Here is a N.Y. Times review of a volume concerning the origins and future of silent film. It was said that the author was quite good at recalling the genesis of the medium – and he was all wet about its future (silent films would dry up six years after this review appeared).
“Fascism, which began in Italy as a political and social force, soon became cultural as well. Already the movement has produced a considerable literature of its own. It is a literature of thews and sinews, of conflict and aspiration: its appeal is to a people awakened to a new consciousness of the possibilities and responsibilities of a life, a people that is confident that it has recovered the elixir of youth and has faith in the future.”
“In the twelve months since Pearl Harbor the American family has begun
to experience war on the home front. Almost a full year has passed before gasoline rationing was extended to the entire country. More than a year will have passed before meat rationing begins next month. The sugar pinch has been only a gentle nip. The full extent of the fuel shortage has yet to be measured against the severity of the weather. The sign ‘one per customer’ appears on more and more shelves in the corner grocery, but except for extra cups of coffee the average menu isn’t too far from prewar. Thanksgiving of 1942 was hardly less than the usual feast day.”
“It is in Palestine where the Jews are building a national home, that the Arab enjoys higher standards of living and of health than anywhere in the Middle East… The Arab population of Palestine has risen from 600,000 to 1,200,00.”
By the time 1951 rolled around, the benefits of the Marshall Plan were hitting on all cylinders throughout Italy, and manufacturing had returned to it’s pre-war levels. The sweet words of Marxism that once had such alure were now falling flat. Although Red candidates had done quite well in 1946, by 1951 they attracted few voters.
After reading this 1941 article you will come away with a full understanding as to how misguided Imperial Japan was to enter into a war with the United States and the British Empire. At the time of the printing, Japan had been engaged in its second war with a very underdeveloped China; even though Japan had held the momentum in that war, it had still driven the Japanese into a life of highly uncomfortable rationing, which would only get worse as their new war expanded.
“The German and Italian propaganda ministries did their customary sister act today, shrieking in unison that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who started the war in the Pacific. But they didn’t accuse the President of bombing Pearl Harbor.”
“Every day in Washington, and twice on Sundays, there will be parades. You love parades. You’ll never get tired of turning out for bands, even though they always stop playing just as they get opposite you…. Anyhow, there will always be the feel of parades in Washington, and the echoes of martial music, and the sight of waving flags. Where else, oh where elese, could they sing so fervently God Bless America?”
When President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on December 8, 1941 – he was not the only one to do so; judging by the content of the attached article, and numerous others on this site, 100,000 other Americans did the same thing. This article is about the rapid growth of the United Sates military that took place between December of 1941 through December of 1942 – and boy, did it grow.
When President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on December 8, 1941 – he was not the only one to do so; judging by the content of the attached article, and numerous others on this site, 100,000 other Americans did the same thing. This article is about the rapid growth of the United Sates military that took place between December of 1941 through December of 1942 – and boy, did it grow.
This article lists a surprising number of American authors who had all found high levels of productivity in the city of Paris, both during the Great War and afterward:
“In Paris the American author seems to get the right perspective of his native land. Three thousand miles away he finds himself better able to interpret or criticize the land of the free. Permeated by the French atmosphere, he suddenly develops a huge interest in America, and this interest, in turn, expresses itself usually in the form of a novel.”
This article lists a surprising number of American authors who had all found high levels of productivity in the city of Paris, both during the Great War and afterward:
“In Paris the American author seems to get the right perspective of his native land. Three thousand miles away he finds himself better able to interpret or criticize the land of the free. Permeated by the French atmosphere, he suddenly develops a huge interest in America, and this interest, in turn, expresses itself usually in the form of a novel.”
After living under Prohibition for two years a journalist for The New York Times collected numerous facts and concerns on the matter of Prohibition and the political battles between Wets and Drys..
“Prohibition is undoubtedly the most drastic of all sumptuary laws. I have found it hard to believe that the men who drafted the Constitution ever supposed that it would contain a clause like the Eighteenth Amendment, which, when once inserted in the document, is practically irreversible.”
“‘We’re so far ahead of that Heinie in tank design and production that he’s never going to catch us’ – that was the opinion expressed by Major General Levin H. Campbell (1886 – 1976), the War Department’s Ordnance Chief, in an interview in New York last week. He quoted a British officer as saying that the American M-4 General Sherman tank is the ‘answer to a tankman’s prayer.'”
“Persistence has been characteristic of Mrs. Sanger. Principally because of her long campaign, 235 birth control clinics have been made lawful in the United States…. In 1913 Mrs. Sanger started a magazine called The Women Rebel which was quickly banned by postal authorities. For some time after that she faced trouble, sometimes landing in jail and sometimes being fined.”
“When recruits in the new Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps – commonly dubbed WAACS – reported for training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, women for the first time in American history became members of Uncle Sam’s Army.”
(The title concerning “the first woman in the Uncle Sam’s Army” is believed to go to a lass named Deborah Sampson who served in George Washington’s army in 1781, under the name “Robert Shurtliff”.)
