War Crimes Edition

With self-styled Secretary of War Pete HIC!seth's Leave No Survivors rules of engagement in the present regime's gratuitous War in the Caribbean, Graphical History Tour takes a look at war crimes of the past.

"Das Ende" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. Dec. 1, 1945

80 years ago on November 30, a German U-boat commander and two of his subordinate officers were executed for war crimes.

It was during World War II, in the South Atlantic. The German submarine U-852 under the command of Captain Heinz-Wilhelm Eck torpedoed the Greek-flagged ship Peleus on March 13, 1944.

The submarine commander Eck feared the steamer’s debris would be observed by a passing airplane, and give enough information to Allied reconnaissance to enable it to find his ship. He therefore surfaced and attempted to have the debris field eliminated by machine-gunning and grenading it into the watery deep.

Per German rules of engagement:

No attempt of any kind should be made at rescuing members of ships sunk, and this includes picking up persons in the water and putting them in lifeboats, righting capsized lifeboats and handing over food and water. Rescue runs counter to the rudimentary demands of warfare for the destruction of enemy ships and crews … Be harsh, having in mind that the enemy takes no regard of women and children in his bombing attacks of German cities.

"Spectator" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 3, 1945

The execution of Captain Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, August Hoffmann, and Walter Weisspfennig, was overshadowed by the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi high command, accused of the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and Socialists.

"Nuernberg" by David Low in London Spectator, ca. Dec. 2, 1945

The Nuremberg trials came to pass because the Allies were triumphant in the War. Germans did not bring the Nazis to trial. 

Nobody was put on trial for the carpet bombing of Dresden. Or for immolating the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The rules of war were followed there.

"My Lai?" by Paul Conrad in Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1971

A generation later, in another war, the world was shocked by the March 16, 1968 massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians by U.S. soldiers in the Vietnamese villages of My Lai and My Khe. Expecting to find a Viet Cong battalion there, two Companies of U.S. Army soldiers gang-raped, mutilated, and slaughtered women and children when they couldn't find any men of military age in the town, then burned their homes to the ground. It was the largest confirmed massacre of civilians by U.S. ground forces in the 20th Century.

"Another Victim of My Lai" by William Roberts in Cleveland Press, March 30, 1971

The massacre had been documented in horrific photographs which were printed in national newsmagazines and on television.

The My Lai Massacre was an egregious, but not isolated case, according to an October, 1968 letter from Tom Glen, a 21-year-old soldier of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, to General Creighton Abrams:

"What has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through a more firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated."

"Guilty" by Don Wright in Miami News, March 30, 1971

The responsibility for the massacre was taken all the way up to an Army Lieutenant, William Calley, Jr.. Calley's court martial became national news after a whistle-blower's letter prompted Congress to open an investigation. Calley testified that he had been following orders from his superior, Captain Ernest Medina. One witness testified that Medina's orders were that "anybody that was running from us, hiding from us" was to be shot. 

"Murderer" by Leonard Borozinski in Wisconsin State Journal, March 31, 1971

Calley received a guilty verdict in March of 1971 and sentenced to life in prison; yet, as the above cartoons suggest, emerged as a sympathetic figure. He was paroled in 1974 to very little public outcry.

"Time to Come Out of Hiding" by Wally "Trog" Fawkes in Punch, London, April, 1971

Meanwhile, in separate courts martial, Captain Medina and Captain Eugene M. Kotouc were acquitted of all charges. Commanding officer of Americal Division, Major General Samuel W. Koster was charged with covering up the massacre and acquitted, but demoted to Brigadier General.

"It's Not So Difficult Once You Get the Hang of It" by Bill Sanders in Milwaukee Journal, March 31, 1971

Before moving on, we would be remiss if we did not also remember U.S. Army pilot Hugh Thompson, Jr., who landed his helicopter between the villagers and the soldiers, interrupting the slaughter and evacuating some survivors to safety.

"This in a Land Where One Humiliation Is Worth a Thousand Retributions" by Mark Streeter in Savannah Morning News, May 3, 2004

In 2004, the U.S. was embarrassed by its soldiers staffing the military prison at Abu Ghraib torturing prisoners of war. The soldiers had even posted photos on the internet of themselves humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners, chaining them like dogs, and piling them up on top of each other. The most widely circulated photo was of one hooded prisoner standing on a box with arms outstretched while hooked up to electrical wires.

Punishment was limited to the lowest level grunts.

"Chain of Command" by John Sherffius in Boulder Daily Camera, August 20, 2004

What the Dubya Bush administration learned from this fiasco was to rely more and more on outside contractors, like Blackwater, whose civilian paramilitary employees massacred 17 Iraqis at a traffic roundabout in 2007. Said employees were not invited to the Blackwater annual Christmas party that year.

Two years later, the outside firm was ArmorGroup, hired by the U.S. State Department to provide security at the American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. CBS broke the story that ArmorGroup guards and supervisors engaging in what can only be described as a combination of the worst fraternity hazing with spring break at Fort Lauderdale.

for Q Syndicate, Sept., 2009

Hazing victims included Afghan nationals employed at the base, according to a Sept. 1, 2009 letter from Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: 

"There is also evidence that members of the guard force and their supervisors have drawn Afghan nationals into behavior forbidden for Muslims. For example, photographs show guards posing with Afghan nationals at the U.S. facility at Camp Sullivan as both the guards and nationals consume alcoholic beverages in scenes that suggest drunkenness, and one photo shows a near-naked U.S. guard who appears to have urinated on himself and splashed an Afghan national."

And again, there were plenty of photos, posted to the unit's social media page. It's always the pictures that get people into trouble.

✍

War crimes have been committed by many countries other than the United States. Is it even possible to have a crime-free war, fought strictly according to the Geneva Accords? 

Seemingly not. That, however, takes us into Current Events, which are not in our Graphical History Tour's itinerary.

Not yet, anyway.

Toon: Very Fine People on Both Sides

Former White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly has written a book of his experiences in the Donald Schickelgruber Trump White House. According to an excerpt in the New Yorker Trump expressed to Kelly his admiration of "German generals" and wished that American generals were more like them.

"Do you mean Bismarck's generals?" Kelly told the Atlantic he'd asked Trump. He added, "I mean, I knew he didn't know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, 'Do you mean the Kaiser's generals? Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals?' And he said, 'Yeah, yeah, Hitler's generals.'"

Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the last sixteen months of Trump's presidency, is quoted in Bob Woodward's latest book as calling Trump "fascist to the core." Two of Trump's Secretaries of Defense, Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis and Army Lt. Col. Mark Esper, and one of his National Security Advisers, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, swell the chorus that Trump must never again be Commander In Chief of the U.S. military.

The White House and cabinet officials letting it be known that Trump is a fascist wannabe dictator who holds up Adolph Hitler as a role model only confirm what we've seen from the outside. Anyone who has been paying the slightest scrap of attention these past eight years knows that he worships the ground Vlad the Defenestrator Putin walks on, wants to be BFFs with Kim Jong Il, and adores what Viktor Orbán has done to Hungarian democracy.

Once upon a time, being exposed by that much military brass as Adolph Hitler's biggest fan would have been enough to send Trump slinking off in ignominy to Mar-a-Lagoon and thence to Argentina. But apparently, half the population of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina (and overwhelming majorities elsewhere in Dixie and the great plains) just don't care. 

For reasons that defy rational analysis, they enthusiastically plan to vote for an actual, literal, bona fide Nazi sympathizer for President of the United States.

Anything to get transgender folks out of the nation's rest rooms and defend the nation's aryan purity of essence. To Trump basest base, nothing else matters.

My cartoon today updates one by the great Australian-British editorial cartoonist, David Low. "Rendez-vous 1939" depicted Hitler and Joseph Stalin greeting each other: "The scum of the earth, I believe?" "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?" At their feet lay Poland, slain under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact partitioning the country that had separated them.

President Putin's policy since assuming power at the turn of the millennium has been to reconquer the nations that declared their independence from Moscow in 1989-1991. Trump will pull the rug out from under the government of Ukraine, which has been trying to fend off Russian aggression since 2008. Just as he pulled the rug out from under the government of Afghanistan.

If Trump is returned to the White House, no country in Eastern Europe will be safe from Russian lebensraum. No country anywhere else will be able to trust in United States assurances of friendship. There will be a new Axis of Evil, and we will be a junior member of it.

Dammit, this matters.

World News

 Come with me on a quick world tour in 1921, won't you?

"St. Patrick's Day Dream of Tomorrow" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., March 17, 1921

Since we've just made it past another St. Patrick's Day, we'll start with Ireland; where their British overlords celebrated the holiday by hanging six Irish Republicans convicted of killing British intelligence officers.

"Peace and Permanent Settlement" by David Low in London Star, Jan./Feb., 1921

Sir Edward Carson was the Conservative MP given the task of finding a peaceful settlement to Britain's Irish problem. His was the novel observation that if Irish Catholics and Protestants would just stop killing each other, they wouldn't have to live in fear of each other. 

"The Dove of Peace" by Jon Cottrell in Chronicle, Manchester, ca. March, 1921

Coming to England from Australia, David Low saw the issue of Irish independence (and Indian independence as well) differently than most of the other cartoonists on that Blessed Isle. According to his memoir, Low's Autobiography, he received some strongly worded pushback from other newspapers and their readers.

"When Are You Going to Pay This Bill?" in London Opinion, ca. March, 1921

Meanwhile, London (and Paris) were insisting upon steep war indemnity from Germany, and had no patience for Germany's protestations that it couldn't afford to pay. 

"The Island of Yap" by Frederick Opper for Star Publishing, ca. Feb. 16, 1921

William Randolph Hearst and his newspapers were eager for the U.S. to call in debts supposedly owed by the major Entente powers and a smattering of other countries around the world. The issue has nothing to do with dispute between the U.S. and Japan over the Micronesian island of Yap, but that didn't stop Hearst cartoonist Frederick Opper from drawing a series of cartoons in which Yap features prominently in merry songs about how nobody is in a rush to repay loans from Uncle Sam.

(I have to apologize for his characterization of Liberia, which appears in all of Opper's "Island of Yap" cartoons. Crude caricatures of Blacks, and, for that matter, foreigners, were the rule in this era, and nowhere moreso than in Mr. Opper's work.)

"Where He Will Be Waiting for Us" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1921

Not every cartoonist thought that Japan staking a claim on the island of Yap was a joke.

"The Sick Man Sees a Silver Lining" by Fred Morgan in Philadelphia Inquirer, March, 1921

Meanwhile, since the Harding administration wasn't interested in governing a mandate over Armenia, the allies decided to let the Ottomans retain control there, in spite of the Turkish genocide of civilians. Between 1915 and 1923, Turkey literally decimated its Armenian population through deportation, forced conversion to Islam, death marches, and outright execution.

"La Civiltà È Finalmente Nelle Nostre Mani," in Pasquino, Torino, ca. March, 1921

Turkey found a new ally in its former adversary Russia. The Bolsheviks, discarding the Romanovs' concern for defending Christianity south of the Black Sea, shared the Ottomans' interest in subjugating their Armenian citizens.

"Who Will Suffer Most?" by Winsor McCay, December, 1920

Any time there was an uprising somewhere in Russia, cartoonists in the U.S. and elsewhere rushed to their drawing boards to proclaim the imminent demise of the Soviet Socialist Republic. March, 1921 witnessed a flurry of such cartoons. What I find more interesting, however, are cartoons like this one in support of Western capitalists who saw financial opportunity in Communist Russia. Winsor McCay was not the only cartoonist who thought the U.S. was losing a potentially valuable market to other countries (especially Great Britain).

Speaking of the class struggle of the proletariat...

"Polonia ha Ordinato Trecento Aeroplani.." in Pasquino, Torino, ca. February, 1921

I have to respect Cartoon Magazine's translation, awkward as it is, of this cartoon by someone whose signature I can't read. (Why, moreover, does the Italian agitator who doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to the Russian leader have "W. Lenin" tattooed on his belly?)

Translating these cartoons isn't as easy as typing words into Google Translate, and here are a couple of cartoons that exemplify that.

"Die Seindlichen Schwestern" by Oskar Theuer in Ulk, Berlin, March 4, 1921

I include this cartoon as one of the earliest cartoons I have come across featuring the Nazi party — the sister seated on the left of her rival, the Deutsche Volkspartei (German People's Party). Both parties were anti-socialist, no matter what that uncle of yours who watches Fox News all night tells you that Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei means.

The caption on this cartoon doesn't seem to translate well; "Die seindlichen Schwestern" is literally "The Enemy Sisters." For all my searching, "Extratour" seems only to translate to English exactly as it looks. I'm only guessing that Oskar Theuer was making some sarcastic allusion to these "enemy sisters" returning to the dance floor in the final panel.

"Desafinação no Continente" by José Carlos de Brito e Cunha in Careta, Rio de Janeiro, March, 1921

I'm similarly stymied by the last word in this Brazilian cartoon, which may mean goals or ends, or, judging from Tio Sam's left hand, it could be a slang term for money and influence.

At any rate, a border conflict between Panama and Costa Rica over the latter's incursion into Almirante presented the Harding administration with its inaugural foreign crisis. Bound by treaty to protect Panama's sovereignty (and because we had seized the isthmus from Columbia in order to build a canal through it), the U.S. did indeed step in to mediate the conflict, and the matter was settled fairly quickly.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Battleships

Last Saturday, I promised to come back to the issue of Japan and the U.S. beefing up their navies in the wake of World War I. Great Britain was in on the arms race as well, and plenty of war-weary civilians were less than happy about it.

"They're Off" by David Low in London Star, by January, 1921 

Once you start binging on military hardware, it's awfully hard to stop. It's like an addiction, overwhelming rational thought. The three nations had been allies in the Great War, but were behaving as if each other were bitter enemies.

Detail from "Cartoons of the Day" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, ca. Dec. 17, 1920

John McCutcheon's fellow cartoonist at the Tribune, Carey Orr, would make the same point in his own cartoon a few weeks later but leave Great Britain out of it (see last Saturday's post). Although drawn later, I think Orr's cartoon did the better job of illustrating the futility of an arms race.

"Let's Take the Limit Off" by John Knott in Dallas News, Jan., 1921

John Knott attributes the three countries' build-up to Wilson's Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels. Republican-leaning cartoonists could easily characterize the American naval build-up as a folly of the outgoing Democratic administration, even if they had been among those decrying U.S. lack of "readiness" four years earlier.

"The Roots" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 27, 1921

(Or, in the case of Carey Orr, drawing this shortly after decrying the arms race.)

"Have a Heart Sam" by Arthur G. Racey in Montreal Daily Star, Jan./Feb., 1921

This Canadian cartoonist seems to agree with Knott that the U.S. is to blame for the naval arms race. Canada (including Québec) being a part of the United Kingdom, perhaps Mr Racey was obliged to lay primary responsibility on the U.S. for the three-way naval buildup in deference to his overlords from across the Atlantic. I'm afraid I don't have an example of how cartoonists on Canada's Pacific coast viewed the Japanese aspect of this arms race.

"Der Letzte Krieg Ist Vorbei," unsigned, in Nebelspalter, Zurich, ca. Feb. 1921

So I'll settle for this Swiss cartoonist, who relegates Great Britain to the sidelines.

"Another Good Reason for Disarmament" by Wm. C. Morris for Geo. Matthew Adams Service, Jan. 1921

But naval supremacy in the Pacific was not the only issue driving a wedge between Japan and the U.S.

"Sitting Tight" by Harold J. Wahl in Sacramento Bee, Jan., 1921

California's Alien Land Law went into effect in December, 1920, expressly prohibiting Chinese and Japanese resident aliens from either purchasing or leasing agricultural property. Legal discrimination against East Asians was nothing new, nor exclusive to California:

 In Oregon's 1859 constitution, it stated that no "Chinaman" could own property in the state, and it protected specifically the rights of "white foreigners" the same property owning rights as enjoyed by native citizens. The territory of Washington passed legislation in 1886 in response to the spreading anti-Chinese unrest in the territory that prohibited aliens ineligible for citizenship from property rights. The Washington legislature added a statute to their constitution in 1889 written more broadly, declaring that one had to declare the intent to naturalize "in good faith" to be eligible for property ownership, which meant that the applicant had to be eligible for naturalization, and Asian immigrants were not eligible. When California re-wrote its constitution in 1879, it limited land ownership to aliens of the "white race or of African descent," the same language used to limit naturalization in 1870. The 1870 Naturalization Act had removed the "white" only restriction on citizenship that had been in force since 1790 and expanded naturalization rights to anyone of African descent. This meant that if an applicant was neither white, nor of African descent, they were not eligible for naturalization. The coded language targeting "aliens ineligible for citizenship" became a legal way that individual states could limit the rights of Asian immigrants without targeting a group racially in the language of the law. 

"How Can Japan Doubt Our Friendship" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, Jan. 20, 1921

California's 1920 Alien Land Law was designed to close loopholes in earlier anti-Japanese legislation, and would serve as a model for other western states. When Japan protested the discriminatory intent of the law as being a violation of existing treaties between Japan and the U.S., California members of the U.S. House of Representatives proposed replacing California's law with a federal statute prohibiting all resident aliens from acquiring agricultural land.

"Why Get So Excited About the Little Fellow" by Parmalee in Nashville Tennessean, Jan., 1921

Anti-Japanese legislation stretched eastward as far as Minnesota and Florida, but you really can't let any part of the U.S. off the hook discrimination-wise. The 1920's were a period of intense anti-immigrant fervor all across the country, a topic to which I'll turn soon. And, it being African-American History Month, let's not forget that lynching, housing discrimination, and other institutional racism knew no state boundaries, and 1921 would see the nation's most horrific ever paroxysm of White terrorism against an entire Black neighborhood.

But today's post is about U.S.-Japan relations, so let's return to the topic at hand.

"Look at the Size of It" by Haydon Jones in New York Evening Post, Feb., 1921

Yap is a small island group about 700 miles east of the Philippines. After the Spanish-American War, Spain had sold Yap to Germany; then, after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles awarded it as a mandate to Japan. In the waning days of the Wilson administration, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby protested to the League of Nations that the U.S. did not recognize Japanese sovereignty over the islands. As it happens, they happened to be a critical telegraph cable crossing linking the U.S., Australia, Pacific islands, and Far East Asia, back when telegrams were the primary vehicle for international communication.

"As Much Privacy as a Gold Fish" by Harry Murphy for Star Company, ca. Jan. 8, 1921

While the U.S. did have certain rights as a World War I belligerent power, its outsider status at the League left it without much leverage in the Yap Scrap. Yap would remain part of the Empire of Japan until the end of World War II; it is now part of Micronesia. 

"Hello, Japan" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, Jan., 1921

Finally, there was the fatal shooting of U.S. naval officer Lt. Warren H. Langdon by a Japanese sentry  in Vladivostok, Russia on January 8, 1921. Returning to the U.S.S. Albany around 4:00 a.m., Lt. Langdon was confronted by a Japanese sentry and shot in the back when he attempted to continue on his way. As with Yap, the U.S. did not recognize Japanese jurisdiction in Russian territory, complaining that this was only the most serious example of Japanese harassment of Americans there. Anxious not to make relations between the two countries worse than they already were, Japan court-martialed the sentry, issued regretful apologies to the U.S. government, and promised reparations. 

Saturday Hash

Uncaptioned, by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, Dec. 3, 1920

The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas during a presidential transition can be a slow news period as far as political cartoonists are concerned. The incoming president is busy filling his cabinet with people the cartoonist hasn't learned to draw yet, and the outgoing president is not desperately trying to stage a coup to overturn the popular vote. Well, not normally.

1920 was a pretty normal year as presidential transitions go, so editorial cartoonists had plenty of opportunity to address topics of general interest. Some of them, as illustrated by Clifford Berryman's complaint against unregulated gun sales above, are if you'll pardon the yuletide expression, evergreen.

"Big Flap Jack Contest" by Frederick Opper for International Feature Service Inc., ca. Dec. 3, 1920

Fred Opper's complaint about high prices never gets old, either, although it would be hard to find a mainstream cartoonist today blaming "grocery profiteers" and "rent gougers." What went up, however, must have come cheap; those "pick pocket prices" are the same ones my generation's grandparents used to remember fondly in the '60's and '70's.

"Out" by Bob Satterfield for NEA, ca. Dec. 1, 1920

Bob Satterfield commends a drive to oust criminals, indecent dancing, and vice from the nation's dance halls.

"Tormentors" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 3, 1920

Nelson Harding begs to differ. Besides opposing dirty dancing, "fanatical reformers" were pushing to extend prohibition to tobacco and any number of other vices. There was even a push by something called the Lord's Day Alliance to nationalize "blue laws," making any commercial activity, interstate travel, or newspaper publication on Sundays a federal offense. That particular proposal died for lack of any member of Congress wishing to be associated with it.

"Broken Idols" by Magnus Kettner for Western Newspaper Union, ca. Dec. 3, 1920

Speaking of vices: I've somehow made it through the last two years without posting anything about the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, but Magnus Kettner gives me an opportunity to get around to it at long last. A grand jury handed down indictments against eight baseball players and five gamblers in October. A committee headed by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis convened in December to begin setting rules to clean up professional baseball.

"An Ounce of Prevention" by J. N. "Ding" Darling in Colliers, Dec. 11, 1920

"Ding" Darling offered some advice on avoiding strikes of the non-baseball variety.

"Ireland, 1920" by David Low in London Star, ca. Dec., 1920

Meanwhile, overseas, 100 Irish "Black and Tan" guerillas killed 17 police cadets in an ambush near Macroom, and British police uncovered a plot to attack the House of Parliament and 10 Downing Street. In retaliation, the British arrested the Irish Vice President (President De Valera being in the U.S. at the time) and three politicians who were members of both Parliament and Dail Eireann.

John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, ca. Dec. 4, 1920

Armenia's armed conflict against Turkey was not going well. Tsarist Russia had fashioned itself as the protector of the Ottoman Empire's Christian minorities in the Caucasus; Soviet Russia's support of the Armenian cause, however, was limited to diplomatic protest. The same was true of western powers, each of whom would rather that someone else step in.

"A Peaceful Change" by Bob Satterfield for NEA, ca. Dec. 2, 1920

Mexican President Venustiano Carranza was killed during a coup led by General Álvaro Obregón in April, 1920 (most historians believe he was assassinated, but some argue that he committed suicide). On December 1, the provisional government of Adolfo de la Huerta turned power over to Obregón. This marked the end of ten years of civil war, and the beginning of a quarter century of military generals heading the Mexican government.

"Can They Untangle It?" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. Dec. 2, 1920

In 1920, the California revisited a 1913 "Alien Land Law" severely restricting non-citizens' rights to own agricultural property in the state. The law's primary targets were Japanese immigrants, and the 1920 law sought to close loopholes left open by the original law. Japan regarded California's actions as a violation of the spirit of a 1911 friendship treaty between Japan and the U.S. 

In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California's laws were not a violation of 14th Amendment rights of equal protection. Eventually, the California Supreme Court decided in 1952 that the 14th Amendment did indeed invalidate the Alien Land Laws.

The Russo-Polish War

In spite of Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, the years between the two World Wars were anything but peaceful. By August, 1920, hostilities between Poland and Soviet Russia had been flaring up for a year and a half; Poland sought to annex Ukraine and establish mutual defense arrangements with the Baltic states against Russia and Germany, while the Soviets wanted to push their revolution through Poland ―На Запад!  ―into Central and Western Europe.

"Another Case of the Bald-Headed Barber" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, ca. August, 1920

Polish and Ukrainian nationalist forces occupied Kiev on May 7, but were beaten back by the Soviet army thereafter. The Soviets could almost taste victory, foreseeing an easy march "over the corpse of Poland" to Berlin, Paris and London.

Detail from "Cartoons of the Day" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, ca. Aug. 19, 1920

Once Russian armies pressed into Poland, the U.S., British and French governments threatened to come to Poland's defense if Russia didn't cease fire and come to the western powers' negotiating table. The western powers, however, had no domestic support whatsoever for another war, so Russia said thanks but no thanks. Confident of defeating the Poles, Russia would negotiate only with its sure-to-be-vanquished foe.

"Die Polenschlacht" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderatatsch, Berlin, August 15, 1920

Then, in August, the tide of battle turned again.

"They Met with the First Obstacle..." by Dorman Smith in Des Moines News, Aug., 1920

Polish military intelligence cracked the code the Soviet army was using, and were able to counter the Russians' planned attacks. The surprised Russians retreated in chaos. 

"Stung" by Sam Armstrong in Tacoma News-Tribune, August, 1920

As Polish advances continued into September (and into Belarus), Lenin sued for peace. 

"Maybe I Can Get Better Terms Now" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, August 21, 1920

Poland successfully defended its territory, but by the same token, the Soviets repulsed Polish advances into Russian territory. The Treaty of Riga awarded Poland territory in what is now Lithuania (including Vilnius), Belorus (within spitting distance of Minsk) and western Ukraine. In addition to souring relations with Lithuania, by reaching a separate treaty with Russia, Poland broke its military alliance with Ukraine. 

By thus alienating its neighbors, Poland in victory sowed the seeds of its own defeat at the outset of the next World War.

"The Inseparables" by David Low in The Sun, London, by August, 1920

I won't leap ahead to "Rendezvous," David Low's famous cartoon about the 1939 partition of Poland, but here's one from 1920. Low here has adopted the style for which he is best remembered.

And before I sign off for today, one note about Dorman H. Smith's cartoon. It appeared in Cartoons Magazine wrongly attributed to R. O. Evans of the Baltimore Sun. Biographical information about Smith states that he sold his first drawing at the age of 17 — that would have been in 1909 or 1910 — and that the Newspaper Enterprise Association started syndicating his cartoons in 1921. In the December, 1920 issue, the cut line under another Dorman Smith cartoon in an advertisement for the Landon Course of Cartooning (page 6) states that it appeared in the Des Moines News; The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons by Maurice Horn also states that Smith drew for the Des Moines News from 1919 to 1921.