1943. Soviets Warn of Pending Summer Fighting on the Eastern Front

The Situation on the Russian Front

Paratroopers of the Black Sea Fleet navigate through a wire obstacle during the liberation of Novorossiysk, September 16, 1943 (Photo by Aleksey Mezhuyev – source)

The parentheses indicate text that did not pass Soviet censors for military security or propaganda reasons.

(For more, see the complete 1943 Moscow reports.)

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

May 18, 1943

President Roosevelt's special envoy to Russia, former ambassador Joseph Davies, is expected to arrive in Moscow either today or tomorrow. Mr. Davies reached Kuybyshev last night. As yet there has been no definite information here as to the purpose of his visit. The only thing we in Moscow know about the Davies mission is that he did not travel all this way merely for the ride.

The Soviet-German front was comparatively quiet again last night. Down in the Kuban, the Nazi forces have attempted a series of counterattacks but thus far have failed to pull off anything that even looks like an offensive.

Front dispatches say that these German counterattacks, however, are being made with ever increasing forces—both on the sector northeast of Novorossiysk and in the Lower Kuban river area. At Lysychansk, at the eastern end of the Donets river line, the Red Army is digging in after crossing the river and capturing important defensive positions.

(The Germans failed to push the Russians back even though they threw in substantial numbers of tanks and infantry.) Now the fighting as settled down to a 24-hour exchange of artillery, rifle, and machine gun fire. (This sector appears to be the most volatile of any front north of the Kuban. It is likely that we'll be hearing of more fighting in this area.)

Another of those warnings to the Red Army and the Russian people about the pending summer fighting appears again in today's Red Star. It's about the sixth such warning to be published in the Soviet press in the past ten days. The newspaper says "the thunder of battles will be roaring soon which will require the greatest courage and energy from the Red Army. We still have to shed no small quantity of blood in order to rout the Hitlerians . . . Not one inch of native soil must be given to the enemy if he attempts to attack. Every village and house must become a fortress and bastion of defense . . ."

This is the kind of talk we heard during the early days of the war and during the defense of Stalingrad.

These warnings are designed to make the entire nation conscious of the situation at the front—a situation which, because of military security, cannot be described in detail. However, it is well to note that these press warnings make no mention of plans for the Red Army.

While it is necessary to warn people of possible military action by the enemy, the home front does not need to be told of offensive action by their own forces.

So in considering the situation on the Russian front, you must also consider the possibilities of a Red Army offensive. Such a move by the Russians is not ruled out. However, the tone of the official press the past two weeks has given absolutely no hint that such an offensive is developing.

This is Bill Downs returning you now to CBS in New York.

1924. Mussolini Balks at Critics, Says All of Italy Supports Him

Mussolini Attacks Anti-Fascist Opponents

The facade of the "Autarchy" pavilion in Rome illuminated at night, featuring the Italian fascist imperial eagle above the words "Mussolini ha sempre ragione" ("Mussolini is always right") as Blackshirts guard the entrance, November 18, 1938 (source)

This article is part of a series of posts on how The New York Times covered the rise and fall of fascism in Europe. In 1924, Benito Mussolini spoke with a Times correspondent about opposition to fascism in Italy. He denied involvement in the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, a socialist politician who ran against Mussolini in the 1924 election as part of the Unitary Socialist Party. Matteotti had been murdered by fascists after questioning the election's legitimacy.

From The New York Times, October 13, 1924:

ALL ITALY WITH HIM, MUSSOLINI ASSERTS

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After Contact With the "People's Naked Soul" He Scorns Infinitesimal Opposition

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PROSPERITY BELIES FOES

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The Country, He Says, Pulses With Blood of New Life Fascism Has Infused

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ARGUES LIBERTY HAS LIMIT

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Is a Fine Thing, but Only Means Something If Coupled With Work and Duty

ROME, Oct. 12 — On his return from a triumphal tour of northern Italy through which the populations of every place he has visited greeted him with an enthusiasm bordering on delirium, Premier Mussolini received The New York Times correspondent today and made important statements about Italy's internal situation after the resolution passed by the Leghorn Liberal Congress, which has been universally interpreted as a stinging condemnation of Fascism.

Utter disregard of the opinions of the Liberals and determination to continue—alone if necessary—along the road toward the goal which Fascism has set for itself were the keynote of Signor Mussolini's declarations.

"The resolutions of the Leghorn Liberal Congress," he said, "which clearly reveal the anti-Fascist sentiment which animates about two-thirds of the Liberals, leave me quite cold and unaffected. I have just returned from a tour of northern Italy, where I have come into contact with the naked soul of the Italian people, of the true Italian people, of the humble Italian people who work and sweat and slave in silence for their country.

"With all due modesty I must confess that I have no word to express how moved I am by the truly wonderful reception they accorded me. Why, then, should I worry about a bare score thousand of those whom I have already described as 'melancholy zealots of super-constitutionalism'? Why should I worry about the decisions of a party which in the whole of Italy hardly counts as many supporters as I have in certain single cities?

Neither Seeks Nor Refuses Help

"The large majority of the country is behind me and my Government and I can today repeat what I have always declared, namely, that I neither seek nor refuse help from anyone.

"The work of reconstructing my country has only just begun, but it has already borne wonderful fruits. We will continue on our way without looking either to the right or left, always willing to accept the collaboration of any one who offers it in good faith and with the supreme interest of the country before his eyes, but also equally ready to march toward our goal as one.

"If the Liberals or any other party care to support us they are welcome. If they do not care to do so we can easily dispense with their services. We have the ability, strength and determination to carry on by ourselves and are ready to do so as long as the bulk of the country stands behind us, as it does at present. Our glory in the end will be all the greater.

"The resolution passed by the Liberals in Leghorn is not in itself anti-Fascist and most of its dictates might be accepted by us. What gives it its flavor of opposition is that it was preceded by violent speeches against the Fascist régime; that orators who tried to stick up for the Government were booed and hissed and that it does not contain a single word of recognition for what we have accomplished for Italy.

"We have undoubtedly made mistakes—every human being makes mistakes and I lay no claim to being a worker of miracles—but we have also accomplished much and it would have been only right for the Liberals to have acknowledged it. If, however, the Leghorn Congress accurately reflects the state of mind of the Liberals I am only sorry that they did not vote a resolution of clear cut opposition to my Government. Avowed enemies are always better than insidious friends."

As he said these words, which were spoken with great vehemence, Premier Mussolini abandoned himself to one of his rare gestures and pounded the table with his clenched fist.

Internal Situation Improving

Turning his attention to the internal political situation in general the Premier said that the improvement in the last few weeks had been so great that it could not have escaped even the most superficial observer.

"By this I do not mean to imply," he continued, "that it ever presented any real dangers, but there is no doubt that the gradual breaking down of the tissue of falsehoods that the Opposition press had woven around the work and intentions of my government has again raised us in public estimation to the place we occupied before the most deplorable Matteotti murder.

"The failure of the Opposition's shameless campaigning of lies and misrepresentations has strengthened the faith of those who never wavered in their allegiance to our régime. It has made fervent Fascisti of many who before supported us only half heartedly, and is attracting to our banners a steady stream of recruits who see in Fascism the only organization capable of giving their country peace, prosperity and happiness.

"Facts speak louder than words. This is a law from which the Opposition, try as it may, cannot escape. It may criticise this or that detail of our work, it may heap fraudulent evidence of our supposed misgovernment, but the facts are still there to give them the lie. The country knows that it is more prosperous than it ever was before. It feels the blood of the new life we have infused into it pulsing in its veins. It senses by a kind of instinct that we love our country better than our very lives and therefore is unwavering in its support despite anything the Opposition may do or say.

"Every accusation that the Opposition has brought against us has failed in almost miserable fashion. It first sought to prove complicity of the Government in the Matteotti murder, but that is a story which is now received with derision whenever it is repeated. Then it attempted to bring charges of graft and persecution against some of my collaborators, but the objects of its attacks promptly sued for libel and the accusations were withdrawn. Then it tried to show that the reforms introduced by my Cabinet were stupid and contrary to the best interests of Italy; but nobody listened because the increased prosperity and contentment of the country proves the contrary.

"Normalization" and "Liberty"

"All the Opposition's other attempts having failed, it has now entrenched itself behind two words, one of which is new-fashioned and ugly and the other is old-fashioned and beautiful. I refer to the words 'normalization' and 'liberty.' I have never been able to understand what normalization means, nor has any one succeeded in explaining it to me. It would appear to mean 'a return to normal conditions,' but I ask you to what normal conditions?

"Italy has just emerged from a war and a long period of strikes and internal disturbances, so that I can hardly believe that any one wishes to return to conditions which were considered normal before the advent of Fascism. What, then? Normalization means the advent of an era of peace and brotherhood and of strict observance of the laws? In that case I reply:

"'Both as head of the Government and as head of Fascism I am a most convinced believer in normalization in the whole of Italy. I wish Fascism to confer upon a united Italy for the first time in its history peace in strict observance of the laws, which is a thing that it never had before.'

"As for liberty, I think liberty is a fine thing, but it does not mean anything in the abstract, or rather it only means something if it is coupled with work and duty. The greatest trouble with the world as present is that men are too inclined to think of their rights and to forget their duties. I believe that  every one must be free to do anything he pleases, but only on condition that he remembers his duty is not to break the laws, not to make himself a nuisance, not to offend public morals, &c.

"In the same way every one must be free to think and say anything he pleases, but only if he fully understands his duty is not to libel his fellow-citizens, not to foment revolution, not to wound the religious susceptibilities of the country, &c.

"With this limitation, I believe every one should have the fullest liberty; but all the same, I believe that duties are more important than rights."

Liberty of the Press

Asked on what grounds the Opposition accused him of suppressing personal liberty in Italy, the Premier replied that most of such charges were based on the decree regulating the activities of the press. "But they forget," he added, "that the press had forfeited its right to complete liberty because it forgot its first duty—namely, to tell the truth to the best of its ability."

He thought, however, that the press in Italy even now had more freedom than in any other civilized country.

"I can state without any fear of contradiction," he said, "that if any paper in America printed even only a small part of what some Opposition papers are printing in Italy, it would have been bankrupt long ago by libel actions brought against it. I am an old newspaper man myself and I know.

"I admit, however, that the decree on the press has not worked well in practice, because by taking the control of the press out of the hands of the Magistrates and placing it in the hands of the political authorities it gave the Government the appearance of persecuting the Opposition press, even when its intervention was more than justified. Parliament, however, as soon as it reassembles will discuss more permanent and juridical measures for controlling the press."

On inquiry as to what he thought about the murder of the Fascist Deputy Casalini, he answered:

"I have nothing to say about that most deplorable affair, as the whole matter is in the hands of the judicial authorities, who, I know, will throw full light upon the matter. I wish to express my indignation, however, at the brutal way in which my dear friend and upright, faithful follower Casalini was suppressed.

"He filled many important posts in our organization, but was completely penniless when he died and totally dependent on the slender salary he received as a Vice President of Fascist corporations. He was one of the purest Fascisti, one of our most retiring and hardest workers, who had dedicated his life to the elevation of the lower classes. That is why his loss hurts so much. He went privately to see that they were properly looked after.

"Nor have I anything to say about Deputy Matteotti's murder and for identical reasons. I wish to state, however, that full light will be thrown on this affair also, no matter who may be implicated, and that the trial will be a great victory for Fascism.

"Despite the machinations of our enemies, despite the venomous campaign of the Opposition press, despite the platonic resolution of the Liberals, despite everything, Fascism is forging and will continue to forge its way ahead to ever more luminous destinies.

"In the last few days I have approved the plans for the erection in Rome of the 'Mole Littoria,' the greatest building in the world. It will be a tangible, immortal monument to Fascism, which even if the latter were to disappear today—which it will not—would leave its indelible mark upon Italy and perhaps upon the world."

1969. ABC News Correspondents React to Nixon's "Silent Majority" Speech

Analyzing Nixon's Speech on Vietnam

President Richard Nixon speaks about the Vietnam War on November 3, 1969 (source)

President Nixon's silent majority speech on the war in Vietnam was televised live on November 3, 1969. After the speech, the three major networks brought on their news correspondents to react. Frank Reynolds anchored the ABC News broadcast, which featured reporters Bob Clark, Bill Downs, Tom Jarriel, Bill Lawrence, John Scali, and Howard K. Smith. Former New York Governor Averell Harriman was also featured.

Vice President Agnew slammed the coverage, singling out comments made by Lawrence and Downs. He also complained of Marvin Kalb's analysis on CBS News.

The text below is adapted from here.

ABC News

November 3, 1969

FRANK REYNOLDS: The President has now concluded his speech. His second major speech of his Presidency, devoted to this single topic, the war in Vietnam. The President reviewed American involvement in the war and the efforts he has made since last January, his Inauguration, to bring the war to an end.

As expected, Mr. Nixon rejected unilateral immediate withdrawal, and he reiterated his willingness to negotiate an end to the war. He fixed the blame for prolonging the war squarely with the North Vietnamese.

None of this, of course, came as a surprise, but it must also be noted that the President, who said before the Moratorium on October 15 that he would not be influenced by it, has said just about the same thing tonight. There was in his speech no new initiative, no new proposal, no announcement of any more troop withdrawals and, in short, Mr. Nixon has taken a hard line, not only against the North Vietnamese but also against those in this country who oppose his policy. And he made an open appeal to the silent majority of Americans whom he no doubt feels are in the majority to support his policy.

With us in our studio tonight to examine Mr. Nixon's speech, we have as our guest the Honorable W. Averell Harriman, former Governor of New York, former ambassador, former Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs and, of course, during the Johnson Administration our chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks.

Ambassador Harriman will be interviewed a few moments from now by ABC State Department Correspondent John Scali. We shall also hear from our White House Correspondent Tom Jarriel, and I'll be joined in a discussion by my colleagues Bill Lawrence, our National Affairs Editor; Bob Clark, our Capitol Hill Correspondent; and Bill Downs, our Pentagon expert, all of whom will give us their views of anticipated reaction from their special areas. And I'll call on my colleague on the ABC Evening News, Howard K. Smith, for an analysis and comment. So, we'll have more, much more on President Nixon's speech to the nation tonight on the war in Vietnam right after this pause for station identification.

Back in our studios in Washington, we propose to spend the next 25 minutes or so in a discussion of President Nixon's speech to the nation tonight on the war in Vietnam and his hope for bringing it to an early end.

I want to call first on our White House Correspondent Tom Jarriel, who has tried to keep track of the President's preparation of his speech, and Tom, I'd like to ask you—we've all had a chance now, not only to hear the President's speech but to read it just before he went on—did Mr. Nixon hope to mute the voices of dissent in this country? Or was his primary goal, really, to rally the silent majority to his side?

TOM JARRIEL: Frank, I don't think there's any question at all about it that his speech tonight was to the silent majority. He feels that these are the people who elected him and these are the people who, tonight, he was reporting to. And his remarks were directed certainly to them and not to those who are the so-called peace groups in the country, or those who are opposed to his Administration.

Tonight, perhaps, he has given the silent majority in the country a brief history lesson in Vietnam, explaining how we got there. He has restated his determination to continue exactly where we are and firmed that determination up, and he projected a certain degree of optimism over it.

He also feels tonight that he has perhaps better armed the silent majority with more information about Vietnam. Given them some moral leadership against the opposing forces in the country who are opposing his course in Vietnam.

He has of course offered no quick solutions, pulled no rabbits from hats, and those who were looking for that certainly would be disappointed. The President tonight has perhaps polarized the attitude in the country more than it has been into groups who are either for him or who are against him.

REYNOLDS: He's confident, no doubt, that those who are for him will perhaps not be quite so silent in the near future. Tom, why, since there was really nothing new, nothing substantively new in his speech, why the big buildup for it? Why were we told 21 days ago that this speech was going to be given at this time tonight?

JARRIEL: It's certainly a very good question, and I still haven't seen the answer from the White House. They say that the President periodically wants to report to the people on the situation in Vietnam. They state that this speech was scheduled long before the October 15 Moratorium and it is a routinely scheduled affair, not having anything to do with tomorrow's [November 4] election.

Certainly he did feel, I'm sure, that the time had come to restate his position, and we were warned repeatedly against speculation at the White House against going out on a limb saying that there might be massive troop withdrawals or perhaps a standstill ceasefire, and tonight after seeing the speech we certainly know why we were warned against speculation.

REYNOLDS: The warnings against speculations, however, did not, I suggest, dampen the expectations of a great many people who did possibly anticipate something tonight.

Thank you, Tom. One of the men most qualified, certainly the most qualified, to speculate on North Vietnam's reaction to the speech is Governor Harriman. For some nine months, of course, he was our chief negotiator in Paris, face to face with the North Vietnamese across the conference table. He is now here in Washington face to face with our State Department Correspondent John Scali.

JOHN SCALI: Governor, could you tell us what is your immediate reaction to Mr. Nixon's address?

AVERELL HARRIMAN: Well, John, I'm sure you know that I wouldn't be presumptuous to give a complete analysis of a carefully thought-out speech of the President of the United States. I'm sure he wants to end this war, and no one wishes him well more than I do. But since I'm here I've got to answer your questions.

He approaches the subject quite differently from the manner in which I approached it. Let me first say, though, that I'm utterly opposed to these people that are talking about cutting and running; I'm against the Senator from New York's proposal—Senator Goodell—to get out our troops in a year, willy-nilly.

I think we should have a responsible withdrawal. But my emphasis has been, and I think it should be, on winning the peaceful contest that will come after the fighting stops.

The first thing we must do is to do everything we can to end the fighting, and I think that we could have made more progress in that direction. As far as winning the peaceful contest, we've got to look at who this government is—President Thieu. He is not representative of the people, in my opinion, from all that I've heard today.

You've probably noticed that probably the most popular man in South Vietnam, General Big Minh, proposed that there be a national convention and consider the future. He didn't define what it should be but it should combine what I've been saying, all of the non-Communist groups. These are very small groups that are in the government. We've been talking to them for two years about expanding his base, and he's contracted it this last time he was there. There was nothing said in this speech about that, which to me, is the all important question.

I don't think we can be successful in Vietnamizing the war, because I don't think they can carry the weight. People should consider that. We can reduce our forces, there's no doubt. We can take down a couple of hundred thousand troops, but we will have to leave probably for many years a very large force. If we attempt to reduce the fighting earnestly—reduce the fighting—we can possibly get the South Vietnamese to expand the base of their government and, to bring together, rally all of the non-Communist forces.

SCALI: President Nixon, Governor, says nothing at all about the advisability of some kind of ceasefire. Do you favor this as a step?

HARRIMAN: Well, I've said that I thought that we ought to have taken up early in November—you know the trouble also was—something he leaves out—was that we expected President Thieu to have his representative in Paris on November 2. And then progress would have been made.

The North Vietnamese had disengaged in the northern two provinces where the toughest fighting had been. Ninety percent of their troops were taken out. Half of those are gone; 200 miles north of the DMZ. And we never had a chance to talk about it.

They have stated, of course, that the February and March offensives were counter-offensives to our pressures. Now whether that's true, whether it isn't, one can judge, but they did give us to understand that if we wanted to accept the status quo then that we could make progress. If we tried to improve our position militarily then there would be—go on and talk.

Now even after this table question was settled, which I thought was a stall so as to—appeared to wait until President Nixon was in—maybe I was wrong. President Thieu said he wouldn't sit down privately.

We had to arrange for the four to sit down privately—

Now all these things have been left out, and I think they should be very carefully debated by the Congress. Particularly by the Foreign Relations Committee, and take a look at where we're going.

SCALI: But you think one of the prompt steps should be to initiate a ceasefire—to propose a ceasefire?

HARRIMAN: No, I think the first thing we should do is to begin to work right away to freeze the reduction in the fighting. To announce that we're going to keep this fighting down, insist that the South Vietnamese do the same, and demand the same thing on the other side. Now that—

SCALI: —ceasefire—

HARRIMAN: Working towards a ceasefire, right. If that is what the President proposes, I would certainly support it.

SCALI: Do you agree, Mr. Ambassador, that there would be a blood bath in South Vietnam if the North Vietnamese were to take over?

HARRIMAN: Well, you know, I may be entirely wrong, but I don't think, from the talks we had, that the North Vietnamese or their colleagues the VC want to have a military takeover. They want to see a settlement. I think they assume that over a period of years they could win out, but I'm sure they'd agree to having the South independent from the North for five or 10 years. They've already proposed that it not be what they call a Communist society—

SCALI: But do you see a reign of terror there?

HARRIMAN: Well, there might well be a reign of terror if there was a complete pullout. But there's no need for a ceasefire if we sit down with these people and try to work out the details.

Now the President gives us some inkling that he's had private talks. I've found that the North Vietnamese representative is a very responsible man, a member of the Politburo. And I would have liked to have seen some talks with him. Exploring with him, before we make proposals what proposition they have to make to us. I think we could have gotten more out of that than our making formal proposals.

Now these things—perhaps I'm wrong, but this is my first reaction: that we ought to give more thought to whom we're supporting, whom President Thieu represents, how much political influence he has in the country, and how we could win the political contest which is going to come after the fighting stops.

SCALI: Governor, you've had a distinguished career as a politician here in the United States. You were Governor of New York. So I don't hesitate to ask you a question of this kind. Do you think that the silent majority in this United States will rally behind the President as a result of his speech?

HARRIMAN: I don't know whether it's a silent majority or not, or silent minority, I just don't know.

You can pick any poll you want; 67 percent was for the Goodell resolution, according to one poll. There's another poll that shows that 64 percent of the people want to see the government in Saigon changed. There are other polls which show that the President has the support of the people. I think he's got the full support of the people.

He's certainly got my support in hoping that he will develop a program for peace. But I think that we've gone so far in Vietnam that this has to be discussed. It cannot be accepted without a lot more explanation, and it seems to me the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would be a very fine place for that discussion.

SCALI: I gather, then, Governor, you were somewhat disappointed in the President's approach.

HARRIMAN: Well, I wouldn't say I was disappointed. I was not surprised. This is about what I thought he would say from the position that he'd previously taken, and he's followed the advice of many people who believe this, many people who advised President Johnson, which wasn't successful, and I'm not sure that this advice will be successful in the future.

We heard this evening saying the war was being won now, anyone who is a neutralist is stupid. Now, has the President abandoned his end of the military—or he ruled out May 14—military solution—

SCALI: Well, Governor—

HARRIMAN: There are so many things we'd like to know about this, but I want to end by saying I wish the President well. I hope he can lead us to peace. But this is not the whole story that we've heard tonight.

SCALI: Governor Harriman, thank you very much. Frank?

REYNOLDS: Thank you, Governor, and thank you, John. Now I want to turn to some of my colleagues who are here with me. Bill Lawrence, our National Affairs Editor; Bob Clark, our Capitol Hill Correspondent; and Pentagon Correspondent Bill Downs.

Bill [Lawrence], it's your job to take the temperature of the country. Tell me, how's the country going to react to this speech?

BILL LAWRENCE: Well, Frank, it is fair to talk about this politically because Mr. Nixon was out on the stump in New Jersey last week, inviting people to listen in. Politically I'm not sure why he did it because there was nothing new in it politically, and its impact will be on those who are moved by words if not by deeds.

His appeal was not to the youth who've been raising trouble but rather to the silent majority, if they are a majority, who presumably have been with him all along. But there wasn't a thing new in this speech that would influence anybody to vote tomorrow or six months from now in a different way than his mood was set.

Now the Democrats engaged in a little one-up-manship on this speech, after the White House announced it three weeks ago. They started very vigorously to build up hope about what this speech might contain in the way of some new move towards substantively ending the war sooner. They talked about a ceasefire, they talked about greater reductions in troops. Nothing happened.

REYNOLDS: You think they were mousetrapping him?

LAWRENCE: I think that was their purpose perhaps, and I think to that extent this speech certainly did not meet the expectations of those who turned on their television or radio sets and expected to learn some big new move in Vietnam, because it just wasn't there.

REYNOLDS: Bob Clark, I have the impression that the ceasefire that's been observed on Capitol Hill of late might well be shattered as a result of the President's speech tonight, because he did not announce any major change in his policy. Do you agree?

BOB CLARK: Well, I would be very much surprised if it didn't shatter resoundingly tomorrow, Frank. I think at the very least tonight too, the President passed a flaming torch to Senator Fulbright, who can be expected to go galloping off with it with new hearings on Vietnam before the Foreign Relations Committee.

Those hearings, of course, were announced for last month and were postponed by Senator Fulbright to give the President a chance to make his speech tonight. Obviously now they will be rescheduled, and they are designed as specific hearings on specific proposals for bringing the war to an end and—on the Goodell proposal, among others—to get American troops out by a specified date.

So it's very clear tonight that the gauntlet will be flung down to the President at those new hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee.

REYNOLDS: Well, there seemed to be a note of—you might call it combativeness—in the President's speech tonight too. Calling on the silent majority to rally round the flag and stand with him.

CLARK: Well, I think undoubtedly, Frank, that is true but there will be plenty of takers on the Hill and you'll hear them tomorrow morning. Not only from what we might call the militant doves, the ones who have been in the forefront for years with efforts to end the war, across the country. This cuts across party lines—many who have been moderates on the Vietnam war in the past who now feel more and more urgently about the need to set a termination date on the war. That, of course, is what the President failed tonight to do.

REYNOLDS: Well, Bill Downs, you cover the Pentagon. What do you think the reaction there is? They probably are not too unhappy about this speech tonight.

BILL DOWNS: No, I think that the Pentagon has come off pretty good. If there's been any wonder about the influence of Secretary of Defense Laird in the Administration and whether the State Department or Dr. Kissinger or who else is shaping the President's thoughts, why I think Mr. Laird comes out pretty well.

I think the sort of key—from the Pentagon viewpoint—the key statement was that our defeat or humiliation in South Vietnam would provoke recklessness among the great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world conquest.

Now, this is the Joint Chiefs of Staff's argument, the Pentagon line, if you will, that in a world of nations in a state of international anarchy, military power is the only answer to our security and to our freedom and the way we want to shape this world. It is not really the domino theory all over again, but it reminds me of what Dean Rusk used to talk about. The credibility of the American commitment. It must be honored.

CLARK: This is strictly Rusk policy, the way I see it. McNamara policy. Although they won't like that on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It does one thing, it allays any fears that people might have had around the world that the Nixon Administration might be heading us for a neutral or isolation course, but it's certainly not in this speech.

REYNOLDS: Bill Lawrence, I want to put this to you. Mr. Nixon is an extremely skillful politician. I don't think there's any doubt about that. Do you believe that there is possibly a full appreciation in the White House now of the depth of the discontent in the country, or of the disenchantment with the war, the weariness, really, of the war?

LAWRENCE: Well, Frank, I don't know whether understanding is the right word. I don't believe the White House believes that there is deep discontent. I'm not, you know, really sure, despite Mr. Nixon's victory for the Presidency last time, that he is so big a politician as you suggest.

REYNOLDS: Well, he's come a long way—

LAWRENCE: Well, true—but he hasn't followed up. He hasn't used the powers of the Presidency. A good politician would have taken the momentum of the election and Inauguration and come forward with a program of some kind. He wouldn't be explaining Vietnam now. You would have done that in February. He had all this time to think—

DOWNS: Bill, in fairness to the President, would you say that he said what he did tonight because there simply is no program that he would not regard as a cut-and-run program? That, then, is his basic dilemma?

LAWRENCE: Yes, but in his campaign he said he had a plan that would end the war and win the peace. He said that again tonight. I still don't know where it is.

REYNOLDS: Could I interrupt both you gentlemen? I have to agree with Bill. I think Mr. Nixon's a consummate politician. I think that around Christmastime he's going to announce a withdrawal of possibly more than 40,000 to 50,000 in a cut, and I think that Vice President Ky, whose crystal ball has been pretty good, said that by the end of 1970 there would be 180,000 Americans out of Vietnam. I think that if you're building for the 1970 election you don't blow your game all in one speech, and I—

LAWRENCE: The President . . . playing that game.

REYNOLDS: Yes, and we must also recognize that this speech tonight is given just 10 days before another great big demonstration that will be all over this town, you know. Apparently Mr. Nixon has decided not to be influenced by that. It may well be that he feels there is more political advantage in giving the back of his hand to the demonstrators and standing up there as the embattled President holding firm against the onslaught of public opinion.

CLARK: Frank, I would think that one immediate spinoff from the President's speech tonight is that you can now expect substantially more Congressional participation in that November 15 Moratorium. Many members of Congress who've been reluctant to involve themselves in what is shaping up as a more violent demonstration or a demonstration that may produce some serious violence will now feel obligated just to reply to the President.

REYNOLDS: Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. History of course will give us, I suppose, the proper perspective with which to view Mr. Nixon's speech tonight.

Earlier this evening on the ABC Evening News, Howard K. Smith referred to it as a battle. A battle for public opinion. Well, Howard, how do you think the President fought the battle tonight?

HOWARD K. SMITH: Frank, you're talking about history. The most impressive thought that came to me from this speech was how much alike all Presidents who have had to deal with Vietnam have thought about it.

I was looking through President Truman's memoirs today, and I ran across a prediction by him that if Indo-China, which Vietnam is part of, were to fall, other countries would soon follow, and therefore he was not willing to see it fall.

Truman and Eisenhower, who disagreed on many things, joined together to sponsor a citizens' committee supporting President Johnson's intervention in Vietnam.

And I recall a news conference in March, before his death, when President Kennedy was asked a question about it and he said if the Communists took South Vietnam their writ would soon run all the way to India and, who knows, perhaps all the way to the Middle East. So, he said, I can't agree to it.

Up until now Mr. Nixon has not endorsed the action of his predecessor, and even tonight he disagreed with his tactics and the way it's been handled, but he did endorse the general goal of not yielding to the opposing side and seemed even unperturbed at the thought, which he mentioned himself, that people are now calling Johnson's war Nixon's war.

I think for the first time I have a strong impression which I didn't have a couple of weeks ago when the senators who had criticized him had begun to support him. I for the first time have the impression he's not going to be hustled or yield to anything but a negotiated settlement involving free elections which probably the Communists couldn't win.

I guess that by his speech tonight he's let himself in for some very rough handling in that next Moratorium demonstration that's coming. I would guess with Bob Clark that a topic grown dormant will now come aflame in Senator Fulbright's committee, and possibly on the floor of the Senate.

He got his message across to the people he's counting on, called the silent majority. But what matters is whether he got his point across to Hanoi. That there will be no surrender in any guise and that they will have to negotiate. And as has been so often said tonight, we'll just have to wait and see.

REYNOLDS: Thank you, Howard, and thank you all, gentlemen. The President said tonight—I think perhaps this certainly expresses his view with respect to the Moratorium upcoming and the past demonstrations—if a vocal minority, however fervent its cause, prevails over reason and the will of the majority, this nation has no future as a free society.

That apparently is the guide that is going to guide the President as he tries to end this war and also deal with the dissent at home.

This is Frank Reynolds in Washington. Good night.

1969. CBS News Correspondents React to Nixon's "Silent Majority" Speech

Nixon Addresses the Nation on the War in Vietnam

President Richard Nixon delivers a live address from the Oval Office on November 3, 1969 (source)

This text is adapted from a transcript of the CBS News broadcast which aired following President Nixon's address to the nation on November 3, 1969. It features Dan Rather, Marvin Kalb, and Eric Sevareid. Later, Vice President Agnew would single out Kalb's analysis as well as commentary by Bill Downs and Bill Lawrence on ABC News, dismissing it as "instant analysis and querulous criticism."

CBS News

November 3, 1969

DAN RATHER: The President of the United States has just addressed the nation live, direct from the White House. These appeared to be the major points of his approximately 32-minute address:

President Nixon said he has adopted a plan for withdrawing all United States ground troops from Vietnam; however, he said he would not, could not, commit himself to a fixed timetable for troop reductions. President Nixon said his secret plan for complete withdrawal has been worked out in conjunction with the Saigon government. He made no mention of any further troop withdrawals after the current pull-out of 60,000 men by December 15.

He flatly rejected demands that he should end the war at once by ordering an immediate and complete withdrawal. The President listed several heretofore secret attempts at peace. He said he had tried, since being elected President, including one personal letter to Ho Chi Minh, a letter which President Nixon said was answered only three days before Ho's death, and the answer was, in the President’s opinion, discouraging.

Those are the highlights. Next, an effort to put those highlights in perspective. A brief CBS News examination of the President's speech.

With me in our CBS studios are my colleagues CBS Diplomatic Correspondent Marvin Kalb and our National Correspondent Eric Sevareid.

Marvin Kalb, in your judgment, and let's preface this by saying, as always, this is a difficult bit of guess-work to immediately follow a Presidential address—what in your judgment is going to be the reaction in this country to the President's speech and, after dealing with that, then overseas?

MARVIN KALB: Well, first, Dan, I'm not sure, but it seemed to me first that the speech cut no new ground. It seemed a soft-spoken straight-in-the-eye restatement of policy that clearly is not aimed at that group of Americans dubbed by Vice President Agnew as "an effete corps of impudent snobs."

Rather it was aimed, as the President put it, at you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans. Presumably those who do not demonstrate; those who want an honorable end to the war but have difficulty defining what an honorable end is and are willing to trust the President to get it.

Those who are not so willing will point to the absence of a new announcement on troop withdrawals or a definite timetable for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces and they may disagree with the President's judgment that the Ho Chi Minh letter was a flat rejection of his own letter. The Ho Chi Minh letter contained, it seems, some of the softest, most accommodating language found in a Communist document concerning the war in Vietnam in recent years.

The President's policy is best summed up in one of his phrases—a negotiated settlement, presumably in Paris, if possible; Vietnamization if necessary. Tonight a White House source issued what seemed like a veiled threat to change the character of the Paris talks, perhaps even to break them up, if the Communists, he said, continue to refuse to negotiate seriously.

RATHER: Eric Sevareid, this speech was widely anticipated to be something of a watershed for the Nixon Administration. What is your gut reaction to it?

ERIC SEVAREID: Well, Dan, this, it seems to me, is an appeal to the American people for unity and for support of their President, done in a low-keyed but very fervent manner. As you've said, or Marvin said, nothing of a substantial nature or dramatic nature that is new; he is standing his ground; he is offering no ceasefire, no public fixed timetable for withdrawal, no announcement of a new contingent of troop withdrawals. He is asking for trust to let him have flexibility and a free hand.

I would think that on its face this speech would not draw the fangs of some of the leading critics, particularly here in the capital, some like Senator Fulbright and others, who were ready, if there was something given them of a definite nature in this speech, to cease their criticism and to support the President. I would doubt now that they would do anything but keep on with the attack.

It may give a little more strength to that demonstration scheduled for the middle of the month. But I can't escape the feeling—and it's only a feeling—that this is not all we're going to get this fall. That there may well be an announcement of a quite sizable troop withdrawal and fairly soon, possibly before these mid-November demonstrations. I have no evidence for this at all except the feeling that it cannot rest where he has left it.

I think it indicates that he believes the majority of opinion in this country is still riding with him, and

that he does have more time. And I would think that if there is to be another announcement of a troop withdrawal with numbers, that that may tell us a good deal more about the time scale in which he is thinking, the magnitudes of his thought about winding down the war.

Philosophically, where this war is concerned he doesn't seem to be any different from Mr. Johnson or Secretary Rusk. He adopts the notion that on a worldwide basis freedom is indivisible, the notion that an American pullout would collapse confidence in American leadership all over the world. It's the test-case idea that failure there would set Communists into action in many other areas, even in the Western Hemisphere, he says.

This, of course, is hotly debated by philosophers of foreign policy, and has been for a long time. And one would think if all that were true, if this war and our presence there was of this cosmic and universal importance then the war should be won.

But he has said it is not to be—a military victory is not to be sought. And in that, it seems to me, there lies a profound illogic; that it's over the dam, he is trying to get us out.

RATHER: Eric, in your judgment is the President going to win this gamble that he can hold a majority of American public opinion behind him for this policy of winding down the war slowly, deliberately, orderly, and, as he sees it, honorably?

SEVAREID: I personally hope he can. I don't know that he can. I think this speech would have been effective last spring, but it's late in the day; and this is why I think something else is going to come and very soon. I do not believe it can rest here. But this is only my horseback opinion of one man. And I could be wrong.

RATHER: Marvin Kalb, a horseback opinion of one man on what the effect is going to be on the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong?

KALB: Well, it seems to me that what they could say, and they may not be too far off base in this kind of judgment, is that the President has not given them anything terribly new to chew on; but I don't really feel that the President was talking to them.

As he pointed out, he was talking very much to the great, silent majority of the American people, and the North Vietnamese haven't been given anything, really, in this speech to chew on, not at all. It seems to me, if anything, it's going to be somewhat negative in terms of the President's judgment of the Ho Chi Minh letter. Ho Chi Minh is now dead; he is a god in North Vietnam at least, and certainly has good deal of strength elsewhere in the Communist world.

The President defines this [Ho's letter] as a flat rejection, and yet you have a number of statements in here which suggest considerable flexibility in negotiating posture. This may not yet be apparent in Paris, but it certainly is there in the language of this Ho Chi Minh letter.

RATHER: Gentlemen, we're running short on time, but very briefly, do you see this speech as an indication that President Nixon and those around him still feel that the war is winnable in the sense that we can keep from losing? Do you agree, Eric?

SEVAREID: Yes, I think that's what he's trying to do, to keep from an outright open humiliating loss.

RATHER: Marvin?

KALB: Very much. I agree with that completely. He apparently feels the great effect that this might have on domestic life in this country; and he fears that almost as much as he does the implications abroad.

RATHER: It may be, then, that the pertinent section of this speech was when the President said: "Let us understand North Vietnam cannot humiliate or defeat the United States, only Americans can do that." Gentlemen, thank you very much. Good night.

1945. Reporters In Japan Limited By Networks

Updates on Foreign Correspondents in Occupied Japan

Bill Downs' Certificate of Identity issued on July 17, 1945

From Radio Daily, October 16, 1945, pp. 1, 5 [PDF]:

Reporters In Japan Limited By Networks

The four major U. S. webs will be allowed two correspondents each in Japan and one each in the Philippines effective Oct. 27, according to a directive issued by Gen. Douglas MacArthur which puts a ceiling on the number of newsmen of all media who will be permitted to remain in the areas under his command. The directive also reverts all correspondents to civilian status.

For MBS, Don Bell, now in Japan, will go to Manila as the web's correspondent in the Philippines. Bob Brumby, now vacationing after a tour in the Pacific, will go to Japan and will be joined by Jack Mahon who is now on his way home for a rest.

William J. Dunn and Bill Downs will cover for CBS in Japan while John Adams stays on as the web's representative in the Philippines.

Of NBC's crew in the area, George Thomas Folster and Guthrie Janssen are assigned to Nippon, with Joe Laitin in the Philippines. Merrill Mueller has returned from Japan and Joe R. Hainline is returning to the U. S. with units of the Pacific fleet.

American's correspondent under the new system will be Frederick B. Opper and Larry Tighe in Japan, and Dave Brent in the Philippines. Norman Paige has come back from Tokyo and John Hooley, recently from Manila, will probably go to Europe after a vacation.

MacArthur's order will permit one correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Co. in Japan and one in the Philippines. BBC will be allowed two newsmen in Japan.

United Press article, August 1945:

Jap Jail for Unwanted Reporters Is Warning

New York — (UP) Bill Downs, Columbia Broadcasting System reporter on Okinawa, reported last night a warning from an American Air Transport Command general that war correspondents or anyone else who arrived with the air-borne occupation forces in Japan without official orders would be turned over to Japanese police at the airfield.

Downs said the general made the statement while addressing 200 men of his command at an Okinawa air strip. Several war reporters will in the group.

"You will take no war correspondents with you," the general told the crews. "Those are orders from General Headquarters."

Then, Downs reported, "the general made a peculiar statement for an American about to occupy Japan. He said, 'Any man found on their airfield without official orders to be there will be turned over to the Japanese police for safekeeping until the main body of our troops arrive.'"

1970. Bill Downs Accused of Left-Wing Bias by Florida Politician

Downs Accused of Bias for Vietnam Coverage

Bill Downs reporting as the Pentagon correspondent for ABC News in the 1960s

This letter by Florida state senator John L. Ducker was written to Bill Downs in 1970. In it, Ducker accuses Downs of bias and concludes by saying "Radical Liberals in the news media are the real 'polarizers' of America."

The letter was in response to an ABC Evening News segment about Defense Secretary Melvin Laird's testimony on the unsuccessful mission to rescue American prisoners of war in North Vietnam.

Downs responded to Ducker with a transcript of the broadcast. He also referenced the letter in an opinion piece one month later, making note of its rhetorical similarities with Vice President Spiro Agnew's attacks on the news media.

The text from the letters and transcript is taken verbatim, including errors.

November 25, 1970

Mr. Bill Downs
ABC
1130 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York, 10010

Dear Sir:

We have all heard a great deal about "polarization of America" in the news media lately. This letter is concerned with the real "polarizers", the left wing commentators and self-styled pundits.

On the 11:00 P.M. News of November 24th, the local ABC television outlet aired a segment showing Mr. Melvin Laird discussing the recent air raids on North Viet Nam and the attempt to rescue our all-but-forgotten prisoners of war. Suddenly Mr. Laird's voice was cut off, although the picture showed him as he continued to speak, and a different voice interrupted criticizing Mr. Laird for making a "political football" out of the Viet Nam war and the prisoners of war. This other voice signed off with the announcement that it was Bill Downs speaking.

Now just who is Bill Downs? Who is he, to interject his puerile political partisanship on a national network? I and millions of other viewers object to Downs and others of his ilk pontificating their snivelling sentiments as the ultimate in wisdom. I personally, and millions like me, would like to answer Mr. Downs on national television because we are as intelligent as he is and know as much about what is going on as he does. We do not need a nursemaid to lead us into the "correct paths" of thinking. We can do our own. Who does the thinking for such as Downs? Who tells him what to say? He who pays the piper calls the tune. He who pays Mr. Downs tells him what to say. To shallow minds this may mean that somebody tells Mr. Downs specifically what to say. This is probably not what happens, but an employer can hire the "right" people who say the "right" things, who agree with them in their political left wing feelings and who see to it that those who air those views are the ones who are benefited and promoted over those who do not.

The fact that Mr. Downs works for ABC does not give him the right to make repulsive remarks about those whom he happens to dislike and with whom he happens to disagree. We can all listen to and judge the Honorable Mr. Laird without help from Mr. Downs or anybody else. Radical Liberals, like Downs and the officers of ABC are the ones who for the past several months have been criticizing Vice President Agnew and even the President of the United States for "polarizing" America.

Speeches of our elected and appointed officials can and should be answered by officials and representatives of the opposit party. This is not polarization. How can a nasty crack by a little pipsqueak like Downs be answered? It is frustrating and infuriating that many who listen and are helpless to reply.

Radical Liberals in the news media are the real "polarizers" of America.

Sincerely yours,

John L. Ducker

Downs responded:

December 8, 1970

Senator John L. Ducker
[address]
Orlando, Florida 32801

Dear Senator:

Attached is a verbatim transcript made by the Pentagon of my November 24th broadcast to which you took such unwarranted and undignified exception.

I have checked with the office of my good friend Secretary Laird and was informed that he agreed with my conclusion that the American POW's in Hanoi's hands should not become anyone's political football. I could find no one in the Defense Department who regarded the report as "repulsive", as you put it.

Sincerely,

Bill Downs

Downs attached the official Defense Department summary and transcript of the night's news broadcasts (errors included):

RADIO-TV DEFENSE DIALOG

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1970 (BROADCASTS OF NOV 24)

SUMMARY OF REPORTS CONTAINED IN THIS ISSUE

John HART reports there is still much talk on Capital Hill about the recent bombing raid and rescue mission in NVN over the last weekend. HART also reports there were no reported US deaths in VN during the last 24 hours. Bob SCHEFER comments on the POW camp mission - says the maneuver was partially politically oriented. He says stale intelligence is nothing new for the was in SE Asia and that part of the problem was not being able to know what was in the prison camp cells. Secretary of Defense Melvin LAIRD also said the same thing about not being able to know what was in those camps - that reconnaissance planes cannot photograph through the roofs of buildings. Robert GORALSKI reports the CALLEY trial is recessed until after the Thanksgiving holiday after hearing 21 witnesses thus far. John CHANCELLOR reports on the reaction of some POW wives - most of them interviewed thought this was a tremendously brave effort and that it was good to show Hanoi the US is concerned about their POW's. Bill DOWNS reports Secretary LAIRD had a full day on Capital Hill today testifying before the Senate. Two US lawyers who were in Hanoi during POW mission believe the US knew there were no US POW's in that camp but pulled the mission off to show Hanoi our strength. There are more reports on drugs and the returning VN veteran.

ABC EVENING NEWS ABC-TV 6:30 PM

Laird Answers Questions At Senate

FRANK REYNOLDS: This has been another long day for Secretary of Defense Melvin LAIRD.

Earlier today, he went before the Senate Armed Services Committee to defend that commando raid on a prisoner of war camp near Hanoi.

Even though no prisoners were rescued, he said the raid showed that the American government does care about the prisoners of war.

Late this afternoon, Secretary LAIRD faced another hearing, this one before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which was opened to live television coverage and was broadcast here on ABC.

The questioning by the Senators was sharp and detailed, with the nation watching and listening...

BILL DOWNS: The Senators wanted to know whether Secretary LAIRD had ordered the dramatic mission impossible to Sontay.

With faulty intelligence, which uselessly risked the lives of the men of the task force, and also possible ruined any chance of successful negotiation in Paris.

Senator FULBRIGHT questioned the intelligence.

FULBRIGHT: ...bad idea simply because it did fail - there was something wrong with the intelligence.

(Two men speaking at once)...

SECRETARY LAIRD: This was not a failure Mr. Chairman and I would...

FULBRIGHT: Well, it was a failure (both talking at once).

LAIRD: This mission was carried on by a group of men that performed the mission with one-hundred percent excellence.

FULBRIGHT: The men performed perfectly but who ever directed it didn't I mean.

LAIRD: These men knew full well the chance that there might not be POW's there.

FULBRIGHT: I'm not complaining about the men, but those men... (both talking at once)

LAIRD: I would like to tell your Mr. Chairman that we have made tremendous progress as far as intelligence is concerned.

(Laughing in background)...

But we have not been able - we have not... (both speaking at once)

LAIRD: We have not been able to develop a camera that sees through the roofs of buildings - the intelligence on where troops were located in the area was excellent.

The intelligence on SAM sites, the intelligence on anti-aircraft positions, every bit of intelligence proved to be correct.

The only intelligence that we did not have was the pictures inside the cells.

And this was something that every men - every man on this mission knew too.

This is something that I personally discussed with them and discussed with our intelligence people that were working on this mission.

Senator GORE, I felt the risk was worth it.

And I recommended this mission and I take the responsibility, but I cannot fault the intelligence that was supplied to us - we do not have men on the ground in NVN.

More than 900 GI's Missing Or Held In NVN

DOWNS: The tragic fact remains there are still more than 900 Americans, prisoners or missing in NVN.

Their fate deserves better than to become a domestic, political football.

Ducker responded with the final word:

December 11, 1970

Dear Mr. Downs:

After reading the transcript, which you enclosed with your December 8th letter, I do not retract a word of my letter. I think that I was absolutely right.

Sincerely yours,

John L. Ducker

1947. Anecdote from the American Zone of Germany

Downs Reports from West Germany

"The hunger-winter of 1947, thousands protest in West Germany against the disastrous food situation (March 31, 1947). The sign says: We want coal, we want bread." (source)

From Building magazine, December 3, 1947:

MADE IN GERMANY

Bill Downs, who went back over the American invasion route through Europe to gather human interest material for the C.B.S. Documentary Unit's "We Went Back," heard the following Nazi propaganda "anecdote" from various individuals in the American Zone of Germany:—

A hungry burgher heard that suspected Nazis, being held for questioning by the denazification courts, are relatively well fed. So he decided to get himself arrested.

On his first try he entered a baker's shop and intoned: "Heil Hitler." The baker silenced him, then whispered: "So you're one of us! Here's a loaf of bread."

The bread gone, the burgher repeated his effort in a butcher's shop. The butcher shouted: "Silence, you fool," then whispered: "Here are some sausages, sieg heil."

On his third try the now baffled burgher approached a policeman and shouted: "Heil Hitler." The policeman glowered, and growled: "It is forbidden to say such things." Then quietly he added: "There's a meeting to-night. Will you join us?"

1934. Mussolini Claims 21st Century Will Be "Blackshirt Era"

Mussolini's Long-Term Plan for Italy

Benito Mussolini delivering a speech in the 1930s (source)

This article is part of a series of posts on how newspapers covered the rise of fascism.

From The New York Times, March 19, 1934:

60-YEAR PLAN FOR ITALY

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Mussolini Says 21st Century Will Be 'Blackshirt Era'

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

ROME, March 18 (AP) — A sixty-year program of internal expansion which in the twenty-first century will give Italy the "primacy of the world" was outlined today by Premier Benito Mussolini. That century, he said, would be a "Black Shirt era."

"In this age of plans," he said, "I want to lay before you a plan not for five years or ten years but for 60 years, carrying on to the twenty-first century, at which time Italy will have the primacy of the world.

"Italy has no future in the west and north. Her future lies to the east and south in Asia and Africa. The vast resources of Africa must be valorized and Africa brought within the civilized circle. We demand that nations which have already arrived in Africa do not block Italian expansion at every step."

Here, it was said, he was referring particularly to France.

Internally, Premier Mussolini said, the immediate objectives were the completion of swamp reclamation by 1940, new aqueducts and highways, plans to re-create Italian municipalities, complete rebuilding of 500,000 rural houses and repairs to 930,000 rural houses, a work of thirty years.

"Every rural person will have a clean and healthful house," he asserted. "Only in this way can the rush to the city be combated."

In the midst of great applause he said fascism "became universal in 1929."

"But in this phenomenon," he continued, "it is necessary to distinguish positive from negative fascism. Positive fascism knows how to destroy the old and rebuild the new, whereas negative fascism knows only how to destroy."

Significantly absent was any reference to relations with Germany, which have cooled over the question of Austrian independence. Regarding Germany's demands for arms he said:

"To pretend to eternally keep a nation like Germany disarmed is pure illusion, unless one has the objective of preventing by force of arms Germany's eventual rearmament. This game has a supreme stake, the lives of millions of men and the destiny of Europe. We have advanced the thesis that, without looking into infinity, one must recognize German rearmament."

"Reform of the League of Nations (demanded by Mussolini) has been almost universally accepted," he asserted, "and will be made when disarmament is settled.

"Heavily armed States will not disarm. An Italian memorandum states the problem in all of its reality. Europe has need of mutual comprehension or it is heading for its twilight."

Parliamentarism, he declared, could not fall lower than it has. Countries where it exists, he said, are in agony, and it is inevitable that the "corporative system" should supersede it.

The Premier concluded his speech with a stirring appeal to his followers to retain their faith and enthusiasm, saying "the creed of the bourgeoisie is egoism, while that of fascism is heroism."

An ovation lasting many minutes, during which the assembly sang the Fascist hymn, followed his speech.

1941. American Red Cross Nurses Recall U-Boat Attack on Dutch Ship

The Sinking of the SS Maasdam

Nazi Commander Reinhard Suhren aboard the U-564 submarine which sank the SS Maasdam in 1941 (source)

United Press article from July 1941:

Nurses Agree Sea Disaster Isn't Fun

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Americans Whose Ship Was Torpedoed Say They've Had Enough Adventure

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

By WILLIAM DOWNS

United Press Staff Correspondent

London — (UP) Excitement and adventure are all right if that's what you want, a group of American Red Cross nurses agreed last night, but being cast into the heaving Atlantic in life jackets during a cold rainstorm is "too much of a good thing."

The nurses were among the survivors of the Dutch steamer Maasdam, torpedoed in mid-Atlantic late last month by a German submarine.

Nine of the American nurses have arrived in London and six others were known to be safe.

Dr. John Gordon, head of the American Red Cross-Harvard hospital, disclosed that two nurses were still missing but said "we are not alarmed because in the confusion there is a possibility they are all right.

Lifeboat Sunk

Wearing borrowed Red Cross field uniforms, five of the nine nurses brought here told how their lifeboat sank in the rough seas, how eleven American marines en route to duty at the American embassy took care of them, and how they were "scared to death" by the sea battle they witnessed.

Shirley Rolph of Jamaica, N. Y., however, was not scared at first.

"Too much was happening to be frightened," she said. "We knew that trouble was around because depth charges were being dropped. Then I was knocked off my feet when the torpedo hit. Debris showered down and dazed me. I looked a mess. All of our faces were black."

Miss Rolph said the captain of another ship in the convoy which picked them up was "the most startled man in the seven seas" when he learned that a "bunch of women were swarming over the rails like pirates."

Praises Marines

Lillian Evans of Cambridge, Mass., told how "a big wave capsized our boat" and reported that "the marines were really wonderful, keeping calm and helping row the other boats." Her life jacket kept her afloat and she swam 200 yards to the ship which picked her up.

Lavinia Fulton of Amherst, Mass., in the same boat, didn't try to swim but hung on until she was picked up. When the torpedo hit, she said, the nurses put on their life jackets first and then secured their money and passports, "which we all saved." She said "We didn't hear the explosion but rather felt it."

Her experience aboard the overcrowded ship which picked them up, Miss Fulton said, made her more appreciative of some of the comforts she had always taken for granted.

"I slept in a real bed last night," she said. "It certainly looked good."

1968. Republicans Gather in Miami Beach for the National Convention

Reporting from the Republican National Convention

Bill Downs interviewing then-Vice President Richard Nixon in the 1950s

Bill Downs

ABC News

August 3, 1968

This is Bill Downs in Miami Beach.

Even during Prohibition days, elbow-bending at political conventions was as important as arm-twisting. The Republican National bash is no exception.

There are some 40 hotels in the Miami Beach area which are housing the 27-hundred delegates and alternates and their friends and families. And in virtually every one of these delegate centers there is that peculiar political institution known as the "hospitality suite."

Hospitality suites range from the smoke-filled backroom where single delegates are regaled with arguments, alcohol, and branch water, to the really big operations such as in the hotel headquarters of candidates Nixon, Rockefeller, and Reagan—where whole ballrooms are equipped to provide hors d'oeuvres and a variety of potables for a couple thousand people at a time.

The amount of liquor consumed at an American political convention always has been immense since the first one was held more than a hundred years ago. But strangely enough, no one has ever figured out whether there is any relationship between an ounce of whiskey drunk and the way a delegate votes.

Because Miami Beach is a resort and vacation city specially designed for the entertainment of visitors, this GOP convention site has an extraordinary number of facilities for any Republican who would wet his whistle. There are a plethora of bars and nightspots ranging from the neighborhood saloon to the plushest of supper clubs. And in August, the hot sun and humid weather cooperate to keep everyone's thirst in constant demand.

So if one counts the myriad "hospitality suites" which dispense free booze throughout the delegation hotels plus the community's high number of commercial whiskey parlors, then by any toper's standard, Miami Beach will be the "wettest" city in the country during the time the Republicans are in town.

This is not to say that Republicans are more partial to the bottle than anyone else—heaven forbid. But traditionally the stein of beer, bourbon, and branch water, and in more recent times, the martini—such libations have been to the national political convention what axle grease was to the wagon wheel, what the buggy whip was to the sulky, what octane is to gasoline.

In recognition of this fact of American political life, the Florida Citrus Commission and the Puerto Rican rum industries this year got together for a bit of mutual promotion. They invented the "Favorite Sun Candidate"—the sun spelled S-U-N. The Favorite Sun Candidate is being boomed as the official drink of the GOP convention. It consists of a mixture of island rum and local orange squeezings, and is very good to you and for you, say the promoters.

All we can say is that we need time for research and development of these claims.

For example, what is the most effective mixture for impressing delegates; what proportion of rum in how much orange juice does a candidate need to change a Nixon delegate to a Rockefeller or Reagan. If we had the answer this weekend, we could name the ballot and the man who will win next week at convention hall.

Lacking this research data, we can only make this prediction from the convention punch bowl: the winner will be a Republican.

__________________________

Bill Downs

ABC News

August 6, 1968

This is Bill Downs at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.

Among the delegates to this confused Republican lovefest is a Georgia attorney named Anthony Alaimo. Besides being a member of the GOP Platform Committee, Alaimo is a World War II flyer who was shot down over Germany and thrown into a war prisoner's camp. It was the same POW camp made famous in the movie "The Great Escape"—and Delegate Alaimo helped dig the tunnel that figured in that escape drama.

The point of this story is that many reporters we've talked with may have to consult with Anthony Alaimo before the convention is over, because a lot of them are out of expense money and they're getting in so deep that they may have to tunnel under Miami Beach's Indian Creek back to the mainland and freedom. Otherwise they may have to spend the next four years until the next Republican convention washing dishes to pay off their debts for bread, board and entertainment expenses.

It's not that reporters and delegates don't expect to get hit in the pocketbook by the locals who take advantage of the people trapped by a convention. It's just that it's hard to get used to paying a dollar and a half for a hot dog, even if it is trimmed with a garden salad and pickle. And it's irritating to pay from 50 to 75 cents for a pack of cigarettes which before the GOP deluge were selling for 40 cents in the machines—which all have disappeared, it seems. Cheeseburgers in the beach hotels range from a buck and a half upward, depending on how chichi the establishment.

And one innocent copy boy went searching for a pair of swimming trunks intending to sneak off to a hotel pool when the boss wasn't looking. He'll either become a nudist or the world's greatest reporter, because the cheapest trunks he could find in an exclusive resort haberdashery cost 17 dollars.

Actually, price gouging here in Miami Beach is at a minimum, with most hotels sticking to their summer rates and prices.

In fact, few Republicans seem to know it, but the Florida Hotel and Restaurant Commission has 26 inspectors patrolling the beach hostelries, bars, and taverns assigned to see that the GOP delegates do not get gouged—at least too much. The commission has an office open day and night, and in case you're a delegate here and listening, if you have an overpriced complaint the Miami Beach number is 538-XXXX.

ABC News also has this story almost exclusively. The Republican wingding is not the only convention in town. Believe it or not, the National Funeral Directors Association also is meeting here. Their convention center is at the Bayfront Auditorium, and instead of featuring delegates and candidates, the Funeral Directors Association concentrates on the tools of its trade: sleek modern hearses, embalming fluid, and the latest thing in caskets.

For a while there we thought we might get the two conventions confused with each other. But then Monday Governor Reagan decided he wasn't a dead duck after all and changed things—if only a little bit.

1957. This Is Murrow

This Is Murrow

Caricature of Edward R. Murrow by Al Hirschfeld, used for the November 3, 1956 edition of TV Guide (source)

From Time magazine, September 30, 1957:

Television: This Is Murrow

Amid the trite and untrue that shed a honky-tonk glare from the nation's TV sets come moments that pierce reality and live up to television's magic gift for thrusting millions of spectators at once into the lap of history in the making. As television moved this week into its second decade, chances were that some of the best of such moments in the new season would come from a dark, high-domed man with a hangdog look, an apocalyptic voice and a cachet as plain as his inevitable cigarette. His name: Edward R. (for Roscoe) Murrow.

Many have come and many have fallen in TV's growth to immature maturity, but CBS's Ed Murrow, 49, marches on as TV's top journalist. Six years after his See It Now pioneered the technique for capturing the sights and sounds, persons and events that shape the news, it is unchallenged by any newer or better technique for exploiting TV's potential or overcoming its shortcomings. The combination of brains, integrity, attractiveness and showmanship that makes him such an effective journalist also establishes Murrow, in his role of star on the trivial but popular Person to Person, as one of TV's five top-rated entertainers.

By the Ears

From his pinnacle atop the nation's TV antennas, Murrow commands a huge circulation. The monthly See It Now, which starts its new season next week (Sun. 5 p.m.. E.S.T.), draws viewers in a Nielsen-estimated 3,850,000 homes; his Person to Person (Fri. 10:30 p.m.. E.S.T.), now in its fifth year, flickers weekly into more than 8,300,000 homes, and his ten-year-old radio broadcast, its audience shrunken by TV competition, still enables Murrow to get more than 1,000,000 Americans by the ears every weekday evening at 7:45, E.S.T.

In prestige and awards, he outrates anybody in TV. He has been laureled not only with eight honorary degrees, but four colleges (one of them: his alma mater, Washington State) have offered him their presidencies. In addition, he has been showered with nearly 100 assorted prizes and honors, including so many George Foster Peabody Awards for various feats that the Peabody judges gave him another just for "being himself."

The VIP's VIP

Murrow was the author of TV's most explosive telecast: the March 1954 show that indicted Joe McCarthy out of the Senator's own mouth in film clips. He did not bother to clear the show in advance with CBS, and in turn CBS decided retroactively that it had lent Murrow the network's right to editorialize. The network lists him only as one of its hired hands, but Murrow is something of a power in himself, with his own generously financed domain and the strong personal loyalty of key CBS news staffers. His unique status stems from 1) his close friendship with Board Chairman William S. Paley, with whom he deals directly, 2) his onetime role as a major architect of its news staff and policy, and 3) the hard fact that if CBS ever loses him, it will be NBC's gain. CBS pays him well over $300,000 a year. To a questioner who demanded at a stockholders' meeting why he got more money than Paley or CBS President Frank Stanton, the board chairman himself replied: "His value seems to be higher."

Apart from his rating in television, Murrow is a VIP's VIP. After dinner at the White House on Dec. 7. 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt confided to him just what losses the Japanese had inflicted at Pearl Harbor that morning. When his broadside against McCarthy provoked the Senator to counterattack, President Eisenhower pointedly described Murrow as his friend. Carl Sandburg calls him a poet. He is a longtime friend-at-the-bar (Scotch, a little water, no ice) of Sir Winston Churchill. Interviewer Murrow is often more celebrated than the celebrities on Person to Person, sometimes must work to bridge the gap. When Rocky Graziano appeared, he urged the prizefighter to call him Ed. Replied Graziano on the air: "Oh no, Mr. Murrow, I can't do that.''

Edward R. Murrow with Fred Friendly and Carl Sandburg in the 1950s (source)

Wide & Weird

The world of electronic journalism that Murrow bestrides runs a course far wider than the one from the tabloids to the Times and weirder than anything in between. It echoes with the weepy singsong of Gabriel Heatter, still broadcasting after 32 years, the now-stilled, intelligent frog croak of Elmer Davis, the cocksureness of Fulton Lewis Jr., the literate wit of Eric Sevareid, the pear-shaped tones of Lowell Thomas. Gone now from radio is Winchell's clattering telegraph key and breathless bleat: too seldom heard is aging (79) H. V. Kaltenborn's clipped assurance. The news comes by short wave and on tape, the newsmen in snazzy ties and boutonnieres (ABC's popular John Cameron Swayze), and even in pairs (NBC's intelligent and informative duet, earnest Chet Huntley and wry David Brinkley). TV's journalists flit all over, like the technically muscle-flexing Wide, Wide World, or work in a simple star chamber, like Interviewer Mike Wallace. On too rare occasions, the newsmakers themselves step before the cameras: Kefauver dueling with a faceless Frank Costello, John McClellan patiently at work on Teamster Jimmy Hoffa and his voluble forgettery. Daily, the networks pour money, manpower, miles of cable and film into an often losing race to outdistance the spoken word.

What gives Murrow his big edge in prestige and following over his rivals? He does not write so well as his own colleagues Sevareid and Howard K. Smith, or ad-lib with the graceful ease of ABC's John Daly, CBS's Walter Cronkite and Robert Trout, or analyze the news with the pungency of ABC's Quincy Howe. As a reporter, he is not always as knowledgeable as ABC's Edward P. Morgan. Murrow's pontifical superficialities in his pundit's dialogue with Sevareid in CBS's presidential-election coverage last year sounded as if he had worked too much with the top of his head and not enough with his legs. As a digger and ferret, he is no match for NBC's Martin Agronsky or CBS's Richard Hottelet.

As an interviewer, Murrow's reputation suffers from the insipid conversations he conducts on Person to Person (and even some of his See It Now interviews show a lack of the flexibility to follow up an opening instead of going on to a prearranged question). Person to Person (sponsors: American Oil Co. and Hamm Brewing Co. alternating with LIFE) makes its pitch mainly to viewers who want to rubberneck in celebrities' homes. It deliberately casts Murrow, sitting in a Manhattan studio, as a discreet electronic guest whose job is to make polite chitchat, not ask probing questions. Murrow's own discomfort is sometimes visible, but he sold Person to Person as a package to CBS this year in a capital-gains deal, thus is undoubtedly committed to go on with it. The show does have what one frequent viewer calls an "idiot fascination," and it is a prime moneymaker for CBS.

One big answer to the question of Murrow's supremacy is that, in TV, Journalist Murrow deliberately bypasses the challenge of the spot news; he lets others try to work—if ever they can—a way in which TV can cover the day's events as effectively as radio, which not only beats TV on most news but provides more of it. The rest of the answers are more personal: one is what TV hucksters call sex appeal. Murrow is tall (6 ft. 1 in.) and compact (175 lbs.). His saturnine good looks and taut doomsday voice project virile authority. Person to Person, which also displays his urbane charm and ready smile, attracts far more women than men viewers, according to Trendex surveys, and in deference to this finding Person to Person technicians (so far unknown to Murrow) are now under orders to adjust camera angles and lighting to compensate for the latest recession in his hairline and to make the most of his expressive hands.

Furrows in Murrow

As a performer, Murrow has expert technique. During the blitz, when he served as Britain's Boswell, his "This [pause] is London" carried the thrill of Britain's finest hour across the Atlantic. His timing can make silence more eloquent than words. Between his ominous tone and his spare, understated writing springs a tension suggesting that, as one listener put it, "he knows the worst but will try not to mention it."

Beyond personality and technique, Murrow's persuasiveness is rooted in a prickly social conscience and a sense of mission about keeping people informed. An NBC cynic has versified: "Nobody's brow furrows like Edward R. Murrow's." Murrow's worried look is genuine. "He internalizes world events," says a friend. "They flow right through him like a stream. The fall of Britain would have been as meaningful to him as the loss of a child to one of us." This outsized sense of responsibility fills Murrow's work with conviction and sincerity. Says a colleague: "Above all of us in this business, Ed Murrow is the one who can make serious matters appeal to large audiences."

Alarms & Excursions

Beyond that, as solid a reason as any for Murrow's edge is simply that he is a fine reporter with sight and sound; he has a gift for capturing actuality in its moods and nuances as well as its meaning. Many a veteran of printer's ink has been, in the words of one of them, "faintly scandalized that such good reporting can be done by a man who never worked on a newspaper in his life." Fellow reporters have nicknamed Murrow "the Professor" after his academic past and "the Bishop" for his solemn cadences, but they agree with Walter Lippmann that he is "really first rate."

Murrow's alarms are almost always matched by his excursions to the scene of the news. He covers his stories with an intensity that courts exhaustion and a passion for physical danger that is the despair of his friends and employers. Says his friend and boss, Bill Paley: "You could almost call it a drive to self-destruction. He's never happy unless he's working. When he looks like death, that's when you feel a happy glow."

He covered the London air raids from the streets and rooftops, made a point of dining under a skylight in a Soho restaurant. Against CBS orders, he went on 25 bombing missions over Germany and broadcast from a British minesweeper in World War II. He has rushed to floods, tornadoes and hurricanes, made three different trips to cover the Korean front—one during his month's vacation—and once had to be hospitalized for exhaustion on his return. Last season, between interviews with Nasser in Cairo, Chou En-lai in Rangoon, and Tito on the island of Brioni, he dashed off to cover the Suez invasion.

"The Little Picture"

Murrow's zest for chasing fire engines on a global scale sometimes forces him to commute across oceans to keep his weekly date on Person to Person. By the time the show's technicians have torn their five tons of equipment out of a visited celebrity's home, Murrow may be on a plane to Washington to lay the groundwork for a new See It Now or closeted in a projection room to edit film for one already in work. At the end of a routine day's conferring, writing, filming or reporting, he must also make his nightly radio deadline—"This [pause] is the news." Murrow has little interest in food ("He could eat scrambled eggs three times a day," says an associate), gets four or five hours sleep a night, manages at best two weekends out of three with his wife Janet and his son Charles Casey, 12, at his 280-acre farm at Pawling, N.Y., close by the estates of his occasional golfing friends, Lowell Thomas and Thomas E. Dewey.

For all of Murrow's outpourings of energy, See It Now is a complex team operation. Almost as important to the show as Murrow is big (6 ft. 2 in.), bustling Co-Producer Fred W. Friendly, 43, who went to work with him eleven years ago after proposing the idea for their I Can Hear It Now, a replay from the recording files of voices and history of 1932-45, brought out by Columbia Records. The record and its sequels led to a radio program, and then to the TV show. Without film training or TV experience, Murrow and Friendly together worked out the See It Now technique for getting at the heart of current issues and problems by narrowing their focus on "the little picture"—the human beings intimately involved.

Twenty to One

The technique, which borrows from radio, movie and printed journalism (and owes a huge debt to THE MARCH OF TIME, which made the mold for film journalism), is the most realistic reporting yet devised for documentary film. Unlike any documentary before it, See It Now sends its cameras after a story without any script, shoots everything with sound, never dubs afterwards, never rehearses an interview, shoots as much as 20 hours of film for one hour of the final product—a ratio greater than any other TV show, newsreel or Hollywood itself. The method is costly in effort and money—$100,000 a show (plus $75,000 for TV time). Though Sponsor Pan American World Airways picks up part of the tab, CBS loses money on the program. Murrow and Friendly may spend as much as a year preparing a single show, e.g., Automation, Weal or Woe?, or follow a breaking news story on two hours' notice and come back with the memorable Clinton and the Law.

Last week one of See It Now's four full-time field teams (each consists of a reporter-director, cameraman, assistant cameraman and sound man) finished a job in Alaska for a show on Alaskan and Hawaiian statehood and flew to Tokyo to join Marian Anderson on a three-month tour of Southeast Asia. Two teams were finishing film for next week's show, The Great Billion Dollar Mail Case, a critical look into the U.S. Post Office. A fourth crew was filming in Europe. In Manhattan headquarters. Friendly pruned incoming footage for perusal by Murrow and began a first draft of next week's narration. Says Friendly, who suffers a severe case of Murrow-worship, a malady rife in the TV world: "My relation to Ed is that of first sergeant. He's the company commander. Everything I edit I edit with Ed's eyes. I write with his fingers." He denies what many pros say—that he gets too little credit: "I get a lot of credit that belongs to Ed."

Cover of Time magazine's September 30, 1957 issue

Eye & Ear

Each show grows first out of hours of talk by Murrow and Friendly. Friendly then briefs the staff, sometimes in a jointly signed memo. After years with See It Now, the staff has soaked up the kind of perceptiveness for human and atmospheric detail that Murrow showed in wartime London when he dramatized the blitz with such tellingly simple touches as the sound of unhurried footsteps, caught by his microphone on the sidewalk as Londoners walked calmly to their air raid shelters.

When Murrow and five teams made the eloquent This Is Korea—Christmas, 1952, the Murrow-and-Friendly advance memo explained: "We want to portray the face of war and the faces of the men now fighting it ... The best picture we could get would be a single G.I. hacking away at a single foxhole in the ice of a Korea winter . . ." Murrow brought back the vivid sight and sound of a marine's shovel rasping futilely at the earth. Other memorable See It Now moments for eye and ear: a Buchenwald tattoo on the arm of an Israeli jet pilot; a "rehabilitated" Mau Mau warrior singing Onward, Christian Soldiers; the ding of a bullet taken out of a G.I.'s spine as it was tossed by the surgeon to a nurse and dropped into a cup in her hand.

In the gap left in news-in-depth reporting when See It Now abandoned its weekly schedule of half-hour shows two years ago for monthly hour-long shows, all three networks have tried to use something of its approach. Though such programs as NBC's Outlook, CBS's World News Roundup, ABC's Open Hearing are often well done, they suffer from a lack of See It Now's huge budget, its lavish shooting, its long experience. They also lack Edward R. Murrow.

"Foghorn Voice"

Murrow, who lives on Park Avenue and gets his suits from a Savile Row tailor, started out, on April 25, 1908, named Egbert, the son of a tenant farmer, in a log-slab house near Pole Cat Creek in North Carolina's Guilford County, twelve miles south of Greensboro. He was the youngest of Ethel and Roscoe Murrow's three boys. The eldest, Lacy, rose to be an Air Force brigadier general in the 18th Tactical Air Command, and is now a transportation consultant in Washington. The other, Dewey, is a contractor in Spokane. "I had one pair of shoes a year," says Ed Murrow. "I can't remember when I didn't have to work."

When he was five ("a fat little boy with a regular foghorn voice," recalls a cousin), the family moved to Blanchard, Wash., 70 miles north of Seattle, where his father (who died two years ago) became a locomotive engineer in a logging camp. Ethel Murrow, now nearing 80, was a frugal, hard-working Methodist who read her boys a Bible chapter every night until they went off to college. She wanted Egbert to be a preacher; he now regards religion as "more ethics than faith." She recalls him as a lad with a strong sense of duty and determination, who could not wait to grow up to his brothers' level. Typically, when a photographer was once posing the two brothers in their school clothes, little Egbert, not yet old enough for school, grabbed a book and crashed the picture with a mature scowl (see cut). He began earning money at 15. At 16, when his boss in the logging camp began calling him Ed, he gladly dropped the Egbert.

Academic Fringe

At Edison High School young Murrow won the school's popularity contest, graduated at the head of his class. In Washington State College, as a speech major, campus politician, actor, debater and R.O.T.C. cadet colonel, he honed his voice, enunciation and speaking technique, made Phi Beta Kappa.

For five years after his graduation, Murrow hustled on the academic fringe, first as $25-a-week president of the National Student Federation, then as assistant director of the Institute of International Education. The jobs entailed speechmaking on 300 U.S. campuses, European travel, arranging international student exchanges. Firsthand glimpses of the rise of Hitler in Germany appalled Murrow. He joined an emergency committee that helped to bring 288 displaced German scholars to safety. "It was the most satisfying experience I ever had," he says. During the same period, on a train to a student conference in New Orleans, he met a pretty Mount Holyoke graduate named Janet Brewster. They were married in 1934.

A year later CBS hired him as its director of talks and education, and in 1937 sent him to London as "European director," a one-man foreign staff charged with arranging cultural programs. As an assistant on the Continent, Murrow hired from the now-expired Universal Service a newsman named William L. Shirer. Soon the two switched from "cultural stuff" to report the Austrian Anschluss, and then, as Europe hurtled toward war, Murrow began hiring the core of what is still the best news staff of the networks. Among the "Murrow boys," as CBS calls them: Eric Sevareid, Larry LeSueur, Charles Collingwood, Richard Hottelet, David Schoenbrun and Bill Downs.

The war made Murrow one of radio's legends. In New York, CBS staffers formed a Murrow-Ain't-God Club so they could view him with proper detachment. (When Murrow got wind of it, he demanded charter membership.) His vivid picture of Londoners under fire stirred the heart of the U.S., stands as one of the war's memorable reporting jobs.

Head-On Clash

Back home, Murrow became CBS vice president in charge of news. After a year and a half he decided that he did not like paper work, budgets, and "most of all, I didn't like firing people." Before he went back to broadcasting with a $150,000-a-year sponsored news show, he took a hand in writing what is still the network's policy forbidding its news analysts to inject editorial opinion into their "objective" interpretation. After Bill Paley added him to the CBS board of directors in 1949—a post he held until 1955—Murrow eyed TV even more distrustfully as a platform for a newsman's personal opinion. He asked in a memo: "Is it not possible that . . . an infectious smile, eyes that seem remarkable for the depths of their sincerity, a cultivated air of authority, may attract huge television audiences regardless of the violence that may be done to truth or objectivity?"

Broadcaster Murrow does not practice the objectivity that Policymaker Murrow preached. He could be accused of using the word "objectivity" sloppily. For, like any other journalist worth his salt, Murrow concedes that, for all the lip service paid to it, there is no such thing as true objectivity in handling the news. The job, as he sees it, is "to know one's own prejudices and try to do the best you can to be fair." He admits to open violations of the CBS policy, notably in some sharply partisan See It Now shows on civil-liberties issues. The climax was the McCarthy show—and an uproar that produced 50,000 letters, phone calls and wires (four to one for Murrow, by CBS's count). In defense of such violations, Murrow says that "most of the time" he has forthrightly identified them as such on the air.

Yet on his nightly news show, Murrow conveys, by his choice of items and his showman's command of tone of voice, the news as Edward R. Murrow wants it to be understood. Example: on the State Department's obstacles to travel of U.S. newsmen to China. Murrow's reporting has dripped with disapproval. The Murrow aphorism ("A Word for Today") that closes the newscast is often chosen to make an editorial point. Something as simple as a See It Now shot of a subject's grimace or surreptitious scratch can carry as much condemnation as a Chicago Tribune editorial.

Murrow admits to prejudices shaped by his background; he tends to favor labor, farmers, Britain, underdogs (and, in the opinion of some Republicans, Democrats). He says he owes allegiance to no party. He speaks often of the rule of law and the right of dissent. But the enormous impact of his few overtly controversial broadcasts during the McCarthy era has given him a reputation for the kind of partisanship that he usually succeeds in keeping under control.

"Edward R. Murrow speaking with an unidentified man in front of television cameras" (source)

Spread Thin

A few who have known him for years think that Murrow has grown vain and pompous—an impression that his style also induces in some of his audience. Vanity is an occupational hazard that a performer has to watch as a woman watches her weight. Living in a swirl of hero worship, Murrow is obliged to recall the Murrow-Ain't-God Club. He smokes too much (three packs of Camels a day), is still gnawed by nerves before every broadcast; even in the air-conditioned studio, doing his radio show, he drips sweat and jiggles his legs tensely. He is a procrastinator and a soft touch. He has little small talk in social conversation. He has an intemperate streak that pushes him beyond sensible limits in poker playing, makes him work 40 hours at a stretch in a projection room or overdo the plowing on his farm. Sometimes in company he drifts off into trancelike gloom. Though he can be an amiable companion to the bottom of the bottle, he has a reserve that keeps his closest friends at arm's length. "I've never had any intimate friends," he once confided. "If I were in serious trouble, I would have trouble knowing where to turn."

In his TV career Murrow has become more of a performer and an editor, something less of a reporter and a creator. He is spread thin by three shows. The news roundup on his radio program has always been written by an assistant, but for the last four years ex-Broadcaster Raymond Swing has had a big hand in preparing the interpretive "end piece'' that Murrow used to write alone. Person to Person was thought up by Co-Producers Jesse Zousmer and John Aaron (formerly associates on the radio news show), and they leave Murrow little more to do than the viewer sees on the screen. The workaday brunt of See It Now is borne by Friendly and staff. Murrow's role keeps him from doing as much legwork as a good reporter should. He knows it, and his forays to the news fronts are spurred by the strongly felt need to replenish his credentials with the raw facts.

Work & Play

Murrow sometimes talks wistfully of quitting for six months or a year just to "keep silent, listen in on myself." As a man who "never learned how to play," he also would like more time for his hunting (he is a good wing shot), fishing and golf (lefthanded). He has little time now to enjoy his money, is uneasy about the celebrity that has robbed him of his anonymity in streets and restaurants, and he wears the burden of being unable to be very proud of the medium in which he works. Murrow thinks that TV at large threatens to become an "opiate" and that the network managements lack "guts." His son Casey is permitted to watch TV only half an hour a day.

But almost in the same breath that he talks of quitting, Murrow may spout plans for big new projects. Forthcoming on See It Now: the peaceful uses of atomic energy: the best from an eight-hour Murrow interview with Harry S. Truman. Murrow and Friendly have made an exciting pilot film of a new TV show called Small World, starring not Murrow but "my colleague" Eric Sevareid, which will present personalities in different parts of the world, joined in conversation through radio circuits and simultaneous movie photography. (But viewers may not see it: so far, CBS has been unable to sell it to a sponsor.) He wants to put a crew on the caboose of a freight train and let the cameras grind all across the U.S.

Murrow's success is, by its lopsided domination, a reflection on the state of TV journalism as a whole. For all its variety and originality, his achievement also leans hard on formula, and TV's trail is littered with the remains of formulas dead of overexposure. The fact that nothing new or exciting is in view to take Murrow's place is explained in great part by the nature of television. It is primarily an adman's medium conceived in escapism and dedicated to the proposition. Its role in communicating information plays second fiddle to the canned comedies, saddle-soap operas and variety shows. In its daily efforts to cover the news, television has not really made up its mind what it is trying to do. TVmen are exhilarated by their technological power to reach at one instant into almost every living room in the U.S., yet timid about using it to edify. So far, for all the earnest thought and energy that is devoted to it, electronic journalism has illuminated with bright flashes but few steady beams of light. Perhaps that is the best it is destined to do.