The Press: They Were There

In 1914, four weeks after the Kaiser's Army swept into Belgium and World War 1 began, the U. S. still had only the vaguest idea how the war was going. When German troops crossed the River Somme, 70 miles from Paris, an official press release placed them on Belgium's River Sambre, 80 miles farther away. Wythe Williams, Paris correspondent for the New York Times (now a commentator for Mutual Broadcasting System in Manhattan) slipped a dispatch past the censor hinting that they were nearer, but his editors at home missed the point....

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