100 Years Ago - Felix the Cat

Almost since the first moving pictures thrilled audiences, we've enjoyed cartoons. Digging through the internet archives I came across this little gem from 1919. One hundred years ago, maybe not to the day, but close enough to qualify. Enjoy a bit of ragtime piano and the antics of Felix the Cat.

The Funnies - Special Christmas Eve Edition

Cartoonist Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling expressing the Christmas sentiment 100 years ago for the Des Moines Register and Leader. Ding was a multi-talented fellow and important in the conservation movement as well as being an editorial cartoonist, he helped initiate the Federal Duck Stamp program, designed its first stamp, and headed up the US Biological Survey (the forerunner of the Fish and Wildlife Service) for Franklin D. Roosevelt. The man's got a Pulitzer, a National Audubon Society Award, and a nature preserve named after him...who says doodling won't get you anywhere?

100 Years Ago - Beer, Bread, and Prohibition

The Price of a Pint
"As far as I can make out from the papers, Bert, the breweries seem to 'ave been
'ard 'it by this blinkin' war."

In 1916, while World War I was churning the fields of Flanders into blood-soaked poppy fields, the beer-soaked pubs of England were under siege by the British parliament. In a rationing move then Prime Minister, Lloyd George, implemented the Output of Beer Act of 1916 which cut England's production of beer and raised the per-barrel duty on brewers. Since then, various people have tried to link this action with a hidden prohibition agenda, however no conclusive evidence has ever emerged. In 1916 there may have been grumblings about the rationing of beer and higher prices, but in 1919 these would erupt into civil unrest which eventually undid the Output Act.

In 1917, though, the cartoonist Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, who'd served with a machine gun regiment in France and had been mustered out of the service after suffering shell shock and hearing loss during the Second Battle of Ypres, obviously didn't feel the pains of the people. His feature character "Old Bill" puts the gripes of the brewers in prospective.

Part of me has to wonder if Samwise Gamgee's pony, Old Bill, wasn't actually a bit of J. R. R. Tolkien tipping his hat to Captain Bairnsfather since they'd both served in the trenches during the Great War.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Once this card probably raised eyebrows, now I just think of Granny from the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. Happy Valentine's Day!

100 Years Ago: Ominous Overtones

Let America Beware: Some Day the Sun will
Rise Above the Stars
Kladderdatsch, 1916

On August 14, 1914 Japan entered World War I, formerly declaring war on Germany at the request of the British government. For doing so, the Japanese government had been promised possession of all German colonial territories in the Pacific should the Allies win the war. Japanese forces took possession of Shandong province in China and cut off the German settlement at Tsingtao by October and went on to seize the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands.

In 1915 Japan presented China with what would become known as the Twenty-One Demands. These saw Japan as the new and most important power in the Pacific. China would become little more than a Japanese protectorate and the colonial privileges enjoyed by the European Allies and United States would be rescinded in favor of Japanese interests.

This little propaganda cartoon printed in 1916 by the German paper Kladderdatsch (a paper that would later be a major promoter of the Nazi party) was meant to stir up animosities between the U.S. and the Allies. The hope (seemed to be) that the threat to American colonial concerns in China and the Pacific would be enough to fracture the alliance and stop arms shipments to Europe. Instead, the Twenty-One Demands proved so unpopular with the Allies that Japan withdrew the final group of them, leaving colonial possessions in the Pacific and China in tact until World War II. The damage done to the Japanese reputation, though, was irreversible...they had become a naval power, but would never have the close relationship with Europe they'd enjoyed before. Strange how, in a way, Kladderdatsch predicted the eventual strike on Pearl Harbor, though...

WWI - The Price of Neutrality (1915)

British Lion: "Please don't look at me like that, Sam. YOU'RE not the eagle I'm up against."

I had a little time to turn my attention back to the Great War this morning, fortunate since I had a cartoon that is exactly 100 years old today! As of this day 100 years ago, the US was still a neutral party to the growing European conflict. Woodrow Wilson had sent out an appeal to the US people on August 17, 1914 to be "impartial in thought as well as action", a plea meant to stave off attacks from pro-war pundits within the country while he tried to beat back British encroachments against neutral trade with their enemies, Germany and Austria-Hungary. Understandably, his efforts were less than acceptable and in December of 1914 he was forced to give up the effort to use the 1909 Treaty of London as a guarantee of safety for American merchant ships and fall back on much more ambiguous international law.

On February 4, 1915 the German government announced that it would begin a submarine campaign against the allies overwhelming naval power and that, because submarine commanders would find it hard to differentiate neutral ships from those of the allies, no vessel would be safe from being torpedoed within the war zone. This move prompted a warning that Berlin would be held accountable for any US losses from Wilson, but it was vague and Washington wasn't really sure how it would handle any transgressions.

The political cartoon from the January 6, 1915 issue of Punch depicts the British Lion giving Sam the Eagle an assurance that the British rejection of US neutrality shouldn't be taken personally. It's a bit paternalistic in tone, if you ask me, but it's coming from London's perspective in a time when Empire was a real thing. The cartoonist, John Bernard Partridge, was the London born nephew of John Partridge, portrait painter to Queen Victoria. Partridge started his career as an architect before beginning a career as an illustrator. He came to Punch in 1910, replacing the magazine's chief cartoonist. The year this cartoon ran, Partridge also was designing war posters including his famous Take Up the Sword of Justice .

In 1925 Partridge was knighted. He died at the age of 84 in August of 1945.