Editing Daily Mail (section)

===Inter-war period===

====1919–1930====
[[File:The_Makings_of_a_Modern_Newspaper-_the_Production_of_'The_Daily_Mail'_in_Wartime,_London,_UK,_1944_D20463.jpg|thumb|left|Bundles of newspapers loaded into the back of a ''Daily Mail'' van in the early hours for delivery to newsagents in 1944]]
Light-hearted stunts enlivened Northcliffe, such as the 'Hat campaign' in the winter of 1920. This was a contest with a prize of £100 for a new design of hat – a subject in which Northcliffe took a particular interest. There were 40,000 entries and the winner was a cross between a [[top hat]] and a [[bowler hat|bowler]] christened the ''Daily Mail Sandringham Hat''. The paper subsequently promoted the wearing of it but without much success.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xlJUM8gkNe0C|page=232|title=The house of Northcliffe|first=Paul|last=Ferris|isbn=978-0-529-04553-9|year=1972|publisher=Garland Science|access-date=10 November 2020|archive-date=12 April 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240412033626/https://books.google.com/books?id=xlJUM8gkNe0C|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1919, [[Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown|Alcock and Brown]] made the first flight across the Atlantic, winning a prize of £10,000 from the ''Daily Mail''. In 1930 the ''Mail'' made a great story of another aviation stunt, awarding another prize of £10,000 to [[Amy Johnson]] for making the first solo flight from England to Australia.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3dgOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA239|page=239|title=Britain between the wars, 1918–1940|first=Charles Loch|last=Mowat|author-link=C. L. Mowat|isbn=978-0-416-29510-8|year=1968|publisher=Methuen|access-date=10 November 2020|archive-date=4 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140904162151/http://books.google.com/books?id=3dgOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA239|url-status=live}}</ref>

The ''Daily Mail'' had begun the [[Ideal Home Exhibition]] in 1908. At first, Northcliffe had disdained this as a publicity stunt to sell advertising and he refused to attend. But his wife exerted pressure upon him and he changed his view, becoming more supportive. By 1922 the editorial side of the paper was fully engaged in promoting the benefits of modern appliances and technology to free its female readers from the drudgery of housework.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nNBoXi8sXMwC&pg=PA97|title=Gender, modernity, and the popular press in inter-war Britain|author=Adrian Bingham|isbn=978-0-19-927247-1|year=2004|publisher=Oxford University Press|access-date=10 November 2020|archive-date=12 April 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240412033623/https://books.google.com/books?id=nNBoXi8sXMwC&pg=PA97|url-status=live}}</ref> The ''Mail'' maintained the event until selling it to Media 10 in 2009.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/media-10-buys-ideal-home-show/3003923.article|title=Media 10 buys Ideal Home Show|first=Branwell|last=Johnson|work=Marketing Week|date=28 August 2009|access-date=1 June 2010|archive-date=20 April 2013|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130420224626/http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/media-10-buys-ideal-home-show/3003923.article|url-status=live}}</ref>  As Lord Northcliffe aged, his grip on the paper slackened and there were periods when he was not involved. His physical and mental health declined rapidly in 1921, and he died in August 1922 at age 57. His brother [[Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere|Lord Rothermere]] took full control of the paper.<ref name="Temple-2008" />{{rp|33}}

In the [[Chanak Crisis]] of 1922, Britain almost went to war with Turkey. The Prime Minister [[David Lloyd George]], supported by the War Secretary [[Winston Churchill]], were determined to go to war over the Turkish demand that the British leave their occupation zone with Churchill sending out telegrams asking for Canada, Australia and New Zealand to all send troops for the expected war. [[George Ward Price]], the "extra-special correspondent" of ''The Daily Mail'' was sympathetic towards the beleaguered British garrison at Chanak, but was also sympathetic towards the Turks.{{sfn|Mango|2009|p=143}} Ward Price wrote in his articles that Mustafa Kemal did not have wider ambitions to restore the lost frontiers of the Ottoman Empire and only wanted the Allies to leave Asia Minor.{{sfn|Mango|2009|p=143}} The ''Daily Mail'' ran a huge banner headline on 21 September 1922 that stated "Get Out Of Chanak!"{{sfn|Mango|2009|p=143}} In a leader (editorial), the ''Daily Mail'' wrote that the views of Churchill, who very much favored going to war with Turkey, were "bordering on insanity".{{sfn|Mango|2009|p=143}} The same leader noted that Prime Minister [[William Lyon Mackenzie King]] of Canada had rejected Churchill's request for troops, which led the leader to warn that Churchill's efforts to call upon the Dominions for help for the expected war were endangering the unity of the British empire.{{sfn|Mango|2009|p=143}}

Rothermere had a fundamentally elitist conception of politics, believing that the natural leaders of Britain were [[upper class]] men like himself, and he strongly disapproved of the decision to grant women the right to vote together with the end of the franchise requirements that disfranchised lower-class men.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=40}} Feeling that British women and lower-class men were not really capable of understanding the issues, Rothermere started to lose faith in democracy.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=40}} In October 1922, the ''Daily Mail'' approved of the Fascist "[[March on Rome]]" as the newspaper argued that democracy had failed in Italy, thus requiring [[Benito Mussolini]] to set up his Fascist dictatorship to save the social order.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=40}} In 1923, Rothermere published a leader in ''The Daily Mail'' entitled "What Europe Owes Mussolini", where he wrote about his "profound admiration" for Mussolini, whom he praised for "in saving Italy he stopped the inroads of Bolshevism which would have left Europe in ruins...in my judgment he saved the entire Western world. It was because Mussolini overthrew Bolshevism in Italy that it collapsed in Hungary and ceased to gain adherents in Bavaria and Prussia".{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=41}} In 1923, the newspaper supported the Italian occupation of Corfu and condemned the British government for at least rhetorically opposing the Italian attack on Greece.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=45}}

On 25 October 1924, the ''Daily Mail'' published the [[Zinoviev letter]], which indicated Moscow was directing British Communists toward violent revolution. It was later proven to be a hoax. At the time many on the  left blamed the letter for the defeat of [[Ramsay MacDonald]]'s [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] in the [[1924 United Kingdom general election|1924 general election]], held four days later.<ref>{{cite book|title=Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization|author=Nicholson Baker|year=2009|page=[https://archive.org/details/humansmokebeginn00bake/page/12 12]|isbn=978-1-4165-6784-4|url=https://archive.org/details/humansmokebeginn00bake/page/12}}</ref>

Unlike most newspapers, the ''Mail'' quickly took up an interest on the new medium of radio. In 1928, the newspaper established an early example of an [[offshore radio]] station aboard a yacht, both as a means of self-promotion and as a way to break the BBC's monopoly. However, the project failed as the equipment was not able to provide a decent signal from overboard, and the transmitter was replaced by a set of speakers. The yacht spent the summer entertaining beach-goers with gramophone records interspersed with publicity for the newspaper and its insurance fund. The ''Mail'' was also a frequent sponsor on [[Border blaster|continental commercial radio stations targeted towards Britain]] throughout the 1920s and 1930s and periodically voiced support for the legalisation of private radio, something that would not happen until 1973.

From 1923, Lord Rothermere and the ''Daily Mail'' formed an alliance with the other great press baron, [[Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook|Lord Beaverbrook]]. Their opponent was the Conservative Party politician and leader [[Stanley Baldwin]]. Rothermere in a leader conceded that Fascist methods were "not suited to a country like our own", but qualified his remark with the statement, "if our northern cities became Bolshevik we would need them".{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=48}} In an article in 1927 celebrating five years of Fascism in Italy, it was argued that there were parallels between modern Britain and Italy in the last years of the Liberal era as it was argued Italy had a series of weak liberal and conservative governments that made concessions to the Italian Socialist Party such as granting universal male suffrage in 1912 whose "only result was to hasten the arrival of disorder".{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=48}} In the same article, Baldwin was compared to the Italian prime ministers of the Liberal era as the article argued that the General Strike of 1926 should never have been allowed to occur and the Baldwin government was condemned "for the feebleness which it tries to placate opposition by being more Socialist than the Socialists".{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=48}} In 1928, the ''Daily Mail'' in a leader praised Mussolini as "the great figure of the age. Mussolini will probably dominate the history of the twentieth century as Napoleon dominated the early nineteen century".{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=47}}

By 1929, [[George Ward Price]] was writing in the ''Mail'' that Baldwin should be deposed and Beaverbrook elected as leader. In early 1930, the two Lords launched the [[United Empire Party]], which the ''Daily Mail'' supported enthusiastically.<ref name="Temple-2008" />{{rp|35}} Like Lord Beaverbrook, Rothemere was outraged by Baldwin's centre-right style of Conservatism and his decision to respond to almost universal suffrage by expanding the appeal of the Conservative Party.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=83}} Far from seeing giving women the right to vote as the disaster Rothermere believed that it was, Baldwin set out to appeal to female voters, a tactic that was politically successful, but led Rothermere to accuse Baldwing of "feminising" the Conservative Party.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=83}}

The rise of the new party dominated the newspaper, and, even though Beaverbrook soon withdrew, Rothermere continued to campaign. Vice Admiral [[Ernest Augustus Taylor]] fought the first by-election for the [[United Empire Party]] in October, defeating the official Conservative candidate by 941 votes. Baldwin's position was now in doubt, but in 1931 [[Duff Cooper]] won the key [[1931 Westminster St George's by-election|by-election at St George's, Westminster]], beating the United Empire Party candidate, Sir [[Ernest Petter]], supported by Rothermere, and this broke the political power of the press barons.<ref>{{cite book|title=Fleet Street|chapter=13. Prerogative of the harlot|author=[[Dennis Griffiths]]|pages=247–252|isbn=0-7123-0697-8|year=2006|publisher=British Library }}</ref>

In 1927, the celebrated picture of the year ''[[:File:Proctor-Morning.jpg|Morning]]'' by [[Dod Procter]] was bought by the ''Daily Mail'' for the [[Tate Gallery]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Houghton Mifflin dictionary of biography|page=1241|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QfesntdNnbwC|isbn=978-0-618-25210-7|year=2003|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|access-date=10 November 2020|archive-date=17 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217075452/https://books.google.com/books?id=QfesntdNnbwC|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1927, Rothermere, under the influence of his Hungarian mistress, Countess [[Stephanie von Hohenlohe]], took up the cause of Hungary as his own, publishing a leader on 21 June 1927 entitled "Hungary's Place in the Sun".{{sfn|Becker|2021|p=22}} In "Hungary's Place in the Sun", he approvingly noted that Hungary was dominated both politically and economically by its "chivalrous and warlike aristocracy", whom he noted in past centuries had battled the Ottoman Empire, leading him to conclude that all of Europe owned a profound debt to the Hungarian aristocracy which had been "Europe's bastion against which the forces of Mahomet [the Prophet Mohammed] vainly hurled themselves against".{{sfn|Orzoff|2009|p=156}} Rothemere argued that it was unjust that the "noble" Hungarians should be under the rule of "cruder and more barbaric races", by which he meant the peoples of Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.{{sfn|Orzoff|2009|p=156}} In his leader, he advocated that Hungary retake all of the lands lost under the Treaty of Trianon, which caused immediate concern in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania, where it was believed that his leader reflected British government policy.{{sfn|Becker|2021|p=22}} Additionally, he took up the cause of the Sudeten Germans, stating that the [[Sudetenland]] should go to Germany.{{sfn|Orzoff|2009|p=156}} The Czechoslovak Foreign Minister [[Edvard Beneš]] was so concerned that he visited London to meet King George V, a man who detested Rothermere and used language that was so crude, vulgar and "unkingy" that Beneš had to report to Prague that he could not possibly repeat the king's remarks.{{sfn|Orzoff|2009|p=156}}  In fact, Rothermere's "Justice for Hungary" campaign, which he continued until February 1939, was a source of disquiet for the Foreign Office, which complained that British relations with Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania were constantly stained as the leaders of those nations continued to harbor the belief that Rothermere was in some way speaking for the British government.{{sfn|Becker|2021|pp=22–23}}

One of the major themes of ''The Daily Mail'' was the opposition to the Indian independence movement and much of Rothermere's opposition to Baldwin was based upon the belief that Baldwin was not sufficiently opposed to Indian independence. In 1930, Rothermere wrote a series of leaders under the title "If We Lose India!", claiming that granting India independence would be the end of Britain as a great power.{{sfn|Hanson|2008|p=73}} In addition, Rothermere predicted that Indian independence would end worldwide white supremacy as inevitably, the peoples of the other British colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas would also demand independence. The decision of the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to open the [[Round Table Conferences (India)|Round Table Conferences]] in 1930 was greeted by ''The Daily Mail'' as the beginning of the end of Britain as a great power.{{sfn|Taylor|2018|p=276}} As part of its crusade against Indian independence, ''The Daily Mail'' published a series of articles portraying the peoples of India as ignorant, barbarous, filthy and fanatical, arguing that the Raj was necessary to save India from the Indians, whom ''The Daily Mail'' argued were not capable of handling independence.{{sfn|Taylor|2018|p=276}}

====1930–1934====
Lord Rothermere was a friend of [[Benito Mussolini]] and [[Adolf Hitler]], and directed the Mail's editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s.<ref>{{cite book|last=Griffiths|first=Richard|title=Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–9|year=1980|publisher=Constable|location=London|isbn=0-09-463460-2}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Taylor|first=S. J.|title=The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail|year=1996|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|location=London|isbn=0-297-81653-5}}</ref> Lord Rothermere took an extreme anti-Communist line, which led him to own an estate in Hungary to which he might escape to in case Britain was conquered by the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|p=34}} Shortly after the Nazis scored their breakthrough in the [[1930 German federal election|Reichstag elections on 14 September 1930]], winning 107 seats, Rothermere went to Munich to interview Hitler.<ref name="Lord Rothemere and Herr Hitler-1930">{{cite news |title=Lord Rothemere and Herr Hitler |url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/27th-september-1930/1/lord-rothermere-and-herr-hitler |publisher=The Spectator |date=27 September 1930 |access-date=21 January 2022 |archive-date=21 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220121071705/http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/27th-september-1930/1/lord-rothermere-and-herr-hitler |url-status=live }}</ref> In an article published in ''Daily Mail'' on 24 September 1930, Rothemere wrote: "These young Germans have discovered, as I am glad to note that the young men and women of England are discovering, that is no good trusting the old politicians. Accordingly, they have formed, as I should like to see our British youth form, a parliamentary party of their own...We can do nothing to check this movement [the Nazis], and I believe it would be a blunder for the British people to take up an attitude of hostility towards it."<ref name="Lord Rothemere and Herr Hitler-1930"/> Starting in December 1931, Rothermere opened up talks with Oswald Mosley under which terms the ''Daily Mail'' would support his party.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=150}} The talks were drawn out largely because Mosley understood that Rothermere was a megalomaniac who wanted to use the New Party for his own purposes as he sought to impose terms and conditions in exchange for the support of the ''Daily Mail''.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=150}} Mosley, who was equally egoistical, wanted Rothermere's support, but only on his own terms.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=150}}

Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them.<ref>{{cite book|last=Giles|first=Paul|title=Atlantic republic: the American tradition in English literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t07NY0V0vzcC&pg=PT213|year=2006|publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-920633-9|access-date=29 June 2015|archive-date=6 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206070540/https://books.google.com/books?id=t07NY0V0vzcC&pg=PT213|url-status=live}}</ref> In it, Rothermere predicted that "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany". Journalist [[John Simpson (journalist)|John Simpson]], in a book on journalism, suggested that Rothermere was referring to the violence against Jews and Communists rather than the detention of political prisoners.<ref>{{cite book|last=Simpson|first=John|title=Unreliable Sources: How the 20th Century Was Reported|publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Pam Macmillan]]|place=London|year=2010|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8yT0O5RkbUYC&pg=PT307|isbn=978-0-230-75010-4|access-date=26 December 2021|archive-date=17 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217075511/https://books.google.com/books?id=8yT0O5RkbUYC&pg=PT307|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=August 2017}} Alongside his support for Nazi Germany as the "bulwark against Bolshevism", Rothermere used ''The Daily Mail'' as a forum to champion his pet cause, namely a stronger [[Royal Air Force]] (RAF).{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|p=33}} Rothermere had decided that aerial war was the technology of the future, and throughout the 1930s ''The Daily Mail'' was described as "obsessional" in pressing for more spending on the RAF.{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|pp=33–34}}

Rothermere and the ''Mail'' were also editorially sympathetic to [[Oswald Mosley]] and the [[British Union of Fascists]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britishpapers.co.uk/midmarket/daily-mail/|title=Daily Mail|date=14 April 2014|website=British Newspapers Online|access-date=4 November 2008|archive-date=3 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210303023339/https://www.britishpapers.co.uk/midmarket/daily-mail/|url-status=live}}</ref> Rothermere wrote an article titled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" published in the ''Daily Mail'' on 15 January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine",<ref>{{cite book|title=Culture of the Europeans: From 1800 to the Present|first=Donald|last=Sassoon|date=2006|publisher=HarperCollins|page=1062}}</ref> and stating that: "Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W."<ref>{{cite book|title=The newspaper game: The political sociology of the press : an inquiry into behind-the-scenes organization, financing and brainwashing techniques of the news media|first=Paul|last=Hoch|year=1974|page=52|publisher=Calder & Boyars |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v4hZAAAAMAAJ|isbn=978-0-7145-0857-3|access-date=29 June 2015|archive-date=5 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151005120933/https://books.google.com/books?id=v4hZAAAAMAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> ''[[The Spectator]]'' condemned Rothermere's article commenting that, "... the Blackshirts, like the ''Daily Mail'', appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average ''Daily Mail'' reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made. When Lord Rothermere tells his clientele to go and join the Fascists some of them pretty certainly will."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/19th-january-1934/6/lord-rothermeres-hurrah-for-the-blackshirts-articl|title=A Spectator's Notebook|work=The Spectator|date=19 January 1934|page=6|access-date=5 October 2013|archive-date=12 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131012142148/http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/19th-january-1934/6/lord-rothermeres-hurrah-for-the-blackshirts-articl|url-status=live}}</ref> In April 1934, the ''Daily Mail'' ran a competition entitled "Why I Like The Blackshirts" under which it awarded one pound every week for the best letter from its readers explaining why they liked the BUF.{{sfn|Pugh|2013|p=150}}  The paper's support ended after violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia in June 1934.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Blamires|first1=Cyprian|editor1-last=Jackson|editor1-first=Paul|editor2-last=Blamires|editor2-first=Cyprian|title=World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia (Volume 1)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nvD2rZSVau4C&pg=PA435|date=2006|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-57607-940-9|pages=228, 435|edition=illustrated, reprint|access-date=29 June 2015|archive-date=28 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210228190700/https://books.google.com/books?id=nvD2rZSVau4C&pg=PA435|url-status=live}}</ref> Mosley and many others thought Rothermere had responded to pressure from Jewish businessmen who it was believed had threatened to stop advertising in the paper if it continued to back an anti-Semitic party.<ref>{{cite book|title=Mosley|first=Nigel|last=Jones|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xxGSpXjUcvEC&pg=PA94|year=2004|page=92|isbn=978-1-904341-09-3|access-date=10 November 2020|archive-date=17 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217075454/https://books.google.com/books?id=xxGSpXjUcvEC&pg=PA94|url-status=live}}</ref> The paper editorially continued to oppose the arrival of Jewish refugees escaping Germany, describing their arrival as "a problem to which the ''Daily Mail'' has repeatedly pointed."<ref>{{cite web|last1=Karpf|first1=Anne|title=We've been here before|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices|website=The Guardian|date=8 June 2002|access-date=31 July 2015|archive-date=12 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150912122720/http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/08/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices|url-status=live}}</ref>

In December 1934, Rothermere visited Berlin as the guest of Joachim von Ribbentrop.{{sfn|Crozier|1988|p=61}} During his visit, Rothermere was publicly thanked in a speech by Josef Goebbels for the ''Daily Mail''<nowiki/>'s pro-German coverage of the [[1935 Saar status referendum|Saarland referendum]], under which the people of the Saarland had the choices of voting to remain under the rule of the League of Nations, join France, or rejoin Germany.{{sfn|Crozier|1988|p=61}} In March 1935, impressed by the arguments put forward by Ribbentrop for the return of the former German colonies in Africa, Rothermere published a leader entitled "Germany Must Have Elbow Room".{{sfn|Crozier|1988|p=59}} In his leader, Rothermere argued that the [[Treaty of Versailles]] was too harsh towards the ''Reich'' and claimed that the German economy was being crippled by the loss of the German colonial empire in Africa as he argued that without African colonies to exploit that the German economic recovery from the [[Great Depression]] was fragile and shallow.{{sfn|Crozier|1988|p=59}}

During the [[Spanish Civil War]], the ''Daily Mail'' ran a photo-essay on 27 July 1936 by Ferdinand Touchy entitled "The Red Carmens, the women who burn churches".{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=87}} Touchy took a series of photographs of Spanish women who joined the Worker's Militia marching up to the front with rifles and  ammunition pouches over their shoulders.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=87}} In an essay that has been widely criticised as misogynistic, Touchy wrote: "The Spanish women has been a creature to admire or make work domestically, to marry or let slip away into a religious order...65 percent were illiterate".{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=88}} Touchy declared his horror at the young Spanish women had rejected the traditional patriarchal system, writing with disgust that the "direct action girls" of the Worker's Militia do not want to be like their mothers, submissive and obedient to men.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=88}} Touchy called these young women "Red Carmens", associating them with the destructive heroine of the opera ''[[Carmen]]'' and with Communism, writing the "Red Carmens" proved the amorality of the Spanish Republic, which had preached gender equality.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=88}} For Touchy, women to fight in a war was to reject their femininity, leading him to label these women as monstrous as he accused the "Red Carmens" of "sexual depravity", writing with utter horror at the possibility of these women engaging in premarital sex, which for him marked the beginning of the end of "civilisation" itself.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|pp=89–90}} The British historian Caroline Brothers wrote that Touchy's article said much about the gender politics of ''The Daily Mail'', which ran his photo-essay and presumably of ''The Daily Mail'''s readers who were expected to approve of the article.{{sfn|Brothers|2013|p=90}}

In a 1937 article, [[George Ward Price]], the special correspondent of ''The Daily Mail'', approvingly wrote: "The sense of national unity-the ''[[Volkgemeinschaft]]''-to which the ''Führer'' constantly appeals in his speeches is not a rhetorical invention, but a reality".{{sfn|Stone|2003|p=118}} Ward Price was one of the most controversial British journalists of the 1930s, who was one of the few British journalists allowed to interview both [[Benito Mussolini]] and [[Adolf Hitler]] because both fascist leaders knew that Ward Price could be trusted to take a favorable tone and ask "soft" questions.{{sfn|Stone|2003|p=118}} Wickham Steed called Ward Price "the lackey of Mussolini, Hitler and Rothermere".{{sfn|Stone|2003|p=118}} The British historian Daniel Stone called Ward Price's reporting from Berlin and Rome "a mixture of snobbery, name dropping and obsequious pro-fascism of a most genteel 'English' type".{{sfn|Stone|2003|p=118}} In the 1938 crisis over the Sudetenland, ''The Daily Mail'' was very hostile in its picture of President [[Edvard Beneš]], whom Rothermere noted disapprovingly in a leader in July 1938 had signed an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935, leading him to accuse Beneš of turning "Czechoslovakia into a corridor for Russia against Germany".{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|p=19}} Rothermere concluded his leader: "If Czechoslovakia becomes involved in a war, the British nation will say to the Prime Minister with one voice: 'Keep out of it!'"{{sfn|Reid Gannon|1971|p=19}}

During the [[Danzig crisis]], the ''Daily Mail'' was inadvertently used by the German Foreign Minister [[Joachim von Ribbentrop]] to persuade Hitler that Britain would not go to war for the defense of Poland. Ribbentrop had the German Embassy in London headed by [[Herbert von Dirksen]] provide translations from pro-appeasement newspapers like the ''Daily Mail'' and the ''Daily Express'' for Hitler's benefit, which had the effect of making it seem that British public opinion was more strongly against going to war for Poland than was actually the case.{{sfn|Watt|1989|p=385}}{{sfn|Rothwell|2001|p=106}} The British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that the newspapers that Ribbentrop used to provide his press summaries for Hitler such as the ''Daily Express'' and the ''Daily Mail'', were out of touch not only with British public opinion, but also with British government policy in regards to the Danzig crisis.{{sfn|Rothwell|2001|p=106}} The press summaries Ribbentrop provided were particularly important as Ribbentrop had managed to convince Hitler that the British government secretly controlled the British press, and just as in Germany, nothing appeared in the British press that the British government did not want to appear.{{sfn|Bloch|1992|p=169}}