The Telephone Booth Indian - Abbott Joseph Liebling [87]
The afternoon newspapers on November 8, particularly those that had been taken in the day before, attacked the United Press. A Brooklyn Eagle editorial, typical of the milder approaches to the subject, began, “The United Press, its news dupes, and the French censors must get out of this muddle as best they can.” The Post deplored the heavy loss of working hours incurred when shipyard workers knocked off to celebrate. The Sun said, “The responsibility is serious in the extreme.” The Globe wondered, “Will the public dare to rejoice over the real news when the armistice comes or will the celebrations be an anticlimax?” During the following week, United Press news disappeared almost completely from the pages of American papers.
All through the falsearmistice excitement, William W. Hawkins, Howard's phlegmatic secondincommand, who was in charge at the New York United Press office, fought to defend the Howard message. Hawkins had collaborated with Howard from the first year of the United Press's existence and was two years later to succeed him as president of the organization. Five or six hours after the State Department's denial of the story, Hawkins, at his office in the Pulitzer Building, said that the United Press would stand by the report until it was disproved. The State Department said that German and Allied delegates to a conference on armistice terms had not even met at the time the report was released. Hawkins replied that it was lucky Howard had got his story past a momentarily relaxed censorship. Twentyfour hours after the false report, the United Press sent out another dispatch just received from its president, saying, “URGENT BREST ADMIRAL WILSON WHO ANNOUNCED BREST NEWSPAPER ARMISTICE BEEN SIGNED LATER NOTIFIED UNCONFIRMABLE MEANWHILE BREST RIOTOUSLY CELEBRATING. HOWARD SIMMS.” Subsequently it sent out a message from Admiral Wilson admitting that the report had originated in his office. Years afterward, when the Tribune had been taken in by a fake report of a fleet of gambling palaces off the Atlantic coast, Howard, playing golf on a Westchester course, shouted to a Tribune man named Montague, who was playing near by, “Where did you get that scoop?” “Admiral Wilson told us,” Montague answered. Howard was struck dumb for five or six seconds.
The signing of the real armistice on November 11 saved Howard and the United Press from any prolonged humiliation. Americans were too pleased with the real thing to stay angry over the false. Howard ordinarily thinks of the incident lightheartedly In 1928, on the first anniversary of his acquisition of the New York Telegram, a purchase which marked ScrippsHoward's entry into the New York newspaper field, the editorial staff held a beefsteak dinner at Cavanagh's Restaurant. The publisher acted as master of ceremonies. Francis Albertanti, a sports writer, heckled Howard freely. At last, Howard happily yelled, “Shut up! I once stopped a war and I can stop you!”
The false armistice and its aftermath did nothing to estrange Howard from Edward Wyllis Scripps, the odd old man who owned fiftyone per cent of the stock in the Scripps newspapers and the United Press and had been Howard's employer for thirteen years. The way Howard bounced back after the nightmare of November 7 increased Scripps's respect for him. Scripps, in his spare time, used to dictate for his own amusement notes he called “disquisitions” on anything that came into his mind. He had already dictated one on Howard in 1917. Howard, then thirtyfour years old, had been president of the United Press for five years. “Right