World War I, though horrendous, brought a silver lining: young men who had become physically fit during military service now had unprecedented interest levels in exercise and sports.
Maybe a World War III would solve America’s current obesity crisis?
Athletic activity during the coming season should set a new mark in American sports. Army life has aroused a new interest for out-of-door games. Youths whose diversion in the past has been nothing more vigorous than billiards have learned in military service to exercise, and they like it. After that strenuous training the American boy is going to get out and do something himself.
After a year of soldiering a young man who lives at 110th Street now walks back and forth to Forty-second Street every day to business. Hiking has become a habit with him. Unless he walks five or six miles a day he doesn’t feel fit. This is the spirit which is likely to bring about a great revival of sports during the Spring and Summer. Golf and tennis are the sports which probably will command the greatest interest among amateurs. Championships have been restores and new events have been instituted.
“Recrudescence,” if you were wondering, means “a new outbreak after a period of abatement or inactivity,” according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Sport Recrudescence on Heels of Army Training: Returning Soldiers, Often Physically Fit for First Time in Their Lives, Show Active Interest in Golf, Tennis, Baseball, and Other Exercise
Several thousand Germans and Austrians were interned during World War I, suspected of being agents or spies. ANow that the war had ended a few months prior, it was time for most of them to be released:
But the department believes that the greater number of the persons now behind the wire fences should be sent out of the country. The majority are regarded as having been “distinctly dangerous during the war.”
So what should be done with them? A bill was introduced in Congress that would allow any of them to be unilaterally deported by the Secretary of Labor — a man named William B. Wilson, no relation to then-President Woodrow Wilson.
The heads of the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the subject took opposing views, even though they were both southerners from the same party.
In favor was the House Immigration Committee Chair, Rep. John Burnett (D-AL7):
He takes the stand of the Department of Justice that the majority of the interned aliens are dangerous and should be deported. He believes that the measure will pass his committee successfully… The fact of internment or conviction is defined by the bill as prima facie evidence that the aliens are “undesirable,” and the decision of the Secretary of Labor is to be final.
Opposed was the Senate Immigration Committee Chair, Sen. Thomas Hardwick (D-GA):
“If I retain my present frame of mind I shall certainly not vote for any law giving one man the power to determine who should be deported. This might be done in wartime. But in peacetime, no! I would consent to a law allowing a trial by jury of these people. But I could not consent to giving this power to one man. This is not Russia!”
Shall We Deport the Interned Aliens?: Representative Burnett’s Bill in Congress Is Enlisting Strong Support, but Has Aroused Opposition, Including Senator Hardwick’s (PDF)
What went wrong with the planned National Victory Memorial Building?
The hall with a 7,000 seat auditorium inside was intended for Washington D.C., at the site of what is now the west building of the National Gallery of Art. The structure was intended to be completely separate from the Washington Monument, even though it was originally supposed to honor the same man.
Ground would later be broken in November 1921, but a lack of funds prevented it from ever opening. Intended to be paid for entirely with private funds, $2.5 million to $3 million was needed, but only about $500,000 was actually raised.
Despite the support of President Woodrow Wilson who was president at the time of this article, and his successor Warren G. Harding, the project was formally abandoned in August 1937. The cumulative donations were donated to George Washington University (GWU), where it was used in part to construct the auditorium Lisner Hall.
An auditorium where I myself have been several times, including the time I saw a talk by Richard Dawkins and asked him this question:
Memorial Temple Under Way in Washington: Fund Left by the First President Was Basis of Project for Majestic Structure Which Can Be Utilized as a Joint Monument to the Men of ’17 and ’76 Memorial Temple Under Way in Washington (PDF)
Was the czar dead? It was February 1919 and seven months had elapsed since anyone had heard from Russia’s Czar Nicholas II. Turns out, yes: he was executed.
The tsar abdicated the throne in March 1917 after the February Revolution, then he and his family were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House. More than a year later on July 17, 1918, Bolshevik authorities killed them all. The tsar was dead.
As was his family, but you wouldn’t know that from reading this 1919 article by Carl W. Ackerman, a New York Times correspondent.
I have just returned to the United States, after a tour of investigation, with all of the facts and testimony I was able to obtain in Siberia and Russia about the last known days of the Romanoffs. After weighing this evidence carefully I am inclined to think, although I cannot prove it, that the Czar is dead, but that his family still lives somewhere in Russia.
Fake news! A grave containing the tsar, his wife, and three of their daughters was discovered in the late 1970s, with the remaining daughter and son found in 2007. DNA testing proved who they were: https://genetics.thetech.org/original_news/news108
In the lyrics of Bret McKenzie from the comedy music group Flight of the Conchords: “A man is lying in the street, some punk has chopped off his head / But I’m the only one who stops to see if he’s dead. / [Pause] / Turns out he’s dead.”
Is the Czar Dead?: Six Chances in Ten That He Was Executed by the Bolsheviki — Fate of His Family Also Doubtful (PDF)
A month after the 18th Amendment banned alcohol, Gerald Van Casteel satirized the push for banning anything which seemed wasteful or excessive, in the name of morals or productivity: namely, banning sleep.
I now suggest a reform by prohibition far more fundamental. While we are in the mood to prohibit let there be no half measures.
There is one overpowering habit that affects not only the whole human race, without exception, but has grown also upon most of the animal kingdom. I refer to that form of wastefulness known as sleep.
…
The farseeing reformers who have instituted our midnight cabarets are glimpsing a new dawn, and the child’s objection to going to bed is the inarticulate protest of nature. Edison says he can work with less than half the sleep we ordinarians require. If it were not for the handicap of his sleep-habituated ancestors and environment he would probably not sleep at all. Away with this incubus and let us insist that everybody live twenty-four hours a day! A Society for the Suppression of Sleep offers a great career to wideawake reformers.
Meanwhile Seattle becomes the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws and utensils in all restaurants. San Francisco, sensing a threat to its status as front runner in the Progressivelympics, responds by banning food and beverages in all restaurants.
29 years before Israel was founded, Jewish Congressman Julius Kahn (R-CA4) advocated against forming a Jewish state, arguing four main points. Here’s how his four points hold up (or don’t) today.
First — It creates a divided allegiance, as between our country and its Stars and Stripes and Zion with its white flag with the blue star. The Zionists, even in this country, are bent upon following their flag. The real American Jew knows but one flag, the Stars and Stripes. The American Jew sings “The Star-Spangled Banner” as his national anthem. The Zionist sings “The Hatikvah” as his.
This argument doesn’t hold much weight in 2019. It’s become clear that supporting America and supporting Israel is not an either-or proposition.
Second — The Zionist doctrine is in conflict with our own free institutions. The Zionists believe in the foundation of a Government which shall embrace both Church and State. That is not in keeping with the trend of modern statecraft anywhere. In that respect Zionism is decidedly reactionary. Besides, the Jews of Palestine are a small minority of the population. Will the other people who live there consent to domination by this minority?
I’m not certain what the demographics of Israel were in 1948, but now it’s 74.3% Jewish — the opposite of a small minority. Have the other people “consented” to such domination? Not exactly. The country is rife with strife and violent attacks such as suicide bombings occur with some level of regularity. As for the idea that Israel would not respect a separation between religion and state, there’s some merit there: just look at this 2018 law declaring that only Jewish people have a right to self-determination.
Third — There is the practical objection against the huddling together in a confined territory of enormous numbers of the Jewish people. As every one [sic] knows, Palestine is small; it could never support the millions of Jews who live in countries where Jewish persecution is a matter of common occurrence. That huddling together has had a baneful effect in Russia, Rumania [sic], Galicia, and Poland. The result would be a continuance of these disadvantages in the proposed new home.
Fourth — The greatest danger to the Jews in all those countries where they are on an entire equality with every other class of citizens is that, with the establishment of a separate Jewish State, they would be looked upon as aliens where today they are respected citizens. They would frequently be told to go to their own country, Palestine, by those agitators and fanatics who have a hatred of the Jew in their hearts.
With the exception of maybe a few extremists, this prediction has not been borne out.
So with a century of hindsight, Rep. Kahn’s arguments probably go 1 for 4.
Perhaps Kahn’s arguments may have had some level of credence at the time, but they didn’t stand up to scrutiny after Adolf Hitler attempted “the final solution” in the Holocaust. Three years the end of World War II, Israel was founded in May 1948.
A 2018 Gallup poll found American support for Israel at 74%, tying the previous high recorded in 1991. However, a YouGov poll found that the support level is highly polarized: 65% of Trump voters see Israel as an ally, compared to 29% of Clinton voters.
And if Julius Kahn couldn’t support Zionism, surely he could at least support Zion Williamson:
Why Most American Jews Do Not Favor Zionism: Their Allegiance to This Country Is the First Reason, and They Object to a Union of Church and State in Palestine or Elsewhere (PDF)
An anonymous Canadian soldier penned this reflection about the difficult transition from life in the trenches of World War I back to the civilian working world.
From the February 1919 article, a visceral description of what was then called “shell shock” and is now more commonly called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD:
You got to remember that the way Bill looks at things isn’t like you do. He’s seen so many nasty things occur right in his immediate locality, like his pals getting their heads blown off, that he’s kind of callous, kind of cynical and disillusioned about life. He’s seen human life itself held so cheap that he figures it down to consisting of merely dodging death, with a sing-song or a smoke in between that a shell may end any second. Put him in an office and he’s apt to make fun of filing systems and such like, which don’t get him far with the office manager, who’s been educated to believe filing systems are serious things and don’t understand that Bill used to spend all his time in the trenches.
How the Homecoming Soldier Likes His Welcome: On the Surface All Goes Well, but There Has Been a Relaxation of the Sympathy and Help Which He Needs as Much as Ever How the Homecoming Soldier Likes His Welcome (PDF)
Every week, I post the most interesting articles from the New York Times Sunday Magazine from exactly 100 years ago, with a little bit of commentary or context. See the About Page for more info.
Important Note
This website is in no way affiliated with the New York Times. All of their articles posted here were originally published before January 1, 1923 and so are in the public domain. More info available in this brochure (pdf) from the US Copyright Office.
On the first anniversary of this site, former admin David Friedman wrote an article for Slate.com about the New York Times Sunday Magazine of 100 years ago. You can read the whole thing on their website. Don't forget to view the slideshow while you're there.
