Prager Tagblatt
- Electoral Defeat of the Republicans
- The Fascist Acts of Violence
- Fascist Acts of Terror in New York
The Prager Tagblatt's front page of 4 November 1926 carried three foreign reports. A United Press dispatch from Washington read the first returns of the US midterm elections as a Republican setback. It counted a Senate split 46 to 46 with one Farmer-Labor senator and argued that seven independent Republicans would hold the real balance. A second report followed the diplomatic fallout after Fascists stormed the French consulate in Tripoli and after incidents at Ventimiglia, which drew the sharpest protests from the French ambassador in Rome. A third described Blackshirts of the New York Fascist branch wrecking the offices and composing rooms of the anti-fascist papers Il Martello and Il Nuovo Mondo in reprisal for the latest attempt on Mussolini's life.
Translation
Electoral Defeat of the Republicans
Washington, November 3. (United Press.) As a result of yesterday's elections for 35 Senate seats, the Senate, according to the results available so far, now consists of 46 Democrats, 46 Republicans and one representative of the Farmer-Labor Party, Senator Shipstead. The three seats still outstanding will be filled by special elections in Republican districts and, even if wholly unexpected circumstances should arise, can definitely be counted for the Republicans. But this time, too, the Congress that convenes in March will have only a purely formal Republican majority. The real decision will always rest with the group of seven independent Republicans, and today these will go with the Democrats.
The Fascist Acts of Violence
In Tripoli, too, several Fascists stormed the French consulate building and physically threatened the consul and the consulate staff. The French ambassador in Rome, Besnard, protested against this in the sharpest terms at the Consulta early this morning; the Consulta promised to open an inquiry and to punish the guilty severely. In Ventimiglia, the investigation opened on the French side is expected to be concluded today. The incidents there, too, have been made the subject of an official démarche by the French ambassador in Rome.
Fascist Acts of Terror in New York
New York, November 3. (United Press.) The editorial offices and composing rooms of the local anti-fascist Italian newspapers "Il Martello" and "Il Nuovo Mondo" have been partly destroyed by a group of Italian Fascists in reprisal for the attempt on Mussolini's life. The intruders, all of whom belong to the New York branch of the Fascist party and wore black shirts, first forced their way into the composing room of "Il Martello," where they compelled the Italian typesetters to leave their posts.
Context
What did the 2 November 1926 elections change in Congress?
The Prague paper, working from a United Press wire filed while counting was still under way, reported a Senate tied at 46 Democrats and 46 Republicans plus the Farmer-Labor senator Shipstead. It assigned the three outstanding seats to the Republicans and argued that seven independent Republicans would decide votes in practice. The settled record confirms the direction of the result but not its drama. The elections took place on 2 November 1926, midway through Calvin Coolidge's second and only full term. The Republicans lost six Senate seats and nine House seats to the Democrats yet kept their majority in both chambers, and the Democratic gains were very modest for a midterm election. The headline's 'electoral defeat' therefore describes a narrowed Republican margin. The claim about the swing role of the independent Republicans is the paper's own political judgement, which the sources used here do not test.
What did voters decide about Prohibition on the same day?
Besides choosing members of Congress, voters in eight states answered Prohibition referendums on 2 November 1926. According to Time's issue of 15 November 1926, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, New York and Wisconsin voted to modify the liquor laws, with New York's Wet majority exceeding three to one, while the Drys prevailed in California, Colorado and Missouri. Time judged the Missouri result meaningless because the Wets had repudiated their own proposal before election day. The magazine also noted three Brooklyn voters old enough to have voted for Lincoln who went to the polls and voted to modify the Volstead Act. The Prague wire counted only party seats in the Senate, but the same ballots showed that the Prohibition question was being fought out in the states alongside the party contest the paper described.
Which attempt on Mussolini did the New York attackers claim to avenge?
The New York report presents the raid as a reprisal for the attempt on Mussolini, and the most recent attempt had happened only three days before the wire was filed. On 31 October 1926 a shot was fired at Mussolini as he rode in an open car through Bologna, and a 15-year-old boy was lynched. The terrorism specialist J. Bowyer Bell later wrote that the boy was likely innocent and that the affair was either a put-up job or a plot among Fascists. The attempt resulted in laws creating Mussolini's secret police. It was the third attempt on Mussolini that year: on 7 April Violet Gibson fired a pistol shot that grazed his nose, and on 11 September the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his limousine at Porta Pia in Rome, injuring four other people. The Blackshirts in New York thus acted at the height of a crisis that the regime turned into new police powers at home.
How were fascists organized among Italian Americans, and how did Washington view them?
The Blackshirts whom the paper calls the New York branch of the Fascist party belonged to a movement that had spread quickly through Italian-American communities: nearly forty Fasci groups had been organized by mid-1923. In 1924 the Fascist League of North America was formed as an umbrella for these groups, and in the mid-to-late 1920s the party in Rome sent Paolo Ignazio Maria Thaon di Revel to organize the local Fasci into the league. The US State Department was ambivalent, initially viewing the league as a body committed to law and order and anti-communism. Anti-fascist Italian Americans had formed an Anti-Fascist Alliance of North America as early as 1923, and clashes between the two camps grew more common, ending in at least a dozen deaths divided evenly between them. The league's end came three years after this raid: following a sensational Harper's Magazine article in November 1929, Mussolini instructed Ambassador de Martino to dissolve it, using the public outcry as a pretext.
What kind of paper was Il Nuovo Mondo?
Il Nuovo Mondo, one of the two papers attacked, was an Italian-language anti-fascist daily whose first issue appeared in New York on 16 November 1925, so it was not yet a year old at the time of the raid. It is described as the first anti-Fascist daily published abroad by Italians. Its financier was Local 89 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and its pages carried mainly articles by Italian exiles who had left Italy because of Fascist oppression. On 26 August 1926, about ten weeks before the attack, it published the manifesto of the North American Anti-Fascist Alliance. These ties to organized labor and to the exile opposition help explain why Fascists seeking reprisals in New York singled it out alongside Il Martello.
Original
Wahlniederlage der Republikaner.
Washington, 3. November. (United Preß.) Als Resultat der gestrigen Neuwahlen von 35 Senatoren besteht der Senat nunmehr nach den bisher vorliegenden Resultaten aus 46 Demokraten, 46 Republikanern und einem Vertreter der Farmer-labour-Partei Senator Shipstead. Die noch außenstehenden drei Sitze werden durch Ersatzwahlen in republikanischen Bezirken besetzt werden und können, selbst wen noch ganz unerwartete Umstände eintreffen, definitiv den Republikanern zugerechnet werden. Aber auch diesmal wird der im März zusammentretende Kongreß nur eine rein formale republikanische Mehrheit haben. Die eigentliche Entscheidung wird immer bei der Gruppe der sieben unabhängigen Republikaner liegen und diese werden heute mit den Demokraten gehen.
Die fascistischen Gewalttaten.
Auch in Tripolis haben mehrere Fascisten das französische Konsulatsgebäde gestürmt und den Konsul und das Konsulatspersonal tätlich bedroht. Der französische Botschafter in Rom Besnard hat dagegen heute früh in schärfster Weise auf der Consulatà protestiert, die versprochen hat, eine Untersuchung einzuleiten und die Schuldigen streng zu bestrafen. In Ventimiglia dürfte die auf französischer Seite eingeleitete Untersuchung heute zum Abschluß kommen. Auch die dortigen Zwischenfälle sind vom französischen Botschafter in Rom zum Gegenstand einer offiziellen Demarche gemacht worden.
Fascistische Terrorakte in New York
New York, 3. November. (United Preß.) Die Redaktionsräume und Setzereien in den hiesigen antifascistischen italienischen Zeitungen " Il Martello " und " Il Nuovo Mondo " sind als Repressalien für das Attentat auf Mussolini von einer Gruppe italienischer Fascisten teilweise zerstört worden. Die Eindringlinge, die sämtlich der New Yorker Ortsgruppe der fascistischen Partei angehören und Schwarzhemden trugen, drangen zunächst in die Setzeret des " Il Martello " ein, wo sie die italienischen Setzer zwangen, ihre Posten zu verlassen.