World War One – Page 9 – Old Magazine Articles

Post-World War I France
(The North American Review, 1920)

In the later years of the First World War, the American journalist Alexander Woollcott (1887 – 1943) served as a writer for the Doughboy newspaper The Stars & Stripes. In this roll he was able to travel far afield all over the American sectors of the front where he saw a great deal of the war: flattened villages, ravaged farmland, factories reduced to ruble. In the attached article from 1920, Woollcott reported that the war-torn provinces of France looked much the same, even two years after the Armistice. He was surprised at the glacial speed with which France was making the urgent repairs, and in this article he presented a sort-of Doughboy’s-eye-view of post-war France.

The Damage to The Occupied Areas of France,
(Time Magazine, 1923)

Here is a column that appeared in the October 15, 1923 issue of Time that reported on the amount of devastation that was inflicted upon the German-occupied areas of Northern France between 1914 through 1918.

The Training of American Blue Blooded Officers at Plattsburg
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1917)

A leaf torn from the chic pages of VANITY FAIR in which eight snap shots depict various high-profile New Yorkers absorbed in their officer training routine. The journalist opined:

The Business Man’s Camp at Plattsburg has accomplished several of it’s avowed objects. It has proved itself practicable. It has demonstrated that men of high standing in business, professional and social affairs are willing to make personal sacrifices for the country’s good. It has shown that American officers have made good use of lessons taught by the War, and have adapted their tactics to conform to modern exigencies. Finally, the Plattsburg camp has grounded a large number of intelligent Americans in the rudiments of warfare.

You can read an article about General Wood here.

German Girls Captured as Machine Gunners
(Stars and Stripes, 1919)

This paragraph was lifted from a longer article concerning the battle-savvy Native Americans of World War One and it supports the claims made in 1918 by a number of nameless allied POW’s who reported seeing female soldiers in German machine gun crews toward the close of W.W I. There is solid documentation pertaining to the women who served in the Serb, Russian and French armies but very little as to the German ladies who did the same. The article appeared after the Armistice and this was a time when The Stars and Stripes editors were most likely to abstain from printing patriotic falsehoods.

If you would like to read another article about women combatants in W.W. II, click here.

Click here to read additional articles about the rolls women played during W.W. I.

‘The Woman Who Took A Soldier’s Job”
(American Legion Weekly, 1919)

Two years ago when the men began to drop out of the industrial world at the call to the colors their women associates gradually slipped into their places, and in the majority of cases effectively filled them… Those men have now nearly all come back to claim their old, or better jobs. What of the girl, then, in the soldier’s job? What is she going to do?

The Lusitania Attack and the Violation of Naval Traditions
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1915)

Attached is a Vanity Fair article printed a few months after the Lusitania sinking in which the journalist listed the many and myriad explanations as to why this event was such a departure from the traditions of naval warfare set in place by John Paul Jones, Admirals Nelson and Dewey.

Click here to read read a 1919 German condemnation of Admiral Von Tirpitz.

A War Like No Other
(Hearst’s Sunday American, 1917)

An article by the admired British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (1881 – 1931) concerning those aspects of the 1914 war that combined to make the entire catastrophe something unique in human history:

Everything has changed; uniforms, weapons, methods, tactics. Cavalry had been rendered obsolete by trenches, machine guns and modern artillery; untrained soldiers proved useless, special battalions were needed on both sides to fight this particular kind of war that, in no way, resembled the battles your father or grand-fathers had once fought.

A good read.

Click here to read about the fashion legacy of W.W. I…

To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…

World War I Fashions in the Spring of 1916
(Strauss Magazine, 1916)

Assorted dry observations regarding what the women of Gotham were sporting that last American Spring of peace (Congress would declare war on Germany during the April of 1917).

Paris, 1918: La Guerre Fini!
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

Yank and Aussie and Jock, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Pole, Checko-Slovak, Tommy, Indian, all from the newly arrived Brazilians to the wizened and and weather-beaten poilus wearing the seven brisques denoting four years in the furnace, knew no nationality, no difference of tongues or even of uniform.

Click here to read another article about the 1918 Armistice.

– from Amazon:

The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914

The British Home Front Observed
(Harper’s Weekly, 1915)

Attached is one American journalist’s view of the Great War as it is waged on the home-front by the British people. He was impressed with the resolve of the population to win the war and he found that everyone, regardless of age or infirmity, was pursuing war work with a surprising earnestness.

The outward evidences of a nation at war are plentiful in London. Soldiers are everywhere. Columns of armed men and columns of recruits still in civilian clothes march through the streets. Drilling goes on in the parks and other places all day and every day.

Read about how the First World War effected life on the campus of Eton College.

The Atmosphere of W.W. I Paris
(Atlantic Monthly, 1918)

William Beebe is best remembered for his exploration of the oceans in a submersible craft called a Bathysphere, however, as a younger man his study of nature brought him to war-weary Paris.

Four devastating years of war had altered the city and made quite an affect on the young naturalist. His astute and very moving observations were recorded in this essay, A Naturalist in Paris.

This link displays the first six pages; the remaining seven pages are available upon request.

Click here to read about the day when the Nazis took Paris.

Rampant Inflation in Post-War Germany
(Click Magazine, 1944)

Author and radio commentator Emil Ludwig (1881 – 1948) recalled the economic catastrophe that devastated post-World War I Germany as a result of their inflated currency:

Inflation in Germany really started on the first day of the war in 1914 when the government voted a credit of five billion marks. This was not a loan…I saw the mark, the German monetary unit corresponding to the British shilling or the American quarter, tumble down and down until you paid as much for a loaf of bread as you would have paid for a limousine before inflation started.

The U.S. Marines Land ”Over There”
(The Spectator, 1918)

A British journalist encountered the United States Marine Corps and found them to be an impressive curiosity that spoke an odd, nautical language. One Marine in particular was singled out and, although anonymous some of you will recognize right away that he could only be one man: Sergeant Dan Daily of the Fifth Marines.

Click here to read about the high desertion rate within the U.S. Army of 1910.

‘Tell That To The Marines”
(Sea Power Magazine, 1918)

The W.W. I poster campaign was a vast undertaking that was new in the annals of warfare. Never before had government locked arms with the newly created forces of mass-media (such as it was) in an effort to instill some sense of patriotism in the hearts of so many. The old salts who edited Sea Power Magazine recognized this and so they documented as many of the posters dealing with the US. Navy as they could find.

The attached single page article explains the origins and development of the famed Tell That To The Marines poster that was painted by James Montgomery Flagg in 1918.

Soviet Prisoner Exchanges
(Soviet Russia Monthly, 1920)

Here is a brief notice that appeared in a small, semi-monthly magazine concerning a PoW exchange that took place between the Soviets and the Germans some three years after the Russian Army made their uneasy peace with Imperial Germany.

Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.

German Officers Recall Their Days as P.O.W.s
(Times Literary Supplement, 1921)

Attached is a book review of what was described as the first book of it’s kind: a compilation of assorted recollections by Imperial German officers of their years spent in captivity at the officer’s prisoner of war camp at Skipton in Yorkshire.

High Culture in World War One Prison Camps
(Literary Digest, 1917)

This two page article is about P.O.W.s and the plays and concerts that they launched while in captivity; it is illustrated by numerous images of the prisoner/performers in costume.

If you are looking for an article that spells out how much more educated people used to be as compared to now, you might have found it.

Click here to read about the W.W. II Canadian POWs who collaborated with the Nazis.

Click here to read about American POWs during the Vietnam War.

‘The Americans Are Here”
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1919)

Les Américains Sont Là!

Those were the words on everybody’s lips as the first big detachments of United States troops began to appear in the Paris streets… I think there is a simple politeness in these young warriors from across the sea, whether they come from some of the big cities, New York, Boston, Chicago or from some far-away states on the other side of the Rockies.