1919 – Page 9 – Old Magazine Articles

W.E.B. Du Boise and the Documents of U.S. Army Prejudice
(The Crises, 1919

This historic article first appeared in a 1919 issue of The Crisis and served to document the official discrimination against African-Americans who served both in the ranks and as officers in the American Army during the First World War. The article includes the communications from high-ranking American officers to the French military authorities, conveying their suggestions as to how America’s black Doughboys were to be treated.

In the War’s Aftermath Came Spiritual Disillusion
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1919)

At the thirty-fifth annual Church Congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1919), clergy members seemed to agree that Christian leaders were needlessly complicit concerning their support for the First World War and were guilty of substituting Christian principles for patriotism:

Christianity has betrayed itself body and soul.

If you would like to read about the spirit of disillusion that permeated post-war literature, click here.

Victory and Paris Fashion
(Vogue Magazine, 1919)

The Paris Victory Parade celebrating the end of the 1914 – 1918 war was a long awaited and much anticipated fashion event and Mme. Parisienne was not going to miss it for all the crepe de Chin in China. This VOGUE correspondent contrasted the Paris that existed a short time earlier, the gray, deserted Paris with the Paris of the 1919 Victory Parade and notes how eager the natives were to recreate that mirthful, light-hearted Paris of 1913 that they all remembered so well. There is a great sense of joie de vivre throughout the article, but it very rapidly becomes a laundry list concerning who-wore-what-where.

The New England National Guard: Twenty-Sixth Division
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

An illustration of the insignia patch and a brief account of the origins, deployments and war-time activities of the U.S. Army’s Twenty-Sixth Division

(a.k.a. the Yankee Division

)during World War I.

American Colleges During W.W. I
(Home Sector, 1919)

Here is a book review of The Colleges In The War And Afterward (1919) by Parke Rexford Kolbe:

One obtains a very clear picture of our educational institutions during the war and a definite feeling of the difficulties encountered when agencies which were quite individualistic, quite self-dependent, suddenly found themselves mere sub-departments of the War Department submitting to a command from higher authority as if they had been used to it all their lives…

Sam Brown Belts: Two Short Notices
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

Aside from barb wire, poison gas, machine guns and trenches, the untested American officer corps had one other alien item to contend with: the Sam Brown Belt. Worn by all the officers in the allied armies and widely recognized as the premiere emblem of authority along the front lines, many American officers were of mixed minds concerning this military fashion accessory.

W.B. Yeats Gripes About the Theater-Going Bourgeoisie
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1919)

Poet and playwright W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) had his say on the matter of theater-subscriber-book-of-the-month-club types who are more likely to attend performances because they feel they should, rather than attending for their own reasons of personal enjoyment:

And the worst of it is that I could not pay my players, or the seamstresses, or the owner of the building, unless I could draw to my plays those who prefer light amusement, or who have no ear for verse and literature, and fortunately they are all very polite.

W.B. Yeats Gripes About the Theater-Going Bourgeoisie
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1919)

Designs of the Italian Futurists
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1919)

Already the young architects of Italy are looking forward to a new renaissance of building, toward the production of a new style based upon modern methods of building and adapted to modern needs. The impulse to this new movement came from the brilliant Futurist Antonio Sant’Elia, who carried the ideas of the Italian innovators into the field of architecture, but whose development was cut short by his heroic death in the war… Nevertheless, his influence upon the younger architects has been great. Fortunately, they have been able to adapt his ideas to the exigencies of practical building, and in some instances to avoid a complete severing with the traditions of the past.

Chateau-Thierry: Setting the Record Straight
(The Literary Digest, 1919)

Rumor has it that when the U.S. Army’s senior staff officers had learned of the victory that the U.S. Marines had achieved at the Bois de Belleau in the summer of 1918, one of them had remarked, Those head-line hunting bastards! When reading this next piece you will immediately get a sense that the army was fed-up with the folks at home believing that the same Marines were responsible for the Army’s success at Chateau-Thierry. The war was already over by the time this piece appeared, making it clear to all that Chateau-Thierry was a feather in the cap for the Army, and no one else.