1937.12.17 “Diplomatic Protests”
by Wallace Heard Goldsmith (1873-1945) and “Bissell”
8.5 x 13 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author_talk:Wallace_Heard_Goldsmith
Goldsmith was a Boston institution, working over his long career at the Herald, the Post, and the Globe. This editorial cartoon is from his 25-year period at the Post.
At the turn of the century, the Boston Herald just couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to run a syndicate. Their homegrown comic section was born and died at least four different times. The Adventures of Little Allright came in the third version of their Sunday section and ran from March 6 to June 26, 1904. There really wasn't much to set the strip apart from any other kid strip -- the starring kid saying "all right" a lot seems an almost ridiculously weak hook. Goldsmith took the dubious credit for this stinker. The strip was rebooted as Little Alright (the second 'L' was dropped), and ran from November 11 1906 to April 14 1907. He was well known for illustrating Oscar Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost."
The Japanese cloud and its dark rain are a remark on the ongoing Japanese aggression in Asia, and a recent event involving the US. In the Panay Incident, Japanese aircraft bomb and sink an American gunboat on the Yangtze River. The Japanese issued its disingenuous diplomatic regret (velly solly), and the West made no retaliation. It was a test we failed.
The umbrella labeled “diplomatic protests” is the weak Western response: verbal condemnation from the isolationist US, while Britain tries to rearm itself in the face of war debts still owed to the US over WW1.
