1917 – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

One of the First Trench Coats for U.S. Civilians
(Magazine Ad, 1917)

No doubt, the fashionable minds who sat so comfortably in America, far removed from the dung and destruction of the European war, would thumb through magazines such as Leslie’s, Collier’s or Current History looking for fashion’s newest thing. How pleased these fops must have been that the ink-stained photogravure boys didn’t let them down! The Brothers Guiterman in Minnesota must have been numbered among these macaronis because they seemed to have been the first to begin production of a trench coat intended solely for civilian production (although it must be remembered that during the war, trench coats were a private purchase item, available only to officers sold only by haberdashers and privately-owned military furnishing establishments).

‘The Philosophy of Auguste Rodin”
(Vanity Fair, 1917)

Just prior to the death of Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917), the Welsh poet and essayist, Arthur Symons (1865-1945), reviewed a book written by the French writer, Judith Cladel (1873-1958) concerning the artist’s work and creative temperament:

AUGUSTE RODIN PRIS SUR LA VIE at once a document and a living thing. The main interest lies in the exactitude with which it records the actual words of Rodin, much as he must have spoken them y

The Elephant on the British Home Front
(Popular Mechanics, 1917)

We are told that the attached picture could only have been snapped in the more eccentric parts of Britain during the Great War and that it serves as graphic proof that the farm labor shortage was as dire as the farmers declared that it was.

Barbusse Described the Winter Trenches
(Collier’s Magazine, 1917)

The war has changed many things, and it may have altered conceptions of military smartness as well. For from Paris, the home of ‘mode’ and ‘chic’, comes a daily fashion hint from the front that is upsetting. It is from Henri Barbusse (1873 – 1935), author of the novel Under Fire (Le Feu, 1916) and describes the winter costumes of a squad of French Territorials:

Hides, bundles, blankets, pieces of cloth, knitted hoods, woolen caps, fur caps, mufflers, wound around or worn like turbans, headgear knit and double knit, coverings and roofings of tarred, oiled or waterproofed capes and cowls, black, or all colors once of the rainbow; all these cover the men obliterating their uniforms as well as covering their skins, making them look immense and cumbersome…

Zeppelin Diagram
(L’Illustration, 1917)

A schematic plan of a German World War One Zeppelin that illustrates the airship’s bombay, crew quarters and gondola.

Coal-Based Fuel Introduced During Gas Rationing
(Literary Digest, 1917)

An efficient coal-based fuel has never really been the reality, however the French would make advancements with the technology in the early forties. The accompanying photograph depicts one of the earliest methods for the creation of a coal and gas blended fuel source that was created as a result of the World War I gas rationing in Britain.

American Officer’s Musette Bag
(Advertisement, 1917)

The attached magazine illustration is from an ad for a commercially produced musette bag for American officers during World War One.

American Army officers, like the men in their ranks, had no particular need to ever bother with a musette (we have learned that a musette is a small French wind instrument, not unlike a bag-pipe). The bag pictured here was intended for personal effects that would be needed while on the march: stationery,toiletries, housewives).

Due to the French prowess involving all matters military during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the English language is lousey with French military terms, many of which are very much in use today.

Gassing as Crime
(H.W. Wilson, 1917)

When the United States Congress declared war on Imperial Germany in April of 1917, the New York pamphleteer Halsey William Wilson (1868 – 1954) wasted little time in collecting a list of the numerous war crimes committed by the Germans up to that time in order to launch a mass printing of a 31 page pamphlet that would sell for five cents each. The heinous use of poison gas was listed on page nine.

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Reconsidered
(Literary Digest, 1917)

The 1917 publication of The life of Algernon Charles Swinburne, by Edmund Gosse caused much discussion in the literary world:

A bombshell that struck literary England a little past that last mid-century has been re-echoing in the recently published ‘Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne’ by Edmund Gosse. The shell was the volume called ‘Poems and Ballads’ a cursory knowledge of which probably places it in many minds as one of the bad books of literature…

The Business End of Gas Warfare
(Literary Digest, 1917)

The attached article, How Well Our Chemical Industry Has Been Mobilized for War is an abstract from a 1917 issue of THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE which discussed how readily American chemists embraced their roll after the United States committed itself to the war.

There is much talk of the procurement of potash, toluol and trinitrotoluol which were necessary elements in the manufacture of gas.

A British Shrapnel Grenade
(Trench Warfare, 1917)

During the earliest days of the war the British and Empire armies were seldom issued grenades, but the need for such weaponry became apparent once it was clear to all that trench warfare was going to be the norm. The earliest grenades (improvised by both sides) were simply food tins that were jam-packed with an explosive mixed with nails, glass shards and bits of iron. By 1915 grenade production was in full swing and British historians have estimated that throughout the course of the war on the Western Front, British and Commonwealth forces had used fifteen million hand-grenades.

The following article concern a British shrapnel grenade that is of the heavy friction pattern.

An Englishman in the French Army
(Times Literary Supplement, 1917)

Under the French Flag is a W.W. I memoir by M. Macdonald in which the author tells the story of an Englishman who chose to sign up for the French Army due to their lax recruiting regulations which provided for the enlistment of men as old as fifty years of age. The reviewer believed the author recounted some interesting scenes of early-war France and French barracks life.

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

The British Ball Grenade
(Trench Warfare, 1917)

The attached mechanical drawing depicts one of the most common ignition grenades that were put to use by British and Commonwealth forces during World War One. The Ball grenade was essentially a cast-iron sphere that measured three inches in diameter and it was one of any number of British grenades that used the Brock lighter.

A Three Part Anti-Aircraft Shell
(Scientific American, 1917)

An Honorable Mention was certainly in order for the British inventor Edward Dartford Holmes who thought up a three tiered, time fuse anti-artillery shell:

Briefly, his scheme calls for a shrapnel shell containing a number of compartments which are each exploded in turn at predetermined intervals.

The German Blockhouse
(L’Illustration, 1917)

Here is an architectural plan and a photograph of a German blockhouse that was constructed in Flanders during 1917. The Historian John Laffin is very informative on this subject when he refers to it in his 1997 book, The Western Front Companion:

Blockhouses generally measured 30 ft. along the front, with a width of 10 ft. They were sunk three feet into the ground and stood 7 feet above it. The front was up to 30 inches thick. Massively strong, a blockhouse was virtually impervious to shell-fire; even a heavy shell would merely knock a large chip off the edge.

This article appears on this site by way of a special agreement with L’Illustration.