The training of dogs for war purposes began in a limited way a number of years prior to the outbreak of the European war, the Germans being particularly interested in it. There were some trained war dogs in both the French and Belgian armies, but the British had none to speak of, nor did the United States. The dog began his general usefulness in the late war as a beast of burden.
Invasion, however, will not begin until the Nazis have been virtually knocked out of the sky. The target of the moment, therefore, is the German air force. …From 500 airdromes scattered throughout Britain, Allied planes fly night and day – frequently every hour of the 24 – some in fleets of a thousand or more to battle the Luftwaffe…Air war as such is almost over in Europe; the Allied infantryman is preparing now to march across a continent, battling along a ‘road’ already cut wide and long by bombers and fighters four miles upward.
Who won the war? asks the satirist Herb Roth (1887 – 1953) in this cartoon that appeared in print ten years after America’s entry into the war.
By the time 1927 rolled around, the popular opinion across the Western world was that the war of 1914 – 1918, and the subsequent peace treaty that followed, was a big mistake that left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Although there was paper work indicating that World War One was victoriously brought to a close by the collective strength of the French, British, and American armies (among other nations) – by the time 1927 rolled around it didn’t feel like anyone’s victory.
Click here if you would like to read about the 1918 Armistice Day celebrations in Paris.
Click here to read about W.W. I art.
The attached column is a 1945 magazine profile of Clement Attlee (1883 – 1967: U.K. Prime Minister: 1945 – 1951) it appeared just a few weeks following the long over-do wrap-up of the Second World War and the hasty ouster of Conservative Party Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965).
You might also want to read an article about Soviet Foreign Minister Andre Gromyko.
When Joe Martin received a shrapnel wound to the head it affected that region of his brain that processes language. He spent a good deal of time in military hospitals trying to regain his lost ability to communicate, as he articulated clearly in the attached article:
He then held up a pencil in front of me and asked, ‘Joe, what is this?’
I heard myself reply, ‘A paddle’.
This is a well-illustrated article in which the fashion journalist recalled a dinner party where the men in attendance were knowledgeable on which forks to use but cared little about the proper etiquette 
Unknown to the majority of women in this country, a steadily mounting feminist campaign is under way for Equal Rights for women under the Constitution. The average man will regard this statement with bewilderment.
Attached is a news report from a 1917 issue of THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN announcing:
Czar Nicholas decided to abdicate the Russian throne only after he had been held up by soldiers and the necessity for such action impressed upon him, according to a dispatch printed in DIE FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG…
Also included in the report were the text of a speech delivered by the Czar which called for national unity.
Those darn misogynists in Washington fell asleep at the switch again when they appointed a woman to fill the number two spot at the Department of Defense. The woman in question was Anna Rosenberg (1902 – 1983), an experienced and well-respected hand in the Nation’s Capital who served in that post between 1950 and 1953. During the middle of the war she paid a visit to the American military installations in Korea and wrote warmly about all that she had seen.
When the Korean War began during the summer of 1950 many Americans were wondering aloud Is this the beginning of W.W. III? One year later they were relieved to find that it was not a world war, but the butcher’s bill stood at 70,000 U.S. casualties and still there was no end in sight. This article examines these first 365 days of combat, taking into account all losses and gains.
The tremendous advances in artillery that took place during the years leading up to the war helped to reintroduce an old, time-tested element to the uniforms of the 20th Century soldier: the helmet.
So numerous were head injuries from high-explosive shells during the first year of the war that it compelled the doctors on both sides to beg their respective generals to issue some measure of cranium protection in order to reduce the casualty figures. As you will read in the attached article, the French began to wear helmets in the fall of 1915; the British and Germans a year later.
The Cleveland Orchestra, on February 5 [1935], with Arthur Rodzinski conducting, will introduce to New York ‘Lady Macbeth of Mzensk’, an opera by twenty-eight year-old Soviet composer, Dmitri Shostakovich.
Shostakovich completed the work in December, 1932. It is the first of a projected cycle of four operas in which the composer plans to trace the condition of women in Russia…
Jacob Epstein was brought up in the city of New York, being one of a group of young men from the other side of the Bowery, some of whom have since become well known in the arts.
Attached is a photograph of the American expatriot sculptor Jacob Epstein and three of his pieces. This is a short notice heralding the great splash that the artist was making in the London art world of 1915. Although his work can be found in many of the world’s finest museums, Epstein is best remembered today for his creation of the monumental sculpture that marks the grave of Oscar Wilde.
From the Great Minds Think Alike Department came this small piece about two American sportswear designers, Claire McCardell and Vera Maxwell and their admirable approach in creating a light weather coat that served to both keep women warm in springtime gales, yet accommodate the full, billowing skirts that complemented their feminine forms (as well as the hip padding that accompanied many skirts of the Fifties).
After trouncing Adlai Stevenson in the November Election, President-Elect Eisenhower made good on the vow he had made earlier and packed his bag for a fact-finding trip to the stagnant front lines on the Korean Peninsula.
No abrupt change in Korea is likely to follow Ike’s visit. He doesn’t plan to negotiate with the Reds there. He is interested in training, equipping and preparing South Koreans to defend themselves… The South Korean’s morale is good. About 400,000 of them are mobilized.
Culture critic H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956; author of The American Language reviewed American English
The fact is, of course, that American English is noticeably superior to British English in several important respects, and that not the least of these superiorities lies in the learned department of spelling. Here even the more intelligent Englishmen are against their own rules, and in favor of the American rules, and every year one notices a greater tendency among them to spell wagon with one g instead of two…The English -our ending, the main hallmark of English spelling, dies harder.
Published in a Hollywood fan magazine some months prior to her engagement with Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004) was this 1951 profile of the actress Nancy Davis (born Anne Frances Robbins: 1921 – 2016). A gossipy yet informative article that covers her days at Smith College, her relationship with capitol H Hollywood stars Alla Nazimova and Walter Houston, the eight films in which she had acted in up to that time and the various assorted reactions she instilled in such directors as William Wellman and Dore Schary.
No one is certain how football came to America. There are those who say it has always been here in the guise of an Indian game like lacrosse; its resemblance to English Rugby is apparent. But the game we know today is uniquely American, its place on the American scene secures. From September until long after the snow falls, Saturday afternoon means the Big Game to millions; and to millions the names of Heffelfinger, Grange, Harmon, Kazmaier and other gridiron greats will never lose their luster. This year [1953], more than 15,000,000 Americans – old grads, subway alumni and just plain football fans – will turn out to see their favorites do battle in a game that bears little resemblance to the scrambling, uncoordinated melees of 50 years ago. This is the story of how football grew up, of its heroes, and of the great games of yesteryear.
