Articles from 1920
Here is a brief notice that appeared in a small, semi-monthly magazine concerning a PoW exchange that took place between the Soviets and the Germans some three years after the Russian Army made their uneasy peace with Imperial Germany.
Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.
KEY WORDS: Prohibition Movement in Britain,author John Hay Beith anti-temperance movement,1920 anti-temperance movement in UK,short-lived UK Prohibition Movement,efforts to prohibit
For some unexplained reason, H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956) wrote this essay under the pseudonym Major Owen Hatteras. The one page article is written in typical Menkenese and catalogs example after example of how prohibition is creating a worse society, not a better one; citizens of all stripes who would otherwise be judged as honest souls, are instead committing illegal acts and there seemed to be no end in sight to such behavior.
An article that appeared in an American veterans magazine concerning the pageantry that would mark the Memorial Day of 1920 at each of the primary A.E.F. cemeteries in France.
More than 127,000 American soldiers, sailors and Marines gave up their lives during the war…Total battle deaths in the A.E.F. killed in action and died of wounds were 50,329 including casualties in the Siberian force. Deaths from disease including the A.E.F. and men in the home cantonments, were 58,837…No American field of honor will be without it’s Memorial Day ceremony, no American grave without its flag and its flowers…
An interesting article that was written at a time it was believed that the A.E.F. cemeteries were going to be closed and the interred repatriated. There is a photograph of an early prototype headstone that was later rejected in favor of a stone cross; references are made to Suresnes Cemetery in Paris.
This brief article, The Women Lincoln Loved, illustrates the strong influences that four remarkable women made in the important process of molding the character of young Abraham Lincoln.
All four of these women share in and are a part of Lincoln’s greatness. They were the most powerful influences in the molding and shaping of the man and his career. Their valuation of life and their aspirations were the secret and noble forces that guided his heart and mind… Out of them was born a great and tender spirit with ‘malice toward none, charity for all.’
Attached are a smattering of photos of the U.S. Marines as they appeared shortly after their arrival in France.
This essay was written by President Wilson’s Director of the Committee on Public Information, George Creel (1876-1953). It first appeared in Creel’s post-war memoir, How we advertised America
and gives a thorough rundown of the planning and the creativity that went into the mass-production of what is today a highly-prized collectible; the American World War I poster.
Twenty years later Creel wrote an article in which he explained his belief that America cannot be censored. Click here to read it.
Click here to read about how the mass-marketing techniques of the W.W. I era was used to promote KKK membership…
Much has been written on the unique relationship that has existed between African-Americans and the city of Paris
KEY WORDS: secretary of agriculture edwin t meredith on suffrage 1920,francis c axtell suffrage 1920,Read more …
The following five page article was written by the World War One poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967), in an attempt to give a rough outline of what the British poets did in the Great War, making every allowance for the fact that they were writing under great difficulty….
On came the foe, rushing foe,
As down they fell by hundreds.
‘Twas bravery held our men;
They knew they were outnumbered.
‘Hundreds’ and ‘outnumbered’; Tennyson could hardly have done better than that. But even Tennyson would not have tried to rhyme ‘steam and ‘submarine’, as the author of the following succeded in doing:
Brave boys, put on steam;
Be ready at the guns, boys;
‘Tis a German submarine.
etc., etc.
There can be no doubt that as a term Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is clearly lacking the needed musical quality that would add to the pleasing rhythm of a poem, however the melancholy that is generated by the malady has launched a million poems throughout the course of the last century, which was to date, the bloodiest yet. Most often remembered for her anti-war verses, Lady Margaret Sackville (1881 – 1963) penned this diddly about that legion of crushed and broken men returned to their wives after World War One and how entirely unrecognizable they seemed:
You cannot speak to us nor we reply:
You learnt a different language where men die…
Examine Lincoln’s prose and the fruitage of his reading will appear… The easy quickening of Lincoln’s mind came from books like Aesop’s Fables, Robinson Caruso and Pilgrim’s Progress… To a man who knew intimately so many creatures, both wild and domestic, the fables seemed natural.
In celebration of being awarded a Pulitzer Prize for having written the best American play of 1920 (Beyond the Horizon), theater critic Walter Prichard Eaton (1878 – 1957) saw fit to slip playwright Eugene O’Neill his back hand with a double-dose of venomous criticism:
…O’Neill’s work to date remains intellectually and spiritually thin.
In this 1920 article the theologian George Burman Foster (1858 – 1918), examined the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) and surmised how that philosopher might have understood the First World War, with all of it’s scientific and industrial power.
War constitutes one of of those dangerous ‘experiments’ undertaken by the wise man to further the progress of life, to test the value of an idea, of life. Hence, war is beneficial, good in itself; and thus Nietzsche predicts without dismay or regret that Europe is not far from entering into a period of great wars when nations will fight with one another for the mastery of the world.
Click here to read about the Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche.
Father Francis P. Duffy (1874 – 1932) was the well-loved regimental chaplain for the illustrious, old New York infantry regiment known as the Fighting 69th.
Next time you find yourself walking near Times Square in New York City, you’ll see a statue erected in his memory situated behind a statue of the popular songster who composed Over There – George M. Cohan (1878 – 1942). These memorials will be found at Broadway and 7th Avenue (between 46th & 47th streets). Both men knew the neighborhood well – to Cohan it was known as the Theater District while Duffy knew it as Hell’s Kitchen, and it was his parish.
The Bookman reviewed Duffy’s memoir
You can can read more about Father Duffy’s war here…
Click here to read articles about W.W. I poetry.
Interesting figures revealed by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1920 served to relieve much of the race-conscious anxiety among some of the members of the Anglo-Saxon majority:
The report of the Census Bureau on the number of Japanese residents in the United States shows that the number has been much exaggerated by those panic-stricken persons who affect to dread the rise of a new Japan in America…the Japanese population of the three states on the Pacific coast increased more slowly from 1910 to 1920than it did in the previous decade. There are 70,196 Japanese in California, which has a total population of 3,426,861; in other words about one Californian in every fifty is a Japanese.
The U.S. Census figures for 2011 indicated that the Asian-American population numbered over 17 million, with the lion’s share still residing in the West and the vast majority having arrived after 1965.
A magazine article which examines the automotive upholstery styles of cars that were made for the general public (stock cars) and those other cars that were custom made and likely to be furnished with Dictaphones and vanity cases.
As for materials, it may be said that most of the custom-built cars are upholstered in broadcloth or whipcord, whereas the stock cars show prevailingly velours, mohair velvet and the textile known as automobile cloth.
