Writing

A French Response to the Kaiser Memoir
(Time Magazine, 1923)

Kaiser Wilhelm’s recollections of his part in the First World War (reviewed above) was released in the Winter of 1922. Former French president Rene Viviani (1863 – 1925; leadership, 13 June 1914 – 29 October 1915) quickly responded with his own book that appeared the following spring – it was titled As We See It:


“M. Viviani’s book is a direct answer to that puerile and invidious work known as the ex-Kaiser’s War Memoirs. It is impossible to escape from the logic of Viviani’s scathing denunciation of the ex-Kaiser’s tacit inculpation in the events which preceded the world-wide cataclysm.”

A Veteran Against War
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1938)

Writer Paul Gerard Smith (1894 – 1968) was a U.S. Marine in World War I and in 1938, when he saw that another war with Germany was simmering on the the front burner he put a Fresh ribbon of ink in the typewriter and wrote this editorial which he titled, An Open Letter to Boys of Military Age. His column is a cautionary tale advising the young men of his day to make their decisions thoughtfully before committing themselves to such a dangerous undertaking as war. Smith advised youth to examine the causes for the war, verify whose commercial interests will be served in victory and only if –


you find that America and the future of America is threatened – then go and kick Hell of the enemy, and God be with you.


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


CLICK HERE… to read one man’s account of his struggle with shell shock…

In Memorium, 1914
(Saturday Review of Literature, 1929)

The editors for the August 3, 1929 issue of The Saturday Review of Literature removed their collective caps in deep solemnity for the disasters that began that week just fifteen years earlier when the opening shots were fired that began the First World War.


It was a fitting tribute coming from a literary magazine in 1929, for that would be the year that introduced some of the finest World War I books to the reading public: Undertones of War (Blunden), The Path of Glory (Blake) and All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque), which are all mentioned herein.

Prisoner of War
(Saturday Review of Literature, 1932)

The Saturday Review of Literature discussed a number of World War One books while in the course of reviewing Shoot And Be Damned
by Ed Halyburton and Ralph Goll, a wartime memoir which recalled time spent in a German prisoner of war camp.

T.E. Lawrence of Arabia
(Saturday Review of Literature, 1930)

This is a 1930 review of of Gurney Slade’s fictionalized account of the World War One Arab revolt, In Lawrence’s Bodyguard. The book was intended as a novel for boys and is here reviewed anonymously by one who was simply credited as, A Friend of T.E. Lawrence. Gurney Slade (pen name for Stephen Bartlett) was libeled as a man of taste and sensibility and the novel was generally well liked.

‘The Arab business was a freak in my living; in ordinary times I’m plumb normal.’ Normal, yes; but only the normally strong arise to be normal after trial and error.

You might also like to read this 1933 article about T.E. Lawrence.

Click here to read about Lawrence’s posthumous memoir and the literary coup of 1935.

‘The Battle of the Somme” by Philip Gibbs
(Literary Digest, 1917)

This book review was published in an American magazine shortly after President Wilson and the U.S. Congress declared war on the Germany. The book in question, The battle of the Somme, was written by Philip Gibbs (1877 – 1962). Highly respected among his peers and the reading public, Gibbs was knighted for his efforts at the war’s end but soon he let the world know what he really thought of the war and, in particular, his feelings concerning General Douglas Haig.


Gibbs wrote a number of books that were critical of war, click here to read a review of More That Must Be Told (1921).

‘Company K” by William March
(Saturday Review of Literature, 1933)

The New York Times war correspondent Arthur Ruhl (1876 – 1935) reviewed a book that would later be seen as a classic piece of World War One fiction: Company K
by William March (born William Edward Campbell 1893 – 1954). Awarded both the French Croix de Guerre and the Distinguished Service Cross, March gained an understanding of war and the frailties of human character as a member of the Fifth Marines fighting at Belleau Wood and participating in the big push during the San-Mihiel Offensive:

The outstanding virtues of William March’s work are those of complete absence of sentimentality and routine romanticism, of a dramatic gift constantly heightened and sharpened by eloquence of understatement.

No More Parades’ by Ford Madox Ford
(Literary Digest, 1926)

The attached article is a 1926 review of Ford Madox Ford’s (1873 – 1939) novel, No More Parades, his second in a series of four related novels concerning the Great War. Billed as the most highly praised novel of the year, the reviewer lapses into superlatives and exults:

Not since Three Soldiers has a novel of the war made such an impression on reviewers as Ford Madox Ford’s No More Parades… All our ‘intellectuals’ are reading it…our young intellectual novelists will be heavily influenced by it or will attempt to imitate a whole-cloth imitation of it.


Ford was a veteran of the war who served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers; the article is illustrated with a black and white photo of the author standing shoulder to shoulder with Ezra Pound and James Joyce.

Another War Correspondent Remembers With Anger
(Current Opinion, 1921)

American journalist Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) began his career as a correspondent covering the Greco-Turkish War (1896 – 1897); by the time the First World War flared up his stock was at it’s very peak and and was selected by the British Government to serve as the sole American reporter to cover the efforts of the B.E.F.. In the Spring of 1917, when the U.S. entered the war, Palmer was recruited by the American Army to serve as the press liaison officer for General Pershing. A good deal of Palmer’s experiences can be gleaned from this article, which was written as a review of his wartime memoirs, The Folly of Nations (1921).


Another Frederick Palmer article can be read here…

Another War Correspondent Remembers With Anger
(Current Opinion, 1921)

American journalist Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) began his career as a correspondent covering the Greco-Turkish War (1896 – 1897); by the time the First World War flared up his stock was at it’s very peak and and was selected by the British Government to serve as the sole American reporter to cover the efforts of the B.E.F.. In the Spring of 1917, when the U.S. entered the war, Palmer was recruited by the American Army to serve as the press liaison officer for General Pershing. A good deal of Palmer’s experiences can be gleaned from this article, which was written as a review of his wartime memoirs, The Folly of Nations (1921).


Another Frederick Palmer article can be read here…

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