Recent Articles

Women on the Relief Rolls (New Outlook Magazine, 1935)

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.

The Hollywood Leg Gag (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

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…

The Era of the Dictators (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

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.

Gloom in Germany (Ken Magazine, 1938)

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.

The Military Buildup in France and Britain (Literary Digest, 1936)

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.

The Military Buildup in France and Britain
(Literary Digest, 1936)

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.

Home Front Culture and Men Without Uniforms (Yank Magazine, 1945)

…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.

Princess Margaret and Captain Townsend (Coronet Magazine, 1958)

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.

Trench Medicine (Harper’s Weekly, 1915)

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.

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