Editing Daily Mail (section)

====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}}