Current Opinion Magazine

Articles from Current Opinion Magazine

Problems in British Palestine… (Current Opinion Magazine, 1921)

This is a news article that first appeared in 1921 concerning the continuing clash of civilizations in British Palestine:

There are in Palestine about half a million Muslems, about 62,500 Christians and 65,300 Jews. The aspiration for a Jewish State encounters the opposition not only of all Moslems and Christians but of many Orthodox Jews residing in Palestine. …The Zionist leaders, erroneously classifying the present inhabitants as Arabs, expect them to silently steal away, as Zangwill puts it, and leave the Jews free to rule.

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Illiterate Immigrant Soldiers (Current Opinion, 1920)

So deep were the ranks of khaki-clad immigrants who filled the U.S. military’s regiments and divisions throughout the course the First World War that our British allies would often refer to the U.S. Army as the American Foreign Legion; yet as grateful as the services were to have so many additional strong arms to deploy during a time of national emergency, it was not without a cost.

This article is all about how the army addressed the issue regarding the high number of illiterate immigrants who broadened their phalanx spanning the years 1917 through 1920.

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The Rise of Islamic Outrage (Current Opinion, 1922)

I predict increasing ferment and unrest throughout all Islam; a continued awakening to self-consciousness; an increasing dislike for Western domination.


So wrote Lothrop Stoddard (1883 – 1950), an author who was very much a man of his time and tended to gaze outside the borders of Western Civilization with much the same vision as his contemporary Rudyard Kipling, seeing the majority of the world’s inhabitants as the white man’s burden. Yet, for all his concern on the matter of Anglo-Saxon hegemony, he seemed to recognize the growing discontent in Islam, even if he was some sixty years early.

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Eastern European Jews Slaughtered (Current Opinion, 1920)

One of the most sinister results of the war has been a new wave of anti-Semitism in Europe. Recent dispatches from Berlin describe street demonstrations against Jews and speak of a veritable pogrom atmosphere in Munich and Budapest. In Poland, Jewish blood has flown freely, amid scenes of horror described by Herman Bernstein and other writers in American newspapers. In Ukraine the number of Jews massacred during the early part of the present year is estimated anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000.

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A Briton on American Prohibition (Current Opinion, 1921)

Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (1865 – 1922) was an influential soul back in the day who owned a string of widely-read newspapers. Just months prior to his death, he spent some time stateside and drew some conclusions regarding American Prohibition which were noteworthy:

While in our midst he made up his mind about Prohibition. In his opinion it is a failure… His reasons seem to be that he saw plenty of liquor everywhere he was entertained; that Prohibition encourages hypocrisy in the vision of the law, and that he did not like it anyhow… But America has taken it’s stand and will stick to it.

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Charlie Chaplin Wanted to be Taken Seriously (Current Opinion, 1922)

We have all seen it many times before: the well-loved, widely accepted comedian who decides that being adored by the masses is simply not enough. For too many comic talents, sadly, there comes a time when they slip on one banana peel too many and it occurs to them that they want the world to appreciate them for their ability to think. Comics who fill this description might be Al Frankin, Woody Allen or Steve Martin.


This article tries to understand why Chaplin wanted to play a tragic part in a 1921 London stage adaptation of William Thackeray’s ‘Vanity Fair’.
We have seen such behavior in comics many times before, they hadn’t.

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The Art of the Insane Looks Like German Expressionism (Current Opinion, 1921)

The attached article is about a 1921 exhibition displaying the art of the mentally ill; it was organized under the direction of the psychiatric department of Heidelberg University. The exhibition made quite an impact on a number of modernists at the time and it is said that a few of the pieces from the show were later displayed in the 1938 Degenerate Art exhibit that the Nazis launched in an effort to discredit modernism.

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