Around the World in 175 Days, 1924: Department of State Contributions to the U.S. Army Flight Around the World: Part IX: An Interlude: Conflict With the Press

Today’s post was written by David Langbart, archivist in Research Services at the National Archives at College Park, MD.

This is the ninth in a series of occasional blog posts.

Throughout the weeks and months of the Army’s flight around the world, it received a great deal of attention in the press, both domestic and foreign.  Previous posts have provided a peak at the foreign attention.  That notice was almost always positive.  As the flight was progressing through Europe, however, there was a minor international kerfuffle caused by a negative report in the press.

On August 10, the Washington Post published an article stating that Danish officials had obstructed the flight as it passed through Greenland, a Danish territory, as it flew west across the Atlantic Ocean heading back to North America.  This was not true, however; the U.S. legation in Copenhagen wrote that it could ”testify that this is false as Danish Government acted on every request from the Department with exceptional promptness and good will.”

To deal with the issue, the Department undertook two immediate steps.

First, since the Washington Post article was based on a dispatch by a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, the Department sent Robert R. McCormick, the editor of that newspaper, the following detailed letter.  McCormick was a leading conservative Republican and later became a scourge of many an administration as an avowed isolationist, against U.S. entry into World War II, and an opponent of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and liberal Republicans, among many other things.

Second, the Department sent the following telegram to the U.S. legation in Copenhagen.

The Danish foreign minister replied as follows:

McCormick, still early in his career as the editor, eventually replied with this sanctimonious letter.  

Arthur Bliss Lane, the Department official handling the day-to-day action on the around-the-world flight, noted about this reply:  “Very Tribunesque! I think we had better not send to War.”  Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew (the Department’s #2 official at the time) concurred with that recommendation.

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Sources:  All the documents mentioned above come from file “811.2300” in the 1910-29 Central Decimal File (NAID 302021), RG 59: General Records of the Department of State.  A listing of those documents will be found in the Purport List for that file, which is available online, beginning at frame 510.