Articles from 1922
Attached you will be able to print the film review for Charlie Chaplin‘s movie, Shoulder Arms (1918). Printed in a popular humor magazine from the time, the flick (which had been re-released) was hailed by this one critic as the greatest comedy in movie history.
A two page article reporting on the growth of the KKK throughout the United States in the early Twenties, it’s general rise in popularity and the resolve of elected officials at both the state and Federal levels to contain the Invisible Empire.
Interesting comments can be read by a reformed Klansman named H.P. Fry, who authored a cautionary memoir titled, The Modern Ku Klux Klan
The attached article from LITERARY DIGEST will give you a clear understanding of all that Britain went through in order to govern Iraq in the early Twenties; Britain’s treaties with the Turkish and Angoran Governments in regards to the oil-rich region of Mosul, the selection of an Arab King and the suppression of various Iraqi revolts.
The Mesopotamian Adventure required a tremendous amount of treasure and yielded very little excitement for either party:
At the end of the war we found Iraq upon our hands, and our Government agreed to accept a mandate for the administration for this inhospitable territory.
Click here to see a Punch Magazine cartoon about the British adventure in Iraq.
Time is the satirist in its recompense as in its revenge. Who of that youthful generation who read Dime Novels stealthily and by night, with expense of spirit and waste of shame, imagined that he would one day review his sins by broad daylight in the exhibition room of the New York Public Library? The thin volumes which were wont to lie so flat under pillows or slip so readily into pockets are now enshrined in glass case, and the yellow covers and inky pages which suffered such persistent search and seizure and were burnt so freely as literary garbage are now gathered and appraised as prizes of the bibliophile.
Princess Luciene Murat (1876 – 1951?), a distinguished member of the French nobility and a devotee to Paul Poiret, wrote this VOGUE article shortly after her return from Turkey in 1922. It is the sort of piece that could only be written by an over-indulged member of the post-war European high-society, which makes it all the more enjoyable to read. Her reminiscences of her visit to the city of Pera are especially interesting for the observations made regarding the White Russians of her acquaintance who reluctantly resided there in some discomfort.
The 36th Division has a little corner by itself in the general field covered by the A.E.F. It was not brought into either of the American major operation or into any American sector. Off by itself, under French command, it came into line in Champagne… Theses troops came bang into the middle of the hardest fighting, without any quiet sector preliminaries, and without a relatively easy initiation like St. Mihiel.
Attached is a digest of a Zionist article that appeared some weeks earlier in THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY written by Rabbi Joel Blau who tended to believe that antisemitism could only be eradicated if the Jews of the world were to return to Israel.
When this profile of the thirty-tree year-old Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975) was published, the painter was not as yet recognized as the eccentric that history remembers him to have been. The anonymous journalist took an enormous interest in understanding Benton’s education and the source of his inspiration.
Click hereto read a 1936 art review regarding the paintings of Grant Wood.
This 1922 men’s fashion article is illustrated with seven images and riddled with wise words for all those seeking information regarding 1920s backless vests, patent leather dancing shoes, madras dress shirts and kid suede gloves for semi-dress wear.
Pogroms and other less violent forms of Antisemitism in Eastern Europe had resulted in a large increase of the Jewish migration to the United States by 1922. This growth in the Jewish population swelled from an estimated 1,777,185 in 1907 to an estimated 3,390,301 by 1918. The following one page article includes a map of the continental United States featuring those portions of the U.S. with the largest Jewish populations in 1922.
Click here to read an article about the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Jewish National Council of Palestine has issued a second manifesto to the Arabs, the text of which follows in it’s original translated form.
Semetic nations: our regeneration is your regeneration and our freedom is your freedom.
In 1922 former Vanity Fair editor (1919 – 1920) and future Algonquin wit, Robert E. Sherwood (1896 – 1955), taking his job seriously as the film critic for LIFE MAGAZINE, journeyed West to visit the growing movie kingdom of Hollywood. The doors magically opened up for him and he was able to rub elbows with many of the crowned heads of the realm. He filed these eight paragraphs recounting his experiences and observations; you might be amused to read his thoughts concerning the unfinished Hollywood sign.
The article is adorned with cartoons by John Held Jr.. In the world of American 1920s satirical art, he was the gold standard.
This is the story of the First Gas Regiment. It was organized at American University (Washington, D.C.) in August of 1917 and arrived in France in time to disperse noxious gas all over the Germans as they launched their March offensive in 1918:
Company B of the First Battalion was the outfit that participated in the first show. The attack was launched on a two-mile front extending from Lens to Hill 70 near Loos, and held by the Canadians… It was a tough job. The nature of the work was graphically described by a Yankee buck, who said in a moment of disgust: ‘This is a job for grave diggers, hod carriers and piano movers, instead of chemists, pipe fitters and mechanics.
If you’ve been in search of an historical article that clearly indicated that Americans were irked by white immigrants just as much as they’ve been bugged by non-white immigrants – then search no more. The journalist who penned this 1922 column chides the U.S. Government, and the people who granted them authority, for the difficulties that were placed in the path of all the various poor European migrants yearning to breathe free:
Whilst it does seem most expedient to curtail immigration, it ought to be done in a way which would impose least hardship on those who after all have had a supreme belief in America. One of America’s weaknesses lies in red tape, did it need to be said; another lies in a sort of contempt for the poor whites of Europe – the ‘Wops’ and the ‘K*k*s’ and the ‘Dagoes’ and ‘Hunkies’ and the rest. They are unfortunate – after all, that is the chief thing against them.
Statistics of the World War prove, however, that war was, from the standpoint of mortality, not vastly different from other wars. In spite of the improvements in methods of killing by machinery,Nature managed to runup a higher score than the enemy’s bullets and shells. The Surgeon General of the Army, at the request of The American Legion Weekly, has prepared the following figures for the period of the war, from April 1, 1917 to December 31, 1919.
A few choice words concerning the Treaty of Versailles by the German anti-socialist author S. Miles Bouton (born 1876):
Such a treaty could not bring real peace to the world even if the conditions were less critical and complex. As they are, it will hasten and aggravate what the world will soon discover to be the most serious, vital, and revolutionary consequences of the war.
The quote above is an excerpt from THE NATION’s review of Bouton’s 1922 book, And The Kaiser Abdicates: The German Revolution, November, 1918.
Thus any traveler in Germany feels that the future grows darker and darker for both Germany and Europe. There is no doubt that the German people have learned little from their war experiences and that it would require only a spark to set them off in another wild rush down through Europe behind Russian guns. It is a dismal prospect, and it is a terrible one, for it would mean, in the final analysis, the utter destruction of European civilization.
Conscription and Conscience
