On the day the German Nazi Army marched unresisted into Austria, March 11, 1938—the prelude to World War II—I was home in New York with a cold and a fever. Ed Klauber telephoned to tell me that Vienna had refused us the use of its facilities to broadcast from that city. I thought of the director general of the Austrian broadcasting service, whom I had met several times in Vienna, and remembered that we had had a rather pleasant working relationship. Not quite realizing just how bad things might be, I reacted as I often do when a problem arises. I picked up the telephone.
The overseas operator put me through without difficulty to Vienna to my friend, the broadcasting director general. I told him how distressing it was that his organization was not allowing us the use of the facilities we needed to broadcast from there. In a tearful voice he broke in to say, “I am sorry, Mr. Paley, I am no longer in charge here. I cannot do anything . . . I would if I could.” There was a sob and then a click. The connection was broken and he was gone.
I thought about it for a while and realized that every capital in Europe must be seething in reaction to Hitler’s takeover of Austria. Whether or not we could hear from captured Vienna, it would be interesting if we could switch from one capital to the other and give reports from all. But was it technically feasible? I called Klauber and asked him to put it up to the engineers. Their first reaction was gloomy—it couldn’t be done. I insisted that there must be some way. Within an hour, Klauber called back to say that it would be a very tricky operation, but it probably could be worked out. I urged him to proceed with haste.
At the time, CBS had a staff in Europe consisting of two men: Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer. Neither of them at the time was really a broadcast newsman. Murrow had been hired by CBS in September 1935 as “Director of Talks” and his job was to arrange for personalities to give informative talks over the network. When I first met him, I was so impressed with him—he was such a sober, earnest young man at twenty-seven with that elongated, somber face—that I wrote a memo to Ed Klauber, who had hired him: “Mr. Murrow might be the best one in this organization to be responsible for all of our international broadcasting.” We needed such a man, for our broadcasts from Europe were on the rise. A year and a half later, in 1937, we assigned him to London as our European director. I had great faith in him. But when he came into my office for a talk on the day before he left for Europe, I had no idea that this assignment would set in motion the career of the greatest broadcasting journalist of his generation.
He was the head of our foreign staff, a staff of one. When we wanted to expand it in the summer of 1937, Murrow showed his gift for recognizing the talents of others by engaging William L. Shirer, an experienced foreign correspondent for newspapers, who had broadcast occasionally for CBS. Shirer’s regular assignment, from a base in Vienna, like Murrow’s from his base in London, was to arrange broadcasts and do interviews. On March 10, 1938, both happened to be away—Murrow in Poland and Shirer in Yugoslavia—arranging musical broadcasts for segments of the American School of the Air.
Fortunately, Shirer, who years later was to write The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the definitive book on the subject, got back to Vienna the next day, to witness Germany’s invasion and takeover of Austria. The only broadcaster on the scene, Shirer tried to get on the air to New York, but Nazi soldiers escorted him out of the broadcast studios with bayonets.
He reached Murrow in Warsaw and explained that broadcasting in Austria was shut down. Murrow, having been in touch with Paul White in New York, suggested that Shirer fly to London and go on the air from there with an eyewitness account of what had happened. Murrow would head for Vienna.
The day after the takeover, Shirer went on the air for CBS from the BBC studios in London and reported in personal, telling detail:
Austria’s resistance to Nazi Socialism actually collapsed at 6:15 P.M. yesterday when it was announced on the radio that the plebiscite had been indefinitely postponed. . . . When the radio announcement came over the loudspeaker, the Fatherland Front people and the workers melted away and stole home as best they could. On the other hand, it was the signal for the Nazis to come out and capture the streets of the capital. And yet, as late as 6:00 P.M., the picture had been quite different. I was walking across a large square just a block from the Opera, at six, just as two lone policemen were driving a crowd of 500 Nazis off the square without the slightest difficulty. A half hour later you would not have recognized Vienna as being the same city.
With the announcement that the plebiscite was off, the Nazis suddenly poured by tens of thousands into the old inner city. . . . I saw a strange sight: twenty men, bent down, formed a human pyramid, and a little man—I suppose he was picked for his weight—scampered over a lot of shoulders and, clutching a huge swastika flag, climbed to the balcony of the Chancellory.
By the next day, in line with my instructions for a European news roundup, Murrow and Shirer had recruited American newspaper correspondents in Paris, Rome, and Berlin. Murrow had persuaded German authorities to open a line for him from Vienna, and our CBS engineers had managed the technicalities involved. So, at 8 P.M. on March 13, 1938, two days after the event, CBS broadcast its first round robin of European news and commentary on the Nazi invasion of Austria. We called it the CBS European Roundup. Pierre Huss of the International News Service reported from Berlin; Edgar Ansel Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News from Paris; Shirer, and Ellen Wilkinson, a member of Parliament, from London; Murrow from Vienna. Shirer also read a report from Frank Gervasi of INS in Rome. From Washington, D.C., Senator Lewis B. Schwellenbach of Washington commented from the American point of view.
In the CBS studio in New York, Robert Trout played a role which has since become familiar but was then unknown. Trout was a remarkable extemporaneous broadcaster. He belonged to that small group who could talk in front of a microphone without notes for twenty, thirty, sixty minutes, two hours, without stopping. H. V. Kaltenborn could do the same and then comment on and analyze what he had said. In that European Roundup, Trout may have been the first anchorman in the profession.
Ed Murrow’s broadcast that night from Vienna, his first solo performance as a newsman, gave a hint of the unique sensibilities he would put to use throughout the coming war:
This is Edward Murrow speaking from Vienna. It’s now nearly 2:30 in the morning and Herr Hitler has not yet arrived. . . . From the air, Vienna didn’t look much different than it has before, but, nevertheless, it’s changed. The crowds are courteous as they’ve always been, but many people are in holiday mood; they lift the right arm a little higher here than in Berlin and the ‘Heil Hitler’ is said a little more loudly. There isn’t a great deal of hilarity, but at the same time there doesn’t seem to be much feeling of tension. Young storm troopers are riding about the streets, riding about in trucks and vehicles of all sorts, singing and tossing oranges out to the crowd. Nearly every principal building has its armed guard, including the one from which I am speaking. There are still huge crowds along the Ringstrasse and people still stand outside the principal hotels, just waiting and watching for some famous man to come in or out. As I said, everything is quiet in Vienna tonight. There’s a certain air of expectancy about the city, everyone waiting and wondering where and at what time Herr Hitler will arrive.
For the time, it was an extraordinary feat of logistics and planning. Each correspondent reported live, some thousands of miles away from each other and each of their reports had to be scheduled precisely to the second. It would not be long before we would be able to have such widely scattered correspondents talk to one another on the air. In 1938 this new technique was immediately recognized as an unusual event in news. We put it on again the very next night with a somewhat different cast of correspondents. By bringing together in one program an anchorman at studio headquarters and correspondents on location, we were doing something that would become the important format of modern news broadcasting. The European Roundup became the World News Roundup, which is still on the air at 8 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday.
• • •
It was six months from the Austrian invasion to the Munich crisis. In that period, Murrow and Shirer, who now formed the nucleus of a growing CBS foreign news-gathering organization, cabled dispatches to our newsroom in New York, drew upon the services of newspaper correspondents, gave their own broadcasts, and arranged broadcasts by participants in events. Hitler’s demands on Czechoslovakia and the threat of imminent war that September gripped the attention of the American public as had no other foreign event. For the next eighteen days—to the signing of the Munich Pact by Hitler and Britain’s Prime Minister Chamberlain on September 30—CBS was immersed in the crisis day and night. I was either at the studio or constantly listening from wherever I might be.
Live news and on-the-spot broadcasting made their mark. I was so excited that I sent Murrow and Shirer this cable: “Columbia’s coverage of the European crisis is superior to its competitors and is probably the best job of its kind ever done in radio broadcasting.”
CBS presented more than a hundred special broadcasts on the Munich crisis from Europe, particularly from London, Prague, Paris, and Berlin, but also from Rome, Geneva, Godesberg, Munich, Nuremberg, Trieste, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warsaw, and Budapest. The use of numbers to describe something can be boring but they convey briefly the ferment at CBS. About sixty members of a small home-office staff threw themselves into work on the news. Despite the technical and programming intricacies, we put on fourteen European Roundups during the eighteen days of the Munich crisis. Kaltenborn himself broadcast about a hundred analyses of the situation, a tour de force that made him famous. He seemed to live at our Studio 9 in our Madison Avenue headquarters. Altogether, with the numerous spot bulletins, the news summaries, the commentaries, and the analyses, CBS put on a total of nearly five hundred broadcasts on Munich in less than three weeks.
Still, at this time, CBS had a foreign news staff of only three men, Murrow, Shirer, and Thomas Grandin, whom we had engaged in 1938 and stationed in Paris. On a temporary basis we hired a number of stringers—correspondents of European and American newspapers and wire services—in foreign capitals, who were on call to broadcast for CBS on special occasions. It was just good enough for emergencies of the moment but in the event of war we were understaffed and weakly organized. By mid-1939, Czechoslovakia had fallen, Albania had been invaded, and both Germany and Italy were flaunting their further aggressive intentions. An all-European war was a distinct possibility. Yet, to many Americans, peace still seemed more likely. Quite apart from personal considerations, from a management point of view it was important for us to have an opinion: Would there be war? Or would there be peace? Should CBS enlarge its permanent news organization in Europe? In July 1939, we sent Paul White to London to assess the situation.
White reported back uncertainty about the imminence of war, but he recommended in a letter the addition of one more foreign staff member “to be taken into this office as soon as possible, and trained not only for substitute work here (in London) in the event of a crisis, but also for a European post with us in the event that no crisis arises or the war becomes postponed indefinitely.”
On July 26, Ed Murrow wrote to Ed Klauber from London: “I think that such plans as can be made have been made for covering the next crisis, which I remain convinced will not result in war.” The upshot of this uncertainty about the war was that in August we added one new correspondent to our foreign staff. Ed Murrow persuaded a twenty-six-year-old, hard-working newsman, Eric Sevareid, to join CBS. Sevareid at the time was holding down two jobs: city editor of the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune and night editor of the United Press in Paris.
Back in New York, we added two distinguished journalists to our staff of news analysts. One was Major George Fielding Eliot, who had served in both the Australian infantry and the American Army and had gone on to write books and lecture on military topics. The other was Elmer Davis, a Rhodes scholar and freelance writer who had met Ed Klauber when both had worked for the New York Times. Klauber and Paul White lured Davis to CBS to pinch-hit for Kaltenborn who was off on a three-week trip to Europe and to take on a special, new five-minute nightly news broadcast from 8:55 to 9:00 P.M. Davis came aboard and stayed with CBS for three years, until June 1942, when he was chosen by the government to head the newly created Office of War Information.I Thus before the war started, we had in White, Murrow, Shirer, Sevareid, Kaltenborn, Eliot, Davis, and Grandin, the foundation of one of the most distinguished news organizations ever assembled by any branch of the media.
We also established a short-wave listening station on Long Island to pick up broadcasts from Europe. That facility enabled CBS to put overseas news on the air quickly. Oftentimes, we broadcast news which was picked up by the American newspapers and wire services who had so disdained us in earlier years. These arrangements to enlarge our news staff were made none too soon.
The Stalin-Hitler Pact was announced on August 21 and by the end of the month, war was at hand. Germany invaded Poland on the night of August 31. Britain and France mobilized. There was a pause of two days. We reported the mobilization in detail, and, along with the whole world, waited for the response of Britain and France. On September 3, 1939, from London, Murrow reported the start of World War II:
Forty-five minutes ago the Prime Minister stated that a state of war existed between Britain and Germany. Air raid instructions were immediately broadcast, and almost directly following that broadcast air raid warning sirens screamed through the quiet calm of this Sabbath morning. There were planes in the sky. Whose, we couldn’t be sure. Now we’re sitting quite comfortably underground. We’re told that the “all clear” signal has been sounded in the streets, but it’s not yet been heard in this building.
In a few minutes we shall hope to go up into the sunlight and see what has happened. It may have been only a rehearsal. London may not have been the objective—and may have been.
I have just been informed that upstairs in the sunlight everything is normal, that cars are traveling though the streets. There are people walking in the streets and taxis are cruising about as usual.
The crowd outside Downing Street received the first news of war with a rousing cheer, and they heard that news through a radio in a car parked near Downing Street.
The responsibilities of reporting a war were enormous. As the intermittent alarms came in faster and faster, the spot bulletins and special events of broadcasting became general news. We emerged transformed. In late 1939 and through 1940 and 1941, while the war abroad hung like a shadow over the United States, our newsroom and the studio next to it became the most intensely active and growing places in our broadcasting organization. We continued to expand staff and facilities. Our newsmen worked with a passion almost around the clock. Copy flowed like a deluge into our newsroom from three main sources: our own correspondents at home and abroad, the newspaper wire services, and our short-wave listening post, which received broadcasts from a mélange of foreign sources. Our home-office staff distilled and prepared newscasts, which we broadcast day and night in regular summaries, bulletins, analyses, and in roundups.
Both abroad and at home our news staff grew rapidly. From the ad hoc organization of stringers and the permanent staff of four foreign correspondents on September 1, 1939, we jumped to fourteen regular foreign correspondents by the end of the year, to thirty-nine in 1940, and to more than sixty in 1941. In a short time, CBS News became one of the three or four outstanding foreign news organizations in the United States, in both numbers and quality. The new strength of our domestic news organization also became evident when, in 1940, we sent thirty-four staffers to the political conventions. Among the personalities in CBS News not already mentioned, some forgotten now, some still famous, but all distinguished, were—I like to mention their names—Mary Marvin Breckinridge, Cecil Brown, Winston Burdett, Charles Collingwood, William J. Dunn, Erland Echlin, Harry W. Flannery, Farnsworth Fowle, Bill Henry, Russell Hill, Larry LeSueur, Howard K. Smith, Betty Wason, Leigh White, and William L. White.
Much has been written about the journalistic accomplishments of the members of CBS News in the war, and the routes they traveled and the hazards they faced to get the news home. We sent Bill Shirer to Germany and, to his extreme distaste, upon the fall of France, he entered his beloved Paris with the German Army. Ed Murrow, chief of our foreign correspondents, held the United States in thrall with his broadcasts of the Battle of Britain. His very personal manner of speaking, punctuated by the everyday sounds from the streets and the explosion of bombs, became in the United States the best-known and most respected broadcast voice of the war.
There was no substantial public issue about the rapid buildup of American forces for national defense, but throughout the country there was a conflict of opinion about American involvement in the war. For me, as chief executive of CBS, the dilemma was how the network should handle the great debate. We had long-standing policies in both news and public affairs: unbiased news and the presentation of opposing opinions of representative public figures. Radio, like television, is a particularly sensitive medium. Like the press, we use our editorial judgment in the selection and presentation of news. But unlike the press, radio, being a medium of sound, can carry emotion and the bewitchment of live personality.
These were delicate matters at the outset of the war in Europe. Two days after Britain declared war on Germany, I had Klauber issue a memorandum to the CBS organization reiterating our standing editorial policies—a position adopted afterward by the other networks and by the National Association of Broadcasters. I insisted that as an organization CBS had to be thoroughly objective in reporting the war: we would be fair and factual; we would maintain a calm manner at the microphone; the sound of a newscaster’s voice would not betray any subconscious emotions or prejudices. There was no great difficulty in carrying out these directives in straight news or in public affairs, despite the subjective element in the selection, writing, and presentation of news, common to all journalism. I merely emphasized the need to try consciously to avoid bias.
When President Roosevelt proposed revision of the Neutrality Act, we broadcast his address and then provided a free forum for one of the most extended debates ever heard on a radio network. We presented thirty-four speakers with different points of view in the five weeks before Congress voted on the Neutrality Act.
We took no position on the issue, not because as citizens we had no opinions, but because we believed the overwhelming need of the public was to be given the basic information on which to make its own choices. Certainly, with the issues of war and peace to be decided, the personal opinions of broadcasting journalists had no place on the air. Their work was to provide objective information for others. The professional reporter would be checked by the questions of a professional editor, except when his broadcast was live and checking was impossible.
For each distinguished correspondent whose name the public has learned, there have been unknown editors and producers who have asked hard questions of the reporter himself. Our journalistic strength comes not only from our correspondents, but also from the producers and managers who constantly oversee this whole editorial process.
In the field of news analysis, however, it was more difficult to enforce such policies. It was not easy at times to know where to draw the line between analysis and personal opinion. None of our wartime analysts—H. V. Kaltenborn, Elmer Davis, George Fielding Eliot—disagreed with me on policy. Indeed, Elmer Davis, in an article in Harper’s in November 1939, and later before a congressional committee, brilliantly explained and defended our policy. Each did, however, step over the line of objectivity on occasion, and at one time or another I had to take a stand.
In the early summer of 1940 I was called by James Forrestal, one of Roosevelt’s aides (and an old golfing friend), and asked if I would take a new government post, Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. I told him that I wasn’t right for the job but that I knew someone who was. I recommended Nelson Rockefeller, whom I had come to know through our work at the Museum of Modern Art. I was aware that Nelson had business interests in South America and spoke Spanish, and had some feeling for the people there. Forrestal called Rockefeller, who accepted the post, an event of no small importance, for it was the beginning of his career in politics.
A few months later, I received another request from the government. This one came from the President himself, and so I could hardly refuse. While I was having lunch in Washington with Jesse Jones, the Secretary of Commerce, an aide handed him a note. He turned to me and said, “Bill, are you supposed to be having lunch with the President today?” I said no, and he told his aide, “Some mistake. Just call back and say no. A few moments later the aide reappeared and announced, “Mr. Secretary, the President is in his office waiting for Mr. Paley to join him for lunch.” Jones firmly declared to me, “You must be mistaken. You have a date with the President.” I knew I hadn’t, but obviously I had been commanded. I was whisked by limousine into the White House grounds, nudged through a couple of doors and found myself standing before Franklin Roosevelt.
“Bill, sit down. I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. A metal box on wheels was rolled into his office and placed beside him at his desk. From it, he took out our lunch, handing my plate to me and placing his on the desk in front of him. He said he had heard I was in Washington and wanted to see me.
The President was gracious, charming and serious, all at the same time. He remarked that he had learned that I was contemplating a trip to South America in order to extend the CBS network to that area. I explained that I was planning such a trip but that plans for short-wave broadcasting to Latin America were still in the formative stage. The President talked of his concern over Nazi propaganda and its influence over radio stations in Latin America. Our country ought to do something to counteract that Nazi influence, he said, adding that he would appreciate it if I would take on that assignment.
Such a request from a President, particularly in times of emergency, is a moving thing. I promised I would do what I could and would report to him.
After a quick exchange of letters with the President, I left for a seven-week swing on November 8, 1940, through the major nations of South and Central America, accompanied by Mrs. Paley, Paul White, and Edmund Chester, our Spanish-speaking director of short-wave broadcasting activities. We returned to the United States with contracts with the most important stations in just about every country we visited—sixty-four stations in all, a Latin American network! The contracts provided that CBS would beam to Latin America our entertainment, cultural, and news programs in Spanish and Portuguese. Sustaining programs would be provided free and sponsored programs, if any, would provide a share of the advertising money to the stations broadcasting the programs. All in all, it was quite an exciting and adventuresome trip in which I met heads of states as well as the owners and directors of radio stations.
I gave President Roosevelt a detailed report and analysis on what my staff and I had learned about the influence of Nazi Germany in each of the countries I visited.II I surmised (and accepted the probability early on) that if we entered the war, the U. S. Government would take over our new Latin American network as part of the war effort. And, of course, that is what happened. Because of wartime delays in the delivery of material for our two new short-wave transmitters on Long Island, our broadcasting to Latin America did not start until May 1942. Six months later, the government requisitioned the network and began sending its own broadcasts south of the border. The man in charge of the operation was Nelson Rockefeller, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.
• • •
On December 7, 1941, I was up at Kiluna Farm for the weekend, talking with one of our weekend guests, Ben Hecht, the writer, when someone rushed into the room, shouting that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese. I turned on the radio for the news and then (taking Hecht into town, too) drove to the CBS headquarters. There was nothing much I could do that night except, like Americans throughout the country, listen to the radio.
The next day, Ed Murrow, on leave from London, came into the office and told me he had met with the President at the White House the night before, hours after the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor! Murrow had had an appointment with Roosevelt for that evening, but after the news of Pearl Harbor had been broadcast, he had telephoned the White House on the assumption that his appointment would be canceled. But no, he was told, the President still wished to see him, if he would be willing to wait until the President finished his work. Murrow waited hours in the residential quarters of the White House. It was after midnight when he was called in to see the President. He described President Roosevelt on that night of Pearl Harbor as being very well composed, serious and eager to learn what Murrow could tell him of the events, personalities, and atmosphere of the European theater of war. Murrow was amazed that on that day of days, the President of the United States would take the time to keep an appointment with him. But to me it reflected the high esteem in which Ed Murrow was held in the White House and throughout the nation. The previous week I had given a dinner to honor Murrow for his wartime broadcasts from bombarded London and it seemed that almost every eminent American pressed us for an invitation. The guest list grew to one thousand. Edward R. Murrow had become a national hero, our most famous war correspondent, for he had been America’s eyewitness to Britain’s “finest hour.” After Pearl Harbor, he was most anxious to get back to London.
When our country declared war on the Axis powers, CBS, like every other institution in the United States, converted itself in its own way to a total war effort. We adopted war themes on many of our programs. In dramatic shows, characters met wartime problems; the American School of the Air brought war news, information, and instruction to children; Country Journal gave farmers help in solving wartime agricultural problems; The Garden Gate promoted Victory gardens; Church of the Air broadcast talks by chaplains. There were new series exclusively about the war: They Live Forever, The Man Behind the Gun, Our Secret Weapon. Kate Smith conducted War Bond drives. Some of our company-owned stations went on a twenty-four-hour-a-day schedule, serving as part of an air raid defense system and also providing entertainment for defense workers on the overnight “swing shift.”
Some of our most difficult problems lay in the presentation of the news. From day to day and hour to hour, the news took on immediate and personal meaning for almost every American. Consequently, while the journalists’ responsibilities for accuracy and completeness had not changed, the weight of these responsibilities had increased enormously. We accepted government restrictions on news that would affect the military—troop movements, new inventions, movements of merchant vessels, and the like—to avoid giving vital information to the enemy. It was more difficult to draw the line on controversial subjects which the public had a right to know.
News reports would affect American public opinion and could have an important influence on the war effort. There were legitimate differences of opinion, for instance, about the division of the war effort between the Far East and Europe, about the British, about the “Second Front” to relieve the Russians, and so on. We had to strike a balance between serving the cause of our war effort and maintaining objectivity in our news reports. About this time, I decided that as head of CBS I had better make a wartime visit to London and get a closer perspective on the war.
In late August 1942, I flew to London by Pan American Clipper, a journey then of many hours, in the pleasant company of my Kiluna Farm neighbor and future brother-in-law, John Hay Whitney. Jock was in the Army Air Force and was being transferred to London. From all reports, especially those of Ed Murrow, I knew that I would meet people who, though ravaged by raids from the air, had come through with a quality of perseverance seldom matched in human history. I had also heard but not yet realized how normally and casually, at least on the surface, they went about their business, even pleasure, while under fire.
I was met by a friend, Randolph Churchill, son of Britain’s Prime Minister. He had come into my life in the early thirties on one of my trips to England, and we met thereafter in England or in New York from time to time. I was delighted to see him and his wife, Pam (now Mrs. Averell Harriman). On my first night in London, they took me out to dinner and to a nightclub afterward—a reception characteristic of these English even in a war-torn capital. Late that first night, I met Jock again and we walked home together along dark streets to Claridge’s, traditionally the “American hotel” in London. General George C. Marshall, United States Chief of Staff, and Harry Hopkins, representing President Roosevelt, had stayed there shortly before we did, and one had the feeling of walking through history.
The next morning I received an invitation to lunch with Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had just been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Expeditionary Force, in anticipation of the invasion. The appointment was still a secret at the time. It was simply a get-acquainted meeting at his flat at the Dorchester Hotel. We had a mutual associate in Harry Butcher, who had been a CBS vice-president before the war, in charge of our Washington office, and who spent most of the war as Eisenhower’s Naval Aide and confidant, sitting in on everything that concerned the General, guiding his relations with the press and broadcasting. He, in fact, kept a diary of events for Eisenhower.
The first meeting with Eisenhower was pleasant, casual, and, I think, a time-out period of relaxation for a man who carried such heavy responsibilities upon his shoulders. Nothing was said, for instance, about General Marshall’s recent visit to London which resulted, I found out later, in a major change in war plans. (They had decided to attack the “underbelly” of Europe through North Africa first, rather than conduct a direct invasion across the Channel.) Instead, General Eisenhower and General Carl (Tooey) Spaatz, commander of the U. S. Eighth Air Force, who made a fourth at the lunch aside from Harry Butcher, inducted me into the realm of “short snorters,” a special “society” of air travelers who had crossed the Atlantic. You became a short snorter by having another person sign and date one of your dollar bills, and you did the same to his bill, after which you were obliged to carry that bill with you always. If you were challenged and failed to produce your signed dollar bill, you were fined a dollar. So, they signed my bill and I signed theirs, and became a short snorter.
The two generals impressed me. Behind their genial horseplay, they showed strong character and seriousness of purpose in the deadly business of war. I soon thought of Eisenhower as one of the most engaging men I had ever known. Later I was to learn that he was far more effective in small groups than in addressing large audiences. At any rate, at the time I certainly appreciated the General’s hospitality. It was the start of a long friendship.
The British themselves extended to me hospitality such as I had never received before. With their nation’s survival at stake, they felt a friendliness for their American allies which was extraordinary. British friends and acquaintances of mine fostered this atmosphere by giving small, intimate dinner parties where people got to know one another personally. What with lunch and dinner engagements every day, the giving and receiving of interviews, and work at the office, I was kept busy. For me there was also a long-standing personal attraction to London. I had friends there, like Alfred Duff Cooper (Viscount Norwich), the writer and diplomat, who had been Minister of Information in the first years of the war. Duff was a short, solid, strong man, highly educated and cultured, with a temper that was truly terrifying when out of control. His wife, Diana, was a great beauty. Their son had lived with us at Kiluna Farm since the war had started. They expressed their appreciation by giving a small dinner party for me in a private dining room at the Dorchester. The guests included Prime Minister Churchill and his wife, Clementine; Brendan Bracken, who was then Minister of Information in Churchill’s Cabinet; Ronald Tree, an M.P. and cabinet adviser on American affairs, and his then wife, Nancy; and a few others—about ten in all.
I came to the party with a memory of having met Churchill once before in the mid-thirties, at which time he was looked upon as a rebel and was in disfavor with the Establishment. Randolph had invited my wife, Dorothy, and me to a weekend of golf at Chartwell, his father’s country place, and I had sat silently then as a young man through a long lunch listening to Churchill complain about the lack of military preparedness in England. So, when I came to the Duff Coopers’ party that night in 1942, I was eager to see Churchill again, now at the height of his political and personal powers.
He truly was a great human being. The public and the private man were one and the same; vision and reality came together in a single truth. Churchill had about him that rare quality of personal grandeur, not only upon the world stage but at the dinner table. The legend of his fabulous capacity for drinking, I think, has been exaggerated. At political and military meetings, I have been told, he drank hardly at all and only chewed the end of a long cigar. But when he relaxed in the evening, he relaxed according to legend: cocktails, wine through dinner, champagne after, then brandy. But he scarcely showed it. His was a tongue that hardly needed loosening.
He was at his best that night, even a bit euphoric, and with good reason. Recently returned from Cairo and the front at El Alamein, he talked about the war at the eastern end of North Africa. He described how the British had been in retreat but had stopped Rommel at the El Alamein line. Only later did I realize that while he talked about East Africa he said nothing about “Torch”—the code name for the forthcoming Allied invasion of North Africa which was at that time top secret. Although he had just been to Moscow to tell Stalin the Second Front was off and ‘Torch” was on, he said nothing about it.
The guests took turns expressing their views. I listened, saying little, content to learn and observe. It did not occur to me that I would be expected to perform. It was about half-past eleven and for some time I had had a need to visit the men’s room. But no one else had left the table and so I sat there, very uncomfortable. Then the Prime Minister turned to me and said, “Mr. Paley, you have just come from New York. We would like very much to have you tell us what the attitude in America is toward the war in Europe and toward us in particular. Anything you could tell us would be greatly appreciated.”
That was certainly a key question in every Briton’s mind. However, the first priority on my mind was how to find the men’s room. And so I answered him, saying, “Mr. Prime Minister, if you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’d be glad to answer your question.” I got up, left the table, and went to the room I needed so badly. Upon coming back, I was jittery. One did not address the Prime Minister of Great Britain—at least I didn’t—without a certain degree of nervousness. I hoped that the party had gone on to some other subject and that I’d been forgotten. Not at all. Not a word was being said at the table. When I sat down Churchill looked at me and said, “Well, go ahead, Mr. Paley.”
I gave my interpretation of the current attitudes of Americans toward England. Churchill may have been worried about some anti-British feeling in the United States, and perhaps about whether the pre-war isolationist sentiment in America still fingered toward Europe. To the best of my ability, I summed up the opinions of various American groups, even of the “America Firsters” who had been so prominent on the isolationist side. I explained that there were still some people who felt that the United States should not have gotten involved in the European war. But, I said, the vast majority of Americans, including some ardent isolationists, were now very much in favor of our war efforts to help destroy Hitler.
During that evening, I had another head-on encounter with the redoubtable Churchill, which will ever remain in my memory. Being a new and eager “short snorter,” I had inducted Duff Cooper and, much to my surprise, he immediately turned around and challenged Churchill. The Prime Minister truly snorted that of course he was a short snorter. He implied he had invented it. But he failed to produce his bill. He also refused to pay the fine. He insisted he could not be challenged on the ground, only in the air. My host appealed to me and I felt honor-bound to disagree with the Prime Minister.
“Well, sir, I hate to contradict you, but I was inducted recently into the society and I understand that you could challenge another member at any place, on land, sea, or in the air.”
“Not true,” said Churchill. ‘Who inducted you?”
“General Eisenhower and General Spaatz,” I said.
“Oh, they said that, did they?” said he. “Well, they’re wrong, they’re wrong.”
“Okay, they may be wrong, but here’s my bill,” said I, challenging him. “Just sign it, would you?”
“One isn’t suppose to sign it on land,” he persisted.
“Well, sign it anyway, won’t you, please?”
So, he signed it, “Winston Churchill” and then with a baleful look at me, added “(with reservations).”
The morning after the Duff Coopers’ party I heard that the story of my exit from the dinner table to the bathroom was being bruited about London. In the English tradition of supreme personal discipline, many of those who heard the story thought I should have remained at the table, no matter what. My host, Duff Cooper was of that opinion, much to my surprise.
When I saw Eisenhower again before leaving London, he asked if there was anything he could do for me. I told him the short-snorter story and suggested, I thought whimsically, that he lodge a plea with the Prime Minister concerning the dollar he owed me. A couple of weeks after I got back to New York I received a note from Averell Harriman, who was then stationed in London as the chief overseas administrator of Lend-Lease. Enclosed was a dollar bill, which Churchill had asked him to pass on to me. He explained that Churchill had been told by Eisenhower that he was wrong about the rules and that Churchill had said he was “paying up.” I still have that short-snorter bill framed in my office.
British hospitality is a special genre, unduplicated anywhere else in the world. Although I had visited England many times before, it was on this wartime trip that I became more conscious than ever before of the understated qualities of the British national character, traditions, and sophistication. In some of the most formal, stately country homes and castles, owned by the same families for generations, if not hundreds of years, I came upon the most splendid furniture, furnishings and paintings, much of it of museum quality. In the best of these houses, everything was arranged in a sort of casual manner, rich but not ostentatious. The overall impression was one I would keep with me the rest of my life.
Ditchley, the country home of Ronnie and Nancy Tree, was for me at the time the most beautiful home I had seen in England. Ronnie, born in England of American parents, and Nancy, who came from Virginia, were fabulous hosts to me over many memorable weekends I spent at Ditchley during this trip and upon my returns to England later in the war. Apparently Winston Churchill agreed, for he spent almost every weekend during the war at Ditchley, rather than Chequers, the country estate which the government provided for the Prime Minister. One reason went beyond the magnificent hospitality: Ditchley was safer, for the Germans must have known the location of Chequers.
In the round of social engagements, I met Lord Louis Mountbatten, shortly before he was appointed Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Southeast Asia; I conferred with U. S. Ambassador John G. Winant and with Averell Harriman; spent weekends at Lady Baillie’s residence, called Leeds Castle; and one evening at Lord Beaverbrook’s country house, Cherkley, in Surrey, less than an hour’s drive from London. The evening was, like England itself, memorable.
Ed Murrow drove me to Beaverbrook’s, warning me beforehand that the British press lord took particular pleasure in extracting indiscreet information from his guests by getting them as drunk as possible. At the dinner table, where among the guests were Lady Mountbatten and the author H. G. Wells, Lord Beaverbrook apparently decided to focus on me. When I declined his offer of wine, he asked, “Will you have some whiskey?” To that I agreed, and a bottle of scotch was brought to the table. He poured lavishly.
“I hope you will drink with me, sir,” I said.
“Oh, I like scotch, too,” he replied with a laugh.
So, we drank through dinner and then through most of the night. I was very careful to see that he drank at least as much as I did. And we traded stories. But I was not privy to any war secrets and could expound only on what I had read in the newspapers or heard on the radio. Beaverbrook, who had recently resigned as wartime Minister of Supply, and had just returned from a special mission, as a personal envoy of Churchill, fascinated the party with many tales of wartime diplomacy and the battlefront—quite indiscreetly. Very early the next morning, around six o’clock, his lordship, now completely sober, telephoned and solicitously asked if I had enjoyed the evening before.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, “I couldn’t have had a better time.”
“Of course, we spoke very freely.”
“Yes, we did,” I admitted.
“Of course, everything we said was completely off the record, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, completely,” I assured him. “I wouldn’t think of repeating it to anybody.”
“That’s fine,” said he. “I appreciate that.”
• • •
In London, I saw Ed Murrow every day and the more I was with him the more he impressed me. By nature, he was prone to see the worst side of things, a true pessimist, and yet, at the same time, he was inspired by some higher mission that overrode his inherent gloom. On the air and off, he was the soul of integrity. He was fearless, strong-willed, and honor-bound by his convictions. It all came across in his wartime broadcasts. He radiated truth and concern. And America recognized and reacted to it.
In Britain, Murrow was Mr. U.S.A. He knew everyone of consequence in Britain’s war effort and in government as well as numerous plain Londoners. Everybody who knew him trusted him. As a self-appointed guide to wartime London, he introduced me to all or almost all the British cabinet ministers, and afterward we would discuss our impression of what we learned. From him I learned of Eisenhower’s concern over public opinion in England, including the manifold problems of introducing American troops into the compact British society. These discussions often took place at the Murrows’ flat, not far from the CBS office on Hallam Street, with his wife, Janet, joining us.
As my admiration grew, I also worried about him. I tried to convince him that he was a damn fool to go out on so many night bombing missions over Germany. “You’ve done it and you know what the feel of it is. You can talk about it authoritatively. What do you have to gain to do it the second, third, fourth, or fifth time?”
He would always say, “Oh, I agree with you. I think it’s silly and I won’t do it any more.” Then, a couple of nights later, I would find out that he’d gone on another bombing expedition over Berlin.
When I complained, he would say, “Oh, I’m sorry. But this was one I just couldn’t resist.”
He gave me the feeling that he had a death wish. Ed seemed unable to refrain from putting himself in danger. He did not want to report on danger without having experienced it himself. When describing the air raids over London, he would stand on top of a building and broadcast live. Bombs fell around him. Some dangers are a necessity for war correspondents; but nobody required Murrow to fly night bombing missions, one of the most dangerous activities in the war—except Ed Murrow himself. Such acts were part of his nature. He drove automobiles too fast. When he drove us to the country, he scared me to death. Not many people would drive with him. Close as we became, I never learned what it was that made him live so dangerously.
As a journalist Murrow was an astute observer and man of judgment. He guided me in a number of wartime broadcasting matters. Ed and Robert Foot, director general of the BBC, persuaded me to give a talk over BBC radio the day before I left London in September 1942.
We knew the British had a vital interest (reflected in Churchill’s question to me at the Duff Coopers’ dinner party) in understanding the American attitude toward their country. In my radio talk I reported that there was in fact “evidence of widespread and perhaps increasing anti-British sentiment” in the United States, a feeling, I surmised, that was partly ingrained, dating back to the Revolutionary War. I also reported that there might well be some anti-American feelings in Britain, although I had encountered none myself. The important thing, I declared, was that these differences be admitted and “talked about frankly as between friends,” who were pursuing a common purpose.
As for rumors that relations were bad between American and British troops, I warned that such untrue stories were being spread by the Axis, and it was the duty of transatlantic broadcasters “to defeat and dispel these rumors” by reporting “fearlessly and accurately within the limits imposed by military security” the day-to-day happenings of the war, the broader issues and policies, and also the disagreements that would inevitably arise between the Allies. Better to air any real disagreements when they occurred, I said, than to suppress them and foster distrust and disunity.
On my return to New York, I faced a number of special concerns, such as the reorganization of the news department because of the hundreds of CBS employees who were leaving to join the military service. And Ed Klauber was lost to CBS as number-two executive. After suffering a heart attack, he retired in 1943. Upon his recovery he went to work for the Office of War Information. We had the good fortune to have Paul Kesten take his place. And of course there were many detailed problems in running CBS, both on the entertainment and news sides, on a wartime basis. It occurred to me, however, that in only a few years the war had transformed our once small and inexperienced news department into a large and mature organization, one with a heavy burden of responsibility. As the war expanded, CBS correspondents went east and they went west to the ends of the earth.
I. Elmer Davis’ inimitable style as a writer and a man can be discerned from this very nice, handwritten note he sent:
“Dear Bill—
In the hustle of departure I failed to express adequately my real regret at leaving Columbia. Not only did you give me the nation-wide audience that made this transition possible (I will tell you a year from now whether that was a favor or not) but I always found Columbia a good place to work. It has always been my good fortune to work for civilized employers but Columbia was the most pleasant of the lot. With considerable apprehension I leave a job I know I could do for one which I may not be able to do at all, looking backward at what will presently seem a lost Paradise.”
II. I gave an abbreviated similar report to the American people in an article I wrote for the April 1941 issue of Fortune magazine.