REPUBLICANS NEED VICTORY OF BUTLER AND WADSWORTH TO KEEP SENATE RULE
LIEUT. F. H. CONANT, CRACK NAVY FLYER, IS BELIEVED KILLED
VETERANS MAY GET $262,540,000 LOANS
Two days before the 1926 midterm elections, the Evening Star's front page carried G. Gould Lincoln's forecast that Democrats would gain seats in both the Senate and the House because of Republican troubles in individual states. He still expected the Republicans to hold the House, perhaps narrowly, and the headline said they needed Butler in Massachusetts and Wadsworth in New York to keep the Senate. The page also reported that Navy Schneider Cup flyer Lieut. Frank H. Conant Jr. was believed killed when his plane crashed into shallow water near Mathews, Va., on a flight from Anacostia to Hampton Roads. A third story gave the Veterans' Bureau estimate that World War veterans could borrow $262,540,000 in 1927 against adjusted service certificates with a face value of $2,975,000,000.
RACING EXHIBITION IS CHIEF ATTRACTION ON TODAY'S MENU
AUBURN TIGER IS VICTORIOUS AFTER STRENUOUS BATTLE
NAME OF EXECUTIONER IS NO LONGER SECRET
The Montgomery Advertiser's front page for Sunday, October 31, 1926, combined a local fair, college football and a New York prison story. Hal Stephens's state fair report, headlined on the day's racing exhibition, put Saturday's attendance at an estimated 10,000. It described a lively midway, crowded with Auburn fans despite drizzle, and named the three winners of a Charleston contest held in the automobile building. Jack Langhorne's account of Auburn's win over Sewanee at Cramton Bowl is pure celebration, built around a 'Tiger eat Tiger' image, though the excerpt does not give the score. A third item reported that Sing Sing's executioner, unnamed since his appointment that year, was Robert Elliott of Long Island. Elliott also served three other states, was paid $150 per execution, and had children who believed he only kept a small business.
The front page of 31 October 1926 covered defence doctrine, party tactics and the courts. A column on "the army we need" argued that on modern European battlefields matériel is the first condition of soldiers' effectiveness, and that its quality, nature and composition must shape how a battle army is organized. In a signed editorial, Lucien Romier mocked the socialists as a husband who scorns his wife but loves her dowry. He noted that none of the proposals going to the SFIO National Council ruled out an alliance with the Radicals in the coming Senate elections, and that Renaudel's group openly favoured a first-round pact. A court report on Mme Lefebvre's death sentence observed that no woman had been executed for many years and that, because she was over sixty, a sentence of hard labour would become reclusion for her.
The Journal de Genève of 31 October 1926 led its commentary with an editorial signed W. M. on Mussolini's message for the anniversary of the March on Rome, read aloud across Italy by official speakers; the writer praised fascism's verbal power and called the text both a great piece of political prose and a true act of government. A letter from Paris attacked the French Chamber's finance commission for acting like a second government and rewriting the cabinet's financial plans instead of merely scrutinizing them. On Swiss affairs, J. M. claimed that the paper's warning had stopped the Confederation's pension funds sliding toward a deficit of 12 million a year, and said Federal Councillor Musy had agreed with that alarm.
The Prince of Wales and M. Doumergue Inaugurate the Canadian Students' House in Paris
She Smokes? Oh!!!
This front page paired a political essay with lighter dispatches. In 'Une Union Latine ?', Paul Myx described a strong current of opinion for an understanding among France, Italy, Spain and the Iberian-language countries of South America, recalled a wartime campaign by a newspaper in south-western France, and suggested that French hostility toward the United States and Britain, provoked by their governments' unfortunate words and actions, had revived the idea. A Paris dispatch reported that President Doumergue and the Prince of Wales opened the Canadian Students' House at the Cité universitaire on 30 October, accompanied by the Canadian high commissioner Philippe Roy, the education minister Herriot and the rector of the University of Paris. A London wire passed on a report that a women's temperance union in Indiana had written a letter of protest to the visiting Queen of Romania after reading that she smoked cigarettes.
Once Again Mussolini Escapes Unhurt from a Criminal Attack!
Some Members Led by Dr. Anchorena Provoke the Public
This edition of Crítica, dated 31 October 1926, ran three short reports, one from Chile, one from Italy and one from Buenos Aires. In an Agencia Austral cable from Santiago, the paper described the excitement around Argentina's match against Chile at Ñuñoa in the South American football championship and a crowd of seven to eight thousand; its headline complained that the Argentines had only barely drawn. A brief cable from Bologna said Mussolini had been shot at as he left a stadium after a speech and was unhurt. The local story described a riot at the Hipódromo Argentino in Palermo, where 500 people from the popular stands tried to pull down the iron fence that kept them out of the paddock and the members' stands. Its headline blamed members led by Dr. Anchorena for provoking the crowd.
Il Piccolo's front page of 31 October 1926 carried Mussolini's address to Blackshirts in a city where he had spent part of his youth. He said he had come to open the regime's fifth year by inaugurating public works, and declared that Fascism would pass into history through concrete works and physical transformations of the country, not through resolutions or speeches. From the Vatican came a short report that Pius XI had personally married his niece Maria Luisa Ratti to the Marquis Edoardo Persichetti-Ugolini in the Sala Matilde, following an austere programme. From Britain the paper described Imperial Conference delegates boarding a flagship at Portland to watch a naval review and a mock battle with submarines in the Channel, and noted that ladies were sailing in a British battleship for the first time since Nelson.