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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

AN ISLAND FOR DETHRONED KINGS

JFK+50:  Volume 7, No. 2290

UPTON SINCLAIR SAYS CZAR SHOULD BE PUT ON CATALINA ISLAND

Pasadena, California (JFK+50) One hundred years ago this evening, April 25, 1917, socialist Upton Sinclair* sent a wire to the Chicago Daily Tribune saying that he had written a letter to the Russian socialist minister of justice in which he suggested the ousted Russian Czar Nicholas II** and his family "be entrusted to the American republic for permanent safekeeping."

Mr. Sinclair went on to recommend Catalina Island*** be made into "an island for kings to be used as a refuge for rulers abdicating or dethroned after the war."

The socialist writer's wire concluded with this...

"The island has a salubrious climate and is populated by sheep, the proper subjects for autocracy."

*Upton Sinclair, Jr. (1878-1968) was born in Baltimore, MD & studied law at Columbia University.  His novel, "The Jungle", about conditions in the meatpacking plants of Chicago became a best seller.

Although a socialist, US supported the nation in WWI.  In 1920, he founded the California chapter of the ACLU.  US wrote nearly 100 books & won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.

**Nicholas II was the last Russian emperor.  He ruled from 1894 to 1917.  The Czar & his family were executed by Bolshevik troops on July 17, 1918.

***(Santa) Catalina Island is a rocky island 22 miles SSW of Los Angeles.  It is 22 miles long & is 8 miles at its widest point.  The island had 4096 residents in 2010 & has 50 endemic species which are seen no where else in the world.

SOURCE

"WANTS CZAR PUT ON U.S. ISLAND," The Chicago Daily Tribune, April 26, 1917, www.archives.chicagotribune.com/


LBJ & Upton Sinclair
December 15, 1967
Photo by Yoichi Okamoto
LBJ Library Image