Recent Articles – Page 48 – Old Magazine Articles

The Confederate Error on the First Day
(Confederate Veteran Magazine, 1923)

Alabama native John Purifoy was a regular contributor to Confederate Veteran Magazine and he wrote most often about the Battle of Gettysburg; one of his most often sited articles concerned the roll artillery played throughout the course of that decisive contest. In the attached article Purifoy summarized some of the key events from a rebel perspective. In the last paragraph he pointed out the one crucial error Lee soon came to regret- take a look.

‘My Friend Babe Ruth”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1924)

1920s sportswriter Arthur Robinson wrote this profile of his pal Babe Ruth (1895 – 1948) for the editors of Collier’s:

For some years I have had a peculiarly intimate friendship with Babe Ruth…to the alternately and jeering millions who have watched this modern Beowulf at bat, driving out his smashes, it may have appeared that he was just a thick-skinned ballplayer, schooled to deafness on the field. The skin of my friend Babe Ruth is not thick.

The 1940 Election Polls and FDR
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

The attached article was written by Dr. George Gallup (1901 – 1984), the pioneering American pollster and founder of the Institute of Public Opinion. Gallup’s article reveals some surprising information about American voters and their thoughts concerning FDR’s 1940 bid for re-election against Wendell Willkie (1892 – 1944).

Anti-Lynching Legislation Shelved
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Whether it was due to the urgency of the war or whether it was simply business as usual on Capitol hill, who knows – but ever since he came to Washington in 1929 Representative Joseph Gavagan (D., NYC: 1892 – 1968) tried numerous times to get his anti-lynching legislation through Congress. In April of 1937 he succeeded in getting one of his anti-lynching bills passed (277 to 118) – but the Southern Democrats saw to it that he wouldn’t get an encore performance in ’42; this was his last attempt, he retired from the House that same year.

‘I Was On Board Titanic”
(Pageant Magazine, 1953)

The 1953 Titanic reunion took place in New York City. Numbered among the nine survivors was Edith Russell, who had been nineteen at the time of the ship’s sinking. Also in attendance that day was the writer Seymour Ettman, who collaborated with Russell in crafting the attached five page article about her experiences the night Titanic slipped below the surface of the North Atlantic:

If the Titanic sinks, will they transfer the luggage?

Miss, if I were you, I’d go back to your room and kiss your lovely things goodbye.

The Execution of French Traitors
(Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

The apathetic France of 1939 is dead. Collier’s correspondent, journeying across southern France, found high hope of unity and determination to punish all collaborationists. France, he feels, is reborn.

Military Choices
(U.S. News & World Report, 1965)

Events are moving now toward a military showdown in Vietnam – with a decision to be made by combat.

The question at this time is whether the coming crisis will be resolved in South, middle or North Vietnam. As the showdown approaches, the U.S. finds itself involved in three forms of war in Southeast Asia:

• An anti-guerrilla war in southern South Vietnam.

• A base-defense war in northern South Vietnam.

• An anti-logistics war in southern North Vietnam.

The military man who penned this article weighs all these scenarios and also discusses the nuclear option.

Women At The Brooklyn Navy Yard
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

The Navy Yard in Brooklyn (NY) got along with men mechanics for 141 years, up to now – but this is a tough war. Women are now being hired to help build and repair warships and their accessories.

A Second Look At The Rosenberg Trial
(American Opinion, 1966, 1967)

Looking back fifteen years at the greatest espionage trial of the Fifties, Medford Evans, a former administrative officer of the U.S. Atomic Energy Project, re-read the court testimony and concluded that Harry Gold and David Greenglass had lied on the stand.

Eleanor Roosevelt on Japanese-American Internment
(Collier’s, 1943)

In this article, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) attempted (very politically) to play both sides of the street, implying on the one hand that the creation of the Japanese-American internment camps seemed a reasonable measure in wartime; but the reader doesn’t have to have a degree in psychology to recognize that she believed otherwise:

‘A Japanese is always a Japanese’ is an easily accepted phrase and it has taken hold quite naturally on the West Coast because of some reasonable or unreasonable fear back of it, but it leads nowhere and solves nothing…

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.

Race Riots in Vancouver
(Harper’s Weekly, 1907)

A Harper’s Weekly correspondent filed the attached report that served as an eye-witness account of the 1907 anti-Asian riots that flared up in the Canadian city of Vancouver, British Columbia. The riot triggered countless acts of violence and arson targeting the Asian communities of that western city. The widespread Asian migration to the Dominion of Canada was a result of the diplomatic agreements between Japan and Great Britain (Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1922) resulting in a tremendous amount of racist tension among Canadian Whites.

Today, the surname Li is the most common last name in Canada.

Click here to read about the Japanese-American internment camps of W.W. II.

All the Pretty German Spies
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

Siegrid von Laffert, Edit von Coler and the exotic dancer LaJana had four things in common: they were all carbon-based life forms, they were all all German women, they were all beautiful and they were all Nazis spies:

These women spies are called the ‘Blonde Battalions’. Chosen for their physical attractiveness, they are usually between 18 and 22 years of age. Members of the ‘Blonde Battalion’ are admitted to the Gestapo school in Altona, near Hamburg and after they are sent out to perform their work as efficient machines, with rigid discipline and precision…

From Amazon:
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies

Above Nagasaki
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The destruction of Nagasaki looks nothing like the debris in Cassino or Leghorn. The strange thing here is the utter absence of rubble. You can see a couple of square miles of reddish-brown desolation with nothing left but the outlines of houses, a bit of wall here and half a chimney there. In this area you will see a road, and the road will be completely clean. It is too soon after the bombing for the Japs to have done any cleaning of the roads and you can’t see a single brick or pile of broken plaster or lumber on any street or sidewalk in town.

After Nagasaki, Japan surrendered – but there was a lapse of fifteen hours before the Japanese heard that their declaration had been accepted…

Milton Caniff: 1940s American Cartoonist

Attached is a profile of Milton Caniff (1907 – 1988), who is remembered as the creator of Terry and the Pirates (1934 – 1946), Mail Call (1942 – 1946) and Steve Canyon (1946 – 1988).

Click here to read an article by G.I. cartoonist Bill Maulden.

The Slang of the Beatnik Generation
(Pageant Magazine, 1960)

To fulfill her publicity obligations for her roll as Roxanne in her forthcoming film The Subterranean (MGM, 1960: from the Jack Kerouac novella
of the same title), actress Janice Rule (1931 – 2003) struck a number of Beat poses and provided a glossary of Beatnik slang for the readers of Coronet magazine.

Click here to read an article about 1940s teen slang.

If you would like to read about 1920s slang, click here.

Understanding the Veterans
(Pageant Magazine, 1945)

Appearing in various magazines and newspapers on the 1945 home front were articles and interviews with assorted experts who predicted that the demobilized military men would be a burden on society. They cautioned families to be ready for these crushed and broken men, who had seen so much violence and had inflicted the same upon others, would be maladjusted and likely to drift into crime. In response to this blarney stepped Frances Langford (1913 – 2005), the American singer. She wrote in the attached article that she had come to know thousands of soldiers, sailors airmen and Marines during the course of her tours with the USO and that the nation could only benefit from their return.

The World War Two Origins of the T-Shirt
(Men’s Wear Magazine, 1950)

A couple of paragraphs from a popular fashion industry trade magazine that pointed out that the white cotton knit crew-neck garment we call the T-shirt came into this world with the name quarter sleeve and had it’s origin in the U.S. Navy where it earned it’s popularity and soon spread to other branches of the U.S. military during the mid-to-late 1930s. When the war ended in 1945 the T-shirt was the only element of the uniform that American men wanted to keep.

There was another fashion innovations of W.W. II, click here to read about it…