Trainable Extras Were Vital
(Click Magazine, 1938)
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”If Lincoln Were in the White House”
(Liberty Magazine, 1936)
By cleverly borrowing from the state paper, letters and speeches of the Great Emancipator, a journalist from the usually pretty anti-New Deal Liberty Magazine was able to piece together a few paragraphs indicting
what they hoped Lincoln would think of the New Deal.
H.L. Mencken on the Brain Trust
(Liberty Magazine, 1934)
“The Brain Trust has devised a number of schemes for getting money away from the fellows who accumulated it during the Golden Age of Coolidge, and some of those schemes are working…”
U.S. General Benjamin Oliver Davis
(Coronet Magazine, 1944)
Civil Rights leader Walter White (1893 – 1955) recognized an historic moment when he saw one: during the summer of 1944 he wrote about the first African-American general – Benjamin O. Davis (1912 – 2002; West Point ’36):
“He had endured snubs because of his color and seen less able men promoted over his head without complaint. Some soldiers of his own race charge that he is not as militant as they think he should be in redressing their grievances. Non of this disturbs him.”
The British Six-Pounder
(PM Tabloid, 1942)
“Six-pounder guns are being turned out in large numbers in one of the Royal Ordnance factories in England. Most of the workers who make them are women. The gun is highly mobile and is said to have a high rate of fire and remarkable armor penetration.”
‘The Hope of American English”
Vanity Fair correspondent L.L. Jones cracked open a copy of The American Language by H.L. Mencken:
At last a man has arrived who knows something about English prose style under American conditions…
The rest of his thoughts can be read in the attached review.
Eating Crow
(PM, & Newsweek Magazine, 1945)
Four years after Pearl Harbor, the editors of the Japanese newspaper Asahi gazed out of the windows from their offices and saw the charred remains of their enemy-occupied homeland and recognized that they’d made a fatal mistake:
We once more refresh our horror at the colossal crime committed and are filled with a solemn sense of reflection and self-reproach…
An Eye-Full of Post-War Tokyo
An eyewitness account of the devastation delivered to Tokyo as reported by the first Americans to enter that city following the Japanese surrender some weeks earlier:
The people of Tokyo are taking the arrival of the first few Americans with impeccable Japanese calm. Sometimes they turn and look at us twice, but they have shown no emotion toward us except a mild curiosity and occasional amusement…They are still proud and a little bit superior. They know they lost the war, but they are not apologizing for it.
Click here to read about the humbled Japan.
‘God and Alcoholics”
(Liberty Magazine, 1939)
Somebody said The Lord’s Prayer as the meeting broke up. I walked three blocks to the subway station. Just as I was about to go down the stairs – bang! – It happened! I don’t like the word miracle, but that’s all I can call it. The lights in the street seemed to flared up. My feet seemed to leave the pavement. A kind of shiver went over me and I burst into tears…I haven’t touched a drop in four years and I’ve sent four other fellows on the same road.
1937, The American Legion Monthly, Trench WarfareA German Listening Post North of Verdun
A German Listening Post North of Verdun
(American Legion Monthly, 1937)
Appearing in The American Legion Monthly some nineteen years after the end of the war was this nifty article written by a German veteran. The article explains quite simply how his forward listening post operated in the German trenches North of Verdun during the early Autumn on 1918.
French Soldiers Desperate to Leave the Trenches
(The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)
So horrid was the terror of World War I trench warfare that more than a few of the Frenchmen serving in those forward positions (and others who were simply overcome with life in the military) began to post personal ads in French newspapers, volunteering to marry widows and divorcees with large families in order to be absolved of all military duty.
Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about courage.
‘Our First War With The Russians”
(Collier’s Magazine, 1951)
With the Korean War in full-swing, Major General Edward E. MacMorland (U.S.A.) recalled his experiences some forty years earlier when he was a field grade officer fighting the nascent Soviet Army on their own turf:
It was a tough and surprisingly well-equipped enemy that our soldiers faced in this region…
The Well Dressed Man Confronts Bad Taste
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1918)
On page one of this three page guide, you will find some essential notes and illustrations from the editors of Vanity Fair regarding the good taste of 1918 (as well as the simply awful).
Karl Marx Reviewed
(NY Times, 1887)
To be sure, the book review of Das Kapital by Karl Marx that appeared in The New York Times in 1887 was very different from the review that same paper would give that book today. For this reviewer, Marx was one of the advocates of chaos, and a militant political economist:
If he is anything, Karl Marx is a man in a towering rage. His paragraphs are replete with kicks and cuffs. He wants to slap your face if you are a bourgeois; to smash your skull if you are a capitalist.
Click here to read an article by Leon Trotsky.
The Great Depression and the Failings of FDR
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)
The columnist whose opinions are attached bitterly pointed out that the first year of FDR’s administration had marginalized the Congress – and further opined that Roosevelt’s rhetoric clearly implied his arrogant conviction that his administration alone was the only alternative to out right revolution, and should therefore to be seen as a mandate of the people. The article lists the numerous failings of FDR’s New Deal.
CLICK HERE to read more criticism from FDR’s loyal opposition…
When W.W. II began and the factories reopened, the reality of having money and full-time employment made so many people giddy with excitement it proved to be too much for them – click here to read about that…
Black Racism
(Pageant Magazine, 1969)
During the closing months of the tempestuous Sixties, American baseball legend Jackie Robinson (1919 – 1972) wrote about his fears in regards to the racist hatreds that existed within the hearts of a handful of the most vociferous Black radicals.
The Brain Trusters
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)
A year and a half into FDR’s first term, journalist William E. Berchtold caught wind of a growing realization in Washington that most of the ’emergency’ legislation will become permanent. This didn’t bother him nearly as much as the fact that such imperishability also meant that the host of beta males who were positioned to maintain this behemoth would also be remaining (History has taught us that it was not FDR’s alphabet agencies that became a mainstay, but those of LBJ).