Modern Foreign Correspondents after World War I: The New York Evening Post's David Lawrence and Simeon Strunsky

Abstract

In the aftermath of World War I and the Peace Conference of 1919, the American public's interest in foreign affairs increased. The Wilson administration's wartime program, the New Diplomacy, contributed to this interest. It called for open diplomacy among statesmen and diplomats in the settlement of international conflicts, and press access to and publicity of their deliberations. The goal was an internationalized public opinion that would aid both concepts. With the prospect of an enlarged role for the United States in foreign affairs, prominent newspaper publishers and editors supported a robust coverage of foreign news, marked by a modern narrative consisting of the facts and an interpretation of their meaning. The New York Evening Post's David Lawrence and Simeon Strunsky promoted the New Diplomacy and explained its ramifications for American foreign policy and press relations.

Notes

1 Neil MacNeil, Without Fear or Favor (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), 121.

2 Herbert Bailey, cited in “New American Interest in Europe,” Literary Digest, October 2, 1920, 2.

3 Andrew Ten Eyck, “Are We out of Europe?” New Republic, February 23, 1921, 364.

4 Frank W. Scott, “Newspapers since 1860,” The Cambridge History of American Journalism, vol. 3, ed. William Peterfield Trent, John Erskine, Stuart Sherman, and Carl Van Doren (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1921), 335. See also Gregory Mason, “American War Correspondents at the Front,” The Bookman (September 1914), 66.

5 Clipping, “Public Ledger Has Carroll at Front,” n.d. Raymond Carroll Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

6 Webb Miller, I Found No Peace: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), 82.

7 Charles H. Dennis, Victor Lawson, His Time and His Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935), 264, 277.

8 Fred K. Welty to John J, Spurgeon, n.d. Carl Ackerman Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter APLC).

9 Charles Seymour, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, The Ending of the War, vol. 4 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 152.

10 Simeon Strunsky, “What the War Did to the Dictionary,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1921, 449–450.

11 Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 1889–1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type (New York: Knopf, 1965), 234–235.

12 Charles Seymour, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House: Into the World War, vol. 3 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 148.

13 Ibid., 141–142; 145.

14 Ibid., 147.

15 Ibid., 146.

16 John H. Sweet, “Introduction,” in The Editorials of David Lawrence, v.1, The Era of the New Deal (New York: US News and World Report, 1970), xv–xvi.

17 William Shepherd, “Our Ears in Washington,” Everybody's Magazine, October 1920, 68.

18 “Perilous Diplomacy,” New York Tribune, October 25, 1918.

19 David Lawrence, “Our Foreign Policy and the War,” North American Review, April 1915, 545–553.

20 David Lawrence, “International Freedom of the Press Essential to a Durable Peace,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 72 (July 1917): 139.

21 Ibid.

22 Simeon Strunsky, “Memorandum: The Evening Post. For Mr. Lamont. By S. S.,” n.d. Edwin Gay Papers. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (hereafter GPHU).

23 Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Peace and CounterPeace, from Wilson to Hitler: Memoirs of Hamilton Fish Armstrong (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 110. Armstrong worked for the Evening Post from 1920 to 1922.

24 Oswald Garrison Villard to David Lawrence, November 15, 1916. David Lawrence Papers, Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (hereafter LPPU).

25 Ann Wintermute Lane and Louise Herrick Wall, eds., The Letters of Franklin K. Lane (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), 236–237. As Interior Secretary, Lane disagreed with Wilson, and days before the United States entered the war, he set in motion a “plan for the mobilization of all…national industries and resources.”

26 Allan Nevins, “Introduction,” The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism, rev. ed. (New York: Ronald Press, 1968), 1–3.

27 David Lawrence to Thomas Lamont, September 23, 1918. LPPU.

28 David Lawrence to Oswald Garrison Villard, June 17, 1917, and Oswald Garrison Villard to David Lawrence, June 18, 1917. LPPU. Villard retained control of the company's sister publication, the Nation magazine, which appeared weekly and contained some of the Evening Post's previously published editorials.

29 David Lawrence to John P. Gavit, June 11, 1917. LPPU.

30 David Lawrence to Frank I. Cobb, June 12, 1917. LPPU.

31 John Maxwell Anderson, Journalism's Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 266.

32 Lawrence to Cobb, June 12, 1917. LPPU.

33 David Lawrence to John J. Spurgeon, June 13, 1917. LPPU.

34 Lawrence to Gavit, June 11, 1917. LPPU.

35 Star-Chronicle Publishing Company v. New York Evening Post, Inc. et al., 256 Fed. 435, 1919.

36 Seymour, Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 4, 210.

37 David Lawrence, “Wilson Faces Crisis in His Leadership,” New York Evening Post, November 25, 1918.

38 Ten Eyck, “Are We out of Europe?” New Republic, 364.

39 Dennis, Victor Lawson, 264, 277. Lawson believed there was a market for foreign news, citing the Boxer Rebellion and the Dreyfus Affair as two examples of international issues that stirred Americans.

40 “Substantial Appreciation,” Printers' Ink, August 27, 1914, 55.

41 Joseph Hayden, Negotiating in the Press: American Journalism and Diplomacy, 1918–1919 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010), 92.

42 David Lawrence, “France's Position Stated,” New York Evening Post, December 31, 1918.

43 David Lawrence, “Wilson Finds His Principles Gaining Ground in Europe,” New York Evening Post, January 5, 1919.

44 David Lawrence, “President Studies Britain's Plan for League of Nations,” New York Evening Post, January 4, 1919.

45 David Lawrence, “Peace by Publicity,” Scribner's Magazine, June 1919, 703.

46 Edd Applegate, Advocacy Journalists: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press), 186.

47 Morris R. Werner, “A New York Barrie: Simeon Strunsky,” The Bookman, March 1920, 65.

48 “Realistic News,” New York Tribune, June 21, 1919.

49 Simeon Strunsky, “League of Nation's Double Mission,” New York Evening Post, January 18, 1919.

50 In March 1919, Wilson convinced the Council of Ten, which included two delegates each from the United States, England, France, Italy, and Japan, to allow the press access to some sessions, but not its own.

51 Simeon Strunsky, “‘Battles’ at the Peace Conference,” New York Evening Post, January 18, 1919.

52 Simeon Strunsky, “The Peace-makers,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1919, 533.

53 Lawrence, “Peace by Publicity,” Scribner's Magazine, 703.

54 Shepherd, “Our Ears in Washington,” Everybody's Magazine, 68.

55 Oswald Garrison Villard, “Publicity and the Conference,” The Nation, January 18, 1922, 55. Historian Morrell Heald called Wile a “tested [veteran] of [the] overseas news services.” See Morrell Heald, Transatlantic Vistas: American Journalists in Europe, 1900–1940 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), xii.

56 Frederic William Wile, “Transcript of Speech at Indiana Luncheon, Chicago,” n.d. University of Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame, Indiana.

57 “Draper Denies Color in Foreign News, Correspondents Seek Only Truth He Tells Institute,” Editor and Publisher, August 5, 1921. Also, Arthur Draper, “A Plan for a European News Service,” New York Evening Post: European Correspondence, GPHU.

58 George Seldes, Lords of the Press (New York: Julian Messner, 1938), 291.

59 Carl Ackerman to John J. Spurgeon, January 1, 1919, APLC. See also announcement in Editor and Publisher, January 8, 1921.

60 John J. Spurgeon to Carl W. Ackerman, March 23, 1920, APLC.

61 Ackerman to Spurgeon, January 1, 1919, APLC.

62 “Dictated by E. F. G. (Edwin F. Gay) at T. W. L.'s (Thomas L. Lamont) Request,” October 29, 1920, GPHU.

63 Armstrong, Peace and Counterpeace, 112–113. Armstrong described Puckette as “a not-in-the-least typical Southerner. [He was] shy, short-spoken, hardheaded and, like all managing editors of great city papers, harassed.”

64 Simeon Strunsky, “Memorandum: The Evening Post. For Mr. Lamont,” n.d., GPHU.

65 Arthur Draper to Charles McD. Puckette, “A Plan for a European News Service,” The New York Evening Post: European Correspondence, April 8, 1919, GPHU.

66 Frederic William Wile to A. Z. Potter, October 11, 1919, GPHU; Herbert Heaton, A Scholar in Action: Edwin Gay (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 153–154.

67 Frederic William Wile, “The Press and a Constructive Foreign Policy,” Advocate of Peace through Justice, 82 (June 1920): 197. See also, Frederic William Wile, News Is Where You Find It: Forty Years' Reporting at Home and Abroad (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1939. “Real Specialist in Big International News,” Editor and Publisher, March 12, 1921.

68 Thomas Lamont to Arthur Draper, May 3, 1919, The New York Evening Post: European Correspondence, GPHU.

69 Herbert Heaton, A Scholar in Action, 180–184.

70 Hamilton, Journalism's Roving Eye, 266.

71 “Julian S. Mason, Editor, Writer, ’78,” New York Times, November 9, 1954. The other bureau chiefs were Raymond Gram Swing (London); M. W. Fodor (Vienna); and Raymond Carroll (Paris).

72 Hugo Renfro Knickerbocker to Christer Maederlund, Esq., January 11, 1931. H. R. Knickerbocker Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY (hereafter KPCU). Knickerbocker described his background and education, and his desire early in his career to becoming a foreign correspondent. See also William Henry Chamberlin, “The Balance Sheet of the Soviet Five Year Plan,” Foreign Affairs, April 1933, 3. The Five Year Plan comprised “the regulation of every branch of social, economic and educational activity.”

73 Julian Mason to H. R. Knickerbocker, May 23, 1931. Mason also observed how the series' success caught the New York Times unprepared, and it began flooding its pages with articles from its foreign correspondents, KPCU.