The Wingfoot Express took its maiden voyage around Chicago on July 21st, 1919. The 150-foot long airship was filled with hydrogen gas--lighter than air, but extremely flammable.

The dirigible caught fire in downtown Chicago, inside the Loop, right above the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, at the corner of LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard. The entire ship was consumed in literally seconds. The five men aboard jumped and tried to inflate their parachutes, but only three were successful. One man, mechanic Carl Weaver, plunged through the skylight of the bank.

In this photo of the bank before the disaster, you can see how the interior was ringed by a circle of teller stations. They enclosed an area where typists, telegraphists, and other bank staff worked. For security purposes, this inner area could only be accessed through two gated entrances.

Flaming debris, including the engine and two full tanks, crashed through the skylight above this inner area, starting a massive fire and trapping employees inside.

This image of the interior of the bank after the disaster gives some sense of the horror of those trapped inside. 13 people died in the crash, ten of them bank employees.

Before radio, fans had few ways to follow a live baseball game. Newspapers would receive game updates by telegraph and posted results in their windows. In 1912, the Washington Post invested in an elaborate scoreboard system complete with lights indicating balls, strikes, and position on the field. You can see here fans gathered to "watch" the 1912 World Series.

The American and National Leagues kept player salaries low with the reserve clause, a provision in player contracts that kept players tied to one team and unable to negotiate higher salaries. The clause also made it difficult for new teams and new leagues to attract top-quality players. The Federal League, founded in 1913, tried to operate as a third major league and ended up suing the established leagues for operating an illegal monopoly.

This is an official scorecard of one Federal League Team, the Neward Peps.

The case came before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. It couldn't have landed on the desk of anyone more deeply invested in the game of baseball.

At the start of World War I, team owners were desperate to keep the game going and their players out of the trenches. One attempt to demonstrate their patriotism was the practice, seen here, of holding drill sessions with players before games. The War Department was not impressed and made players eligible for the draft after the 1917 World Series.

The president of the American League, Ban Johnson, suggested reserving 18 players for each team and conscripting the rest. No one was impressed by this plan.

While more than one third of major league players enlisted, others went to work for factories in essential industries such as steel manufacturing or shipbuilding. The players spent far more time playing baseball for factory teams than painting or welding, and team owners worried that major league baseball would be run out of business by industrial ball.

Charles Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox, denounced the factory team players as unpatriotic and sniffed that he wasn't sure he wanted them back on his team.

The 1918 World Series was held in early September at the request of the War Department, so the second, most deadly wave of the Spanish Flu pandemic was just getting started when baseball ended for the season. Nevertheless, at least some players took to the field in masks to prevent the spread of the disease.

I have been able to find out little about this photo. I don't know who was playing or the exact date. I wish I knew more--when and where the picture was taken would be a start. If I find out more, I will post it.

The 1919 White Sox had a fantastic team, with several top-notch players and one genuine superstar in Joe Jackson.

Shoeless Joe Jackson is one of baseball's all-time greatest players.

Eddie Cicotte was a fine pitcher and possibly the inventor of the knuckleball.

Lefty Williams was another strong pitcher for the White Sox.

Chick Gandil, on other hand, was just average. On the other hand, he had a reputation as being crooked and multiple contacts with gambling organizations.

Gandil's connections went all the way back to New York underworld figure Arnold Rothstein. Thoughtful and scheming, Rothstein inspired multiple fictional representations, including Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls.

The Cincinnati Reds beat the White Sox in the World Series five games to three. It was difficult to tell, watching the White Sox play, if some men on the team were playing to lose. Certainly, some of the players seemed off, but a player can have a run of bad luck. Other members of the team, such as the catcher, were sure something fishy was going on. Rumors swirled throughout the series and into the off-season that the the series had been fixed.

In the fall of 1920, the story broke open, the case went before the Cook County grand jury, and all eight players were indicted. Cicotte, Jackson and Williams confessed before the grand jury--after being told they would not be prosecuted if they told the truth. In fact, the person who made that promise, Charles Comiskey's attorney, had no power to make such a promise.

In the summer of 1921, the Black Sox went on trial for intent to injure the business of the Chicago White Sox. It was a difficult case to prove. Cicotte, Jackson and Williams retracted their confessions, and it proved impossible to get the gamblers in court. Ultimately, the men were acquitted.

Despite their acquittal, Judge Landis, now the Commissioner of Baseball, declare the men banned from baseball for life. This had the intended effect of cleaning up the game, but was seen then and now as unjust.

In this cartoon from 1921, a laundry woman, identified as the jury, shows Landis the White Sox uniforms and declares them "Clean and white!" Landis replies, "They look just th' same to me as they did before."

A myth arose about the Black Sox, that they were more sinned against than sinning--hard working, blue-collar guys who just wanted to play ball but were unfairly treated by the owners, the lawyers, and the commissioner. The ultimate expression of this myth is the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. In this scene the spirits of the players emerge from an Iowan cornfield to again play baseball.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball by Charles Fountain
• Black Sox Scandal Research Committee, from the Society for American Baseball Research
• City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, by Gary Krist
• History of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank
• "Horrified White Sox fans witness Wingfoot Express blimp disaster in Chicago," Jacob Pomrenke, Society for American Baseball Research
• "The History of How We Follow Baseball" by Philip Bump, The Atlantic
• Opinion | Forget What You Know About the Black Sox Scandal - The New York Times
• 'On Account of War' | Baseball Hall of Fame
• "1918 flu pandemic did not spare baseball" by Bill Francis, Baseball Hall of Fame
• The 1919 Chicago Black Sox Scandal w/ Charles Fountain - Most Notorious Podcast on Youtube
• Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the 1919 White Sox - ESPN
• Frank Sinatra - "Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game" from Guys And Dolls (1955) - YouTube

Notes and Links

A word about dates. Anyone writing about the Russian Revolution must wrestle with the date issue. The Russian empire used a different calendar than the rest of the world for several centuries. This means that the Russian calendar ran about two weeks ahead of the rest of the world. So an event such as the February Revolution occurred on February 23rd on the Russian calendar but March 8 on the western calendar.

The Bolsheviks converted to the western calendar in February 1918, making life easier for them but more complicated for humble podcasters a century later who must decide which date system to use. I have chosen to give dates before the Revolution according to the old calendar, as people in Russian themselves would have experienced them. So in my text, the February Revolution happens in February and the October Revolution in October.

Comparing the map of Europe before and after World War I reveals how many new nations came into being after the collapse of the Austria-Hungarian empire and the division of territory by the Paris Peace Conference. For years the Armistice, armed conflict stretched from southern Finland through the Baltics, Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Romania.

Before the Great War, Tomáš Masaryk was a professor of philosophy and Czechoslovak nationalist leader. He fled Prague early in the war and spent time in London drumming up support for a new Czechoslovak nation. After the Tsarist regime was overthrown in February 1917, he traveled to St. Petersburg to convince revolutionary leaders to allow the creation of a Czechoslovak Legion drawn from POWs that would fight the Central Powers.

Russian POW camps were grim, overcrowded, and disease-ridden. They only became worse after the Revolution, when the new government put little priority on the care and feeding of prisoners. POWs were eager to leave the camps, to go home, to support the Czechoslovak Legion, or to join the Bolsheviks.

Tsar Nicholas II was the heir to the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty and the supreme autocrat of all Russians. In effect, the entire nation was his personal fiefdom. He was diligent and hardworking but utterly unprepared for the task of rule and, frankly, not very smart.

Nicholas was married to Alexandra, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and the couple had four daughters and one son. Alexandra became even more passionate about Russian autocracy than her husband, once telling her grandmother than the Russian people love to be whipped.

Alexei, the young son and heir, had a blood disease hemophilia. He was frequently ill and likely would not have lived to adulthood. The trauma of her son's illness sent Alexandra scrambling for help and healing. She found both in the peasant mystic Grigori Rasputin.

Rasputin was foul-mouthed, lecherous, and dirty, but he convinced the Empress that he and he alone could save her son.

During the 1905 Russian Revolution, the people rose up in protest, but the military remained loyal to the regime and put down riots before they got out of hand. In one incident, troops opened fire on peaceful protesters, killing hundreds; this is an artistic representation of that scene. The Tsar implemented reforms to limit the revolution, but he walked them back as soon as possible.

By 1917, the military had lost faith in the regime and began supporting protesters rather than fighting them.

After the Revolution, the Provisional Goverment tried to control the government. On paper, they looked powerful, but in reality they quickly squandered any authority they might have had.

The soviets or councils of Moscow and Petrograd had the real power in 1917. They were large, unruly bodies made up of factory workers, peasants in from the countryside, soldiers, and a handful of trained, experienced communist organizers. They attempted a form of direct democracy that ended up disorganized and brutal.

Vladimir Lenin rushed back to Russia after the Revolution and quickly began organizing the Bolsheviks into the most formidable political force in the country. He and his party seized control in October 1917.

The Czecho-Slovak Legion traveled east along the Trans-Siberian Railway. This map shows the entire route of the railway. The Legion actually joined the railway on a leg not pictured on this map that extended into Ukraine southwest of Moscow. According to their original plan, they would have to travel roughly 5000 miles from Ukraine to Vladivostock.

A unit of the Czechoslovak Legion stands with one of their trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Five members of the Legion pose in a photo studio. I love this photo--it raises so many questions. When and where did they find a photo studio? Who came up with the pose? Did anyone recognize how silly they looked against a clearly painted backdrop of a classical column?

Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Dreams of a Great Small Nation: The Mutinous Army that Threatened a Revolution, Destroyed an Empire, Founded a Republic, and Remade the Map of Europe by Kevin J McNamara — McNamara's book is one of the few texts available on the Czechoslovak Legion. I found the book incredibly useful in understanding both the motives and the logistics of the Czechslovak nationalist movement and the Legion.
• A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes — There are many excellent books about the Russian Revolution, but I found Figes' to be the most helpful. This is not a casual book, and it will require sustained attention, but it never loses focus on the human scope of the Revolution.
• The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore — This is a really fascinating look at the entire history of the Romanovs, and it opened up a lot of history to me. It also paints a picture of the slow accumulation of missteps, errors in judgment, and, sometimes, utter idiocy that paved the way to revolution.
• Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty by Robert K. Massie — Massie's book was published all the way back in 1967, and I must have read it for the first time about 1980. It was published in one of those Reader's Digest condensed books that everyone's grandparents (including mine) seemed to have. Would I rely on it exclusively for an academic paper? No, but it's still a good read and an insightful psychological study of the emperor and empress.
• Fighting Without A Country - Czechoslovak Legions of World War 1 -- THE GREAT WAR Special - YouTube — I've praised The Great War series on YouTube more than once, and I must do so again. They provide a great summary of the adventures of the Czechoslovak Legion.
• Revolutions — Mike Duncan's always amazing "Revolutions" podcast began its examination of the Russian Revolution, and of course it's fantastic. He is spending weeks on events I skip over in a sentence, so if you want to dive deep, make sure you're listening.

Show Notes

The story about the police horse in Vienna is recounted by author Margaret MacMillan, author of the book Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, in a 2007 speech to the National World War I Museum. MacMillan's speech, like her book, is fantastic--you can see it here.

This map depicts the hunger levels of Europe in December 1918. It was created by the US Food Administration in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Education. Germany and Austria-Hungary (which, in fact, no longer existed) were labeled "Unclassified" because when this map was prepared, two two countries were still classified as enemies and the food blockade was still in effect. Austria, at least, would have fallen into the black zone.

Food riots became common across the Central Powers countries. This photo depicts a delicatessan in Berlin that has been looted by a mob.

This cartoon, published in 1917 in the Österreichische Volkszeitung, is about the food conflict between Austria and Hungary. The Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire ("Cis") is represented by the Viennese Mayor Richard Weiskirchner (1861-1926) and the Federal Minister of Food Anton Höfer begging for food deliveries. On the other side of the river Leitha, the Hungarian part ("Trans") is shown as a fat man stone-heartedly withholding his herd of animals and boxes of supplies. This cartoon reflects Viennese popular sentiment toward Hungarians, who they believed were selfishly withholding critical supplies. In fact, Hungary did restrict shipments to Austria in order to safeguard food for its own people. However, the attitude of paranoia extended to numerous ethnic groups and poisoned relations between the multiple nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff fully understood that his troops had been defeated in late September 1918. This diary entry by a German General Staff officer makes it clear that Ludendorff had no illusions about Germany's ability to go on fighting. However, by the spring of 1919, Ludendorff had convinced himself that the army had never been truly defeated in battle. Instead, the military had been betrayed by sinister forces at home, most likely Communists and Jews.

The Fry and Laurie sketch on the Treaty of Westphalia is pure fantasy--no, Luxembourg was not divided between Sweden and France--but it accurately depicts the attitude of diplomats for most of European history. To the winners of war went the spoils, and never mind what the people who actually lived there thought about the matter. You can watch the entire sketch, which was originally broadcast on BBC 1 in January 2000, on YouTube.

The Allied leaders at the Paris Peace Conference argued heatedly and at length about the fate of Germany and Austria. French Premier Georges Clemenceau (second from right) believed Germany would inevitably rise again and seek revenge for its defeat; he wanted the country to be stripped of land and resources, its industry destroyed, and its economy crippled. American President Woodrow Wilson (far right) on the other hand, argued for a more just and fair peace, based on the Fourteen Points, that would prevent future conflicts--although he held more resentment and animosity against Germany than he liked to admit. British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George (far left) fell in the middle; he was in favor of reparations but also wanted Germany to recover and again trade with Britain. Italian Premier Vittorio Orlando had little input on real decision-making.

Germany lost about 13 percent of its territory after World War I. Alsace-Lorraine, at the far western edge of Germany, was returned to France; Germany had seized the provinces in 1871. The Rhineland was occupied after the war by the Allies, but despite Clemenceau's vehement arguments, it remained German territory. The Polish Corridor runs along the eastern edge of the country. You can see that it allowed the new nation of Poland access to the Baltic Sea but separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany.

This map is among the resources on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website,

German Foreign Minister Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau made a terrible first impression on the Allies when he began by complaining that Germany was being treated unfairly. His stern and cold personality didn't help.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The room was packed with diplomats, delegates, academic advisors, journalists, soldiers, and smattering of spies. The signing was captured by a film crew. You can watch some of the original footage on YouTube.

British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote the blockbuster bestseller The Economic Consequences of Peace in a rage after the Paris Peace Conference. He argued that the Treaty of Versailles was unjust and vindictive and would ruin the economy of Europe. Keynes' book helped convince the public that Germany had been mistreated in 1919 and deserved justice in the 1930s. Keynes went on to become one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, with an entire school of economics bearing his name.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by Alexander Watson — Watson describes The Great War from the perspective of the losers in this very compelling book. The detail is fantastic, giving insight into what it was like to serve on a U-Boat or work at a factory in Berlin.
• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World byMargaret MacMillan — MacMillan's book is the ultimate resource on the Peace Conference. It takes an incredibly complicated series of events and makes them understandable.
• The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End by Robert Gerwarth — Gerwarth takes a difficult and complicated subject and treats it with humanity and sensitivity. The book goes beyond Germany and Austria to look at events across Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire.
• The World Remade: America in World War I by G. J. Meyer — The last few chapters of Meyer's book explore Wilson's actions at the Paris Peace Conference and provide insight into his mindset.
• "What if the Allies had been more generous in 1919? - Versailles revisited" by — This brief but insightful article looks at the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and asks if they were really as unjust as the Germans and Keynes claimed. (You must register with the website to read the article, but registration is free for up to five articles a month.)

Here's the original meme that inspired this episode:

I left out a few lines to simplify things, but I love it.

This is a look at the different alliances during the war. The green countries are neutral. The pink countries are the Central Powers. Note that Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire didn't join the Central Powers until later in the war. The tan countries are the Triple Entente. Similarly, Italy, Romania and Portugal also didn't join this alliance until later in the war.

Introducing Austria Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. Their assassination on June 28, 1914 began the crisis that ended in the Great War.

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gave Austria a "blank check" to take any actions it chose against Serbia. This is the emperor in only one of his outrageous uniforms. The skull on the cap is a nice touch.

Germany's plan for defeating both France and Russia was to put Russia on hold and make a lightening strike against France. ThiTSchlieffenhe plan, named after the general who developed it, was to sweep across neutral Belgium and Luxembourg into northern France and circle around Paris. The French and British stopped Germany at the outskirts of the capital.

In early 1917, the German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann sent a telegram to Mexico urging it to join the war against the United States. In return, it would be awarded all of the U.S. states it lost in 1848. This is a copy of the telegram that was intercepted by British code-breakers and translated into English. Outrage over the telegram was the final straw that broke U.S. resolve to stay out of the war.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson originally didn't want to join the war, but once he was thoroughly riled up, he threw all American resources into defeating Germany.

Wilfred Owen wrote some of the most devastating poetry of World War I. He was a young British officer, and he was killed one week before the Armistice.

Here's a link to the complete text of "Dulce et Decorum Est," and here's Christopher Eccleston reading the poem for the BBC.

Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling was once a huge supporter of World War I, but after his son Jack died, his tone changed. Here's a link to several excerpts from his 1919 collection Epitaphs of the War.

For more World War I poetry, I recommend this collection by the Poetry Foundation.

Production Notes

Thanks to Chris McAdams, my marvelous husband, for helping me record this episode.

The theme music for this podcast is "Mostly Mo" by Aaron Steinberg, from Strike Audio, courtesy PodcastMusic.com. PodcastMusic.com also provided several sound effects for this episode.

Thanks to Kraigpartridge for the bar scene sound effect, courtesy FreeSound.com.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman — Tuchman's book is now decades old, and some the details have been contested by recent researchers, but it still the best book about the origins of World War I, in my very humble opinion. It's vivid and packed with telling details, and somehow Tuchman manages to inject suspense into events that took place more than a century ago.
• The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark — One of the most highly regarded recent publications about the start of the war, this book is scrupulously researched. I'll admit, it's heavy going at the beginning. You begin to feel you will never get out of the Balkans. But the last three-quarters make it worth sticking with the text. It's not a casual read, but it's worthwhile.
• A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 by G. J. Meyer — This is a really solid overview that begins with the origins of the war and takes the reader through to the beginning of the Peace Conference in 1919. It's a very accessible history of the entire war with far more detail than you might think possible for such a vast subject.
• The Zimmermann Telegram by Barbara W. Tuchman — This short little book tells the story of the event that drove the United States into the war, the telegram promising Mexico a massive chunk of the United States if it joined the Central Powers. It's a great introduction to Tuchman, if the thought of "The Guns of August" is overwhelming, and a fantastic retelling of one of the most bizarre and consequential events in the war.
• The World Remade: America in World War I by G. J. Meyer — This book is a companion to "The World Undone" that focuses on events in the United States. The last quarter book is one of my main sources for this series, but the first half describes the process of the United States turning from isolationism to single-minded focus on winning the Great War.
• "The Big One," by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, August 15, 2004 — This article is technically a review of several books about World War I, but it offers a compelling overview of contemporary thinking about the origins of the Great War.
• The Great War YouTube Channel — I am incredibly impressed with this video series about the Great War and wish I had found it years ago. The creators take a week-by-week look at the war but also highlight key individuals and events in special episodes. If you're curious about any single aspect of the war, from social conditions in Germany to the guns used by Australians, check out this channel.

Lucy Maud Montgomery became one of Canada's most successful and beloved authors with the publication of the Anne of Green Gables series. After Montgomery lived through World War I, she decided to recount the war years through the eyes of Anne's teenage daughter. The result is Rilla of Ingleside.

This is the cover of the first edition of Rilla of Ingleside, and it's almost unbearably sweet. The book itself has plenty of sappy moments, but it doesn't shy away from the enormous grief and anxiety experienced by families with sons in the war.

Rilla of Ingleside is available in numerous editions, and I've linked to one on Amazon at the bottom of the page. Or you can listen via LibriVox, a service that records books in the public domain; I used the LibraVox recording, by Karen Savage, in this episode.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was a Canadian poet, physician and author. He served as a battefield surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, treating the wounded in a 8-foot by 8-foot bunker dug into a dyke along the Yser canal. During the battle, McCrae's good friend Lt. Alexis Helmer was killed. After attending Helmer's funeral, McCrae wrote the poem "In Flander's Fields." It was published in December 1915 and soon became one of the most popular verses of the war.

McCrae writes in the poem about the poppies that he saw growing in Flanders; poppies are the first flowers that bloom in the churned-up earth of battlefields. The enormous popularity of the poem led directly to the poppy being adopted as a symbol of remembrance. Initially, poppies were used only in commemoration of the Great War, but over time they came to represented all lost in battle. Many people wear poppies in the first two weeks of November and on Remembrance Day, November 11th, in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

McCrae did not survive the war. He died on January 28, 1918 of pneumonia.

You can read the entire poem "In Flanders Fields" on the Poetry Foundation website or hear Leonard Cohen read "In Flanders Fields"

William Butler Yeats was no doubt a brilliant poet, but he had a bad habit of falling in love with beautiful, tormented, unattainable women. He decided to leave all of them behind in 1917 and marry someone "serviceable" instead.

Georgie Hyde-Lees, soon to be George Yeats, was the "serviceable" woman Yeats chose. She was smart, capable and self-effacing--and saved her marriage when she discovered her "gift" for automatic writing.

This is another view of George, in a painting titled Mrs. W.B. Yeats by the artist and illustrator Edmund Dulac. Dulac is best remembered for his illustrations for children's books, including fairy tales and The Arabian Nights. (I had a copy of his illustrated Stories from Hans Christian Anderson and have a vivid memory of his drawing for "The Princess and the Pea" of a huge stack of mattresses.) Dulac and Yeats were close friends and occassional collaborators. Dulac places George in a fairy tale setting, with a charging unicorn in the background. Yeats must have loved it.

You can read the entire poem "The Second Coming" on the Poetry Foundation website. Or check out actor Dominic West reading it in a production for Irish public broadcasting service RTE.

Research Notes

I referred to several biographies of Yeats, including the following:

• Keith Aldritt, W.B. Yeats: The Man and the Milieu. New York: Clarkson Potter. 1997.
• R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life II: The Arch-Poet, 1915-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003
• A. Norman Jeffares, W.B. Yeats: A New Biography. London: Continuum. 2001

I also consulted the one biography of George Yeats:

• Ann Saddlemeyer, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs. W.B. Yeats. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery — I'm not claiming that Rilla of Ingleside is an immortal work of literature, but it is charming and moving and the only contemporary account of the war from the perspective of women on the homefront. Also, there's a really, really good dog.