Recent Articles – Page 61 – Old Magazine Articles

The First 100 Hours
(Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

Perched on the quarter deck of an LST off the coast of one of the American beachheads during the D-Day invasion, COLLIER’S war correspondent, W.B. Courtney, described the earliest hours of that remarkable day:

I stared through my binoculars at some limp, dark bundles lying a little away from the main activities. In my first casual examination of the beach I had assumed they were part of the debris of defensive obstacles. But they were bodies – American bodies.

Four Glider Pilots on D-Day
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

A three page article about the unique experiences of four American glider pilots on D-Day; how they fared after bringing their infantry-heavy gliders down behind German lines, what they saw and how they got back to the beach.

The President’s Prayer
(National Archive)

On the evening of D-Day, President Roosevelt led a radio audience estimated at 100,000,000 in a prayer of his own composing:

Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor… Lead them straight and true… Their road will be long and hard… Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them.

1910 and The Growing Popularity of the ”Flickers”
(Review of Reviews, 1910)

An informative and well-illustrated column that makes reference to various copy cat crimes that were first seen on movie screens as early as 1908 and duplicated in the real world. The reader will come away with a clear understanding as to just how popular the medium was in the United States and throughout the globe.

Modern Dance: Spreading the News
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Quoting the apostles of Modern Dance quite liberally, this article presents for the reader their impassioned defense as to why the era of a new dance form had arrived and why it was deserving of global attention and much needed in America’s schools. The column centers on the goings-on at Teacher’s College, N.Y.C., where a certain Mary P. O’Donnell once ran the roost at that institution’s dance department; it was O’Donnell’s plan to send her minions out in all directions like the 12 Apostles of Christ, spreading the good news to all God’s creatures that Modern Dance had arrived.

The Boy at Vicksburg
(Literary Digest, 1912)

After reading the attached article, we concluded that baby-sitters must have been pretty hard to come by in the 1860s – and perhaps you’ll feel the same way, too, should you choose to read these columns that concern the recollections of Frederick Dent Grant (1850 – 1912) – son of General Ulysses S. Grant, who brought his son (who was all of 13 years-old at the time) to the blood-heavy siege of Vicksburg in the summer of 1863. The struggles he witnessed must have appealed to the boy, because he grew up to be a general, too.

The Champ is Gone
(PM Tabloid, 1945)

This highly personal column appeared in one of New York City’s evening papers and seemed characteristic of the feeling experienced by much of the U.S. after hearing about the unexpected death of President Roosevelt.
Written by Joe Cummiskey, the column stands out as the type of remembrance that is thoroughly unique to those who write about sports all day long, which is who Mr. Commiskey was:

Somehow or other, if you were in sports, you never thought of FDR so much as connected with the high office which he held. Rather, you remembered him most the way he’d chuckle, getting ready to throw out the the first ball to open the baseball season. Or how he’d sit on the 50 at the Army-Navy game…

1920s Road Rage
(The American Magazine, 1927)

Is it possible for a person to drive an automobile and remain a human being?

Do gasoline and courtesy mix?

Can you tell me why Ottis Throckmorton Whoozies, secretary of the Golden Rule Society, will smile sweetly, lift his hat and say graciously, ‘I beg your pardon. I’m really awfully sorry. Please excuse me,’ when he accidentally steps on a strange woman’s foot in a theater lobby, yet will lean out and make faces at his own grandmother if she fails to slow up her flivver and allow him to ‘cut in’ on a congested highway?

There’s something about a windshield that distorts a man’s outlook on life.

Click here to read about Lincoln, the joke teller.

The Back-Hand from a Flapper
(Flapper Magazine, 1922)

Flapper Magazine crowned itself the

official organ of the national flapper’s flock

If nothing else, this verbiage simply spells out that the editors took themselves very, very seriously indeed and it was in that same spirit they gleefully went to work disemboweling a movie that they saw as anti-flapper to its very core. The film in question was

Nice People (Paramount, 1922) starring Bebe Daniels and Wallace Reid. Produced by Willam C. deMille (1878 – 1955), elder brother of Cecil, the film makers were clearly intimating that nice people will always keep their flapper daughters in line; it is at that point in the flick when the reviewer dipped her pen in the ink:

This is one of the themes that ‘old fogies‘ usually delight in; the ‘reformation’ of the flapper… The picture is replete with pithy subtitles, such as ‘the smart girl of today removes the rouge from her lips only to kiss and make up.’

A Pat on the Back for the Doughboys
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

The attached Stars & Stripes article briefly summarizes the American efforts from Cantigny to the Armistice and serves as one big attaboy for the whole Doughboy army. The journalist anticipates John Mosiere’s World War One history, The Myth of the Great War, which opines that it was the high morale and seemingly endless supply lines of the A.E.F. that served as one of the most decisive factors in bringing the war to a close.

Stars & Stries could not have agreed more.

Ten years later a Frenchman writing for La Revue Mondiale would say essentially the same thing, click here to read that article.

Click here to read an article about life in a W.W. I German listening post…

The Eight World War One American Cemeteries
(Literary Digest, 1923)

Written five years after the Armistice, this is an article about the eight U.S. W.W. I cemeteries that were erected in Europe (with the help of German P.O.W. labor) and the money that was set aside by the veterans of The American Legion to aid in the upkeep of these memorials:

The American flag is still in Europe, even tho the last Doughboy has left the Rhine. It floats over eight cemeteries, six in France, one in Belgium and one in England…It is the high honor of the American Legion to represent the American people in the fulfillment of the sacred national obligation of decorating the graves of our soldiers abroad on Memorial Day. The Legion pledges itself always to remember and honor our dead on foreign soil on the day when the heart of all Americans is thrilling with reverence for them.

U.S. Cemeteries: A Flag for Every Grave
(American Legion Weekly, 1920)

An article that appeared in an American veterans magazine concerning the pageantry that would mark the Memorial Day of 1920 at each of the primary A.E.F. cemeteries in France.

More than 127,000 American soldiers, sailors and Marines gave up their lives during the war…Total battle deaths in the A.E.F. killed in action and died of wounds were 50,329 including casualties in the Siberian force. Deaths from disease including the A.E.F. and men in the home cantonments, were 58,837…No American field of honor will be without it’s Memorial Day ceremony, no American grave without its flag and its flowers…

An interesting article that was written at a time it was believed that the A.E.F. cemeteries were going to be closed and the interred repatriated. There is a photograph of an early prototype headstone that was later rejected in favor of a stone cross; references are made to Suresnes Cemetery in Paris.

Burying The American Dead
(Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

In time, the American dead from D-Day and the Normandy campaign would be buried at the larger cemetery located in Colleville-sur-Mer, but in late July of 1944, these honored dead were interred at Cardonville, France.

The Need for Color in Men’s Fashion
(Current Opinion, 1919)

Tom Wolf and Mark Twain have not been the only men to have lamented the drab hues so prevalent in manly attire: now you may add to that list a new name: H. Dennis Bradley. The late Mr. Bradley was a tailor in London’s Old Bond Street some time back, and he was quite vocal concerning the issue of men’s fashions. Being a true man of the cloth, Mr. Bradley was certain that, prior to the unpleasantness of 1914, men’s fashions were headed in a healthy and aesthetically sound direction, but when the boys came home, the promise was not kept.

We may not go back to the rainbow shades and wonderful stuffs of the bucks and the dandies of olden times–do what we will, we live in utilitarian days–but whatever comes do not let us revert to the hideous hues and shapelessness of the Victorian era…

Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.

The Ground Taken by the German Armies
(NY Times, 1915)

Here is a numeric account, estimated by the Germans, indicating how much of Europe was conquered and occupied by their army on the first anniversary of World War One. The report also accounts for the amount of land being occupied by the Entente powers, and the number of Allied prisoners, machine guns and artillery pieces taken by the central powers within this same time frame. The report was interpreted by the Berlin-based American Association of Commerce before being filed in its entirety by the Associated Press.

The French Navy Sank Their Own Submarine
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

This news piece appeared in a Georgia newspaper during the closing weeks of American neutrality. The first report of this French naval blunder involving a French torpedo boat sinking a French submarine came from Berlin, rather from Paris or London, where such events would never make it past the censors.

This brief notice makes no mention as to the original source or who witnessed the accident.

Comprehending the Afterlife
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

The attached article is by novelist Richard DeWitt Miller (1910 – 1958) who assembled a number of anecdotes and first-hand accounts from people of various backgrounds who had all experienced singularly unique moments in their lives that were unworldly; happenings that could only serve as evidence that there exists a life after this one.

Secular America on the Rise
(Literary Digest, 1933)

The most fundamental change in the intellectual life of the United States is the apparent shift from Biblical authority and religious sanctions to scientific and factual authority and sanctions.

So, at any rate, Professor Hornell Hart, of Bryn Mawr College reads the signs…Two other investigators find evidence of a decline in dogma and a rise in the ‘social gospel’ as evidence of the humanist form of religion which Professor Hart sees foreshadowed by the morning sun.

In 1900 people wanted to know why men didn’t like going to church…