Collier’s Magazine

Articles from Collier’s Magazine

Prosperity Returns to Freeport, Texas (Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

In 1940, when a defense plant moved into the Gulfport town of Freeport, Texas, the Great Depression came to a screeching halt. Within three months their population shot up from 3,100 to a whopping 7,500, and the economic blessing was not simply confined to that one region:

In Corpus Christi they have a nice little plum in the form of a $25,000,000 naval air base. Houston is getting a $2,000,000 refurbishing of Ellington Field. Randolph Field at San Antonio is getting a costly going over.


Life in Freeport was good. When a local shoeshine lad had found that his pockets were flush with cash after three day’s labor, he exclaimed –

We’re in high cotton now!

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Wilbur Wright, R.I.P. (Collier’s, 1912)

The Collier’s Magazine obituary for Wilbur Wright (1867 – 1912) was written by the aviator and journalist Henry Woodhouse (born Mario Terenzio Casalengo, 1884 – 1970).


The Brothers Wright gave flying instructions to a young boy who would later become one of the first U.S. Air Force generals – you can read about him here…


Click here to read about a much admired American aviator who was attracted to the fascist way of thinking…

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H.G. Wells on Winston Churchill (Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

H.G. Wells and Winston Churchill first met in 1901. Churchill was a deep admirer of Well’s fiction, and he eagerly pursued a friendship. The two enjoyed a spirited exchange of letters that went on for decades – although it seemed to have taken a hit in the Twenties when the two disagreed on the nascent USSR – but their friendship was not seriously shaken. In this 1940 article, Wells stepped up to tell American readers how fortunate Britons are to have such a man of discernment standing at the helm:

I will confess I have never felt so disposed to stand by a man through thick and thin as I do now in regard to him. And I think that, in writing that, I write for a very great number of my fellow countrymen who have hitherto felt frustrated and fragmentary amidst the rush of events.

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Americans ♥ Winston Churchill (Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

Shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a solemn visit to the White House in order to plot the course of the war with FDR. The affect that the Prime Minister impressed upon the average American was profound and was soon made manifest in the form of innumerable gifts that began descending upon the White House addressed to him. An unsigned editorial in Collier’s Magazine noticed the event and remarked:

If we hadn’t liked Mr. Churchill immensely from the moment he arrived here, none of us would have sent him anything. The size and variety of this shower of gifts are the best measure of the terrific hit he made with all kinds and conditions of Americans.

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‘What the Finns Won” (Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

We suppose debate will go on for years about whether the Finns or the Russians won their 105-day war of late 1939 and early 1940. We think the Finns won all the phases of the war except those included in the peace treaty – and that the treaty was a minor matter in the long view of it all…As for the predictions that the Russians will be coming back in six months or so to gobble up the rest of Finland – we may easily be wrong, but we can’t picture the Russians tackling the Finns again for another thirty years.

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Listening-In On The Enemy (Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

The FBIS – short for Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service – is the organization that listens to the world’s radios for Uncle Sam. It’s monitoring station in Washington has, besides editors and annalists, some sixty fantastic linguists on its staff – people who are fluent at anywhere from three or four – up to a couple of dozen, languages apiece. Their job is to intercept and translate the shortwave broadcasts of Rome, Berlin, Vichy and a score of lesser stations, which daily pour out Axis propaganda in more languages than were ever spoken in the Tower of babel.

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The Atlantic Convoys (Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

The War Shipping Administration is never at a loss for an answer when asked what’s been authorized, what’s in the works, what’s been shipped and where everything is at the moment? Nevertheless, the Transportation Inventory Department is a tidy place, with no visible signs of agitation. The TID has never lost so much as a bolt. Once it took twenty-two weeks to find a couple of airplane engines which had got themselves lost.

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The Greatest Sea Battle (Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

Patching together the reports of four different war correspondents, the editors at Collier’s were able to create a genuine page-turner narrating the American naval victory that took place off the coast of the Philippines during the Fall of 1944.

Secretary of the Navy Forrestal summed up the results as ‘One of the great naval victories of the war that will go down, along with Midway and Guadalcanal sea battles as one of the great, shattering blows struck against Japanese sea power. The Japanese fleet was indeed beaten, routed and broken.’

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