The Literary Digest

Articles from The Literary Digest

Are the Indians of Jewish Origin?
(The Literary Digest, 1912)

The earliest encounters with the Native American had left the brain trust of Europe entirely baffled. The persistent matter as to who these people were remained an unanswered question well into the Nineteenth Century, for in order to qualify as a member of enlightened classes, a fellow had to show some sufficiency in at least two fields: classical literature and the Bible. Therefore, it stood to their reasoning that the inhabitants of the Americas had their story told in one of those two fields of study. Some of Europe’s elite were convinced that these people were descendants of the survivors of Troy, who, fearing the Greeks, caught a strong wind which allowed them to sail both the Mediterranean as well as the Atlantic and arrive on that far distant shore. Others tended to believe that the Native American could only have descended from the lost tribes of Israel, which is the topic of this one page article.

Fascists in Chile
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Cabled from Santiago, Chile came this report that on May 7, 1933 the broad-belted boulevards of that grand city were filled with 15,000 Chilean fascists, cheered on by a crowed that was estimated at a number higher than 400,000 – a throng composed almost entirely of citizens who had all come to see the first parade of the Nacional Milicia Republicana:

Along the lines of the march there were many demonstrations for the Fascists, and a few against them. Women tossed flowers from flag-bedecked windows. Domingo Duran, Minister of Education and Justice, a regimental commander of the militia, received almost continual applause.

A squadron of Fascist planes flew overhead as the units, unarmed, and marching to airs played by two dozen bands and fife corps, moved through the spacious Boulevard Alamada, past the Presidential Palace to the Plaza des Aramas.


From Amazon: Chile and the Nazis: From Hitler to Pinochetstyle=border:none

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

The Truce of Tangku
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

This 1933 news piece concerned the cessation of hostilities that was agreed upon by both the Imperial Empire of Japan and China in the campaign that began two years earlier with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

When the withdrawal of Chinese troops is completed, the Japanese agree that their own troops will retire to the Great Wall, which the Japanese claim is the boundary of the state of Manchukuo.

FDR on Wage Reduction
(Literary Digest, 1938)

I am opposed to wage reductions – a statement made by President Roosevelt at a February press conference in 1938, compelled both economists and industrialists to ejaculate numerous multisyllabic words on the matter. In light of the fact that magazine editors are wage earners, the majority of selected quotes side with FDR.


Click here to read about the end of the Great Depression…

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

British Praise for General Grant
(Literary Digest, 1897)

When the Grant Memorial in New York City was first presented to the public during the Spring of 1897, few could have guessed that one of the places most excited about the monument would be Great Britain. An American journalist posted to that distant isle filed the attached article, quoting from as many as eight British newspapers that saw fit to liberally sprinkle their pages with a variety of laudatory adjectives in praise of General Grant:

He sprang from the people, he was the son of a plain farmer, and had ‘driven team’ in his day. Yet he was also a trained soldier. But, from first to last, he was merely the citizen in arms, and with the mighty array he commanded, he resumed his position in civil life as soon as his work was done…The giants of the Civil War were probably the last of a great race.


Click here to read Grant’s recollection of the first time he met President Lincoln.

Japan’s Puppet
(Literary Digest, 1936)

A brief notice reporting on Prince Teh Wang (Prince Demchugdongrub 1902 – 1966), ruler of Inner Mongolia, who, in an attempt to create an independent Mongolia, simply ruled as an appeaser of Imperial Japan:

While Prince Teh’s position, as a Japanese puppet, can scarcely be less comfortable than it was before , Japan has a grip on the bottle-neck controlling a vast, ill-defined hinterland of North China; and has as well a buffer State between her own influence and that of the Soviets.

Mussolini and the Four-Power Pact
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

The brain child of Il Duce, the Four-Power Pact was a diplomatic treaty that was intended to guarantee a greater voice to the four strongest powers in Europe: Italy, Germany, France and Britain.

The chief value of the Mussolini pact is (1) it induces collaboration in Europe and (2) it pledges the disarmament regardless of what the disarmament conference does.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

The Military Buildup in France and Britain
(Literary Digest, 1936)

This 1936 magazine article reported that Germany had spent a considerable sum on munitions and armaments throughout much of the previous year and was not likely to stop anytime soon. In light of this fact, the French and British governments were moved to do the same:

Winston Churchill, a cherubic reddish-haired Cassandra, bobbed up in the House of Commons again last week to warn his countrymen of the ‘remorseless hammers’ of the world.

The German Rebellion Against the Treaty
(Literary Digest, 1923)

This 1923 German editorial by Professor Rudolf Euken (coincidentally published in THE EUKEN REVIEW) was accompanied by an anti-Versailles Treaty cartoon which attempted to rally the German working classes to join together in rebellion against the treaty.

The so-called Peace of Versailles subjects the German people to unheard-of treatment; has injured and crippled Germany; has, with refined cruelty, deprived her of fertile territories; robbed her of sources indispensable to her existence; has heaped upon her huge burdens, and this for an indenite time – the intention being, if possible, to reduce her people to serfdom.


Click here to read another one of Rudolf Euken’s post-war efforts.


Click here if you would like to read about the 1936 Versailles Treaty violations.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

Military Buildup in the United States
(Literary Digest, 1936)

At midnight, December 31, the Naval Limitations Treaty of 1930 will expire and, tho a treaty of a sort was negotiated last April, apparently it will not be ratified and put into effect by the end of the year.

With this in mind, Congress authorized the construction of two battleships at the cost of $50,000,000 each.

And is it worth it, in these days of fleet and deadly torpedo planes or great diving bombers clutching demolition bombs weighing a ton apiece? Naval experts think so. The Battleship, they say, is still the backbone of the battle-fleet. In the phrase of the street, the battleship can dish it out.

The Navy would soon learn that they were actually living in the age of the aircraft carrier.


Click here to read more about the expansion of the U.S. Navy.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
(Literary Digest, 1915)

KEY WORDS: Vorticist Sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,avant-garde artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,writings of French avant-garde artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,Henri Gaudier-Brzeska contributor to BLAST MAGAZINE,Read

To Outlaw War
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Not pacifists, but soldiers, have signed what several editors term one of the most striking and remarkable appeals for peace that have come to their tables.


Veterans of the 1914-1918 slaughter called for their respective governments to oppose territorial aggrandizement and demanded that an international court be established to outlaw war; following the establishment of said court, the immediate effort to disarm and disband sea and air forces and destroy the implements of warfare should begin. The American Legion Commander-in-Chief, Alvin Owsley (1888 – 1967), was among the signators.


Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

Scrambling for Oil
(Literary Digest, 1921)

Even as early as 1921 the world was noticing that in the U.S., that old Yankee mantra about avoiding foreign entanglements (a distortion of Washington’s Farewell Address) was being updated with a disclaimer: avoid foreign entanglements except when oil is involved.


Having put the Prussians in their place three years earlier, oil had become the new peace-time obsession for the Americans and their British ally – but it was to be the bane in their relationship: the Anglo-American irritant as Sydney Brooks remarked in FORTNIGHT REVIEW. With car manufacturers filling orders to placate a booming consumer market, the Brits pumped oil in Mesopotamia, the Americans in Texas while the oil companies from both locals vied for the rights to explore Latin America and the Caribbean.

Protestant Churches Condemn the KKK
(The Literary Digest, 1922)

A couple of years after the membership lists of the Ku Klux Klan had swelled to record levels, and just seven years after a chic Hollywood film director made a movie that ennobled their crimes,the Administrative Committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America issued a statement which served to distance the Protestant churches from that hate-filled organization.


From Amazon: Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930style=border:none

Coal-Based Fuel Introduced During Gas Rationing
(Literary Digest, 1917)

An efficient coal-based fuel has never really been the reality, however the French would make advancements with the technology in the early forties. The accompanying photograph depicts one of the earliest methods for the creation of a coal and gas blended fuel source that was created as a result of the World War I gas rationing in Britain.

Advertisement

Use shortcode [oma_ad position="summary_top"] (or other position) in your theme or widgets to display OMA Promotions here.

Scroll to Top