Articles from Current Opinion Magazine
This article was written by the well respected British bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Wright (1861 – 1947) concerning his belief that women should be denied the vote. Relying upon his scientific training, Wright held that women, as a result of their flawed nature, simply lacked a sense of reasoning.
This article was written by the well respected British bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Wright (1861 – 1947) concerning his belief that women should be denied the vote. Relying upon his scientific training, Wright held that women, as a result of their flawed nature, simply lacked a sense of reasoning.
American journalist Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) began his career as a correspondent covering the Greco-Turkish War (1896 – 1897); by the time the First World War flared up his stock was at it’s very peak and and was selected by the British Government to serve as the sole American reporter to cover the efforts of the B.E.F.. In the Spring of 1917, when the U.S. entered the war, Palmer was recruited by the American Army to serve as the press liaison officer for General Pershing. A good deal of Palmer’s experiences can be gleaned from this article, which was written as a review of his wartime memoirs, The Folly of Nations (1921).
Another Frederick Palmer article can be read here…
American journalist Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) began his career as a correspondent covering the Greco-Turkish War (1896 – 1897); by the time the First World War flared up his stock was at it’s very peak and and was selected by the British Government to serve as the sole American reporter to cover the efforts of the B.E.F.. In the Spring of 1917, when the U.S. entered the war, Palmer was recruited by the American Army to serve as the press liaison officer for General Pershing. A good deal of Palmer’s experiences can be gleaned from this article, which was written as a review of his wartime memoirs, The Folly of Nations (1921).
Another Frederick Palmer article can be read here…
A single paragraph review of Sir Philip Gibbs’ (1877 – 1962) book, More That Must Be Told. The book was written as a sequel to his previous volume which cataloged the many blunders and assorted outrages of the Great War, Now It Can Be Told (1920). The reviewer wrote:
Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War – none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.
A magazine review of the classic American World War One novel, Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos.
This book is vivid, but not sentimental. It does not contain a description of a single battle. What it does describe is the transformation of minds and bodies under the stress of war.
In the bad-old days of World War I, author Andreas Latzko (1876 – 1943) served as a line officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. While at the front he was affected by the horrors of combat until he found that he had seen enough and chose to desert. Even before the war had ended he managed to create an anti-war novel and get it to press before the Armistice. Digitized here is the 1918 review of his book, Men In War
Disillusionment and an almost morbid sympathy with mental and physical suffering are outstanding features of the book.
Attached is the 1922 book review of Robert Lansing’s (1864 – 1928) book, Big Four, and Others of the Peace Conference
shows us Clemenceau dominating the conference by sheer force of mind; Wilson outmaneuvered; Lloyd George clever, alert, but not very deep; and Orlando precise and lawyer like. This book confirms the popular belief that the general scheme of the treaty was worked out by the British and French delegations without material aid from the Americans. As a consequence, the American delegation lost prestige.
A tight little essay that clarifies the force behind Italian fascism. This was an editorial penned by Dr. Frank Crane, a pastor who appeared regularly in the pages of CURRENT OPINION.
The Fascisti is a name given to a political party in Italy. Political parties, and indeed almost all organizations, as has often been pointed out, hold together and get their strength by hating something. The Fascisti hate the Bolshevists, Communists and the like.
Click here to read about those who resisted Mussolini.
This is a brief editorial from 1921 that pointed out how amazing and promising pre-war Germany once was and then remarks how far off the mark the nation had fallen since the war ended:
• Her empire dismantled.
• Occupied by alien armies.
• Worthless currency.
• Widespread despair.
Click here to read about Anti-Semitism in W.W. I Germany.
Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.
You might also want to read about the inflated currency of post W.W. I Germany.
The Current Opinion foreign correspondent filed this short dispatch about the pandemonium unfolding in post-World War I Germany:
The great fact to the outside world is that a German parliament has actually precipitated a crisis. It threw out the Scheidemann cabinet. It presided over the birth of a Bauer one. It was the German parliament which dictated to the government regarding its composition, instead of meekly obeying the government, as had been the custom…
More about leftists in Weimar Germany can be read here.
France has discovered Lafayette in this age only because America never forgot him
The attached article reported that the Marquis de Lafayette (Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, 1757 – 1834), who seemed heaven-sent when he appeared in Philadelphia in order to aid the Americans in their revolt against the British, had been largely forgotten by the French in the Twentieth Century. Indeed, the French were baffled to hear his name invoked as often as it was during the period of America’s participation in the World War One.
It was said that during the war some disgruntled wit in the American Army woke up one morning in the trenches and grumbled: Alright, we paid Lafayette back; now what other Frog son-of-a-bitch do we owe?
Oddly, there is no mention made whatever of that unique trait so common to the Homo Americanus- selective memory: during the 1870 German invasion of France there seemed to have been no one who recalled Lafayette’s name at all.
The post-World War I American economy was humming along quite nicely when an inquisitive journalist took notice as to how many more cars there were on the streets (all told, there were 7.5 million). Perhaps there were no written studies documenting what we now call ‘the order of durable goods’ – that dependable yardstick we use to measure American opulence, and so this investigative journalist came up with a different way of figuring out just how many cars Americans could purchase -and we’re mighty glad he did!
As many of the readers in the OldMagazineArticles.com audience have figured out, the purpose of this site is to allow the past to represent itself — warts and all, and few articles make manifest this policy better than this 1921 article which reported on the efforts of an appropriately forgotten scientist from the University of Virginia, Dr. George Oscar Ferguson. Ferguson was the author of a project that somehow measured the intelligence of African Americans and White Americans and concluded that his:
psychological study of the Negro indicates that he will never be the mental equal of the white race.
Tobacco is not food. It is a drug. A healthy human being can get along without it. One who has never used it is better off, his health has a surer foundation and his life expectancy is greater than in the case of one who is a habitual user.
The cautionary paragraph posted above was written in the early Twenties, and this article points out that the health advocates of the that era were not delusional or ill-informed in matters involving tobacco and health care. Tobacco’s ability to harm was understood so well that an effort was afoot in the U.S. Congress to make the weed illegal. Needless to say, that effort did not get very far.
In the 1950s, some people questioned whether cigarettes were truly dangerous – click here to read about it…
At the thirty-fifth annual church congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1919) clergy members seemed to agree that Christian leaders were fully complicit in the recently ended war and were guilty of abandoning Christianity for patriotism:
Christianity has betrayed itself body and soul.
When W.W. II started, Americans went back to church…
In 1900 people wanted to know why men didn’t like going to church…
Out of the Mouths of Babes: Girl Evangelists in the Flapper Era
Tom Wolf and Mark Twain have not been the only men to have lamented the drab hues so prevalent in manly attire: now you may add to that list a new name: H. Dennis Bradley. The late Mr. Bradley was a tailor in London’s Old Bond Street some time back, and he was quite vocal concerning the issue of men’s fashions. Being a true man of the cloth, Mr. Bradley was certain that, prior to the unpleasantness of 1914, men’s fashions were headed in a healthy and aesthetically sound direction, but when the boys came home, the promise was not kept.
We may not go back to the rainbow shades and wonderful stuffs of the bucks and the dandies of olden times–do what we will, we live in utilitarian days–but whatever comes do not let us revert to the hideous hues and shapelessness of the Victorian era…
Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.
Contrary to the headline written above, this interesting article does not simply discuss the (temporary) Japanese rejection of European and American clothing in the Twenties but also touches upon earlier days when Western styles were fully embraced by the nobility of that country.
There is in Japan a growing revolt against European clothing…The Japanese have endured agonies in their efforts to get our hats, our trousers, our corsets…
