"The design and general scheme of a small dugout which can be made by the infantry under the supervision of an officer, without the aid of an engineer, are here given."
Click here to read an article about life in a W.W. I German listening post...
Click here to see a 1915 ad for British Army military camp furniture.
In 1917 an American newspaper correspondent from THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN reported that the dominion of Canada, heeding the protests of it's most impoverished citizens, moved to restrict the flow of the immigrants to their shores:
"The commissioners say that in Canada, as in Australia, there is a strong current of opposition to immigration as it is now carried on, particularly among the wage earners in the cities."
An end of the year round-up of the 1916 lynchings concentrating on the state of Georgia as the lynching champion for the second year in a row (Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri were all tied for the 1914 title).
A black and white mechanical drawing illustrating the most famous of British hand grenades that was ever used by British and Commonwealth forces during the course of World War One.
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."
A few words on the water colors that John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925) made in 1917 which pictured the Villa Viscaya in Miami, Florida. The paintings were later purchased by the Worcester Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Six months after the United States entered the First World War all sorts of issues had to be addressed, such as the matter of the Sam Brown belt. Since 1914 the famous sword belt had been established as an emblem of authority among all the Allied armies along the assorted fronts, but the Americans didn't like it one bit. The level-headed editors of Collier's Magazine published the attached editorial pointing out that such matters of military fashion simply don't matter at a time of national emergency and to illustrate their point they quoted a portion from Under Fire by Henri Barbusse which laid plain how miserable everyone (without exception) looks in the trenches, regardless of their accessories.
It was the preferred plan on both sides that their troops sleep in fields and forests as they briskly marched forward to the terror-struck cities of their timid and surrendering foes - but other sleeping arrangements had to be made when it was decided that trenches were necessary. Officers in forward trenches would sleep in shifts within muddy little rooms called "dugouts" and the enlisted men would get something worse; dubbed, "shelters", these holes were simply rectangular caves carved into the walls of the trench:
Click here to see a 1915 ad for British Army military camp furniture.
In 1917 Washington, D.C. had no mayor, no city council and no say as to the goings on in Congress - the city was lorded over by the President and a Congressional commission. It was set up that way by the founders - and that is how Prohibition came to Washington, D.C. two years earlier than the rest of the nation: with the flick of his wrist, President Wilson signed the Sheppard Bill, legislation that declared that after November 1, 1918 all alcohol would be prohibited in the District of Columbia.
A year and a half before the end of World War I, the German Army introduced the "Lederschutzmasken", a leather gas mask made of specially treated Bavarian sheepskin with removable lenses. Designed to replace the rubberized cloth gas masks, the 1917 respirators proved to be far more effective against phosgene gas than the 1915 masks. The Allied powers dismissed the new design as evidence that material shortages on the German home front were forcing changes.
Click here to read about the celebrations that took place in Paris the day World War One ended.
Attached is a review of a biography covering the life and times of Brigadier General John Rawlins (1831 - 1869). Rawlins distinguished himself as the Chief of Staff to General Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War. It is explained that the two met while Grant was engaged as a sales clerk at a leather shop which was owned by Rawlin's brother; at the outbreak of the war, in 1861, Grant's skill as an officer became clear to many and with each promotion he was able to secure Rawlins' certain advancements in grade. By 1863 Rawlins was promoted to Brigadier General. During Grant's term in the White House, Rawlins served as Secretary of War. The author of the book, Major-General James Harrison Wilson, is remembered as the man who captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis in flight; the review of his autobiography can be read here.
The "melting pot" in this sense is applied to the race-conscious study of forensic anthropology. This article concerns the work of Dr. Ales Hrdlika (1869-1943) of the National Museum of Washington, and the records that he maintained regarding the physical features of the earliest European settlers compared to the Americans of the early Twentieth Century (read: Jews and Italians), following so many generations of immigration and intermarriage.
...the diagram drawn to scale from Dr. Hrdlicka's data... shows "the mean man of the old American stock". It is pointed out that the most conspicuous peculiarities of the type are the oblong outline of the face and the well-developed forehead."
J.M Studebaker (1833 - 1917) "was a pioneer in vehicle building and lived to see the change in locomotion from oxcarts to automobiles. He had been engaged
in the manufacture of vehicles for sixty-five years".
This is a very quick and interesting read, highlighting the key events in the life of this automotive engineer whose name is so readily recognized 105 years after his death.
A brief notice from 1917 reported on the arrest of three women for smoking in the Times Square subway station in New York City.
When the socially astute, forward-thinking judge recognized that no real crime had been committed they were released, but in the high fashion world feminine tobacco abuse, these women are often said to be the Rosa Parks of nicotine:
Printed five years apart were these two articles that we've attached herein collectively recalling three different events by three different services within the American military, each claiming to have fired the opening salvo that served notice to Kaiser Bill and the boys that the U.S. of A. was open for business:
•The first article recalls the U.S. Merchant Marine freighter MONGOLIA that sank a German U-Boat on April 19, 1917 while cruising off the coast of England.
•The second article chuckles at the Army for insisting that the First Division fired the premiere shot on October 23, 1917 in the Luneville sector of the French front;
•following up with the absolute earliest date of American aggression being April 6, 1917 - the same day that Congress declared war - when Marine Corporal Michael Chockie fired his 1903 Springfield across the bow of the German merchant raider S.M.S COMORAN on the island of Guam.
Click here to read about FDR as Under-Secretary of the Navy.
Some thirty-one years prior to the official establishment of Israel as a nation, one columnist could read the tea leaves well enough to see that the United States would serve as the protectorate of the young country.
Click here to read a 1933 magazine article concerning the rise of secularism in American society.
The silent film actor J. Warren Kerrigan (1882 - 1947; played in such films as Captain Blood, Samson and Delilah and The Covered Wagon) was singled out for ridicule following a poorly conceived remark that all artists should be exempted from military service. The editors of Photoplay Magazine counter-attacked with a short list of the creative souls who have served regardless of their talents to entertain or provoke thought.
Apparently getting skewered in the press had no effect on him; he still wouldn't register for the draft for another thirteen months.
The attached mechanical drawing depicts one of the most common ignition grenades that were put to use by British and Commonwealth forces during World War One. The Ball grenade was essentially a cast-iron sphere that measured three inches in diameter and it was one of any number of British grenades that used the Brock lighter.
Here is an architectural plan and a photograph of a German blockhouse that was constructed in Flanders during 1917. The Historian John Laffin is very informative on this subject when he refers to it in his 1997 book, The Western Front Companion:
"Blockhouses generally measured 30 ft. along the front, with a width of 10 ft. They were sunk three feet into the ground and stood 7 feet above it. The front was up to 30 inches thick. Massively strong, a blockhouse was virtually impervious to shell-fire; even a heavy shell would merely knock a large chip off the edge."
This article appears on this site by way of a special agreement with L'Illustration.
The attached news article from 1917 reported on the a Russian combat unit that consisted entirely of women soldiers called "The Battalion of Death":
"The courage of the Battalion of Death when the actual test came is the subject of many enthusiastic Petrograd dispatches. They behaved splendidly under fire, penetrating into a first-line trench of the Germans and brought back prisoners."
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.
Shortly after the U.S. Congress declared war against Germany, a New York City minister named Dr. John Haynes Holmes (1879 - 1964) took to his pulpit and made a series of sound remarks as to why the United States had no business participating in the European war:
"Other clergymen may pray to God for victory for our arms -- I will not. In this church, if no where else in all America, the Germans will still be included in the family of God's children. No word of hatred will be spoken against them, no evil fate will be desired upon them. I will remember the starving millions of Belgium, Servia, Poland, and Armenia, whom my countrymen may neglect for the more important business of killing Germans..."
Stephen Leacock (1869 - 1944) had some amusing opinions concerning social introductions according to the recognized formulas.
"With the approach of the winter season, conversation as an art is again in order. It is a thing that we all need to consider. Some of us are asked out to dinner merely because we talk. Others, chiefly because we do not. It is a matter in which we can help one another. Let us discuss it..."
Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York bathrooms.
One of the seldom remembered casualties in the Northern migration history was the prosecution of those Whites who both encouraged and provided monetary favors to the African-American families seeking a better life in the North.
To learn how many African-Americans served in the W.W. I American Army, click here.
When the diplomatic leadership in Washington began to unravel the plot that was revealed behind the Zimmerman telegram, the Wilson administration wisely concluded that the governments of Japan and Mexico were not complicit in the scheme that had been cooked-up by the Germans.
A short review of the silent classic film, Intolerance by D.W. Griffith:
"For many years to come it is sure to be the last word in pictorial achievement. Not only is it deeply enthralling as entertainment, but it also carries a message of such power that pages of editorials have been written around its theme and its treatment."
A wife, having suffered her husband's stench long enough, had the police drag him away to stand before the local magistrate where, she hoped, some swift, punitive measure would be delivered and placate not only herself, but the long-suffering tax-payers as well. The husband agreed to bathe.
When the United States Congress declared war on Imperial Germany in April of 1917, the New York pamphleteer Halsey William Wilson (1868 - 1954) wasted little time in collecting a list of the numerous war crimes committed by the Germans up to that time in order to launch a mass printing of a 31 page pamphlet that would sell for five cents each. The heinous use of poison gas was listed on page nine.
The attached column is an abstract of an article that first appeared in THE NEW YORK EVENING POST in 1917. The original article was penned by NAACP secretary James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938)
"I believe the Negro possesses a valuable and much-needed gift that he will contribute to the future American democracy. I have tried to point out that the Negro is here not merely to be a beneficiary of American democracy, not merely to receive. He is here to give something to American democracy. Out of his wealth of artistic and emotional endowment he is going to give something that is wanting, something that is needed, something that no other element in all the nation has to give."
Johnson was quick to point out that American popular culture was enjoyed the world-over and these dance steps and catchy tunes were not simply the product of the Anglo-Saxon majority.
We are told that the attached picture could only have been snapped in the more eccentric parts of Britain during the Great War and that it serves as graphic proof that the farm labor shortage was as dire as the farmers declared that it was.
"There are canine sentries on duty on both sides in the Great War, and dogs that are dispatch-bearers. "Marquis", a French dog, fell from a bullet-wound almost at the feet of a group of French soldiers to whom he bore a message across a shell-raked stretch of country. But the message was delivered!"
By the time this letter was written in 1917, Seigfreid Sassoon and Wilfred Owen would have found very little common ground with it's author. However the letter is remarkable for it's eloquence and passion in support of the war.
This news piece appeared in a Georgia newspaper during the closing weeks of American "neutrality". The first report of this French naval blunder involving a French torpedo boat sinking a French submarine came from Berlin, rather from Paris or London, where such events would never make it past the censors.
This brief notice makes no mention as to the original source or who witnessed the accident.
A short notice reporting on the 1917 death of Count Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Von Zeppelin (b. 1838). The count is reported to have died a sad and broken man over the failure of his airships to hasten a decisive ending to the First World War and remorseful that his name would forever be associated with the first air raids on civilian targets.
A black and white photograph depicting the gondola interior of the German zeppelin 49, that was brought down over Bourbonne-les-Bains, France in 1917. At the center of the image is the pilot's wheel and off to the right sits the zeppelin's bombsite.
For all too few it is understood that fashion need not end in the wilderness: for it is more than likely that that was where the need for fashion was first recognized and it was there, among the toads and the dung, that the Well-Dressed man first crawled out of the muck and civilization was born. With all this in mind, Robert Lloyd Trevor reviewed the fashions for the enjoyment of camp-life in this 1917 Vanity Fair review. Another vital concern touched upon by the journalist was the clothing available to the yachtsmen at that time:
"Yachting is one of the things that begin at the bottom. That is to say, at the shoes. They are the foundation, as it were, for the rest of life on the rolling deep."
This book review was published in an American magazine shortly after President Wilson and the U.S. Congress declared war on the Germany. The book in question, The battle of the Somme, was written by Philip Gibbs (1877 - 1962). Highly respected among his peers and the reading public, Gibbs was knighted for his efforts at the war's end but soon he let the world know what he really thought of the war and, in particular, his feelings concerning General Douglas Haig.
Gibbs wrote a number of books that were critical of war, click here to read a review of More That Must Be Told (1921).
"Our boys are to be drafted into service. We cannot afford to draft them into a demoralizing environment."
-the words of Mr. Raymond B. Fosdick (who would later be lampooned by Chester Gould in the comic strip, "Dick Tracy" as "Fearless Fosdick") as he announced the intentions of the Federal Commission on Training Camp Activities. This long forgotten and failed government program was set up two years prior to prohibition to combat the "demoralizing influences" so the officers and men could concentrate on more sublime topics, like chemical warfare.
Ida Tarbell (1857 - 1944), one of the greats of American journalism, wrote this article about the policy changes that were evolving in Washington and recognized that the mobilization of women in the cause of defeating Germany was a solid step in the direction of victory:
"One of the many innovations of the National Council of Defense is an entirely original attempt to use the women power of the country."
Tarbell insightfully pointed out that up until that moment men and women had very little experience working together side by side.
Attached is a cartoon that was created during the third year of the First World War by a British cartoonist who feared that women have, through the years, been loosing their feminine mojo - that charming thing that truly separates them from the males of the species.
This small notice is interesting for what it doesn't say: of all the uniform foppery and up-town military accessories that were made available for American officers of World War I, there was no run on serge, whipcord or fine Melton wools; pigskin was plentiful for custom boots and no one seemed fearful that pewter flasks were scarce. What was in short supply were trench coats. The officer candidates from Plattsburg (N.Y.) were making their desires known: they did not care to risk life and limb only to wear a mackinaw. These men wanted trench coats and the New York Times found that newsworthy (It is interesting to note that the reporting journalist had never actually seen one, or else he might not have said that it extended to the ankle).
Attached is a brief review of Civilization, the silent anti-war film produced by Thomas Ince in 1917. Sadly, Ince underestimated the power of film as a means of persuasion; World War I raged on for another year and a half following it's release.
Just prior to the death of Auguste Rodin (1840 - 1917), the Welsh poet and essayist, Arthur Symons (1865-1945), reviewed a book written by the French writer, Judith Cladel (1873-1958) concerning the artist's work and creative temperament:
"AUGUSTE RODIN PRIS SUR LA VIE at once a document and a living thing. The main interest lies in the exactitude with which it records the actual words of Rodin, much as he must have spoken them"
Attached, you will find the 1917 review of Carry On
by Coningsby Dawson (1883 - 1959). The book is a collection of the author's beautifully crafted letters that were written to his family while he served on the Western Front during the First World War. Dawson's ability to convey the urgency of the allied cause was so well received he was assigned to write two additional books by the British Ministry of Information: The Glory of the Trenches and Out to Win, both published in 1918 (neither of the two were any where near as moving as the one that is reviewed here).
This 1917 article listed the known body count of dead poets who were rotting away in no-man's land. A number of the scribes are unknown in our era; among the prominent names are Alan Seeger, Julian Grenfel and Rupert Brooke.
Printed in a popular U.S. magazine, it appeared on the newsstands the same week that Wilfred Owen, the most well known of World War I poets, was discharged from Craiglockhart Hospital, where he first resolved to write poetry about his experiences in the war.
Attached are two wartime illustrations from a French magazine that depict the artist's understanding of the frantic life on board a zeppelin that is under attack from enemy aircraft.
Although the U.S. President Woodrow Wilson asked Americans to be "neutral in thought and deed" on all matters concerning the war in Europe [before to April, 1917], the sympathies of the American people firmly stood with the French and their allies. Whether they served as soldiers or non-combatants, the American public was proud of those young Americans who expressed their outrage by volunteering to serve among the French or British armies. Numbered in that group was the Poet Alan Seeger (1888 - 1916), who fought with the French Foreign Legion and was killed on the Somme. The following poem was written by Grace D. Vanamee (1867 – 1946) in response to Seeger's very popular poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death (North American Review, October, 1916).
An enthusiastic review of the Hollywood silent film, "The Tiger Woman" (1917) starring the first (but not the last) female sex symbol of the silent era, Theda Bara (born Theodosia Burr Goodman; 1885-1955). This very brief review will give the reader a sense of how uneasily many men must have sat in their chairs when she was pictured on screen. Theda Bara retired in 1926, having worked in forty-four films.
Some observations of the earliest Doughboy experiences were recorded in a letter home by this anonymous A.E.F. lieutenant during the Summer of 1917. He was unusually interested in the French architecture and rustic culture that surrounded him but also noted the deeply depressed German P.O.W. laborers, his food and the different treatment between officers and men.
"Last year New York State carried its Woman Suffrage Amendment by a majority of one hundred thousand. The Suffrage Party, instead of turning its headquarters to a tea room or a new Tammany Hall, decided to remain in existence, for educational purposes only, until it was assured that each new voter knew who she was, and what she was going to do about it."
"The problem of educating the feminine voter has as little to do with the telephone directory as it has with the Social Register. For the average addition to the voter's lists, strange as it may seem, is quite below the financial level recognized by the switchboard operator..."
Click here to read articles about the American women of W.W. II.
During much of the war, inventors from all combatant nations had been trying to make a artillery projectile that could eradicate the obstacle that had become one of the symbols of trench warfare: barbed-wire. No one seemed up to the task and in the end, wire-cutters were still the best way to deal with the problem.
This article is about one inventor's failed effort to create a time fuse artillery shell that would deploy hooks that grab the wire as it goes speeding by and thereby saving the day. Needless to say, the "hook thing" didn't work out terribly well and the difficulty inherit with time fuse artillery shells would be perfected in the inter-war years.
Attached is a news report from a 1917 issue of THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN announcing:
"Czar Nicholas decided to abdicate the Russian throne only after he had been held up by soldiers and the necessity for such action impressed upon him, according to a dispatch printed in DIE FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG..."
Also included in the report were the text of a speech delivered by the Czar which called for national unity.
Anticipating the onslaught of prohibition, the actress Elsie Janis (1889 - 1956; also known as, "The Sweetheart of the A.E.F") understood that, even with the absence of alcohol in the United States, boys and girls, men and women would continue their pursuit of love, marriage and divorce.
The front-line Tommy of the First World War, like Fritz, Jock, Sammy and Les Poilu, had a good deal of time on his hands between terrors. Some wrote letters, some made trench art, some slept - and the ones we're concentrating on were the ones who made this handy alphabetic guide that explained their world:
"Z is for ZERO, the time we go over,
Most of us wish we were way back in Dover Making munitions and living in clover
And far, far away from the trenches"
A witty if dry profile of George Jean Nathan (1882 - 1958), one of the more prolific essayists and reviewers of all things dramatic and literary during the Twenties. At the time of this printing he was serving as the co-editor (along with his friend H.L. Mencken) of the American magazine The Smart Set while contributing occasional drama reviews to Vanity Fair. You'll read a very long list of Nathan's likes and dislikes, which, in fact, comprise 99% of the profile.
An illustrated article about the American sculptor Jo Davidson (1883 – 1952) and his creation, FRANCE AROUSED. The Davidson piece, a colossal depiction of France as an outraged warrior queen, was intended for the French village of Senlis to serve as a memorial to that remarkable day in September, 1914, when the German drive on Paris was stopped and driven back. It was at Senlis where the earlier successes of the German Army were reversed.
"To those in America and Europe who believed in the new doctrine of political equality, it was the most thrilling day in her history."
"When France in wrath Her giant - limbs
upreared, And with that oath, Which smote air, Earth and sea Stamped her strong foot and said she Would be free."
The statue, which is twenty feet high, was made in the sculptor's studio in McDougal Alley (NYC), where it was photographed for the pages of VANITY FAIR.
In 1919, Jo Davidson would endeavor to create a number of busts depicting the various entente statesmen who participated in the Peace Treaty.
Fashion and Hollywood costume designer Howard Greer
wrote of Lady Duff Gordon
(born Lucy Sutherland, 1863 - 1935):
"...she was the first to introduce the French word chic into the English language, particularly in relation to fashion. She was the first dressmaker to employ mannequin parades (ie. models) in the showing of clothes...She was responsible for many fads and her clothes made many people famous. She was the most expensive dressmaker of her time, and the most aloof."
Lucile was one of the few souls to survive the TITANIC sinking; click here to read her account of that sad night.
During the earliest days of the war the British and Empire armies were seldom issued grenades, but the need for such weaponry became apparent once it was clear to all that trench warfare was going to be the norm. The earliest grenades (improvised by both sides) were simply food tins that were jam-packed with an explosive mixed with nails, glass shards and bits of iron. By 1915 grenade production was in full swing and British historians have estimated that throughout the course of the war on the Western Front, British and Commonwealth forces had used fifteen million hand-grenades.
The following article concern a British shrapnel grenade that is of the heavy friction pattern.
Attached herein is the obituary of a remarkable woman and early feminist: Belva Lockwood (1830 – 1917) was the first woman lawyer to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court. A graduate of Genesee College, she was the nominee from the Equal Rights Party of the Pacific to run for President during the 1884 U.S. election.
An article by the admired British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (1881 - 1931) concerning those aspects of the 1914 war that combined to make the entire catastrophe something unique in human history:
"Everything has changed; uniforms, weapons, methods, tactics. Cavalry had been rendered obsolete by trenches, machine guns and modern artillery; untrained soldiers proved useless, special battalions were needed on both sides to fight this particular kind of war that, in no way, resembled the battles your father or grand-fathers had once fought."
A good read.
The exclusion of the word "obey" from the traditional wedding vow has been happening for a good while, and it seems to have pre-dated the 1960s; however in the following case, the presiding official at one wedding would only do so for a fee.
Two articles from 1917 heaped praise upon the laureled cranium of the British war correspondent Philip Gibbs (1877 - 1962). Having written diligently for the readers of the DAILY MAIL and DAILY CHRONICLE, who were also anticipating his book THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME (1917), Gibbs was "admitted" to the VANITY FAIR "Hall of Fame" (for whatever that was worth at the time):
"He has been able to bring the wide, modern, romantic outlook to bear in his survey and analysis of fighting and the conditions of fighting"...He is a war-correspondent of a 'new dispensation', giving 'not a realistic or a melodramatic vision of war, but a naturalistic vision'".
At the close of hostilities in 1918, Philip Gibbs was filled with disgust concerning his cooperation with the censors and would begin writing NOW IT CAN BE TOLD (1920), in which he angrily names the bunglers in command and admits that he wrote lies all through the war.
An "Honorable Mention" was certainly in order for the British inventor Edward Dartford Holmes who thought up a three tiered, time fuse anti-artillery shell:
"Briefly, his scheme calls for a shrapnel shell containing a number of compartments which are each exploded in turn at predetermined intervals."
The attached article, "How Well Our Chemical Industry Has Been Mobilized for War" is an abstract from a 1917 issue of THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE which discussed how readily American chemists embraced their roll after the United States committed itself to the war.
There is much talk of the procurement of potash, toluol and trinitrotoluol which were necessary elements in the manufacture of gas.
A black and white magazine illustration from the cover of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN that appeared six months after President Wilson's declaration of war against Germany in order to let Uncle Sam's taxpayer's understand what it will cost them to put a million and a half men in the field.
An enthusiastic review of the Hollywood silent film, The Tiger Woman (1917) starring the first (but not the last) female sex symbol of the silent era, Theda Bara (born Theodosia Burr Goodman; 1885-1955).
This very brief review will give you a sense of how uneasily many men must have sat in their chairs when she was pictured on screen.
"She is a very tigerish 'Tiger Woman' in this picture. Her heart, her soul, her finger tips, her eyelashes, her rounded arms, her heaving buzzum, all vibrate to a passion for pearls."
Theda Bara retired in 1926, having worked in forty-four films.
In April, 1917, the call went out to artists of all ages that their talents were badly needed to create new and different sorts of posters that would rally the American masses to the colors. One of the first to answer the call was the celebrated illustrator James Montgomery Flagg; his first effort was the memorable I Want You poster, immediately raised the standards which other artists would have to acknowledge. It was reported that George Creel, the President's appointee for all matters involving such undertakings in the mass-media, hosted a dinner for American illustrators; the evening ended with much clapping and cheering and the next day, one can assume, the poster campaign began in earnest.
A VANITY FAIR article covering the social and patriotic transformation of New York City just eight months after The U.S. entered the First World War:
"Already the greatest manufacturing center in the world, our coming into the War made New York the money center, the distributing center, the very hub of the universe as far as resources were concerned. London and Paris sank to the level of mere distributing points...."
An additional event took place in 1917: Congress granted full U.S. citizenship rights to the citizens of Puerto Rico - but they didn't move to New York until the Fifties. Click here to read about their integration.
By the time the U.S. Army had joined the war in 1917, they were far behind in the study of camouflage, but they did their best to catch up quickly. The American generals assigned the task camouflage to the Signal Corps, which began to cruise the ranks for artists and sculptors because of their natural abilities understand paint and scale (one of the more well-known W.W. I Signal Corps camofleurs was the painter Grant Wood: click here to read about him).
The attached article displays an illustration that clearly shows that the American Army had torn a page out of that well-worn play book written by the British Camouflage School in order to deploy papier-mache dummies along the front lines. There is no evidence or written word to indicate that it was actually done.
An editorial cartoon made to illustrate that some of the combatant nations across the sea had taken measures to discourage liquor consumption and with the recent U.S. Declaration of war, America would be doing the same thing (only on a far more radical level)...
The manner in which front-line soldiers in a war are able to stave off boredom has been the topic of many letters and memoirs throughout the centuries, and the attached article will show you how one Frenchman addressed the issue - it is a seldom seen black and white photograph depicting an acrobatic stunt being performed above the parapet and in plain view of German snipers.
On the same day that it was announced that the state of Georgia was going to prohibit alcohol a full year and a half prior to the Congressional measure, a bill died in the state legislature that would have prohibited all alcohol substitutes that had caffeine, as well (Georgia, you'll recall is the home of the Coca-Cola Company):
"In an effort to force the "bone-dry" majority of the House to the greatest extreme, Representative Stark of Jackson, Friday offered an amendment which would have barred all substitutes for liquor, all patent medicines, and soft drinks containing caffeine."
Photographs of a small, hand-held helium balloon being loaded with German translations of President Wilson's April (1917) war address in order that they might be released over the German trenches. This small notice makes clear that this particular method of persuasion resulted in fifty Germans surrendering.
"Mr. Sunday pays his compliments to New York and gratefully revises his first impressions. He declares that when he first saw the big building(s) he believed "they were right when they called it the 'graveyard of evangelism'".
Upon learning that the Woman Suffrage Amendment passed the New York legislature quite handily, the Suffrage Party lost no time in solidifying their base and quickly set to work locating additional voters for future state elections. They discovered that there were five hundred thousand new voters in New York City alone; two hundred thousand of them were foreign-born women.
This VOGUE article is a fun read for a number of reasons, the first one being that it seems that nothing ever really changes in America and the second reason is because this article was written by a pampered patrician of the first order and when you read between the lines you get the sense that she would rather not breathe the same air as Italian and Jewish Immigrants:
"As well-born American women, we can never out-vote the immigrant; we must make her an all-American citizen and voter."
"Three hundred and fifty French artists, among whom are painters, sculptors, engravers, and architects, have paid the extreme price of their devotion to country and are counted with the dead."
When watching the old newsreel footage from the two world wars you see a fair amount of American sailors going about their business. They wore a uniform that seemed to have its origins in the Nineteenth Century, with bell bottom trousers and an odd shirt called a jumper. The blue jumper of an American sailor is decorated with various white stripes, stars and topped off with a queer little black silk kerchief; this article seeks to explain what the origins behind them all were largely British.
A color illustration of the U.S. Army rank insignia worn by the American Army of World War I. Insignia noted are officer's bronzed collar and shoulder devices as well as the sleeve chevrons and enlisted-men specialty badges. Excluded are enlisted men's collar and cap devices. Please bare in mind that this insignia chart was not produced by the army but by civilians; we could only correct the errors that we were able to recognize.
Cartoonist Rea Irvin (1881 - 1972) did the work of ten George Creels during America's participation in the Great War by consistently producing a number of funny gags that served to belittle Imperial Germany. Unlike most cartoonists who were active during the Gilded Age, Irvin has been published at least once a year every year since 1925: he was the creator of 'Eustice Tilly' -the Regency dandy who graced the very first cover of THE NEW YORKER that is re-printed every February. Other cartoons in this series are available upon request.
This short notice from a 1917 Georgia newspaper documented the heavy numbers involved in what has come to be known as the Great migration as more and more African-Americans abandoned their homes in the Southern states preferring life in the North. It is believed that between the years 1910 through 1940, some 1.6 million African Americans participated in this exodus. The Southern journalist who penned these three paragraphs clearly felt a sense of personal rejection:
"The worthless ones are remaining here to be cared for... The departure of these Negroes is not spasmodic. It is a steady drain of the best class of laborers that the South now has. Just what remedy is to prevent it we do not know."
A book review from Britain's controlled press of "Friends of France". Printed in 1917, the book was a collection of memoirs by the members of the Field Service of the American Ambulance.
Click here to read about the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps.
"Under the French Flag" is a W.W. I memoir by M. Macdonald in which the author tells the story of an Englishman who chose to sign up for the French Army due to their lax recruiting regulations which provided for the enlistment of men as old as fifty years of age. The reviewer believed the author recounted some interesting scenes of early-war France and French barracks life.
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.
The attached magazine illustration is from an ad for a commercially produced musette bag for American officers during World War One.
American Army officers, like the men in their ranks, had no particular need to ever bother with a musette (we have learned that a "musette" is a small French wind instrument, not unlike a bag-pipe). The bag pictured here was intended for personal effects that would be needed while on the march: stationery,toiletries, housewives).
Due to the French prowess involving all matters military during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the English language is lousey with French military terms, many of which are very much in use today.
"The war has changed many things, and it may have altered conceptions of military smartness as well. For from Paris, the home of 'mode' and 'chic', comes a daily fashion hint from the front that is upsetting. It is from Henri Barbusse (1873 - 1935), author of the novel Under Fire
No doubt, the fashionable minds who sat so comfortably in America, far removed from the dung and destruction of the European war, would thumb through magazines such as "Leslie's", "Collier's" or "Current History" looking for fashion's newest "thing". How pleased these fops must have been that the ink-stained photogravure boys didn't let them down! The Brothers Guiterman in Minnesota must have been numbered among these macaronis because they seemed to have been the first to begin production of a trench coat intended solely for civilian production (although it must be remembered that during the war, trench coats were a "private purchase" item, available only to officers sold only by haberdashers and privately-owned military furnishing establishments).
This collection of Civil War letters, written by one of the younger members of an Illinois regiment, was printed in a men's magazine at a time when the U.S. was gearing-up for it's first military adventure in Europe. The editors wished only to impart to their younger readers what a soldier's life is like:
"I will try to give you some of the particulars of soldier life so far as I have tried it...We don't have more than half enough to eat...Health is good, with the exception of dysentery."
An efficient coal-based fuel has never really been the reality, however the French would make advancements with the technology in the early forties. The accompanying photograph depicts one of the earliest methods for the creation of a coal and gas blended fuel source that was created as a result of the World War I gas rationing in Britain.
Here is a terribly unflattering and premature report concerning the death of the Romanov heir, Czarevitch Alexis (1904 - 1918). Although he would not actually be murdered until the July of 1918, this article reports that his death was entirely due to poor health.
This two page article is about P.O.W.s and the plays and concerts that they launched while in captivity; it is illustrated by numerous images of the prisoner/performers in costume.
If you are looking for an article that spells out how much more educated people used to be as compared to now, you might have found it.
Click here to read about the W.W. II Canadian POWs who collaborated with the Nazis.
Click here to read about American POWs during the Vietnam War.
Just as the American poet Walt Whitman once remarked concerning the American Civil War - that "the real war will never make it into books", so goes the thinking of the ink-stained wretch who penned the attached column regarding the efforts of the Official War Artists during W.W. I - who attempted to render accurately the horrors of war. Such genuine indecency could never allow itself to be duplicated into a two or three dimensional format.
The American press seemed a bit late in writing about the wartime innovations when they printed this piece:
"Observation posts made of lumber and sheet metal to look like tree trunks are among the latest disguises employed on the battle front to deceive the enemy and enable watchers to occupy positions of advantage."
The steel tree-stump gag had been in effect since 1915.
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.
An article by the admired British war correspondent, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (1881-1931), concerning the unique aspects of the Great War which combined to make that the sort of war that had never been seen before:
"Everything has changed; uniforms, weapons, methods, tactics. Cavalry had been rendered obsolete by trenches, machine guns and modern artillery; untrained soldiers proved useless, special battalions were needed on both sides to fight this particular kind of war that, in no way, resembled the battles your father or grand-fathers had once fought. A good read.
The alarming rise in shipping losses due to the increased presence of German submarines (as foretold in the Zimmermann telegram) had made the American population sit up and take notice in a way that the war had never done before. The attached four notices were printed on the front pages of an Atlanta paper one month prior to the U.S. Congress' declaration of war; each one pertains to military recruiting or the need for military equipment.
The widening of hostilities also served to outrage the Latin American republics: Guatemala would soon break off all relations with Germany and Brazil would declare war in October of that year.
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.
"A bombshell that struck literary England a little past that last mid-century has been re-echoing in the recently published 'Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne' by Edmund Gosse. The shell was the volume called 'Poems and Ballads' a cursory knowledge of which probably places it in many minds as one of the bad books of literature..."
The need for elevated artillery observation platforms is as old as the science of artillery itself. As this black and white image makes clear, the ones built during the Great War had to meet different needs: in order to evade detection from the air (as well as enemy artillery spotters) the more successful ones were built among the taller trees and draped in camouflage.
This article appears on this site by way of a special agreement with L'Illustration.
The socialist New York magazine The Masses maintained that the 1914 - 1918 war in Europe was not a concern for Americans and this is a great cartoon by the cartoonist Cornelia Barns (1888 - 1941) to illustrate the point; Barns was also one of the magazine's editors.
The attached art review is a classic piece of anti-modernist criticism:
"The intellectual degeneracy of the modernistic movement of to-day can easily be traced back to the moral degeneracy of the Second Empire, created by the Mephistophic traitor and despot Napoleon III..."
The full text of the telegram to German Ambassador Von Eckhardt from Dr. Alfred Zimmermann outlining the plan to form a military alliance with the nation of Mexico. Should the United States declare war on Germany and Austria, Mexico, in turn, was to attack the American South-West and reclaim her lost colonies.
Here is a World War I article that appeared on the pages of The New York Times some four months after the American entry into the war and it reported that the U.S. Government was obligated to close all news and opinion organs that questioned any efforts to prosecute the war or support the allied nations. The Times reported that the government was granted this power under "Title 1, section 1, 2, and 3 of Title 12 of the Espionage Act" (signed by President Wilson on June 13, 1917). Although no publications were named, the reader will be able to recognize that the only ones slandered as "pro-German" were those that would appeal to the pro-labor readers.
To learn how many African-Americans served in the W.W. I American Army, click here.
In 1917 an American newspaper reported that Canada, heeding the protests of it's most impoverished citizens, moved to restrict the flow of the immigrants to their shores:
"The commissioners say that in Canada, as in Australia, there is a strong current of opposition to immigration as it is now carried on, particularly among the wage earners in the cities. It is recognized that the development of the land is of prime consideration and that the tide of immigration into the cities has created a surplus, whereas the rural communities have suffered."
KEY WORDS: Immigration History Canada,Poor Immigrants 1917,Immigration Policy Canada,Canada Immigration, Australia Immigration, History Immigration,North American Immigration History,Canadian Immigration Restrictions 1917
Oddly, the other U.S. magazine that concerned itself with matters mechanical, Scientific American, also explored the question of World War One uniform and equipment costs during the same same month -however they took the question a bit more seriously and hired an artist to address the concern. The cost illustration dealing with uniforms and equipment was printed on their December, 1917 cover which we offer herein.
FYI: Doughboy service jacket cost the U.S. taxpayer $15.20-while the Doughboy overcoat cost $14.92...
":
by D.W. Griffith:
was born. With all this in mind, Robert Lloyd Trevor reviewed the fashions for the enjoyment of camp-life in this 1917 Vanity Fair review. Another vital concern touched upon by the journalist was the clothing available to the yachtsmen at that time:
(1865-1945), reviewed a book written by the French writer, 
(1873-1958) concerning the artist's work and creative temperament:
(1888 - 1916), who fought with the French Foreign Legion and was killed on the Somme. The following poem was written by Grace D. Vanamee (1867 – 1946) in response to Seeger's very popular poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death (North American Review, October, 1916).
" (1917) starring the first (but not the last) female 
of the silent era, Theda Bara (born Theodosia Burr Goodman; 1885-1955). This very brief review will give the reader a sense of how uneasily many men must have sat in their chairs when she was pictured on screen. Theda Bara retired in 1926, having worked in forty-four films. 
wrote of 
(born Lucy Sutherland, 1863 - 1935):
(1881-1931), concerning the unique aspects of the Great War which combined to make that the sort of war that had never been seen before:
, by 
caused much discussion in the literary world:
maintained that the 1914 - 1918 war in Europe was not a concern for Americans and this is a great cartoon by the cartoonist Cornelia Barns (1888 - 1941) to illustrate the point; Barns was also one of the magazine's editors.