Current Opinion Magazine – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

Reconsidering Poison Gas as a Weapon
(Current Opinion, 1925)

An article about J.B.S. Haldane (1892 – 1964), formerly a British combatant of the Great War who became a chemist (and pioneer geneticist) during the inter-war years studying not merely the effectiveness of poison gas but the question as to whether the weapon was more humane than bullets and artillery shells:

The future lies with poisonous smoke made from arsenic compounds and with mustard gas. Of the latter, he says, it kills one man for every forty it puts out of action, whereas, shells kill one for every three.

His musings concerning atomic energy are referred to as are some of his quack-theories regarding the effects of gas warfare on people with dark skin.

Is There an American Art?
(Current Opinion, 1922)

Prior to the establishment of the New York School in the 1940s, there has always been a popular belief among Europeans (and a few Americans) that the art produced in the U.S. was purely derivative and lacked true originality in conception and style. In the attached article from the early Twenties, some of these Europeans and Americans step forward and identify themselves while continuing to crack wise on the topic; however, the editors of ART NEWS will not suffer this abuse and they return fire offering plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Rudyard Kipling Condemned
(Current Opinion, 1919)

The author of The White Man’s Burden gets the back-hand for all of his narrow-minded jingoism by Robert Wilson Lynd (1879 – 1949), who penned this angry review of Rudyard Kipling’s (1865 – 1936) body of work, finding the author to be too much the Victorian imperialist.

An article about the Muslim opinion concerning colonialism can be read here…

British Palestine Thrives
(Current Opinion, 1922)

As early as 1922, the British Foreign Office could recognize the economic promise of Israel. This article sums up a report on British Palestine submitted to the British Government by High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel concerning the Jewish population growth to the region, as well as the establishment of schools and businesses.

It is especially interesting as reflecting the development of Palestine as the future home of the Jewish race. The High Commissioner points out that the country, if properly developed, ought to experience a future far more prosperous than it enjoyed before the war.

An Interview With Mary Pickford
(Current Opinion, 1918)

When this two page profile appeared in print Pickford was world famous, married to the handsomest actor in Hollywood, adored by all – she could do no wrong. Just fourteen years later, the respected New York playwright Clara Boothe Brokaw would ridicule her in the pages of Vanity Fair (August, 1932: p. 18) as a sad symbol representing a vulgar era.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, today few people know who she was – although she does get twice as many Google searches than Lillian Gish (but whose counting).

Amazon offers a PBS salute to the actress on a DVD that is strangely titled Mary Pickford.

The New Objectivity
(Current Opinion, 1919)

A review of the paintings and sculptures from the Weimer Republic and the manner in which that new art served to reflect the social upheaval that was taking place in Germany at that time. The article concerns itself primarily with one art exhibit in particular, the Spring Exhibition of the Berlin Secession (1919) and the two art factions who participated: there were the artists of Der Sturm a movement that existed prior to the war and a newer, post-war tribe; the November Group. Also displayed were the works of two painters who served in the Kaiser’s army and did not return; Franz Marc (1880-1916) and August Macke (1887-1914).

It is hoped by the German Expressionists and the artists of the New Objectivity that their art will serve as a tool for the destruction of Germany’s old order.

Click here to see a few trench war images by German Expressionist Otto Dix.

Click here to read about Expressionist woodcuts.

The New Objectivity held up a mirror to the political crises that was playing out all over Germany, click here to read about it…

The Life of Woodrow Wilson
(Current Opinion, 1925)

Here is a 1925 review of William Allen White’s (1868 – 1944) biography Woodrow Wilson: the Man, his Times and his Task:

Whether or not Woodrow Wilson will live as a world figure depends not so much upon what work he has done as upon what the chance of time and circumstance will do with his work. He must live or die in world fame bound upon the League of Nations. If that stands he may tower beside it…If the League crumbles, then Wilson will become one of the host of good men who spent their zeal striving for futile things.

An article about Wilson’s reluctance to go to war can be read here…

Click here to read a list of Wilson’s Fourteen Points for the Versilles Treaty.

In the War’s Aftermath Came Spiritual Disillusion
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1919)

At the thirty-fifth annual Church Congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1919), clergy members seemed to agree that Christian leaders were needlessly complicit concerning their support for the First World War and were guilty of substituting Christian principles for patriotism:

Christianity has betrayed itself body and soul.

If you would like to read about the spirit of disillusion that permeated post-war literature, click here.

John Maynard Keynes on the Versailles Treaty
(Current Opinion, 1922)

A magazine review of John Maynard Keynes book, A Revision of the Treaty (1922). The reviewer wrote that it lacks the prophetic fire of it’s author’s earlier book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, but continues the argument of that book:

Mr. Keynes claims that almost everyone now has come around to his point of view. We practically all recognize, he says, the over-severity of the reparation clauses written into the Versailles Treaty.

Christian Radio Broadcasting Begins in Earnest
(Current Opinion, 1925)

Believing that vast numbers of broadcast-clergy can only damage the credibility of the church in the long-run, this article was written which concerned the personal quest of one observant Christian who wished to see that the amount Christian programming be reduced. The author pointed out that by 1925

One out of every fourteen broadcasting stations in the United States is today owned and operated by a church or under a church’s direction…

Click here to read about the Christian broadcasts of Oral Roberts…

Designs of the Italian Futurists
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1919)

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.

Fearing German Filmmakers
(Current Opinion, 1921)

Teutonic film producers must have gotten a good guffaw upon reading the attached article that announced how insecure Hollywood producers felt when faced with the filmmakers of Germany. These intimidated studio heads and distributors believed that the Germans had a leg-up on Hollywood due to the high quantity of well-trained actors, crew and writers who had benefited from the traditions set forth generations earlier in German theater – so much so that they beseeched the law givers in Washington to protect them from these Germans…

REVIEWED: Broken Blossoms
(Current Opinion, 1919)

A 1919 film review of Broken Blossoms, directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess:

Broken Blossoms came to the screen a masterpiece in moving pictures. Bare narration of the story cannot hope even to suggest the power and truth of the tragedy that Mr. Griffith has pictured.

You can read more about Lilian Gish here

The Fight Against Lynching
(Current Opinion, 1919)

Figures were presented at the National Lynching Conference showing that in the last thirty years 3,224 persons have been killed by lynching, 2,834 of them in Southern states which once were slave-holding.

The French-German Non-Aggression Agreement
(Current History, 1938)

Attached is a translation of the text of the Franco-German declaration signed in Paris on December 6, 1938.

Click here to read about the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact.

Rebecca West: The Last Birth of Time
(Current Opinion, 1921)

Rebecca West
(born Regina Miriam Bloch: 1892 – 1983) became a fixture on the literary landscape just prior to the First World War when she was recognized as a young, thought-provoking writer with much to say on many matters. The article serves as an interesting profile of the woman by compiling various remarks made during the course of her early career.

Starvation in the Worker’s Paradise
(Current Opinion, 1921)

The first Soviet famine lasted from 1919 through 1923; some historians have placed the death toll as high as five million:

[Lenin] is held responsible for the policy which has brought about a consumption of so great a proportion of the seed wheat that the fields cannot be sown. For the first time since Bolsheviki gained power, says the Berlin Lokalanzeiger, Lenin is a cipher.

Click here to read about the blackmail and extortion tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression…

Recognizing the Potential of Wind Power
(Current Opinion, 1925)

Eighty-three years ago, aircraft pilot Major Kurt Bilau (formerly of the Imperial German Air Corps) was intrigued by the abilities a properly designed propeller; he applied his curiosity to the design of a windmill in order to experiment with the possibility harnessing the power of the wind as a source of energy.
This magazine article briefly explains what a success that experiment was. Bilau’s aerodynamo was able to convert a sixteen-mile per/hour wind into an amount of energy that was measured at sixty horse power.

These days, the good works of Kurt Bilau are very actively being improved upon and his same theory is being adapted to harness the power of underwater sea currents.

Click here to read a 1947 article about the battle against air pollution.

Click here to read a 1951 article about America’s polluted rivers.