Elsa Maxwell: Life of the Party
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)
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Pathfinder Magazine
Articles from Pathfinder Magazine
George Orwell
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)
No one perhaps has done as much as the British writer who calls himself George Orwell to persuade former fellow-travelers that their ways lie in some direction other than the Stalinist party line.
So begin the first two paragraphs of this book review that are devoted to the anti-totalitarian elements that animated the creative side of the writer George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair: 1903 – 1950). The novel that is reviewed herein, Coming Up for Air, was originally published in 1939 and was reviewed by Pathfinder Magazine to mark the occasion of the book’s first American printing in 1950.
The Taboos
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Radio executives hated any controversy – as you will see in the attached list of subjects all writers and broadcasters were instructed to veer away from at all cost.
The Lot of Chinese Christians
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1952)
For those who keep records of the harsh treatment dolled out to religious sects by the various assorted tyrannical governments of the world, China is the all-time champion. Since it’s inception, the People’s Republic of China has attempted to coerce or eradicate every religious faith within its borders. Here is an account by an eyewitness to the many assorted atrocities dished out to the Christians in China by the followers of Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976.
An article about Soviet persecution of religious adherents can be read here…
The Duke Went After An Author
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Perhaps one of the unmentioned reasons for America’s revolt against the crown in 1776 was our revulsion of their power to cancel publication of any book of their choosing (there have been exceptions) – primarily books they deem slanderous of The Firm. This certainly was the case in 1937 when the newly minted Duke of Windsor (previously Edward VIII) sought to block all further publication of Coronation Commentary (1937) by Geoffrey Dennis. He succeeded in doing so on grounds of libel – but not before hundreds of copies could be published.
The Wonderful World of Adjectives
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)
To grammarians, a verb is the strongest part of speech, but not to radio advertisers. In a survey of 15 national radio programs, the entertainment weekly VARIETY has found that adjectives receive the most voice emphasis and the most repetition. On one program, 28 adjectives were spoken in 15 minutes.
Click here to read about how the mass-marketing techniques of the W.W. I era was used to promote KKK membership…
Ad Man: Heal Thyself…
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)
After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 it was generally recognized by the red-meat-eaters on Madison Avenue that the rules of the ad game had been re-written. There were far fewer dollars around than there were during the good ol’ Twenties, and what little cash remained seldom changed addresses with the same devil-may-care sense of abandon that it used to. Yet as bleak as the commercial landscape was in 1932, those hardy corner-office boys, those executives with the gray flannel ulcers remembered that they were in the optimism business and if there was a way to turn it around, they would find it.
Prohibition Builds the First U.S. Prison for Women
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1926)
Alderson Prison in lovely West Virginia was not simply the first Federal prison intended for women, but also the very first prison ever built on American shores to house women only; for as you might have read in this 1924 article, thousands of American women were running afoul of the law as a result of Prohibition.
Going Where the People Go
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
Fed-up with empty pews, a British pastor discovered that when he held services in a movie theater – where he discussed whatever Christian content was encapsulated within the story, he attracted a far larger crowd. The numbers were so impressive he continued this practice and even began producing Christian films in the subsequent decades.
A Racial Dust-Up in Harlem
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)
One of Reverend Martin Luther King’s most poignant observations involved the sad fact one of America’s most segregated institutions was the church. This article is about the New York Episcopal Archdioceses and their efforts to remedy that in the early Thirties:
All Souls Episcopal Church is in Harlem, New York’s ‘black belt’. This once lily white congregation has been engulfed by the spreading colored population. Opposition to negro parishioners reached a point when an element of the white vestry asked the rector, Reverend Rollin W. Dodd, to resign…
‘The Tenth Man”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)
This is a light history of the African-American people; weak in some spots, informative in others, it’s greatest value lies in telling the story of Blacks in the Thirties.
Because the colored race comprises almost a 10th of the population of the United States, sociologists sometimes refer to the Negro as ‘the Tenth Man.’ As such, he is little known to the other nine. Yet there are 12,500,000 colored persons in the nation – black, brown and some so white that 10,000 pass over the color line every year to take up life as whites.
Origin of the Term ”Jim Crow”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
The first three paragraphs of this article explain the 19th Century origins of a moniker that represents the most hideous institution born on American shores. The term in question is Jim Crow – a sobriquet that came into use decades before the American Civil War but was refashioned into a synonym that meant institutional racism. The article goes on to recall one African-American Congressman and his fruitless efforts to clean up Jim Crow.
White Primaries in Georgia
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1947)
On January 29, 1947, the Georgia House of Representatives approved the Democratic white primary law – which was intended to exclude any African American in that state from voting in state primary elections.
June 6, 1944
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1944)
That was the way D-Day began, the second front the Allies had waited for for two years. It came like a shadow in the English midnight… The Nazi news agency, DNB, flashed the first story at 12:40 a.m. on June 6, Eastern wartime. Before dawn, British and American battleships were pounding shells into Havre, Caen and Cherbourg, high-booted skymen of the [88th] and 101st U.S.A. paratroop divisions had dropped into the limestone ridges of the Seine valley and landing barges filled with American, Canadian and British infantrymen nosed up to the beaches along the estuaries of the Orne and Seine rivers.
‘Korean Pearl Harbor”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1950)
The first surprise attack came at night. It was mounted by reckless fighters, who swarmed into battle on horseback and afoot after [American] bugles had morbidly sounded ‘taps’. The Reds pounced on two combat regiments of the American First Cavalry Division and the South Korean First Division. Hundreds of civilians, caught by the flaming machine gun and mortar fire, were mowed down. In U.N. casualties, it was the one of the costliest engagements of the war.
No, Joe Biden, U.S. Relations With Germany Were Bad Before W.W. II
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1939)
During the Presidential debate of October 22 (2020) Vice President Biden remarked that the American diplomatic corps made nice with Hitler up until the German invasion of Poland – the attached article from 1939 refutes this statement:
Eight months prior to the day when W.W. II would commence, diplomatic relations between Berlin and Washington got ugly; the carefully controlled German press declared that matters between the two camps were at their lowest point since 1917. Hitler’s diplomats demanded apologies and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee clarified the American position by stating that the American people have a general dislike for Fascism. The Department of the Navy announced that it was expanding its presence in the Atlantic.