Articles from Liberty Magazine
When Stalin decided to mess with the Finns in 1939 he failed to take into consideration one demographic that was accustomed to blood, and that was the seal hunters of Finland. Upon hearing of the invasion, these men immediately burned their houses and turned their rifles away from the seals, toward the Soviets. Liberty war correspondent Edward Doherty (1890 – 1975) witnessed much of the fighting.
When Stalin decided to mess with the Finns in 1939 he failed to take into consideration one demographic that was accustomed to blood, and that was the seal hunters of Finland. Upon hearing of the invasion, these men immediately burned their houses and turned their rifles away from the seals, toward the Soviets. Liberty war correspondent Edward Doherty (1890 – 1975) witnessed much of the fighting.
When Stalin decided to mess with the Finns in 1939 he failed to take into consideration one demographic that was accustomed to blood, and that was the seal hunters of Finland. Upon hearing of the invasion, these men immediately burned their houses and turned their rifles away from the seals, toward the Soviets. Liberty war correspondent Edward Doherty (1890 – 1975) witnessed much of the fighting.
This is one of the more enjoyable reads on the site. Published during the Summer of 1945, with the war in Europe over and the Japanese capitulation only six weeks away, the Liberty editors saw fit to run an article that recalled the absolute devotion that so many USO performers displayed again and again in order to guarantee that American military personnel abroad was fully entertained and amused – no matter their proximity to the enemy.
This is one of the more enjoyable reads on the site. Published during the Summer of 1945, with the war in Europe over and the Japanese capitulation only six weeks away, the Liberty editors saw fit to run an article that recalled the absolute devotion that so many USO performers displayed again and again in order to guarantee that American military personnel abroad was fully entertained and amused – no matter their proximity to the enemy.
By cleverly borrowing from the state paper, letters and speeches of the Great Emancipator, a journalist from the usually pretty anti-New Deal Liberty Magazine was able to piece together a few paragraphs indicting
what they hoped Lincoln would think of the New Deal.
“The Brain Trust has devised a number of schemes for getting money away from the fellows who accumulated it during the Golden Age of Coolidge, and some of those schemes are working…”
Somebody said The Lord’s Prayer as the meeting broke up. I walked three blocks to the subway station. Just as I was about to go down the stairs – bang! – It happened! I don’t like the word miracle, but that’s all I can call it. The lights in the street seemed to flared up. My feet seemed to leave the pavement. A kind of shiver went over me and I burst into tears…I haven’t touched a drop in four years and I’ve sent four other fellows on the same road.
In 1938, Fulton Oursler (1893 – 1952), editor of Liberty, crossed the Atlantic Ocean in order to ask Benito Mussolini why he invaded Ethiopia and to get his thoughts as to whether there would be peace in Europe. We can’t say that Il Duce gave very thorough answers to those questions, but Oursler did find out what was eating Mussolini:
Why is it that the people of the United States are so against Fascism? What is the matter with them? Why is the whole press so bitter against Fascism? Can you answer me that?
In most of our larger cities and many small towns there are thousands of Negroes who have successfully ‘gone over the line’ and are now living as white. Among them, it is said, are several well-known athletes and members of Congress – But you don’t hear much about the Negro women who pass. The roving male nature makes it easier for a man to pass completely, though it involves giving up his family as well as his friends. A woman finds passing harder to take.
Click here to read about the social differences between darker skinned and lighter skinned black people.
If you were planning to use your time machine to travel back to 1935 so you could work as a Hollywood extra – you might want to read this article about what a bad hand was dealt to that crowd back in the day. It was written by Campbell MacCulloch, General Manager of the Central Casting Corporation – and he knew all about it:
In Hollywood dwell some ten or twelve thousand misguided folk who cling tenaciously to a couple of really fantastic illusions…
Well, Monsieur, did I ever tell you about the time I was a Doughboy in the Great war?
This is the story of Marie Marvingt (1875 – 1963), an amazing French woman who did indeed serve in the forward trenches disguised as a man during the Summer of 1917.
In the winter of 1938, when one of FDR’s anointed Brain Trusters made an off-the-cuff remark that the Federal Government would take over industry if the economy did not turn around, it must have alarmed many of the industry captains and sent the stock market through the floor. It also moved the eccentric Bernarr MacFadden (1868 – 1955) to put a fresh ribbon in his typewriter and have at it:
The present administration has made a ghastly failure of the business management of this government. It has increased the national indebtedness at the rate of five to ten million dollars every day. It has added more than twenty thousand million dollars to our national debt, and it probably has twenty million or more of our citizens on the dole, or in charity jobs, which is the dole in another form.
Often published by the editors of Liberty, Life and Judge, was the American cartoonist Ellison Hoover (d. 1966) who poked some fun at the instability and blood-lusting thirst of the still-born Soviet Union in 1920.
Click here to read an article about the NKVD agent who murdered Trotsky.
