Debating Immigration (Time Magazine, 1923)An occasion was provided to debate the pros and cons of American immigration policy at the National Immigration Conference that convened in New York City during December of 1923:
"Most of the speakers advocated restriction and selection, but as to the degree and variety of each there was no consensus of opinion. Especially, there were two different methods of attacking the problem - from the industrial standpoint, and from the standpoint of the welfare of the race and of citizenship." W.E.B. DuBois on Black Labor (Reader's Digest, 1923) Woodrow Wilson on the Russian Revolution and the Red Scare (Atlantic Monthly, 1923)Attached is an essay by Woodrow Wilson (1856 1924) in which the former president implored his fellow citizens to see that the world has indeed been made safe for democracy and that better days are ahead, regardless of the events in Russia and their own fears of communism at home. Their Nascent Justice System (Reader's Digest, 1923)A lawyer writing from the Soviet Union in 1923 lays out for his foreign readers what a sausage factory the Bolshevik courts were:
"Then the blood began to flow like a river. People were condemned to death every day. People were shot for all kinds of offenses. A woman was sentenced to death for selling a food card. Vikstein was shot because, in the opinion of the prosecutor, he had intended to bribe him. First Trans-Continental Flight (Time Magazine, 1923) Young Picasso (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)"Upon his first arrival in Paris, Picasso met with success. It was '99... At that time he had a face of ivory, and was as beautiful as a Greek boy; irony, thought and effort have brought slight lines to the waxen countenance of this little Napoleonic man... At that time, Picasso was living the life of the provincial in Paris... He had won fame there by his portraits of actresses in the public eye. Jeanne Bloch, Otero - all the stars of the Exposition. Those paintings are priceless today; the intelligent museums have bought them." Praying for the Return of the Hapsburgs (Time Magazine, 1923)"Hungary is reported to be on the brink of revolution...[Since the war's end] The Government has never been popular with the majority of the people; it was only accepted by them as a temporary measure, pending the advent of King Otto - the late King Charles' young son - to the throne of Hungary." The Damage to The Occupied Areas of France, (Time Magazine, 1923)Here is a column that appeared in the October 15, 1923 issue of Time that reported on the amount of devastation that was inflicted upon the German-occupied areas of Northern France between 1914 through 1918.
More on this topic can be read here
The KKK Popularity in Indiana (Atlantic Monthly, 1923)"Don't ya know that ever' time a boy baby is born in a Cath'lic' fam'ly they take and bury enough am'nition fer him to kill fifty people with!" Such thinking "is part of the state of mind that accounts for the amazing growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the old Hoosier commonwealth; that enables Indiana to compete with Ohio for the distinction of having a larger Klan membership than any other state. It helped make possible the remarkable election results of last fall, when practically every candidate opposed by the Klan went down in defeat." Written by Lowell Mellett (1886 - ?), hardy journalist and son of Indiana. Millett is primarily remembered for his W.W. II days serving at the helm of the U.S. government's Office of War Information's Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP). Return To Chateau Thierry (The American Legion Weekly, 1923)In 1923, a seasoned war reporter returned to the battleground of Chateau Thierry and walk the old turf where so many had died. The Eight World War One American Cemeteries (Literary Digest, 1923)Written five years after the Armistice, this is an article about the eight U.S. W.W. I cemeteries that were erected in Europe (with the help of German P.O.W. labor) and the money that was set aside by the veterans of The American Legion to aid in the upkeep of these memorials: The American flag is still in Europe, even tho the last Doughboy has left the Rhine. It floats over eight cemeteries, six in France, one in Belgium and one in England...It is the high honor of the American Legion to represent the American people in the fulfillment of the sacred national obligation of decorating the graves of our soldiers abroad on Memorial Day. The Legion pledges itself always to remember and honor our dead on foreign soil on the day when the heart of all Americans is thrilling with reverence for them." The Anti-Saloon League Convenes (Time Magazine, 1923)During the summer of 1923, 40 state superintendents of the Anti-Saloon League convened in Westerville, Ohio in order that they might assess the changes wrought by Prohibition and draw-up plans for the coming year.
"On comparing notes, they agreed that the Atlantic states are not more than 50% dry and the country as a whole not more than 70% dry..." Marcel Proust (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)In this column, art critic Clive Bell (1881 - 1964) explained why neither Britain or America would have been capable of producing a writer like Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922).
Foreign Shipping (Time Magazine, 1923)In order to gain a secure footing on the issue of Prohibition law enforcement, a Federal law was passed seeing to it that no foreign ships within the three mile limit of the United States could ever keep alcohol or wine in their ship stores. In Defense Of Chemical Warfare (Reader's Digest, 1923)This article is very different from the others posted in the W.W. I Poison Gas Warfare section of this site. The column is a spirited argument advocating for chemical weapons, recalling the productive roll they played in the Great War. It was written by General Amos A. Fries (1873 - 1963) who had commanded the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare units during the First World War:
"Poison gas is the most effective weapon mankind has ever devised. Will any nation with its back to the wall, and fighting for its life, hesitate to use it?" William Jennings Bryan on Evolution (Reader's Digest, 1923)William Jennings Bryan (1860 1925) is best remembered today as the prosecuting attorney who advocated for creationism in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In this 1923 essay he picks away at Darwin's evolution theory using many of the arguments that he would (victoriously) deploy two years later. ''OOOPS - Sorry'' (Time Magazine, 1923)Try as they may, the silver-tongued diplomats who rebuked Germany so mercilessly at Versailles in 1919 never could get an apology out of the Kaiser, or Hindenburg or Ludendorff. They just had to sit tight and wait - because in 1923 Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber (1869 - 1952), [alas] speaking in an unofficial capacity as a German, apologized for the whole monkey show: Lusitania, Belgium, etc. Everything comes to those who wait. The Lincoln Memorial (NY Times, 1923) Quotas in 1923 Immigration (Time Magazine, 1923)"The gross quota allowance of immigration for the new year is the same as for the last, 357,803, of which 20% or 71,000 is the maximum which may arrive in any single month... Germany has sent only 43,000 immigrants, although her quota was 67,000."
New Rules of Warfare (Time Magazine, 1923)"The International Commission of Jurists of the World Court under the Presidency of Professor John Bassett Moore of Columbia University, New York, drew up at The Hague new 'rules of warfare'... Chief among the rules for aircraft in warfare are provisions against bombing private property not of a military character and against attacking non-combatants." Prohibition And Our Northern Neighbor (Time Magazine, 1923)When the architects of Prohibition were planning their dry fairyland they always knew that the weak spot in their scheme was going to be the vast borderlands that separate the United States from Canada and Mexico.
The attached article from 1923 outlines the concerns President Coolidge's administration had regarding Prohibition law enforcement along the Canadian frontier. Resident Aliens: Not Eligible for the 1917 Draft (American Legion Weekly, 1923)Here are a few lines from "The American Legion Weekly" that reported to their disappointed veteran readership that the foreign-born men residing legally in the United States who were previously accused of shirking the 1917 draft were, in fact, absolved from service and thus free to swear the oath of citizenship, after having been slandered as draft dodgers and alien-slackers until the finer points of the selective service law was clarified.
For Want of Assimilation (Reader's Digest, 1923)If Facebook existed in 1923, their όber 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?" Skirt Length: High or Low? (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)"The important question of the proper length of dress skirts is again racking the public press and putting a large part of our female population completely off their feed." Benito Mussolini And His Followers (American Legion Weekly, 1923)A 1923 article about the earliest days of Mussolini and the Italian Black Shirts; their discomfort with neighboring Yugoslavia, their love of the Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863 1938) and their post-war struggle against the Italian Communists: "When the Communists virtually ruled over Italy in 1920 and 1921, they set up a detestable tyranny. Railways could not carry troops. Officers were forbidden wear sidearms, and men with war medals were spat on and beaten."
Mussolini changed all that.
You can read about his violent death here...
Discovered: The Tomb of King Tutankhamun (Literary Digest, 1923)One of the first American magazine articles heralding the November 4, 1922 discovery of the ancient tomb of King Tutankhamen (1341 BC 1323 BC) by the British archaeologist Howard Carter (1874 1939); who was in this article, erroneously sited as an American: "What is thought may prove the greatest archeological discovery of all time has recently been made in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor. Two chambers of a tomb have been found filled with the funeral paraphernalia of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, and hopes are entertained that the third chamber, yet unopened, may contain the royal mummy itself." *Watch a Film Clip About 1922 Discovery of the Tomb of King Tutankhamen* April is the Cruelest Month (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)"With the double-breasted coat, the single-breasted waistcoat is the rule and to repeat the crossing of lines twice in one suit is an entirely unreasonable exaggeration." Critical Thinking from South of the Border (Literary Digest, 1923)"More harsh words for Uncle Sam are found in some Brazilian journals, such as the JOURNAL DO PAIZ, which observes: "Happenings like the Negro massacre at Chicago in 1919 are still fresh in our minds; nor must we forget that at the time mentioned many in this country advocated a boycott on all American goods to serve as a protest and a warning to the Unites States."
Click here if you would like to read about the American race riots of 1919. The Earliest Mid-Flight Refueling (Time Magazine, 1923)"A quartet of Army officers succeeded in passing a fresh supply of gasoline from one plane to another flying forty feet below at the same speed of 90 miles per hour." The Rise and Fall of Cubism (Vanity fair, 1923)Numerous deep thoughts on the subject of Cubism by a prominent art critic of the time, Clive Bell (1881 1964):
"But, though in two or three years' time Cubism may have disappeared, its influence should endure for a generation at least. The service it has rendered art is inestimable. Without it the liberating impulse given by Cezanne had been incomplete. Cezanne freed artistic sensibility from a hampering and outworn convention; Cubism imposed on it an intelligent and reasonable discipline. If a generation of free artists is now turning spontaneously towards the great tradition, it was through Cubism that it came at Ingres and Poussin." Flaming Youth (Time Magazine, 1923)Here is an entirely unsympathetic Time Magazine review of the 1922 film, Flaming Youth starring Colleen Moore and Milton Sills. The uncredited reviewer really wasn't buying any of it and was not at all impressed with the morality of Flappers. Today, Flaming Youth has deteriorated to just just a few feet of film and rests in the vaults of the Library of Congress; the reviewer probably would be pleased to know that. Free Enterprise And The Assimilation of Immigrants (Readers Digest, 1923)The testimony given in this column from the early Twenties is as true today as it was then. It was written by a 1905 immigrant who observed that the first word immigrants learn when arriving in America is "BUY". When presented at every corner with products they'd never seen before in tandem with the smiling and encouraging face of the sales staff, the immigrant can't help but feel an inner drive to join the American society:
"And when he succumbs, why wonder that he grows more aggressive, demanding higher wages and striking when the demand is denied?" American Illiteracy in 1920 (Time Magazine, 1923)"The census-takers of 1920 to the people of America:
"Can you read and write?"
Five million men and women of America responded:
"We cannot!" The Lynching of James Scott (Time Magazine, 1923)The 1923 lynching of James Thomas Scott was precipitated by a case of mistaken identity. Falsely accused of rape, the World War I veteran was dragged from jail by a mob and hanged from a bridge before 1,000 onlookers. The Time journalist wrote:
"What they did, some people call murder; others, lynching." Fashion Notes from London (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)Written in a prose style reminiscent of an owner's manual, these pages spell out the 1923 tailoring rules for men's formalwear:
"Essentially traditionalist in matter of men's clothes, London is never more
conservative than in dress clothes, and the changes from year to year are of the slightest... However, one still sees far more dinner jackets (ie. "tuxedos") in restaurants than of yore, when black tie and short coat were for the home circle and the club alone, but in society, whether for small dance, ball, dinner or theatre party, the white tie is the rule." The French Army Moves into the Ruhr Valley (Literary Digest, 1923)When Germany's post-war government failed to remit a portion of the 33 billion dollars it owed under it's obligations agreed to in the Versailles Treaty, France lost little time deploying her army into the coal rich regions of the Ruhr Valley. This article, illustrated with cartoons and maps, offers a collection of assorted observations and editorial opinions gathered from from across Europe concerning the event:
"Premiere Poincare remarked, 'the French troops will remain in the Ruhr as long as may be necessary to assure the payment of reparations, but not a single day longer.'"
1923 Germany (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)Maximilian Harden (1861 1927) was a major-league journalist and editor in Germany at the time of the First World War. Between 1914-18 he was all-in for a German victory. After the defeat he believed in the democracy that came with the Weimar Republic - but he hated the economic state that his country was forced to endure - and that is what he addresses in this column.
"An old married couple, or a widow, who in 1914 were assured of an untroubled existence on an income 6,000 marks a year, cannot buy with that amount today a pair of shoes, or any new sheets, and can get nine or ten pounds of butter at the most...If anyone has looked upon all this destitution, which is borne by many in silence and true dignity, if anyone has seen this decay of a whole nation, which is like the crumbling of some venerable cathedral, and if in spite of this he puts it all down as camouflage, then that person has a heart of stone in his breast." The Lure of College Atheism...(The Literary Digest, 1923)"'They enter college as Christians and graduate as atheists or agnostics', say some whose sons and daughters come home with a sheepskin showing proficiency in the arts and sciences and little, or none at all, in religion. The college is repeatedly blamed for this vital lack, and is not infrequently defended of the charge of failing to establish a religious background for the student."
Out of the Mouths of Babes: Girl Evangelists in the Flapper Era
The Great Fokker (Time Magazine, 1923) The Confederate Error on the First Day at Gettysburg (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. Anna Katherine Green (Time Magazine, 1923) The Treasury Department Steps Up (Time Magazine, 1923)As 1923 was winding to a close, President Coolidge's Treasury agents were targeted to receive over $28,000,000.00 in equipment and personnel to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment. The Resistance (Time Magazine, 1923)The opposite number of the Anti-Saloon League (established 1893) was The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (1918 - 1933). As the name implied, it was organized for the purpose of repealing Prohibition in the United States and sought to achieve this end by printing pamphlets and articles and engaging lecturers. This short notice announced that the Association was setting up the Face the Facts conference in the Nation's Capital - to be convened immediately after the League had closed their own conference. Many elected officials would be in attendance.
- from Amazon:
The Anti-prohibition Manual: A Summary of Facts and Figures Dealing With Prohibition
Rupert Hughes (Time Magazine, 1923)Although the attached column is a book review covering the 1923 novel by Rupert Hughes (1872 - 1952), Within These Walls, we have posted it in this category due to the fact that in our age, more people see his movies than read his books. In fact, the bulk of the review refers to his Hollywood efforts (he had over 65 credits before retiring) rather than his novels (thirty titles):
"Few authors have been successful at the business of creating motion pictures...Rupert Hughes, however, has proved to be exceedingly able in the Hollywood studios. He not only writes his own scenarios, but he directs his pictures." Chinese Migration and Law (Time Magazine, 1923) Observations Concerning Comic Strips (Vanity Fair, 1923)"From a study that covers practically all the comic sequences, I have roughly estimated that sixty percent deal with the unhappiness of married life, fifteen percent with other problems of the home, such as disagreeable children, and in the other fifteen is grouped a miscellany of tragic subjects - mental or social inferiority, misfortune and poverty. This last group contains a few subjects that carry no definite plan from day-to-day but are based on transient jokes such a Prohibition and the income tax." A Woman of Paris (Time Magazine, 1923)The Time Magazine review of Charlie Chaplin's film, A Woman of Paris, fell in line with many other reviews of the work: they all believed that Chaplin, as director, had moved the ball forward insofar as the development of film - and Time hoped that they had seen the end of Chaplin the clown. However, the 82 minute film was a commercial flop, primarily because he wasn't in it (they chose not to publicize that he played an extra's roll for one quick scene).
The first film Chaplin had directed was The Kid (1922) - and you can read about that here... Trying to Demilitarize the Ruhr Valley (Time Magazine, 1923)It was easy for the French and Belgians to send their Armies into Germany's Ruhr Valley in February of 1923 - not so easy getting them out. Attached are two news articles that reported on the assorted European officials who were applying all their brainpower to the problem. 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.
George Bernard Shaw Gushes About The Power Of The State Colonel House: His Right Hand Man (Time Magazine, 1923)What Harry Hopkins was to FDR, Edward Mandell House (1858 1938) was to Woodrow Wilson (1856 1924) - senior advisor and close confidant. When this article was on the newsstands Wilson had been out of the White House for three years, yet House was still seen as a shrewd observer of the political landscape. In this piece from Time Magazine, we gat to read about some of his doings during the Post-W.W. I era.
The Soviet Press on Famine Conditions (Literary Digest, 1923)"Indignant accusations of trickery in dealing with the grain supply, which have been launched against the Russian Soviet Government by American and European editors, who were amazed to find that Russia was exporting grain in the midst of a new famine, are not particularly noticed by the Moscow press, which however, in such journals as the Moscow 'Isvicstia' and the 'Economcheskaia Gizn' feature reports of starvation in the Volga provinces." Although there is no mention of the Soviet famine in this 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky, it is interesting nonetheless; to read it for free, you may click here. Wilson on the League (Time Magazine, 1923) Legal Equality with Men (Time Magazine, 1923)Established in 1913, The National Womans Party worked tirelessly to secure the vote for American women - which was attained in 1920 with the Nineteenth Amendment. Flush with this victory, the organization pushed for an additional Constitutional amendment, one that would guarantee the equality of the sexes in the eyes of the law:
"Having received the assurance of Senator Curtis of Kansas, Republican Whip, that he would present their amendment in the next Congress, a delegation of 200 women went to call on [President Coolidge]." Letters from the Dying (The Atlantic Monthly, 1923)Printed five years after the war, an American nurse published these letters that were dictated to her in France by a handful of dying American soldiers; equally moving were the grateful responses she received months later from their recipients: "I am glad and thank God he had such a quiet, peaceful death. It is a very hard thing for a mother to realize she cannot be with [her son] in his last moments...I am proud to give up my only boy to his country, and that alone is a great consolation." This is just a segment from a longer article; to read the six page memoir in it's entirety, click here. Click here for clip art depicting the nurses of World War One. The Hungarians Yearned for the Hapsburgs (Time Magazine, 1923)"Hungary is reported to be on the brink of revolution...[Since the war's end] The Government has never been popular with the majority of the people; it was only accepted by them as a temporary measure, pending the advent of King Otto - the late King Charles' young son - to the throne of Hungary." Fascism At It's Peak (Time Magazine, 1923)"A dictatorship can last forever, if properly managed. It is my task to provide a mechanism that will endure and to have the various parts of this mechanism running without friction; then after I am gone it will be able to run itself. A dictatorship must answer the purpose for which it was introduced. Certainly the Fascist regime will last a very long time... Socialism works on the principle that all are equal, but Fascism knows we are far from equal. Take the great masses of human beings. They like rule by the few." Onslaught (The State Journal, 1923)A report that anticipated a hefty load of European immigrants for 1923 (but no where near the 2021 - 23 scale). The Military Police in France (American Legion Weekly, 1923)A genuinely funny reminiscence written by an anonymous Doughboy recalling his days as an M.P. in war-torn France during the First World War:
"Now that it is all over I wonder what did I gain from my experiences as an M.P. in the great Army of Newton Baker's Best?...Watching the dawn coming rosily up over snow-clad barracks roofs and rows of tents; informing careless privates, sergeants, lieutenants and even majors to 'button that there button'; listening to the dull bang-slamming of artillery barrages on crossroads; jotting down the names of high-spirited young men found in cafιs at the wrong hours -such things aren't of much lasting value."
Click here to read an article about the sexually-transmitted diseases among the American Army of W.W. I - and the M.P.s in particular...
Miscegenation (Time Magazine, 1923)The Crackers of old hated miscegenation (i.e.race-mixing). Sadly, they seemed to have removed the concept of love from the equation - and happily this article reminds us that not everyone felt the same way in 1923. The attached column concerns U.S. Senator Arthur Capper (1865 1951) and all the hot water he got into when he sponsored a bill that would have, among other things, criminalized race-mixing. Draft-Dodgers and Deserters in Federal Prison (American Legion Weekly, 1923)"Only eight men are serving sentences as draft deserters in Federal penitentiaries, Mr. Taylor declares. 'Yet, the number of men defying our country in its hour of need, was many times the number who deserted the Army after the Armistice.' Thirty-nine men, he states, are still serving time for desertion from the Army, and the draft deserters are serving shorter average sentences than are the soldiers who took unauthorized leave of the service after the Armistice." The ''Popularity'' of Prohibition (Reader's Digest, 1923) It is said that the Eighteenth Amendment would never have come into being without the efforts of one Wayne Bidwel Wheeler (1869 1927), and who are we to doubt it. In this column, the father of Prohibition recalls the numerous times throughout American history in which those who held minority opinions bit the bullet and acquiesced to will of the majority - all but one faction, "the liquor interests". Time and again, he points out, this was the one tribe that wouldn't budge. Prohibition and the High Seas (Time Magazine, 1923)"The Supreme Court ruled, by [a] vote of 7 to 2, that liquor is legal on U.S. ships outside the three-mile limit... The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act apply only to actual United States territory." Fears of German Treaty Violations (Punch, 1922 and Time, 1923)These articles makes it clear that Clemanceau and Churchill were not the only ones who feared German duplicty in regards to the rearmament clause. Written a year apart are these two columns from Time and Punch insisting that the German Reichswehr had numerous weapons that were banned under the Versailles Treaty:
"My attention had often been called to persistent rumors regarding Germany's secret army. Whispers had reached me from quite reliable sources of over a million Teuton soldiers, well-officered and disciplined..."
Click here if you would like to read about the 1936 Versailles Treaty violations.
The Pajama Ascendency (Literary Digest, 1923)"The pajama is ascending to glorified heights. Long the black sheep of polite private life, this garment has been elevated to the four hundred...Men are drugging their senses with batik designs in sleeping apparel and inhaling the stimulation of contrasting shades in underclothes."
"What the well-dressed man will wear when going to bed is one of the burning topics of the immediate future...By and large, the thirst for color permeates the accessory field from linen to lingerie. The picture might be said to be complete. Man has achieved his zenith."
Read about a pajama fashion innovation that never quite caught on... Rudyard Kipling (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)Literary critic Philip Guedallia (1889 1944) reluctantly concluded that the contributions of Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) to the world of letters were genuine - and, no matter what you think of him, his writing will be around for a good while.
"He sharpened the English language to a knife-edge, and with it he has cut brilliant patterns on the surface of our prose literature."
Hitler: Ten Years Before his Rise (Literary Digest, 1923)This article was written shortly after the French occupation of the Ruhr and at a time when Adolf Hitler did not have much of a following -he was something of a curiosity to the Western press:
"A principal reason why Hitler's followers have begun to doubt him, it appears, is that the 'dreaded gathering' of the National Socialists in Munich came and went without 'accomplishment.'"
Read about the earliest post-war sightings of Hitler: 1945-1955
Remembering the American Dead (The Atlantic Monthly, 1923)Always stationed to the most forward field hospitals during America's five major campaigns, a former W.W. I nurse penned this moving reminiscence that recalled her experiences tending to the soldiers who slowly died in the army hospitals. Haunted by the memories of these dying boys, she asked her readers as to whether they feel the world has kept the promises made to those who sacrificed so much: is the France they died to protect a better place? is the country that demanded they fight a better place?
Click here for clip art depicting the nurses of World War One.
Expressionism as Theory (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)Ernest Boyd (1887 1946), all-around swell guy and significant literary figure in 1920s New York, took a hard look at German Expressionism and its wide influence on other Teutonic arts in the early Twenties. He paid particular attention to the German critic Hermann Bahr (1863 - 1934), who coined the term, Expressionism, and had much to say about the movement. The German Atrocities that Never Were (The Nation, 1923)The post war period was the time when the press had to start figuring out what was true and what was false in all matters involving the reports that their assorted papers and magazines had printed during the conflict. Admiral Sims of the U.S. Navy caused a stir when he went on record announcing that a particularly odious policy observed by the Germans, widely believed to have been true, was in fact, a falsehood: "I stated...that barring the case of the hospital ship "Llandovery Castle" I did not know of any case where a German submarine commander had fired upon the boats of a torpedoed vessel..." Sun Yat-sen is Returned to Power (Literary Digest, 1923)A magazine article about a political leader who is considered the founder of modern China: Sun Yat-sen (1866 1925):
"The return of Sun Yat-sen to power in South China is much more than a mere personal triumph, who are assured by his adherents, who say that it is 'a sign of the times which merits the thoughtful consideration of the Great Powers in their roles of guardians of the Far East." The Emaciated Germans (Time Magazines, 1923)Fresh from his trip through post-war Europe, U.S. Senator Robert La Follette (1855 - 1925) declared:
"The Germans have been underfed for seven years. They are suffering for want of food, fuel and clothing. Young children and old people are dying from hunger and disease induced by hunger. Emaciated, despairing, they are waiting the end."
Click here to read about the American invalids of W.W. I.
The Literature of Disillusion (Atlantic Monthly, 1923)A few years after the Great War reached it's bloody conclusion, literary critic Helen McAfee discovered that a careful reading of the prominent authors and poets writing between 1918 and 1923 revealed that each of them shared a newfound sense of malaise - a despairing, pessimistic voice that was not found in their pre-war predecessors.
"Certainly the most striking dramatization of this depth of confusion and bitterness is Mr. Eliot's The Waste Land. As if by flashes of lightening it reveals the wreck of the storm... The poem is written in the Expressionist manner - a manner peculiarly adapted to the present temper... It is mood more than idea that gives the poem its unity. And the mood is black. It is bitter as gall; not only with a personal bitterness, but also with the bitterness of a man facing a world devastated by a war for a peace without ideals."
If you would like to read another 1920s article about the disillusioned post-war spirit, click here.
Lofty Words Printed on Behalf of the Klan (The Literary Digest, 1923)A collection of remarks made by Klansmen in their own defense as well as a smattering of similar statements made by newspaper editors and various other high-profiled swells of the day:
"This editor has repeatedly affirmed privately and publicly that he is not a member of the Ku Klux or any other secret organization. But when it comes to secret societies, he sees no difference absolutely between the Ku Klux and many others, the Knights of Columbus, for instance..."
Click here to learn about the origins of the term "Jim Crow".
The Spirit of Disobedience (Reader's Digest, 1923)During the Jazz Age, there were a number of opinion pieces published concerning the general feeling of malaise and disillusionment that was experienced throughout most of the Western nations. In this article, written by a well known Protestant theologian of the time, it is stated that a new day has come to America - one that shows itself with a blatant disrespect for law and order.
"Our most obvious lawlessness is the breaking of the prohibition laws... The shame of the present situation is that the law is not being chiefly outraged by poor people; it is mainly the men of means, prestige and influence, who ought to know better. Obviously there has been a breakdown of authority in the state and the rise of a rampant and selfish individualism." A French Response to the Kaiser Memoir (Time Magazine, 1923)Kaiser Wilhelm's recollections of his part in the First World War (reviewed above) was released in the Winter of 1922. Former French president Rene Viviani (1863 - 1925; leadership, 13 June 1914 29 October 1915) quickly responded with his own book that appeared the following spring - it was titled As We See It:
"M. Viviani's book is a direct answer to that puerile and invidious work known as the ex-Kaiser's War Memoirs. It is impossible to escape from the logic of Viviani's scathing denunciation of the ex-Kaiser's tacit inculpation in the events which preceded the world-wide cataclysm." ''Should the Color Line Go?'' (Reader's Digest, 1923)Robert Watson Winston (1860 - 1944) was, in every sense, a man of his age. A Democratic politician from the state of North Carolina, he penned this highly prejudiced article about segregation (he liked it). He packed his column with all sorts of fifty cent words like "miscegenation", "quadroons" and "octoroon". He was yet one more white Southerner who feared "race blending" and the sharing of political power with African-Americans. He was delighted that so many of them were headed to the more industrialized states in the North.
Norma Talmadge was Different (Photoplay Magazine, 1923)As delighted as this Photoplay Magazine journalist was to make the acquaintance of 1920s film star Norma Talmadge (1894 1957), she could not help but compare her to the reigning film diva of the period, Mary Pickford:
"Mary awakens your love."
"Norma awakens your admiration."
"Mary makes you long to be of service to her."
"Norma makes you long to have her friendship."
"Mary Pickford is a sort of divine child, who always seems far away from you, glowing in a soft light..."
"Norma Talmadge is an intelligent, brilliant woman of the world, with every faculty keyed to the highest pitch..."
The interview was conducted by the versatile Adela Rogers St. Johns (1894 1988): a veteran journalist from Hollywood's earliest days, she also made her mark writing screenplays, novels and toiled in the precincts as one of the first woman police reporters. Tristan Tzara on the New Expressionists (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1923)Artist Tristan Tzara (1896 - 1963) reported from Berlin for the editors at Vanity Fair on what's new in German art. With tremendous enthusiasm he explained everything that was going on throughout all the German studios - he did not hold back - every name brand is included: Schwitters, Klee, Kandinsky, Lehmbruck, Gropius and the Bauhaus. The German Rebellion Against the Treaty (Literary Digest, 1923)This 1923 German editorial by Professor Rudolf Euken (coincidentally published in THE EUKEN REVIEW) was accompanied by an anti-Versailles Treaty cartoon which attempted to rally the German working classes to join together in rebellion against the treaty.
"The so-called Peace of Versailles subjects the German people to unheard-of treatment; has injured and crippled Germany; has, with refined cruelty, deprived her of fertile territories; robbed her of sources indispensable to her existence; has heaped upon her huge burdens, and this for an indenite time - the intention being, if possible, to reduce her people to serfdom."
Click here to read another one of Rudolf Euken's post-war efforts.
Click here if you would like to read about the 1936 Versailles Treaty violations. Upper-Class Bootleggers Arrested (Literary Digest, 1923)When the four brothers La Montagne were arrested for violating the Volstead Act in 1922, the social butterflies of New York society were shocked; not simply because some of their own had been roughed-up by the police, but shocked because they had no idea as to where they were to acquire their illegal hooch in the future. "The plea for leniency made by several well-known lawyers, on the grounds of social prominence of the accused, was 'pitiable and foolish', in the opinion of the New York Globe. "In summing up his case...the United States District Attorney said": "'To allow these defendants to escape with a fine, it seems to me, would...justify the belief that men of great wealth or influence or power are above the law.'" | 
