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What They Wrote About the War APRIL 21, 2021 ON AUGUST 1, 1914, Thomas Mann was summering in a villa outside the Bavarian town of Bad Tölz. His children were down the street rehearsing a play with their cousins when they heard that Germany had declared war on Russia. They ran home to tell their papa. He could scarcely believe it. His first reaction was to say, darkly, that this would never have happened if Tolstoy were still alive. But in the next few days he discovered in himself a surprising enthusiasm. He began to write an essay. He would call it “Thoughts in Wartime.”

From the NS archive: The depression 1 January 1921: Why economic depressions happen and how to deal with them. As the New Year rolled in in 1921, the nation was in the midst of an economic depression with its attendant high unemployment. Clifford Sharp, the New Statesman’s first editor, used the first issue of the year to look at the problem and suggest remedies. Employers should be made to look after their own workforces in both good and bad times and hence end the scourge of casual labour; better understanding of why depressions occur should be applied to industry; the government should ...