News Archives – The International Herald Tribune - Retrospective Blog (2024)

Front Pages

Nov 14 11:03 am

1917: Must Crush German Lust for Conquest, Asserts President

By International Herald Tribune
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BUFFALO, N.Y., Tuesday, — President Wilson delivered an eloquent speech here yesterday before the annual congress of the American Federation of Labor. He made a stirring appeal to the workers to aid in prosecuting the war, which, he said, could not be won unless all parties made common cause and forgot their differences.

Mr. Samuel Gompers presided, and an audience numbering 6,000, and including 450 Labor delegates from all parts of the country, gave Mr. Wilson a rousing ovation.

“We have arrived,” he said, “at the decisive hour when we have to choose between the old principle of Might and the new principle of Liberty. Germany had her place in the sun. What more did she want? She had peace in her domain, but she desired to succeed by domination, not by peaceable labor.”

Speaking of Russia, the President said that any nation that has dealings with Germany is courting her own ruin. “The Russian pacifists,” he added, “are as deceived as.they are visionary.”

The audience gave him an enthusiastic ovation.

Referring to the Berlin-Baghdad railway, Mr. Wilson said: — “That railway was constructed with a view to outflanking the industries of half-a-dozen countries. German competition would not have met with great resistance because it has always been possible for the German armies to get into the heart of a country more quickly than other armies.’

How It Looks on Paper.

“Take a glance at the map of Europe. In the German proposals regarding Belgium, Northern France and Alsace-Lorraine, there are some very interesting side issues, but Germany takes good care not to broach the matter herself.

“Germany has absolute control of Austria-Hungary, and practically controls the Balkans, Turkey and Asia-Minor. If she can keep the map of Europe as it is at present she will realize the dreams which she cherished at the beginning of the war, and, by her might, trouble the world as long as she retains it.”

— The New York Herald, November, 14, 1917 —

Oct 6 10:23 am

1967: Wilson Receives Approval From Party on Bid to ECC

By International Herald Tribune
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Scarborough, England, Oct. 5. — The lingering doubt about Britain’s political will to enter the European Economic Community was effectively dispelled today at the Labor party conference.

By a 2-to-1 margin, the conference approved the Labor government’s decision to apply for membership in the Common Market. By a somewhat smaller majority, it rejected a call to reaffirm the stiff conditions for membership laid down by the party five years ago.

The main vote in favor of the government’s policy was 4,147,000 to 2,032,000.

Three other votes were taken on Common Market resolutions. A demand that the government set stringent preconditions on any attempt to join the EEC lost by 3,536,000 to 2,539,000. Approval of the government’s decision to attempt to join the Common Market with no preconditions being set was given by a vote of 3,359,000 to 2,697,000. And a call for the government to drop the attempt and change its policy was defeated by 4,539,000 votes to 529,000.

The approval of the government decision was the most important vote of the conference for Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his government. If it had gone the other way, the result could well have crippled the government’s attempt to bargain its way into the Common Market over French opposition.

All three major parties in Britain are now unequivocally in favor of participation in the community. The Liberals led the way and the Conservatives made the applications that failed in 1963.

The actual chances for Britain to get into the community remain entirely another matter. Every indication is that France will delay and oppose it with all possible devices. And last week’s report of the commissioners of the EEC on the question raised doubts about the readiness of the British economy for membership.

The debate in the Spa Grand Hall here this morning had special meaning against the background of Labor party history.

— International Herald Tribune, October, 6, 1967 —

1967: U.S. Will Construct Barrier Across DMZ

By International Herald Tribune
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — The United States will build a complex barrier between North and South Vietnam in hopes of hindering enemy infiltration, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara announced today.

In confirming the widely published reports that the United States planned such a barrier, he declined to give any details of how it would work other than to say that “equipment to be installed will range from barbed wire to highly sophisticated devices.”

Mr. McNamara is going ahead with the barrier project over the protests of military leaders here who contend it will not be worth the effort.

These military leaders claim it would take an inordinate number of troops to make the barrier effective. They would rather have more troops to step up the ground war in South Vietnam.

Mr. McNamara said at this press conference today that “no obstacle system can stop the infiltration of personnel or supplies.” He termed the barrier instead “a system to make infiltration more difficult.”

Tight Secrecy

The Defense Secretary would not say how far the barrier would extend along the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Vietnam. He added that the Pentagon had clamped a tight secrecy lid on the whole barrier plan. But the barrier, in fact, already is under construction.

The first step was officially described as clearing lines of fire along the DMZ. This amounted to bulldozing a strip 600 yards wide and about six miles long from Gio Linh near the coast toward Con Thien to the west.

The first six-mile strip was started last year and already is overgrown. Initially, wooden watch towers were erected and were promptly burned down by the enemy. The barrier Mr. McNamara talked about today would be a new strip stretching eastward 15 miles toward Laos.

He declined to answer when asked specifically if the barrier would go into Laos, as many advise, including Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. The Defense Secretary did say that the barrier system would go into operation early next year or possibly this year.

— International Herald Tribune, September 8, 1967 —

Front Pages

Aug 19 11:01 am

1917: Maximalists Are Fomenting Fresh Trouble in Russia

By International Herald Tribune
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Government Is on Alert — National Conference Is Expected to Strengthen Unity.

PETROGRAD, Saturday.— A conference of the political organizations of Odessa has discussed the danger of the counter-revolutionary, anti-Semitic pogrom agitation in the market-places and outskirts of Odessa. A close watch is being kept on the former Black Hundreds’ agents and on the circulation of pogrom literature. A number of these agitators have been arrested. Several German war prisoners speaking Russian fluently also have been arrested. They appeared at meetings, urging the Russian soldiers to surrender and to fraternize with the Germans. A thorough investigation of these intrigues has been started.

The Maximalists have held a secret convention in Petrograd, lasting ten days. It is understood that the Maxi­malists have not yet abandoned their policy, but that on the contrary they are resolved to conduct a more intense, uncompromising opposition to the Provisional Government.

During the recent revolt in Petrograd the Maximalist slogan was “all power to the Soldiers and Workmen’s Coun­cil.” Their new slogan is born of the dictatorship. Of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, Troesky, Lunacharski and others, now in prison, in letters to the press, declare their detention to be cruel and unjust. They appealed to the Minister of Justice, M. Zarudny, to interfere. M. Zarudny said he was sur­prised the revolutionists should ask the Minister of Justice to bring pressure on the Prosecutor’s investigation. Have not the revolutionists always demanded that the Courts should be uninfluenced by the Minister of Justice? M. Zarudny has therefore declined to interfere. — The New York Herald, August 19, 1917 —

Front Pages

Jul 28 10:11 am

1967: The Agony of Detroit, U.S.A.

By International Herald Tribune
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Detroit, July 27. — This haggard city is a mirror of a civilization going backward.

Its smoke blood and gunfire are the most tragic testaments to date that urban America cannot even keep up with the accumulating problems of the modern age.

Federal troops on street corners. Tanks firing at night in streets where the lights have been shot out. Wretched, bleeding men in hospital emergency rooms. Jails so teeming with miserable prisoners that is is a questions whether legal processes really mean much. buildings gutted by fire. Weapons everywhere.

Take all these ingredients. Mix them with fear, alarm, bewilderment, hatred, despair and hopelessness. The elixir that results is Detroit. Its chief distinction, of course, is that it comes in a larger bottle. The same elixir from Newark, Watts, Grand Rapids, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, Minneapolis and Cambridge, Md., has come in smaller vials.

Some comforting myths lie dead in the ashes of Detroit. Foremost among them is the myth that when rioting begins the troopers can seal off the ghettos in their misery and allow life in the better sections of town to go on as usual.

In Detroit the whole life of the city, practically its entire commerce, was brought to a standstill, and fear reached far into the loveliest suburbs.

The smell of smoke from an unknown source caused dread. The people went out and made sure their garden hoses were attached, as if these would do any good any against gasoline bombs. Automobiles were driven off the streets and locked in garages. Residents called the police and inquired about rumors of danger approaching in the night.

Some of them turned a lot of lights on in their houses. Others kept the rooms dark. Noises that otherwise would have gone unheeded brought anxious faces peering out of windows.

“No one knows where a moving mob, or a newly-formed one, is going to strike next,” a suburban reporter wrote in the “Detroit News.” “It’s a helpless feeling.”

The feeling of no escape could scarcely have been more aptly dramatized than by a worried act of Gov. George Romney in asking the state police to keep an eye on his suburban home to make sure that Mrs. Romney would be safe. — International Herald Tribune, July 28, 1967 —

Jun 1, 2017

1967: Argentine Opinion Polls to Replace Congress

By International Herald Tribune
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Buenos Aires — The military government plans to use the Argentine press and public opinion polls as a substitute for the congress which has been dissolved and the political parties which have been banned.

“We must find new channels of communication to the people now that we no longer have a representative democracy,” said Federico Frischknecht, the new secretary of broadcasting and tourism in an interview yesterday.

There has been growing concern here that the government wants to use the mass media to express only its views and to suppress even the cautious kind of criticism that now appears regularly in newspapers and magazines.

Mr. Frischknecht denied that he had any intention of becoming a kind of supercensor of Argentina’s press and broadcasting.

“The only way we have to establish channels to the people is through the newspapers and radio and television,” he said. “If we don’t make that communication, then we will have a totalitarian regime and this government does not want to be that.”

Many of his plans are still unformed, Mr. Frischknecht said, but his primary job, as he sees it, is to “see that the newspapers here get much more information about how the government is thinking, what the meaning of the government’s moves are, and even where the disagreements are centered.”

Mr. Fischknecht said that in the past, government press officials and government officials themselves have tried to hide many of their blunders “behind a lot of meaningless talk.”

“I am going to see to it,” he said, “that they now disclose full information.”

It is Mr. Frischknecht’s theory that “by helping the news media get absolutely truthful information without suppressing anything but security secrets we can be in better contact with the public and they with us.”

He said his office would expect public reaction to government plans and actions to appear in the press in the form of letters, editorials and other published comment.

“But we are also going to rely on public opinion polls like those that are used so effectively in the United States,” he said. — International Herald Tribune, June 1, 1967

World War I Centenary

May 28, 2017

1917: Pro-German “Gloaters” Listed by Federal Agents

By International Herald Tribune
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NEW YORK — Commenting upon the report that Federal agents were compiling a list of “gloaters”— i.e., Teuton sympathizers who exhibit satisfaction at reverses suffered by the Allies and the sinking of American ships — the “New Yorker Staats-Zeitung” says: “It has already been admitted that there exists no law under which such ‘gloaters’ — those rejoicing maliciously — may be punished.

“But what does not ex­ist now may come. Therefore, the warn­ing that he who, as an American, re­joices at the enemy’s victories — and Ger­many certainly is an enemy — or mali­ciously discusses possible misfortunes of the United States, displays the lack of loyalty that is liable to punishment.

“As for the ‘enemy aliens,’ however, who make merry over America’s under­takings, who praise Hindenburg as if he were not America’s arch-enemy, they will be interned — the warning is plain enough. So in the future don’t laugh, do not even grin; not only hold your tongue, but also close your lips.”—Ex­change Telegraph Company. — The New York Herald, European Edition, May 28, 1917

May 26, 2017

1967: U.S. War Toll Sets a Record

By International Herald Tribune
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SAIGON — The U.S. command reported today that American casualties last week were the highest of any week in the war in Vietnam. A total of 337 U.S. servicemen were killed in action, 31 listed as missing, and 2,282 were wounded — by far the heaviest losses in any one week.

Most of the deaths were attributed to the hard fighting in the vicinity of the demilitarized zone near the 17th Parallel. The week’s total raises past the 10,000 mark — unofficially to 10,271 — the number of U.S. servicemen killed in battle in Vietnam. The number of wounded now totals 61,425, with 616 listed as missing in action or captured.

The previous highest toll in any one week was 274 killed, which was recorded two weeks ago, and also during the week of March 18 during the fighting in War Zone C northwest of Saigon. U.S. spokesmen said 241 South Vietnamese troops were killed, along with 50 other allied soldiers. The South Vietnamese government does not release wounded figures.

The U.S. military reported that the enemy dead during the week ending Saturday night stood at 2,464, or a killed-in-action ratio of 3.9 to 1 favor of the allies.

[United Press International reported from Washington that Republican Rep. Joseph McDade had said he had kept a count of Communist casualties as released by the Pentagon and that they had been exaggerated. Rep. McDade said that for 1966-67 the Pentagon reported 276,326 enemy troops killed, captured or defected, while the Red buildup over the same period as reported by the Pentagon indicated there were 200,000 more enemy casualties than enemy troops.]

Last week, the U.S. reported 253 Americans killed, seven missing and 1,319 wounded. — International Herald Tribune, May 26, 1967

In Our Pages

May 23, 2017

1917: Mexico Faces Ruin as Strikes Spread

By International Herald Tribune
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NEW YORK — The New York Herald this morning prints an unusual despatch from its special correspondent “somewhere in Mexico,” and although, in accordance with the request of the United States Government, all matters appertaining to Mexico’s international relations are eliminated, the correspondent reports that numerous strikes are paralyzing all commercial and industrial activity in Mexico.

The most serious of these strikes, says the correspondent, is centred in the Tampico (State of Tamaulipas) oil fields, whence it is spreading southward like wildfire and soon will embrace all the oil regions, including the Tuxpan and Coatzacoalcos districts in Vera Cruz.

The strikes, if they turn out to be successful, will seriously interfere with the output of crude oil and its derivatives, which are being supplied to the Allies. This movement, which has Prussian intrigue written all over it, is evidently intended to destroy all the oil fields entirely.

The first strike was started about May 1 at the instigation of German agents, who infest all the oil fields. It was directed originally against the Eagle Oil Company, the property of the Pearson (Lord Cowdray) interests. Attempts to employ strike-breakers resulted in violence.

The Mexican rioters, who are now receiving $1.50 a day in gold from German agitators, went to such extremes that two United States gunboats which were then stationed at Tampico were reinforced by two more American gunboats from Vera Cruz.

The local authorities at Tampico were communicated with and advised that they must keep order at all costs. When this warning was unheeded, the ranking commander of the gunboat patrol went ashore and notified the authorities that unless they succeeded in keeping the strikers from the oil properties the United States naval forces would take it upon themselves to see that this was done. New York Herald Tribune, European Edition, May 23, 1917

In Our Pages

May 22, 2017

1967: Lyndon Johnson and the Intellectuals

By International Herald Tribune
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WASHINGTON, May 21. — President Johnson gathered some of the most luminous intellectuals on his payroll around a lunch table the other day to find out why he was having trouble communicating with the country’s luminous intellectuals.

The answer, which Mr. Johnson himself brought to the meeting, was Vietnam. But that was only the beginning of what is said to have been a spirited one-hour discussion of what he might do about the intellectuals and what they would have him do about the war.

The 16 men seated around the President in the White House Thursday were in themselves one of his proudest exhibits — evidence that teachers and scholars and men of letters had found a high place in his administration. He had called them together to see what ailed some of their distinguished colleagues in the intellectual community.

There were John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, a former college teacher and foundation president; William Gorham, assistant secretary to Mr. Gardner, an economist; Robert C. Wood, the under secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Charles M. Haar, assistant secretary in the same department of Harvard Law School.

From the State Department policy-planning council there was Zbigniew Brzezinski, a scholar in Communist affairs in Columbia University, and from the Pentagon came Harold Brown, the secretary of the Air Force, a physicist, and Alain Enthoven, assistant secretary of defense, an economist.

All three members of the Council of Economic Advisers sat at the table — Gardner Ackley, the chairman, from the University of Michigan; Arthur M. Okun, from Yale; and James S. Duesenberry of Harvard. So did economists Charles L. Schultze of the University of Maryland, the director of the budget; Francis M. Bator, a Harvard economist on the White House staff; and John A Schnittker of the University of Kansas, the under secretary of agriculture.

No one denied that there was a problem of communication influenced perhaps by the President’s style or personality but traceable basically to resentment of the war.

The extent of intellectual disaffection was described by some as not much greater than the disaffection of a noisy minority of the general population. — International Herald Tribune, 21 May, 1967

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