World War One – Page 21 – Old Magazine Articles

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.

Post-War Diary
(Atlantic Monthly, 1928)

Printed posthumously, the attached article was written by British Lieutenant Colonel Charles A Court Repington (1858 – 1925) as he recalled his conversations with French Field Marshals Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), Joseph Joffre (1852 – 1931) and a number of other French statesmen about the First World War during a series of chats that took place in the autumn 1924.

The Noises of Battle
(The Cambridge Magazine, 1916)

This letter is very short and was composed by a German soldier who is simply identified as a socialist. Writing to his wife from the war-torn Eastern European front in Moldavia, he describes what the man-made Hell of industrial war was like – the gas shells, the grenades, the ceaseless rattle of machine guns and the never ending groans of the wounded. The soldier concludes that if only the kings who were responsible for the war could witness this carnage for only fifteen minutes, then surely the war would end.

Click here to read about the foreign-born soldiers who served in the American Army of the First World War.

French Women and American Soldiers
(The Spiker, 1919)

At the end of the First World War, the young women of France were asked the question:

Who would you choose for a husband, a Frenchman or an American? And what are the qualities and faults which justify your preference?

Some of the answers were pretty funny (especially the responses made by the irate Frenchmen returning from the Front). After all the votes were tallied, it was discovered that, regardless of their gold teeth, big tortoise shell glasses and shaved faces, the Doughboys were able to charm as much as a quarter of the women asked (which was a good deal better than they thought they would do) Some women, however, were not very impressed.

Click here to read an article about social diseases within the A.E.F..

Click here if would like to read about British Women and American G.I.s during the Second World War…

American Soldiers Remember Siberia
(American Legion Weekly, 1919)

The Doughboys of the the U.S. Twenty-Seventh Infantry remember the bad old days in Vladivostok guarding the trans-Siberian railway line:

The Czar’s old government used to send its enemies to Siberia, to exile; Uncle Sam’s government sent its own men there to guard a railroad. Whose railroad it was and what it was there for and why Americans should be taken away from a perfectly good war in France and stationed up there to take care of it — surely you can answer all these questions. If you can’t, don’t go to any of the veterans of the Siberian Expeditionary Force, because they won’t give you very coherent answers. They think the whole trip was a post-season special, staged especially for their benefit.

Captain Eddy Rickenbacker: Fighter Pilot
(The Literary Digest, 1919)

This is a wonderful read in which the American World War One fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker (1890 – 1973), recounted his experiences in France. Arriving rather late in the game (March, 1918), he quickly racked up 26 kills, a Croix de Guerre, a Distinguished Service Cross, the Legion d’Honeur and the Congressional Medal of Honor (which would not be approved and awarded to him until 1930). He was the top Ace in the American Air Service. In his later life, he would go on to become one of the founders of Continental Airlines.

I learned pretty fast. Long practice in driving a racing-car at a hundred miles an hour or so gives first-class training in control and judging distances at high speed…

In his later life, Rickenbacker would go on to become one of the founders of Continental Airlines.

Click here to read an article about the development of aerial reconnaissance during W.W. I.

Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about courage.

W.W. I Art and the Canadian War Memorial
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919)

An illustrated article from the chic Conde Nast magazine, VANITY FAIR, regarding one of the great Canadian disappointments of the immediate post-war years: the failure to build the Canadian war memorial building. By the summer of 1919 1,000 paintings and drawings depicting the experiences of the World War had been amassed with the intention of displaying them in a museum that was to serve as a remembrance to the Canadian servicemen of that war.

Throughout the Twenties and Thirties there were numerous advisory groups charged with the task of launching the museum, but they were never able to agree on key issues. With the outbreak of the Second World War the urgency of the project took root – and, finally, the Canadian War Museum was officially established in 1942 (and opend in 1967).

There are two paintings illustrating the article: Camouflaged Ships by E. Wadsworth and Strathcona Horse on the March by A.J. Munnings.

C.R.W. Nevinson: Futurist on the Front
(The Great War, 1918)

Attached you will find a segment from a longer article reviewing the W.W. I paintings of C.R.W. Nevinson (1889 – 1946). Trained by the Italian Futurist Severini, Nevinson made some of the most modern images of all the World War One artists:

C.R.W. Nevinson with unerring eye penetrated to the man behind the khaki and deliberately unveiled the son of toil. The hands of the foremost figures may be exaggerated (but probably not), and in any case they emphasize the essential truth that these men belong to the horny-handed class. They may not be beautiful, but they are strong…

Click here if you would like to read a 1922 article about C.R.W. Nevinson.

Drawings of the Soissons Trenches
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1915)

French war artist Charles Huard (1875 – 1965) produced theses seven illustrations of French Poilus as they once stood guard in the frozen misery of the Soisson trenches during the first winter of the war.

Huard’s experiences as a war artist can be read in his memoir: My Home In The Field Of Honor (1916)

The Future of War-Artists
(Literary Digest, 1917)

Just as the American poet Walt Whitman once remarked concerning the American Civil War – that the real war will never make it into books, so goes the thinking of the ink-stained wretch who penned the attached column regarding the efforts of the Official War Artists during W.W. I – who attempted to render accurately the horrors of war. Such genuine indecency could never allow itself to be duplicated into a two or three dimensional format.

World War I Pictures by British Artists Seen in America
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919)

The attached VANITY FAIR art review by Christian Brinton (1870 – 1942) covered the first public exhibition of the British War Artists to be shown on American shores (1919):

A direct product of war and war conditions, it reflects not only the varied aspects and incidents of the great struggle, but but also the actual state of British artistic taste at the present moment…England has been the first to enlist the services of the artist, and the readiest to grant him the measure of official standing so manifestly his due.

Launched jointly by the British Ministry of Information and the Worcester Art Museum, the exhibit was comprised of almost 250 paintings. This review discusses the art of Paul Nash, Muirhead Bone, Sir John Lavery, James McBey,Sir William Orpen, Augustus John, C.R.W. Nevinson, John Everett, Frank Brangwyn and Eric Kennington.

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…

Wars Affect the Art of a Nation
(Literary Digest, 1916)

Various musings concerning the influences that war has had on art through the centuries are discussed in this article, with particular attention paid to the historical belief that wars are won by those nations that host the more vibrant and original arts communities.

FRANCE AROUSED: Created by Jo Davidson
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1917)

An illustrated article about the American sculptor Jo Davidson (1883 – 1952) and his creation, FRANCE AROUSED. The Davidson piece, a colossal depiction of France as an outraged warrior queen, was intended for the French village of Senlis to serve as a memorial to that remarkable day in September, 1914, when the German drive on Paris was stopped and driven back. It was at Senlis where the earlier successes of the German Army were reversed.

To those in America and Europe who believed in the new doctrine of political equality, it was the most thrilling day in her history.

When France in wrath
Her giant – limbs

upreared,
And with that oath,
Which smote air,
Earth and sea
Stamped her strong
foot and said she
Would be free.

The statue, which is twenty feet high, was made in the sculptor’s studio in McDougal Alley (NYC), where it was photographed for the pages of VANITY FAIR.

In 1919, Jo Davidson would endeavor to create a number of busts depicting the various entente statesmen who participated in the Peace Treaty.

Butcher Bill Paid by the French Arts Community
(Literary Digest, 1917)

Three hundred and fifty French artists, among whom are painters, sculptors, engravers, and architects, have paid the extreme price of their devotion to country and are counted with the dead.

Muirhead Bone at the Front
(Times Literary Supplement, 1918)

A book review covering a collection of drawings by one of the Official War Artists, Muirhead Bone (1873 – 1953). The book was titled, and it is not surprising to read that it was published by Country Life. The reviewer was not at all impressed with the artist’s renderings of, what was at that time, the most dangerous place on planet earth:

In these drawings Mr. Muirhead Bone has resolutely refused to become a journalist. He has not allowed the novelty of his subject-matter to affect his treatment. There he differs from Mr. Nevinson. Mr. Nevinson in his pictures of the war is not a journalist but at least an illustrator.

Nonetheless, Sir Douglas Haig wrote a supportive introduction to the book. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) found his drawings to be highly inaccurate at best.

A List of German Versailles Treaty Violations
(Literary Digest, 1936)

This is an interesting article that announced the Germans march into the Rhineland as well as the island of Hegoland. The journalist also listed various other Versailles Treaty infractions.

Click here to read an additional article concerning the Versailles Treaty violations.

The 36th Division
(The American Legion Weekly, 1922)

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.