World War One – Old Magazine Articles

Winston Churchill Recalled the U-Boat Problem
(Liberty Magazine, 1941)

Former Lord of the Admiralty (1911 – 1915), Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) wrote the attached article sometime after the First World war and recalled the tremendous difficulties faced by the Royal Navy when this new form of warfare came to the fore:

“There followed the fourth prime feature of the war — the grand U-boat attack on the Allied shipping and the food ships and store ships which kept Great Britain alive. Here again we were exposed to a mortal risk. Not merely defeat but subjugation and final ruin confronted by our country.”

How the AEF Intelligence Service Did It
(American Legion Monthly, 1939)

A fascinating read. Written twenty-one years after the war, journalist Thomas M. Johnson, who had covered the A.E.F. for The New York Sun, revealed all the tricks employed by the U.S Army Intelligence Service to get the most information out of every German prisoner they could get their hands on – and none of them involved breaking bones or shedding blood.

More about W.W. I prisoners of war can be read here

General Helmuth von Moltke
(N.Y. Times Book Review, 1923)

“If ever there was a German who foresaw nothing but defeat and punishment for his native land, even in the days when the great majority of his fellow-countrymen were mad with anticipation of victory and world domination, it was Helmuth von Moltke (1848 – 1916).”

Click here to read a 1922 review of the Kaiser’s war memoir.

”Never Again”
(American Legion Magazine, 1939)

In the attached article, an American journalist ruminated about the U.S. experience in W.W. I on the eve of W.W. II. All told, he didn’t think intervention was a good idea but was grateful America learned its lesson.

“Suffice it here to record the unquestioned fact that American determination which was enthusiastic at the outset became more and more grim as reality replaced imagination.”

”Never Again”
(American Legion Magazine, 1939)

“Suffice it here to record the unquestioned fact that American determination which was enthusiastic at the outset became more and more grim as reality replaced imagination.”

General Charles Summerall
(American Legion Magazine, 1939)

Looking back twenty-one years at the W.W. I commands of General Charles Summerall (1867 – 1955), historian Fletcher Pratt pointed out that it was the general’s unique understanding of artillery that served as the key to his success in battle.

Sinai And Palestine: Allenby’s Victory
(Liberty Magazine, 1936)

Attached are two articles by American journalist Lowell Thomas (1892 – 1981) regarding all that he witnessed while reporting on General Edmund Allenby’s campaign against Johnny Turk in the Sinai and Palestine Theater during the First World War. This reminiscence was written many years after the war in an effort to make up for the fact that “after eighteen years, no clear-cut account of Allenby’s campaign has been set down.”

Click here to read about Lawrence of Arabia…

The Invalids Speak
(Literary Digest, 1935)

Speaking from their hospital wards, disabled American veterans of W.W. I express their bitterness concerning their lot and the general foolishness of the young who unthinkingly dash off to war at the slightest prompting.

Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War – none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.

The Biggest Investor In The War
(The Literary Digest, 1921)

Here is an article that deals with the money aspect of the First World War. Illustrated with two tables, the journalist explains that the United States laid out far more money than any of the combatant nations. Albeit the funds extended were in the form of loans to the Entente powers rather than the creation of their own military, in the end the U.S. ended up being the one nation that invested the most in the war.

What the Stenographer Saw…
(Atlantic Monthly, 1930)

The attached recollection was written by a British woman who worked as a stenographer at the American embassy in London. She recalled much of what she saw from the typing pool on that dreadful August day in 1914 when the Great War began.

Sergeant York
(Literary Digest, 1919)

Sergeant Alvin York (1887 – 1964) of the 328th Infantry Regiment, Eighty-Second Division, was one of the great heroes of the First World War. The attached four page article recalled those deeds as well as his glorious trip to New York City where he was luxuriated at the Waldorf Astoria and feted by the swells of Gotham.

French Amazement at American Esteem of Lafayette
(Current Opinion Magazine, 1922)

France has discovered Lafayette in this age only because America never forgot him

The attached article reported that the Marquis de Lafayette (Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, 1757 – 1834), who seemed heaven-sent when he appeared in Philadelphia in order to aid the Americans in their revolt against the British, had been largely forgotten by the French in the Twentieth Century. Indeed, the French were baffled to hear his name invoked as often as it was during the period of America’s participation in the World War One.
It was said that during the war some disgruntled wit in the American Army woke up one morning in the trenches and grumbled: Alright, we paid Lafayette back; now what other Frog son-of-a-bitch do we owe?
Oddly, there is no mention made whatever of that unique trait so common to the Homo Americanus- selective memory: during the 1870 German invasion of France there seemed to have been no one who recalled Lafayette’s name at all.

The British Aristocracy and the Great War
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

The 1914 social register for London did not go to press until 1915, so great was the task of assessing the butcher’s bill paid by that tribe. The letters written from camp and the front by those privileged young men all seemed to give thanks that their youth had been matched with this hour and that they might be able to show to one and all that they were worthy.

…For not even in the Great Rebellion against Charles I did the nobility lose so many of its members as the list of casualties of the present war displays. In the first sixteen months of operations no less than eight hundred men of title were killed in action, or died of their wounds, and over a thousand more were serving with the land or sea forces.

A similar article can be read here…

Click here to read about the W.W. I efforts of Prince Edward, the future Duke of Windsor.

Click here to read another article about the old European order.

The Training of American Blue Blooded Officers at Plattsburg
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1917)

A leaf torn from the chic pages of VANITY FAIR in which eight snap shots depict various high-profile New Yorkers absorbed in their officer training routine. The journalist opined:

The Business Man’s Camp at Plattsburg has accomplished several of it’s avowed objects. It has proved itself practicable. It has demonstrated that men of high standing in business, professional and social affairs are willing to make personal sacrifices for the country’s good. It has shown that American officers have made good use of lessons taught by the War, and have adapted their tactics to conform to modern exigencies. Finally, the Plattsburg camp has grounded a large number of intelligent Americans in the rudiments of warfare.

You can read an article about General Wood here.

German Girls Captured as Machine Gunners
(Stars and Stripes, 1919)

This paragraph was lifted from a longer article concerning the battle-savvy Native Americans of World War One and it supports the claims made in 1918 by a number of nameless allied POW’s who reported seeing female soldiers in German machine gun crews toward the close of W.W I. There is solid documentation pertaining to the women who served in the Serb, Russian and French armies but very little as to the German ladies who did the same. The article appeared after the Armistice and this was a time when The Stars and Stripes editors were most likely to abstain from printing patriotic falsehoods.

If you would like to read another article about women combatants in W.W. II, click here.

Click here to read additional articles about the rolls women played during W.W. I.

Paris, 1918: La Guerre Fini!
(The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

Yank and Aussie and Jock, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Pole, Checko-Slovak, Tommy, Indian, all from the newly arrived Brazilians to the wizened and and weather-beaten poilus wearing the seven brisques denoting four years in the furnace, knew no nationality, no difference of tongues or even of uniform.

Click here to read another article about the 1918 Armistice.

– from Amazon:

The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914

The British Home Front Observed
(Harper’s Weekly, 1915)

Attached is one American journalist’s view of the Great War as it is waged on the home-front by the British people. He was impressed with the resolve of the population to win the war and he found that everyone, regardless of age or infirmity, was pursuing war work with a surprising earnestness.

The outward evidences of a nation at war are plentiful in London. Soldiers are everywhere. Columns of armed men and columns of recruits still in civilian clothes march through the streets. Drilling goes on in the parks and other places all day and every day.

Read about how the First World War effected life on the campus of Eton College.

The Atmosphere of W.W. I Paris
(Atlantic Monthly, 1918)

William Beebe is best remembered for his exploration of the oceans in a submersible craft called a Bathysphere, however, as a younger man his study of nature brought him to war-weary Paris.

Four devastating years of war had altered the city and made quite an affect on the young naturalist. His astute and very moving observations were recorded in this essay, A Naturalist in Paris.

This link displays the first six pages; the remaining seven pages are available upon request.

Click here to read about the day when the Nazis took Paris.