The Evening Star of October 5, 1926, caught the World Series in progress: a low-legibility bulletin from St. Louis had Game 3 between the Cardinals and Yankees scoreless in the third inning, praised both pitchers, credited Billy Southworth with the day's first hit and printed the batting orders. Under a headline about a defended claim approval, the selected column actually carried the end of an Associated Press account of New Jersey bandits who killed a motorist named Kearney, shot his son, wounded one of their own and commandeered cars as they fled. From Paris, the AP reported that Premier Poincare, long opposed to the Mellon-Berenger war-debt agreement because it lacked a guarantee tied to German reparations, was now ready to accept ratification with oral reservations meant to calm his critics in Parliament.
BRANDON REQUESTS SOUTH'S GOVERNORS TO MEET IN CAPITAL
HOPE IS ABANDONED FOR TWENTY-THREE ENTOMBED MINERS
INDIANA EDITOR SEEKS TO PROVE POLITICAL CORRUPTION CHARGES
The Montgomery Advertiser of 5 October 1926 led with Alabama Governor Brandon's telegram inviting the cotton-state governors to Montgomery to meet alongside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agricultural conference on 11–12 October, as spot cotton sold locally at 11.75 cents, about nine cents below estimated cost. Agriculture Secretary Jardine, in a letter to the state farm bureau, proposed credit corporations that would borrow from the Intermediate Credit Banks instead of a Texas bankers' pool. An AP report from Rockwood, Tennessee, said 23 miners were believed entombed after an explosion in the Roane Iron Company mine, with four bodies found and four men rescued. From Indianapolis came publisher Thomas H. Adams's appeal to Governor Jackson to question the imprisoned former Klan leader D. C. Stephenson about political corruption. The same columns carried short items on a cruiser missing off Miami and a mother who sent her daughter to school in knickers.
The Vossische Zeitung of 5 October 1926 led with arrests in a Berlin spirits-smuggling case. Warrants were issued against the banker Carl Lindemann and his brothers, a deciphered Baltic chart showed where the yacht “Pelikan” met the schooner “Inge” beyond the 10-mile limit, and the engineer Bauer, said to be the key figure, was still at large. Dispatches from Paris reported that the inter-Allied debt question was overshadowing the Thoiry talks: Poincaré was distrustful, and Washington had rejected a conditional ratification. From New York came word of White House doubts about the Thoiry programme, and a short item outlined the bill for a definitive Reich Economic Council. A commentary from Cologne argued that the German People’s Party stood wholly behind Stresemann but had dodged the coalition question.
Le Figaro's front page of 5 October 1926 carried an argument against Gustav Stresemann in a short editorial signed "Intérim", "Verdict historique", which insisted that the German foreign minister was wrong to try to clear his country of war guilt and that Italy's decision at the outbreak of war in 1914, taken while still allied to Germany and Austria, settled the matter. Henri Vonoven's political column described a sleepy parliamentary return: the Chamber's finance committee met, adjourned almost at once for more information, and left deputies gossiping in the lobby while the opposition stayed calm. Under the foreign-affairs rubric, beside the Paris exchange table, the paper announced the assassination of a French non-commissioned officer in the occupied Rhineland.
The Vienna Neue Freie Presse of 5 October 1926 gave its lead space to an admiring editorial portrait of former German chancellor Joseph Wirth, whose Sunday speech at the Pan-European Congress in Vienna urged German-French reconciliation. The paper recalled his 1921–22 policy of fulfilment amid reparations pressure and political murders, quoted Reichstag President Löbe's tribute to him, and tied the new optimism to Locarno, Germany's entry into the League of Nations and the Stresemann–Briand talk at Thoiry. A brief overnight report gave the jury verdict in a Salzburg murder trial, with fifteen years for the killer and life for the man who commissioned him, while a feuilleton by Georg Terramare opened its tribute to Francis of Assisi, 700 years after his death, with the bells of Assisi at dusk.
This front page of L'Écho d'Alger for 5 October 1926 set the case for Franco-German reconciliation beside its frictions. A press review quoted L'Ère Nouvelle, which called rapprochement with Germany a vital necessity and the first step toward a United States of Europe, while regretting that Stresemann had revived the debate over war guilt; the excerpt breaks off as L'Éclair's reply begins. A dispatch from Verdun reported the mayor's welcome to the 311th Artillery Regiment after it left Germersheim, with his warning that French goodwill depended on equal German sincerity. A Vienna dispatch described the opening of the first Pan-European Congress, its honorary presidents, the French delegation and a regretful telegram from Briand.
The front page of La Tribune de Madagascar for 5 October 1926 carried a piece on paid holidays for workers, although the reading captures only the masthead line under that heading, giving the paper's 20th year and issue number 1927. A short polemical item on the German 'Stahltrust' claimed that the Americans had imposed the new steel combine on Germany in return for credit. It quoted a financial magnate, whose name is illegible in the reading, as saying that whoever bought German heavy industry also bought its political power, and that the lenders would allow Germany neither a war nor an alliance with the Soviets. A news item on the Mussolini–Chamberlain talks at Livorno reported that the two men stressed Italo-British intimacy. It added that French newspapers regretted that the great Mediterranean power seemed shut out, and that the Écho de Paris doubted the meeting would have great international consequences.
Printed five days before the Cochinchina Colonial Council vote of 10 October 1926, this front page of L'Écho Annamite was given over mainly to the election. Bui Quang Chieu signed an appeal urging Annamite voters to back the full "list of ten", arguing that only a united bloc could carry weight on the port concession, taxes, rice export duties, salt works and forests, and he named the two candidates in each of five constituencies. The ten candidates then set out their joint programme: loyal but firm collaboration with the French administration, reforms obtained through mutual confidence, and no challenge to French sovereignty. A wire report gave Austen Chamberlain's account, on his return to London, of his meeting with Mussolini and of the Briand–Stresemann talks at Thoiry, which he said had produced no new agreement.
The Prager Tagblatt of 5 October 1926 opened with an editorial welcoming Finance Minister Karel Engliš's draft reform of Czechoslovak direct taxes. It argued that firms were losing eighty per cent of their profits to the state and the municipalities, praised lower rates, a cap on municipal surcharges and a single codified system, and approved a new approach of trusting taxpayers first and punishing evasion severely. It also backed Engliš's decision to drop Rašín's single-tax idea. A report from New York and Paris said Washington doubted the Franco-German Thoiry plan to mobilise Dawes railway bonds, and described a split between Briand and Poincaré over ratifying France's war-debt agreement with America. From Moscow came Tass and United Press reports that Trotsky, Zinoviev and other opposition leaders had defied a party ban on discussion by turning up at a factory meeting, and were condemned for it.
The Journal de Genève of 5 October 1926 led with an editorial signed W. M. on the continental steel cartel just signed in Brussels. It set out the promoters' claim that the cartel would share out production rather than cut it, reported Louis Loucheur's objections that no governments took part and that Britain was left out, and argued that by making "their own Locarno" the steel magnates gave the Franco-German rapprochement of Briand and Stresemann an economic footing. A column signed J. M. attacked the Federal Council's plan to raise Swiss stamp duties by some 11 million francs, saying the money would only pay for the officials' salary increases voted by the National Council. It urged the Council of States to cut off the funds. An Assisi correspondent described how the town was being restored for the seventh centenary of St Francis's death.
Politika gave a page to the Czechoslovak parliamentary delegation's reception at the National Assembly in Belgrade. One report described how the Assembly's presidency, helped by police commissioner Đokić, prepared a festive welcome: admission tickets were rationed through the parliamentary clubs, a police clerk and a cordon of gendarmes kept order outside from early morning, and the courtyard was hung with greenery, Yugoslav and Czechoslovak flags and strings of electric lights. A second item printed part of the sitting itself, in which the presiding speaker announced the death of deputy Dragoljub Radojević and then set routine business aside, hailing the visit of the 'brotherly' Czechoslovak people's representatives as a rare and splendid day and invoking the custom of suspending a sitting as the highest honour. The page also showed the cover of the Czechoslovak address and photographs. This reading covers the opening portions of the two items and does not describe the photographs.
Aftenposten's front page of 5 October 1926 carried a signed essay by Drammen school inspector Sven Svensen, who defended his claim that coercion does not create morality: children learn through habit, but laws, especially laws of mere expediency such as the minimum size for lobster, need public support or they provoke defiance and mass violations. The page also printed King Haakon's toast at the palace gala dinner for Finland's visiting President, recalling his studies at the Agricultural College of Norway, and a report from Skien that evictions of workers from Tinnfos company housing at Notodden would probably go ahead on Thursday despite the poor-relief board's offer to pay the overdue rent, with police asked to keep order.
The front page of the Leidsch Dagblad for 5 October 1926 looked back on Leiden's 3 October festival, which the paper says ran from Saturday afternoon until after midnight on Monday and succeeded without a single discordant note, though a mist on Monday morning may have disappointed some. Further reports describe the 3 October Society's board leading a quiet ceremony at the monument to Boisot, Van der Does and Van Hout, crowds gathering at the Stationsplein for the Royal Band of Eugène Goulmy en Baer from 's-Hertogenbosch, and an open-air play followed by a historical parade that had been assembled on the Krijthof.
The Chamber Finance Commission Resumed Its Work Yesterday
The First Pan-European Congress in Vienna
This Tunis daily's front page of 5 October 1926 opened with Marcel Huart's gloomy column on French party politics, which said the Cartel des Gauches had gone bankrupt. As parliament prepared to return, he showed the Radicals, the Socialists and the Republican Socialists quarrelling over discipline and ministerial participation while a public tired of broken promises looked on. A Paris dispatch reported the Chamber Finance Commission back at work on the 1927 budget. The government's spending booklets still left out the cost of administrative and judicial reforms, and the commission chairman, Henry Simon, was to ask the premier for clarification. A Vienna dispatch described the opening of the first Pan-European Congress, with Mgr Seipel's speech, the new flag, an answer to Austrian pan-Germans who raised Anschluss, and an ovation for Joseph Wirth. Short items on the Beaujolais harvest and a speech by Curtius at Cologne broke off where the page was cut.
Our Fans Will Welcome the Guests at the Estación del Norte
The Reception of the Delegations in Los Andes
The Players in Camp Continue Their Training
Santiago's La Nación of 5 October 1926 gave its front page to the eve of the South American football championship. The paper announced that the city's sporting public would greet the visiting delegations, which it called friendly 'Embassies', at the Estación del Norte that night, and added its own warm welcome to the guests. A follow-up item reported that the town of Los Andes, at the Chilean end of the railway over the Andes, was preparing an enthusiastic reception for the sporting Embassies 'from the Atlantic'. A short note in another column said the players the Chilean Football Federation had gathered in camp at the El Llano Stadium were still training for their fixture.
This page of Crítica for 5 October 1926 carried two stories. In the killing of a man named Polack, Commissioner De la Cuesta and a Crítica police reporter were at the spot where the body was found when Inspector Miguel Chiappare of the Bella Vista sub-precinct arrived with what the paper called a crucial tip; a doctor's account, relayed by a first-person narrator, described an unlit, mysterious car left standing on a bridge, with a Matanzas hire-car detail noted. A separate bulletin reported that Horacio Varela, a former minister of Governor José Camilo Crotto, had killed himself with potassium cyanide on a bench in Plaza Intendente Alvear, leaving letters for a judge and a police commissioner, and the paper proclaimed 1926 'the year of cyanide'. This reading does not include the full Polack report on page 3.
Il Piccolo's page of 5 October 1926 carried a Paris dispatch, drawn from the Petit Parisien, describing how a German civilian in a crowded Neustadt restaurant pressed a drink on Sergeant Audigou of the French 12th Artillery, talked of killing his own wife, and then, without any quarrel, stabbed the sergeant near the heart. A Brescia communiqué from the Fascist party press office reported that party secretary Turati had approved the work of Barduzzi, extraordinary commissioner of the Trieste Fascio, and the guidelines of the Verona federation, followed by the opening of a note that parliament might reopen in November. A London dispatch relayed a Morning Post editorial insisting that Chamberlain's meeting with Mussolini at Livorno was not aimed at France and that Italo-French friendship served British interests. The reading covers three partial excerpts, two of which break off mid-sentence.