1918

Articles from 1918

‘Patriotism” (The Crisis, 1918)

An interesting editorial from World War I in which the writer (possibly W.E.B. Duboise) expressed that an African-American’s sense of patriotism in that era was based on the nation’s potential to be judicious and fair.


The article is a fine example illustrating the influence that George Creel and his Committee on Public Information had strong-arming the American magazine editors during the period of World War One.

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The Battle at Cantigny (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The battle of Cantigny (May 28 – 31, 1918) was America’s first division sized engagement during the First World War; George Marshall would later opine that the objective was of no strategic importance and of small tactical value. General Pershing was hellbent on eradicating from the popular memory any mention of the A.E.F.’s poor performance at Seicheprey some weeks earlier, and Cantigny was as good a battleground in which to do it as any. Assessing the battle two weeks after the Armistice, Pershing’s yes men at the Stars & Stripes wrote:

But at Cantigny it had been taught to the world the significant lesson that the American soldier was fully equal to the soldier of any other nation on the field of battle.


Click here to read about the foreign-born soldiers who served in the American Army of the First World War.


Click here to read a STARS & STRIPES article about the sexually-transmitted diseases among the American Army of W.W. I…

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Lt. Colonel Charles Whittelesey in the Vanity Fair Hall of Fame (December, 1918)

Unlike the Vanity Fair magazine that we find on our newsstands, the Vanity Fair published under the steady hand of it’s first editor, Frank Crowninshield (1872 – 1947), was able to recognize that military heroes are a rare, three-dimensional breed, composed of an uncommon variety of testicular fortitude. Indeed, some years back, Israel went to the effort of giving IQ tests to the heroes of the Six Day War (1967) and they were not surprised to find that all of them tested in the higher ranges of their populations. The W.W. I U.S. Army hero Crowninshield saluted on the attached page was the commanding officer of a brave group of men called the Lost Battalion.



Click here to read more about the heroism of Major Whittelesey.

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The Battle of Henry Johnson (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

The courageous acts of white soldiers were not so easily demeaned in other STARS & STRIPES features as were the heroics performed by Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts in this piece from the Spring of 1918. For those who have, through the years, read the history of the New York 369th Regiment of Infantry this article will leave you a little sadder for the racial stereotyping and cheekiness so clearly enjoyed by the journalist and his editors.


On June 2, 2015 Henry Johnson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony.

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D.W. Griffith in the ‘Vanity Fair Hall of Fame’ (Vanity Fair, 1918)

Sweet words of praise were heaped high for the silent film director D.W. Griffith when he was selected by VANITY FAIR magazine to be one of their anointed ones:

Because he was for many years an excellent actor and a leading man on Broadway; because he went into moving pictures as a an actor and emerged from them as a producer;because the greater the magnitude of the task ahead of him the more the prospect pleases him; because he invented the high-priced movies; because he has employed upwards of 5,000 people in a single scene; because he is an excellent musician and wrote the orchestral music for ‘Hearts of the World’, the most sensational moving picture of recent years.film production
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D.W. Griffith in the ‘Vanity Fair Hall of Fame’ (Vanity Fair, 1918) Read More »

A British Tommy to the Mother of his Victim (True Stories of the Great War, 1918)

One of the most moving letters included in the the 1918 book True Stories of the Great War
was the pair that we have attached herein: a British soldier, heartily sickened by war, composed a letter to the mother of the German he had killed, pleading for her forgiveness. The mother wrote back and her response was unpredictable.
This exchange was first published in a Geneva newspaper.


Click here to read about compassion on the battlefield.

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