The Press: Death of a Viscount

A new era began for Britain’s press one day in 1896 when two Harmsworth brothers, sons of an indigent London barrister, started the Daily Mail. First of Britain’s great papers for the masses, it made the Harmsworths first of a fabulous line of British press lords. That era definitely ended last week when the younger of the Harmsworth brothers, aged 72, died of dropsy in Bermuda.

Alfred Harmsworth was 23 when he started his first paper, Answers to Correspondents, a gossipy, amusing weekly journal. It caught on with Britain’s masses. Harold Harmsworth was then a 21-year-old postal clerk. Against his better judgment, he let Alfred persuade him to join Answers as business manager. Alfred had the editorial brains, Harold knew shillings & pence. In six years, from their profits, they were able to buy a struggling London daily, the Evening News, and put it on its feet. Then they founded the Daily Mail. In 1917 Alfred was created Viscount Northcliffe, two years later Harold became Viscount Rothermere.

Brilliant Alfred was not much interested in money, left all business details to Harold, used to say with a careless gesture: “My rich brother can handle that.” By the time Lord Northcliffe died in 1922, they also owned the stately London Times, the Daily Mirror, various lesser publishing enterprises. Out of a welter of involved deals and suits that followed Northcliffe’s death, Rothermere emerged with control of all these properties except the Times, which was sold to Major John Jacob Astor.

Like Hearst, Rothermere collected objects of art and stored them away. Like Hearst he was a patriotic tub-thumper, a violent Red-baiter. He lived like a maharaja, traveled with an entourage of editors, friends, servants, women. He was lavish with money, but was never the resourceful editor Northcliffe had been.

For a time during World War I Rothermere served as Air Minister (he resigned after his two oldest sons were killed in action). When Britain’s first Labor Government came into power in 1924, he took fright. He invested a large part of his fortune in the U. S., turned his editorial guns on Communism, began to look respectfully at dictators. In 1934 he jumped on Hitler’s bandwagon, threw his support to Sir Oswald Mosley’s British blackshirts. He soon abandoned Mosley, but it was not until a few months before World War II broke out that Rothermere lost hope of an alliance between Britain and Germany against Soviet Russia.

Most remarkable episode in Rothermere’s gold-encrusted career was his crusade for a greater Hungary. The Daily Mail took up Hungary’s cause in 1927, for five years harped on the “wanton” dismemberment of Hungary at Versailles. Astonished Hungarians went wild with enthusiasm, showered gifts on Rothermere, named a street after him in Budapest. A Hungarian newspaper, Pesti Hirlap, supposedly backed by some members of theGovernment, offered Rothermere the crown of Hungary. When he refused,it was offered to his son Esmond.

Last year, after war began, Rothermere was sued by Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a friend of Hitler, who said that Rothermere had offered her £5,000 a year to serve as his personal representative in Central Europe. Rothermere admitted that he had paid the Princess over £51,000 in six years, publicly confessed that he had once admired Hitler. Said he: “I was wrong—and so was half the population.”

His worst mistake in business was made in 1928, when he tried to buck the Berry brothers, William Ewert (now Baron Camrose) and James Gomer (now Baron Kemsley). The Berrys had a prosperous string of provincial newspapers on which Rothermere looked with a jealous eye. He set up rival papers in Newcastle and Bristol. Eventually the news war became so expensive that both sides called a truce. Rothermere retired from Newcastle, leaving most of the field to the Berrys.

In 1932 Lord Rothermere retired as chairman of Associated Newspapers, Ltd., turned the management of his properties over to young Esmond. Three years ago he gave up business completely. Last spring the man who took Northcliffe’s place as Britain’s Press Peer No. 1—gnomelike little Baron Beaverbrook, publisher of the mammoth London Daily Express, Minister of Aircraft Production—took Rothermere out of retirement, sent him to Canada and the U. S. on a special war mission. Harold Harmsworth was still rich, but old and tired. Month ago he went to Bermuda for a rest. His granddaughter was with him when he died.