Articles from Pamphlet Produced by the National Park Service
The Immigration Act of 1924 denied admission to the United States to wives of American citizens if these wives are of a race ineligible for citizenship. Hindus, Chinese and Japanese are ineligible. Hence the curious and cruel fact that while an Oriental merchant with his wife may enter America, the wedded wife of an American-born citizen is held at the coast for deportation.
A short paragraph from 1921 in which the editors of The Nation leveled a charge at the admission departments for both New York University and Columbia for having taken steps that would reduce the number of Jewish students admitted each year.
A couple of years prior to the sinking of Titanic the president of the International Seaman’s Union of America presented a petition before the U.S. Congress declaring that the issue of safety at sea is widely ignored on all levels. In his address he remarked:
There is not sailing today on any ocean any passenger vessel carrying the number of boats needed to take care of the passengers and crew…
An interview with Zhang Zuolin (1873 – 1928), the Chinese warlord who oversaw Manchuria and much of North China during the last fifteen years of his life. The article was written by the old China-based correspondent Randall Gould.
Marshall Zhang, drawn to Peking from his native Mukden ‘to cooperate with the foreign ministers in saving China from Bolshevism’, talks in terms of nations but continues to think in terms of provinces. Anyone who has spent half an hour with him knows this. The Strong Man of Mukden has improved his propaganda vocabulary but he is using the same old brain – shrewd, keen, but sharply limited.
British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (1862-1922) was quicker than most of his contemporaries when he recognized what was unfolding in Europe during the August of 1914, and uttered these prophetic words:
The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
The anonymous old wag who penned this opinion column came to understand Gray’s words; four years after the war he looked around and found that the world speeding by his window seemed untouched by the heavy handed Victorians. For this writer, the Victorian poet and writer Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888) represented the spirit of that age and it all seemed to come crashing down in 1922:
Granting that the son of Arnold of Rugby was more troubled over the decay of Christian dogma than we are, it should be remembered that the decay symbolized for him a fact of equal gravity to ourselves — the loss of a rational universe in which to be at home. But he never doubted how a new world was to be built — by justice and by reason, not by claptrap and myth.
Situated where the Tennessee River passes through the Cumberland Mountains, forming gaps, Chattanooga was called the Key to East Tennessee and Gateway to the deep South. The possession of Chattanooga was vital to the Confederacy, and a coveted goal of the Northern armies. Chattanooga’s principal importance during the Civil War was it’s position as a railroad center.
Click here to print American Civil War chronologies.
This article from THE NATION was written by Alfred Von Wegerer in the interest of refuting Versailles Treaty article 231, which reads:
The Allied and Associated Governments affirm, and Germany accepts, the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.
Von Wegerer, like most Germans at that time, got mighty hot under the collar when he stopped to consider that Germany was blamed entirely for the start of the First World War. This article was written nine years after the close of the war when a number scholars on the allied side had already stepped forward to question, what has come to be called, the war guilt clause.
Read about the total lack of war guilt that existed in 1950 Germany…
The following is a very short opinion piece that more than likely served as an accurate reflection the of the opinions held by the Titanic‘s mourning loved ones. In their grief and incomprehension, some of the surviving family members of Titanic‘s victims, no doubt, did lay much of the blame on those who ply their trade at sea:
The Titanic‘s loss has made it clear that things are not going well among seamen. Despite the calmness of many of the crew, some of the facts that are coming out do not redound to the credit of the men of the sea. Like the captains of those near-by steamers that could have saved all but refused, they have made us all ask weather the old ideal of the sailor as a man brave to rashness, ready at any time to risk his life for others, and characterized by many other noble attributes of character, has faded from the sea…
Attached is one of the first American reviews of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, it was penned by literary critic Gilbert Seldes (1893 – 1970):
In essence The Waste Land says something which is not new: that life has become barren and sterile, that man is withering, impotent, and without assurance that the waters which made the land fruitful will ever rise again.
The Jewish National Council of Palestine has issued a second manifesto to the Arabs, the text of which follows in it’s original translated form.
Semetic nations: our regeneration is your regeneration and our freedom is your freedom.
A few choice words concerning the Treaty of Versailles by the German anti-socialist author S. Miles Bouton (born 1876):
Such a treaty could not bring real peace to the world even if the conditions were less critical and complex. As they are, it will hasten and aggravate what the world will soon discover to be the most serious, vital, and revolutionary consequences of the war.
The quote above is an excerpt from THE NATION’s review of Bouton’s 1922 book, And The Kaiser Abdicates: The German Revolution, November, 1918.
Literacy tests were used to exclude immigrants even during the uncertain period of war with Germany and Austria. Rather than rely on immigrant labor from Italy or Mexico, steps were taken to reduce the number of available foreign workers. So great was the need for labor in agriculture and industry that the daily wage rose quickly in the month following Wilson’s call to arms.
These two columns recall the structure and requirements of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps and how sincerely appreciative the French were for these young American volunteers.
When only a few wet months were left before all alcohol was banned from the United States, THE NATION reviewed the 1918 Anti-Prohibition Manual and the Year Book of the United States Brewers Association (1917) and came away with this brief, but amusing and informative history of drinking.
This article is an editorial by an anonymous scribe at THE NATION who responded to a fashion article that appeared in the 1929 pages of THE NEW YORK TIMES declaring that skirts and dresses would once again sweep the floor, sleeves would button at the wrist and the corset was making a comeback after so many years on the lam:
There is in this genuine cause for mourning. It is too bad that modern women should again be salves to fashion; it is a pity that the female form, happily free of entanglements for half a dozen years, is in a fair way to go back to them.
One of the most curious aspects of the Great War that generated a good deal of conversation among the civilian populations was camouflage. Many people believed that camouflage was one of many elements that made that war so terribly different from all other wars. One well-read reader from a respectable American magazine would have non of it: she composed a well researched letter explaining that the need for camouflage preceded the era of industrial warfare and was practiced by the ancient combatants of Greece and Rome as well.
Here is the brief text to President Lincoln‘s very eloquent second inaugural address, that was delivered during the closing weeks of the Civil War.
Ten years ago the American people reversed its national tradition against entangling alliances and participation in the political struggles of Europe in order, as it is fondly believed, to make the world safe for democracy, safeguard the rights of small nations and the principle of self-determination… If the causes and justifications for our intervention were based on facts, some evidence of their truth ought now, after ten years, to be apparent.
