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The House of Lucile
(Hearst’s Sunday American, 1917)

Fashion and Hollywood costume designer Howard Greerstyle=border:none
wrote of Lady Duff Gordonstyle=border:none
(born Lucy Sutherland, 1863 – 1935):

…she was the first to introduce the French word chic into the English language, particularly in relation to fashion. She was the first dressmaker to employ mannequin parades (ie. models) in the showing of clothes…She was responsible for many fads and her clothes made many people famous. She was the most expensive dressmaker of her time, and the most aloof.


Lucile was one of the few souls to survive the TITANIC sinking; click here to read her account of that sad night.

•Read about the 1943 crochet revival•

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‘Fascism in America”
(Literary Digest, 1937)

With the opening of Camp Nordland (Dorkland?) in Andover, New Jersey, the two streams of American fascism saw fit to convene there and join hands. The Italian side was lead by the American Duce Salvatore Caridi and Yankee Fuhrer Fritz Kuhn stood at the head of the American Bundists.

Amidst much heiling, drinking of imported beer and assorted flag-waving, was celebrated the cementing of the twenty-first link in a chain of camps which has been gradually growing. By car they came and by train, until the countryside was increased by ten thousand inhabitants.

Who Was Mussolini?
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

A semi-flattering profile of Benito Mussolini that explains his difficult childhood and the periodic beatings he suffered at the hands of his Marxist father. No references are made to his favorite pastimes – beating up editors and closing newspapers:

Significantly, his god is Nietzsche, the German philosopher who wrote: ‘Might makes right.’


You can read about his violent death here…


Fascist Rome fell to the Allies in June of 1944, click here to read about it…

For Want of Assimilation
(Reader’s Digest, 1923)

If Facebook existed in 1923, their über censor meisters would see to it that the uncharitable opinions of U.S. Representative French Strother (1868 – 1930) would never appear upon their fair pages. Strother’s thoughts on the failure of the immigration system were shared by many of his countrymen and in this column he lists many examples illustrating the collapse of America’s ability to assimilate the new-comers:

In fairness to the aliens, be it said that some of them have brought rich gifts to our civilization. But what shall profit a nation if it gain the whole world, and lose it’s own soul?

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The Klansman on the Supreme Court
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

When the U.S. Supreme Court gave their decision concerning the 1940 appeal of a lower court’s verdict to convict three African-Americans for murder, civil libertarians in Washington held their collective breath wondering how Justice Hugo Black approached the case. Black, confirmed in 1937 as FDR’s first court appointee, admitted to having once been made a ‘life member’ of the Ku Klux Klan. This column was one of any number of other articles from that era that reported on the Alabaman’s explanation behind his Klan associations:

I did join the Klan… I later resigned. I never rejoined.

The Hobo News
(Collier’s Magazine, 1945)

The Hobo News printed poems, cartoons, pin-ups, essays and news items that were useful to that unique class of men who rode the rails and frequent flop-houses. It was established in New York City by Pat The Roaming Dreamer Mulkern (1903 – 1948); the paper was run by hobos, for hobos and printed proudly across the awnings of their assorted offices were the words a little cheer to match the sorrow. Mulkern recognized that no self-respecting litigator would ever stoop to sue a newspaper with such a pathetic name, and so the paper was voluntarily in constant violation of U.S. copyright law by habitually printing the articles they most admired that had earlier appeared in Collier’s, The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post.

A Walk Through Five W.W. I American Battlefields
(The Independent, 1919)

Attached are some of moving observations penned by the Editor of The Independent, Hamilton Holt (1871 – 1951) when he toured Seicheprey, Cantigny, Chateau Thierry, St Mihiel and the Argonne battle fields — which were the five battlefields where General Pershing chose to launch operations in the European war against Imperial Germany. There is one winsome photograph of the Aisne-Marne Cemetery as it appeared shortly after the conflict.


Within a year Holt would change his mind about the war as well as the treaty signed at Versailles.

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Anticipating the War with Japan
(The Saturday Review, 1925)

The Great Pacific Warstyle=border:none
was one of the truly remarkable books to hit the shops in 1925; the problem was that this would not be recognized until at least 1944. Unlike the unfortunate writers charged with the task of reviewing the novel, the author, Hector C. Bywater (1884 – 1940), was something of a clairvoyant, and was able to spell out how the war between Japan and the United States would unfold; the contested islands and the American victory. He wrote that the war would commence with a Japanese surprise assault, he recognized the importance that naval aviation would play and he predicted the Kamikaze attacks. Some elements of the war he did not predict, such as Hiroshima, but in 1945, after the smoke had cleared and the bodies were buried, many were amazed to pick the book up and read how much he got right.

Anticipating the War with Japan
(The Saturday Review, 1925)

The Great Pacific Warstyle=border:none
was one of the truly remarkable books to hit the shops in 1925; the problem was that this would not be recognized until at least 1944. Unlike the unfortunate writers charged with the task of reviewing the novel, the author, Hector C. Bywater (1884 – 1940), was something of a clairvoyant, and was able to spell out how the war between Japan and the United States would unfold; the contested islands and the American victory. He wrote that the war would commence with a Japanese surprise assault, he recognized the importance that naval aviation would play and he predicted the Kamikaze attacks. Some elements of the war he did not predict, such as Hiroshima, but in 1945, after the smoke had cleared and the bodies were buried, many were amazed to pick the book up and read how much he got right.

Anticipating the War with Japan
(The Saturday Review, 1925)

The Great Pacific Warstyle=border:none
was one of the truly remarkable books to hit the shops in 1925; the problem was that this would not be recognized until at least 1944. Unlike the unfortunate writers charged with the task of reviewing the novel, the author, Hector C. Bywater (1884 – 1940), was something of a clairvoyant, and was able to spell out how the war between Japan and the United States would unfold; the contested islands and the American victory. He wrote that the war would commence with a Japanese surprise assault, he recognized the importance that naval aviation would play and he predicted the Kamikaze attacks. Some elements of the war he did not predict, such as Hiroshima, but in 1945, after the smoke had cleared and the bodies were buried, many were amazed to pick the book up and read how much he got right.

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Anticipating the War with Japan
(The Saturday Review, 1925)

The Great Pacific Warstyle=border:none
was one of the truly remarkable books to hit the shops in 1925; the problem was that this would not be recognized until at least 1944. Unlike the unfortunate writers charged with the task of reviewing the novel, the author, Hector C. Bywater (1884 – 1940), was something of a clairvoyant, and was able to spell out how the war between Japan and the United States would unfold; the contested islands and the American victory. He wrote that the war would commence with a Japanese surprise assault, he recognized the importance that naval aviation would play and he predicted the Kamikaze attacks. Some elements of the war he did not predict, such as Hiroshima, but in 1945, after the smoke had cleared and the bodies were buried, many were amazed to pick the book up and read how much he got right.

Anticipating the War with Japan
(The Saturday Review, 1925)

The Great Pacific Warstyle=border:none
was one of the truly remarkable books to hit the shops in 1925; the problem was that this would not be recognized until at least 1944. Unlike the unfortunate writers charged with the task of reviewing the novel, the author, Hector C. Bywater (1884 – 1940), was something of a clairvoyant, and was able to spell out how the war between Japan and the United States would unfold; the contested islands and the American victory. He wrote that the war would commence with a Japanese surprise assault, he recognized the importance that naval aviation would play and he predicted the Kamikaze attacks. Some elements of the war he did not predict, such as Hiroshima, but in 1945, after the smoke had cleared and the bodies were buried, many were amazed to pick the book up and read how much he got right.

Baseball as Metaphor for War
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

In one of the first issues of the Stars & Stripes, it was decided to mark the historic occasion of the American arrival on the World War One front line with the always reliable baseball comparison. Printed beneath a headline that clearly implied that the war itself was actually the World Series sat one of the worst poems to ever appear on the front page of any newspaper:

The Boches claim the Umpire is a sidin’ with their nine,

But we are not the boobs to fall for such a phony line;

We know the game is fair and square, decision on the level;

The only boost the Kaiser gets is from his pal the Devil…

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The Loud Noises of N.Y.
(Literary Digest, 1929)

The unsettling noises of New York City are as well-known to the New Yorkers of today as they were to the New Yorkers of yore:

Soldiers get war shell-shock; New Yorkers get peace shell-shock, a condition of nerves less obvious, but more insidious. It makes the New Yorker smoke more cigarettes than any one else in the world…it keeps the speakeasies open, it builds skyscrapers and eggs him on to splendid achievement, or shatters his morale…

The Dummy Horse Observation Post
(Popular Mechanics, 1918)

History’s ancient example of camouflage, the Trojan horse, has a modern twist in this illustrated article. The journalist reported that at some undated point earlier in the war the French had a chance to set a mock horse-carcass between the opposing trenches and use it as an observation post.

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