1921 – Page 5 – Old Magazine Articles

American Lynchings on French Soil
(NY Times, 1921)

(The article can be read here)

This article from 1921 reported on a disturbing series of lynchings that took place between the years 1917 through 1919 by U.S. Army personnel serving in France during the First World War. The journalist quotes witness after witness who appeared before a Senate Committee regarding the lynchings they had seen:

Altogether…I saw ten Negroes and two white men hanged at Is-Sur-Tille. Twenty-eight other members of my command also witnessed these hangings and if necessary, I can produce them.

It was alleged that the murders were committed under the authority of American officers who willingly acted outside the law.

If you would like to read more about African-American service during W.W. I you may click here.

Slandering Gandhi
(The Literary Digest, 1921)

An uncredited column by an American journalist who seemed to hold that the British Empire could do no wrong in their rule over the colony of India, and that the man who most vociferously opposed this governance, Gandhi, was an old-fashioned, eccentric monk with Bolshevik leanings…

Men’s Tennis Clothes
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

Four incredible sketches depicting the natty tennis clothing of 1921.

The Bush Wedding, Kennebunkport
(Vogue Magazine, 1921)

These days the Bush family is not much in vogue, but that was not always the case.

Attached is a small notice from a 1921 issue of VOGUE MAGAZINE announcing the marriage of George Herbert Walker’s daughter, Dorthy, to a Mr. Prescott Sheldon Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine. From this union would spring two U.S. Presidents, one Florida governor, and one Chief Executive of the Municipal Opera Association.

Clothing for Fox Hunters and Wall Streeters
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

A glance at the 1921 wardrobe enjoyed by those fashionable fellows who were part and parcel of that Wall Street clique who might today be called the one percent.

The reviewer also devoted some column space to classic fox hunting attire and Chesterfield overcoats,hunting tweeds,wing collars and men’s suit from the early Twenties.

Her Armistice Poem
(American Legion Weekly, 1921)

At 11:00 a.m., November 11, 1918, an American woman volunteer was toiling away at her Service of Supply base in Tours when peace broke out all over the place. When she was asked to recall that moment three years later for the editors of THE AMERICAN LEGION WEEKLY – she wrote down the attached verses –

The Feminist Rebellion of the Twenties
(The Dilineator, 1921)

It was estimated that there were as many as two million empty seats around the collective family dinner tables in Post World War One Britain. Such an absence of young men could not help but lead to a new social arrangement:

England is the great human laboratory of our generation – England with her surplus of two million women, her restless, well-equipped, unsatisfied women.

Too many European women were unable to find husbands and moved to America.

On Believing in Equality
(The Smart Set, 1921)

H.L. Mencken rarely passed up an opportunity to impugn the sincerity of his fellow Americans; in this small piece he expressed his doubt as to whether they really embraced the concept of full equality as it was written in the constitution.

As Europe Sees Us
(The Smart Set, 1921)

George Jean Nathan (1882 – 1958) and H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956) surmised that as the Europeans bury their many dead among the damp, depressing ruins of World War One, 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.

-Read an Article About the First World War and the Gratitude of France-

Who Are the Italian Fascists?
(The Literary Digest, 1921)

There have been other ‘Fasci’ before the present, for the word, derived from Latin ‘fascia’ (a bandage), means any league or association. Thus, the association of laborers and sulfur-workers, that caused the agrarian agitation in Sicily in 1892, were called Fasci… the essence of the word being the close union of different elements in a common cause that binds them all together. Each ‘Fascio’ possesses so-called ‘squadre de azione’ (squadrons of action), composed of young men who have mostly served in the war. Each of these ‘squadrons’ has a commandant, named by the directing council of the particular Fascio.

In Milan there existed a general committee that supervised all these yahoos, but by enlarge, each local Fascio was free to do as they saw fit within their own domains. The earliest ‘Fasci di Combattimento’ were created in 1919 by Mussolini, who at the time enjoyed some popularity as the editor of the Il Popolo d’Italia. The Fascists saw the destruction of Italian socialism as their primary job.

Problems in British Palestine…
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1921)

This is a news article that first appeared in 1921 concerning the continuing clash of civilizations in British Palestine:

There are in Palestine about half a million Muslems, about 62,500 Christians and 65,300 Jews. The aspiration for a Jewish State encounters the opposition not only of all Moslems and Christians but of many Orthodox Jews residing in Palestine. …The Zionist leaders, erroneously classifying the present inhabitants as Arabs, expect them to silently steal away, as Zangwill puts it, and leave the Jews free to rule.

1921 Saw Many Single European Women Moving to the U.S.
(Literary Digest, 1921)

The death and disfigurement of over four million young men during the course of the First World War (1914 – 1918) created an enormous problem for the women of Europe:

A French statesman recently estimated that in his country there are now 1,000,000 women for whom there are no mates, while similar conditions exist also in England, Italy, Germany and Austria.

This article makes clear that in a quest for husbands, half a million women had arrived in the U.S. following the end of hostilities and it was further believed that by the close of 1921 another half million will have landed.

Educating the Negro
(The Independent, 1921)

Attached is a 1921 account of the Hampton Institute; it’s past, present and future is entirely outlined in this magazine article that was written by a celebrated journalist of the time, Mr. Talcott Williams (1849 – 1928).

Click here for the Ku Klux Klan Archive.

George Duncan and Abe Mitchell at the Columbia Country Club
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

Now our golfing cousins from the land of the Thistle and Rose are sending another pair, who might well be christened the New Mandarins of Golf. One is is George Duncan of Scotland. The other is Abe Mitchell of England. And in addition to giving battle in our in our Open Championship at Columbia, Washington, D.C., they will display their wares in exhibition matches before 250,000 of our golfing citizens in another one of those extended tours that bring in a lot of kale and almost as many blisters.

Man at His Best: The Raccoon Coat
(Magazine Advertisement, 1921)

Here is a perfectly charming fashion illustration of a young man wearing a raccoon coat while abusing a tobacco product; this class of man was also prone to sitting on top of flag poles, concealing flasks and dancing the Charleston.

Click here to read about the 1956 college revival of the raccoon coat.

The Post-War Change in Women
(Vanity Fair, 1921)

There were many social changes following the First World War which men had to struggle to understand; among them was the Modern Woman. The Italian novelist and lexicographer Alfredo Panzini (1863-1939) attempted to do just that for the editors of Vanity Fair.

She will be a stenographer, a school teacher, a movie actress. But She will not cook for you. She will not do your washing. She will not knit her own stockings.

Moratorium
(The Independent, 1921)

A single column from 1921 reported on a proposal before the U.S. Congress to drastically reduce the numbers of immigrants who were entering the United States at that time.
The bill passed.

H.L. Mencken on American English
(The Smart Set, 1921)

Culture critic H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956; author of The American Language reviewed American English by Gilbert M. Tucker.

The fact is, of course, that American English is noticeably superior to British English in several important respects, and that not the least of these superiorities lies in the learned department of spelling. Here even the more intelligent Englishmen are against their own rules, and in favor of the American rules, and every year one notices a greater tendency among them to spell wagon with one g instead of two…The English -our ending, the main hallmark of English spelling, dies harder.