I’m going to do a series of posts on each magazine’s
reaction to the American entry into World War One, starting here with The New Age, because it’s a weekly: the
USA entered so early in April that the monthlies had almost an entire month
before they could respond.
I have been reading the journals without posting as often
because I’m finishing up my dissertation, but I regret not getting around here
more often: the Russian Revolution is also in its early phases, and has been
discussed in The New Age and
elsewhere. I was interested to see how that commentary would link with the
journal’s coverage of the US entry. TNA sees
its Guild Socialist ideals becoming reality in Russia.
So, with that smidgen of context, what happens: Orage writes
an extremely positive review of Woodrow Wilson’s speech requesting the
declaration of war. Orage is impressed by Wilson’s philosophical grounding of
the American intervention, especially Wilson’s compassion to the German working
people.
Remarkable--the US seen as the guardian of the Germans. This sent me to look at Wilson's address, here.
“Three of the mightiest political events ever known in the
history of the world have occurred within three years of the lives of the most
common of us. The war is unique for its dimensions and its issues in the
history of mankind; the Russian Revolution is a phenomenon of epic size; and
the intervention of America in, a European
,war carries with it such implications that our remotest descendants will date
an epoch of history from it.”
Yeah, that’s why I wanted to do a post on this.
Intriguingly, TNA reports that the
mainstream press was cynical about the intervention. TNA hates the Daily Mail.
Quick Notes:
S. Verdad points out that the US will now seize all German
ships in US harbors. He performs a cold-blooded computation showing that the
Germans sank less tonnage with their submarines than the US is about to
confiscate from them. Celebrating the intervention, he praises the US for its
plans for mild censorship—something the fate of The Masses might refute (it will perish at the end of the year).
G.D.H. Cole prints an article arguing that capitalism can’t
be overthrown by a frontal assault on the monopoly of production: first the
workers must attack the function of exchange. This mirrors some 2016-17 calls
for alternative modes of distribution. Without those networks, the general
strike knockout blow won’t land.
Bechofer interviews Lord Haldane about education (he wants a
hybrid Montessori/apprenticeship model).
There’s a letter from someone named G. E. Fussel about a
show of Epstein sculptures, linking modernist art with social progress.
Pair that with a review of a review of Bernard van Dieran’s music, and a further hostile letter against
Epstein, and it seems that modernist art manages to be discussed despite the
war: but in the correspondence pages.
