World War One – Page 7 – Old Magazine Articles

African-American Stevedores in the U.S. Army
(The Independent, 1919)

An article written by David Le Roy Ferguson (dates unknown), an African-American pastor assigned to minister to the black Doughboys posted to the depot at St. Nazaire, France. The men of his flock were stevedores who were ordered to perform the thankless task of off-loading cargo from the various supply ships arriving daily to support the A.E.F.. Aside from working as cooks or in other service positions, this was a customary assignment given to the African-Americans during the war; only a small percentage were posted to the 92nd and 93rd combat divisions.

Pastor Ferguson’s magazine article salutes the necessary labor of these men while at the same time adhering to the usual simple descriptions of the African-American as cheerful, musical and rather crude.

Christmas Shopping for Women in Service
(Harper’s Bazaar, 1918)

Contrary to those trust-fund babies who lord over the Harper’s Bazaar of today, the editors and stylists of that magazine during World War I understood quite well the vital rolls American women were needed to fill while their country was struggling to attain proper footing in a state of total war. The attached file will show you seven photographs of various accessories recommended for W.W. I women war volunteers as well as two illustrations of various practical coats for winter.

From Amazon: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War

The Lynching of African-Americans in France
(NY Times, 1921)

This disturbing article from 1921 reported on a series of lynchings that took place between the years 1917 through 1919 by U.S. Army personnel serving in France during the First World War. The journalist quoted witness after witness who appeared before the Senate Committee regarding the lynchings they had seen:

Altogether…I saw ten Negroes and two white men hanged at Is-Sur-Tille. Twenty-eight other members of my command also witnessed these hangings and if necessary, I can produce them.

Read about racism in the U.S. Army of W.W. I

The Political Crisis in Post-War Germany
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1919)

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.

Crack of Doom for the Draft Dodgers
(American Legion Weekly, 1920)

Doomsday looms just over the horizon for the draft deserters. That wily gentleman who hid behind a tree and chuckled as his neighbor shouldered a gun and marched off to battle is soon to have that chuckle mopped off his face. He will find that no tree vegetates enough to cover from shame the miserable carcass of his manhood…According to the latest reports, 173,911 is the maximum number of draft registrants chargeable with willful desertion.

The Emaciated Germans
(Time Magazines, 1923)

Fresh from his trip through post-war Europe, U.S. Senator Robert La Follette (1855 – 1925) declared:

The Germans have been underfed for seven years. They are suffering for want of food, fuel and clothing. Young children and old people are dying from hunger and disease induced by hunger. Emaciated, despairing, they are waiting the end.

Post-War Germany Struggled Under the Versailles Treaty
(The Independent, 1921)

A 1921 column that clearly pointed out all the hardships created for Germany as a result of the Versailles Treaty.

The framers of that agreement could never have envisioned that the post-war landscape they designed for Germany would be pock-marked with such a myriad of frustrations – such as the border skirmishes between Germany and Poland, inflation, famine, the Salzburg Plebiscite and such harsh reparation payments that, when combined with all the other afflictions, simply served to create the kind of Germany that made Hitler’s rise a reality.

Another article about the despondency in 1920s Germany can be read here…

Fears of German Treaty Violations
(Punch, 1922 and Time, 1923)

These articles makes it clear that Clemanceau and Churchill were not the only ones who feared German duplicty in regards to the rearmament clause. Written a year apart are these two columns from Time and Punch insisting that the German Reichswehr had numerous weapons that were banned under the Versailles Treaty:

My attention had often been called to persistent rumors regarding Germany’s secret army. Whispers had reached me from quite reliable sources of over a million Teuton soldiers, well-officered and disciplined…

Click here if you would like to read about the 1936 Versailles Treaty violations.

The Failures of W.W. I American Press Censorship
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)

Seven and a half months before the second installment of the War-to-End-All-Wars was to begin, George Creel (1876 – 1953), America’s first official censor from World War I, wrote this article for the editors of Collier’s Magazine explaining why he believed that censorship in an open society cannot work:

As many scars bear witness, I was the official censor during the World War. For two years I rode herd on the press, trying to enforce the concealment demanded by the Army and Navy.

The View from the German Trenches
(NY Times, 1915)

Originally appearing in the Berlin Tageblatt, this dispatch, written by Bernhard Kellerman (1879 – 1951), was later translated and printed in the The N.Y. Times magazine, Current History. It reported on the hardships and morale of German infantry serving in Flanders during the second year of the war.

Post-W.W. I Society and the New Spirit of the Twenties
(The Independent, 1920)

In 1920 there were many articles celebrating the three-hundredth anniversary of the Puritan’s arrival on Cape Cod. This one writer decried the lack of enthusiasm that marked the modern age following the end of the Great War – a world that stood in contrast to the Pilgrim spirit. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced during the war. Shell shocked and traumatized, the world seemed different: the old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The author of this column, Preston Slosson, was one of the observant souls to realize that the legacy of the First World War was disillusionment and cynicism.

Our stock of idealism has temporarily run low and a mood of cynicism has replaced the devoted enthusiasm of 1918…

Click here to read a 1916 article about life on the German home front.

A Woman War Worker Cartoon
(NY Times 1917)

Attached is a cartoon that was created during the third year of the First World War by a British cartoonist who feared that women have, through the years, been loosing their feminine mojo – that charming thing that truly separates them from the males of the species.

American W.W. I Cemeteries and French Gratitude
(American Legion Monthly, 1936)

Eighteen years after the last shot was fired in World War I, Americans collectively wondered, as they began to think about all the empty chairs that were setting at so many family dinner tables, Do the French care about all that we sacrificed? Do they still remember that we were there? In response to this question, an American veteran who remained behind in France, submitted the attached article to The American Legion Monthly and answered with a resounding Yes on all six pages:

…I can assure you that the real France, the France of a thousand and one villages in which we were billeted; the France of Lorraine peasants, of Picardy craftsmen, of Burgundy winegrowers – remembers, with gratitude, the A.E.F. and its contribution to the Allied victory.

The article is accompanied by eight photographs of assembled Frenchmen decorating American grave sites.

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

The Armistice Day Offensive
(The Home Sector, 1920)

A Congressional committee of investigation has recently been treated to a scathing arraignment of the General Staff because military operations on the front of the Second Army were continued up to the hour of the signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918. Members of the operations Section of the Staff, particularly the chief, Brigadier General Fox Conner, have been accused of slaughtering men on the last day of the war in order to satisfy their personal ambitions.

11/11 with the U.S. First Division
(American Legion Weekly, 1919)

A 1919 article that recalled the U.S. Army’s First Division Armistice Day assault in the Bois de Romaigne:

The First Division was a pretty tired outfit. It had seen eleven months of almost continuous fighting…Rumors were around that there was going to be an armistice, but few listened and none believed. We had been bunked before.

The artillery fire increased and the machine guns rattled. You were on outpost and you fired your rifle, just fired it at nothing in particular. Everybody was doing it. The din increased until 11 o’clock, it ended with a crash that startled you. Fini la Guerre?

That Night in Paris
(American Legion Weekly, 1924)

Whether or not this story is true or not, it’s a wonderful ride – written in the idiom of the American trench-dwellers of the time. It’s awfully funny.

The News of the Armistice
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

By the time this column was read by the American Doughboys, the truce was old news and this STARS AND STRIPES article makes for an interesting read as it imparts much of the November, 1918 excitement that filled the streets of Paris when the news of the Armistice hit the previously gloomy boulevards. This front-page article makes clear that many of the rumors pertaining to the German collapse could not be verified, yet affirms reports concerning the revolution in Germany, it’s food shortages and the Kaiser’s exile to Holland.

The Wrong Armistice Day
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

In the attached 1945 article an anonymous YANK MAGAZINE correspondent describes for his young readers how the last World War ended; the widely reported misinformation of a premature armistice treaty that was reported as being signed on November 7, 1918 – the retraction, and the subsequent announcement of the genuine armistice being signed four days later. General John J. Pershing recalled the scene in Paris:

It looked as though the whole population had gone out of their minds. The city turned into pandemonium. The streets and boulevards were packed with people singing and wearing all sorts of odd costumes. The crowds were doing the most clownish things. One could hardly hear his own voice, it was such bedlam.

Click here to read another article describing the Armistice Day celebrations in 1918 Paris.

Click here to read an explanation as to what was understood about the truce of November 11, 1918.