Articles from 1919
An illustration of the insignia patch and a brief account of the origins, deployments and war-time activities of the U.S. Army’s Twenty-Sixth Division
(a.k.a. the Yankee Division
)during World War I.
The New England National Guard: Twenty-Sixth Division (The Stars and Stripes, 1919) Read More »
Here is a book review of The Colleges In The War And Afterward (1919) by Parke Rexford Kolbe:
One obtains a very clear picture of our educational institutions during the war and a definite feeling of the difficulties encountered when agencies which were quite individualistic, quite self-dependent, suddenly found themselves mere sub-departments of the War Department submitting to a command from higher authority as if they had been used to it all their lives…
American Colleges During W.W. I (Home Sector, 1919) Read More »
Aside from barb wire, poison gas, machine guns and trenches, the untested American officer corps had one other alien item to contend with: the Sam Brown Belt. Worn by all the officers in the allied armies and widely recognized as the premiere emblem of authority along the front lines, many American officers were of mixed minds concerning this military fashion accessory.
Sam Brown Belts: Two Short Notices (The Stars and Stripes, 1919) Read More »
Poet and playwright W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) had his say on the matter of theater-subscriber-book-of-the-month-club types who are more likely to attend performances because they feel they should, rather than attending for their own reasons of personal enjoyment:
And the worst of it is that I could not pay my players, or the seamstresses, or the owner of the building, unless I could draw to my plays those who prefer light amusement, or who have no ear for verse and literature, and fortunately they are all very polite.
W.B. Yeats Gripes About the Theater-Going Bourgeoisie (Theatre Arts Magazine, 1919) Read More »
Poet and playwright W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) had his say on the matter of theater-subscriber-book-of-the-month-club types who are more likely to attend performances because they feel they should, rather than attending for their own reasons of personal enjoyment:
And the worst of it is that I could not pay my players, or the seamstresses, or the owner of the building, unless I could draw to my plays those who prefer light amusement, or who have no ear for verse and literature, and fortunately they are all very polite.
W.B. Yeats Gripes About the Theater-Going Bourgeoisie (Theatre Arts Magazine, 1919) Read More »
Already the young architects of Italy are looking forward to a new renaissance of building, toward the production of a new style based upon modern methods of building and adapted to modern needs. The impulse to this new movement came from the brilliant Futurist Antonio Sant’Elia, who carried the ideas of the Italian innovators into the field of architecture, but whose development was cut short by his heroic death in the war… Nevertheless, his influence upon the younger architects has been great. Fortunately, they have been able to adapt his ideas to the exigencies of practical building, and in some instances to avoid a complete severing with the traditions of the past.
Designs of the Italian Futurists (Current Opinion Magazine, 1919) Read More »
Rumor has it that when the U.S. Army’s senior staff officers had learned of the victory that the U.S. Marines had achieved at the Bois de Belleau in the summer of 1918, one of them had remarked, Those head-line hunting bastards! When reading this next piece you will immediately get a sense that the army was fed-up with the folks at home believing that the same Marines were responsible for the Army’s success at Chateau-Thierry. The war was already over by the time this piece appeared, making it clear to all that Chateau-Thierry was a feather in the cap for the Army, and no one else.
Chateau-Thierry: Setting the Record Straight (The Literary Digest, 1919) Read More »
The veterans magazine that published the attached column, THE HOME SECTOR, was edited by Harold Ross, who, just a few months earlier, had held that same post at THE STARS and STRIPES; the article was written by Alexander Woollcott – previously a journalist with that same paper. I’m sure that this was quite common in 1919, but it would seem that these two men wanted to be forthright with their readers and set straight an issue that they wrote about when they were in the employment of Uncle Sam: the Doughboys who were victorious at Chateau-Thiery and Belleau Wood did not save Paris. Just as German historians have insisted for many years, those German divisions were simply not headed for Paris.
‘The Truth About Chateau-Thiery” (Home Sector, 1919) Read More »
One writer’s reminiscence of attending a London party and being introduced to Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) and the object of his affection, John Gray. The author insists, as has been documented in other places, that Gray was the model for Wilde’s character Dorian Gray:
Once at a Private View in the New Gallery, as I came downstairs, I came on Wilde, in the midst of his admirers, showing more than ever his gift of versatility. Seeing me he made a gesture, and as I went up he introduced me to John Gray, then in what is called ‘the zenith’ of his youth. The adventure was certainly amusing…
An additional article about Wilde can be seen here.
Click here to read a 1940s article about American sodomy legislation.
Who Was Wilde’s Dorian Gray? (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919) Read More »
What we enjoyed about this piece by the Muckraking Ida Tarbell (1857 – 1944) was that it was written some six months after the heavy handed George Creel had ceased influencing Yankee magazine editors into printing pro-American blather, and so we tend to feel that her praise of the American Doughboys was quite sincere – and praise she does! Up hill and down dale, the Doughboys can do no wrong in her eyes.
This essay appeared in print around the same time the French had decided that all the Doughboys were just a bunch of racist hurrah-boys and were becoming increasingly sick of them. The Yanks might have squared their debt with the Marquis de Lafayette, but the recently returned Poilus were not above taking an occasional swipe at Ida Tarbell’s Doughboys…
Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.
‘The Doughboys” (The New Red Cross Magazine, 1919) Read More »
