World War One – Page 37 – Old Magazine Articles

The Feminist Rebellion of the Twenties (The Dilineator, 1921)

It was estimated that there were as many as two million empty seats around the collective family dinner tables in Post World War One Britain. Such an absence of young men could not help but lead to a new social arrangement:

England is the great human laboratory of our generation – England with her surplus of two million women, her restless, well-equipped, unsatisfied women.

Too many European women were unable to find husbands and moved to America.

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Liquid Fire (Literary Digest, 1916)

– A well-illustrated article which sought to explain to American readers the workings of one of the most heinous inventions of the First World War:

This idea of projecting upon the adverse trenches and their occupants a rain of liquid fire was no sudden afterthought of the German mind. It was conceived, studied, and perfected for several years before the war, and its history may be traced in the German patent office.

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The Women’s Overseas Corps (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

Five thousand women are to be brought from the United States to be a part of the American Expeditionary Forces…The Women’s Overseas Corps (WOCS) will consist of companies of 50 women each. The members of the WOC will be under soldierly discipline and wear uniforms…It is not expected that they will march in formation or observe the formalities of the salute.

These women were recruited by Miss Elsie Gunther of the Labor Bureau in order to relieve the men posted to the Service of Supply of their clerical duties for service at the front; in light of the fact that the war ended six weeks later it is unlikely that the these women ever arrived.

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The American Death Record (American Legion Weekly, 1922)

Statistics of the World War prove, however, that war was, from the standpoint of mortality, not vastly different from other wars. In spite of the improvements in methods of killing by machinery,Nature managed to runup a higher score than the enemy’s bullets and shells. The Surgeon General of the Army, at the request of The American Legion Weekly, has prepared the following figures for the period of the war, from April 1, 1917 to December 31, 1919.

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The American Army Occupies Coblenz, Germany (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

On the afternoon of December 8, 1918, the troops of the Third American Army entered Koblenz. This was the goal of the occupation. The Yankees had reached the Rhine.

Probably never in all its stressful history did enemy troops enter it so in quite the matter-of-fact manner which marked the American entry last Sunday. There was no band. There were no colors. ‘We’re just going in sort of casual like,’ one of our generals had said the day before, and he was right.

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The Case for Cavalry (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919)

Numbered among the many Monday-morning-quarterbacks who appeared in print throughout much of the Twenties and Thirties were the old horse soldiers of yore, bemoaning the fact that industrial warfare had deprived their kind of the glory that was their birthright. This was not the case on the Eastern Front, where Imperial Russian generals had seen fit to launch as many as 400 cavalry charges – while American troopers were ordered to dismount (along with most other cavalry units in the West) and suffer postings with the Service of Supply, among other assorted indignities.

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The Case for Cavalry (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919)

The Case for Cavalry (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919) Read More »

A Diagram of the French Renault Tank (Freedom’s Triumph, 1919)

The French made light Renault tank was first seen on the Western Front in 1918, it had a crew of two, measured 13 feet (4 meters) in length and weighed 6.5 tons. The tank’s 35 hp. engine moved it along at a top speed of 6 mph. The factory options were few: one turret was fashioned to accommodate a 37mm gun while the other was made for a machine gun. The American Army placed 227 of these tanks in the field; these Renaults were distinctly different from those commanded by their French allies: the American version sported an octagonal turret (the French used a circular one) and steel wheels (the French Army preferred wood).

If you wish to read about the only German tank of World War I, click here.

Read about the Patton tank in Korea…

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The German View of the Next War (Literary Digest, 1912)

Attached is a short review of a book that turned many heads in the diplomatic circles of Europe in 1911: Germany And The Next War, written by Germany’s General von Bernhardi (1849 – 1930):

A very influential military writer in Germany declares that Germany must win her place as a world power through warfare.

The book sales in Germany were quite meager up until the first shot was fired in August of 1914, when they picked up considerably.

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Germany Defends It’s Military Build Up (Literary Digest, 1913)

A defense was offered for the growth of German military expenditures based on the spread of Slavik pride and the rise of a great Pan-Slavonic movement due to victory of their kinsmen in the Balkans. German leaders, furthermore, felt a deep uneasiness about the fact that about one-third of the population of the Hapsburg Monarchy consisted of Slavs and therefore felt that military aid from the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not guaranteed in the event of a war with Russia and France.

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