Before the war was hours old, Chiang’s most secret plans were known to the Japs. Again and again Jap actions showed foreknowledge of Chiang’s movements and stratagems, as discussed and decided with his most trusted leaders. This explains many mysterious incidents, and makes China’s apparent ‘spy complex’ fully understandable.
This printable page from an R.O.T.C. manual concerns the American military efforts in World War I.
Attached is a useful summation in three paragraphs of the Aisne-Marne offensive. The reader will learn which American and French units participated, the dates on which the battle raged and the German defense strategy.
The battle had numerous and far reaching results. It eliminated the German threat to Paris, upset Ludendorff’s cherished plan to attack the British again in Flanders, gave the Allies important rail communications, demonstrated beyond further doubt the effectiveness of American troops on the offensive, firmly established Allied unity of command…
Fingered as the premier Soviet agent working in the United States by a former communist and editor of THE DAILY WORKER and PEOPLE’S WORLD, Gerhart Eisler (1897 – 1968) – was arrested in the Fall of 1947 and charged with espionage.
Standing before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Eisler refused to take the oath, preferring instead to read a prepared statement. The committee refused to play along and the Justice Department soon leveled Eisler with additional charges. By 1949 things were looking dark for Eisler; jumping bail he made good his escape and secured passage across the Atlantic. Welcomed in East Germany as a hero, Eisler was soon named director of East German radio and became a prominent voice for the Communist government.
It is illuminating to realize that more persons are receiving relief in the United States than there are individuals in such well-known countries as Romania (18,000,000), Mexico (16,500,000), Czechoslovakia (14,800,000) and Yugoslavia (14,000,000); over twice as many as Belgium (8,000,000) and Holland (7,920,000); about three times as many as in Sweden (6,140,000) and to cut theses comparisons short – almost seven times as many in all of Norway (2,800,000)… Clearly, it is not in the least inaccurate to speak of the relief population of the United States as a great nation within a nation… Women and children comprise as much as two thirds of the relief population.
Here is a 1937 article that reminds us that there wasn’t anything left to chance or improvisation under the old studio system:
One of the oldest newspaper publicity devices is the ‘leg display’. Resorted to chiefly by actresses whose press agents want them to break into print, it consists of nothing more than arriving in New York aboard an ocean liner and letting news photographers do the rest.
The adoration of the Feminine Leg began some twenty yeras earlier with the flappers; click here to read more on this topic…
This new form of illusion cannot be called an art. Without the magic of the human voice, without the reality of the human form, lacking in color sound and poetry the film is purely an ocular illusion, an effect of light.
Another anti-silent film article can be read here…
Click here to read a 1939 article about an alumni organization for the pioneers of silent films.
If necessity can be called the mother of invention, then deep public dissatisfaction can be called the mother of the authoritarian or ‘totalitarian’ state. In Europe, the [First] World War resulted in post-war conditions that walked arm-in-arm with profound social change. The aftermath was a great political and economic headache that grew slowly in intensity until it lead people to embrace anything that promised a cure… In Europe there are no less than 11 nations operating under systems far removed from democracy as we know it in this country.
But today there is no laughter in Germany. There are only smiles of disdain, contempt, conceit and strain. There is no humility, no pity, not much mercy. There is an odd sort of honor, an amazing egotism. But there is no will power nor need there be in a nation that knows but one man’s will.
CLICK HERE to read an article from 1923 about the abitious Adolf Hitler.
This 1936 magazine article reported that Germany had spent a considerable sum on munitions and armaments throughout much of the previous year and was not likely to stop anytime soon. In light of this fact, the French and British governments were moved to do the same:
Winston Churchill, a cherubic reddish-haired Cassandra, bobbed up in the House of Commons again last week to warn his countrymen of the ‘remorseless hammers’ of the world.
This 1936 magazine article reported that Germany had spent a considerable sum on munitions and armaments throughout much of the previous year and was not likely to stop anytime soon. In light of this fact, the French and British governments were moved to do the same:
Winston Churchill, a cherubic reddish-haired Cassandra, bobbed up in the House of Commons again last week to warn his countrymen of the ‘remorseless hammers’ of the world.
…you think it’s easy for a guy my age not to be in the Army? You think I’m having a good time? Every place I go people spit on me…
So spake one of the 4-F men interviewed for this magazine article when asked what it was like to be a twenty-year-old excused from military service during World War Two. This article makes clear the resentment experienced at the deepest levels by all other manner of men forced to soldier-on in uniform; and so Yank had one of their writers stand on a street corner to ask the slackers what it was like to wear civies during wartime.
Read about the 4-F guy who creamed three obnoxious GIs.
Click here to read an article about a World War Two draft board.
This snippet is about a major crisis (and a colossal media event) that took place in the life of Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret Rose (1930 – 2002) – when she was told in 1955 that the man she loved, Captain Peter Townsend, was not suitable for marriage.
An informative article from World War I concerning the doctors of all the combatant nations and how they dealt with the filthy conditions of stagnant warfare and all the different sorts of wounds that were created as a result of this very different war:
This is a dirty war. Gaseous, gangrene, lockjaw, blood poisoning, all dirt diseases… Colonel G.H. Makins of the Royal Army Medical Corps longs for the clean dust of the Veldt, which the British soldier cursed in the Boer War.
Contrary to popular thought, the Fashion Police, so called, are not concerned with seemingly vulgar acts of dressing – mismatched colors, cheap accessories, gross fabrics, etc – but they do consider knocking-off the work of other designers as a serious violation – and when it comes to ripping-off the designs of Christian Dior or Pierre Balmain, that is when the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Coutre and police inspector Jacques Besson step in.
STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Katherine Best was not shy about giving credit where credit was due, as you will read in this article that stands as one big pat on the back for the producers at Warner Brother’s for possessing the testicular fortitude needed to launch the first anti-Nazi movie in Hollywood: Confessions of a Nazi Spy
In October of 1940, Charlie Chaplin released his anti-fascist masterpiece: The Great Dictator. Click here to read about that.
In this article, P.G. Wodehouse (1904 – 1975) sounded-off on a new type of novelist that had surfaced in 1919 – and has yet to decamp. He breaks the novelizing classes into two groups:
…the ordinary novelist, the straightforward, horny-handed dealer in narrative, who is perfectly contented to turn out two books a year, on the understanding – a gentleman’s agreement between himself and his public – that he reserves movie rights and is allowed an occasional photograph in the papers..
Written in the interest of promoting U.S. Army morale, this is a profile of five-star General Dwight David Eisenhower by an anonymous YANK MAGAZINE journalist. An interesting interview, it was printed six months prior to the Normandy invasion:
General Eisenhower’s rise is surely without parallel in American military history. From colonel to supreme commander and full general in two years – from the ‘mock’ war maneuvers in the delta country of Louisiana to the real maneuvers that face him now as he must figure out the when and how of the attack that must drive to the very heart of Nazi Europe – that is his story.
Click here to read about Hitler’s slanderous comment regarding the glutinous Hermann Goering.
The attached 1933 and 1934 photos will give some indication as to what golf clothes looked like during the early Thirties. Depicted in the first image are four actors of the Hollywood tribe: Adolphe Menjou (clad in plus-fours), a slovenly Johnny Weismuller, Bruce Cabot and Richard Arlen.
Full-cut trousers were the rule of the day, as can clearly be seen in the second photo that was indifferently ripped from the browning pages of Delineator Magazine, which also shows a smashing linen shirtwaist dress that was worn on the Bermuda links.
