He Spied on the Bolsheviks
(Literary Digest, 1921)
Read more …
1921
Articles from 1921
‘The Wreck of the Word’s Largest Plane”
(Literary Digest, 1921)
Click here to read about the China Clipper.Read more …
Fracture in Moscow
(Literary Digest, 1921)
Sharp encounters between Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Dzerzhinsky and other Bolshevik leaders took place when Trotsky tried to take Warsaw in 1920 and the majority of the committee antagonized his policy, we learn from a letter written by a Bolshevik adherents in Russia, who is ‘presumably‘ high up in the Soviet hierarchy and a partisan of Trotsky.
Soviet-Approved Poetry
(Literary Digest, 1921)
No liberty of the press exists in Russia and so none but a poet recognized by the Government can get his verses published… In justice to Russian letters it must be said that all talented Russian authors have abstained from writing, or at any rate, from publishing their works during the rule of the proletariat, so that only the official poets, the literati hired by the Government, have their say.
The only Soviet-approved poet they single out for derision is Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893 – 1930), who is quoted liberally.
Fearing German Filmmakers
(Current Opinion, 1921)
Teutonic film producers must have gotten a good guffaw upon reading the attached article that announced how insecure Hollywood producers felt when faced with the filmmakers of Germany. These intimidated studio heads and distributors believed that the Germans had a leg-up on Hollywood due to the high quantity of well-trained actors, crew and writers who had benefited from the traditions set forth generations earlier in German theater – so much so that they beseeched the law givers in Washington to protect them from these Germans…
A POW Hears About The Armistice
(American Legion Weekly, 1921)
A former American prisoner of war recalled the American flag that he and his fellow prisoners had fashioned from Bull Durham and Lucky Strike bags the day they heard that the Germans had quit.
The Swing of Cecil Leitch
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)
Attached herein is a photographic study of the British golf champion Cecil Leitch (1891 – 1977) snapped with a high-speed, stop-motion camera. In nine black and white images depicting her drive from start to finish, we are able to gain an understand as to how she was able to win three British driving championships up until that time. She left the game after having won a total of twelve national titles; at the time of this printing, she was writing her first book: Golf (1922).
Winston Churchill and the Mesopotamia Occupation
(The Spectator, 1921)
Mesopotamia should be placed in the same file as Gallipoli, along with all the other various assorted fantasies conceived by his Lordship. Mr. Churchill hopes to avert any fresh rising by setting up an Arab Government. The people are to elect a National Assembly this summer, and the Assembly is to choose a ruler…Mr. Churchill admits that that he does not know whether the people of [Iraq], who are rent with tribal, sectarian, racial, and economic feuds, will choose the Emir Feisul.
Click here to read about Churchill’s other folly: the Battle of Gallipoli.
As Europe Saw America in the War’s Aftermath
(The Smart Set, 1921)
H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, editors of The Smart Set, surmised that as the Europeans bury their many dead among the damp, depressing ruins of 1920s Europe, America is neither admired or liked very much:
…the English owe us money, the Germans smart under their defeat, the French lament that they are no longer able to rob and debauch our infantry.
Conrad Reviewed by H.L. Mencken
(The Smart Set, 1921)
H.L. Mencken’s (1880 – 1956) short review of Joseph Conrad’s (1882 – 1941) collection of essays, entitled Notes on Life and Letters . The book contained Conrad’s thoughts on such subjects as the sinking of ‘Titanic’ to the writings of Henry James, Guy de Maupassant, Daudet and Ivan Turgenev were all touched upon in this collection of essays.
Rebecca West: The Last Birth of Time
(Current Opinion, 1921)
Rebecca West
(born Regina Miriam Bloch: 1892 – 1983) became a fixture on the literary landscape just prior to the First World War when she was recognized as a young, thought-provoking writer with much to say on many matters. The article serves as an interesting profile of the woman by compiling various remarks made during the course of her early career.
‘Youth, the Spirit of the Movies”
(Illustrated World, 1921)
Screen director D.W. Griffith declared in this article that youthful, energetic performers and writers are needed in the young and vigorous film industry of the Twenties:
We need youth because the most successful screen stars are not harassed by the technique of the older stage and the requirements of the newer art are very largely different. So a new kind of actor has come to be—the screen actor—just as a new kind of writer is coming to be—the screen-writer. But that isn’t all!… An audience loves a sweet and kindly face on the screen as in life. The surest guide in the world to lead us out of our daily troubles is a little star who is sweet and gentle and kind, like youth with all its yearnings and simplicity.
Men’s Undergarments: 1921
(Magazine Advertisement, 1921)
Attached is an illustrated magazine advertisement from a polite, middle class American periodical which depicts two trim bucks in the full flower of youth wearing their under-lovelies so that all the internet gawkers can get a sense of how wildly uncomfortable men’s underwear used to be.
Click here to read about the introduction of the T shirt to the world of fashion.
Anticipating the American Century
(The Spectator, 1921)
Attached is a review of The American Era by H.H. Powers. The reviewer disputes the author’s argument that the First World War made Britain a weaker nation:
Mr. Powers’ interpretation of the war and it’s squeals is that the Anglo-Saxon idea, having triumphed, will set the tone for the whole world. He also believes that the real depository and expositor of this idea in the future must be America. Britain, he thinks,in spite of her great geographical gains from the war– he considerately exaggerates these, has sung her swan song of leadership.
A similar article about American power can be read here.
Starvation in the Worker’s Paradise
(Current Opinion, 1921)
The first Soviet famine lasted from 1919 through 1923; some historians have placed the death toll as high as five million:
[Lenin] is held responsible for the policy which has brought about a consumption of so great a proportion of the seed wheat that the fields cannot be sown. For the first time since Bolsheviki gained power, says the Berlin Lokalanzeiger, Lenin is a cipher.
Click here to read about the blackmail and extortion tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression…
A Clever Way to Escort Prisoners…
(American Legion Weekly, 1921)
This piece reminds me of what my son’s history teacher so wisely passed on to them one day in sixth grade: History can be found anywhere. How right she was, and in this case, a seldom remembered but perhaps widely practiced method of escorting German prisoners to the rear was rendered by a cartoonist in a 1921 magazine advertisement for a firm that manufactured men’s accessories [underwear]:
Remember that big attack? You couldn’t spare a whole squad to escort your prisoners back to the cages; you needed every man in front. You got around the difficulty by cutting off the Boches’ trousers. That made them helpless. They couldn’t run and they couldn’t fight. You parked the skipper’s dog robber on their flank with a warped rifle and ran’em back.
Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.
Posters Will ”Sovietize” the People
(Literary Digest, 1921)
Three years into the Soviet experiment, the ruling Bolsheviks were finding it difficult to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the proletarian masses they so deeply loved (but refused to feed).
Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.
Andre Derain
(The New Republic, 1921)
Clive Bell (1869 – 1964) was an art critic who is remembered in our day as one of the most devoted champions of modern abstract art. In this 1921 review for THE NEW REPUBLIC, Bell explained why he held that the paintings of the André Derain (1880-1954) were so significant – writing that the Frenchman was best painter in all of France (reserving for Picasso the roll of the most influential painter in all of Europe).