1922 – Old Magazine Articles

‘A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents” (The Outlook, 1922)

If one judges by appearances, I suppose I am a flapper. I am within the age limit, I wear bobbed hair, the badge of flapperhood. I powder my nose. I wear fringed skirts and bright colored sweaters, and scarves and waists with Peter Pan collars and low-heeled ‘finale hopper’ shoes. I adore to dance… But then there are many degrees of a flapper. There is the semi-flapper, the flapper, the super-flapper. Each of these three main general divisions has its degrees of variation. I might possibly be placed somewhere in the middle of the first class.

The Black-Shirt Revolution (The Nation, 1922)

A report by Carleton Beals on Italy’s new order:

The strong state has arrived in Italy. It has been on the road ever since the failure of the factory seizures in September, 1920.

Ode to Feminine Knees (Flapper Magazine, 1922)

When the skirt hems began to rise in the Twenties, it was widely understood that the vision of a woman’s leg was a rare treat for both man and boy; a spectacle that had not been enjoyed since the days of Adam (married men excluded). The flappers certainly knew this, and they generally believed that suffering the dizzying enthusiasm of the male of the species was a small price to pay in order to secure some element of liberty. The flappers liked their hem-lengths just where they were and, thank you very much, they were not about to drop them. Attached are some verses by an anonymous flapper who expressed her reaction regarding all that undeserved male attention her knees were generating.

Review of Kaiser Welhelm’s Memoir (The Spectator, 1922)

Surprisingly, a British magazine published a terribly dry and unsympathetic review of My Memoirs by Kaiser Welhelm II (1859 – 1941).

Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.

Review of Kaiser Welhelm’s Memoir (The Spectator, 1922)

Surprisingly, a British magazine published a terribly dry and unsympathetic review of My Memoirs by Kaiser Welhelm II (1859 – 1941).

Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.

A Review of the Memoir by the Crown Prince (The New Republic, 1922)

The book reviewer for The New Republic, by Sidney B. Fay, summed-up his reading of the dethroned Crown Prince’s (1882 – 1951) post-war memoir in this way:

This is a remarkable book in at least three respects: it’s literary cleverness, it’s revelation of a new Crown Prince chastened by adversity, and it’s vivid pictures of men and events.

The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings (Life Magazine, 1922)

This is a short, pithy review of E.E. Cummings’ (1894 – 1962) novel, The Enormous Room I1922), which was based upon his experience as an American volunteer ambulance driver and his subsequent incarceration in a French jail for having admitted to pacifist sympathies. The reviewer believed that the book provided:

the last word in realistically detailed horrors.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked:

Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives – The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings.

H.L. Mencken Reviewed Two Novels Dealing the War and Disillusionment (The Smart Set, 1922)

In Three Soldiers, John Dos Passos exhibited the disillusionment of the soldiers in the field; The Last Mile by Frank Macallister exposes the disillusionment of the soldier come home. The reviewer remarked that both men had been bamboozled by Woodrow and company.

Golf Goes Yankee (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

The attached golf article first appeared in a 1922 Vanity Fair titled The Royal and Ancient Game. Penned by golf legend Charles Chick Evans, Jr. (1890 – 1979) it traces the birth of the game and its migration across the sea where the game was heartily welcomed:

Golf seemed a gift from an high. Across the water it came and our best people took it up. They had discovered it in their travels abroad. It is true that poor people played it in Britain, but it seemed very sure that they would not do so in America…

Click here to read about the American cars of 1922.

A Cartoon that Lampooned Balfour, Churchill, the Whole Iraq Adventure (Punch Magazine, 1922)

A 1920s cartoon from a well-known British humor magazine depicted the doomed British adventure in Iraq as a result of an unbridled lust for oil and nothing else.

Click here to read about Punch Magazine.

Another piece about Churchill and Iraq can be read here.