Category: Politics
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The Three Dictators of Europe
A 1923 New York Times Magazine article said three men essentially controlled Europe: France’s Raymond Poincaré, Italy’s Benito Mussolini, and Czechoslavakia’s Edvard Beneš. Today, the average person only knows Mussolini. So who were the other two? Poincaré had previously served as president of France, and in 1923 was serving the second of what would ultimately be three…
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Drying Up Freedom of the Seas
During Prohibition, could the government enforce the alcohol ban by searching any ship coming in from the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans — even outside U.S. territorial waters? A 1923 New York Times Magazine article described the debate: Hitherto, the infringement of such maritime liberty has been confined to periods of war and, even then, has been…
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Senility and the Senate of the United States
Three issues loomed large in the 1923-25 Congress: whether to begin congressional and presidential terms in January instead of March, whether to stop appointing committee chairs by seniority, and filibusters. As this April 1923 New York Times Magazine article described: From the welter of discussion that followed the late and little lamented Sixty-seventh Congress, three important…
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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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