Writing – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

‘Men in War” by Andreas Latzko
(Current Opinion, 1918)

In the bad-old days of World War I, author Andreas Latzko (1876 – 1943) served as a line officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. While at the front he was affected by the horrors of combat until he found that he had seen enough and chose to desert. Even before the war had ended he managed to create an anti-war novel and get it to press before the Armistice. Digitized here is the 1918 review of his book, Men In War

Disillusionment and an almost morbid sympathy with mental and physical suffering are outstanding features of the book.

Israel Zangwill and the Great War
(The North American Review, 1916)

Israel Zangwill (1864 – 1926) was a member of the Jewish literary society in Britain; he was an prominent lecturer, journalist, novelist and playwright. Today, however, he is mostly remembered for his efforts on behalf of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish homeland. The following is a luke-warm book review from 1916 covering his collection of essays about World War I, The War for the World.

H.L. Mencken Reviewed Two Novels Dealing the War and Disillusionment
(The Smart Set, 1922)

In Three Soldiers, John Dos Passos exhibited the disillusionment of the soldiers in the field; The Last Mile by Frank Macallister exposes the disillusionment of the soldier come home. The reviewer remarked that both men had been bamboozled by Woodrow and company.

The W.W. I Plays of the Post-War Years
(Stage Magazine, 1933)

A look at What Price Glory? and Journey’s End and the new spirit that created these dramas.

When R.C. Sheriff, nearly ten years after the Armistice, sat down to write an easy play for the amateurs of his boat club, he seems to have had no fixed notion as to what a play ought to be. The script of Journey’s End shows a complete absence of strain…

Click here to read an additional article concerning Journeys End.

JOURNEY’S END by R.C. Sheriff
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1929)

Robert Littell reviewed the first New York production of Journey’s End by former infantry officer, R.C. Sherriff (1896 – 1975: 9th East Surrey Regiment, 1915 – 1918). We have also included a paragraph from a British critic named W.A. Darlington who had once fought in the trenches and approaches the drama from the angle of a veteran:

Click here if you would like to read another article about the WW I play Journey’s End.

Good and Bad Writing About World War I
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

A small column from a 1915 issue of Vanity Fair in which the correspondent praised the virtues of Howard Copeland (an American psychologist and ambulance volunteer working in Frabce), Gertrude Aldrich (author of an Atlantic Magazine essay titled, Little House on the Marne), Cardinal Mercier (author of the Great Belgian Pastoral) and W.F. Bailey (authored a paper concerning the war in Northeastern Europe). These writers are preferred to the usually celebrated ink-slingers like Hellaire Belloc, Rudyard Kipling, Anatole France, and Arnold Bennett who are all compared to amateur recruiting sergeants in support of the War.

This image file is poorly scanned: we recommend that you print it for greater legibility.

The War-Poetry of the Soldier-Poets
(The English Review, 1921)

Soldier poets are the true historians of the war. Unlike the host of professional versifiers who sat up day and night on Parnassus, pouring out their patriotic zeal in allegorical rhymes of battles and batteries with more than Aesopian facility, the soldier poets have given to life and literature a genuine interpretation of warfare stripped bare of artificialty

The Pessimism That Followed W.W. I
(Atlantic Monthly, 1923)

A few years after the Great War reached it’s bloody conclusion, literary critic Helen McAfee discovered that a careful reading of the prominent authors and poets writing between 1918 and 1923 revealed that each of them shared a newfound sense of malaise – a despairing, pessimistic voice that was not found in their pre-war predecessors.

Certainly the most striking dramatization of this depth of confusion and bitterness is Mr. Eliot’s The Waste Land. As if by flashes of lightening it reveals the wreck of the storm… The poem is written in the Expressionist manner – a manner peculiarly adapted to the present temper… It is mood more than idea that gives the poem its unity. And the mood is black. It is bitter as gall; not only with a personal bitterness, but also with the bitterness of a man facing a world devastated by a war for a peace without ideals.

If you would like to read another 1920s article about the disillusioned post-war spirit, click here.

Father Francis Duffy of the Fighting 69th
(The Bookman, 1920)

Father Francis P. Duffy (1874 – 1932) was the well-loved regimental chaplain for the illustrious, old New York infantry regiment known as the Fighting 69th.

Next time you find yourself walking near Times Square in New York City, you’ll see a statue erected in his memory situated behind a statue of the popular songster who composed Over There – George M. Cohan (1878 – 1942). These memorials will be found at Broadway and 7th Avenue (between 46th & 47th streets). Both men knew the neighborhood well – to Cohan it was known as the Theater District while Duffy knew it as Hell’s Kitchen, and it was his parish.

The Bookman reviewed Duffy’s memoir as a book which carries A.E.F. readers back to lousy, old French barns, to chilly, soupy Argonne mud and, at last, to a wintry Rhineland….

You can can read more about Father Duffy’s war here…

Click here to read articles about W.W. I poetry.

A Visit to the Grave of Rupert Brooke
(The London Mercury, 1920)

Attached is an account by a learned traveler who journeyed to that one piece of ground on the isle of Skyros that will forever be England – the grave of the English poet Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915). The literati who wrote the attached article went to great lengths imparting the significance of Skyros throughout all antiquity and it’s meaning to the world of letters – credited only as S. Casson, he informed his readers that he arrived on the island five years after the 1915 internment in order to erect the headstone that is currently in place, describing the shepherds and other assorted rustics in some detail while alluding tirelessly to the works of Homer.