World War One – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

”OOOPS – Sorry”
(Time Magazine, 1923)

Try as they may, the silver-tongued diplomats who rebuked Germany so mercilessly at Versailles in 1919 never could get an apology out of the Kaiser, or Hindenburg or Ludendorff. They just had to sit tight and wait – because in 1923 Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber (1869 – 1952), [alas] speaking in an unofficial capacity as a German, apologized for the whole monkey show: Lusitania, Belgium, etc. Everything comes to those who wait.

A French Response to the Kaiser Memoir
(Time Magazine, 1923)

Kaiser Wilhelm’s recollections of his part in the First World War (reviewed above) was released in the Winter of 1922. Former French president Rene Viviani (1863 – 1925; leadership, 13 June 1914 – 29 October 1915) quickly responded with his own book that appeared the following spring – it was titled As We See It:

“M. Viviani’s book is a direct answer to that puerile and invidious work known as the ex-Kaiser’s War Memoirs. It is impossible to escape from the logic of Viviani’s scathing denunciation of the ex-Kaiser’s tacit inculpation in the events which preceded the world-wide cataclysm.”

Trying to Demilitarize the Ruhr Valley
(Time Magazine, 1923)

It was easy for the French and Belgians to send their Armies into Germany’s Ruhr Valley in February of 1923 – not so easy getting them out. Attached are two news articles that reported on the assorted European officials who were applying all their brainpower to the problem.

Trying to Demilitarize the Ruhr Valley
(Time Magazine, 1923)

Praying for the Return of the Hapsburgs
(Time Magazine, 1923)

“Hungary is reported to be on the brink of revolution…[Since the war’s end] The Government has never been popular with the majority of the people; it was only accepted by them as a temporary measure, pending the advent of King Otto – the late King Charles’ young son – to the throne of Hungary.”

A Doughboy Remembers
(The Independent, 1920)

On the second anniversary of the Armistice, an American veteran of the war looked back on his days in military training. In this article, he walked the grounds of his old cantonment wistfully recalling how each plot of ground was put to use:

“…the K.P.’s peeling potatoes at the doors of the mess hall, the prisoners digging ditches or working on the coal pile, the guards walking their posts, the officers with their ladies under the trees… Here, under these trees, were the tents of the medical staff… There were the horse-stalls… That thrill, that enthusiasm, that lofty notion that the country was greater than the man…”

1923 Germany
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)

Maximilian Harden (1861 – 1927) was a major-league journalist and editor in Germany at the time of the First World War. Between 1914-18 he was all-in for a German victory. After the defeat he believed in the democracy that came with the Weimar Republic – but he hated the economic state that his country was forced to endure – and that is what he addresses in this column.

“An old married couple, or a widow, who in 1914 were assured of an untroubled existence on an income 6,000 marks a year, cannot buy with that amount today a pair of shoes, or any new sheets, and can get nine or ten pounds of butter at the most…If anyone has looked upon all this destitution, which is borne by many in silence and true dignity, if anyone has seen this decay of a whole nation, which is like the crumbling of some venerable cathedral, and if in spite of this he puts it all down as camouflage, then that person has a heart of stone in his breast.”

Slacker’s Holiday
(Leslie’s Magazine, 1915)

An interesting article by photojournalist James Hare (1856 – 1946) who told us his impressions as to how patriots and recruiting officers prowl about Hampstead Heath in search of volunteers. He was dumbstruck by the high number of men who simply shrugged when reminded of the national emergency.

‘Our First War With The Russians”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)

With the Korean War in full-swing, Major General Edward E. MacMorland (U.S.A.) recalled his experiences some forty years earlier when he was a field grade officer fighting the nascent Soviet Army on their own turf:

It was a tough and surprisingly well-equipped enemy that our soldiers faced in this region…