Lodge opposed League of Nations

It is the birthday of historian and politician Henry Cabot Lodge (1850), who advocated intervention in Cuba that led to the Spanish-American War, annexation of the Philippines after the war, and limits on immigration, especially of the low skilled and poorly educated. He staunchly believed Americans should drop hyphenated designations such as Irish-American or Italian-American and just be American. He hated Woodrow Wilson and criticized his reluctance to get into World War I. He thought that Germany should be crushed and crippled so it could never again threaten the stability of Europe. He successfully fought United States membership in the League of Nations, and vehemently opposed the Treaty of Versailles because it didn’t require Germany’s unconditional surrender. Lodge wrote biographies, including Alexander Hamilton (1882), Daniel Webster (1883), George Washington (1889), and Theodore Roosevelt (1919), as well as other historical works.

Happy birthday, William Allen White

It is the birthday of newspaper editor and Progressive political leader William Allen White (1868), who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for editorial writing, wrote numerous novels about small-town ideals, and biographies of Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge. He also wrote non-fiction political and social commentary, including The Old Order Changeth (1910), Politics: A Citizen’s Business (1924), Forty Years on Main Street (1937), and The Changing West (1939). He was a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and supported him politically. He never voted for President Franklin D. Roosevelt but staunchly supported his New Deal policies, though he considered them haphazard. His autobiography, published in 1947 three years after his death, won a Pulitzer Prize.