Ear on Chicago; Unidentified

This is Hugh Hill, speaking from the wire room of the Chicago Tribune Press Service. And this is the story of the foreign service of the Tribune, as told by its foreign correspondents and their editor, Don Starr. The sound you were just hearing is that of the teletype machine, sending stories from around the world to the Tribune, which is located in Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. The wire room is on the fourth floor of the Tribune Tower. The story now coming in is by the Tribune correspondent in Bonn, Germany, Larry Rue. This story may appear in tomorrow's Sunday Tribune. Let me read just a few lines. Date line, Bonn, Germany, June 29. The United States has granted $3 .4 billion in post -war aid to West Germany. It would be difficult to find any other European country where American taxpayers' money has had such far -reaching results in achieving the purpose of this aid to accelerate post -war economic recovery. More than one -fourth are $900 million of the American aid grants have been

spent on the rebuilding of West Berlin, which itself has set up some kind of a record in developing economy for its two and three -tenths million people behind the Iron Curtain. Two paragraphs from a story filed by Larry Rue over in Bonn, Germany. Now let me bring in Don Starr, who is the editor of the Chicago Tribune's Foreign Service. Don, first of all, let me ask you how this story arrived on this teletype machine from Larry Rue. Well, Larry fows in Bonn at the radio station, and it goes direct to New York, where to our New York office. There our New York office puts it on this teletype machine, and it is transmitted to Chicago. How does it originate in the first place, Don? Do you phone Larry Rue? Do you send him a cable or something, letting him know what kind of a piece you want? Normally, Larry is left to himself, he knows what we want. And on occasion, we either telephone him or cable him, and tell him, give him a special

assignment. But normally, Larry knows what we want and files daily, which happened in this case. That happened in this case. This has a good chance of being in tomorrow morning Sunday trivia. That will be in tomorrow morning's paper. Don, there must be some times when you talk to these foreign correspondents by telephone, is that right? Quite often we call them. As a matter of fact, I'm about to call Jules Dubois right now, would you like to listen in? Why sure would? That's fine. That's a good way for us to learn how you do business. Let's listen. Hello. Would you please get Jules Dubois at the Hotel National in Havana, Cuba? Thank you. Thank you. While we're waiting for that phone call, Henry Wales, our chief of our Paris bureau, is in town. Would you like to talk to him? I certainly would. I wonder if we could make a little interview with him. Yes. Let's go into Mr. Maxwell's office and talk to him. All right. Fine. Henry, let's get into a little bit of your background. First of all,

you were, I understand, the first foreign correspondent for the Tribune. I was the first post -war one correspondent from the Tribune. And I was with the American Army in World War I, credited to General Pershing staff. And so was Floyd Gibbons of the Chicago Tribune. And at the end of the war, in November of 1918, Colonel McCormick instructed Floyd Gibbons to organize a foreign staff. Floyd came to me and said, how would you like to be the Paris correspondent? He was the director of the whole thing. He said, you can then cover the peace conference. So, I grabbed it quick, because if I had a state with the IANS, I'd have had to go on up to Cobblance covering the Army of Occupation, and I had plenty of Army by that time. Well, Henry, let's move on up a little bit in history and come to the Lindbergh arrival in Paris. It was in 1927. Tell us about that. Well, I got a lucky break on the arrival of Lindbergh out there, because

in the first place I got over to his plane, I was the first one from the Savinian side to reach Lindbergh's plane, the spirit of St. Louis, when it sat down at Le Bourget Airport. But there were a couple of soldiers from the military side of the airfield that got there first, because he landed on that side of the field. And I got there just as these soldiers were hammering and busting on the door to open it. Well, Lindbergh then opened it off from the inside, and they pulled him out, and they put him on their shoulders. They chaired him, as the English say. The first thing I noticed with these Frenchmen rushing toward the plane with knives, with drawn knives. And there had been a good deal of comment that Lindbergh should not have made that flight, or no American should have made the flight toward Paris at that period, because the French Frenchmen who had tried to made the flight from Paris to New York,

Nungesser and Coley had been lost, and the French papers printed stories that the reason they were lost was because the United States meteorological bureau, the weather bureau, refused to give them any weather reports, and therefore they went down in bad weather, while that was later proved to be untrue, and that the Americans were not withholding any information just so an American pilot could make it first. But anyway, what do you think they were going to the plane with knives drawn to cut it up? Well, I thought they were going to cut me up, and Lindbergh, too, is what I thought. But however, as a train, now all they wanted, it was to cut off pieces of the fuselage as souvenirs, which they did, and one of them, Lindbergh, was up there on the shoulders of these men, and one of the fellows that was slashing off a piece of that material, and Lindbergh managed to take off his helmet and make a swipe at him like that, and said, lean away from there and so forth. Well, when did you first get a chance to talk to Lindbergh in person? I got a chance to talk to

Lindbergh, as soon as he was pulled out of that plane, he was sure that he made the flight all right, but anyway, he wanted to be dead sure, and he says, is this booget? He pronounced it with the hard G, and so I reached up, and I said, yes, this is booget, you're here, and then they started to march him off, and as I say, was black dark, and the nice stumbling in my hat fell off, and that time thousands more people were there, and I never could find Lindbergh again, and what was the next time you saw him? The next time I saw him was at 4 .30 in the morning. He sat down at 10 .30 at night, and I saw him at 4 .30 in the morning at the American Embassy, but I mean, well, I'll give you a fill in on what happened before that. The paper goes to bed early on Saturday nights, and so I said to myself, well, I better get in and get this advanced story, even though I haven't got Lindbergh's tail of what happened, and I got a very good break there because instead of going to my office to write the story where I would have descended in what we call takes, namely short piece, a hundred words a piece, and I only had one

cyclist, I decided to go right to the cable office. Well then, there were two cable companies operating, and the Western Union was still charging a centa -word more for press copy than the rival company, and I figured, well, all my competitors will be using the rival company, which we had been using for a couple of months since they'd dropped their rate of centa -word. So I went to the Western Union, and I figured this story was worth another centa -word, and sure enough, it was nobody filed by the Western Union that night. I sat in there, they gave me a typewriter, they pulled out every page that came out of the typewriter and sent it off, and I had an open cable direct into Chicago. And when I was writing the story, I got messages back from the cable editor, our cable editor here, and those days was named Joe Pearson saying, you're hours ahead of everybody, hours and hours, because you see, from Borje Airport, there was only one telephone line available for all those reporters that were there. So now you're getting along to what happened next, when did I see Bern, Lindbergh, next,

after I sent all this long tail, I then realized that I hadn't seen Lindbergh, so I said to myself at 4 .30 in the morning, where could I find Lindbergh? Well, I took one chance, I went to the embassy, and I go out to the embassy, and I see it's all lighted up, and I see several cars outside, and I go in, and his son, the ambassador, son, Palmley Herrick, said, run upstairs, you're just in time. I went upstairs to a room on the second floor, and just as I entered the room, the door from the bathroom opened, and in March, Mr. Lindbergh, in a pajamas and a dressing gun, and a great big glass of milk in his hand, and told us the story of his flight, and how he iced up, and how he saw the fishing boats over island, and all the rest of the thing. So that's a great story, Henry, yeah. Listen, let's bring it up to World War II, and tell me about the story of the GIs who were imprisoned, and when you arrived, they were released. Well, I'll tell you, well, that's really the story, they give me the most satisfaction of any story I made in my whole career, but it really gave me a

great big boot to be able to go out to that POW camp, that prisoner of war camp, that Falling Bastel in Germany, near Bremen, and to be able to send the names of about four or five thousand American soldiers who had most of whom had been listed as missing, and this was the first news that their mothers, their wives, their sweethearts, their families in America had that they were alive and kicking, and they were all kicking because they wanted to soap and a bath. You set up all night writing out those three thoughts? Yes, right. I got there about two in the afternoon because we had to make innumerous detours in the Jeep to get there, and the bridges were all down and so forth, and it was about two in the afternoon, and the British and American trucks were just arriving to take these men out of there and take them back and rehabilitate them. And I got out there when my Jeep driver, he helped me to take the names and the addresses of all these men, and some of the men, some of the prisoners themselves

waited around for a while and helped me. Well, we speedily ran out of paper, and so we tore up shirts and we tore up pajamas and any other thing they had to write on that was on which you could write legibly to get all these names done. And then with all this work, the censor didn't want to file the name? Yes, well then I drove all back. I drove back almost all night long, and then I started to pound out this story at our press camp near Magdaburg on the Elbe. So I wrote this story and took it into the censor, and he says, you can't send that because you haven't got their serial numbers. So what did I do? What did I figure? What the do's can I do about this thing? So I went back, I rewrote this story, and I put in phony serial numbers, any numbers that came in my mind for every one of these men. Then I took it back to him, and I said, well, I have the thing, but I didn't think I'd waste the tolls on it because I've read it, and while he said, now you're conforming to regulations, the story can go. And then of course, I had to send another wire to the managing editor who

was then Pat Maloney saying, kill those serial numbers because they're all phony, and I was afraid that some mother might say that she knew her son's serial number, and well, his name is there, but his serial number is totally different. Maybe there's still another mix up on the thing. So anyway, they killed the serial numbers, and they distributed all those names to all those people. And I really felt pretty good about it, and I've received many, many letters from parents and from the fellows themselves that got out of saying how glad they were that this story had been, that the fact that they were safe had been cable to their parents and that their people stopped worrying anymore and stopped thinking they were dead. No, Henry, we're up to the present time. What do the French people think about American foreign aid? Well, of course, they can understand it. The French people as far as the government and most of the Europeans too, they can't imagine Santa Claus 365 days in a year. Of course, envy, because America is so rich, and I think

every American is a millionaire, they become very envious because of the fact that the acute housing problem, which has existed in France since World War I, and no decent lodgings being built for people. And yet on the other hand, and all those hundreds, I might say, of installations of the American army in France, the French government goes out and builds housing for those people, apartments or little cottages and so forth, which is paid for by the US government in which we'll back to the French. But in the meanwhile, it's being occupied by Americans personnel, they're in their dependence, their wives, their kids and so forth. And so that makes the French pretty envious to think that they're living in houses that they great grandfather's lived in, all grabbed up in cubby holes, and then wherever the Americans go, why they put up nice apartments for them and whatever you want, installation. So they're not too happy in the long run about

foreign aid, and especially about Americans being over in France. No, they're not. No, they don't. No, I guess no country likes a foreign army on its soil when there's no war going on. And as far as the mass of the people is 99 percent of the French people are concerned, they don't see any, they don't see any results of foreign aid. The foreign aid that we give is given to the French government. This made a handful of Frenchmen extremely fabulously rich, and it has enabled the French to balance their, not to balance their budget, but anyway to reduce the deficit of the budget so that the Frank doesn't go all to pieces, the monetary unit. And it is enabled the Frenchmen not to pay his taxes because that's the scandal of the world over there is tax evasion by the French. And while they're, well, their tax schedules run pretty high, the fact that they never collect them, it makes it kind of nullifies the thing. So therefore, by

using American money to carry on their administration and to discharge their functions, why it relieves the Frenchmen of, well, about $15 billion in taxes that he would have to pay otherwise if we hadn't given them the money. Of course, we have to pay him for him. Well, Henry, it's been a pleasure talking to you, and once again, I'll say that we're rather fortunate in having you come into Chicago so we could make this interview. And here's some of the very interesting stories of a Tribune Foreign Correspondent. Yeah, well, it's been a pleasure to meet you and to find a man that can put questions in such a leading form that it makes it easy to answer them. Thank you, Henry. We're back now at Don Starr's desk in the wire room of the Tribune's Press Service. And Don, I suppose you and I better do some more talking about how you operate so that we can let them know exactly what is going on in here. In this room, we have teletite machines from Associated Press from Reuters News

Service. Our own machines hooked to our Washington and New York bureaus, both of which help out on this foreign coverage by transmitting our messages. Can you send out on those machines? We can send out on those machines we're in direct communication with all of our offices at all times. And as a matter of fact, this machine here, the Reuters machine, we can get London in 30 seconds. I wonder what happened to that phone call from Du Bois? Well, it ought to be due right now. Let me see if it's in. All right. Hello. I'm ready with Havana Kilba. OK. Hello, Han. Hello, Jules. Yes, sir. How are you? Fine, thank you. How are you? Just fine. Uh, what's going on down there right at the moment? Well, right now, there's an extraordinary comm in Havana. Yes. And usually, when these comms occur down here, it's significant of something that's liable to break. Well, let's go into the background of this a little bit, Jules. What do you think is responsible

for this recent uprising against Batista? Well, the reason for it goes back to a year ago when Batista threw out constitutional president Carlos Puyo. Mm -hmm. People have never forgiven him for that. Uh, basically, you know, that he set back Puyo by half a century in its progress, uh, democratic government. What do you mean, uh, setting back, uh, set Cuba back half a century? Well, uh, uh, Batista has been ruling the country, Yomotap, in that tree anyway. And, uh, they, uh, Puyo, that they were making cash towards, uh, pending government by ballots and not by bullets. And when Batista pulled his, uh, two -day car, 82 days before the election. What election? When was it? I was a presidential election in 1952. Yes. Uh, Batista was a candidate for, uh, president at that time. Yeah. And 82

days before the election, we, uh, engineered a coup and threw out president Carlos Puyo. Yeah. Uh, Batista was sure that that spores third in the race that year. So, uh, the people here, uh, especially the users of the country have never forgiven him for that. And, uh, how about the professional people, the doctors, the lawyers, people of that sort? Oh, uh, all the professional and civic organizations throughout the country have now declared themselves unanimously opposed to this. Mm -hmm. And opposed to this reign of terror that has been going on. Yes. Well, now, Jules, since you speak, uh, excellent Spanish and, uh, and, uh, have virtually lived in all these South American, Central American countries, uh, there are a couple of other points, uh, you'd better be ready in Havana to take off, uh, oh, any moment, there are two hot spots. Now, one, uh, the Dominican Republic, you're

barred down there by Trujillo. That's right. This, uh, Galinda's Murphy case, you're very familiar with that. Yes. And, uh, I think that, uh, repercussions from that have caused the Republic, the Dominican Republic, the Bar, you, uh, can you give me, uh, uh, a few notes on that? Yes. When this was a Spanish refugee, and, uh, he opposed Franco, and when Trujillo, uh, accepted refugees from Spain, back in 1939, Galinda was admitted into the Dominican Republic. Yeah. He was very about Roman Catholic and an advocate of the independent Spanish government who lived in the Dominican Republic for about, uh, six years, and, uh, are the professor at the university, and also a tutor for Trujillo's children. Mm -hmm. Then he gained a section in the United States on an immigrant visa in 1945, and, uh, who was a professor, stuck to that

Columbia University. He then, uh, produced a very comprehensive, penetrating analysis, uh, of the Trujillo era for his thesis, uh, for a doctorate of polo - Yeah. And, uh, Trujillo got wind of that book, and the belief is that, uh, Galinda was done in because Trujillo did not want that book published in the United States. Well, you, you, you say done in, as a matter of fact, Galinda's disappeared mysteriously, uh, somewhere between New York and where? Somewhere between New York and the Dominican Republic. Uh -huh. He was believed to have been flown to the Dominican Republic by Joe Lester Murphy. There has been a body flown in? The body was flown out on the night of March 12, 1956. Murphy has disappeared in the Dominican government announced that he had been killed by, uh, Cabillo de la Maza, uh -huh, a pilot making airlines. You knew Galinda's quite well, didn't you? Yes. Galinda was a very

heartened anti -communist. Oh, he was. Yes. Well, now, you know, I'm getting a lot of publicity from Trujillo's outfit, uh, these pamphlets that tell me that, uh, Galinda's has played both sides of the fence, that at one time he was a great and good friend of Trujillo and was given jobs and money and whatnot, and that, on the other hand, Trujillo then turned against, I mean that, uh, Galinda's then turned against Trujillo. Uh, what about that? Well, uh, Galinda's a Mexican as book, uh, which was published in Spanish, and so that Leon has never been published in the United States. Uh, Galinda's a Mexican as book, you did work for Trujillo. All right, Jules. Now, uh, I think you ought to stay in a van, uh, as long as you think necessary, you're, the best judge of, uh, how hot it is there, but I think you also should keep in the back of your mind, go out of my mind on that possible student, uh, uh, date when they may, uh, break out, uh, in

order to be ready to go down there any time, okay? Oh, yeah. Now, you know, the situation is a little hot and heavy again. Yes, I know it is. But I don't dare lose here and fly the hairdo because, uh, it gets too hot there to close the airport. And I won't be able to get back here. I know. The last time you were down there, they closed the airport and hate he and you had to land in the Dominican Republic and you thought perhaps Trujillo would catch your throat, huh? I thought I'd wind up like mercy and possibly go into it. Okay, Jules. Okay, guys. Thank you a lot. Thank you. Bye. All right. Done. That was interesting hearing, uh, the phone conversation between you and Dubois. I guess this sort of thing goes on quite often, doesn't it? Quite often, yes. Done. One of the more interesting things I think that are printed in the Chicago Tribune is on Sunday when you print the letters from the foreign correspondents. We had Gadgetini tape this one, which will appear in tomorrow morning's paper. He went down to the CBS office in Rome and put the thing on tape so that, uh, it could be broadcast. Well, fine. Let's take a listen to it.

Everybody knows that one of the biggest resources of Italy is tourists. More than 12 and a half million foreigners visited Italy last year or nearly one fort of the entire Italian population. This year's tourist crop is expected to be even bigger and this will mean more numerous American collars at the Tribune office in Rome, particularly for Rita Young, my assistant would normally take care of the women collars who are more numerous than the men. A good number of American tourists, not only Chicagoans, call at our office so conveniently located near Rome's central post office. And each collar has its little problem and a different question, where to shop, which are the best restaurants, what to see in a limited time, how to get tickets for an audience with a Pope. Chicagoans, dropping to look at the Tribune, we keep on file. Anytime there is an election in Chicago, many either phone or call to get the final results and when some

disaster happens, like the recent crash on the elevated line, we receive many calls from people who want to check on the names of the victims to make sure none of their relatives or friends are involved. The great number of American tourists and the presence of large American residential groups of civilians and soldiers in various parts of Italy has had its influence on a Italian way of living. For example, Italian youngsters insist on wearing American blue jeans and fancy sports shirts. They are beginning to build driving movie theaters and the first one is soon to be open in Rome. In addition to space for automobiles, it will have a special area reserved to Italy's most popular means of transportation, the motor scooter. Roman health wives have been the first in Italy to experience the mysteries and the lights of the American supermarket. Their first reaction to it was negative. They miss gossiping with the shopkeepers and the traditional haggling

over prices. But when they discovered that supermarket prices were considerably lower and the quality standards more uniform, they changed their minds. Now supermarkets are mushrooming up all over the city and the first one opened only a few weeks ago, it's already planning to expand in order to eliminate the daily peak hours crush. Competition from the supermarket has nearly ruined neighborhood food stores and their owners are desperately seeking ways to survive. One of the greatest factors of American influence in Italy was the post -war aid program which ended in 1952. American aid helped not only to fight communism in Italy but also contributed largely to rebuild this country and its economy. American aid was given to the Italian government to spend with the supervision of American government agencies, naturally known of this money filtered down directly to the little people of Italy who, however, indirectly got the benefit of all the reconstruction accomplished with this money. Highways,

bridges, railways, hospitals and houses were rebuilt and new ones added. Factories received off -to -date equipment and boosted their production above pre -war levels. They gave work to masters of unemployed, steadily raising the standard of living for Italian workers. The elite people of Italy have always realized how important American aid has been in improving their everyday life. Well done, that's about as much time as we have for the first program. We're going to do this story in two parts because it's such an immense story and we still have a number of foreign correspondents to hear from. Next week I understand you're going to make a phone call for us to Arthur V .C. over in London and talk to his wife Gwen Morgan at the same time. Yes, I'll talk to Art and Gwen next week. Who else can we hear from next week? We can hear from Griffin up in Otto, what Canada where they have a very interesting situation has developed in an upset election and the party that's been in power 22 years has been kicked out. By the way, Percy Wood

has just returned from a six months tour of the Far East and he went there on an assignment in which we call Asia Revisited. Percy had been out there before, would you like to talk to Percy? Well, I will have to of course wait until next week and talk to him, will he be in next week? He'll be in next week, yes. All right, that'll be swell. Then let's come back next week and we'll talk to those correspondents we mentioned and of course we'll be back with Don Starr and that's the end of part one of the story of the Chicago Tribune Foreign Service. This is Hugh Hill speaking.