1923

Articles from 1923

Letters from the Dying (The Atlantic Monthly, 1923)

Printed five years after the war, an American nurse published these letters that were dictated to her in France by a handful of dying American soldiers; equally moving were the grateful responses she received months later from their recipients:

I am glad and thank God he had such a quiet, peaceful death. It is a very hard thing for a mother to realize she cannot be with [her son] in his last moments…I am proud to give up my only boy to his country, and that alone is a great consolation.

This is just a segment from a longer article; to read the six page memoir in it’s entirety, click here.

Click here for clip art depicting the nurses of World War One.

William Orpen and W.W. I (Literary Digest, 1923)

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War there were many eye witnesses to the slaughter who refused to remember it as a Noble Struggle. The chubby and comfortable fellows who ran the British Government couldn’t have known that the society portraitist William Orpen was one of these witnesses – but they soon found out when they commissioned him to make a pretty painting depicting all the pomp that was taking place at Versailles…

The German Rebellion Against the Treaty (Literary Digest, 1923)

This 1923 German editorial by Professor Rudolf Euken (coincidentally published in THE EUKEN REVIEW) was accompanied by an anti-Versailles Treaty cartoon which attempted to rally the German working classes to join together in rebellion against the treaty.

The so-called Peace of Versailles subjects the German people to unheard-of treatment; has injured and crippled Germany; has, with refined cruelty, deprived her of fertile territories; robbed her of sources indispensable to her existence; has heaped upon her huge burdens, and this for an indenite time – the intention being, if possible, to reduce her people to serfdom.


Click here to read another one of Rudolf Euken’s post-war efforts.


Click here if you would like to read about the 1936 Versailles Treaty violations.

Lofty Words Printed on Behalf of the Klan (The Literary Digest, 1923)

A collection of remarks made by Klansmen in their own defense as well as a smattering of similar statements made by newspaper editors and various other high-profiled swells of the day:

This editor has repeatedly affirmed privately and publicly that he is not a member of the Ku Klux or any other secret organization. But when it comes to secret societies, he sees no difference absolutely between the Ku Klux and many others, the Knights of Columbus, for instance…


Click here to learn about the origins of the term Jim Crow.

Critical Thinking from South of the Border (Literary Digest, 1923)

More harsh words for Uncle Sam are found in some Brazilian journals, such as the JOURNAL DO PAIZ, which observes:

Happenings like the Negro massacre at Chicago in 1919 are still fresh in our minds; nor must we forget that at the time mentioned many in this country advocated a boycott on all American goods to serve as a protest and a warning to the Unites States.

Click here if you would like to read about the American race riots of 1919.

The Pajama Ascendency (Literary Digest, 1923)

The pajama is ascending to glorified heights. Long the black sheep of polite private life, this garment has been elevated to the four hundred…Men are drugging their senses with batik designs in sleeping apparel and inhaling the stimulation of contrasting shades in underclothes.

What the well-dressed man will wear when going to bed is one of the burning topics of the immediate future…By and large, the thirst for color permeates the accessory field from linen to lingerie. The picture might be said to be complete. Man has achieved his zenith.


Read about a pajama fashion innovation that never quite caught on…

The KKK Popularity in Indiana (Atlantic Monthly, 1923)

Don’t ya know that ever’ time a boy baby is born in a Cath’lic’ fam’ly they take and bury enough am’nition fer him to kill fifty people with!

Such thinking is part of the state of mind that accounts for the amazing growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the old Hoosier commonwealth; that enables Indiana to compete with Ohio for the distinction of having a larger Klan membership than any other state. It helped make possible the remarkable election results of last fall, when practically every candidate opposed by the Klan went down in defeat.

Written by Lowell Mellett (1886 – ?), hardy journalist and son of Indiana. Millett is primarily remembered for his W.W. II days serving at the helm of the U.S. government’s Office of War Information’s Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP).

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