine in the Adriatic and sank, killing 147 men.
8th Annual Cyclist Convention.
Last edition:
Wednesday, August 12, 1914. The United Kingdom and France declare war on Austro Hungaria.
Labels: 1910s, 1914, Austro Hungaria, Battle of Halen, Belgian Army, Belgium, British Commonwealth, cavalry, France, German Kriegsmarine, Imperial Japanese Navy, Japan, Mexican Revolution, Pacific, United Kingdom
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