Recent Articles – Page 42 – Old Magazine Articles

What Will Save Us? (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

The author of this brief paragraph points out that prior to the Great Depression that commenced in 1929, there were as many as five other economic slumps that existed in America’s past. He remembered that in each case something unexpected has come along to not only put us back on our feet again but to boom things in addition.

Will it be the sudden perfection of television? Or further development of electrical appliances, particularly air-conditioning and cooling? Or some new novelty?

End of the Road for Sgt. John Basilone (Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

The first Marine waves that stormed ashore on Iwo Jima included a stalwart young sergeant who stood out as a leader even in that picked group. Handsome, dark-haired, and purposeful, he strode through the surf seemingly oblivious to the enemy’s artillery fire. His eyes focused inland on a spot suitable for his machine-gun platoon… Suddenly, a Jap shell screamed. The sergeant fell. John Basilone, first enlisted Marine in this war to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, was dead.

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.

Japanese Spies and Their Many Troubles (PM Tabloid, 1940)

From the 1940 editorial pages of PM came this column by Henry Paynter (1899 – 1960) who wrote amusingly about the many frustrations facing Japanese spies in North America.

The identity of almost every Japanese spy or saboteur has been known to U.S. authorities. Every instruction they have received or sent has been decoded…

At the height of their irritation, they confided in the German Consul-General stationed in San Francisco – only to learn after the war that he was an FBI informant (you can read about him here).

American Graphics Seen in Soviet Russia (Pageant Magazine, 1964)

An exhibition of graphic art from the United States has become a tremendously popular attraction [as it toured throughout four cities within the Soviet Union]… In the first two days more than 17,000 Soviet citizens, most of them in their teens or early twenties, came to see a gay collection of funny American posters, preposterous ads, colorful book covers and abstract prints.

‘You mean you’re really allowed to paint like this, and nobody says anything?’ one of the visitors asked.

The Very First Football Referee Hand Signals (Literary Digest, 1929)

With the widespread complaints on the rise from the football fans on the sidelines that they were completely in the dark as to why a play was called, the elders of the sport decided that action had to be taken to remedy the growing confusion…

Hence a system of signals has been devised whereby the officials on the field can let the people in the stand know what is what. A gesture of the arm by the field official will immediately telegraph to the stands that Whoozis College’s penalty was for slugging. Another wave will inform the inquisitive public that the forward pass was incomplete by being grounded.

The article is illustrated with eight photographs of assorted football penalty hand signals; none of the gestures have stood the test of time – the penalties have remained but today different signals indicate each infraction.

The Hiss-Chambers Case (Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

This is a report concerning how the Hiss/Chambers perjury trial was proceeding before the jury. The journalist pointed out that Hiss’ attorney, Lloyd Paul Stryker, was repeatedly making slanderous remarks about the character of Whitaker Chambers – an indication that the facts were simply not on the side of the defendant.

Propaganda Radio (Direction Magazine, 1941)

This magazine article first appeared on American newsstands during February of 1941; at that time the U.S. was ten months away from even considering that W.W. II was an American cause worthy of Yankee blood and treasure; yet, the journalist who penned the attached column believed that American radio audiences were steadily fed programming designed to win them over to the interventionist corner. He believed that it was rare for isolationists to ever be granted time before the microphones and quite common for newscasters to linger a bit longer on any news item that listed the hardships in France and Britain. Objectivity was also missing in matters involving the broadcasting of popular song:

The morning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor President Roosevelt stood before the microphones in the well of the U.S. Capitol and became the first president to ever broadcast a declaration of war; CLICK HERE to hear about the reactions of the American public during his broadcast…

The WPA Symphony Orchestras (Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

This article lays out the enormity of the WPA Music Projects in the City of New York during 1941 – It sponsors the most extensive musical organization ever assembled in one city: two symphony and eight dance orchestras, two bands, two choral groups and three ensemble employing some 500 musicians, not to mention 96 music centers with 188 teachers instructing 22,000 students.

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.