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Last year, after war began, Rothermere was sued by Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a friend of Hitler, who said that Rothermere had offered her £5,000 a year to serve as his personal representative in Central Europe. Rothermere admitted that he had paid the Princess over £51,000 in six years, publicly confessed that he had once admired Hitler. Said he: "I was wrong—and so was half the population."
His worst mistake in business was made in 1928, when he tried to buck the Berry brothers, William Ewert (now Baron Camrose) and James Gomer (now Baron Kemsley). The Berrys had a prosperous string of provincial newspapers on which Rothermere looked with a jealous eye. He set up rival papers in Newcastle and Bristol. Eventually the news war became so expensive that both sides called a truce. Rothermere retired from Newcastle, leaving most of the field to the Berrys.
In 1932 Lord Rothermere retired as chairman of Associated Newspapers, Ltd., turned the management of his properties over to young Esmond. Three years ago he gave up business completely. Last spring the man who took Northcliffe's place as Britain's Press Peer No. 1—gnomelike little Baron Beaverbrook, publisher of the mammoth London Daily Express, Minister of Aircraft Production—took Rothermere out of retirement, sent him to Canada and the U. S. on a special war mission. Harold Harmsworth was still rich, but old and tired. Month ago he went to Bermuda for a rest. His granddaughter was with him when he died.