#john jellicoe

[tgirldarkholme]

Ms. Marvel #19 by Chris Claremont and Carmine Infantino

Marvel Super-Heroes #10 by Chris Claremont and Mike Vosburg

Carol's habit at casually kissing married friends on the mouth

[scotianostra]

December 30th 1915 saw the Cruiser Natal explode in Cromarty harbour, killing over 400 people.

HMS Natal on that fateful day was at anchor in the Cromarty Firth. Her Captain, Eric Percy Coventry Back, had allowed a number of the ship’s crew to take shore leave – many of them to watch, and play, in an inter-ship football match.

For some of his officers however, Captain Back had invited them and their wives to a film show on board. He had also invited a family friend, John Henry Dods – a former Scottish International rugby player – his wife Annie and their children Dorothy, Marcus and John. Captain Back’s wife (their own children were ill) and three nurses from the nearby hospital ship HMS Drina.

At around 3.20 pm the Natal was rocked by an explosion, followed by a further three blasts in short succession. Flames shot throughout the ship but the true seriousness of the situation wasn’t fully appreciated, with injured seaman were being sent to sickbay to have their burns dressed. Orders to flood the magazines couldn’t be carried out and although hoses were rigged no water was obtainable through the fire main system. Within three minutes of the first explosion the ship started to list heavily to port and after another two minutes, she had completely settled down with the forward end of the starboard bilge keel clear of the water.

421 men, women and children lost their lives in this disaster. The loss of the ship was soon announced to the press. Various photographs of the Natal, her crew and the ship’s cat (with the caption “Rudolph, it is feared, was on board at the time”) appeared on the front page of the Daily Sketch two days running. And although they attempted to notify next of kin as quickly as possible, the Admiralty was inundated with letters from family members of the crew.

Although not immediately ruled out, the idea of a submarine attack was soon dismissed. In order to carry out a torpedo attack, a U-boat would have needed to have passed two other ships: another cruiser and an even more tempting target – the battleship Emperor of India. Having talked to survivors personally, and from divers reports, Vice-Admiral Jellicoe was of the opinion that the foundering of the Natal was due to an internal explosion.

As was traditional in the loss of a Royal Navy ship, a Court Martial into the loss of the Natal was held at Chatham between 18th and 20th January 1916. As the highest surviving officer, Lieutenant Commander John Spencer Tyndall was the first to give evidence. He was in the Mail Office and in the immediate aftermath directed the crew to rig fire hoses. His testimony, along with that of others, in particular the divers William Russell and Charles Lambert, confirmed the opinion that the loss of Natal was due to an internal explosion caused by faulty ammunition. (The divers reported that the explosion had blown both sides of the ship bodily outwards)

Today, a buoy marks the spot where Natal sank – the remains of the wreck designated under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986. Many of those who died are remembered on the naval memorials at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth. Of the bodies recovered only 17 were identified and were buried in the local cemeteries of Cromarty and Rosskeen.

More than 100 years later their memory lives on in the local community, with a garden created in her honour at Invergordon, and museums in Cromarty and Invergordon remembering the sinking, a memorial in Durban was erected in 1927.

[regina-bithyniae]

book ask 17!

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they are?

I was expecting The Rules of the Game to be good, but it was better than that. Going into it, I had watched Drachinifel's Jutland series and read Castles of Steel, and both took a pretty similar line, 0.9 pro-Jellicoe and 0.1 pro-Beatty. Drach really hates Beatty.

TRotG's stance is effectively, "The long calm of naval dominance after Trafalgar allowed the Royal Navy to ossify into an organization of men obsessed with discipline and following orders, such as one John Jellicoe. Whatever you think of Beatty, he used a loose and aggressive command style more suitable for actual combat in visibility and signalling-limited environments."

His long social history of the Navy in the 1800s explains several odd patterns. Hugh Evan-Thomas not turning to follow the Battlecruisers right off the bat, or the bizarrely passive behavior of RN captains in the night action, where the entire High Seas Fleet barges its way through their line without anyone managing to get a signal off about it, seem like odd blips at first glance. After TRotG you get that they think "do exactly what you're told, nothing more, nothing less," reinforced by the fallout of the Victoria-Camperdown collision. He states directly that for Jellicoe to be faultless, then the only thing that could have gone wrong at Jutland were technical issues (of which there were many) and individual mistakes. And that can't be.

(Technical Issues: HMS Indefatigable exploding at Jutland)

HOWEVER, Beatty has both an extremely sloppy record, and his "loose, initiative-focused" style credentials are severely overstated. Gordon never brought up Beatty trying to micromanage the Battle of Dogger Bank after HMS Lion was crippled and fell behind the rest of the BCS, causing them to all tear off after poor SMS Blucher rather than pursue Hipper. His fuckups are many:

leaving the Queen Elizabeth's, the slowest capital ships under his command, at the rear of his formation

not meeting with Hugh Evan-Thomas to tell him how the BCS does things after the Fifth Battleship Squadron gets assigned to it

his substantial part in the signalling issues that left them behind

his substantial part in the signalling issues that told them to go straight into the High Seas Fleet

aformentioned micromanagement at Dogger Bank

keeping Seymour around in general

his part in the BCS' abysmal ammunition-handling practices (lower-confidence on this, they were in the Grand Fleet too IIRC)

Most of these are mentioned in the book. Evan-Thomas was no genius and Grand Fleet signalling practices were unsuitable, but Beatty's failure in point 2 to tell him what the "rules of the game" actually are in the Battlecruiser Fleet makes him assuming Grand Fleet rules are in place reasonable, and nudges more blame weight onto Beatty.

All in all, my take on Beatty is that he was essentially a moron with the right idea, while Jellicoe was a very technically capable practitioner of a dead-end doctrine.

[gonzalo-obes]

IMAGENES Y DATOS INTERESANTES DEL DIA 31 DE MAYO DE 2024

Día Mundial sin Tabaco, Día Mundial del Loro, Día Internacional del Tripulante de Cabina, Semana Internacional de solidaridad con los pueblos de los territorios no autónomos, Semana Europea Contra el Cáncer, Año Internacional de los Camélidos.

Santa Felisa, Santa Visitación, Santa Amelia, Santa Cancianila, Santa Petronila y Santa Avelina.

Tal día como hoy en el año 2010

El ejército de Israel ataca una flota de barcos en el mar Mediterráneo que transportaban ayuda humanitaria hacia Gaza, argumentando que llevaban armas.

1989

Miembros de la banda terrorista MRTA asesinan a ocho travestis en un bar de Tarapoto (Perú), tras lo que afirmaron que los homosexuales son 'lacras sociales utilizadas para corromper a la juventud'.

1975

Comienza a funcionar de facto la Agencia Espacial Europea (ESA), organización intergubernamental dedicada a la exploración espacial. Está formada por 18 estados miembros que son: Alemania, Austria, Bélgica, Dinamarca, España, Finlandia, Francia, Grecia, Irlanda, Italia, Luxemburgo, Noruega, Países Bajos, Portugal, Reino Unido, República Checa, Suecia y Suiza. La sede principal de la ESA está en París, Francia, aunque sus estructuras se hallan muy descentralizadas. El 1 de enero de 1979, Canadá entrará a formar parte como estado asociado. (Hace 49 años)

1916

En el Mar del Norte, frente a las costas de Dinamarca, se inicia la Batalla naval de Jutlandia en el contexto de la Primera Guerra Mundial, con resultados inciertos. Se enfrentan la Flota de Alta Mar de la Marina del Káiser, dirigida por el vicealmirante Reinhard Scheer, y la Gran Flota de la Armada Real Británica comandada por el almirante Sir John Jellicoe. (Hace 108 años)

1911

En Belfast, Irlanda, y ante una gran muchedumbre que vitorea y aplaude sin cesar, el trasatlántico Titanic es lanzado al agua para poder terminar la superestructura en el río Lagan, aún desprovisto de sus cuatro impresionantes chimeneas. Tras la botadura, el Titanic estará diez meses en el depósito de Harland & Wolff, donde se completarán las estructuras y se dará el acabado final a los muebles y la decoración. Finalmente, el 2 de Abril de 1912, el Titanic estará terminado y listo para entrar en servicio y surcar los mares. (Hace 113 años)

1910

Apenas diez años después de la segunda guerra bóer, Sudáfrica se independiza de manera limitada del Imperio Británico. La élite blanca minoritaria y antibritánica llevará a cabo una serie de políticas con la intención de lograr la independencia total. La segregación racial irá cobrando fuerza e impregnará poco a poco la legislación hasta que, finalmente, se instituya el régimen que se conocerá como apartheid. En 1961 el país alcanzará la independencia total. El gobierno continuará legislando a favor del régimen del apartheid, a pesar de una oposición cada vez mayor tanto exterior como interior. En agosto de 1989 llegará al poder Frederik de Klerk, quien se declarará a favor de un cambio en el sistema racista que terminará con las leyes discriminatorias y convocará las primeras elecciones democráticas en 1994. (Hace 114 años)

1906

En Madrid, España, en la Basílica de San Jerónimo el Real tiene lugar la boda real entre el rey Alfonso XIII y la princesa británica Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg, sobrina del rey Eduardo VII de Inglaterra. A la salida de la ceremonia, en la calle Mayor, a la altura del número 88, mientras se dirigen al Palacio Real para el banquete, sufren un atentado cuando el anarquista Mateo Morral arroja, desde el balcón de una pensión situada en el cuarto piso, una bomba camuflada en un ramo de flores contra la comitiva, que no alcanza a los reyes pero que mata a veinticuatro personas además de herir a ciento siete más que contemplan el paso del cortejo. El 2 de junio, Mateo Morral será detenido en Torrejón de Ardóz, pueblo cercano a Madrid, por un guardia jurado al que matará de un tiro para suicidarse a continuación. (Hace 118 años)

1902

En Sudáfrica, el ejército británico vence a la guerrilla de los boers (colonos holandeses) que se han sublevado. (Hace 122 años)

1860

En Rusia se funda el Banco Imperial Ruso que, a finales del siglo XIX, se convertirá en Banco Central de Rusia. (Hace 164 años)

1852

En Argentina se firma el Acuerdo Nacional de San Nicolás de los Arroyos, para sentar las bases de la organización nacional y se convoca a un Congreso Constituyente de donde saldrá la Constitución Nacional, sancionada el 11 de mayo de 1853 y promulgada el 25 de ese mismo mes para ser jurada el 9 de julio del mismo año. (Hace 172 años)

1793

Comienza el reinado del "Terror" de la Revolución Francesa al declarar los extremistas de la Convención fuera de la ley a los girondinos o moderados. Durará hasta el derrocamiento de Robespierre el 27 de julio de 1794. Al día siguiente será guillotinado. (Hace 231 años)

1790

En EE.UU. se aprueba la ley de derechos de autor bajo la condición de cumplir previamente ciertas formalidades, tales como el registro, la notificación y el pago de un depósito. Todo ello sujeto a un límite de tiempo a cuya expiración se considerará la obra de dominio público. (Hace 234 años)

[captain-price-unofficially]

As addressed in a previous post, Victoria went down with her engines running, driving her vertically into the seabed. The fact that her enormous guns were all forward didn’t help either. As such, she’s one of the few shipwrecks in the world that stands up.

One of the survivors was executive officer John Jellicoe, later commander-in-chief of the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland.

HMS Victoria sinking after her collision with HMS Camperdown in 1893. On 22 June 1893, she collided with HMS Camperdown near Tripoli, Lebanon, during maneuvers and quickly sank, killing 358 crew members, including the commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet

[thisdayinwwi]

Reel 9, IWM IWM 580, released #OTD Dec 29 1915

Peggy Vs Jumbo 

Jumbo

"Jutland Jumbo" at the Palace

"Jumbo" is the bull-dog which was regarded as Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's mascot in the "Iron Duke," and who, during 20 months afloat, experienced, among other things, the indescribable thrills of the Jutland Battle. He now accompanies Miss Gwendoline Brogden in the tube scene of "Vanity Fair" at the Palace Theatre. "Jumob" was purchased at a Red Cross Auction for 65 by Mr. Arthur Playfair, who presented it to Admiral Jellicoe. In returning "Jumbo" to his former owner, Admiral Jellicoe expressed his regret in parting with him, owing to having no garden at the moment wherein the faithful canine companion could take exercise. Our illustration shows "Jumbo" photographed with Mr. Arthur Playfair, who is in the costume of a liftman.

[officialwarspite-blog]

[mjwrightnz]

Remembering history - the battle of Jutland, 116 years on

Remembering history – the battle of Jutland, 116 years on

The Battle of Jutland was the largest naval battle of the First World War and produced casualties of similar scale to the disastrous ‘pushes’ on the Western Front. Over six thousand British sailors died and more than 2,550 German, all in a hectic afternoon and night. More than half of the British were lost in moments, aboard the four – and possibly five – British ships that blew up in…

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k t h e n e x t g e n e r a t i o n created by gene roddenberry Chain of Command, Part II [s6ep11]

[streamondemand]

'The Knack… and How to Get It' – goofing on swinging London on Criterion Channel

‘The Knack… and How to Get It’ – goofing on swinging London on Criterion Channel

In Britain in the early 1960, as “serious” directors were making socially-aware dramas in a movement that was called the “kitchen sink dramas,” American-born Richard Lester was making comedies inspired by the zany humor of the radio comedy “The Goon Show” and the freewheeling cinematic vocabulary of the French New Wave. Fresh from the playfully exuberant A Hard Day’s Night, which set the bar for…

[scotianostra]

December 30th 1915 saw the Cruiser Natal explode in Cromarty harbour, killing over 400 people.

HMS Natal on that fateful day was at anchor in the Cromarty Firth. Her Captain, Eric Percy Coventry Back, had allowed a number of the ship’s crew to take shore leave – many of them to watch, and play, in an inter-ship football match. For some of his officers however, Captain Back had invited them and their wives to a film show on board. He had also invited a family friend, John Henry Dods – a former Scottish International rugby player – his wife Annie and their children Dorothy, Marcus and John.  Captain Back’s wife (their own children were ill) and three nurses from the nearby hospital ship HMS Drina.

At around 3.20 pm the Natal was rocked by an explosion, followed by a further three blasts in short succession. Flames shot throughout the ship but the true seriousness of the situation wasn’t fully appreciated, with injured seaman were being sent to sickbay to have their burns dressed. Orders to flood the magazines couldn’t be carried out and although hoses were rigged no water was obtainable through the fire main system. Within three minutes of the first explosion the ship started to list heavily to port and after another two minutes, she had completely settled down with the forward end of the starboard bilge keel clear of the water. 421 men, women and children lost their lives in this disaster. 

The loss of the ship was soon announced to the press. Various photographs of the Natal, her crew and the ship’s cat (with the caption “Rudolph, it is feared, was on board at the time”) appeared on the front page of the Daily Sketch two days running. And although they attempted to notify next of kin as quickly as possible, the Admiralty was inundated with letters from family members of the crew.

Although not immediately ruled out, the idea of a submarine attack was soon dismissed. In order to carry out a torpedo attack, a U-boat would have needed to have passed two other ships: another cruiser and an even more tempting target – the battleship Emperor of India. Having talked to survivors personally, and from divers reports, Vice-Admiral Jellicoe was of the opinion that the foundering of the Natal was due to an internal explosion.

As was traditional in the loss of a Royal Navy ship, a Court Martial into the loss of the Natal was held at Chatham between 18th and 20th January 1916. As the highest surviving officer, Lieutenant Commander John Spencer Tyndall was the first to give evidence. He was in the Mail Office and in the immediate aftermath directed the crew to rig fire hoses. His testimony, along with that of others, in particular the divers William Russell and Charles Lambert, confirmed the opinion that the loss of Natal was due to an internal explosion caused by faulty ammunition. (The divers reported that the explosion had blown both sides of the ship bodily outwards)

Today, a buoy marks the spot where Natal sank – the remains of the wreck designated under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986. Many of those who died are remembered on the naval memorials at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth. Of the bodies recovered only 17 were identified and were buried in the local cemeteries of Cromarty and Rosskeen. 

More than 100 years later their memory lives on in the local community, with a garden created in her honour at Invergordon, and museums in Cromarty and Invergordon remembering the sinking, a memorial in Durban was erected in 1927.

[regina-bithyniae]

books

3

16

12

?

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Know No Fear (Dan Abnett): A rare "good" Warhammer book. Tells the story of "Pearl Harbor in space." A rare good use of present-tense, the sections jump POV between a dozen different characters (albeit many who die rapidly) in time-stamped sections.

The Rules of the Game (Andrew Gordon). The dive into Victorian social customs dragged, but it's as good a defense of Admiral Beatty as you're likely to get. Still avoids talking about Dogger Bank, which undermines the "open command style Beatty" case. Adds nuance to the Beatty/Jellicoe debate.

Stalin's War (Sean McMeekin). A read-in-progress, it is LONG. But provides a good, extremely critical, read of Soviet foreign policy, pointing out Stalin as a primary instigator of the Second World War.

Tsukihime: I mean uh, visual "novel" right? Some routes are better than others but Hisui True Ending is a sort of masterpiece. The "worse than median AO3"-tier porn makes it impossible to recommend to friends IRL, which hurts badly.

The Naval Battle for Henderson's Airfield (Robert Lundgren). A close re-examination of the battle, plotting out stated locations and gunnery targets of every ship involved minute-by-minute, Lundgren reveals the latter part of the "battle" occurred while the IJN had withdrawn and the USN spent several minutes shooting and torpedoing each other. Highlights a total of 10 friendly fire incidents by the US task force alone. Everyone knew the battle was a shit show, but the extent was covered up.

16. What was the most over-hyped book you read this year?

Bad take: "Black Shoe Carrier Admiral" by John Lundstrom. A defense of Admiral Fletcher, who led the US carrier fleets through 3/4 of their main 1942 battles and won all three, yet got dumped on in post-war historiography for no reason in particular. This book did a vital job re-examining it and largely turned around the narrative on Fletcher.

But dear god is it boring! I'm not sure how aircraft carrier engagements can be made dull but Lundstrom managed it! I couldn't get further than Coral Sea before I gave up. Will give it another go.

@gpuzzle shoot me

12. Any books that disappointed you?

Warhammer books are not generally good, but many are almost good if not for the missed potential.

Take Vengeful Spirit, another part of my doomed Horus Heresy speedread. Prose quality good for Black Library (BL), and it did a great job at showing the obliteration of a planet in a short, brutal campaign, and the themes came together in a way BL fiction rarely does. But it's absolutely packed, with about five main plot threads in addition to the many doomed characters brought up to show various parts of the unfolding campaign. Many cool battle sequences get set up and then abrubtly dropped.

Several of these actually get picked up in the "Doom of Molech" Adeptus Titanicus supplement. One has an outnumbered Imperial titan force fighting a delaying action, the other has their knights desperately trying to stall an enemy force.

[readastray]

My Favourite Books By Australian Authors

My Favourite Books By Australian Authors

On The Jellicoe Road – Melina Marchetta Taylor is leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs—the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again. And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor’s only clue is a manuscript about five kids who lived…

[the-maidofgevaudan]

Chase gives me Webb Schroeder vibes:

“He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it’s not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It’s the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he’s saying, ‘Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?’”- On The Jellicoe Road, By Melina Marchetta

happiest of birthdays to one of earth’s sweetest souls. i hope it’s a good one, you deserve it.

[today-in-wwi]

The End of Today in World War I (continued)

This half will cover what became of some of the foremost personalities of the Great War after the events previously covered.

United Kingdom

King George V emerged from the war a popular leader, even if his health was not once what it was after his injury and long-term chain smoking.  He died in early 1936 at the age of 70.

Asquith and Lloyd George eventually reunited their two factions of the Liberals in 1923, under Asquith’s leadership.  Asquith supported a Labour minority government later that year, which backfired at the next election. He accepted a peerage in 1925 and died in 1928.

Lloyd George took over leadership of the Liberal Party after Asquith’s departure, but relinquished it after refusing to support the National Government during the Depression.  He did not join the War Cabinet in World War II, and served in the Commons until he was elevated to a peerage shortly before his death in 1945.

Churchill lost his seat in Parliament in the November 1922 election, and while out of office began writing his account of the First World War, The World Crisis (which I used, with appropriate skepticism, at certain points during the war).  He returned to Parliament in 1924, joined the Conservative Party, and served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer until the Labour victory in 1929.  He continued as a backbencher until the outbreak of World War II, at which point he once again became First Lord of the Admiralty, then Prime Minister after the invasion of the Low Countries.  His Conservatives were defeated in 1945, but he returned to power in 1951 until his resignation in 1955; he died ten years later.

Beatty helped negotiate the Washington Naval Treaty, and retired from the Navy in 1927. Jellicoe served as Governor-General of New Zealand from 1920-1924. Their partisans continued to debate their actions at Jutland throughout the 1920s.  Jellicoe died in late 1935; Beatty, despite his poor health, attended and died four months later.

Admiral Reginald Hall served as a Conservative MP from 1919-1923, and 1925-1929, and died in 1943.

Field Marshal Haig left the military in 1920, and spent most of his remaining 8 years advocating for former soldiers.

General Plumer served as British High Commissioner of Palestine and Trans-Jordan from 1925-1928, and died in 1932.

General Byng, once commander of the Canadian Corps, became Governor-General of Canada in 1921. In 1926, he declined to dissolve parliament on the request of PM Mackenzie King. The resulting controversy helped spur reform of Dominion status codified in 1931.  From 1928-1931, he served as the Commissioner of the Metropolitcan Police. He was promoted to Field Marshal in 1932 and died in 1935.

General Rawlinson served as the Commander in Chief in India from 1920 until his death in 1925.

Allenby remained as High Commissioner in Egypt until 1925, and died in 1936.

Sir John French resigned from the military (and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) in April 1921, and died in 1925.

General Gough lived until 1963, giving him plenty of time to write multiple sets of memoirs about the war. He commanded the Chelsea Home Guard early in World War II.

Sir Edward Grey served as Ambassador to the United States for a brief stint in 1919-1920, then as Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1928 until his death in 1933.

Charles Townshend was elected as a non-Coalition Conservative in a 1920 by-election, but further coverage of his troops’ fate in captivity after the surrender of Kut tarnished his reputation.  He did not stand in the 1922 election, and died in 1924.

Canada

Despite only having a high school education, Arthur Currie served as vice-chancellor of McGill from 1920 until his death in 1933. In 1927 and 1928, he was involved in a bitter libel suit against a Canadian newspaper that suggested his effort to liberate Mons on the final day of the war was needlessly wasteful of lives; he won the suit but was only awarded $500 in damages.

South Africa

Jan Smuts succeeded Louis Botha as South African PM upon the latter’s death in 1919, and served until his party was defeated in a 1924 election.  He once again became Prime Minister at the outset of World War II, and at the close of the war, became the only person to have signed both the United Nations Charter and the Treaty of Versailles.  His party was defeated by the hardline pro-apartheid National Party in 1948, two years before his death.

France

Raymond Poincar�� served as French PM for two different stretches totaling over five years in the 1920s, during the first of which he ordered the occupation of the Ruhr.  He retired due to ill health in 1929, and died in 1934.

Clemenceau launched a failed bid for the presidency in 1920, then retired from politics. He died in 1929.

Pétain led the campaign to defeat Abd el-Krim in the Rif (along with the Spanish) in 1925-1926, briefly served as Minister of War in 1934, then as ambassador to Franco’s Spain in 1939.  In May 1940, as Germany invaded France, he was made Deputy Prime Minister, then became Prime Minister after the fall of Paris.  A second armistice of Compiègne was signed on June 22, and his government collaborated with the Germans until it was evacuated to Germany in September 1944. Sentenced to death for treason after the war, this was quickly commuted to life imprisonment due to his service in World War I.  He was discharged on health grounds a few weeks before his death in 1951.

Sarrail, after spending a long time in the wilderness due to his socialism, was appointed High Commissioner of Syria in 1924.  His tenure there saw the start of a multi-year revolt, and he was recalled after ordering the shelling of Damascus. He died in 1929.

Aristide Briand led the French negotiations at the Washington Naval Conference while Prime Minister, but was soon replaced by Poincaré.  He returned to power for two more brief periods later in the 1920s, and even when not PM served as Foreign Minister from 1926 until his death in 1932.  In 1926, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the Locarno Treaties, which normalized relations with Germany (including its accession into the League) in return for formal German recognition of its western borders.  In 1928, the oft-derided Kellogg-Briand Pact committed its signatories (initially, Germany, France, and the United States) to not use war to resolve “disputes or conflicts.”  

Belgium

King Albert I’s wartime service made him popular for the remainder of his reign, cut short by a mountaineering accident in the Ardennes in 1934.

Serbia

Nikola Pašić served as PM of Yugoslavia for most of the period from 1921 until his death in 1926, and was instrumental in centralizing the Yugoslav state under Serbian rule.

Japan

Katō Takaaki became Prime Minister in 1924.  During his tenure, which lasted until his death in 1926, he normalized relations with the Soviet Union, withdrawing the last Japanese forces from Kamchatka and northern Sakhalin, and extended suffrage to all men over 25.

Italy

King Victor Emmanuel III abdicated in 1946, in an attempt to save the monarchy after his decades-long collaboration with Mussolini.  He was unsuccessful, and died the next year.

Pietro Badoglio warmed himself to Mussolini, and was appointed Chief of Staff in 1925.  In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he led a genocidal campaign to pacify Libya, and in 1935 he completed the Italian conquest of Abyssinia. He was dismissed as Chief of Staff following Italian defeats in Greece in late 1940. In 1943, the king named him Prime Minister, and a hasty armistice was negotiated with the Allies.  His fascist ties eventually made his position untenable, and he left office the next year. He died in 1956.

Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz

Hussein abdicated as King of Hejaz shortly before the Saudi conquest of the area in 1924.  Feisal, after his defeat in Syria in 1920, became King of Iraq from 1921 until his death in 1933; in the final year of his reign, the British mandate ended and Iraq officially gained its independence.

TE Lawrence returned to military life in 1922, published his Seven Pillars of Wisdom about his time in the Arab Revolt in 1926, and died in a motorcycle crash in 1935.

Greece

Venizelos returned to power briefly in Greece in 1924, then again after a landslide victory in 1928.  He helped normalize relationships with Italy, Yugoslavia, and Turkey, before the Great Depression led to another defeat in 1932.  He left Greece in 1935 following a failed coup by his supporters, and died the next year.

United States

Woodrow Wilson remained bitter at the Treaty of Versailles’ defeat, and spent much of his last years in a delusion plan to mount a bid for a third term in 1924; he died in February 1924 before these could come to fruition.

William McAdoo again sought the Democratic nomination in 1924, and led on the first ballot, but ties to those implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal and an endorsement from the KKK doomed his chances.  He served one term as a Senator from California in the 1930s, and died in 1941.

Pershing served as the US Army Chief of Staff from 1921 to 1924, and largely retreated from public life afterwards, although he did play a role in promoting aid to the United Kingdom in 1940.  His rank of General of the Armies meant he still outranked the five-star generals created in World War II. He died in 1948.

Admiral Sims won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1921 book The Victory at Sea which described his experiences in the war. He retired in 1922, and died in 1936.

William Jennings Bryan moved his focus away from politics after 1920 and concentrated on religion, mounting a failed bid for Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA and participating in the Scopes Monkey Trial shortly before his death in 1925.

Charles Evans Hughes served as Harding’s Secretary of State, and was instrumental in the negotiation of the Washington Naval Treaty. He returned to the Supreme Court, this time as Chief Justice, in 1930, serving as Chief Justice through the New Deal era until his retirement in 1941. He died in 1948.

Germany

Kaiser Wilhelm II remained in exile in the Netherlands until his death in 1941, even after the German conquest of the country in 1940.  His son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, returned to Germany in 1923 and involved himself in politics until the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. He died ten years after his father, in 1951.

Hindenburg was elected President in 1925 and served until his death in 1934; in 1933, he appointed Hitler as Chancellor.

After the Beer Hall Putsch, Ludendorff ran for President in 1925 as the Nazi candidate, receiving barely more than 1% of the vote. He fell further into conspiracy theories and was sidelined by the Nazis after their rise to power; he died in 1937.

Wilhelm Groener served as minister in several governments during the Weimar Republic, before leaving politics in 1932. He died in 1939.

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck was forced out of the military after being involved in the Kapp Putsch, and became involved in monarchist politics later. Hitler apparently offered him the ambassadorship to the United Kingdom in 1935, but he declined. He died in Hamburg in 1964.

Mackensen became involved in far-right politics in the 1920s, even endorsing Erzberger’s murder.  He and the Nazis enjoyed a tenuous relationship; they enjoyed his propaganda value, but did not like his committed monarchism. He died in late 1945.

Count Bernstoff helped to found the liberal German Democratic Party in 1921, and served in the Reichstag until 1928. He left Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933, and died in Geneva in 1939.

Admiral Tirpitz continued his involvement in far-right politics, and served in the Reichstag for the German National People’s Party for a few years in the 1920s, before dying in 1930.

Austria-Hungary

Empress Zita lived in exile in various countries for the rest of her life, outliving her husband by 77 years, never remarrying until her death in 1989.

Admiral Horthy continued to serve as Regent of Hungary, allying with Nazi Germany during the war, until the Nazis deposed him after concluding an armistice with the Soviets in October 1944.  He was freed by the Allies after the end of the war and lived in exile until his death in 1957.

Ottoman Empire

Mustafa Kemal became the first President of the new Turkish Republic from 1923 until his death in 1938, and played an outsized role in shaping modern Turkey.

Russia

Lenin continued as the effective head of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union until his death in early 1924.  Trotsky lost the power struggle after his death, went into exile in 1929, and was assassinated by an agent of Stalin in Mexico City in 1940.

Kerensky lived in exile in France until 1940, and then in the United States until his death in 1970.

Romania

General Averescu served as Prime Minister twice in the 1920s; in his second government, he attempted to align himself with Mussolini’s government in Italy. He remained politically active until his death in 1938.

Finland

Mannerheim was made Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Army upon the Soviet invasion in November 1939, and remained in place until he became President in August 1944.  He concluded the war with the Soviet Union and joined the Allies.  After the end of the war, he resigned as president in 1946, and died five years later.

Mexico

Pancho Villa ended his hostilities in 1920, after the assassination of President Carranza, but was himself assassinated by political enemies in 1923.

Final Words

Thanks again to all my readers, and to all those I thanked three years ago.

After seven years and one gender transition (tumblr will have its due, after all), it’s time to finally close the book here.  I will not be doing a similar project for World War II, but might do something for the 150th anniversary come 2064.

[isfjmel-phleg]

"Perhaps he's saving up to get married. We may be helping toward furnishing the home. There was a Siamese prince fellow at my dame's at Eton who had four wives when he arrived, and gathered in a fifth during his first summer holidays. It was done on the correspondence system. His Prime Minister fixed it up at the other end, and sent him the glad news on a picture post card. I think an eye ought to be kept on Comrade Jellicoe."

I've talked about this before when I did annotations, but it was such an interesting research rabbit trail (Hare trail?) that I want to bring it back.

There really was a Siamese (Thai) prince at Eton during the time Psmith would have been there. Prince Prajadhipok (1893-1941) attended Eton starting in 1906. The rest of Psmith's story is nonsense; the prince was obviously unmarried during his time at school and would go on to marry only once.

"Dame" was Eton slang for "housemaster." The prince's housemaster was John Hugh Montague Hare (1857-1935), who played first-class cricket for Oxford before becoming a schoolmaster at Winchester and later Eton. Schoolboys reportedly referred to him as "Bunny."

According to his obituary (which I just stumbled across today!):

Hare adopted an old-fashioned style of dress, and a careworn, anxious, and almost dilapidated air. To judge solely by appearances, few would suppose that he had been an athlete, a prosperous house master and an opulent Norfolk squire. His methods were as peculiar as his appearance. As a teacher, he proved an admirable instructor of backward boys and no one knew how he ruled his house. He was indecisive and hesitating, yet invariably had his own way and his house was conspicuously well conducted.

Few at Eton were held in such high regard by their students. Hare's house living room was a regular port of call for his pupils and regularly packed with them, and from there they overflowed through the passage and the staircase and on into many other rooms.

If Psmith were a real person, this is who his housemaster would have been, and the interactions would have be fascinating, no doubt!

Hare's house is now called Durnford House, so we can assume that this is where Psmith would have lived during his time at Eton. A far cry from the much humbler Sedleigh!