Articles from 1917
There are canine sentries on duty on both sides in the Great War, and dogs that are dispatch-bearers. Marquis, a French dog, fell from a bullet-wound almost at the feet of a group of French soldiers to whom he bore a message across a shell-raked stretch of country. But the message was delivered!
The Red Cross Dogs (Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »
There are canine sentries on duty on both sides in the Great War, and dogs that are dispatch-bearers. Marquis, a French dog, fell from a bullet-wound almost at the feet of a group of French soldiers to whom he bore a message across a shell-raked stretch of country. But the message was delivered!
The Red Cross Dogs (Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »
Attached is a news report from a 1917 issue of THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN announcing:
Czar Nicholas decided to abdicate the Russian throne only after he had been held up by soldiers and the necessity for such action impressed upon him, according to a dispatch printed in DIE FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG…
Also included in the report were the text of a speech delivered by the Czar which called for national unity.
The Czar Abdicates (The Atlanta Georgian, 1917) Read More »
Attached is a review of a biography covering the life and times of Brigadier General John Rawlins (1831 – 1869). Rawlins distinguished himself as the Chief of Staff to General Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War. It is explained that the two met while Grant was engaged as a sales clerk at a leather shop which was owned by Rawlin’s brother; at the outbreak of the war, in 1861, Grant’s skill as an officer became clear to many and with each promotion he was able to secure Rawlins’ certain advancements in grade. By 1863 Rawlins was promoted to Brigadier General. During Grant’s term in the White House, Rawlins served as Secretary of War.
The author of the book, Major-General James Harrison Wilson, is remembered as the man who captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis in flight; the review of his autobiography can be read here.
General John Rawlins: General Grant’s Chief of Staff (The Literary Digest, 1917) Read More »
During much of the war, inventors from all combatant nations had been trying to make a artillery projectile that could eradicate the obstacle that had become one of the symbols of trench warfare: barbed-wire. No one seemed up to the task and in the end, wire-cutters were still the best way to deal with the problem.
This article is about one inventor’s failed effort to create a time fuse artillery shell that would deploy hooks that grab the wire as it goes speeding by and thereby saving the day. Needless to say, the hook thing didn’t work out terribly well and the difficulty inherit with time fuse artillery shells would be perfected in the inter-war years.
A Weird Anti-Barb Wire Artillery Shell (Scientific American, 1917) Read More »
No doubt, the fashionable minds who sat so comfortably in America, far removed from the dung and destruction of the European war, would thumb through magazines such as Leslie’s, Collier’s or Current History looking for fashion’s newest thing. How pleased these fops must have been that the ink-stained photogravure boys didn’t let them down! The Brothers Guiterman in Minnesota must have been numbered among these macaronis because they seemed to have been the first to begin production of a trench coat intended solely for civilian production (although it must be remembered that during the war, trench coats were a private purchase item, available only to officers sold only by haberdashers and privately-owned military furnishing establishments).
One of the First Trench Coats for U.S. Civilians (Magazine Ad, 1917) Read More »
Just prior to the death of Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917), the Welsh poet and essayist, Arthur Symons
AUGUSTE RODIN PRIS SUR LA VIE at once a document and a living thing. The main interest lies in the exactitude with which it records the actual words of Rodin, much as he must have spoken them y
‘The Philosophy of Auguste Rodin” (Vanity Fair, 1917) Read More »
We are told that the attached picture could only have been snapped in the more eccentric parts of Britain during the Great War and that it serves as graphic proof that the farm labor shortage was as dire as the farmers declared that it was.
The Elephant on the British Home Front (Popular Mechanics, 1917) Read More »
The war has changed many things, and it may have altered conceptions of military smartness as well. For from Paris, the home of ‘mode’ and ‘chic’, comes a daily fashion hint from the front that is upsetting. It is from Henri Barbusse (1873 – 1935), author of the novel Under Fire
Barbusse Described the Winter Trenches (Collier’s Magazine, 1917) Read More »
A schematic plan of a German World War One Zeppelin that illustrates the airship’s bombay, crew quarters and gondola.
Zeppelin Diagram (L’Illustration, 1917) Read More »
