1919

Articles from 1919

Sharp-Shooting on the Western Front
(Cornhill Magazine, 1919)

The attached remembrance of sniping on the Western Front was written by Major H. Hesketh-Pritchard, D.S.O, M.C. (author of Sniping in France 1914-18) and recalls the development and changes of sharp-shooting on both sides during the war. Pritchard broke down the scouting and sniper involvement on the Western Front into four phases:


Phase I (1914 – 1915): German snipers weigh heavily on Allied soldiers (Clear German advantage)


Phase II (1915 – 1916): British sniping organized (Advantage even)


Phase III (1916 – 1918): British sniper program takes off (Slight British Advantage)


Phase IV (1918 through to the Armistice): Allied Offensive takes effect (Snipers began scouting)

Categorizing The Lynchings
(The Crises, 1919)

Here is a Crisis Magazine summary of the all the various lynchings that had been recorded in the United States between the years 1885 through 1918. Additional lists are provided that give an account of the participating states for the year 1918, the genders of the victims and the racial group to which they belonged.


Click here for the Ku Klux Klan Archive.

The Return of the Coldstream Guards
(The New Red Cross Magazine, 1919)

To-day was a great day in London. The Guards’ Division was inspected by the King at Buckingham Palace and had a triumphant march to welcome them home…East End and West End rubbed shoulders to-day and showed the same respect for each other that not so long ago they had shown in the trenches.


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

The American Cemetery at Romagne
(Literary Digest, 1919)

An eye-witness account of the construction of the American Meuse-Argonne Cemetery in Romagne, France:

They are now gathering up the bodies of the 26,000 American boys who were killed on the Argonne-Meuse battlefield, and are burying them in a great cemetery at Romagne, a little town in the heart of the region where the fighting took place. Here and there all over the battlefield are stakes, each marking the grave of an American soldier who was buried where he fell.

In one of the office buildings a large force of clerks is keeping the records of the dead; no banking firm could be more careful of its accounts than are these clerks…and their superiors of their registration of graves.

African-American Stevedores in the U.S. Army
(The Independent, 1919)

An article written by David Le Roy Ferguson (dates unknown), an African-American pastor assigned to minister to the black Doughboys posted to the depot at St. Nazaire, France. The men of his flock were stevedores who were ordered to perform the thankless task of off-loading cargo from the various supply ships arriving daily to support the A.E.F.. Aside from working as cooks or in other service positions, this was a customary assignment given to the African-Americans during the war; only a small percentage were posted to the 92nd and 93rd combat divisions.


Pastor Ferguson’s magazine article salutes the necessary labor of these men while at the same time adhering to the usual simple descriptions of the African-American as cheerful, musical and rather crude.

Farewell to Alcohol
(Literary Digest, 1919)

Published at a time when America stood so reluctantly on the doorstep of the Prohibition era, an unnamed editor at The Literary Digest compiled a number of quotes from numerous literary sources as if to illustrate the deep roots the Western world of belles-lettres has invested in the culture of alcohol.

The Political Crisis in Post-War Germany
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1919)

The Current Opinion foreign correspondent filed this short dispatch about the pandemonium unfolding in post-World War I Germany:

The great fact to the outside world is that a German parliament has actually precipitated a crisis. It threw out the Scheidemann cabinet. It presided over the birth of a Bauer one. It was the German parliament which dictated to the government regarding its composition, instead of meekly obeying the government, as had been the custom…


More about leftists in Weimar Germany can be read here.

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