Auf Wiedersehn to Arms

To follow up on last Saturday's post on U.S. domestic issues 100 years ago this month, here are some of the foreign affairs popping up in the news in October, 1921. Let's start with an Aussie cartoonist:

"The Disarmament Conference" by Will Donald, for Federated Press and Australian Worker, October, 1921

Washington D.C. was gearing up to host a big disarmament conference with European powers, China, and Japan in November.

I'm a little puzzled by the "Harding Hot Air" paper on the table in this cartoon, and I wonder if it might be an addition by an American editor. The man at the head of the table bears no resemblance to President Harding, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, or Secretary of War John Weeks. He bears a slight resemblance to Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, except that P.M. Hughes sported a mustache.

Federated Press was headquartered in Chicago, and provided news coverage and features to labor and socialist publications from 1920 to 1946. Aussie Will Donald's wide-ranging cartooning career included drawing for the Australian Worker (published 1890-1950), the newspaper of the Australian Workers' Union.

"You Folks Can't Take That Junk Aboard..." by Leo Bushnell for Central Press Features, ca. Oct. 15, 1921

A primary focus of the conference was on participants' interests in East Asia and the Pacific. Japan was interested in formalizing a sphere of influence that included Siberia, Mongolia, Tsingtao, Manchuria, and Pacific islands such as Yap. Great Britain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands, on the other hand, with their colonial possessions in south and east Asia, wanted Japan kept in check. 

"The Same Thing All the Others Are Saying..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Collier's, Oct. 15, 1921

The gender of "Ding" Darling's Mrs. National Pride notwithstanding, many historians say that western nations' extending the vote to women was a significant factor in pushing arms control to the fore.

The American public certainly viewed the primary goal of the conference as reducing armaments, and it indeed kept the naval arms race among the U.S., Great Britain, and Japan from getting completely out of hand. It produced the first multilateral arms agreement among nations, and the conference is generally viewed as a success.

It also established Japan as a major naval and colonial power in the region, allowing it to build a navy to rival those of Great Britain and the U.S., and larger than either those of France or Italy.

"He's Better Off on Board" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Sept., 1921

According to McCutcheon, Japanese and European eagerness to secure their empires in the Far East was reason enough for the United States to continue its occupation of the Philippines. Sure, it was in direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but we couldn't allow some other country to take over our colony!

A number of postwar issues still remained to be settled within Europe, starting with shoving Germany's eastern borders westward.

"Völkerbundsrat" by Hans-Maria Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Oct. 30, 1921

This cartoon is a hoot, coming from a cartoonist living in a (formerly) colonial power. I'd lay even odds that Kaiser Wilhelm would have had difficulty locating Yap on a globe despite making decisions for the locals in what was then a German possession.

Upper Silesia had been the southeasternmost corner of Germany prior to the Treaty of Versailles; since then (except during World War II), nearly all of it is on Poland's southern border.

"A Persistent Romeo" by William Hanny in St. Joseph News-Press, Oct. 24, 1921

Since we last checked in on postwar Hungary, its communist government had been overthrown in 1919 by Romanian troops, who were in turn succeeded by a homegrown military government — which promptly clamped down on communists, socialists, labor unions, immigrants, and, quelle surprise, Jews. The new government declared Hungary a kingdom once again. 

An unemployed former emperor, Karl Hapsburg, twice applied for the job of King of Hungary; but in the face of threatened invasion by Hungary's neighbors, the job went instead to Miklós Horthy, an admiral in the Austro-Hungarian navy, who reigned as regent until 1946. Karl was instead exiled to Madeira, where he died the following April at age 34.

"Since Nobody's Lookin'" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, Oct. 7, 1921

Meanwhile, back where the whole Great War Mess started, the various southern Slavs still were busy stirring up trouble. The 1920s would be marked with a series of Balkan War flare-ups as the various ethnic groups scattered amongst each other in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire's southern territories fought for local supremacy.

"Auch ein Tod fürs Vaterland" by Erich Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, Oct. 12, 1921

But the world had just fought a War To End All Wars, so there really wasn't anything to worry about, was there?