The Mysterious Mr. Maxwell and Room M-1: Clandestine Influences on American Postal Censorship during World War I

Abstract

Infrequently examined archival sources raise the possibility that British press mogul Lord Northcliffe and his country’s intelligence agents enabled America’s purging of journalistic dissent during World War I. William Maxwell—Northcliffe’s representative in the United States and a liaison with a British-funded spying ring—performed a pivotal role in suppressing America’s foreign-language press. He displayed a remarkable ability to install himself as the spearhead of the Post Office’s wartime monitoring and censorship activities in New York. The information he gathered also served the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Intelligence, the Military Intelligence Section, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Maxwell later became a key advisor to the Post Office and lobbied to expand his responsibilities to include surveilling all of the country’s foreign-language publications.

Notes

1 H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917–1918 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1957), 92, 95.

2 Scholars have remarked on the sparse use of the wartime entries within the Records of the Post Office Department. These entries include “Records of the Censorship Board, 1917–18”; “General Records, 1905–21”; “Records Relating to the Espionage Act, World War I, 1917–21”; and “Office Files of William H. Lamar, 1912–22.” See Peter Conolly-Smith, “‘Reading between the Lines’: The Bureau of Investigation, the United States Post Office, and Domestic Surveillance during World War I,” Social Justice 36, no. 1 (2009): 21; and Donald Johnson, The Challenge to American Freedoms: World War I and the Rise of the American Civil Liberties Union (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1963), 208–09. A helpful description of these entries, which also notes their infrequent use by researchers, is located in the National Archives in Washington, DC. (See “Aliens, Anarchists, and Plotters—Postal Censorship in War and Peace, 1917–1922”).

3 Richard Spence, “Englishmen in New York: The SIS American Station, 1915–21,” Intelligence and National Security 19, no. 3 (2004): 511–37.

4 Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), 362, 464–65; The 150th Anniversary and Beyond, 1912–1948, part 2, The History of the Times (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 703; Christopher Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Heinemann, 1985), 39.

5 Andrew, Secret Service, 39–40; William Le Queux and H. W. Wilson, The Invasion of 1910, with a Full Account of the Siege of London (Toronto: Macmillan, 1906).

6 A. J. A. Morris, The Scaremongers: The Advocacy of War and Rearmament, 1896–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 484; Paul Ferris, The House of Northcliffe: A Biography of an Empire (New York: World Publishing, 1972), 258–76.

7 150th Anniversary and Beyond, part 2, 702–09; J. Lee Thompson, Politicians, the Press, and Propaganda: Lord Northcliffe and the Great War, 1914–1919 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1999), 33; Gary S. Messinger, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 147–48, 169. Northcliffe would invigorate the Times but never really understand it or bend it to his will. The gentleman scholars at Printing House answered to a higher calling, and many of the “Old Gang” thwarted attempts by the frustrated proprietor to employ the paper for self-aggrandizement (150th Anniversary and Beyond, part 2, 702–03).

8 Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (New York: Knopf, 2009), 3–28.

9 Andrew, Secret Service, 73–75, 91; Alan Judd, The Quest for C: Sir Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the British Secret Service (London: HarperCollins, 1999), 297–333; William James, The Eyes of the Navy: A Biographical Study of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall (London: Methuen & Co., 1955), 200–07.

10 John Vincent Mooney Jr., “William H. Maxwell and the Public Schools of New York City” (Ed.D. diss., Fordham University, 1981); “William Henry Maxwell,” Historical Biographical Files, Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library; Naughty-Naughtian (Columbia University), 1900, 108; New York University Bi-Weekly Bulletin I, no. 1 (February 1901), 200; William H. Maxwell Jr., “The Twentieth-century Vehicle,” Metropolitan Magazine, November 1900, 638–42; “Searchmont Agencies,” Horseless Age, August 7, 1901, 407; William H. Maxwell Jr., “Electromobile Evolution,” Electrical Review, January 12, 1901, 51–53; Automobile Topics, June 28, 1902, 489.

11 Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth, Northcliffe (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960), 255–58, 261; Lord Northcliffe (hereinafter cited as Northcliffe) to William H. Maxwell Jr. (hereinafter cited as Maxwell), April 24, 1909, Maxwell to [Alfred] Butes, June 4, 1909, both in correspondence and papers of Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, British Library (hereinafter cited as Northcliffe Papers). In his publications, Northcliffe actively promoted automotive as well as air travel. He was such an enthusiast of motorcars that he edited a volume on the topic for the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes (Alfred Harmsworth, Motors and Motor-driving [London: Longmans, Green, 1902]).

12 Maxwell to Kennedy Jones, May 12, 1911, Northcliffe to Maxwell, April 15, 1913, both in Northcliffe Papers; The 150th Anniversary and Beyond, 1912–1948, part 1, The History of The Times (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 418; “William Henry Maxwell,” New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957 (accessed June 6, 2017), available from Ancestry.com; Sun (New York), August 9, 1914; Bronxville (New York) Review, August 7, 1914.

13 “Bohemian National Alliance,” May 10, 1918, Box 110, File PF 7926, Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, Record Group 165, National Archives, College Park, MD (hereinafter cited as RG 165); Charles Pergler, America in the Struggle for Czechoslovak Independence (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1926), 11–34; T. G. Masaryk, President Masaryk Tells His Story, trans. Karel Capek (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1935), 218; T. G. Masaryk, The Making of a State: Memories and Observations, 1914–1918, trans. Henry Wickham Steed (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1927), 239, 259–62.

14 Messinger, 169; Henry Wickham Steed, Through Thirty Years, 1892–1922: A Personal Narrative, vol. 2 (Garden City: Doubleday, Page, 1924), 42–3; Emmanuel Victor Voska and Will Irwin, Spy and Counterspy (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940), 12–16; Thompson, 36. Steed’s account of the London interaction differs from Voska’s. He made no mention of Voska meeting with Northcliffe, Kitchener, or the Russian ambassador.

15 Voska and Irwin, 18–20.

16 Ibid., 19–41; Ralph H. Van Deman, “Memorandum 2,” in Memoirs of Major General R. H. Van Deman (Pittsfield, Mass.: 1209th Military Intelligence Training Center, [1951]), 24–25; Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 30–31. The following sources provide particular insight into the intelligence activities of Willert, Gaunt, and Wiseman: Arthur Willert, The Road to Safety: A Study in Anglo-American Relations (London: Derek Verschoyle, 1952); Guy Gaunt, The Yield of the Years: A Story of Adventure Afloat and Ashore (London: Hutchinson, 1940); W. B. Fowler, British-American Relations, 1917–1918: The Role of Sir William Wiseman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969); Anthony Delano, Guy Gaunt: The Boy from Ballarat Who Talked America into the Great War (North Melbourne: Arcadia/Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2016); and Richard Spence, “Englishmen in New York: The SIS American Station, 1915–21,” Intelligence and National Security 19, no. 3 (2004): 511–37.

17 Richmond Levering to L. A. Dewey, August 24, 1917, Fold3, FBI Case Files: Old German Files, 1909–21 (accessed June 10, 2017), available from Ancestry.com; New York Tribune, June 14, 1914; Judd, 333.

18 A. S. Burleson (hereinafter cited as Burleson) to Maxwell, December 3, 1919, Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group 28, National Archives, Washington, DC (hereinafter cited as RG 28).

19 Roy Talbert Jr., Negative Intelligence: The Army and the American Left, 1917–1941 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 9; Masaryk, Making of a State, 261; Voska and Irwin, 30; Richmond Levering to L. A. Dewey, August 24, 1917, Fold3, FBI Case Files: Old German Files, 1909–1921 (accessed June 10, 2017), available from Ancestry.com; R. H. Van Deman (hereinafter cited as Van Deman) to Nicholas Biddle, August 3, 1917, Box 2045, File 9140-1023, Van Deman to Maxwell, September 14, 24, October 23, 1917, Van Deman to Nicholas Biddle, October 23, 1917, Maxwell to Van Deman, September 19, October 18, 1917, Box 2876, File 10153-57, all in RG 165. Other possible funders of the alliance include Northcliffe and Charles Crane (Norman E. Saul, The Life and Times of Charles R. Crane, 1858–1939: American Businessman, Philanthropist, and a Founder of Russian Studies in America [Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013]).

20 Zechariah Chafee Jr., Free Speech in the United States (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 39; United States Statutes at Large, 65th Cong., 1st sess., 1917, 40, pt. 1:217–31; Congressional Record, 65th Cong., 1st sess., 1917, 55, pt. 6:6257–58; William Lamar, “The Mails as Affected by War Legislation,” n.d., Box 1, File “Excluding Publications from the Mail,” Entry 47, Burleson to Postmasters of the First, Second, and Third Classes, June 16, 1917, Box 36, File 47594, Entry 40, both in RG 28. Denying use of the mail to the act’s transgressors, the two leaders maintained, abridged no First Amendment rights, nor did it constitute censorship. The present policy simply expanded on the Post Office’s refusal to circulate obscene, libelous, and fraudulent matter, which the courts had long upheld (Postal Laws and Regulations of the United States of America [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1913], 264).

21 Chafee, 97–100; Postal Laws, 217; New York Call, October 6, 1917; Vireck’s—The American Weekly, March 13, 1918; William Lamar (hereinafter cited as Lamar) to Alexander Dockery, Alexander Dockery to Publisher, “The Eye Opener,” September 27, 1917, both in Box 44, File 47618, Entry 40, RG 28.

22 Lamar to Leonard Mitchell, January 24, 1918, Box 2894, File 1075-427, “List of Publications Whose Second-class Mail Privilege Has Been Revoked,” January 7, 1918, Box 2893, File 1075-404, both in RG 165.

23 E. H. Babbitt, “The Foreign-language Press in the United States,” Munsey’s Magazine, May 1919, 608–11; Thomas Patten (hereinafter cited as Patten) to Lamar, August 20, 1917, Box 78, File 47748, Maxwell to Lamar, October 1, 1917, Box 127, File 49230, both in Entry 40, RG 28.

24 Lamar to A. Bruce Bielaski (hereinafter cited as Bielaski), September 17, 1917, Box 78, File 47748, Maxwell to Lamar, October 9, 1917, Box 116, File 49006, both in Entry 40, RG 28; Lamar to Bielaski, October 10, 1917, Bielaski to W. M. Offley, October 13, 1917, both in Fold3, FBI Case Files: Old German Files, 1909–21 (accessed June 10, 2017), available from Ancestry.com; Voska and Irwin, 31–32; Andrew, Secret Service, 209. Some—perhaps all—of these foreign-language papers are described in an exhibit Bielaski submitted to a Senate subcommittee shortly after the war (Senate Subcommittee on the Judiciary, Brewing and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda, 66th Cong., 1st sess., 1919, S. Doc. 62, 1586).

25 W. E. Cochran and Samuel Wynne (hereinafter cited as Cochran and Wynne) to [George Sutton] (official and personal reports), March 18, 1918, William Lamar, “Personal Memo” [March 1918?], all in Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28; Congressional Record, 65th Cong., 1st sess., 1917, 55, pt. 7: 7021–25, 7340–53, 7419–30. Lamar also played an important role in shaping the Trading with the Enemy Act, as he had in fashioning the Espionage Act. He recalled that within both pieces of legislation he “drew” the sections pertaining to the Post Office (“War Service Record,” n.d., Box 1, File “Excluding Publications from the Mail,” Entry 47, RG 28.

26 United States Statutes at Large, 65th Cong., 1st sess., 1917, 40, pt. 1:411–26; Washington Post, September 21, 1917. Maxwell described to Lamar the process of permitting foreign-language publications as “licensing,” a grating designation with a highly negative connotation for advocates of the First Amendment and for students of journalism history. One might imagine that individuals implementing such a potentially controversial policy would select a less provocative term, one that better masked their intent to ride roughshod over press freedoms.

27 Maxwell to Lamar, October 1, 16, 1917, both in Box 127, File 49230, Entry 40, RG 28.

28 Maxwell to Lamar, October 16, 1917, Box 127, File 49230, “List of Foreign Language Newspapers Which Have Been Granted Permits,” March 21, 1918, Box 188, File 50763, both in Entry 40, RG 28; James R. Mock, Censorship 1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), 141.

29 Maxwell to Lamar, October 26, 1917, Box 127, File 49230, “Room M-1 New York Post Office,” March 11, 1918, Box 78, File 47748, both in Entry 40, RG 28. The divisions consisted of Spanish, Bohemian-Slovak-Ruthenian, German, Jewish, French, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Croatian-Serbian, Danish-Swedish-Norwegian, Lithuanian, Japanese-Chinese, Ukrainian, Arabic, Dutch, and Finnish.

30 “Memorandum of Duties of the Special Assistants,” [1917], Box 155, File 50141, Entry 40, RG 28. The documentation assembled by the Post Office could also be used by the district attorney to prosecute a publisher under the Espionage Act.

31 L. J. Vance to Asst. U. S. Attorney, December 20, 1917, L. J. Vance to United States District Attorney, December 28, 1917, both in Box 127, File 49230, Maxwell to Lamar, March 18, 1918, Box 78, File 47748, all in Entry 40, RG 28.

32 Maxwell to Lamar, February 14, 1918, Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, “War Service Record,” n.d., Box 1, File “Excluding Publications from the Mail,” Entry 47, both in RG 28.

33 Maxwell to Lamar, December 12, 1917, Box 141, File 49522, Entry 40, RG 28.

34 Report made by Robert S. Judge, March 14, 1917, Box 116, File 49006, Entry 40, RG 28.

35 “Czechoslovak National Alliance of America,” February 11, 1920, Box 354, File 269-18, RG 165.

36 “Weekly Report of Activities Undertaken by State Councils,” November 19, 1917, Box 784, Records of the Council of National Defense, Record Group 62, National Archives, College Park, MD; Frederic Paxson, America at War, 1917–1918, vol. 2 of American Democracy and the World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1939), 30; Van Deman to Bielaski, June 18, 1917, John Grgurevich to Bielaski, July 30, 1917, George Porter to Otto Praeger, December 28, 1917, all in Box 116, File 49006, Entry 40, RG 28; Masaryk, Making of a State, 239–50; Voska and Irwin, 8, 20.

37 “Summary of Services Rendered by the Bureau of Translation,” [1918?], Box 4, File “Translation Bureau and Radical Publications,” Entry 47, Kirby to Maxwell, January 16, 1918, Van Deman to Lamar, January 22, 1918, both in Box 127, File 49230, Entry 40, all in RG 28; Aide for Information to Office of Naval Intelligence, August 3, 1918, Box 67, File 21036-996B, Entry 78, Records of the Chief of Naval Operations, Record Group 38, National Archives, Washington, DC (hereinafter cited as RG 38).

38 Aide for Information to Office of Naval Intelligence, September 7, 1918, Box 67, File 21036-996B, Entry 78, RG 38. For an example of a report submitted by a Navy operative spying on a meeting of radicals, see “Report on Lecture by Marie MacDonald, ‘The World’s Awakening,’” February 10, 1918, Box 61, File 21020-3, Entry 78, RG 38.

39 Maxwell to Lamar, Maxwell to Van Deman, April 6, 1918, Lamar to Bielaski, April 10, 1918, all in Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28.

40 Alexander Trachtenberg, ed., The American Labor Year Book: 1919–1920, vol. 3 (New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1920), 96; Chafee, 40–41; Encyclopedia of American Journalism, s.v., “Espionage Act of 1917.”

41 United States Statutes at Large, 65th Cong., 2nd sess., 1918, 40, pt. 2:553–54.

42 Maxwell to Lamar, March 30, 1918, Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28.

43 Ibid.

44 Maxwell to Lamar, April 10, 1918, “Order No. 1382,” [April 1918], both in Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28.

45 Cochran and Wynne to [George Sutton] (official and personal reports), March 18, 1918, both in Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28.

46 Cochran and Wynne to [George Sutton] (personal report), March 18, 1918, Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28.

47 Ibid., Lamar, “Personal Memo,” [March 1918?], both in Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28.

48 Maxwell to Lamar, April 8, 25, 29, 1918, Lamar to Maxwell, April 13, 1918, Box 78, File 47748, Maxwell to Lamar, April 26, 1918, Box 127, File 49230, all in Entry 40, RG 28.

49 Lamar to [Patten], August 21, 1918, Box 155, File 50144, Entry 40, RG 28.

50 New York Times, September 16, 1918; Maxwell to Lamar, September 17, 1918, Box 155, File 50141, Entry 40, RG 28.

51 Lamar to Maxwell, September 23, 1918, Box 155, File 50141, Entry 40, RG 28.

52 Maxwell to Lamar, January 21, 1919, Lamar to Joseph Tumulty, January 23, 1919, Burleson to Maxwell, December 3, 1919, all in Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28.

53 Sun (New York), October 22, 1919; Maxwell to Northcliffe, September 30, 1920, Northcliffe Papers; New York Herald Tribune, December 18, 1931; Norwalk (Conn.) Hour, December 18, 1931; “William Henry Maxwell,” Historical Biographical Files, Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

54 Regin Schmidt, Red Scare: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States, 1919–1943 (Copenhagen: Museum of Tusculanum Press, 2000), 24–82.

55 “Register of the Robert Adger Bowen Papers,” http://media.clemson.edu/library/special_collections/findingaids/manuscripts/ (accessed August 2, 2017); Schmidt, 91, 164; Investigation Activities of the Department of Justice, 66th Cong., 1st sess., 1919, S. Doc. 153, 12; William J. Maxwell, F. B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 151–53; “War Service Record,” n.d., Box 1, File “Excluding Publications from the Mail,” “Radical Publications,” n.d., Box 4, File “Translation Bureau and Radical Publications,” Robert Bowen to J. J. Southerland, April 5, 1921, Box 4, File “Reports on Radical Press,” all in Entry 47, J. Edgar Hoover (hereinafter cited as Hoover) to Lamar, September 29, 1920, Box 99, File B-742, Entry 40, all in RG 28.

56 Voska and Irwin, 18–20; Masaryk, Making of a State, 261; Cochran and Wynne to [George Sutton] (personal report), March 18, 1918, Box 78, File 47748, Entry 40, RG 28; Ferris, 202, 216.

57 Spence, 530; Fowler; “British Espionage in the United States,” February 15, 1921, Box 2206, File 9944-A-178, Sherman Miles (hereinafter cited as Miles) to Hoover, December 14, 1940, Hoover to Miles, December 20, 1940, February 13, 1941, S. V. Constant to Miles, January 13, 1941, Box 1848, File 2801-287, all in RG 165.