Helen Kirkpatrick Milbank: Interview #1

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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Kasper: Well, as I mentioned, let's start with early on. I know that you were born in Rochester, New York, but much more than that, I don't know. You could fill me in.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. I was born in Rochester, New York, in 1909. I grew up there and lived there until the end of my sophomore year in college when my parents moved east to Glens Falls, New York. My father had a job there. I went to a private school, Columbia Preparatory School—where all my mother's and father's friends' children went—until the end of the freshman year in high school. My father, who never took any hand in disciplining me or my brother [Kirk], who is seven years younger, announced that unless I stopped being kept in after school and pulled up my grades, that I would go to public school the next year. I paid no attention, because I knew Mother wouldn't let that happen. But to my surprise, she did, and I went to East High School for one year, which was the greatest thing that ever happened.

I had a marvelous English teacher with whom I was in love. He was probably all of 22 or 23. He was a great teacher, and he turned out later to become a very well-known educator in this country. He was the dean of New York University—Paul McGhee—and he had edited an anthology of poetry and doubtless wrote other books. He used to write long notes on my papers when I turned them in. He called me into his office one day and said, "Where are you going to college?" And I said, "Well, I'm not. Mother says I'm going either to Paris or to Florence to school." And he said, "No, you're not. You're going to college." So, that was that.

And the next year I went to boarding school, the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. I discovered after I'd started there that Mother had entered me in the general course, not the college preparatory course. So I went to the dean and said, "I think there's a mistake. I belong in the college preparatory course." So that was that.

Kasper: Now, why is that your parents didn't have college as part of their sights for you?

Kirkpatrick: I don't know. Mother, was very, very bright. Her mother was the graduate of the first class at Pennsylvania College for Women, which was very unusual at that time. My father had one year at Yale and then had dropped out. He was more social than he was academic, but he also wasn't stupid. I don't know. I think Mother perhaps thought I could follow her example. She had been a very, very glamorous young woman who had a lovely time in Kentucky as a girl. She was very beautiful and this was the way that one went at that time. Unfortunately, I wasn't beautiful as she was, and I just knew that I could not follow that lifestyle. I "came out," so to speak, in Rochester at a tea, but I was awkward and gawky and most of the boys came up to my chin in dancing school. So that didn't appeal to me.

Kasper: Well, did they have other expectations for your brother?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, I suppose so. As a matter of fact, there was no battle about it. None at all. Mother was perfectly happy when I—

Kasper: When you changed her mind.

Kirkpatrick: —when I announced that I was going to college. And along with fourteen—I think there were fifteen of us who graduated in the college course at Dobbs—fourteen of us went to Smith, and Louise McCracken went to Vassar. Her father was president of Vassar. The rest of us, sheep-like, followed the school leaders, and went there also.

Kasper: And when you were coming up, as they say, with your brother at home, were there interests like literature, reading, writing, that were encouraged at home?

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Kasper: And you eventually passed the exam?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I not only passed the college board, but Smith required a reading knowledge of two foreign languages to graduate. I took it in Latin and French at the beginning of my sophomore year and passed both, because I'd had French in school from fifth grade on, and, at one point, had had a French governess.

Kasper: That helped.

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes.

Kasper: When and what did you major in at Smith? How did you decide what you would major in?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I was going to major in psychology until, at the University of Rochester, we got into abnormal psych, and I decided I had all of the problems of abnormal psychology. And it was so gloomy. At Smith I became intrigued with history—History 101 course—and so I switched to that. My roommate and I looked at the possibility of going to Paris for junior year. We were accepted, but we debated and finally decided we'd stay at Smith and do what they call special honors—I in history, and she in government.

[Tape interruption.]

Kasper: How did you settle on history as your major?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I was fascinated by it and I became involved fairly early on in things like the international relations club and debating. And the faculty—we had Sidney Fay, who was a noted World War I historian; and a man by the name of Robert Binkley (who died much too young) in modern European history. He went to Wisconsin from Smith. There were just terribly good people. And they, I think, put a little pressure on me.

Kasper: To become a history major.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. Yes.

Kasper: But it was History 101 that began to excite you, was that true?

Kirkpatrick: Well, it fascinated me, yes.

Kasper: What in particular fascinated you?

Kirkpatrick: I think—I don't know.

Kasper: Even ancient history. It wasn't necessarily contemporary?

Kirkpatrick: No. No. No—not ancient and not medieval. I took medieval history and hated it. But Renaissance I loved. And from 1815 on, I thought was fascinating. We were all swept up in the period of modern history—that was the late twenties—in "merchants of death," armaments, the responsibility for the war (WW I), you know— Everybody was against war and we were looking at the people whom we thought were responsible—the "merchants of death," the armaments manufacturers.

Kasper: What do you mean by merchants of death?

Kirkpatrick: I think there was a book called Merchants of Death, which was about the armaments industry and the extent to which the sales of arms and their promotion tended to push nations toward fighting.

Kasper: The fact that there was money involved in producing these kinds of activities were an economic item.

Kirkpatrick: Sure. Of course. Well, after all, Nobel's money was made in armaments.

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Kirkpatrick: Yes. Well, Sidney Fay's two volumes on the causes of World War I were, and still are, textbook books. I don't think Binkley wrote. He may have, but I don't remember anything that he wrote, but he was just a marvelous teacher. There was a thing called special honors in which you had no classes, just small units, maybe three or four students, who met with the professor at his or her house for two or three hours a week. And we did research and papers. No classes for junior and senior year. And then senior year, you did a long paper. Mine has the marvelous, really pretentious title of, "Objectivity in American Historiography with Particular Reference to George Bancroft and Henry Adams."

Kasper: All right!

Kirkpatrick: Isn't that wonderful? Merle Curti, who has also been at Wisconsin, is a noted American historian, still alive at the age of 92 or 93. He has a book—among others—on war and peace. I went back to Smith—oh, maybe I had been four or five years out—and went to one of his classes and was sitting in the back of the room. He came in late. At the end of the lecture he said, "Would Miss Kirkpatrick speak to me after class?" And I went up, and he said, "I came across something the other day that I thought would interest you on the subject of objectivity. This was the kind of a mind you had there."

Kasper: He remembered well what you had written?

Kirkpatrick: Well, apparently.

Kasper: Well, it must have been reasonably impressive.

Kirkpatrick: I don't think so. I haven't read it since.

Kasper: [Laughter.] Do you still have a copy of it? Have you saved it?

Kirkpatrick: No. There presumably is one in the library now on microfiche, I suppose, because they couldn't keep them otherwise.

Kasper: Now, in the paper did you make reference to World War I? Was there a particular subject matter?

Kirkpatrick: No, this had to do with George Bancroft and Henry Adams, American historian.

Kasper: Oh, of course. I'm sorry. That was the latter part of the title. Who was George Bancroft?

Kirkpatrick: He was a noted [19th century American] historian and he wrote textbooks for schools—really rather simplistic textbooks.

Kasper: Were you criticizing objectivity or you were—?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I was looking to see how objective they were?

Kasper: Did you conclude that they were?

Kirkpatrick: I don't remember the conclusions.

Kasper: Tell me about your life as a student at Smith. Was it congenial?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, it was wonderful. I loved it—every minute of it. I'd had boarding school. I'd been there two years and held no positions and was not even in any club or anything like that. But at Smith suddenly everything opened up.

Kasper: You blossomed.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. Slow bloomer. I was president of the international relations club; I headed debating; I was class officer on student council; editor of the yearbook—you know, all that nonsense.

Kasper: Oh my. All that stuff. You were very busy.

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Then when I graduated, I'd had three job offers. I was offered a job teaching at Roberts College in Istanbul; Macy's training school had a course; and the third was to go back to Geneva with a fellowship to study and also be part-time secretary at the Students' International Union. I think the other options closed so that I took the Geneva one, which I guess I was going to take anyway.

Kasper: It sounds like the best of the three.

Kirkpatrick: Also I went back to Geneva for the summer and helped run the seminar that summer. Then I spent the winter partly at the University and partly at the Institute des Hautes Études Internationales (Rappard Institute). And while it was serious, I didn't get into a degree program.

Kasper: What did your parents think of all of this? I mean, not only did you become all these—

Kirkpatrick: They were divorced by that time. My father was remarried living in California, and Mother was in the east, in Cohasset and at Deerfield. She couldn't get my brother into the boarding school that year, so she took a house in Deerfield. He got into boarding school the following year. So, in spring vacation of senior year, when we were working on our papers, four or five of us stayed in Deerfield with Mother and commuted to the library at Smith to do our long papers.

Kasper: Was your mother pleased with your progress—your intellectual progress?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I think so. I didn't know anything about it, but the faculty member, in a house I had lived in, was head of Special Honors, a professor of government, Alice Holden; I think she telephoned Mother to say that the Phi Beta Kappa announcements were going to be in Chapel the next morning, so Mother turned up.

Kasper: Oh, did she.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. I came back from the Hasty Pudding Show at Harvard that same morning—just in time to get to Chapel. My roommate and I had both been there with our beaux.

Kasper: Were you pleased to see your mother there?

Kirkpatrick: Yes. I didn't see her until after Chapel. I was surprised. I didn't know how she'd gotten there.

Kasper: That's nice.

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes. She was pleased.

Kasper: How about your father? Once they were divorced and he was remarried, did you stay close to him as well?

Kirkpatrick: No. No. Both my brother and I were very, uh—very disapproving of him—and of the split—which in some ways I shouldn't have been because I think I had a part in it. They used to argue tremendously over money. And I remember sitting in the living room one day and this argument going on and said, "Why don't you stop this and separate?" I've always felt slightly guilty about it, but I don't think I was the cause.

Kasper: Probably not. But childhood guilt is long lasting.

Kirkpatrick: Well, I was a freshman in college at that time.

Kasper: Well, but still. I think children inevitably feel very responsible for things that happen in their parents' marriages—it can't be helped.

Kirkpatrick: Well, they remarried later.

Kasper: Both of them?

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Kasper: Well, maybe it wasn't to your liking either.

Kirkpatrick: No.

Kasper: It's kind of interesting—

Kirkpatrick: I'm glad. I've made every child that I've had anything to do with take Latin.

Kasper: Oh, have you?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes. Because I think it's very important.

Kasper: My mother felt just the opposite.

Kirkpatrick: She did?

Kasper: She had so many years of Latin, she said she was not going to subject her children to it. And to give you some idea of how sometimes those tests for, you know, how children are going to do on certain aptitudes? I remember my mother loves to tell this story. She was called into the guidance counselor's office in my high school, who reported to her that Anne just did not seem to have a particular facility for languages and that she was going to suggest Anne not take Latin to which my mother, of course, said, "Fine, I don't want her to take Latin." And she said, "Well, I'm going to suggest that Anne take Spanish, it's probably the easiest of the languages that we offer." And my mother said, well, she preferred Anne to take French. So Anne would take French. My mother always likes to tell this story because when I went off to college, I took a language placement exam—actually at the end of high school for college—and scored the highest in the country—in French. And Mother said she always loved to tell this story because, as she said, it said something about the kinds of placement exams that kids have all been required to take, you know. And, you know, my fluency in French was fine.

Kirkpatrick: You must have had awfully good teachers.

Kasper: Actually I did. I had some very good teachers. Their accents were not good, but they were—

Kirkpatrick: They were Americans?

Kasper: They were Americans, but they had a nice grasp of grammar. And then, I guess, I think I just had some natural facility. I see that now. My daughter speaks French just beautifully. And when she, just this year, took her placement exam at the University of Wisconsin, she placed in junior year French, you know. One of the courses she's taking is French conversation, and she told me early in January when she went back, that her professor told her that she had a lovely accent. And I said, "Oh, good!"

Kirkpatrick: Right. Right. Well it's funny, but are you musical?

Kasper: No, not particularly.

Kirkpatrick: Because, I think, often it goes hand-in-hand.

Kasper: Yes. Yes. No, not particularly at all.

Kirkpatrick: Well, I had very good grounding in French. I remember Madame Brewer at Columbia School, who was French, married to an American, I guess, and she was a tartar. She really was. But we did learn our grammar: "favor, help, please, trust, believe, persuade, command, obey—take the subjunctive," you know. I mean, the grammar was dinned in us.

Kasper: What was the first part? Do that again.

Kirkpatrick: "Favor, help, please, trust, believe, persuade, command, obey—take the subjunctive."

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day about it and I can't understand why I did—and I thank god it didn't go on. I broke it off.

Kasper: Oh, so you never married him.

Kirkpatrick: No. No.

Kasper: Was this a Swiss or a—?

Kirkpatrick: No, no. He was an American. He was a twin and his twin brother and father were at that time, in 1931, in China, in Manchuria, when the Japanese went in. We were passionately involved against the Japanese at the League, you see. And Bill, with letters from his father and brother (his brother later committed suicide)— Bill was a very earnest, tweedy, pipe-smoking, gung-ho kind of a guy—a Harvard graduate, you know. We were very congenial, but I had, at the same time, another beau, a Swiss, who was very sophisticated, a very good dancer, and lots of fun, and I really—I really liked him better. [Laughter.]

Kasper: Did you ever become engaged to the Swiss?

Kirkpatrick: No, no. No, but later, many years later, he and his French wife came over with me and spent some weeks with us. I took them down to Florida where the family were at that time. I've seen him from time to time. He ended up in the International Red Cross. Oh, in the meantime, he'd had a coffee plantation, I think, in Rhodesia. But during World War II, I ran across him in the International Red Cross. A very attractive man. I kept saying to him, you know, how marvelous a people the Swiss are, and it's a wonderful country and everything—the trains ran on time and the food was so good. In fact, I think it's almost as good as French food. And he'd say, "Yes—

Kasper: Keep going. That's my annoying [timer].

Kirkpatrick: "—name one great painter, one great writer, one great musician, who is Swiss." Well, you couldn't quite do that. He said, "Any Swiss worthy of his salt leaves Switzerland."

Kasper: The amenities were not enough. Life was comfortable, but it wasn't interesting.

Kirkpatrick: Not intellectually interesting, he thought.

Kasper: Yes. Was he particularly attractive—

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: —to you because of his intellectual kinds of—?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, I don't know. I don't think we did much about the intellect at that point. [Laughter.]

Kasper: Okay.

Kirkpatrick: You know. He loved American jazz.

Kasper: Uh huh. So does my husband.

Kirkpatrick: He collected all the records.

Kasper: Yes. My husband is quite an aficionado of American jazz.

Kirkpatrick: His parents were dead and he lived with his—he didn't live in the same house, but on the property of his brother who was a pastor—a Calvinist—and Jean had no use for the Calvinists.

Kasper: Oh, my. Now, at the end of this year in Geneva, you'd obviously had a very exciting time, both intellectually and even romantically, shall we say, or socially.

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Kasper: [Laughter.] Because you did such a good job—correcting your own mistakes.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. That's right. And after each one of these assignments you'd go back and the executive placement person would go over the assignment. She was Mrs. Shepherd, who was a tough cookie. And you'd go back and she'd go over how well you'd done.

In the china department, where I was head of stock, there was to be a sale the next day. One of the rules was: you set up a sale table the night before—no nonsense about it. Well, there was a party out in Mt. Kisco that I wanted to go to, so I left early and didn't set up the sale table. I got in early the next morning and was setting it up when the buyer came along. He said, "Miss Kirkpatrick, you didn't set it up last night?" And I said, "No, sir. I had had an urgent engagement and I knew I'd get in early." And he said, "Supposing you'd been knocked down by a taxi, what would we have done?" [Laughter.] So, I thought, "Well, that's going to be a black mark for me."

Well, when we came to the end of the review and Mrs. Shepherd was going over it and so on and so forth. "Well," she said, "Mr. Wells said 'never makes the same mistake twice.'" That kind of thing. Then I wound up—you make a choice at the end of the training period as to whether you wanted to go into management, personnel or merchandizing—and I really hated the whole thing. I knew it was good training, but I hated it. I'd wake up in the morning and say, "You've got to get up." "Why?" "To go to Macy's." "Why?" "To earn enough money to pay the rent." "Why?" "So you can go back to work at Macy's?"

A British psychiatrist, for some reason, was over here studying at Macy's, and I saw a lot of him. He was very attractive. And he said, "You know, this isn't your line." And I said, "Well, I know, but so what?" Well, when I came back at the end of the training period and Mrs. Shepherd was going over things, she said, "Well, now, you have your choice. You can go anywhere you like. You've done very well." Then she leaned back and she picked up a cigarette and lit it. This was sort of an indication that the interview as such was over, you see. We'd become fairly good friends and she said, "Tell me what's happening in France?" The government had fallen for the umpteenth time, you see. And I thought, "Uh huh, she's trying to catch me on this." And I said, "Well, you know, Shep, I haven't really had time for that kind of thing." And she laughed and lit the cigarette and said, "Well, you know what I'm saying to you is that that's your field of interest—not here." But she said, "It won't matter. If you want the job, you can have it."

Kasper: So it was clear to everybody—not only to yourself, but even to your employers—that Macy's was not your future.

Kirkpatrick: That's right.

Kasper: And that your interests were elsewhere, shall we say?

Kirkpatrick: That's right. That's right. And this British psychiatrist said, "You know, you really should get out of this."

Kasper: Meanwhile, there was this beau, however, at Columbia. Is that where he was?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes. But then—

Kasper: That's part of the reason why you were there.

Kirkpatrick: That's right. Well—

Kasper: I mean, aside from the fact that the New York Herald Tribune said that they didn't want you because they didn't need any women, it was also this man that had attracted you back to New York.

Kirkpatrick: That's right. I saw a lot of him. I was crazy about him. And at Christmas time, he and a friend of his (they had been at Cambridge together) picked me up and we drove to Canada to ski with a group of friends.

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lawyers, were behind this exhibit. And the Institute, in itself, was supposedly non-Communist and not involved in the Party. Actually, I think the Executive Secretary definitely was a Party member. She was Russian and married to an American. But this was afterwards that I realized this. So I took that job and put the exhibit on and then decided that really things were not right, so I was going to get out.

Kasper: Things were not right in working with the Institute and—

Kirkpatrick: No. As far as Vic and I were concerned.

Kasper: In your marriage.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. It just, to me, had no future. It was brought to a head by the fact that I was pregnant and I just knew that it wasn't going to last, and therefore, it was wrong. So I had an abortion—or, we called it—a D&C, which my doctor very kindly organized at Doctor's Hospital. That really brought me up to the point of saying, "Well, this doesn't make sense to go on." So I got a job taking a bunch of girls to Europe—the hard way—thirty girls in their late teens. At that point we had moved in with Vic's family, which was impossible.

Kasper: Especially given his mother.

Kirkpatrick: Well, she was all right. I just—she was sort of a fussy, fussy, pretentious woman. I loved Father Victor. I used to spend time with him every day. He would come back from the office and go into his study and he and I would sit and he'd smoke these big cigars and we'd have long talks. He was a wonderful man who took a dim view of his older son, too.

Kasper: Had his son gone to college? Did he have a profession of some kind?

Kirkpatrick: He went to Princeton. And he went to Cambridge. But he never finished anything. He was going to write the great American novel.

Kasper: Was that part of your frustration in the marriage—that he never completed anything?

Kirkpatrick: That's right. And, you know, he'd get one idea of making money, and it was always going to make a million, but nothing really ever happened. He was fun and charming and attractive. And, also, another thing that I held against him: he and the family were Jewish, but he didn't think of himself as Jewish. He rejected it. And this, I didn't hold with. You are what you are and you don't reject it. And he did. I just didn't respect him for that. So I left with the girls for Europe. When I got to Vienna, I sent him a cable saying, "Not returning."

Kasper: Is that right?

Kirkpatrick: Chicken. And I got a furious cable back. At that point, I was ill. I had acute cystitis. By the time I got to Rome, I was fairly ill, and I shoved the girls on the ship. We had the dean of Sweetbriar as my assistant. Anyway, she got the girls home and I went back to Geneva with no money.

Kasper: Oh, my god.

Kirkpatrick: And I couldn't ask the family for money 'cause I couldn't admit that they'd been right and I'd been wrong. I certainly couldn't ask Vic for any. So I got to Geneva and my college roommate had married a Dutchman and lived in Holland and I borrowed some money from her. I lived in the Salvation Army hostel in Geneva, which was very attractive. I had a very nice, clean room with running water, a balcony looking over the lake, for two francs fifty a day. And I looked for jobs. And I heard that Raymond Buell, who headed the Foreign Policy Association, was coming over to set up a Geneva office. So I quickly did a great deal of research on the issue before the League at that time, which was the Chaco dispute between Uruguay and Paraguay.

Kasper: The Chaco dispute?

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Kirkpatrick: No, no. I'd moved in with two American friends, girls, who had a flat and I think—I'm ashamed to say, I don't think they charged me any rent. One of them worked at the ILO—the International Labor Office—and what did Harriet do? She had a job, but I have no idea what she did. Anyway, they were agreeable. One of them was a Smith graduate which is how I originally got involved in that. So that was very helpful.

[Tape interruption.]

Kasper: Tell me a little bit about some of the pieces that you wrote at this time. When you wrote for the Guardian or the Express or the Telegraph, do you remember some of the kinds of issues you were covering or articles you were sending them?

Kirkpatrick: Well they principally had to do with the League—things that were before the League Council: Abyssinia—the Ethiopian War—the Spanish Civil War. I remember when The Negus, the Emperor of Ethiopia, came to Geneva—it was a big story. Dear little man.

Kasper: What was his name, "The Negus"?

Kirkpatrick: Haile Selassie, the Negus, the Emperor of Ethiopia. And the Japanese-Chinese war was still going on, of course, because the Japanese were pushing farther and farther into China and the affair was perpetually before the League. I think the most dramatic one I remember, however, arose because of the sanctions the League imposed against Italy with the greatest reluctance on the part of the British, notably, and the French. And, of course, the Italians were utterly opposed to it.

Kasper: What was the issue?

Kirkpatrick: The Italian invasion of Ethiopia and their really brutal behavior to the natives. The most dramatic moment came when Lord Halifax spoke to the League Assembly, I think it was, to say that Britain intended to lift the sanctions. It was the most sanctimonious, mealy-mouthed alibi as to why, you see. And I remember that the London Times correspondent, a very proper young Scotsman by the name of Ian MacDonald, was sitting in front of me. There was this dead silence in the Council chamber—and as Halifax finished, Ian murmured audibly: "Jesus, bloody Christ," and it echoed throughout the room. This was the reaction of many people.

Kasper: Why were the British and the French opposed to sanctions against Italy?

Kirkpatrick: Well, you know, it gets in the way of trade and good relations. The British would privately say, "Well, you know, we're concerned about Mussolini and Hitler, and we don't want to do anything to push them together." The usual.

Kasper: Even though the evidence about the slaughter and the brutality in Ethiopia was pretty overwhelming.

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes. And it was the Italians' war. I mean, they had invaded Ethiopia from Eritrea, which was Italian at that time. Shortly after, the Spanish Civil War became a great issue. It was well known that the Germans and the Italians were using it as a testing ground for weapons. There again came the question of applying sanctions, but nobody was willing to do it. The Spaniards, both sides, were up arguing—I don't remember Franco's people because the legal Spanish government was a member of the League, you see. And del Vayo was the Spanish representative. He was the foreign minister of the legal government and he made moving pleas in French. If there is anything more painful than hearing a Spaniard speak French, I don't know what it is. The accent is appalling.

Kasper: The two just don't mix.

Kirkpatrick: No, they don't mix. No.

Kasper: No. One is a whole difference use of the tongue and the mouth than the other.

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Europeans than Americans. She sees all these Germans. You ought to stick with Americans." And I said, "You mean to live in Geneva and see only Americans? I could stay at home and do that."

Kasper: View.

Kirkpatrick: But it was a fascinating place because many famous people came to the League, to the various bodies of it.

Kasper: Were there other women like you who were reporting on some of these issues? When you were up in that press box in the Council chambers, were there any other women with you?

Kirkpatrick: There was a Dutch girl, Luce Haakman, I think. She was a regular correspondent there. There was one other, I can't think who it was, who came. Then, of course, when the Council was in session and big issues—when people came, Geneviève Tabouis, a famous French reporter, a character, was there—she and Pertinax—Andre Géraud—who was a very impressive writer—they were both very well informed.

Kasper: What paper did they work for? Did they work for the same paper?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, no. I think Pertinax wrote for Le Figaro and I've forgotten what Tabouis' paper was.

Kasper: Le Monde?

Kirkpatrick: I worked for a French paper called L'Ordre. No, Le Monde didn't exist then. The same format and perhaps staff became Le Temps in 1944.

Kasper: And what paper did you work for?

Kirkpatrick: L'Ordre. Which, as far as I could make out—I never did make it out very clearly—it was slightly left-wing.

Kasper: So, in other words, when you were writing articles for some of the other papers, you were also writing for this particular French paper.

Kirkpatrick: Well, that was later. I picked up L'Ordre when I was in London and did regular telephone reports every night with current stories, or specials if requested.

Kasper: When you were in Geneva and you were beginning this career in journalism, was your French an advantage to you?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes, sure. Because also when I needed money I worked for a law firm there translating. Jean, my Swiss beau, was in that law firm—or one of his and my pals, Tudi Martin-Achard's father was head of that firm, and I used to do translations for them, which, I must say, took me into another realm of French because legalisms are—

Kasper: A whole other vocabulary.

Kirkpatrick: That's right.

Kasper: But in working in journalism and making contacts and networking, was your French an advantage?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes. Sure.

Kasper: In what ways?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I could talk to the French delegation more easily. Their English was never great. People like Briand. They all went to the Bavaria, which was a café almost on the lake side, every night. It was a famous place. There were two Hungarian cartoonists, political cartoonists, and the walls of the Bavaria were, and probably still are, covered with their cartoons. Derso and Kalen, wonderful

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an awful racket. And one night—we had relatively small sort of a lounge and they were making an awful racket. Dorothy and several of us were sitting and talking. Suddenly Dorothy got up and walked over to them and said, "Look, there are Nazis on this ship, and you're Jewish—shape up." And they did. And I thought, boy, that takes guts.

Kasper: Yes. It does.

Kirkpatrick: And if she can do it, maybe I could, you know?

Kasper: So that you felt in some ways she was a bit of a mentor to you?

Kirkpatrick: Oh yes, definitely, except, and this is not a nice thing to say, but when we got to Italy— I had been staying on way out with the British minister and his wife, Noel Charles, who was very sharp politically. And the ambassador was Sir Eric Drummond, who was out of the country at that point. But they had divided responsibilities: Drummond saw Mussolini and Noel Charles saw [Count Galeazzo] Ciano. So on my way home in whenever it was from the lecture tour, I sat up until about two in the morning drinking champagne with Noel while his wife went to bed and he filling me in because he really knew what was going on. So when we got back to Italy in April, 1940, I went to stay with the Charles' again and they had a cocktail party for me and I had asked them to ask Dorothy Thompson. Well, Ciano came, all the brass were there, none of whom she had known. So I sort of helped, you know—

Kasper: You introduced her to all these—

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: You introduced the famous Dorothy Thompson to people you already knew.

Kirkpatrick: No, I also first met Ciano there. I got a certain secret sort of satisfaction out of it. And sitting up the night before I left to go back to London with Noel again I got the story. I got to Paris and wrote that the Italians would be in the war as soon as France fell or the June wheat came in. The story appeared on the front page of the Daily News and in the next column was a speech by Colonel Knox (who owned the paper) and who was Secretary of the Navy, saying that there was absolutely no chance that Italy would ever get into the war. It would remain neutral. Well, I shook in my boots!

Kasper: This was in the same edition of the paper?

Kirkpatrick: Same paper—on the front page—yes!

Kasper: Of the Chicago Daily News.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. Side by side. And I thought, "Whoo, here I go." I got a cable from him saying, "Congratulations on your story. I hope you're wrong. But congratulations."

Kasper: Well that was kindly of him.

Kirkpatrick: Oh, he was marvelous. They ran a wonderful paper.

Kasper: Well, indeed, it was a marvelous paper. We'll talk about that. Let's see. That was—

Kirkpatrick: We jumped ahead to 1939-40. Well, back to Geneva in '35 or '36. I went in June or July of 1936 with a friend who was living in Europe for a time with her son. We drove down to Spain. We got as far as Barcelona when Franco attacked and the Spanish Civil War began.

Kasper: Was attacking in Barcelona?

Kirkpatrick: No, the attack began in Morocco and spread to Spain. There were reports of fighting somewhere between Barcelona and Madrid, and we were headed for Madrid. Well, of course, we had to turn around and get out fast.

Page 23

So he finally agreed—if I'd come and spend a weekend with him in Paris. I said, "Well, you know, we'll see. Let's play it by ear." And that was that. He went off to write the great American novel.

Kasper: Did he ever?

Kirkpatrick: No. Well, I don't know. I have something he wrote in here.

Kasper: What became of him?

Kirkpatrick: He is living in Florida. I got a large bouquet of flowers on my birthday. And he called up and said, "I have a house. I've just had my third divorce. And I've got a nice house on a lake and a sailboat, come on down."

Kasper: This is a recent birthday?

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: Last October?

Kirkpatrick: No, a year ago.

Kasper: A year ago October.

Kirkpatrick: And we chatted and he said, "Did you hear me?" I said, "Yes." "Will you come down?" And I said, "Well, we'll see." And that was that.

Kasper: Let's see, forty-four years later—no, more than forty-five years—fifty-five years later—and it was still another, "We'll see."

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: I guess he hasn't forgotten.

Kirkpatrick: No. One of his sons was at Brown University where my brother was university professor after he left CIA, and Vic saw my brother and asked about me—where I was living. Kirk was very vague about it, happily, and said, "Well, you know, you really don't want to see her, she's turned into a nasty old woman." [Laughter.]

Kasper: That's what your brother said to him? [Laughter.]

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: In protection.

Kirkpatrick: Vic wrote and said, "I don't know. I don't understand this. You were very nice when you were married to me." [Laughter.]

Kasper: Well, it apparently didn't prevent him from reaching you on your birthday, however.

Kirkpatrick: No, I know. And my brother gave him my address which I was very cross about.

Kasper: He hasn't bothered you since then.

Kirkpatrick: No. No.

Kasper: Well, that's all right, then.

Kirkpatrick: No. I think three marriages were enough. I'll tell you about meeting him in France, though, during the war. That was a riot.

Kasper: Meeting Vic later, yet, after this divorce was finalized?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes, years later.

Page 25

Kirkpatrick: I think that my great interest in politics, always, might have had something to do with the fact that my father took me down, when I was fairly young, to City Hall in Rochester and introduced me to the mayor and explained to me the way in which city government functioned, including the fact that there was a boss—like Boss Tweed in New York, but whose name I don't recall—and that he was really the man who called the shots. At any rate, it certainly was part of my continuing interest in political governance.

So, are we back to where we left me in 1935 or '36 in Geneva?

Kasper: Yes. We were just finishing the whole portion of your life in Geneva before you went on to London. I don't know if there is anything you want to add to that before we move along to London?

Kirkpatrick: I don't think so. I went to London, in 1937 actually, largely because a British diplomatic correspondent, Victor Gordon Lennox of the Daily Telegraph, suggested that I come, and that he and I, and Graham Hutton of the Economist, would put together a newsletter. So, when I went to London, that's what happened.

Kasper: The Whitehall News?

Kirkpatrick: The Whitehall Letter. Yes, and it was totally and entirely on foreign affairs and dealt with the situation in Europe. At that time, in late 1936-37, it was clear to the three of us that we were headed—or Britain was headed—for war with Germany.

Kasper: Why was it so clear to you and so unclear to the British government and other people?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I think it was clear to many, but there were those who didn't want to believe it to be inevitable. Many thought that they could avoid it—as did Mr. Chamberlain, who perhaps was very naïve. He was naïve in many ways—though not in street politics. His election in Birmingham and to Parliament, subsequently to the leadership of the Conservative Party attested to that. But he was naïve in sensing what the situation was with Hitler and Mussolini. For example, he wrote to Lady Austin Chamberlain, who was in Rome at that time, on the stationery of Number 10 Downing Street, and mailed it through the open mail. When Eden learned of this, I don't know how, he was appalled and said to him, "Prime Minister, your letters will be opened and read by the Italian government." And Chamberlain said, "What a nasty mind you have. Gentlemen don't do that." This would suggest that he really didn't know what the score was.

Kasper: And he just blithely thought the Italians were gentlemen?

Kirkpatrick: Well he wrote to her all that he was thinking about.

Kasper: He really did.

Kirkpatrick: Oh yes.

Kasper: All of his planning and strategizing and so on?

Kirkpatrick: Well, whatever, that had to do with Italy and so on. Of course it was on Mussolini's desk the next day. And it was one of the many causes of Eden's break with Chamberlain. But the actual break came over the question—at the time none of us knew—that [Franklin D.] Roosevelt had offered to intervene to try to mediate between Hitler and Mussolini on one hand, and the British on the other. This was at a time when Eden had been in the south of France recuperating from flu, and Chamberlain had never told him of this offer but had simply rejected it out of hand. When Eden came back from the south of France, he was met at Dover by Strang from the Foreign Office who told him of this offer. Eden was simply furious and went immediately straight to Checkers where the Prime Minister was and told him how appalled he was at it and handed his resignation in as Foreign Secretary. We thought that it had something to do with Ciano and Grande, the Italian ambassador in London. Ciano was Mussolini's son-in-law and the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Italy. Count Ciano had married Edie Mussolini.

Page 27

Kirkpatrick: To ship me out of the country. And that I didn't—I did not take advantage. Oh, yes, here in the footnote it says: "The Prime Minister's personal minute—After Brendon Bracken had assured Churchill that Helen Kirkpatrick was a stoutly loyal and pro-Allied American, Churchill agreed to let her remain in the country. Minuting on the file in which her accidental indiscretions were described, 'Oh, Lord,' Helen Kirkpatrick writes of Rougier and Dupuy, 'I never met either one. I know that I first learned of their presence in London from Eve Curie and I suspect that more details of their reports came from Desmond Morton, whom I saw regularly.'" Desmond Morton was an assistant to the Prime Minister and particularly assigned to the Free French. I don't remember knowing anything about Rougier, and I did learn from Eve Curie when we drove down to Ditchley for Christmas that December of 1940 that Dupuy had been in London. I thought he was French, but he was Canadian. He was the Canadian minister to Vichy.

Kasper: And what information were you accused—or what did Churchill think you'd given away?

Kirkpatrick: Well, Churchill, you see—it hadn't occurred to him to have the censors watch out for this because he didn't think anyone knew. This was very, very secret. But, of course, the Free French had their sources too and they knew all about it. Because Churchill, through Dupuy and Rougier, was trying to persuade Pétain and General [Maxime] Weygand that if they would take their government to North Africa, the British would lend them support against the Germans. And if they didn't, that the Vichy government would be regarded as a traitor and illegal in British eyes. Well, Churchill claimed that my revealing this had sabotaged that effort. I think the Vichy people had turned it down anyway.

Kasper: As it came to pass, the Vichy government did—

Kirkpatrick: And I didn't know as much as he credited me with knowing. [Laughter.] Oh, and one reason that I thought it was important was that the British, and Churchill included, were being very snide about the United States having an ambassador in Vichy. We had Admiral Leahy there as ambassador, and this suggested that we thought the Vichy government was a legitimate government, which the British didn't regard it to be. And they were always making snide remarks about the United States in that respect. I thought this would indicate that they were not above trafficking with Vichy themselves.

Kasper: Themselves. Exactly. Did you actually write a column or send out to the Chicago Daily News a piece on that at that point?

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: You did. And was it published in the paper?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes. That's why Churchill knew about it.

Kasper: Oh, that's how they knew.

Kirkpatrick: Sure.

Kasper: Oh, okay. So it wasn't until it was actually published in the Chicago paper that they realized that you had been privy to this information. Is that correct?

Kirkpatrick: The censors had not been alerted to stop it. Unless they were alerted, they didn't stop things.

Kasper: And you just came across this recently?

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: In the Martin Gilbert book?

Kirkpatrick: Well, actually, Martin wrote me when he was working on this book and said that he'd come across this. The reason I knew him was that he came over to the

Page 29

my brother printed it here and distributed it. We charged quite a lot for it. There was only one other newsletter at that time and that was Commander King Hall who had a kind of political newsletter.

Kasper: Out of Britain too, out of London?

Kirkpatrick: Yes. But newsletters were very new and I'm not sure whether—

Kasper: You mean the whole concept of political newsletters.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. Of newsletters.

Kasper: The I.F. Stone kind of thing.

Kirkpatrick: I don't know whether Kiplinger was going then or not.

Kasper: No. Or I.F. Stone or—

Kirkpatrick: Oh, no, he was much later.

Kasper: He was later, right. But it's that same family of political newsletter.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. And we kept it going until, oh, probably, late 1939 or mid-1940, when it became clear that it was no longer of any merit, partly because of censorship and also things had developed and our sources of what was happening on the Continent were less good than they'd been obviously before that. Field Marshall Mannerheim in Finland took it. Interesting, interesting group of people. And we clearly pointed out what was in Mein Kampf and what the Germans were doing in gradually—economically, first of all—moving into southeast Europe and the Balkans and becoming the dominant factor in the economies of those countries. And then, of course, moving into Austria with the Anschluss and later into Czechoslovakia. The weekends when Chamberlain was flying to Germany to meet Hitler, Victor Gordon Lennox went at the same time with the press, and I was left to try to put the thing together while this was going on. It was wild.

Kasper: Writing the stories, seeing it printed, seeing it distributed—all the effort.

Kirkpatrick: Well, it was not mimeographed, but it was sort of that kind of a process.

Kasper: Was this the same place where the three of you, well, I'm assuming the three of you, or at least where you worked on commentaries that have now been attributed to your prescient ability to predict the war? I mean, were these pieces where, for instance, you saw the Munich Pact not as something wonderful but rather as something terrible.

Kirkpatrick: Well, I wrote a book on the subject.

Kasper: That, I know, but that was a little bit later, wasn't it? That was 1938?

Kirkpatrick: Well, that was Munich in '38.

Kasper: That's true.

Kirkpatrick: I wrote it right after Munich.

Kasper: And you wrote it right after. Right.

Kirkpatrick: In about three weeks.

Kasper: You wrote the book in three weeks?

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: Now, you're talking about This Terrible Peace, is that correct?

Page 31

Kasper: Well, because they might not want to share this kind of information with you. I mean, who were you anyway? You know that kind of thing.

Kirkpatrick: I was becoming known as a serious journalist. They knew me. I had very good contacts in London.

Kasper: How did you have such good contacts in London?

Kirkpatrick: Well, partly because the first two years I was there, I really didn't know many Americans and Victor had excellent contacts. And then, socially one saw them.

Kasper: Ditchley was a place where things really connected for you, presumably, I mean, all the people out there.

Kirkpatrick: Well, to a certain extent, but London also. Roland de Margerie was the minister in the French embassy—not the ambassador, the minister—and very, very knowledgeable.

Kasper: And did you speak French with him? Did that get you in the door too?

Kirkpatrick: No, I don't think I did. He spoke very good English. And Jan Masaryk was a marvelous character, and, of course, delighted to tell the Czech side of the story. And the Foreign Office, well, we had regular contacts at the Foreign Office with the press officer there or other people that one knew.

Kasper: Well, I'm intrigued because one of the things you said this morning was how you're really a very private and shy person, and yet, at the same time, you're a very social person. Clearly, you enjoy interesting people and good parties and getting around and traveling and so forth and seeing what was going on.

Kirkpatrick: Well, I meant shy in the sense of sort of waiting three or four minutes to get up enough nerve to call Mr. Snooks and say I want to talk to you about something or other. It always seemed to me an intrusion.

Kasper: Into people's lives.

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: But then again, you were intrigued enough by the goings on—

Kirkpatrick: Well, it was my job to do so.

Kasper: Well, you didn't have to do it—well, it was a job, yes, but obviously you had a lot of native curiosity too that overcame whatever shyness you might have had.

Kirkpatrick: Oh, of course.

Kasper: And so you were able to get in the door nonetheless.

Kirkpatrick: [William Maxwell Aitken] Beaverbrook I got to know fairly well, and he was a character, a real character, and a—a rather sleazy one in many ways.

Kasper: Why is that?

Kirkpatrick: Well, when things looked blackest for Britain during the war, Beaverbrook suddenly became, again, a Canadian. He was a Canadian by birth and he talked about "we" meaning Canada. Whereas, the rest of the time, he was British! He'd been Minister of Aircraft Production. I remember one of my less objective leads in a story was, "Max Beaverbrook having been named Minister of Aircraft Production, aircraft production is likely to go down." [Laughter.] That was because he and Ernest Bevin were at the sword's point. Bevin was Minister of Labor and Beaverbrook had to count on Bevin to provide the manpower.

No, the first couple of years that I was in London, before the war actually started, I knew a great many of these people, thanks, largely, to Victor and his

Page 33

Kirkpatrick: Well, as they can be cancelled today. For example, if you went to Cuba without permission—

Kasper: Authorization, right.

Kirkpatrick: —your passport could be picked up.

Kasper: It sounds like she went a little overboard, out of bounds, as it were.

Kirkpatrick: Well. No, I think it was perfectly legitimate, in a sense.

But, at any rate, Bill called and asked me so I went down, and I did mostly go'fer for a time, you know, just gathering information and bringing it back to Bill who did the writing. Then the Windsors came back. (Julia Edwards has got this all mixed up in her book.)

Kasper: Well, here's your chance to straighten it out.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. The Windsors came back to Britain from Paris.

Kasper: You're talking about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor. And he was looking, you know, for a job, so to speak. So I said to Bill, "Would you like me to get an interview with the Windsors?" And he looked at me witheringly and said, "Well don't you suppose that if it were possible Bill Hillman, who knows them intimately, would have had it?" And I said, "Well, nevertheless, I know where they're staying." "Well," he said, "go ahead, but you won't get one." So I went down. They were staying in the country with the Metcalfs—and I went down and I saw them. And the Duke said, "You know, I'm terribly sorry, but I did say that I wouldn't give any interviews while I was here." I apparently looked rather crestfallen, and he said, "But I didn't say I wouldn't interview anybody. Why don't I interview you?" So, I went back and wrote about being interviewed by the Duke of Windsor.

Kasper: Was that your first story for the—

Kirkpatrick: That was the first story winging its way to Chicago.

Kasper: —for the Chicago Daily News?

Kirkpatrick: Yes. And I had already signed a contract for a lecture tour and had the second book coming out so that I was due to come back here at the end of '39 or the beginning of January of '40 to do a lecture tour. So I came back and one of the early lectures was in Chicago in the ballroom of the Palmer House for the Council on Foreign Affairs. This was my first contact with the paper. In the meantime, Carroll Binder had come over to London in '39 and I had met him. He was the foreign editor and he was a dear. So he sort of shepherded me around the office. And my first meeting was with Paul Scott Mowrer, the editor, whom I had met once in Geneva. He was a rather awesome figure and rather taciturn and he sat as his desk, and I remember, turning his pencil over and saying, "I like your stuff, but we don't have women on the foreign staff." And this went on all the way along until I went up to see Knox.

Kasper: Who was the publisher?

Kirkpatrick: The publisher was Colonel Frank Knox—later Secretary of the Navy. And Carroll Binder went with me and the Colonel repeated what had become sort of a litany: "I like your stuff but we don't have women on the foreign staff." And Carroll said, "Well, Colonel, you know, the UP is trying to get her." I think it was absolutely made up out of whole cloth. They never tried to get me. I think he just made it up. I don't know. But the Colonel said, "Well, we can't have that. Let's have lunch." And that was end of the discussion. It never came up again. They never had any more women. And that was that.

Kasper: And in the Julia Edwards book, she reports that you said something to Colonel Knox about how "I can't change my sex, but you can change your policy."

Page 35

Kirkpatrick: No, I don't think you could say that. I think Windsor was a weak character that perhaps like some British thought war was unnecessary—that one could accommodate, you know, Hitler. That war was—

Kasper: Avoidable.

Kirkpatrick: Avoidable. And there were those. But there was never, in my view, anything like the "Cliveden set," but there were people who thought that war was avoidable, including of course, Chamberlain, who right up to the last minute was certain that you could trust Hitler, he said, that nothing would happen. It was a very naïve attitude.

Kasper: In that talk at the Palmer House, did you come out quite bluntly about what you saw as the future for the war in Europe?

Kirkpatrick: Probably.

Kasper: You don't remember?

Kirkpatrick: I've got the text somewhere—in Northhampton, I guess. Yes, I think so.

Kasper: Did you startle anybody? Do you remember getting responses that people were quite upset or surprised by what you said?

Kirkpatrick: Well, and I talked of course about rationing and the extent to which women were in the services and in factories, although it was just beginning at that time. And I remember speaking somewhere else in Chicago, and riding down in the elevator with some women who'd been at the lecture and who didn't know I was in the elevator, saying, "Well, I don't care. I'm not prepared to do without this or that. It's nonsense, you know."

Kasper: Oh, dear.

Kirkpatrick: Also, of course, during the spring of 1940 Ditchley, in one sense, was sort of a center. I was there one weekend when there were a number of members of Parliament, dissidents who were anti-Chamberlain and who wanted Churchill to come in (who felt Chamberlain had made a mess at Munich and he was not the man who should lead Britain in war) and they were all discussing it. (I have a list of the names of them—I made a note of that.) And we were all sitting out, it was a beautiful spring day, and I was just sitting there listening to them argue about, you know, the timing and how one dealt with getting Chamberlain out and so on and so forth. And Nancy Tree, who had been off in the garden, came dancing through and said, "Listen, all you people, talk is so cheap, why don't you make up your minds. You know what you should do, now go and do it." And the following week, indeed, they did. They voted against Mr. Chamberlain and voted him out of office.

Kasper: Thanks to Nancy Tree. [Laughter.] Somewhat.

Kirkpatrick: Somewhat.

Kasper: Or at least it makes a good story. She pushed them—

Kirkpatrick: She pushed them—

Kasper: —over the brink perhaps.

Kirkpatrick: They knew they were going to have to. Duff Cooper was there. Jim Thomas. These were members of Parliament. And Duff Cooper, of course, had resigned as a result of Munich. And Lord Cranborne—Robert E. Cranborne—who had been a minister, he resigned. Dick Law, the son of Bonar Law (a former Prime Minister) who was an MP—I don't think he had any office at the time. I don't think Eden was there, but that group of people, all of whom I knew and I sat, of course, listening with fascination. And, as a result, and Churchill probably was right in this sense, I went back and I wrote that Mr. Chamberlain would fall. And I remember Drew Middleton, who was then New York Times—just—he'd been with AP—and Drew said,

Page 37

Kasper: You're not in that picture.

Kirkpatrick: No, certainly not.

Kasper: Oh, no. You're right. It's the one on the inside that you're in.

Kirkpatrick: But not in a group.

Kasper: Not in a group. You're right. And that's true of Martha Gellhorn, too, there's a single picture of her, as well.

Kirkpatrick: That's right. No, in the first place, Martha Gellhorn and I had both been—

Kasper: That's cute.

Kirkpatrick: —both had been newspaper people before the war began and we didn't need to be led around in a group.

[End Tape 2, Side B; Begin Tape 2, Side B]

Kasper: —the Julia Edwards' book, you mentioned there's—

Kirkpatrick: Ruth Cowan, whom I knew very slightly. Sonia Tomara, who had worked for the Herald Tribune and was a first-class reporter and had worked for some years. She was no novice. I did not know Rosette Hargrove. I didn't know—Betty Knox—you say?

Kasper: Yes. The London Evening Standard.

Kirkpatrick: No. I may have seen her you know at affairs, but I don't remember. Iris Carpenter I knew and liked very much. I thought she was a first-class writer. Erica Mann, I knew slightly. The thing is, you know, you'd know these people but you wouldn't see what they wrote because it appeared back here and we didn't necessarily see what came out. But Erica Mann was a very serious person.

Kasper: And as you were saying at lunch, too, that perhaps you weren't the only so-called "loner." You said, for instance, you and Martha Gellhorn would invariably run into each other when you were reporting on material, but it doesn't mean you worked together or shared information or shared sources or anything else.

Kirkpatrick: No.

Kasper: You were reporters doing a job, and if you happened to have carried the same story, or covered the same story—do you want me to keep this?

Kirkpatrick: Yes, you can stick it in your book.

Kasper: Okay. Now these are hyperbole or errata in the Julia Edwards' book.

Kirkpatrick: Maybe I ought to send it to Julia. I don't know her address.

Kasper: I think so. Because if she's doing a revision—I have her address right with me.

Kirkpatrick: All right. I'll send it to her.

Kasper: I'll put the address on the top here. Because if there are mistakes in there—

Kirkpatrick: There are.

Kasper: —then she should correct them in the second edition. Are there any really serious ones?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I—to me—I mean, I don't know what she called Victor Gordon—something else, I don't know what it was. You know, I'm just trained to

Page 39

in Algiers, Geoff said, "I'll call up and get them to send for us." And I said, "You can do that. I'm going to take the bus in." And I took the bus in. He went too, but he was protesting. And I went to the billeting office and was put in a terrible room right on the edge of the Casbah. Then I showed up the next day at the Press Building and Joe Phillips, the colonel in charge of press, said, "Well, where have you been? Why didn't you call?" And so on. And I said, "Well, I've got this room." "Well, we've got a room for you in the Aletti (the hotel where the press were billeted)." But I wasn't asking for any special treatment and I was sort of almost under doing it.

Kasper: So as to ingratiate yourself in another way.

Kirkpatrick: Well, no, to sort of overcome the feeling that had been left by—

Kasper: By those feminine women who needed special treatment.

Kirkpatrick: Whose names we will not mention.

Kasper: So you feel very neutral about being a woman and a war correspondent in terms of not only what your abilities and your access and your continuing coverage of war and so forth—

Kirkpatrick: I had been a correspondent before the war. I continued to be a correspondent. The war got in the way. One took it as it came. But I didn't feel that I had to change. No.

Kasper: Well, but on the other hand, you do realize that you were what we call a pioneering woman journalist. You know, whether you were a war correspondent or not, you were—

Kirkpatrick: Well, there had been others. Look there had been—what's her name?

Kasper: Sigrid Schultz?

Kirkpatrick: Sigrid Schultz in Germany long before the war. Dorothy Thompson. There were plenty. There had been—in Julia Edwards' book she talks about them.

Kasper: Yes. It's not plenty. I mean there was a small number of women as compared to a large number of men who had been journalists.

Kirkpatrick: Well, but this is true in any profession. Women only latterly come into the newspaper business in any numbers.

Kasper: Yes. Indeed. But still, nonetheless, usually breaking into a profession is not easy. And there are trials and tribulations associated with it and usually a fair amount of discrimination associated with it.

Kirkpatrick: Well, I think, being on the right spot at the right time and with luck, that's how you get there.

Kasper: You don't think you brought any special abilities—or perhaps did you?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I think I had. Yes, I had a great sense of curiosity and I always asked questions and I wanted to get the news out.

Kasper: Do you think the fact that you had no formal education as a journalist was in any way a handicap?

Kirkpatrick: Not at all. To the contrary.

Kasper: To the contrary?

Kirkpatrick: We didn't—at that time, you know, it wasn't the thing to do, necessarily, to go to a journalism school. Now, I don't think you can be a copy boy unless you've got an M.A. in journalism. But who needed to know how to put together a paper at that time in order to write for it. I found that I needed to know later

Page 41

Kasper: Okay, at this point you want to put in some things that have been on your mind, is that right?

Kirkpatrick: Yes. March, 1936. Hitler operated on weekends. Every move he made was on a weekend so that he would take the people by surprise. The chancellories were closed. People were away for the weekends. And for some reason that I do not recall, I got a clue that he was going to pull something off on this particular weekend in March. So I got up at a very early hour on Sunday morning.

Kasper: Do you remember what year this was?

Kirkpatrick: It was 1936. And drove up with a friend of mine and we left Basle, Switzerland, at nine Sunday morning and crossed into Germany. We'd bought a Tribune de Lausanne on the way which the German customs inspected thoroughly before they let us through. And from the frontier to Freiburg, we saw many SA cyclists and police, but there was no evidence of troops. But the road was being widened. We tried to cross over to the Rhine Bridge at Mulheim, but the road was barred and guarded. We went all the way up as far as Freiburg, which was in gala attire with Nazi flags on every building and the streets filled with soldiers, SA and SS men. There were soldiers all the way along. This was the remilitarization of the Rhineland which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. But it was very clear, to me at least, in seeing this that they were very tentative. They hadn't pulled them right out to the very border of the Rhine. They were back and in such a position that they could withdraw quickly if there were any opposition.

Then we came down and crossed the Kehl Bridge at Strasbourg and went up the French side along the Maginot Line where the French were lazying around. Nothing was happening. And we followed from north Breisach down to Basle and the impression was decidedly one of war: trenches, fortifications, thousands of soldiers. Many of the local men had been called the day before, and at two towns there were large numbers of anti-aircraft and long-range guns. Trucks of French soldiers were scattered all along the road and no one was allowed beyond the first barbed wire lines of which we took a picture from the car. The French and the British consulted each other and decided that, well, nothing had happened so they wouldn't do anything. They were obligated, really, to enforce it. And they didn't. And if they had, I think that there's no question that the Germans would have pulled back because they were not ready for a confrontation. But neither were the French or the British. That was in March of 1936.

In April of 1936, I went to Berlin and I stayed with the Riddlebergers. They'd been in Geneva. He'd been in the consulate, one of the political observers, and he was now in the embassy in Berlin. Millie Riddleberger was Dutch, had grown up in Java, and was a very free spirit. The Nazis would come around and knock on the door and ask for saving your aluminum cans or whatever it was, metal, and so on, and she'd tell them to go to hell. One wondered how long they were going to survive in that. The atmosphere was really—you had to have been there to know it—you could cut it with a knife.

There was a press ball given by the German Foreign Office Press Corps, or Press Office, and I went with Wally Duell and his wife. He was with the Chicago Daily News. Ralph Barnes of the Herald Tribune, another old friend. This was in 1936 and yet everyone there was fully conscious that this was building up towards war—there was no question about it. You had the feeling far more than one did later in Russia of being scared to death until you got out of Germany. At the border, coming down, you had to be cross-examined as to how much money you had in marks or in dollars or in Swiss francs. They were all very unpleasant about it. At the Dutch border, the German officials were perturbed that I had no currency papers. But they finally—didn't make any difficulty.

"A man, a Britisher who was on the train (there were lots of SS and Reichswehr officers on a platform in Cologne), and Dr. Simpson, who was with Imperial Chemicals, was very, very, pro-Nazi and cautious, until we got to the border. Then he turned around completely. But you didn't dare open your mouth in Germany. That was the feeling that we had. As soon as we had crossed the Dutch frontier, Dr. Simpson began talking and contradicted all his previously expressed views on the Nazis. He said, his personal mail was always opened, but the business stuff, never. He had to go to England every three months because it was impossible to write the

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Kasper: Well, we were in an isolationist posture.

Kirkpatrick: No, this is after the war.

Kasper: This is 1940, you're saying.

Kirkpatrick: That was. But I'm saying that this continues.

Kasper: It continues. I see.

Kirkpatrick: Lack of—not interested, "we have our own sources" is the official U.S. attitude.

Kasper: So why do you think they discounted you? Because you were a journalist?

Kirkpatrick: Who?

Kasper: These people who discounted the material that you had.

Kirkpatrick: Nobody discounted it. No, I'm saying that if it had been an American, the attitude of American officials at almost any time was of disinterest. Not just to me.

Kasper: Not just to you.

Kirkpatrick: No, Beedle Smith had been ambassador, and they never bothered to asked him questions. But the British always were interested. When I got back from the Berlin trip, I was in London and Robert Vansittart—who was the permanent head of the Foreign Office, a brilliant man, very anti-German, anti-Nazi, anti-Munich—called me up and wanted me to come and talk to him and tell him everything I saw in Berlin. And no American was interested.

Kasper: Was interested at all.

Kirkpatrick: No, "we have our people in Berlin." "We know," is the U.S. attitude.

Kasper: And who were their people in Berlin?

Kirkpatrick: At the embassy—

Kasper: The embassy?

Kirkpatrick: And they're probably all right, but, you know, the difference in attitude.

Kasper: To what do you attribute the difference in attitude?

Kirkpatrick: Well, it's a—I don't know—having been in the State Department, I don't know—It's just a—well—"we can take care of it." The British have a much greater interest in picking up intelligence. I used to think that every Britain was born with an MI5 number on his wrist, you know.

Kasper: So he could be trailed or tracked?

Kirkpatrick: No, so he would report. [Laughter.] No I think—and my brother has been in intelligence most of his life in the CIA, and he's written several books on intelligence—and I think both of us have this strong feeling of the importance of intelligence, of knowing what's going on and finding out from people, asking them what they've seen, what they've heard. Then you evaluate it as to whether it's of real interest or not. But that—I was struck by the attitude of the British officer at Gibraltar, who didn't know who I was from Adam—but, "oh, yes, thank you," and he put it in his pocket. The Italian captain looking on.

Kasper: Or over your shoulder as you were typing.

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Kasper: "Chamberlain Takes Charge." "British Renaissance." "Europe Moves Towards War." "Britain Goes to War." And then the last chapter is, "The World of Tomorrow." Now why do you say it was childish?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I don't know, it just struck me that way, looking at it now.

Kasper: You mean in later years when you look back on it?

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: Well, you were only thirty years old when you wrote it.

Kirkpatrick: Well, I should know better.

Kasper: You mean then to write a book at thirty? [Laughter.] When you say it was well received, where was it well received? What kind of reviews—?

Kirkpatrick: It was reviewed in the New York Times.

Kasper: Oh, that's nice.

Kirkpatrick: Book Review, by—what's his name? I don't know. No, it got good reviews. I've got a scrapbook that has all the reviews of This Terrible Peace and of Under the British Umbrella.

Kasper: Oh, I'd like to see that.

Kirkpatrick: Well, it's in Northhampton.

Kasper: Oh, of course. I came too late.

Kirkpatrick: Yes.

Kasper: I have to go back up to the Sophia Smith Collection to have a look-see.

Kirkpatrick: Right. The clip books are all there, too. And other papers.

Kasper: What prompted you to write these two books?

Kirkpatrick: Well, the book on Munich, I just felt so strongly about it that I had to. And then I proceeded to collapse thereafter.

Kasper: Why?

Kirkpatrick: I don't know. I couldn't keep food down. I couldn't sleep. I called Victor up in the middle of the night one night and said—which I don't remember—he said the next day that I called up and said, "I'm in the Chancery and I can't find Hitler." Oh, yes. Ohhh.

Kasper: Oh, you were really into it.

Kirkpatrick: Yes, I was. And I had a Czech doctor who put me into what they called a nursing home, which we would call a private hospital, and his instructions were that I was to have no radio, no newspapers, no telephone calls, and the nurse was to stay in the room if I had any visitors, and if they started talking politics, get them out. Then he sent me home and said for a month I wasn't to look at a newspaper or listen to a radio.

Kasper: Well that's sort of a post-traumatic disorder of some kind.

Kirkpatrick: I was just—I would call it a nervous breakdown, except I didn't feel I had a breakdown. I just couldn't keep any food down, you know, and I felt very strongly about it.

Kasper: And you were frightened, presumably, as well.

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to be deputy minister of defense. The army had never listened to De Gaulle on the subject of the use of tanks. The Germans had, however. But it was too late at that point. The German offensive started on the 10th of May. This was in April. And De Gaulle had only been back there a short time.

Kasper: It was too late for him to do anything about France falling.

Kirkpatrick: Oh, sure. Oh, yes. He had a perfectly good war record, but the French were fighting the last war. You know, here they were on the Maginot Line and the Germans, of course, just swung around it—and over it.

Kasper: When you met with De Gaulle, what did you talk about? Do you remember?

Kirkpatrick: No. He's not a great conversationalist. You don't make small talk.

Kasper: Presumably you spoke in French with him, is that correct?

Kirkpatrick: Yes. Yes. It must have been trying for him. [Laughter.]

Kasper: Did you write copy based on the interview?

Kirkpatrick: I don't remember.

Kasper: Whether you wrote a story or not.

Kirkpatrick: I don't remember. Probably, when I got back to London. I wouldn't have done it from Paris because that was Edgar Mowrer's bailiwick.

Kasper: He was there, at the London bureau.

Kirkpatrick: No. He was in the Paris bureau.

Kasper: I mean in the Paris bureau. Right.

Kirkpatrick: So I wouldn't have trod on his toes.

Kasper: Why is it that Roosevelt was not fond of De Gaulle? What was the conflict there?

Kirkpatrick: Well, in the first place, St. Pierre et Miquelon, those islands off Canada, De Gaulle had sent some of his people there, and Roosevelt didn't think he should have. We'd rather handle that ourselves, you know. Also, De Gaulle was a feisty character and he didn't take direction well. In fact, Churchill found him very difficult. He once said, "The heaviest burden I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine."

Kasper: Oh, right. I remember that. Yes.

Kirkpatrick: And then he also said, in his inimitable French, to De Gaulle, when he was trying persuade him to do something, and De Gaulle was not having any of it, he said, "Si vous m'obstructerez, je vous liquidatorez."* [Laughter.]

Kasper: I'm sure had he said it English it would have been better. Same words. I mean— [Laughter.]

Kirkpatrick: I would think De Gaulle couldn't help but laugh.

Kasper: He'd probably couldn't have been more offended.

Kirkpatrick: But he couldn't have—he didn't have any sense of humor, I think.

Kasper: No. And I'm sure offended he was. "Je vous liquidatorez." [Laughter.] That's terrible.

Kirkpatrick: Churchill thought he was great in French.

Kasper: Oh, he didn't realize the humor behind that.

______________________ * Meaning "If you obstruct me, I will liquidate you," but in incorrect French.

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Kasper: Did you yell at them?

Kirkpatrick: No, I didn't.

Kasper: No. What did you do?

Kirkpatrick: Well, I'd just argue with them.

Kasper: Did you ever succeed in changing the censors' minds?

Kirkpatrick: Oh, sure, once in a while. The one thing that made me angry—really angry—was with this stupid Major General whom I thereafter called major.

Kasper: But not general. [Laughter.]

Kirkpatrick: Right. I was wakened one night, after eleven, by a phone call from someone who introduced himself as Commodore so-and-so, saying that the First Lord of the Admiralty wanted to see me. Who is this at that hour of the night who wanted to see me? It seemed highly improbable. I thought of Ed Beatty and Drew Middleton and Bill Stoneman—that one of them said, "let's get the old girl out and see what she's up to." And I was to meet him in front of this club in St. James Square and he would take me over to the Admiralty. Well, I knew that clubs were not open at that hour of the night. It seemed very unlikely. So I said, "Yes, fine," and hung up and went back to sleep. About fifteen minutes later, the phone rang again, and it was the same voice. I finally thought, well, all right, I'll give him the satisfaction. So I got up and dressed and got the car out and went down, and there, indeed, was an old salt, with whiskers growing out of his cheeks—I apologized and said I thought that it had been some of my colleagues—

Kasper: Playing a joke.

Kirkpatrick: Playing a trick on me. And he took me into the Admiralty. It had great enormous concrete walls around it and so we had to go through that. It was the First Lord of the Admiralty who was going to give me advance news of the fact that they had sunk the French ship in the harbor at Oran.

Kasper: Where?

Kirkpatrick: In Oran, North Africa. The British had sunk this ship because it was going to be turned over to the Germans, and this was to give me a scoop, you see. Well, at eleven-thirty or twelve at night, it didn't do me the slightest bit of good for the Daily News. It had already gone to press that day. However, I thanked him. This was really, I think he was sort of buttering me up thinking that I might be able to persuade Colonel Knox that the British needed the destroyers. You know, this was before the destroyer deal.

Kasper: Was Colonel Knox already Secretary of the Navy by then?

Kirkpatrick: Yes. Yes. Well, you know how much influence I would have had if I used it—none. So the next morning I did write the story. It got stuck by Major General so-and-so, in the Marines, who was the censor up at the Ministry of Information. I went in and said, "You can't do this." And I explained—he didn't believe it. By the time he got through and was convinced it was true, of course, everybody else had the story, too.

Kasper: It was really sometimes a real nuisance—the censorship.

Kirkpatrick: Oh, yes. And this man was so stupid. You know, where would I have gotten it if my account hadn't been true? But the censors were on the whole quite reasonable. But you couldn't specify as to where damage was because the Germans really wanted to know. I remember one weekend down at the country at the Hudsons. Rob Hudson was the Minister of Food and there was this Swede there, Wenner Gren, who was known to be in touch with the Germans. He went back and forth between Stockholm and Berlin, you see. Rob had said to those of us who were down there that weekend, "Be a little guarded with what you say." So everybody was very careful and we talked about nonsense. And going up in the train Monday morning, I was sitting next