15 DEAD, 30 INJURED AS LA PLATA COUNTS TOLL OF HURRICANE
FALL AND DOHENY PLEAD NOT GUILTY AT BRIEF SESSION
Seminole Slayer Is Sentenced to Die By Cudgel With Which He Killed Friend
The Evening Star's front page for November 10, 1926 led with a staff correspondent's report from La Plata, Maryland, where a tornado the previous afternoon had wrecked a schoolhouse full of pupils and several nearby homes, with a probable 15 dead, 13 of them children, and a school bell left silent under the wreckage. In Washington, former Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall and oilman Edward L. Doheny pleaded not guilty in an arraignment lasting under five minutes on a charge of conspiring to defraud the government over the Elk Hills naval oil lease, the first of four Teapot Dome indictments, with trial set for November 22. An Associated Press story from Miami told of Seminole justice in the Everglades sentencing a killer to death; the legible portion stops at the tribal gathering that opens the account.
EXPERT DESCRIBES NATURE OF WOUNDS IN DOUBLE MURDER
WAR CLUBS LIFTED FOR ASSAULT UPON TAX REFUND PLANS
KNOX DEATH LAID TO HEART TROUBLE BY DAVIS DEFENSE
This Montgomery Advertiser front page mixed national wire news with a case from Alabama's own prison mines. From Somerville, New Jersey, an AP report described a day of technical testimony in the Hall-Mills murder trial: a New York medical examiner told the court that any one of three bullets would have killed Eleanor Mills and that her larynx, tongue and upper windpipe had been cut away after death. From Washington, the paper reported that President Coolidge, facing a congressional fight, had left his tax refund proposal to Congress and asked for nonpartisan treatment. Closer to home, it set the defense's claim that the Mobile convict Knox died of heart trouble against the state's charge that he was beaten for failing to dig his coal task, killed in a laundry vat and dosed with mercury after death to cover up the crime.
The London, Ontario Evening Advertiser of 10 November 1926 opened this reading with local weather: nine inches of snow had fallen on the city by 3 p.m., brought by two weakened storms that met over Ontario, and the paper warned that much colder weather and heavier snow were likely within hours. From Maryland, an Associated Press dispatch described La Plata, a town of 500, picking up its life after a tornado cut a path up to 500 yards wide, killing 15 and injuring two-score, mostly schoolchildren, with four more badly hurt at nearby Cedarvale. A short cable from Southampton reported that Mrs. Lucia Welch had become the first woman appointed sheriff in England, an office the paper said would oblige her to attend any execution held during her term.
The Vossische Zeitung of 10 November 1926 reported that the Reich government would hold to its own unemployment-benefit bill, already before the Reichsrat, even though the Reichstag plenary had voted for increases of 30 and 20 per cent; the paper argued that the vote had been partly tactical and that the majority did not really want the increase. Emil Ludwig reviewed the former Kaiser's second book of memoirs as a cosier, more modest collection of childhood, court and military stories than the combative first volume, and predicted it would lie on every aristocratic Christmas table. From Prague the paper reported Education Minister Hodža's declaration that forcing German parents to send their children to Czech schools, or the reverse, was punishable, and that minority schools would be built only where needed.
The Vienna Neue Freie Presse of 10 November 1926 led with an editorial on the resignation of the financier Siegmund Bosel. It totted up what he had paid for the Unionbank, the Veitsch Magnesite Company and the Laura-Hütte: eight hundred billion, more than two hundred billion and three hundred billion, or one and three-tenths trillion in all. The paper called this proof of both huge available capital and a regrettable lack of restraint. A Paris report described the French Foreign Ministry's denial that Briand had agreed with the Italian ambassador to treat the Garibaldi affair as a mere police matter. Instead, Briand had warned of the dangers of such police machinations. A feuilleton by Emil Ludwig on the Kaiser's new book recounted the young prince's merciless riding lessons at the hands of his tutor.
The Prague Tagblatt of 10 November 1926 led with an official police communiqué: Josef Simunek, an invalid working in the lithographic workshop of a Prague military authority, had stolen military documents and sold them to a member of a foreign mission in Prague. The headline named Soviet Russia as the beneficiary, and Simunek had been arrested and had confessed. From the Budget Committee, the paper reported Education Minister Milan Hodža calling the existing school self-government inadequate and outdated and saying its reform was close to a solution. From Rome it described the extraordinary Chamber sitting of 9 November, where black-shirted Fascist deputies cheered Mussolini, whose seat was decked with laurels and roses, while almost the whole opposition, Giolitti included, stayed away.
The Journal de Genève of 10 November 1926 combined European diplomacy, Fascist police intrigue and a Swiss domestic dispute on its front page. An editorial signed W. M. passed on a rumour that Italy's ambassador, Baron Romano Avezzana, had told Briand that Italy would gladly take over the Syrian mandate if France tired of it; the writer could not confirm the remark but said it matched what the Italian press had long been writing. A correspondent reported as established fact that Ricciotti Garibaldi, recently arrested, had been in the pay of the Fascist police since summer 1925, and that most plots against Mussolini had been hatched with that police's connivance. A third article, on the grain monopoly, recalled the wartime emergency of 1917, when the Federal Council ordered farmers to expand wheat sowing and the area rose from 78,500 to 116,000 hectares in one year.
Politika's front page of 10 November 1926 carried a signed column by Kosta Todorov on Bulgarian affairs. He accepted that Andrey Lyapchev's government was turning its policy toward London and Rome and that reactionary parties were trying to harness the Agrarian Union. He dismissed as invented a report that Omarchevski and Markov had met the former King Ferdinand in Berlin. A badly damaged report headed 'The Shameful Grandson of a Famous Ancestor' described skilful police work exposing fascist agents and the dark figure of a man with a brilliant name, and it warned of unpleasant consequences for France and Italy. A short item reported that Zagreb Archbishop Ante Bauer had spoken at the Strossmayer monument in praise of Strossmayer's services to the nation's culture.
Grim car accident last night at Nesset in Bundefjorden.
Border control is working well, believes the chief of police at Fredrikshald.
The readable parts of this front page cover three stories. A special correspondent followed the King's visit to Borregaard's home exhibition, describing crowds who braved rain and wind outside the factories and a little boy who said the King had greeted him. From Drøbak came a telegraphed report of a 1½-ton lorry that overturned down a slope at Nesset in Bundefjorden after pulling aside for an oncoming horse. And the police chief at Fredrikshald judged that border control was working well: passengers arriving by train from abroad were asked where they came from and where they were going, and shown the official precautions against foot-and-mouth disease.
Il Piccolo of 10 November 1926 gave over its political coverage to the Rome sitting of the Chamber of Deputies. An editorial hailed the bill for the defence of the State, presented by Minister Rocco, as the people's own demand after the attempts on Mussolini's life, and openly welcomed the death penalty and revolutionary tribunals staffed by the Blackshirt Militia. A colour report described repeated standing ovations for Mussolini, who was shown as modestly trying to stop the cheering while he received flowers and laurel. A shorter item reported that the Fascist deputies Starace and Ceci accused Scotti, a Peasants' Party deputy who had returned from the Aventine secession, of breaking a promise to vote for the bill, and then forcibly put him out of the Chamber.