Got a small stack of old Nat Geos. One from 1915, one 1916, one 1940, and about 2/3rds of 1918. Interesting stuff.
are they particularly... warlike?
A lot of the articles (obviously) are about the war. 1915/16 not so much.
Titles range from "Roumania, the Pivotal State" (Oct. 1915) through "Wards of the United States" (August 1916 - RE holdings in the Caribbean, and boy howdy is some of that... dated, to put it politely), an entire issue on stories about aircraft mostly penned by officers (Jan. 1918, from "Flying in France" through "Building America's Air Army" and "The Future of the Airplane" written by a certain Rear-Admiral Robert E. Peary ).
Proceeds with more like "Shopping Abroad for Our Army in France" (Feb. 1918), "Voyaging on the Volga Amid War and Revolution" (March 1918), "Smaller North American Mammals" (May 1918, 32 pages of full-color illustrations, this was the entire issue), "Our Friends, the French" (Nov. 1918), "Curious and Characteristic Customs of Central African Tribes" (Oct. 1919 - haven't been through this issue yet, but I bet y'all can guess what
that article will be like, judging by the bits on Haiti and Romania), and concluding on June 1940's issue, which contains things like sets of color photographs of the Great Barrier Reef, rural Sweden, and the American Southwest.
The photographs are singularly remarkable and the hand-drawn illustrations are fuckin' stupendous. Lots of good stuff in these.
Also, the
ads, dude. Not only civilized (the ads are in chunks at the front and back instead of interspersed), but they're ads from (mostly) a century ago. Cool stuff.