Category: Politics
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An American Viceroy For Europe?
In 1922, four years after World War I ended, P.W. Wilson wrote a New York Times Magazine column advocating for American occupation of Europe — like how the Allies would later occupy Japan and Germany for several years after World War II. Mere military, money, and moralities will never save Europe. Like the Phillippines, she…
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Who’ll Be Head of the Family?
In February 1923, New York Times Magazine asked: who should be considered the preeminent moral leader of the western world? For various reasons, writer Anne O’Hare McCormick cast doubt on then-leaders in the U.S., U.K., France, and even the pope. Where is the spokeman strong enough to speak for us — the more flexible Wilson,…
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The Imminent Third Party
Shortly after Election Day 1922, President Woodrow Wilson’s former Secretary of War Lindley Miller Garrison advocated the formation of an “anti-radical” third party in a New York Times Magazine column. Garrison said: “I class myself as a liberal conservative. … The political division which is ahead of us will take this cleavage, then: The conservatives…
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English and American Women in Politics
A 1922 New York Times Magazine column surmised reasons why women had earned a higher share of political seats in the U.K. than the U.S. The same discrepancy holds true today, with women comprising larger shares of Parliament than Congress. In 1922, women had only recently gained the right to vote in both countries: in…
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Trotzky Explains New Red Capitalism
A 1922 New York Times Magazine profile spelled the Soviet Union revolutionary’s name Leon Trotzky, with a ‘z.’ When did the predominant spelling become Leon Trotsky, with an ‘s’? Google Books’ Ngram Viewer allows you to search for the relative popularity of different words or phrases in books over time. The ‘s’ spelling actually first became more…
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Re-enter the Guilds
Here’s a fact of FDR’s biography which has been almost completely lost to history: exactly 10 years before being elected president, he was elected president… of the American Construction Council. The highlights of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s political chronology leave a gaping hole in the middle. First he served as a New York state senator from…
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If Wells Went to Parliament
Few remember that British science fiction novelist H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, ran for the House of Commons in 1922. Today, this fact doesn’t even merit a mention on Wells’ Wikipedia page. Yet he did run for the lower house of the British Parliament, and for a most unusual…
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Soviet Smoke Screen and the Hague
A June 1922 international conference at the Hague aimed to settle Soviet Russia’s economic issues. For example, should the nation be absolved of its WWI debts? Although more than 30 nations participated, primarily from Europe, the U.S. refused: The Russian memorandum of May 11… set forth that Russia of the Soviets was not bound to…
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Our All-American Aliens
From 1907 to 1931, an American woman would lose her citizenship if she married a non-American man, taking the husband’s nationality instead — even if she’d never visited the country in question or spoke the language. This 1922 New York Times Magazine article explained the situation: Few people realize that there is in this country a…
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Free Union of Hughes and Harding
After President Warren G. Harding publicly contradicted his Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes on an issue related to Japan, rumors swirled of bad blood between the two men: Why should Mr. Harding interpret the pact one way when Mr. Hughes had more than once interpreted it the other way, unless the president wished to…
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