Library of Congress’ newly digitized WWI newspaper clippings collection includes Canadian articles

My heart swells and chokes me when I think of dear mother opening that cable and reading merely “We regret to inform you that on June 2, 1917, Pte. Leonard Young, 530640, was dangerously wounded.” That was all they knew for a whole week, and they waited with a sick dread every time the postman range the bell, in case.

Leonard Young, c1916.

Sitting among almost 80,000 pages of World War I-era newspaper clippings in 400 bounded volumes at the Library of Congress is a letter my great-grandmother’s cousin, Leonard Young, a Canadian soldier, wrote to a friend.

Leonard lost his leg in June 1917 during a battle in France. After he recovered, he joined the Dumbells, a vaudeville troupe that entertained the Canadian soldiers in the battlegrounds in France. Later, they performed across Canada and on Broadway.

Leonard wrote a letter from London to his friend, Grace, in October 1917, about the loss of his leg, his feelings of loneliness, the concern he had for his mother, and the thrill he received when performing for the troops.

I, even I, have danced to wilder applause than Bernhardt ever got, and have thrilled to a response that she might envy. To sing and dance and act to laughing men who will lie dead at the dawning of the second day afterward – to give them perhaps, their last note of music, their last jest, that is to experience a weird thrill even the Divine Sarah can never have. 

The letter to Grace was published in the New York Globe on February 21, 1918, and thanks to a massive digitization project, it is now available online.

The Library of Congress yesterday announced it has fully digitized its collection, World War History: Newspaper Clippings, 1914 to 1926, and it is available on its website.

The 79,621 pages are packed with war-related front pages, illustrated feature articles, editorial cartoons, and information about the political, social, cultural, and economic impact of the war.

Canadian newspapers
Coverage begins on June 29, 1914 with articles focusing on the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and continues into the post-war world through December 31, 1926. The clippings provide a tremendous resource for the examination of the devastating Great War and its aftermath. The chronological arrangement of daily press coverage from multiple sources is invaluable.

Keywords can be searched over the entire date range of the volumes or for a time frame as small as a month. New York City newspapers predominate, but newspapers from all over the United States and some foreign titles, such as from Canada, are represented.

Canadian newspapers that were clipped include the Toronto Daily Star, Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Herald, and Le Soleil.

Search results can be improved by adding quotation marks around a name or phrase. For example, Leonard Young, without quotation marks, produced more than 1,600 pages of newspaper clippings that included Leonard and Young in different parts of the article. A search of “Leonard Young” resulted in only two clippings, and one of them had the letter.

You can read more about Leonard in my blog post, My cousin was a Dumbell during the First World War.