Recent Articles – Page 53 – Old Magazine Articles

The French Navy Sank Their Own Submarine
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

This news piece appeared in a Georgia newspaper during the closing weeks of American neutrality. The first report of this French naval blunder involving a French torpedo boat sinking a French submarine came from Berlin, rather from Paris or London, where such events would never make it past the censors.

This brief notice makes no mention as to the original source or who witnessed the accident.

Comprehending the Afterlife
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

The attached article is by novelist Richard DeWitt Miller (1910 – 1958) who assembled a number of anecdotes and first-hand accounts from people of various backgrounds who had all experienced singularly unique moments in their lives that were unworldly; happenings that could only serve as evidence that there exists a life after this one.

Secular America on the Rise
(Literary Digest, 1933)

The most fundamental change in the intellectual life of the United States is the apparent shift from Biblical authority and religious sanctions to scientific and factual authority and sanctions.

So, at any rate, Professor Hornell Hart, of Bryn Mawr College reads the signs…Two other investigators find evidence of a decline in dogma and a rise in the ‘social gospel’ as evidence of the humanist form of religion which Professor Hart sees foreshadowed by the morning sun.

In 1900 people wanted to know why men didn’t like going to church…

Snapshots of the Assassination
(Saturday Evening Post, 1865)

The pistol ball entered the back of the President’s head and penetrated nearly through the head. The wound is mortal. The President has been insensible ever since it was inflicted and is now dying… A common single-barred pocket pistol was found on the carpet.

Colleen Moore: A Flapper in Hollywood
(The Flapper Magazine, 1922)

By the time this piece appeared in The Chicago Daily News (prior to being picked up by the fast crowd at Flapper Magazine) Colleen Moore was all of twenty-one years of age with fourteen Hollywood films to her credit. This interview was conducted over lunch by the polished Hollywood reporter Gladys Hall, who we’re sure picked up the check; on that day Miss Moore wanted to talk about flappers, a flock she was proud to be numbered among (and a subject she seemed to know well).

The Utopian GBS
(Time Magazine, 1923)

IF we were to have a favorite socialist it might be the silver-tongued playwright and all around-wit, George Bernard Shaw (even though in the attached film clip he blathers-on gleefully in favor of a government that kills the non-productive elements of society). In this article, Shaw muses about how the ideal society would operate – regardless of the flaws inherit in human nature (which Marx also ignored).

Click here to read a few Shavian witticisms.

British Fascists
(Ken Magazine, 1938)

This article is about the founder of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley (1896 – 1980). The article outlines much of his life and political career up to the year 1938, with heavy emphasis concerning some of the least admirable aspects of his character

His father’s comment sums Mosely up admirably:
‘He has never done an honest days work in his life.’

Click here to read about the origins of Fascist thought…

Incompetence at the Helm
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

A columnist writing for the magazine New Outlook following the first nine months of the New Deal, weighed carefully all the assorted alphabet agencies and edicts that President Roosevelt created in hopes that the U.S. economy would once more spring to life. He concluded that there was nothing to look forward to and compared FDR to the con-men on the street corners who scam the passersby into playing their shell games; difference being that FDR’s shells were both empty.

Click here to read about the first 100 days of the Roosevelt administration.

The Arabs Mobilize
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

From a guarded high-walled villa in Alexandria, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (1895 – 1974), exiled fifty-three year-old Grand son of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem craftily directs the affairs of the 1,200,000 Palestinian Arabs.

In the Mufti’s web, the strands of potential organized resistance include two rival ‘youth organizations’, the al-Najjada and the Al-Futawa and the ‘mobile elements’ of the secret Muslim Brotherhood, which is a sort of Middle Eastern Ku Klux Klan. The precise figures of their strength are elusive, but combined they may comprise something like 50,000 men and boys.

Mohammad Nimr al-Hawari, thirty-eight-year-old leader of the Najjada told me, ‘We believe in force’.

How Did the Men in First Class Dress for Dinner?
(Vanity Fair, 1913)

There were several clothing options available for the well-heeled men fortunate enough to (briefly) enjoy Titanic‘s First Class comforts. Dinner suits were not strictly confined to black and there were a number of shirting and accessory choices; this article covers all of them quite thoroughly.

More on men’s fashions can be read here.

‘Korean Pearl Harbor”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)

The first surprise attack came at night. It was mounted by reckless fighters, who swarmed into battle on horseback and afoot after [American] bugles had morbidly sounded ‘taps’. The Reds pounced on two combat regiments of the American First Cavalry Division and the South Korean First Division. Hundreds of civilians, caught by the flaming machine gun and mortar fire, were mowed down. In U.N. casualties, it was the one of the costliest engagements of the war.

More MIGS for Cuba
(The Washington World, 1963)

The latest U-2 photographs, showing increased numbers of Russian planes on or near Cuban airfields, have forced U.S. intelligence experts to raise their estimates from 150 to 300 Soviet planes in Cuba

U.S. Post Office Stamps Honoring Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The philatelists in our audience know well the G.I. stamps issued by the U.S. Post Office in 1945; what they may not know are some of the stories that lay behind them (some stories are sad and some are merely pathetic).

His Female Chief-of-Staff
(Literary Digest, 1938)

Missy Le Hand (1896 – 1944) was a pretty big deal in the life of President Franklin Roosevelt. FDR had many secretaries, but only one was a woman (and she was the first woman to ever serve in this capacity to a U.S. president). When the Germans attacked Poland, the State Department called her first, knowing full well that she was the only one in the White House with the permission to wake him up. Although this article lists many of the personal tasks she was charged with, it should be known that Missy Le Hand was the target of many Washington influence-peddlers.

One of the First Letters to the Editor in Favor of the Bomb
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Apparently the arguments that we still hear today concerning whether or not use of the Atomic Bomb in 1945 was justifiable popped-up right away. The following is a letter to the editor of Yank Magazine written by a hard-charging fellow who explained that he was heartily sick of reading the

-pious cries of horror [that] come from the musty libraries of well-fed clergymen and from others equally far removed from the war.

Praise for the Nesei Regiment
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A member of the 34th Infantry Division wrote to the editors of YANK to let all members of the Army know how much respect he had for the Nisei soldiers in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Women Candidates Win Higher Offices
(The Literary Digest, 1924)

The majority of women being natural-born housekeepers, why shouldn’t the infinite details of a Governor’s office appeal to the female of the species?

This deep thought was put to the public by the inquisitive souls at The Birmingham News just four years after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote.

The attached article concerns the 1924 elections which saw many American women swept into high political offices all across the fruited plain; it lists all significant offices that would soon be held by women and clearly indicates that the year 1924 ushered in a new era in American political history.

Click here to read further about women in national politics.

In 1933 FDR named one of these women to serve as Director of the U.S. Mint…

Fortune
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1938)

Fortune is the world’s outstanding exponent of plush journalism. Its editors, long accustomed to prodigal expenditures, proudly talk of doing things ‘in the Fortune manner’. The Fortune manner may mean spending $12,000 on research for a single story. It means commissioning oil paintings of industrial tycoons for the sole purpose of reproduction in Fortune. It mean de luxe color gravure and high-priced writers…