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La Domenica del Corriere (The Sunday Courier) of March 25 to April 1, 1917, an illustrated weekly supplement to Corriere della Sera, published in Milan, Italy. The front and back covers are full-page illustrations by the great Italian illustrator Achille Beltrame. The front cover depicts Russian troops cheering the deputies entering the Duma after what the paper calls, 'the Russian revolt for freedom and the war.' The secondary story was on the fall of Baghdad to British troops.
Russian soldiers resting in the field. Card postmarked November 28, 1916.
Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies. The date on Wilson's desk calendar is October 8, 1916, a day on which German submarine U-53 sank five vessels — three British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian — off Nantucket, Massachusetts. One of the British ships was a passenger liner traveling between New York and Newfoundland.
A photo postcard of a German trench view of barbed wire and a dead patrol. Dated February 22, 1916, and field postmarked the next day, the message is from a soldier to his uncle, and reads in part, 'yesterday we heard that 4 fortresses of Verdun were taken. This have been a lot of shooting . . . Maybe this is the end of Verdun and peace will come soon . . . the barbed wire on the other side of the card is French. You can see dead patrols . . .' (Translation from the German courtesy Thomas Faust.) Evidently the author safely reached the French trench line.
British soldiers advancing on the Flanders front. From The Nations at War by Willis J. Abbot 1918 Edition
"Saturday, March 31, 1917Anarchist propaganda has already contaminated the larger part of the front.From all quarters I am receiving reports of scenes of mutiny, the murder of officers and wholesale desertion. Even in the front line bands of private soldiers are leaving their units to go and see what is happening in Petrograd or at home in their villages." ((1), more)
"The Extremists seem to hold the Moderates in their power. That is the way with revolutions. So far it is very difficult to estimate the morale of the Army, and what tendencies will manifest themselves as a result of the latest events, under the initiative of leaders who have brought about the fall of Tsarism." ((2), more)
"With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war." ((3), more)
"God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men,Whose pious poetry blossoms on your gravesAs soon as you are in them, nurtured upBy the salt of your corruption, and the tearsOf mothers, local vicars, college deans,And flanked by prefaces and photographsFrom all your minor poet friends — the fools —Who paint their sentimental elegiesWhere sure, no angel treads; and, living, shareThe dead's brief immortality." ((4), more)
"I thought we were going over the top tonight, but it has been postponed — a state of things which will inevitably lead to soul-outpourings. My state of mind is — fed up to the eyes; fear of not living to write music for England; no fear at all of death. Yesterday we had a little affair with a German patrol, which made me interested for 5 minutes; after which I lapsed into the usual horrid state of boredom. O that a nice Blighty may come soon! I do not bear pain and cold well, but do not grumble too much; so I reckon that cancels out. One cannot expect to have everything, or to make one's nature strong in a week." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the entry for Saturday, March 31, 1917, from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia in Petrograd, the Russian capital. In the course and immediate aftermath of the February Revolution, some officers were murdered, and some soldiers left the front.
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. III by Maurice Paléologue, page 277, publisher: George H. Doran Company
(2) Diary entry by Albert, King of the Belgians, for April 1, 1917, writing of the revolution in Russia where the state Duma and the Soviet contended for power. The latter was supported by much of the army and most workers.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 162, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(3) The paragraph from President Woodrow Wilson's April 2, 1917 address to the Congress of the United States in which he asks it to declare war on the German Empire in response to that nation's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and the American lives that policy had taken, property it had destroyed, and rights it had restricted. In the next paragraph Wilson summarizes what 'all its power,' 'all its resources' will entail: cooperation with and financing for those governments at war with Germany, the organization and mobilization of material resources of the Unites States, 500,000 or more men raised by conscription, and government funding by 'the present generation,' that is, to the extent possible, by taxation rather than borrowing. Wilson stresses that Germany has struck at all nations, and that America will fight as one among the many nations of the world, and for democracy.
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, page 315, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
(4) Beginning of the poem 'God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men!' by British officer Arthur Graeme West of the 6th Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry, killed by a sniper April 3, 1917 in Bapaume, France. West loathed the kind of poetry that glorified the war and its ugly death. In 'The Night Patrol,' for example, men mark their route to the German wire by committing to memory the bodies they encounter as they crawl along, and the stench off them, so these will bring them safely back to their own line and a ration of rum.
The Lost Voices of World War I, An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights by Tim Cross, page 69, copyright © 1989 by The University of Iowa, publisher: University of Iowa Press, publication date: 1989
(5) Ivor Gurney, English poet and composer, writing to the composer Marion Margaret Scott, President of the Society of Women Musicians from 1915 to 1916, on 'April 4 or 5th', 1917 in the preparation for the British Arras Offensive. Gurney was a private in the Gloucestershire Regiment then in the Fauquissart-Laventie sector. A 'Blighty' was a wound that would send him back to Blighty, to England.
War Letters, Ivor Gurney, a selection edited by R.K.R. Thornton by Ivor Gurney, page 152, copyright © J. R. Haines, the Trustee of the Ivor Gurney Estate 1983, publisher: The Hogarth Press, publication date: 1984
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