World War One – Page 28 – Old Magazine Articles

John Maynard Keynes on the Versailles Treaty (Current Opinion, 1922)

A magazine review of John Maynard Keynes book, A Revision of the Treaty (1922). The reviewer wrote that it lacks the prophetic fire of it’s author’s earlier book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, but continues the argument of that book:

Mr. Keynes claims that almost everyone now has come around to his point of view. We practically all recognize, he says, the over-severity of the reparation clauses written into the Versailles Treaty.

Britain and France Draw Closer (Literary Digest, 1921)

When Capitol Hill rejected the Versailles Treaty in 1919, Paris and London found themselves having to rely upon each other in ways they weren’t expecting.

The Ongoing French Occupation of Germany (Literary Digest, 1928)

The attached article, written in 1928, reported on how heartily sick the Germans were at having to serve as hosts for three occupying armies as a result of a Versailles Treaty clause that mandated the Allied military occupation until 1935. The Foreign Minister of Germany, Dr Gustav Stresemann, made several eloquent pleas to the diplomatic community insisting that there was no need for the continuing encampments before he began submitting his bitter editorials to assorted European magazines, which are discussed herein:

Friendship between France and Germany is impossible as long as Allied troops remain in the occupation area of the Rhineland…

Calling Out the Kaiser, et al… (”Our Times”, 1936)

[On January 16, 1920] the Peace Conference at Paris summoned Holland to yield the ex-Kaiser of Germany for trial… In its reply, issued January 23, Holland refused.

The conferees also demanded that Germany hand over some 850 German citizens to stand trial for numerous infractions; needless to say, nothing came of the request.

Chateau-Thierry: Setting the Record Straight (The Literary Digest, 1919)

Rumor has it that when the U.S. Army’s senior staff officers had learned of the victory that the U.S. Marines had achieved at the Bois de Belleau in the summer of 1918, one of them had remarked, Those head-line hunting bastards! When reading this next piece you will immediately get a sense that the army was fed-up with the folks at home believing that the same Marines were responsible for the Army’s success at Chateau-Thierry. The war was already over by the time this piece appeared, making it clear to all that Chateau-Thierry was a feather in the cap for the Army, and no one else.

‘The Truth About Chateau-Thiery” (Home Sector, 1919)

The veterans magazine that published the attached column, THE HOME SECTOR, was edited by Harold Ross, who, just a few months earlier, had held that same post at THE STARS and STRIPES; the article was written by Alexander Woollcott – previously a journalist with that same paper. I’m sure that this was quite common in 1919, but it would seem that these two men wanted to be forthright with their readers and set straight an issue that they wrote about when they were in the employment of Uncle Sam: the Doughboys who were victorious at Chateau-Thiery and Belleau Wood did not save Paris. Just as German historians have insisted for many years, those German divisions were simply not headed for Paris.

Who Were the Young Turks? (Literary Digest, 1908)

This 1908 magazine article serves to define the Young Turk movement and present a brief history of those reformers who sought to modernize the government of Turkey and introduce a constitutional form of government that would benefit not only the Turks but also the people who reside within the dominions of the Ottoman Empire:

The program of the Young Turks includes individual liberty to all Ottomans; this liberty is to be inviolable excepting by process of law; the press is to be free, Ottomans may form commercial, industrial, or agricultural associations, so long as no law is infringed. All are to be equal before the law.

‘The Doughboys” (The New Red Cross Magazine, 1919)

What we enjoyed about this piece by the Muckraking Ida Tarbell (1857 – 1944) was that it was written some six months after the heavy handed George Creel had ceased influencing Yankee magazine editors into printing pro-American blather, and so we tend to feel that her praise of the American Doughboys was quite sincere – and praise she does! Up hill and down dale, the Doughboys can do no wrong in her eyes.
This essay appeared in print around the same time the French had decided that all the Doughboys were just a bunch of racist hurrah-boys and were becoming increasingly sick of them. The Yanks might have squared their debt with the Marquis de Lafayette, but the recently returned Poilus were not above taking an occasional swipe at Ida Tarbell’s Doughboys…

Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.

1919: Franco-American Relationship Begin to Cool (The North American Review, 1919)

During the closing months of the American presence in France, one element can be found in the majority of the letters written to loved ones at home:

The French aren’t treating us as nice.

In the war’s aftermath, writer Alexander Woollcott (1887 – 1943) attempted to explain the situation to his readers; what follows were his observations.

‘Patriotism” (The Crisis, 1918)

An interesting editorial from World War I in which the writer (possibly W.E.B. Duboise) expressed that an African-American’s sense of patriotism in that era was based on the nation’s potential to be judicious and fair.

The article is a fine example illustrating the influence that George Creel and his Committee on Public Information had strong-arming the American magazine editors during the period of World War One.