The Montgomery Advertiser
- AMERICA WILL ADHERE TO WORLD COURT ONLY ON SENATE CONDITIONS IS PROMISE OF COOLIDGE IN MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
- CLAYTON DEPLORES ANTI-AMERICAN TREND IN EUROPE
- TESTIMONY ENDS IN DAVIS TRIAL ON EIGHTH DAY
The Montgomery Advertiser's front page of November 12, 1926, led with the AP account of President Coolidge's Armistice Day address at the foot of Kansas City's war memorial, where he gave formal notice that the United States would join the World Court only on the Senate's terms, even as reports said the member nations would never accept them. Closer to home, Federal Judge Henry D. Clayton told the Montgomery American Legion banquet that America would never again send an army to Europe and could fight a defensive war against the combined world. The page also reported the close of testimony in the trial of Warden Davis, former head of the Flat Top prison camp, with witnesses on who directed convicts underground, the absence of bruises on the dead prisoner's face, and an alleged offer of a job in exchange for testimony.
Translation
AMERICA WILL ADHERE TO WORLD COURT ONLY ON SENATE CONDITIONS IS PROMISE OF COOLIDGE IN MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
(AP) - From the base of the great monument erected in this city to the memory of the men and women of the world war, and in the presence of a huge throng from the entire southwest, President Coolidge served formal notice in an Armistice day address today that the United States would adhere to the world court only on the conditions laid down by the senate. The significance of the utterance from the president, who at all times had urged membership in the court and in the face of reports that the nations represented in the court would never accept the senate reservations to the protocol of adherence was not lost upon the crowd which stretched far out of sight, but never out of hearing of the address.
CLAYTON DEPLORES ANTI-AMERICAN TREND IN EUROPE
Federal Judge Henry D. Clayton, in an address delivered at the banquet at the Exchange hotel, Thursday evening, of Montgomery Post American Legion, in observance of Armistice Day, declared that in his opinion, America will never send another army to Europe. It will not be necessary for the preservation of the nation's institutions and civil liberty, he stated, adding that America with its vast resources and its splendid citizenship, can fight a defensive war successfully against the combined world.
TESTIMONY ENDS IN DAVIS TRIAL ON EIGHTH DAY
Mr. Nolen also testified that actual working of convicts under the ground is in charge of mine superintendents and not directed by the warden of the prison camp. A. E. Ingram, Blossburg undertaker, testified there were no bruises on the prisoner's face that he recalled. Len Nichols, of Perry county, who was paroled three weeks ago, while serving a sentence for murder, testified that J. Dunn, a former guard at Flat Top, informed him that Wiley Pugh had promised him (Dunn) the Age-Herald would give a good job if he would testify in the Davis case.
Davis on Stand
Warden Davis said that he was warden at Flat Top and had supervision of Banner and Belle Ellen mines, at the time of Knox's demise, and that he retired from the position April 5, 1926. "Did you
Context
What the Senate's World Court reservations demanded, and how narrow the dispute really was
The conditions Coolidge endorsed were five reservations the Senate attached to American adherence to the Permanent Court of International Justice after a fight in January 1926; TIME reported that the Senate would accept nothing short of their verbatim acceptance. In September 1926 a Geneva conference of the Court's signatory states answered with counter-reservations, and some senators who had favored the Court turned hostile. That sequence lies behind the AP report's reference to reports that the nations in the Court would never accept the Senate reservations. In Kansas City Coolidge said he did not intend to ask the Senate to modify its position, which TIME summarized as his one policy pronouncement: no entry unless the reservations were accepted in toto. A note sent by Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg in February 1929 later showed how narrow the gap was. The replies following the Geneva recommendations accepted the first four reservations, and the only substantial difference concerned the second part of the fifth, which barred advisory opinions touching questions in which the United States claimed an interest without its consent. The reports the AP cited described a sweeping refusal, while the recorded replies show disagreement concentrated on a single clause.
Why Coolidge spoke at Kansas City's Liberty Memorial, and how the speech was read abroad
The "great monument" in the AP lead was Kansas City's Liberty Memorial, a 217-foot limestone shaft the city built for $2,000,000 in memory of its World War dead. TIME noted that Coolidge had earlier come to Kansas City to lay the memorial's corner stone and returned on Armistice Day 1926 to dedicate it. TIME put the audience at 150,000 and mentioned the radio transmitters before the speaker, which matches the paper's picture of a crowd stretching out of sight yet never out of hearing. Observers abroad shared the AP's sense of the statement's weight: the London Times judged that the speech must virtually destroy the expectations, confidently held a few months before, that the United States would adhere to the Court.
Why European opinion was cooling toward the United States in 1926
War debts were a standing grievance between Europe and the United States when Clayton spoke. Congress created the World War Foreign Debt Commission in February 1922, and it reached agreements with thirteen European debtor nations before its five-year term expired. Every settlement spread repayment of principal over sixty-two years, and on a 5 percent basis the settlements as a whole amounted to cancelling 51.3 percent of what could have been required. Great Britain, France, Italy and Belgium nonetheless believed the debts should have been cancelled altogether as America's contribution to a common struggle. The World Court statement added to the friction: the London Evening Standard wrote that Europe's peace settlement had been made on the assumption that America would play "snake charmer in chief," a part "she has refused." The excerpted passage of Clayton's speech gives no cause for the anti-American trend named in its headline and does not mention debts; his confidence that America could defend itself against "the combined world" was voiced while these disputes were unresolved.
Who James Knox was, and what the Davis trial witnesses were contesting
The "Knox" whose death frames Warden Davis's testimony was James Knox, a convict from Mobile who died at the Flat Top mine prison, where Sloss-Sheffield used convict labor until Alabama outlawed it in 1928. Knox's death was first reported as suicide by swallowing bichloride of mercury, but the autopsy found he had died of heart failure, with poison injected after death, and investigators determined that his fatal injuries came from whipping with a steel wire and immersion in hot water. The Encyclopedia of Alabama, without naming him, records that in 1924 the death of a prisoner tortured by being lowered into a vat of boiling water prompted an investigation. The testimony in the excerpt bears on two contested questions: the physical evidence of abuse, addressed by the undertaker Ingram's recollection of no bruises on the face, and responsibility for the convicts' work, addressed by Nolen's statement that mine superintendents rather than the warden directed labor underground. Nichols's account of a job allegedly promised through the Age-Herald put the motives behind testimony in the case at issue.
How Alabama's convict-lease mines operated, and how the system ended
From 1875 to 1928 the state and counties of Alabama profited from leasing prisoners' labor, overwhelmingly to coal mines around Birmingham. More than 95 percent of county prisoners and 90 percent of state prisoners were African American, and whipping was the accepted norm for punishment. Banner, one of the mines Davis said he supervised, was the site of the 1911 explosion that killed 123 African American county prisoners. In 1912 TCI announced it would employ only free workers, and the state then took over management of the prison mines and sold their coal directly, an arrangement consistent with the trial's attention to the division of authority between a prison warden and mine superintendents. Alabama abolished convict leasing on June 30, 1928, the last state to do so, and the City of Birmingham's history page notes that many historians argue Knox's death at Flat Top helped quicken that end. The Davis trial reported here took place in November 1926, about a year and a half before abolition.
Original
AMERICA WILL ADHERE TO WORLD COURT ONLY ON SENATE CONDITIONS IS PROMISE OF COOLIDGE IN MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
(AP) - From the base of the great monument erected in this city to the memory of the men and women of the world war, and in the presence of a huge throng from the entire southwest, President Coolidge served formal notice in an Armistice day address today that the United States would adhere to the world court only on the conditions laid down by the senate. The significance of the utterance from the president, who at all times had urged membership in the court and in the face of reports that the nations represented in the court would never accept the senate reservations to the protocol of adherenco was not lost upon the crowd which stretched far out of sight, but never out of hearing of the address.
CLAYTON DEPLORES ANTI-AMERICAN TREND IN EUROPE
Federal Judge Henry D. Clayton, in an address delivered at the banquet at the Exchange hotel, Thursday evening, of Montgomery Post American Legion, in observance of Armistice Day, declared that in his opinion, America will never send another army to Europe. It will not be necessary for the preservation of the nation's institutions and civil liberty, he stated, adding that America with its vast resources and its splendid citizenship, can fight a defensive war successfully against the combined world.
TESTIMONY ENDS IN DAVIS TRIAL ON EIGHTH DAY
Mr. Nolen also testified that actual working of convicts under the ground is in charge of mine superintendents and not directed by the warden of the prison camp. A. E. Ingram, Blossburg undertaker, testified there were no brises on the prisoner's face that he recalled. Len Nichols, of Perry county, who was paroled three weeks ago, while serving a sentence for murder, testified that J. Dunn, a former guard at Flat Top, informed him that Wiley Pugh had promised him (Dunn) the Age-Herald would give a good job if he would testify in the Davis case. Davis on Stand Warden Davis said that he was warden at Flat Top and had supervision of Banner and Belle Ellen mines, at the time of Knox's demise, and that he retired from the position April 5, 1926. " Did you
Source: Holding institution