1919

Articles from 1919

A Pat on the Back for the Doughboys (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

The attached Stars & Stripes article briefly summarizes the American efforts from Cantigny to the Armistice and serves as one big attaboy for the whole Doughboy army. The journalist anticipates John Mosiere’s World War One history, The Myth of the Great Warstyle=border:none, which opines that it was the high morale and seemingly endless supply lines of the A.E.F. that served as one of the most decisive factors in bringing the war to a close.

Stars & Stries could not have agreed more.

Ten years later a Frenchman writing for La Revue Mondiale would say essentially the same thing, click here to read that article.


Click here to read an article about life in a W.W. I German listening post…

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The Need for Color in Men’s Fashion (Current Opinion, 1919)

Tom Wolf and Mark Twain have not been the only men to have lamented the drab hues so prevalent in manly attire: now you may add to that list a new name: H. Dennis Bradley. The late Mr. Bradley was a tailor in London’s Old Bond Street some time back, and he was quite vocal concerning the issue of men’s fashions. Being a true man of the cloth, Mr. Bradley was certain that, prior to the unpleasantness of 1914, men’s fashions were headed in a healthy and aesthetically sound direction, but when the boys came home, the promise was not kept.

We may not go back to the rainbow shades and wonderful stuffs of the bucks and the dandies of olden times–do what we will, we live in utilitarian days–but whatever comes do not let us revert to the hideous hues and shapelessness of the Victorian era…

Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.

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Carrier Pigeons of the US Army Signal Corps (American Legion Weekly, 1919)

Illustrated with images of maimed and disfigured carrier pigeons, this article is filled with interesting lore of the battles waged by the ‘feathered aviators’ of the 1914 – 1918 war. You will read about how the pigeons were often dyed black so as to be mistaken for crows; how they were used at sea and at Verdun and that spies relied upon them.

During the course of World War II the U.s Army signal Corps deployed more than 50,000 pigeons.


It was said that the carrier pigeons of W.W. II were ten percent stronger.

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The Lynching Evil as Understood by Robert Moton (Review of Reviews, 1919)

A digest concerning the thoughts of Tuskegee Institutes’s Robert R. Moton (1867 – 1940) and his reflections on the 1919 lynchings. Principal Moton pointed out that lynching served as the primary cause for the northerly migration of the African-Americans and was creating a labor shortage that would in no way benefit the economies of the Southern states. He stated that more and more Whites were recognizing the injustice of the crime and taking measures to actively oppose it. Seven influential Southern newspapers were named that had recently condemned lynching.

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‘The Lady and the Plane” (Vanity Fair, 1919)

In the June, 1920 issue of British Vogue, an anonymous correspondent tried her hand at prophecy:

As surely as the woman of yesterday was born to ride in a limousine, the woman of today was born to fly an aeroplane.

-that said, we have higher hopes for the women of the 21st Century – however, a year earlier, the Vanity Fair writer charged with covering all aspects of motoring, both horizontal and vertical, penned this enthusiastic article and filled it with the names of many of the women aviators who were at that time, striving to make new records in aviation history; it must have been a very exciting time in history to experience (except for the dental care).

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With The Marines (Scribner’s Magazine, 1919)

A U.S. Army officer was ordered to march with the Marines during their first engagement of the war and explained all that he saw:True to their tradition of ever being the first to fight, the Marines made up, in part, the first fighting unit of the A.E.F. to reach foreign shores… It was my fortune to to be assigned to the Marines and my privilege to go with them into the front line for their first hitch.

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A Starbucks Cure for the 1918 Influenza (The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Coffee has the ability to remedy some physical ailments, however this small article told the story of one U.S. Army Colonel who felt so helpless upon seeing so many sick army men come ashore in France suffering from such a terrible illness as influenzastyle=border:none, and was moved to do the only thing that he could in his power to offer comfort: unlimited cups of hot coffee. How real was coffee as a preventative measure in the face of influenza? The good colonel was on to something – it wasn’t the java bean that made an impact, it was the heat: viruses die when exposed to high temperatures.


A more thorough article about Influenza can be read here.


Click here to read about the earliest use of face masks to combat airborne disease.

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Jack Dempsey In Silent Movies (Motion Picture News & Vanity Fair, 1919)

Two articles from two different magazines reported the news that the World Champion Boxer of 1919, Jack Dempseystyle=border:none (1895 – 1983), would soon try his hand at movie acting. The Vanity Fair item is actually a cartoon by that old sentimentalist, John Held, Jrstyle=border:none.(1889-1958).


In the future, other athletes would follow in his steps to Hollywood; his fellow boxer Gene Tunney would follow him out there eight years later (The Fighting Marines). Swimmers Buster Crabbe (Buck Rogers) and Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan) got the fever and came out during the early days of sound movies.

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Censoring Letters and Looking for Spies (Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Buried on page eight of a post-war issue of The Stars & Stripes was this column reporting on the wartime activities of the AEF censors in France – men assigned to not simply censor all outgoing mail from Europe, but to also chemically test each one for traces of invisible ink.


Click here to read an article the post office censorship duing the Second World War.

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