MAIL BANDITS KILL GUARD, GET $160,000 IN JERSEY HOLD-UP
CORRUPTION CASE MAY CRUSH G. O. P. HOPES IN INDIANA
SCRIVENER SLAYER BOY, A WOMAN OR THIN-NECKED MAN
The Evening Star's front page of October 14, 1926, led with an Associated Press account of a machine-gun holdup of a U.S. mail truck in the center of Elizabeth, N.J., in which driver John Enz was killed, a postal clerk and a motorcycle patrolman were wounded, and a Newark dispatch put the stolen payroll at $160,000. From Indianapolis, G. Gould Lincoln reported Thomas H. Adams's charges that the imprisoned former Klan grand dragon D. C. Stephenson had bankrolled the last Republican campaign, a scandal that could cost Senators Watson and Robinson their seats. A local story explained how a broken necktie and fine-ridged fingerprints led police to think Detective Arthur Scrivener's killer was a boy, a woman or a slight man, while The Star posted a $1,000 reward.
KLAN DRAGON FAILS TO EXPOSE PLOT IN COURT TESTIMONY
SOUTHWIDE MEET FAVORS RETIRING PART OF OUTPUT
NEW HIGH SCHOOL TO ADD $150,000 IN MONTGOMERY EXPENSE BUDGET
This Montgomery Advertiser front page carried three AP and local stories. From Indianapolis, it reported that the imprisoned former Klan Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson, brought in under heavy guard, revealed nothing in a civil suit or before a grand jury, while publisher Thomas H. Adams pressed on regardless, quoting attorney Floyd Christian's claim to have seen a $5,000 check payable to Governor Ed Jackson in Stephenson's cell. From Memphis, it described a southwide cotton conference that, after a narrow 181-175 floor fight over legislative aid, adopted a plan to withdraw surplus cotton through cooperative pools and seek acreage cuts for 1927. At home, Atticus Mullin calculated that a new high school financed by $1,000,000 in 5 per cent bonds would cost the city about $150,000 a year, perhaps less if old Lanier absorbed other pupils.
This London, Ontario evening paper led its local news with Mayor John M. Moore reversing his announced retirement. After a deputation brought him a petition signed by 1,500 citizens, he agreed to let his name stand for nomination in December, thanked the council and the civic boards, and described his habit of leaving City Hall departments to their heads. From abroad, a Peking dispatch reported that three American missionaries seized by bandits in western Hunan had been freed after 18 days without any ransom being paid. A report from Elizabeth, New Jersey, described a gang of ten or more men who raked a mail convoy with rapid-fire guns, killed a man named Enz, wounded a postal worker and a motorcycle patrolman, and escaped with registered mail that included $160,000 in currency.
This Vossische Zeitung front page paired a political crisis abroad with two disputes at home. A dispatch from the Spanish border reported that the Liberals Romanones and Villanueva had protested to Alfonso XIII that Primo de Rivera's planned National Assembly would breach the constitution, and that artillery officers were secretly circulating defiant leaflets. It judged the throne to be in danger but expected the King to sign the convocation decree anyway. An unsigned editorial expected Prussia's settlement with the Hohenzollerns to pass on Friday. It defended the deal as the Braun government's least-bad option and faulted the SPD for only abstaining. Arthur Eloesser attacked the pending youth-protection law against 'trash and smut', arguing that adding state review boards would let local moral zeal censor serious literature across the Reich.
Le Figaro's front page led with Lucien Romier's signed column on Raymond Poincaré's draft budget for 1927. Romier admired the finance minister's command of the subject. He called the programme a policy of “high-tension virtue” that strained taxpayers, the public services and the nation's productive capacity alike. He warned that the public's hope for a financial “miracle” and the memory of 11 May made such virtue hard to sustain. He also named the floating debt and monetary policy as the plan's weak points. On foreign affairs, the paper reported that Czechoslovakia replaced its caretaker cabinet of officials with a parliamentary government under Švehla in less than twenty-four hours. It stressed that two ministers from German parties had joined the government and that Beneš stayed on. A dispatch from Bordeaux previewed the Radical-Socialist congress, where Herriot was expected to answer criticism of his leadership.
The Neue Freie Presse of 14 October 1926 led with a Budapest report on the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' edition of Count Stephan Tisza's wartime letters. It quoted Tisza's January 1915 attack on Prince Bülow for failing to defend the Trentino in Rome, described the friendly attitude of Italy's ambassador Avarna and of the Vatican, and broke off in Erzberger's alarmed telegram of 2 May 1915 warning that Cadorna wanted war. Telegrams from Paris reported that General Guillaumat had proposed cutting the French Rhineland army to four divisions but had run into strong objections, and that Spain's Liberals had protested to Alfonso XIII that Primo de Rivera's planned National Assembly would breach the constitution, leaving the King's throne in danger.
L'Écho d'Alger's front page for 14 October 1926 carried news from Paris, Strasbourg and New York. In Paris, a Chamber finance sub-commission heard its chairman, M. Dariac, present a long historical and critical report on the inter-Allied debts and the Washington and London accords. The report offered no conclusions, and the sub-commission still had to decide whether to question the government or send the file to the full Finance Commission. Dariac then said he would step away from mid-November because he was running for the Senate. In Strasbourg, Raymond Poincaré toured schools and received a senator, religious leaders, business figures, judges and professional delegations before leaving for Colmar. From the United States came a report on a Marne taxi, number 610 G 7, cheered from New York to Philadelphia, where it was to ride in the American Legion's convention parade before going back to its French manufacturer.
The 14 October 1926 front page of La Tribune de Madagascar, a Tananarive tri-weekly, opened with an editorial warning that France, and therefore its colonies, faced a paper shortage. It blamed a collapsing franc that made Swedish pulp and newsprint ruinous, and printed import figures rising from 18,581 tonnes in 1922 to 28,579 tonnes in 1925. A short dispatch reported that the National Union of Ex-Servicemen handed Poincaré a resolution against paying the Allies more than France would receive from Germany, and that Poincaré replied France would pay only according to its capacity. A column from Tananarive retold a mocking anecdote about Abd-el-Krim's justice in the Rif and described his anger at being sent into exile while his former emissaries waited in Morocco.
The case of MM. Bui-quang-Chiêu, Nguyên-van-Thinh and Trân-van-Dôn
RACIAL PREJUDICES TO BE OVERCOME
The mining question in England
This front page of L'Écho annamite was dominated by the quarrel that followed Cochinchina's Colonial Council elections. An editorial signed N. Q. N. attacked the Courrier Saigonnais for declaring Bui-quang-Chiêu, Nguyên-van-Thinh and Trân-van-Dôn ineligible and for announcing a runoff for M. Binh, quoting the decree of 9 June 1922 to argue that votes are counted against ballots validly cast and that only the Conseil du Contentieux and the Conseil d'État, not the vote-tallying board, could rule on eligibility. A second editorial used Pius XI's consecration of Chinese bishops to contrast the Church's treatment of non-white clergy with France's treatment of Annamites. Wire items covered France's 1927 draft budget, possible troop cuts in the Rhineland, and British Labour and miners' resolutions on the coal dispute.
The front page of 14 October 1926 led with an editorial from Prague. It urged Sudeten Germans not to expect too much too soon from the German ministers who had just joined the Czechoslovak cabinet. It also warned that supporters of the new 'bourgeois bloc' were pressing to roll back social reforms, which could discredit the first Czech–German coalition. From Graz the paper reported chaotic sessions of the Styrian Diet. Social Democrats there attacked Education Minister Rintelen over corruption charges, a deputy slapped a heckler in the gallery, and crowds tried to force their way into the building. A rival candidacy threatened to leave Rintelen one vote short, 34 to 35. From Belgrade it reported that the Uzunović cabinet had resigned. The Radicals and Radić's party could not agree on how to settle Radić's outburst in front of a visiting Czechoslovak parliamentary delegation in Zagreb.
The front page of 14 October 1926 carried a column signed "W. M." on Czechoslovakia. It called the Germans' rallying to the state a great success for Edvard Beneš, even though his own National Socialist party was in opposition and he sat in the cabinet only as a specialist, "somewhat up in the air". In a signed column, Colonel Feyler argued that the Swiss army was weak at the top because administration and command were confused, and he blamed that defect for the "affairs" that kept harming the army. A correspondent in the United States reported that President Coolidge's envoy, Colonel Thompson, had spent two months touring the Philippines. He wrote that Thompson's views were already leaking out ahead of a report due in November.
Politika's front page of 14 October 1926 was dominated by the fall of Nikola Uzunović's cabinet, the coalition of the Radicals and Stjepan Radić's Croatian Peasant Party. One report explained that the crisis had in effect opened two days earlier with lengthy cabinet deliberations, and that the Radical ministers, all but one, refused this time to overlook Radić's latest outburst or settle for his customary reassurances; its headline already looked ahead to a new coalition. A second report described the final cabinet session, where Uzunović delivered a long speech, praised by all the ministers, that reviewed his government's tasks and efforts, blamed Radić's conduct for making calm work impossible and singled out an incident at the Zagreb railway station.
Executive Board Opens Construction of the New Municipal Buildings at Ila to Free Competition
Hans E. Kinck
Days before Norway's new referendum on the spirits ban, the morning front page led with an editorial that set Johan Ludwig Mowinckel's 1919 case against the spirits ban — his signature on the Bergen appeal and his statements to Dagbladet and Tidens Tegn — beside his newly declared prohibitionism, and urged readers to vote no again. A news report described how Oslo's executive board, on the city architect's advice, put masonry and carpentry for two new municipal blocks at Ila out to tender, arguing that contract work would lower costs and rents and that most of the 102 municipal building workers would have to be let go under either system. A signed tribute by I. A. Refsdal mourned the writer Hans E. Kinck, who had died suddenly at home the day before, and praised his roughly 40 works and his twin spiritual homes in Norway and Italy.
The Leidsch Dagblad's front page of 14 October 1926 mixed municipal business, local news and church affairs. A notice signed by Mayor De Gijselaar listed the squares, dikes and towpaths in Leiden where kites could be flown. It was followed by the start of a city-news report on an evening power failure that left several villages dark and in which The Hague brought partial relief. Another report described an Arabian prince in princely robes touring Leiden with Professor Snouck Hurgronje. The party was received at the Town Hall, where the mayor spoke in French and the Jeddah consul Van der Meulen interpreted. A third item printed a statement from a conference of the Reformed churches outside the synod. The conference sought reunion after the Assen Synod of 1926, but only if the synodal churches returned to the Three Forms of Unity and the existing Church Order.
Our naval aviators left Berre yesterday on their 26,000 km long-distance flight
The quarrel burns ever hotter in Moscow
This front page of Le Petit Matin carried three substantial items. Raymond Colrat's signed column surveyed the Radical Party on the eve of its Bordeaux congress, blaming the alliance with the Socialists and a run of unstable cabinets for splitting it into ministerial clienteles, and sizing up Herriot, Caillaux, Sarraut and Malvy as rivals for its direction. From Marseille came the departure of two Navy seaplanes under Lieutenant Guilbaud on a planned 26,000 km flight to Majunga in Madagascar along Africa's rivers and lakes. Dispatches via Reval and Berlin reported the Soviet leadership moving to discipline Trotsky, Zinoviev and Pyatakov, along with rumours of emergency powers against the opposition.
This partly legible 14 October 1926 Shibao page carried wire reports from the Northern Expedition's Jiangxi front and from northern politics. Dispatches from Beijing, Jiujiang and Shanghai said that the vanguard of the Second and Third Armies of Sun Chuanfang's Allied Army moved southwest of Nanchang on the 11th. They met Chiang Kai-shek's troops at noon, and the fighting broke off after two hours, with no decisive clash of the main forces yet. Shorter, badly damaged items reported that Zhang Xueliang left Beijing for Mukden on the morning of the 13th, that Ye Gongchuo and others had urged peace and a national assembly on Fengtian, and that a representative was heading to meet Zhang Zuolin on an "important mission." Fragments on naval movements and a notice about foreign merchant shipping followed.
This partial reading of the Tonga Ilbo's front page for October 14, 1926 covers two pieces. One article took up a foreign cable reporting that Hu Shi had told a celebration of the Chinese republic's fifteenth anniversary, held by Chinese students in Britain, that the revolution had failed. In his view it had only changed the outward form of government, and the Chinese had neglected modern civilization and the training of youth. The article granted that this was no new principle but called it a weighty lesson. It then argued that a political revolution bears fruit only when it carries economic meaning. The page also carried the eighteenth installment of Choe Hyeon-bae's serial on the rebirth of the Korean nation. It gave four causes for Korea's bare mountains: soil and rainfall less favorable than Japan's, little reason to grow large timber, a lack of forestry knowledge and foresight, and the wood-hungry ondol furnace.
REPORT THAT THE ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER WAS TO UNDERGO SURGERY IS DENIED
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE VARIOUS AMERICAN COUNTRIES WILL MEET IN PHILADELPHIA
Crítica's foreign-news columns on 14 October 1926 carried wire reports from Berlin, Rome and Philadelphia. An Associated Press dispatch said Berlin police had banned the open-air demonstrations the Communists planned that afternoon against the settlement of the Hohenzollern property question. From Rome, the AP called a story that the Austrian surgeon Sauerbruch was rushing to operate on Mussolini the latest in a series of false rumors, officially denied and contradicted by the premier's busy activity. A third report announced that diplomats of all the American republics, Secretary of State Kellogg and the Pan American Union board would meet on the 22nd at Philadelphia's Sesquicentennial Exposition. Shorter items covered a proposed Brazil–Venezuela treaty, a London horse race and a football team's travel schedule.
This partial reading of Il Piccolo for 14 October 1926 covers three short wire reports. From Rome, the paper described Mussolini's late-night return by special train from Forlì and listed the ministers, undersecretaries, party chiefs and police officials who met him at the station before he drove to Villa Torlonia. A second Rome item reported that a delegation from Fiume, including Host Venturi, had conferred with ministers and invited Interior Minister Federzoni to the city's 4 November Victory commemoration, an invitation he gladly accepted. A Moscow dispatch said the Leningrad Soviet was negotiating to buy buses from a large Italian car maker that had offered favourable credit terms.