Relying on the expertise of various Lincoln scholars (Paul M. Angle, Dr. William Barton, Reinhard Luthin and David Mearns), efforts were made to verify whether or not all the many aphorisms, bon mots, maxims and plentiful epigrams attributed to Lincoln were indeed authored by the slain president, or were they the product of the hundreds of forgers and prevaricators that followed in his wake.
The Nazis quickly extended the dread Nuremberg laws to the occupied territory. Jews lost jobs, businesses, property, liberty, even their lives. They were flung into primitive concentration camps and deported to Polish ghettos. And with them the Nazis brought the usual wave of Jewish suicides.
This is an early Thirties profile of a young American sculptor named Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988). In the years to come, Noguchi would become well known for his innovative designs for lamps and furniture; but when this article first appeared he was admired for simply having served as an apprentice to Constantin Brancussi.
Click here to read a 1946 art review concerning the paintings of French architect Le-Corbusier.
The testimony given in this column from the early Twenties is as true today as it was then. It was written by a 1905 immigrant who observed that the first word immigrants learn when arriving in America is BUY. When presented at every corner with products they’d never seen before in tandem with the smiling and encouraging face of the sales staff, the immigrant can’t help but feel an inner drive to join the American society:
And when he succumbs, why wonder that he grows more aggressive, demanding higher wages and striking when the demand is denied?
A confidant cashed-in on his chum Babe Ruth and provided numerous factoids regarding the baseball legend’s habits, manias and obsessions that are not likely to be added to the Baseball Hall of Fame archives.
Sammy Sosa in our day may use steroids, but unlike Babe Ruth, at least he wears underwear…
Here is an expose that revealed the hypocrisy of Stalin and the Soviet party members – who spoke of the inherit nobility of the laboring classes and the triumph of the worker’s paradise while they lived like the czars of old:
The children of the country’s rulers already regard themselves as the hereditary aristocracy… The absence of a free press and consequently, of public criticism, allows them to retain this psychology even beyond their adolescence.
New York’s Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman (1889 – 1967) wrote the attached editorial explaining why Marxism was the polar opposite of everything Americans holds dear:
My sole objective in writing is to help save America from the godless governings of totalitarianism…if you believe with me that freedom is the birthright of the great and the small, the strong and the weak, the poor and the afflicted, then you would be convicted as I that [Socialism] is the antithesis of American Democracy.
Click here to read another argument opposed to socialism.
Dale Carnegie (1888 – 1955) was a phenomenon unique to American shores; he was a publishing marvel whose book How To Win Friends and Influence People has sold over fifty million copies since it’s first appearance in 1937.
Similar to his contemporary Napoleon Hill
(1883 – 1970), Carnegie was one the preeminent self-help authors of the last century who recognized that success can be found within all of us if we simply know how to harness those elements properly. He had a strong belief that the powers of self-determination can be mastered in one’s ability to communicate clearly, and his followers are legion.
This article coincided with the printing of his second book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), and explains the author’s philosophy –
… be a good listener, talk in terms of the other man’s interests, and make the other person feel important.
No sooner had the curtain descended on the tragedy that was World War II when the Allied nations found themselves having to put together a coalition of nations that would be willing to contain Soviet expansion throughout Europe. A COLLIER’S journalist wandered among the rubble of West Germany and found that a great number of draft-age men simply replied nein when asked if they would be willing to fight alongside the Americans, French and British. One of the wiser observers opined:
Remember that Germany is a convalescent country…These people have lost two world wars in a generation. The last one cost them nearly 3,000,000 dead and another 1,000,000 or so still missing, to say nothing of some 4,000,000 wounded. They just don’t want to take a chance of being on the losing side again.
The West Germans joined NATO in 1955.
Published during the closing months of the war, the following five page article is a beautifully written account, by an Old Etonian illustrating the strange atmosphere felt on the Eton campus as a result of the Great War with all it’s sadness and uncertainty.
Click here if you would like to read a magazine article about World War I as it was experienced on the Harrow campus.
