If You Don't Buy This Magazine

One of my pleasures is finding The Week in my mail. It's a news readers' digest kind of magazine that still respects and honors editorial cartoons — with both an interior spread of choice cartoons (usually across two pages), and on the cover.

Their cover art stable consists of two cartoonists; this recent cover about Trump's covetous obsession with Greenland should strike Boomers as vaguely familiar:

by Jason Seiler in The Week, Jan. 30, 2026

I'm trusting that Seiler didn't create this with Artificial Intelligence, since I don't detect any of the markers that typify most A.I. cartoons. Photoshop? Yeah, who doesn't use Photoshop any more?

The cartoon was spoiled by ICE shooting actual humans in cold blood shortly after this magazine came out, but I still think it was a good cartoon.

Will You Be Mine?

'Tis February 14, and our Graphical History Tour turns lightly to thoughts of love!

Holidays of any sort are a godsend to editorial cartoonists, because we can just check the calendar, and thinking up our cartoon is halfway there. Is it Valentine's Day? Surely there's a job somewhere that would be just perfect for Mr. Cupid. 

Or his understudy.

"Love's Labor Lost" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Daily Star, Feb. 13, 1926

Canada's Conservative Party leader Meighen continued to woo the Progressive Party for enough support to form an improbable coalition government, making for fairly obvious Valentine's Day cartoonistry. Conservatives had won more seats in Parliament than its rivals in the November, 1925 elections, whereas Liberals and Progressives had both lost seats; thanks to a very few minor party members, neither the Conservatives nor the pre-election Liberal-Progressive coalition could muster a governing majority.

"Saint Valentine's Day, 1926" by Arthur Racey in Montreal Star, Feb. 13, 1926

As a fan of the Liberals, Hunter was happy to lampoon the Conservatives' plight. Tory partisan A.G. Racey used the romantic holiday instead to complain about The Kids Today drinking and smoking and wearing rouge.

Who knew that St. Valentine wore glasses?

"Wanted a Valentine" by Clifford Berryman in Washington [DC] Sunday Star Feb. 14, 1926

Down in the States, Congress passed a tax cut bill that was deeper than the Coolidge administration had asked for. Clifford Berryman availed himself of the holiday to depict the bill as a surplus of valentine cards for Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon.

"Valentines" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 13, 1926

Gustavo Bronstrup sent a tax cut Valentine to a happy taxpayer, and also drew valentine cards from Californians to their Governor (considering a run for federal office), from a traffic cop to a motorist (admonishing for breezing through red lights yet lingering at green ones), and the U.S. over the Senate's vote in favor of joining the World Court.

"A Hint to the Wise Should Be Sufficient" by Ed LeCocq in Des Moines Register, Feb. 14, 1926

Because of conditions included in that Senate bill, the U.S. never actually joined the World Court — nor the League of Nations — before they were dissolved in 1945. Accordingly, Ed LeCocq's Uncle Sam, despite his valentine to Mlle. League, had not gotten over his commitment issues.

"They Have the Exits and Their Entrances" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 14, 1926

Meanwhile, events were building that would test Uncle Sam's isolationist commitment to bachelorhood. Italy's il Duce was a topic of several Valentine's Day cartoons in 1926, and one that defied any allusion to love notes, flowers, and boxed chocolates.

Whereas editorial cartoonists today liken our modern fascist leaders to Mussolini and Hitler, cartoonists in the 1920's and '30's compared far-right politicians of their day to wartime foes of even earlier times.

"Römischer Karneval" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Feb. 14, 1926

Oskar Garvens's allusion to Napoleon rings somewhat more true than Daniel Fitzpatrick's to Kaiser Wilhelm, insofar as the most alarming part of a Mussolini speech to the Chamber of Deputies on February 6 were remarks that stopped just shy of declaring war against Austria and Germany. Denying alarmist complaints from Bavarian leaders that Italy had torn down a statue of a German poet and had also prohibited residents of former Austrian territories from having Christmas trees, Mussolini threatened, "Fascist Italy can, if necessary, carry her flag beyond the Brenner frontier" between Italy and Austria.

"Il re bambino" in Garvens's cartoon is Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III, known during World War I as "il Re Soldato" (the soldier king). At 56 years of age, the king was hardly a "bambino"; but his short stature was exaggerated by German cartoonists, especially after the Italian government broke antebellum agreements with Germany and sided with the Entente powers.

"Diplomacy's Sea Becoming Turbulent" by T.E. Powers for Star Newspapers, Feb. 13, 1926 

A few months earlier, Mussolini had celebrated the Locarno peace accords with a public rant, er, speech glorifying war. Mussolini's tirades full of bluster and bravado against Italy's neighbors alarmed leaders across the continent.

"Showing Off" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Feb. 14, 1926

Remind you of anyone?

Carey Orr's cartoon includes a laundry list of affronts to European diplomacy in addition to the latest "Insult to Germany": Fascisti defiance of France, Corfu insult to Greece, Threat to take control of Mediterranean from England, and Threat against Balkans. 

"Some of These Days He Will Puncture Himself Doing That" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 14, 1926 

Hubris will get you only so far. But that lesson would only come after another nine years and another World War.

Q Toon: Minnesota ICE

I wish I had come across this quotation by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in time to send this cartoon out for publication by the federal holiday (yes, it still is a federal holiday, in spite of the racist Trump regime's refusal to respect it). Instead, it goes public during Black History Month (not a federal holiday, but another observance repudiated by the white supremacists in the White House).

The quotation is certainly not aimed at the good people of the Twin Cities who have literally risked their lives to stand up, speak out, video, and blow whistles against the wicked people and the wicked government that sent them there. We are all, however, at a Which Side Are You On moment in history.

There are still plenty of people who support, defend, and excuse what this government and its hired storm troopers are doing. Many such people are beyond any cartoon's powers of persuasion. (But we keep on trying.) This cartoon is directed to what I believe is the dwindling middle ground of Americans who are yet to face the musical warning of the late Neil Peart that, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

I had most of this cartoon inked before leaving on vacation last month, leaving a few spaces in case I needed to acknowledge outrages in addition to ICE's murder of Renée Nicole Good and the dogged persecution of brown-skinned detainees, including those who happen to be LGBTQ, such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Elias Perez Zuazo, and Jose Nuñez.

We weren't watching the news down in South America, but our Facebook feeds were flooded with reports and videos of the summary execution of Alex Pretti. I have a lot of college friends who live in the Twin Cities area, including one couple who live on the same block as Pretti's home.

Including Good and Pretti, 40 people have died in ICE custody or at ICE's hands in this first year of the Lawless Trump Regime's ethnic cleansing campaign. 32 in 2025. Eight in the first month of 2026.

So you will excuse me if I don't give a flying frock that somebody couldn't understand the words of Bad Bunny's halftime performance. 

William Henry Harrison's Birthday Sneak Peek

As I mentioned the other day, I've been away on vacation the past couple of weeks.

And it only occurred to me on Saturday, waiting in a foreign airport for the last of the planes to take us home, that I hadn't prepared a third Graphical History Tour to publish here in my absence. For that I apologize.

I had drawn enough editorial cartoons for the weeks I was gone, and, in case flights got delayed or connections missed or the U.S. air traffic control system shut down, most of the one I needed to have finished by last night (plus working ahead on some other stuff that people needed from me). Since I came home to find my white-out had congealed to the consistency of pizza dough, and my ink likewise to fresh tar — and I had a replacement bottle only for the latter — and my computer quite happy to remain on its own vacation, it's a good thing I hadn't left myself a lot to finish up.

Well, anyway, here's the sneak peek for that cartoon.

Q Toon: Exit Stage Left

Here's Part Two of Mama's visit to Max and Leo's humble abode.

I've made an effort to by coy about where Max and Leo live — in what city, town, or village (someplace with a couples therapist and a coffee shop, however), what part of the country, and whether in a house or apartment. Hence the introduction of Max's mother, who, it can now be revealed is on or works for the board of directors for the so-called Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

It can also be revealed that I was away on vacation when the deadlines for last week's and this week's cartoons arrived, so these two cartoons were drawn well ahead of time. In fact, they were drawn before the Washington D.C. Opera withdrew from the DJTJFKMC4PA last month. (The Center's President Ric Grenell claims they were fired; perhaps the company wanted to present Emmett Till: the Opera by Clare Coss and Mary D. Watkins. Or had commissioned an opera about Jeffrey Epstein.)

So anyway, I've spent the last few weeks hoping that none of the real entertainers mentioned in this cartoon kick the bucket, or get arrested by ICE for protesting in Minneapolis, or denounce the renaming of the DJTJFKMC4PA. 

But then our pouty mercurial president went and brayed on Trump Social that now he is shutting the DJTJFKMC4PA down for two years in order to redesign it into the gilded Louis XIV whorehouse he’s always dreamed of.

The center’s staff learned of the imminent closure through Trump’s Truth Social post, which proposed “temporarily” closing the “Trump Kennedy Center” for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” starting July 4. Trump added the move is subject to approval by the center’s board, which he chairs. — https://wapo.st/3NRd901

Phuoc that gagh damask whole.

Ground Hog Day's Sneak Peek

January, 2025

Part 2 of the visit from Max's mom is coming up this week; and at this point it might be relevant to remind loyal readers that she perhaps lives in or around Washington, D.C.

P.S. FDT.

...and Farewell

"Columbia proved unequal to Uncle Sam and gradually was replaced as a common cartoon character." — The Ungentlemanly Art, Stephen Hess and Milton Kaplan, 1968

Today's Graphical History Tour continues following the career of Lady Columbia into the 20th Century.

"Pan-American Puck" by Samuel Ehrart in Puck, May 8, 1901

As the personification of the nation, Lady Columbia was riding high at the turn of the century. She welcomed South America to the 1901 Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, New York (where President McKinley would be assassinated).

Ehrart's cartoon illustrated the host nation's hope that, in the words of Puck's editors,

"We have extended our trade horizon to include the Antipodes, but we have not yet secured the trade of our nearest neighbors. Central and South America still find reasons for going elsewhere to do most of their shopping. The weightiest of these reasons have to do with a certain protective tariff, and the disposition of them must await the enlightenment of a certain majority of the voters,— a condition happily promising for the near future. ... Incidentally we shall become better acquainted with the resources of our own island possessions and give their people, perhaps, a more favorable view of their relationship to us than they have thus far been able to gather."

"A Fair Return" by Louis Raemaekers in Chicago Examiner,  August 15, 1917

World War I raged in Europe for three years before the U.S. entered the fray. Dutch cartoonist Louis Raemaekers welcomed U.S. entry into World War I by depicting Lady Columbia embracing Marianne, the personification of France, telling her, "When I was a child it was you who saved me."

Columbia's gown doesn't have the usual flag motif in Raemaekers cartoon — perhaps because white stars are hard to draw in charcoal.

"It's a Great Day for America" by Albert T. Reid in National Republican, Nov. 3, 1920

The stars and stripes are back in Albert Reid's cartoon. Lady Columbia, here updating her wardrobe from the robes of classical Rome to congratulate President-elect Warren Harding, was often enlisted to welcome a new administration to office.

"My Harp Is Also Turned to Mourning" by Gennette in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 7, 1901

One of Lady Columbia's chief roles in editorial cartoons was as chief mourner for the country. Cartoonists drew her grieving at the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley (in this case), Harding, and the Roosevelts, as well as other prominent figures in the news. 

"Columbia's Anguish" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, Jan. 30, 1922

Here she mourned collapse of the Knickerbocker Theater in the nation's capital that killed 98. It is possible that Berryman drew this particular Columbia to represent the District of Columbia, where the tragedy occurred, instead of the bespectacled and bewigged 18th-Century gentleman that he usually drew to represent the capital city. This Columbia lacks the Phrygian cap and wears full-length mourning black.

"Hail and Farewell" by Clyde Batchelor in Washington Times-Herald, April 13, 1945

Every reference I have found about Miss Columbia agrees that she went out of fashion sometime in the 1920's, Uncle Sam, the Statie of Liberty, and the eagle becoming the go-to cartoon personifications of the United States. 

I did find this 1945 Batchelor cartoon of her paying her respects to Franklin Delano Roosevelt upon his death the day before. Perhaps because Batchelor disagreed with much of FDR's policy (his April 12 cartoon accused the administration of covering up warnings of the attack on Pearl Harbor), his Columbia isn't racked with grief she typically was for earlier fallen presidents.

Looking back at my post a few years ago of cartoons drawn after President McKinley's assassination, whereas Columbia knelt in grief, it was Uncle Sam who meted stern justice to the assassin.

Today, Lady Columbia would be horrified and ashamed of the present government’s wanton murder and disappearing of its citizens. What would Uncle Sam be doing?

"His 146th Birthday" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, July 4, 1922

One does notice Columbia fading into the background, cartoon-wise. At the nation's 146th birthday, she serves the cake; but it's Uncle Sam's birthday, not hers, even though he was at most a mere 110 years old.

"Uncle Sam Will Take a Little of the Stuffing" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington Post, Nov. 26, 1925

At Thanksgiving, Columbia serves the dinner, and while Uncle Sam frets that he'll have to settle for a little stuffing, there doesn't even appear to be a seat for her at the table. Unless a chair is hidden behind that turkey, Lady Columbia must have been demoted to kitchen staff.

"Why Not Flowers for the Living, Too" by Winsor McCay for Hearst newspapers, May 30, 1925

Would Uncle Sam deliver a bouquet of flowers to wounded veterans?

One theory is that Columbia as a cartoon character fell into disuse in the 1920's once she became the mascot for Columbia Pictures. Columbia Pictures wasn't named after her directly; the movie company was a division of Columbia Records, which was originally headquartered in the District of Columbia.

"Some Day They'll Come Crawling Back to Her" by Joseph Parrish in Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1948

Last week's post began with a cartoon of a female "America Triumphant" drawn before she was given the name Columbia, so we'll end here with one of that familiar lady, back in her liberty cap and Romanesque robe, but without the name coined by Edward Cave over two centuries before.

Q Toon: Mama Comes to Visit

Please enjoy a respite from the news of the day. I'll explain later.

MAGA Max and Liberal Leo are back this week, along with Max's mother and their Dog To Be Named Later. (Max's mom's name is Karen, by the way. Because of course it is.)

I guess Max has told Karen that he and Leo are part of the trend I've heard about of friends buying homes together because of the sky-high cost of mortgages these days. Young people were renting together before Friends was a thing, which they could work around when one of them took a job out of town or got married. Deciding what's fair when co-owners are confronted with one or the other of those inevitabilities could be just as thorny as if they were a married couple.

Well, I've never specified whether Max and Leo have a legal union; but I'm pretty sure that Max is insinuating to his mother a little white lie about where he sleeps.

To be continued...

The 2-Point Conversion of St. Paul's Sneak Peek

I'm introducing a new character into the Max & Leo series this week. It's a two-parter, and probably not a three-week series, since, as Benjamin Franklin once quoted Jonah's Nineveh hosts, "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."

By the way, I've got to take care of a little editorial housekeeping here. In Saturday’s Graphical History post, I asserted that the first cartoon appearance of Uncle Sam was in 1832, and it behooves me to back up that claim in case some artificially intelligent future researcher ever credits me as an authority. 

My reference is The Ungentlemanly Art: The History of American Editorial Cartoons by Stephen Hess and David Kaplan (1968), which in turn cites The Rise and Fall of Cartoon Symbols by William Murrell in The American Scholar, Summer, 1935, pp. 310-311. The text of the Hess-Kaplan book (page 35) says that the cartoon below was published in 1832; the citation in the index (page 178) says it was in 1834.

"Uncle Sam in Danger," cartoonist unknown, 1832 or 1834

I think you'll agree that this is not an Uncle Sam readers today would recognize if he weren't named in the cutline.

Hail, Columbia...

Today's Graphical History Tour was inspired by a reader who was curious about the cartoon figure of Miss (sometimes Lady) Columbia.

"America Triumphant and Britannia in Distress" 1782

In the Eighteenth Century, European cartoonists represented the American colonies, later the United States, with a Native American woman, or at least what they imagined Native American women to look like. I’ve seen that personification used in a very few German cartoons as late as 1920; but White Americans preferred seeing their nation represented by White cartoon characters.

European cartoonists were quick to oblige, almost as soon as the ink was dry on Cornwallis’s surrender. “America Triumphant” predates Lady Columbia, but served as a model for her: neoclassical Greco-Roman clothing similar to Brittania’s, plus the liberty cap that would later be the hallmark of revolutionary France’s Marianne.

"Columbia Teaching John Bull a New Lesson" by William Charles, 1813

The name Columbia has been traced to The Gentleman's Magazine's accounts, begun in 1738, of Parliamentary proceedings by Edward Cave. To get around a British law prohibiting accounts of Parliamentary debates, Cave substituted nicknames for persons and places: instead of “America,” he coined the name “Columbia.”

Uncle Sam came along much later. His name originated sometime around the War of 1812, and he first appeared in a political cartoon in 1832. His features evolved from another early cartoon personification of Americans, Brother Jonathan; but the characterization you might recognize only develops around the time of the Civil War. 

"Mistress Columbia, Who Has Been Taking a Nap," in Harper's Weekly, ca. 1860

In general, Brother Jonathan represented the American people, Uncle Sam represented the government in Washington, and Lady Columbia represented the U.S. as a nation. Brother Jonathan could be a wise-ass, but Lady Columbia was always quite serious.

"The Spirit of '61," 1861

Before James Montgomery Flagg painted Uncle Sam wanting you to serve in World War I, Columbia recruited soldiers to come to her defense in the Civil War. I have not been able to discover who created this recruitment poster.

"Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, Nov. 20, 1868

Columbia and Uncle Sam both appeared in this postbellum cartoon by Thomas Nast. She was seated in the foreground between the Black and Chinese Americans at Nast's Thanksgiving table (greatly exaggerating any welcome and promise of freedom and equality the United States offered persons of those two ethnicities).

"The Right Kind of Valentine," in Canadian Illustrated News, Feb. 18, 1871

Columbia had "reciprocity" behind her back in this cartoon in Miss Canada handed her a valentine reading "Freedom of fisheries," a contentious issue between the two nations for years. Curiously, the cartoonist decided that neither Uncle Sam or Johnny Canuck were appropriate for a cartoon about piscine love notes.

"That's a Pretty Chicken" by Joseph Keppler in Puck, 1872

Columbia could register shock and alarm, as in this Keppler cartoon expressing disappointment with proposed civil service reforms.

"Auch eine Tätowierte" by Joseph Keppler in Puck, Nov. 1, 1876

In another Keppler cartoon, "Also a Tattooed Woman" (in the German language edition of Puck), Columbia's shame was laid bare.  tattooed with Corruption, Tammany (New York City's Democratic headquarters), the Crédit Mobilier scandal, Civil War, taxes, Black Friday, Whiskey Ring, Election Frauds, and plenty more. The caption under  indicates that Columbia was not a willing recipient of her tattoos; similarly themed cartoons of Uncle Sam left open the possibility that he might have foolishly submitted to the inkster's ministrations.

"Columbia's Unwelcome Guests" by Frank Beard in Judge, Feb. 7, 1885

Frank Beard drew this version of a more determined Columbia offering a firm KEEP OUT to immigrants arriving on her shores with their strange ideas and drinking habits. It could be your own great-great-great-great grandparents Beard drew streaming out of Europe's sewers. Maybe even Stephen Miller's.

"A Disgusting and Scandalous Condition of Affairs" by Unknown cartoonist, 1899

Here is a cartoon that illustrated the relationship between Lady Columbia and Uncle Sam: she gives the orders to him to do something about the Army beef scandal (meat issued to soldiers in the Spanish-American War with embalming fluid added to it to slow spoilage). Uncle Sam appears slow to act, however; "How long are you going to sit here idle?" she scolds him.

Neither Grainger nor Alamy credit the artist or publication of this cartoon.

"Darned If I Can Have Any Fun" by E.T. Richards in Life, July 5, 1900

After the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American war put the U.S. in charge of Spain's former colonies in the Caribbean and the Philippines, Lady Columbia and Uncle Sam both appear uncomfortable in their new role as imperial powers in E.T. Richards's cartoon.

Come back next Saturday, as we follow the fortunes of Lady Columbia into the Twentieth Century.

Q Toon: None Taken

The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a pair of cases over transgender student athletes' rights in Idaho and West Virginia. The two states are among several Republican-run states with blanket bans prohibiting transgender youth from participating in school athletics.

That the present Republican majority will rule against the two girls is sadly a foregone conclusion; the only suspense is whether their ruling will be so broad as to prevent transgender students from athletic activities anywhere, or so narrow as to apply only to Idaho and West Virginia.

The primary concern of the majority justices appears to be how the lawyers arguing on behalf of the two athletes want to define what a female is and whether laws prohibiting gender discrimination apply to that definition. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are predictably hostile to non-cisgender, non-heterosexual plaintiffs, but former girls’ basketball coach Brett Kavanaugh took a moment to offer sympathy to transgender student athletes. That sympathy, however, is countered by his sympathy for hypothetical cisgender student athletes who don't make the team:

“I hate–hate that a kid who wants to play sports might not be able to play sports. I hate that,” Kavanaugh said. “But … it’s kind of a zero-sum game for a lot of teams. And someone who tries out and makes it, who is a transgender girl, will bump from the starting lineup, from playing time, from the team, from the all league, and those things matter to people big time, will bump someone else.”

“We have to recognize on both sides the zero-sum. It’s not like, ‘Oh, just add another person to the team.’ That’s not how sports works. ... Someone else is going to get disadvantaged.”

It’s a shame that there isn’t enough room on a team’s bench for everybody who was promised a seat.

MLK Day's Sneak Peek

On this Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2026, it's worth remembering the words of the prophet:

"We shall have to repent in this generation, not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." — quoted in Concise Dictionary of Religious Quotations, W. Neil, ed.

Uncle Samicus Curiae Mundi

The Graphical History Tour returns to January of 1926, and a moment when it appeared that Uncle Sam was ready to break out of his isolationist sulk.

"Down Comes That Fence" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 29, 1926

On January 27, 1926, the U.S. Senate voted 76 to 17 in favor of joining the World Court, a proposal that had been waiting for Senate approval since the Harding administration. The World Court was established in 1921 as a peacekeeping arm of the League of Nations to provide an alternative to war for settling international disputes.

"On the Threshold" by Ed Gale in Los Angeles Times, Jan. 31, 1926

Senate approval came with reservations. Conditions stipulated in the Senate bill included requiring all World Court proceedings to be public, and that the U.S. should be a party to all cases having any effect on U.S. interests.

"Everything to Lose—Nothing to Gain" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington Post, Jan. 27, 1926

William Hanny's cartoon at the top of today's post notwithstanding, opposition to U.S. participation in the World Court remained. William Rogers depicted the Court's other members outnumbering the U.S. in unified opposition. Only Uncle Sam has any chips on this poker table (they spell out "Monroe Doctrine" and "Independence").

"The Devil's Dish" by T.E. Powers for Star newspapers, ca. Jan. 26, 1926

Opposition by the "irreconcilables" crossed party lines: there were Republicans and Democrats against anything to do with the late Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, whereas the Coolidge administration was in favor of joining the World Court.

T.E. Powers, drawing for Democrat-affiliated Hearst newspapers, discounted the Court as a warmed-over stew of intrigue, revenge, jealousy, and hate.

"Got Him At Last" by Sam Hunter in Toronto Star, Jan. 28, 1926

Drawing from a Canadian vantage point, Sam Hunter saw the Senate bringing a reluctant Uncle Sam at long last to justice.

"All Aboard" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 28, 1926

But this Senate vote was not ratification of the treaty the U.S. had signed in Geneva. Those five reservations the Senate insisted upon were never resolved.

"Bitter Bitter Enders" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 31, 1926

In 1930, President Herbert Hoover would ask the Senate to ratify the Geneva treaty, only to have his request all but ignored. The Senate finally took up a ratification vote in 1935, during Franklin Roosevelt's first term as President. The vote in favor, 52 to 36, fell short of the two-thirds majority required.

The World Court was dissolved, along with other functions of the League of Nations, in 1945, and its duties turned over to the newly established International Court of Justice. The U.S. has been a member of the ICJ from the beginning, at least up to the present Lawless Trump Regime.

✍

Uncle Sam appears in six of today's seven editorial cartoons. Come back next week, when the Graphical History Tour follows up on a reader's question about another American symbol.