The Pall Mall Gazette dated Monday February 21st
1919
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The Pall Mall Gazette was founded as a pro-conservative
evening paper in 1865 and lasted until it merged with the Evening Standard in
1923.
The War may be over but the Versailles Peace Treaty is still
being forged, labour unrest in Britain increases and Germany is politically and
economically unstable.
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(Cont’d from page 1)
All this talk of Germany paying for pensions etc was changed
when the total amount of reparations was fixed in 1921 on the basis of the
German capacity to pay, not on the basis of Allied claims. The debt was set at
about £1billion and by 1931 they had repaid less that 20% when the debt was
suspended indefinitely, although it was revived in 1953 and paid off in full by
West Germany.
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(Cont’d from page 1)
Demobbed soldiers found a very different Britain to the one
they left in 1914. High unemployment, a rising cost of living, strikes by newly
organised unions and a severe shortage of houses were the order of the day.
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As George Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister and
President of the Paris Peace Conference, was leaving his house the previous
Thursday, a man fired several shots at his car. Clemenceau was hit once between
the ribs, just missing his vital organs. His attacker, Emile Cottin, was seized
by the crowd and nearly lynched. Clemenceau died in 1929 with the bullet still
in him.
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The Pall Mall Gazette, being an evening paper, is commenting
here on the news that Kurt Eisner the Socialist who had declared Bavaria an
independent state, had been assassinated in Berlin earlier in the day.
Immediately following The Great War Germany was in turmoil with various
factions for or against the terms of the surrender and the occupation of the
industrial Ruhr by the French. Bavaria was strongly anti-French and became the
breeding ground for Nazism as the 1920’s progressed.
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The
Late News tells us that Prince Leopold of Bavaria had been arrested on
suspicion of being involved in the plot to murder Eisner.
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No great mystery really – the retired actress
Jessie Francis, wife of actor/manager Frederick Wright Sr. and mother of comedians
Huntley and Fred Wright, died of a heart attack during or after a burglary.
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The Melville Brothers (Walter and Frederick) owned and
managed theatres, including the Lyceum in London, as well as writing and
directing plays like this melodrama of German spies that ends with a British
General shooting his traitorous wife, the Female Hun of the title.
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Special constables as we know them now date back
to the First World War. The case of Herbert Stanton Moss can’t have helped the
distrust the public had for the Specials as reflected in the lyrics of the
popular 1919 song ‘My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)’ – ‘…you can’t trust a
Special like an old-time copper…’
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There are no photos in the Pall Mall Gazette so this fashion
drawing is a nice relief from the pages of text.
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With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious that
Prohibition in the USA between 1919 and 1933 did not work and even had a
detrimental effect on society with the criminalisation of social drinking and
the rise in organized crime to support the supply of alcoholic drinks. This
article is referring not to the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act
that brought in National Prohibition on January 1st 1920, but to the
temporary Wartime Prohibition Act that preceded it.
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I wonder if Lt.-Col PSC was at all mollified by the 1920
issue of the Bronze Oak Leaf to all service personnel mentioned in despatches. I
doubt it.
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