Pa_e Two

America Finds HerselfInvolved in War Trade

• This is the secondinstalment of the amazingly timely revelationsof the events that drew America into the World war more than twodecadesago. ,The author has traced the growth of Wilsonian ideal·ism as a factor in our foreign· policy and how it involved us withMexico, and with the Allies upon the outbreak of war in Europe.

, "

By WALTER MILIJS. (~pyright: 1936: By Walter Millis,)

I.

IN THE capitals the firstjoyous excitement of war,still reigned; but on the

border lines of Eutope therewas already war its elf. InBrussels. our minister, Mr. Whit-lock, had been passing the mostexciting fortnight' of his life.U~ge, they knew, had fallen onAug. 7, but the communiques saidit didn't matter. The streets werefull of glamorous, anachronis-tic uniforms; the flags flutteredbravely in the unusually perfectweather and Brussels was" love-lier than ever." Everybody wasin a fever of enthusiasm andpatrlottsm and activity; every-body, suddenly, was in the army.To the east, of course, men mustbe flghting; but even when awhole squad of American warcorrespondents - Richard Hard-ing Davis, Frederick Palmer,John T. McCutcheon, Irvin Cobb-miraculously appeared out ofthe blue, it was still more likeKipling than like war. Theydashed cheerfully about in bigautomobiles, innocent of passesor' credentials, reporting skir-mishes, reporting Uhlans, tryingto guess where the" big battle"that everyone anticipated wouldbe most likely to take place,

(U •••• rwood ~ Uaderwood photo.)

A ndIled bridge' aeron the MeusedYerat Uege folloWingthe German

bombardment.

But then there were rumors.The Liege gateway had fallen;what might in fact be comingthru it? What was really hap-pening? All at once the gov·ernment was gone from Brus-sels, and in the street Mr. Whit-lock ran into a troop of Belgiancavalry that was not gay. Theywere "weary, haggard men, un-kempt, with grimy faces, theiruniforms gray with dust." Thensuddenly all the flags began to

flutter down; the Germans wereat the gates of Brussels.For three days and nights

on end it flowed thru Brusselswithout a break or pause-themightiest torrent of armedpower that any of them wereever likely to see-and dlsap-peared into the silences of thesouth. With what result? Theflood had passed; it was swal-lowed up in space and time, andnothing penetrated the thickveils of censorship to show theoutcome. Battering her way withthe great 42-centimeter howitzers- engines of the new warfaremore irresistible than anyonehad dreamed of-Germany hadoverrun nearly the whole of Bel-gium and deployed one millionof the flnest flghtlng men onearth along the northern fron-tiers of France. The rest wasmystery. There was no "bigbattle." This was war.

II.Our public had received from

its own newspapers in the veryflrst days of the crisis the basicelements of what was to be per-reeted as the Allied thesis of thewar. Americans were now to besurprised, shocked (and natural-

ly pleased) to discover how ev-erything that they read as thewar progressed simply contirmedtheir tirst judgment. What theyoverlooked was the source ofnearly everything that they read.No one paid much attention tothe disappearance of the Ger-man side of the story with thecutting of the cables; no onestressed the possible influence ofthe Allied censorship upon thecolor of the news, all of which

Voice of the Movie FanLett.r. pubU.h.J in thi. d.pGrtm.nt .hould b. writte« on one .id.

of the pop.r. If you wida crper.oncrl r.ply plecr.e indo ••cr .tcrmpetl, •• U.crddr•••• d enl1elop•.

in 19BJ,. First came into prominencein pictures playing 'opposite Mar·lene Dietrich in ((Song of Songs."Married Joan Fontaine, film cc-tress. Thanks, and good luck toyou.

Dear Miss Tln~e: I always readyour columns and keep a scrapbook

of your Sundaycol um n s. Justthe other day 1was looking thrut hat scrapbookand came across11 letter rrom acertain Wl1leml-na Phillips. Whodoesshe think sheIs,anyway, to call"Captain Fury"an awtul picture?It was swell, just

plain swell, and Brian Aherne, Inmy opinion, Is one ot the swellestactors I've seen. MaybeMissPhil-lips doesn't know a good picturewhen she sees one, or maybe shewas just too young to understandIt. Anyway, here's hoping to seemore pictures like" Captain Fury"and more actors like Brian Aherne.Could you please ftnd room lor

a picture ot Brian and a littleabout him? Wishing you the bestot luck, GINGERJONES.Editor'B note: l( W h a t'B one

man'" meat is another man', poi-,~on," you know. Yes, we have arorner we can tuck Brian Into. HeW/lS born in WorceBtershlre, Eng-land, May!, 1902. He's 6 feet !ItIch(' tall and has brown hair andblw: eyes. Educated Malvern cot-lege. Went on the English tage

Irion Aherne

Dear MissTln~e: Please settle 8

strong argument between a friemand myself. Inwhich picture didBar bar a Stan-wyck sing "IHum a Waltz"?Was It ••This IsMy A t t a I r " or••His Brother'sWlte"? I say In•.This Is My Al-tair," but mytrlend hoi d s a

"rbara Stanwyck strong argument.She firmly sug-

gested we turn to you. It you haveroom In your column please printa picture ot her as she appearedIn ••This Is My A1falr." Sincerelyyours, ESTHER TRIBO.Editor's note: We're strong on

settling sh'ong arguments. Bar-bara Stanwyck sang U I Hum aWaltz" ifl the motion picture"This Is My Affair," in which "hewas co-starred with Robert Taylor.Here's a photo of her as she ap-peared In that film. You're wel-come.

CLiea_o SUDda." TrilJuDe

WoodrowWilson with hia first wife. In the early 'days of the war thePresident was the object of flattering Britishpressure.

now had to pass thru these con-trols.Few, indeed, even realized that

the Allies, because of the owner-ship and routing of the cables,could edit the news coming fromGermany by way of the Euro-pean neutrals almost as readilyas they could edit that originat-ing in their own territory. Ac·cording to an Associated Pressrepresentative on the continent.it was possible to get neutral dis-patches to the American papersfor only a week or two after theoutbreak of the war, " after thatit was entirely a matter of haz-

, ard, or one of writing from theBritish point of view."

By early, autumn an editorof The Chicago Tribune wasbeginning to suspect that theBritish censors were not onlyeliminating what they did notlike from the continental dis-patches but interpolating theirown material. Our public, how-ever. for a long time thereafterstill naively assumed that it wasthe suppression of only militarysecrets in which the war censor-ships were interested.There were many things that

the American people never un-derstood about the reporting ofthe war. At the outset [some]American newspapers ran intothe difficulty that no Amer-ican correspondents were al-lowed upon the Allied front.Their recourse was to utilize theservices of the British newspa-pers. From September the NewYork Times, Tribune, and Worldregularly bought the advanceproofs of the London Chronicle.Morning Post, and Daily Tele·graph, using this material intheir own news columns and syn-dicating it thruout the UnitedStates. The British for theirpart early' assigned their ablestand most effective popular writ-ers to the reporting of the war,and American editors were eagerto print the work of such men asPhilip Gibbs~·H. M. Tomlinson,or H. W. Nevinson. Nor was theII informing" of American opin-ion left to any such casual ar-rangements as these." Practically since the day war

broke out," as Sir Gilbert Parkercheerfully admitted afterward," I was responsible for Americanpublicity."Sir Gilbert soon had a large

propaganda office at work nearVic tor i a station-under theaegis. it was vaguely supposed,of the foreign office. He distrib-uted propaganda material broad-cast to American libraries, edu-cational institutions, and period-

icals: he was particularly care-ful to arrange for lectures, let-ters, and articles by pro-allyAmericans rather than by Eng-lishmen; while he himself estab-lished relations •.by personalcorrespondence with influentialand eminent people of every pro-fession in the United States, be-ginning with the university andcollege presidents and scientificmen and running through allthe ranges of the population."The overwhelming effective-

ness of the allied propagandasin the United States is not to beexplained by any particularsuperiority in technique orsubtiety in misrepresentation.Rather is it to be found in thepredisposition of the Americanpublic to receive the propagan-da, ih the nearly absolute alliedcommand over all channels ofcommunication and opinion andin the passionate and sincereconviction of the allied propa-gandists. One of the greatest ofthe qualities which have madethe English great people is theireminently sane, reasonable, fairminded inability to conceive thatany viewpoint save their owncan possibly have the slightestmerit.As the terrible gray tide came

rolling across the Belgian plaina vast fog of atrocity storiesrolled and spread before it,drifting rapidly thru the alliedcountries and over the allied ca-bles into every quarter of theworltl. From the tirst momentsof the war our legation at Brus-sels had been hearing the mostdreadful rumors-stories of oldmen, women, and children bru-tally shot; of nuns violated; ofthe most frightful savageries -perpetrated. Mr. Whitlock, ofcourse, had no way of verifyingthe stories, but he clung to hisskepticism for only a day or twoand then yielded wholly to con-viction.August yielded to September;

the idea of a world actually atwar began slowly to sink in, butabout the progress of the waritself there was singularly littlenews. As the Allied armies fellback the correspondents werenaturally debarred from report-ing what was really going on.The atrocity story tilled thevoid. One group of the Ameri-can newspaper men in Belgiumhad been overtaken by the Ger-man advance and had continuedthereafter with the German ar-mies. Early in September a bun-dle of allied and neutral news-papers fell into their hands;they were astounded andshocked by what they read con-cerning the operations they hadjust been witnessing. HarryHansen, Irvin Cobb, John T. Me-Cutcheon, Roger Lewis, andJames O'Donnell Bennett dis-patched a joint cable to the As-sociated Press:" In spirit of fairness we unite

in declaring German atrocitiesgroundless as far as we wereable to observe. After spendingtwo weeks with German army,accompanying troops upwardhundred miles, we are unable toreport single instance unpro-voked reprisal. Also unable toconfirm rumors of mistreatmentof prisoners or noncombatants.

. Numerous investigatedrumors proved groundless. . . .Discipline German soldiers ex-cellent as observed. No drunk-

Who Are 'The Guilty Bystanders'?

PHOEBELOCKWOOD.played byCaroline Fisher (Rathbone).

HUGO RYDER,p Iaye d by BobBarron.

MARTINYORKE,played by Wil·lard Waterman. and EDITHRYDER,

played by Kay Campbell.

DICKBENTLE.played by GeorqeNeise.

MRS.JOECRESSY,played by DorisLarson.

enness. To truth of these state-ments we pledge professionalpersonal word."But it was no use, either then

or later.When the appeals for aid for

the starving Belgians began to

BobertLansing

Sir GilbertParker

come in, ot'tering a sudden prac-tical outlet for the overwroughtAmerican emotions, the responsewas immediate-and the alliesfound themselves in possessionof still another incomparablepropaganda weapon.

..Crazed. Huqo flings himselfmurderously upon Yorke:' Read below, why he did. and what followedthis dramatic scene.

(Tribune Studio photo •. )

Read the Story of TheirDramatic Lives!

GUILTY BYSTAND-ERS! Whoarethey?Why are they guilty?

What of?They are the characters

Rupert Hughes has chosento enact the thrilling dramaof real life that began lastweek in the Graphic Section.You saw Hugo Ryder. drink-cruel. leave his wife andchild for a night of drinking.You saw Edith Ryder gotoMartin Yorke, her sympa-thetic and still romantic ex-fiance, for comfort, only tobe discovered by Hugo. Yousaw Kirke McKeel,' young

KIRXEMcKEEL.played by JackBarrick.

Month in and month outthereafter American millionswere to fiow into the Belgianrel,ief, every penny doing itspart to cement the emotionalalliance with the entente powers.The prompt organization of

the spectacular Lafayette Esca-drille worked powerfully to thesame end. Ambassador Herrickhad been showing his sympathywith the French in many grosslyindiscreet ways. When a verysolemn and earnest group ofyoung Americans tiled into hisoffice to ask if they might enlistin the French army the ambas-sador read and explained tothem the laws of neutrality,then closed the book and burstout:"That is the law, boys, but if

I were young and stood in yourshoes, by God, I know what Iwould do."They cheered, shook hands

with the ambassador, and went

district attorney, and Mur-ray Bentle, often his suc-cessful rival in the courtsof law. and his rival as wellfor the affections of PhoebeLockwood, go with her to aparty at Lakemeadow Coun-try club. You saw MartinYorke and Edith in a moon-lit tryst there, and HugoRyder, in a drunken stupor,hunting for them, gun inhand.Tragedy s t a Ik s n ear.

Turn now to pages six andseven and watch it unfoldin pic t u res before youreyes!

MURRAYBENTLE.p Iaye d byStanley Waxman.

out to enlist-and to be killed,most of them. "Their influenceupon sentiment at hornet as Mr.Herrick later boasted, "was tre-mendous."Secretary Bryan almost alone

seems to have been worried asto the correctness of Mr. Her-rick's neutrality, and on one oc-casion sent a query as towhether the American hospitalservice was taking care to sue-cor German wounded as well asFrench. By a remarkable coin-cidence it was discovered thatthere was not a German in thehospital; but the ambassadorrushed out one of his militaryattaches with a searching partyand by good luck they foundthree mangled but still livingGermans. One died on the wayin and was dumped uneeremo-niously upon the roadside; theother two survived and Mr. Her-rick was able to telegraph

(Continued on pag_ eight.)