Stars and Stripes, newspaper launched during WWI, survives Pentagon kill effort
He was a soldier fighting the Germans with words instead of weapons. Then, in 1918, Pvt. Harold W. Ross became the managing editor of a new military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, which became a force in the trenches of France.
Ross, then 27, “knew he was the lowest form of human life,” his colleague Sgt. Alex Woollcott wrote in a 1919 newspaper article. He also knew “there were few generals who wielded half his influence, and he must have derived some compensatory amusement from the process of filling his waste bucket with poems composed by colonels or better in their candle-lit billets.”
Ross went on to become the co-founder and legendary editor of the New Yorker magazine. Woollcott became a famed literary critic and actor. And Stars and Stripes newspaper became the bible of America’s military service members and veterans.
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That status was in trouble this summer when the Defense Department threatened to close the paper Sept. 30. But the Pentagon did an about-face on its order to close the paper this week after President Trump tweeted that “the United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch.”
Trump’s action followed an article by the Atlantic magazine that said the president in 2018 had called World War I soldiers buried at a U.S. cemetery in France “losers.”
Stars and Stripes, which traces its name to a paper started by Union soldiers in the Civil War, was launched in Paris by Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in France. He called it a newspaper written by enlisted men for enlisted men.
“The STARS AND STRIPES is your paper, first, last and for all time,” the editors declared in the first edition on Feb. 8, 1918. “It will try to reach every one of you every week—mud, shell-holes and fog notwithstanding.
The eight-page paper was a mix of news about the war and from home with a heavy dose of irreverent humor. One front-page story in the first edition reported on a traveling Red Cross dentist for soldiers under the headline “TOOTH YANKING CAR IS TOURING FRANCE.”
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There was a poem, “Off To The Trenches,” written by a soldier. There were advertisements to help pay the bills, including ads by Tiffany of Paris and American Express. The paper sold for 50 French centimes per copy, or 10 cents in the United States (now the equivalent of $1.70).
Stars and Stripes had a sporting page but dropped it in late July of 1918. The decision followed articles about famous U.S. athletes running to get jobs at shipyards and farms to avoid military service under a War Department “Work or Fight” order.
Healthy young American men dodging military service was a frequent target of scathing coverage. One editorial began: “Here are two pictures of fighting men.” The first picture showed 23-year-old boxing champion Jack Dempsey standing over knocked-out 28-year-old Fred Fulton.
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The second picture showed “a picture of Scotty, aged 16, lying dead across his beloved sho-sho [machine gun] with a bullet through his brain, and out beyond him 30 German dead who had fallen before his fire. … We read where there were thousands who acclaimed Dempsey’s victory. There were no thousands to acclaim Scotty’s fall, for his place was out in a French forest.”
The paper published cartoons and drawings. The most popular cartoon feature was “Helpful Hints,” such as “Never Stop A Shell With Your Helmet.” Many of the other drawings were by Charles Dana Gibson, who later gained fame as the creator of the “Gibson Girls.”
Stars and Stripes demonstrated its impact in May of 1918 when it proposed to celebrate Mother’s Day “by having every soldier, young and old, high and low write home to his mother on that day.” In late May, a ship arrived in the United States carrying more than 1.4 million letters written by the troops to their mothers.
Germany surrendered in an Armistice agreement on Nov. 11, 1918, but peace negotiations continued until June 28, 1919. The paper kept publishing.
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Stars and Stripes is “in a class by itself,” the New York Times wrote in May 1919. “The articles are well-written, impartial and trustworthy.” Many of the articles are not too serious: “No soldier wants to read what he calls the ‘heavy stuff’ in his service newspaper.”
The paper’s final edition on June 13, 1919, featured a drawing labeled “For the Sake Of Auld Lang Syne.” It pictured three Allied soldiers shaking hands over a discarded enemy rifle on the ground.
In a farewell editorial, the paper said “as far as we know,” it was the only part of the Army “that does not claim to have won the war single-handed.” Instead, the paper’s participants drew satisfaction in learning about the “poems, editorials and other articles from this paper in the shirt pockets of Yanks found dead at the very uttermost parts of the front.”
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Stars and Stripes ended publication with a $700,000 profit, equal to about $10.5 million today. Over its 16 months, it sold 526,000 copies, according to a 1921 report. The New York World called the paper the “most successful instant phenomenon in newspaper history.”
It was called back into service at the start of World War II. The first edition of the revived Stars and Stripes, published April 18, 1942, in London, featured a letter to Hitler.
“Dear Adolph: We know your stooges will get this paper into their hands at an early date. Suggest you read at once.”
This time the paper was so successful that it continued publishing after World War II ended. Today, Stars and Stripes has a daily circulation of 1 million print and online readers. The government covers about half its costs.
From the beginning, the paper’s focus has been on soldiers on the front lines. Back in 1919, Ross sometimes felt guilty about fighting the Germans only from his writing desk.
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“I remember encountering him one morning sitting tired, dusty and disconsolate on the side of the road along which wounded men of the Second Division were being carried out from Belleau Woods,” Woollcott wrote.
Ross groaned, “At home I was always a non-producer and here, on the battlefield, I am a non-combatant.”
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