On December 10th, 1920, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of his effort to create The League of Nations. This was a rare late award, permitted under the rules but not previously done. The reason for the delay was that some of the committee were reluctant because the U.S. Senate had failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles in November, 1919.
Kansas WW1
Commemorating the First World War Centennial in Kansas
This major motion picture will be released soon. Directed by Sam Mendes and produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners, it features George McKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Richard Madden. You can read more about this and view the trailer here.
Recently Hiawatha, Kansas, honored World War I hometown soldier Homer White, for whom the American Legion post is named. The National World War I Centennial Committee posted the story on their website. Here’s the link:
Episode #135 of the WWI Centennial News Podcast includes a story about Erwin Bleckley, the WWI flyer from Wichita who lost his life and received the Medal of Honor. See the link below; the Bleckley story starts at 8:05:
The 1919 Versailles Treaty required the payment of reparations to most of the Allied Powers for causing the war. No payments were to be made to Russia, who wasn’t represented at the conference, and the U.S. which refused to receive reparations or territorial concessions. The burden fell mostly on Germany, in an amount equivalent to $269 billion today. Cash reparations assessed to Austria, Hungary and Turkey were zeroed out due to their large territorial losses. Bulgaria paid about $1.4 billion in today’s money before their debt was cancelled in 1932.
A couple of things that may be of interest to the World War I people. As usual, all times are Central, and all can be watched any time at the C-SPAN website.
–Reel America “Uncle Sam Watching the Mexican Border”–1916. Airs at 12:23 a.m. early Friday morning, August 9. Second airing is at 6:27 a.m the same morning.
During the Great War there were many persons who found ways to serve in humanitarian and medical capacities in spite of their ineligibility for military duty. The most numerous of these were the members of the British Voluntary Aid Detachments, familiarly known as ‘V.A.D.’s’, which numbered about 80,000 young women. These volunteers became nursing assistants and hospital workers, and Wikipedia lists twenty-three noteworthy V.A.D.’s, some of whom were Vera Brittain, Agatha Christie, E.M. Delafield, Amelia Earhart, Violet Jessop, and Freya Stark.
At some point in time, you may have heard the words ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag’ and you may have wondered “what is a kit-bag?”
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag
Smile, boys, that’s the style.
And smile, smile, smile,
While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag,
Blockades, embargoes and sanctions. Although these tactics are many centuries old, historians say that the first effective blockade was imposed on France by the Royal Navy under Admiral Edward Hawke (1705-1781) during the Seven Year’s War (1754-1763), which Americans know as The French and Indian War.
Yesterday the U.S. World War One Centennial Commission ran this story about a Virginia high school’s approach. You can read the article here.
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