Casablanca Story

Newspapers had been playing blindman's buff with the Roosevelt-Churchill Casablanca conference story ever since Jan. 9, when all editors were advised by Censor Byron Price: "The President is taking another trip. . . . Attention is directed forcefully to the Code provision restricting any information regarding [his] movements. . . ." By Jan. 25, when the printable news reached their desks, with another 32 hours before it could be officially released (at 10 p.m. E.W.T., the 26th), they had fidgets. Meanwhile they hinted to the hilt:

> Many gave unusual prominence to "think-pieces" from London which told of "Allied conversations now under way" and "imminent developments of far-reaching importance."

> The Chicago Sun provided sleuth-minded readers with all the clues they needed. First the Sun topped Page One with a streamer: NEWS DISPATCHES or VITAL IMPORTANCE IN TOMORROW'S CHICAGO SUN. Supplementing this was a two-column box plugging the imminence of big news, and next to the box a dispatch from the Sun's London Correspondent Frederick Kuh saying: ". . . inter-Allied negotiations [now are coming] to fruition. . . ." Finally the Sun featured a Berlin radio report that Roosevelt and Churchill had met to discuss North Africa.

>The gun-jumpy Seattle Star, over the Berlin dispatch, ran a black headline:

FR, CHURCHILL MEET, BERLIN SAYS.

Leaks. While newspapers kept the secret of the Casablanca conference well, the news here & there leaked.

In Kansas City, day before the story was to be made public, reporters heard bartenders, waiters whisper: "The President's in Africa, you know." In San Francisco one newsman was told of the President's trip by a stranger on a trolley. A Detroit reporter was flabbergasted when a courthouse official spouted: "Yeah, I know all about it. Roosevelt and Churchill conferred in North Africa." In Wilkes-Barre, Pa. striking anthracite miners declined for a while to obey a Presidential request that they return to work because "it's a phony; the President's not in Washington." A Portland, Ore. reporter was informed by his wife that the President had been in Africa: she had heard it from her mother, who had heard it from her second husband, who had heard it at his Rotary luncheon. One slip was made inadvertently over the Associated Press wirephoto talker system. A Midwest member got on the wire, blatted the news to all wirephoto points by asking the New York office: "What about pictures on Roosevelt at Casablanca?"

Guesswork. Readers who could make neither head nor tail of the hints were reduced to fantastic speculation.

> Citizens in Kansas City thought:

1) Russia was declaring war on the Japs,

2) Hitler had asked for an armistice,

3) income taxes were to be doubled.

> Some Denverites guessed Roosevelt was resigning.

> Know-it-all Washingtonians had Roosevelt in Moscow seeing Stalin, in South America strengthening Latin-American relations, in Canada discussing hemisphere defense, in Mexico ditto.

People reading the promise of news to come were ripe for rumors:

> In Pittsburgh a housewife turned on her radio, heard Commentator H. V. Kaltenborn orating about "unconditional surrender." Waiting to hear no more, she raced to a telephone, called her husband, a shop foreman in a Pittsburgh mill. To him she breathlessly imparted the glorious news that the war had ended. Result: the foreman told his men, they celebrated while furnaces began to cool.

> A passenger train churning through La Porte, Ind. got its whistle stuck, shrilled steadily the 26 miles into South Bend. The South Bend Tribune was flooded with telephone calls from rural hopefuls, positive the war was over.

Having been kept waiting longer than the public, many editors had anticipated news of decisions as well as of a meeting. Hoping for a mountain, they felt they had been given only a mouse. Editorialized the Baltimore Sun: "Disappointment rather than enthusiasm was the chief emotion. . . . "

Said Commentator-Author William L. Shirer: "The unprecedented build-up . . . was a psychological mistake. . . ."

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