Current History (New York, NY, USA)

A twenty-five cent monthly, Current History was founded in 1914 by George Washington Ochs Oakes as a chronicle of the First World War. Oakes's brother, Adolph Ochs, was publisher of The New York Times, under whose imprint the magazine appeared. Each issue of Current History contained a detailed summary of recent events in the various theatres of conflict, feature articles on domestic and international aspects of the war, black-and-white maps, rotogravure illustrations, and a section titled 'The European War as Seen by Cartoonists'. An editorial statement in its May 1919 number declared: 'CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE differs from magazines of comment and criticism by presenting official documents and authentic facts of history without introducing its own opinions or thrusting into the narrative its editorial judgments. The magazine avoids partisanship, bias, or politics in presenting all essential phases of current history'.

Current History's first number presented the arguments of the warring parties to an American readership. Under the heading 'What Men of Letters Say', it printed George Bernard Shaw's 'Common Sense About the War' and Arnold Bennett's response, 'Shaw's Nonsense About Belgium'. Shaw's riposte, 'Bennett States the German Case', was countered, in turn, by R. B. Cunninghame Graham's 'Flaws in Shaw's Logic', followed by short contributions from Christabel Pankhurst, H.G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Jerome K. Jerome, Rudyard Kipling, Norman Angell, G.K. Chesterton, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Maurice Maeterlinck, Henri Bergson, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Frederic Harrison. Other prominent wartime contributors, whose articles were often reprinted from other publications, included David Lloyd George, Pierre Loti, Theodore Roosevelt, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Richard Harding Davis, Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Balfour, John Redmond, Ellen Key, Philip Gibbs, H.H. Asquith, and Edith Wharton. The magazine continued publication after the war, and now claims to be the oldest journal in the United States devoted exclusively to international affairs.

Sources
Current History.

The complete text of the April 1915 number of Current History is available at Project Gutenburg. Click here.