The combining of machine gun and motorcycle was an entirely Canadian concept that made an appearance early in the war. It is highly likely that the vehicles never got their baptism of fire:
an interesting adaptation of the motorcycle to military uses has been made by employing it as a light artillery vehicle…the accompanying photograph shows a machine gun mounted on a sidecar chassis.
Here is an article on the last American concert tour of Polish pianist (and composer, diplomat and politician) Ignaz Jan Paderewski (1860 – 1941). The article concentrates on the amount of money pulled-in by the performer, both on this tour as well as previous ones; his legendary generosity and his monumental reputation.
Click here to read more about Paderewski and other pianists of 1915…
Click here to see what the first car radios look like.
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.
An interesting profile of General Pershing by the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Marquis James (1891 – 1955):
• Ever hear about the time the C-in-C saluted a French cow?
• Did you know he had the right to put ‘Attorney at Law’ after his name?
• That he was given eight hours extra guard duty for a breach of discipline at West Point?
• Do you know why he was chosen to command the A.E.F.?
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 short notice concerning the number of sexually diseased American World War I soldiers who were treated or segregated during the war and post-war periods.
What is missing from this report was an anecdote involving General John Pershing, who upon hearing that his army was being depleted by social disease, quickly called for the posting of Military Policemen at each bordello to discourage all further commerce. The immediate results of this action were pleasing to many in the American senior command however the next problem concerned the growing number of venereal cases within the ranks of the Military Police.
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.
The trench coat has become such a mainstay in the male wardrobe throughout the years it is difficult to imagine a time when the great shopping boulevards were without them. Perhaps the first men’s shops to offer them in the U.S. were on New York’s Madison Avenue: F.R. Tripler and Brooks Brothers, where the garments can still be purchased to this day. The attached vintage print ad was commissioned by F.R. Trippler for a gabardine trench coat as well as the sale of private-purchase flexible protective body armor. The body armor appears to have been modeled after a German design. The reader may be disappointed to learn that the Madison Avenue boutiques no longer offer body armor.
In the early parts of the 20th Century serious attention had been paid in some quarters to what was called dress reform. An article from the August 14, 1929 magazine The Nation pointed out that
The Life Extension Institute weighed the street clothing of the women in New York City last June. The clothing of the women…averaged two pounds, ten ounces, while that of the men was was eight pounds, six ounces.
The Italian Futurist Ernesto Thayaht offered his remedy for the fashion maladies of the day with the design of a one piece garment that many Americans chose to see simply as pajamas. Needless to say, it didn’t catch on.
Click here to read a 1929 article about the Dress-Reform Movement.
Click here to read an editorial about the need for reform in men’s attire.
Read about men’s fashions from 1937 and the break-through in color that had been so sorely needed.
The Great Pacific War
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.
On February 5, 1918 the Cunard passenger liner, Tuscania (having been pressed into service as a troop ship) was sent to the bottom of the sea by a German U-boat; well over one thousand, five hundred Doughboys from various units were drowned, as were her British crew which was numbered over three hundred. On the first anniversary a survivor of the attack wrote to the editors of the Stars and Stripes.
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…
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…
Much has been written on the unique relationship that has existed between African-Americans and the city of Paris
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.
All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque topped the U.S. bestseller list for all of 1929 and it was due in no small part to enthusiastic book reviews like the one we’ve posted here that must have numbered in the thousands throughout all of North America:
Here is a book about the war of such extraordinary purity and force that, reading it, one seems actually never to have read of the wear before. Numberless books have been written that present the stark, physical horrors of the war in quite as full detail as All Quiet on the Western Front, but their effects have been ified by one’s perception of the intent to shock. Many others have given us a more complete, more literary rendition of war as it strikes full upon the nerves of sensitive and intelligent men. Nothing could be less academic than Herr Remarque’s book; but nothing could be more vivid.
From Amazon: All Quiet on the Western Front
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…
Here is a 1929 magazine article that makes clear for us in the digital age just how appealing the fad of flag pole sitting was to the YouTube-starved teenagers of the Twenties. This article tells the tale of Avon Azie Foreman and Jimmy Jones, two courageous flag pole sitting sons of Baltimore who inspired their feminine Maryland counterparts, Ruth McCruden and Dorthy Staylor, to ascend to perch. This journalist was probably not alone in believing that anyone who was capable of placing their keister where the flag should be was a rare and distinct breed of individual – possessing a faultless character and was destined for great things in the future.
Good; they will need such sturdy souls in two months – when the bottom falls out of the N.Y. Stock Exchange and the Great Depression begins – you can read about that here…
