The Daily Chronicle was founded in 1872. Purchased by Edward
Lloyd for £30,000 in 1876, it achieved a high reputation
under the editorship of H. W. Massingham
(1895-99) and Robert Donald who took charge
in 1904.
Circulation was increased when Robert Donald
transformed it into a halfpenny daily. Donald recruited a group talented
journalists and artists including Henry Hamilton
Fyfe, Philip Gibbs, Phil
May, F. H. Townsend and Frank
Brangwyn.
By 1914 Donald claimed that the net sale of the Daily Chronicle
exceeded the combined sales of the The Times,
Daily Telegraph, Morning
Post, Evening Standard
and the Daily Graphic. The following
year the company that owned the Daily Chronicle, United Newspapers
Limited, was able to announce that it had made a healthy profit of
£43,650.
The Daily Chronicle supported the left-wing of the Liberal
Party. At the end of July, 1914, it became clear to the British
government that the country was on the verge of war with Germany.
The left-wing members of the government were opposed to the country
becoming involved in a European war. Although Charles
Trevelyan, John Burns, and John
Morley resigned from the government, the leader of this group,
David Lloyd George changed his mind and
stayed. Lloyd George also persuaded Robert Donald
and the Daily Chronicle to give its full support to the war
effort.
Philip Gibbs and Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle reported the war for the Daily Chronicle.
Donald also made several visits to the Western
Front and in 1915 wrote a detailed account of the trench
system.
On 9th April, 1918, the prime minister, David
Lloyd George, told the House of Commons
that despite heavy casualties in 1917, the British
Army in France was considerably stronger than it had been on January
1917. He also gave details of the numbers of British troops in Mesopotamia,
Egypt and Palestine.
Sir Frederick Maurice, whose job it was
to keep accurate statistics of British military strength, knew that
David Lloyd George had been guilty of misleading
Parliament about the number of men in the British
Army. Maurice wrote to Sir Henry Wilson,
the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, pointing out these inaccuracies.
He did not receive a reply and after consulting with friends and relatives,
he took the decision to write a letter to the newspapers giving the
true figures.
On 7th May, 1918, the principal newspapers published Maurice's letter
accusing David Lloyd George of giving the
House of Commons inaccurate information.
Maurice, by writing the letter, had committed a grave breach of discipline.
He was retired from the British Army
and was refused a court martial or inquiry where he would have been
able to show that David Lloyd George had
mislead the House of Commons on both the
9th April and 7th May, 1918.
Donald took the decision to appoint Sir Frederick
Maurice as the military correspondent of the Daily
Chronicle. Lloyd George was furious with Donald's decision
to employ Maurice and on 5th October it was announced that a group
of his friends led by Sir Henry Dalziel,
had purchased the Daily Chronicle.
Donald resigned in protest and complained that Lloyd George was trying
to "corner public opinion".
In 1930 the Daily Chronicle and the Daily
News merged and became known as the News Chronicle.
Both the News Chronicle and its evening partner, The
Star, stopped production in 1960.
(1)
H. Simonis, The Street of Ink (1917)
Many big scoops are to be credited to the Daily Chronicle
in connection with exploration. In 1896 it published exclusively Dr.
Nansen's narrative of his attempt to reach the North Pole. The explorer
received £4,000 for this. Captain Amundsen's story of the discovery
of the South Pole appeared exclusively in its columns, and a similar
with the accounts of the Shackleton expeditions.
(2)
The Daily Chronicle (7th August, 1914)
A newspaper's duty is to give news, but at times of war it
has a patriotic duty as well. It must give no news which would convey
information of advantage to the adversary.
Throughout this war, The Daily Chronicle will refrain from
indicating the location and movements of warships and units of the
army. At the same time The Daily Chronicle has taken complete
and energetic measures to supply its readers with full intelligence
from every part of the war areas.
The censorship that we exercise over our news will not affect its
value to the ordinary reader of the paper. The special correspondents
of The Daily Chronicle are men of world-wide repute, experienced
in war, vivid descriptive writers and brilliant news-getters.
(3)
Philip Gibbs described the retreat from Mons
in the Daily Chronicle (29th August, 1914)
I have been
into this war zone and have seen during the last five days the men
who are holding the lines of defence. I have been among their dead
and wounded, and have talked with soldiers marching fresh to the front.
I have seen the horrid mess which is cleared up after battle and the
grim picture of retreat. But nothing that I have seen or heard from
either the British or the French leads me to believe that our allies
have been demoralized.
It is astounding to see the cheerfulness of our wounded British soldiers
at Rouen, where the Red Cross nurses tell admiring stories of their
pluck and patience. Yet out of the firing line as well as in the trenches
they have had a dreadful time. It is almost true to say that they
only rest when they get into the ambulance cart and the field hospital.
One of them told me that incessant marching, marching forwards and
backwards to new positions, is more awful to bear than the actual
fighting under the hideous fire of the German guns.
(4)
Robert Donald, Daily Chronicle (August,
1915)
The soil is
soft clay, admirably suited for entrenching, tunnelling, and mine
warfare - when it is dry. As an outside observer, I do not see why
the war in this area should not go on for a hundred years, without
any decisive result. What is happening now is precisely what happened
last year. The only difference is that the trenches are deeper, dug-outs
better made, tunnels are longer, and the charges of explosives heavier.
Everywhere there are trenches, barbed wire, machine guns where they
are least expected, and all the complicated arrangements for defence.
The trenches are very deep, very narrow, and very wet. Streams of
water run at the bottom.
The nearer one gets to the front the more mysterious and wonderful
become the methods of defence. You are allowed to peer through an
observation post towards the German trenches a few hundred yards away.
You see absolutely nothing but a mass of brushwood, broken trunks
of trees, hanging branches and barbed wire.
The guns were always at work. On my day of my visit to this area there
was an almost continuous bombardment going on. The shells were hurtling
over our heads. You heard the sharp discharge, and then the exploding
of the shell. You saw nothing. The sound re-echoes through the woods
and valleys like rolling thunder. The French fire six rounds to the
enemy's one. The object of the cannonading is to disturb any work
going on behind the enemy lines.
(5)
Frederick Maurice, Daily
Chronicle
(7th September, 1918)
Why has our Government expressed no recognition of Sir Douglas Haig's
leadership and the valour of our men? We are often accused of concealing
the performances of our own troops, and of giving the credit to others.
This time there has been no concealment, which makes it more remarkable
that so conspicuous a success should have been allowed by the War
Cabinet to pass unnoticed.
(6)
Frederick Maurice, Daily
Chronicle
(13th September, 1918)
He (David Lloyd George) did right in doing homage to Marshal Foch,
but his omission to make any reference to the prominent part played
by Sir Douglas Haig in the achievement of the recent victories was
very marked. It is a small mind that petulantly refuses to acknowledge
the services of a great soldier.
(7)
Frederick Maurice, Daily
Chronicle
(3rd October, 1918)
The British successes on the Western Front since 8th August are much
the greatest in scale ever won by the British Army or a British General.
Within the period under review General Pershing and General Allenby
have received the official congratulations of the British Government,
and Mr. Lloyd George has congratulated Marshal Foch. Various private
organizations have sent congratulations to Sir Douglas Haig, including
the Labour Party and the National Liberal Federation; but the War
Cabinet has remained silent.
(8)
The Morning Post (17th October,
1918)
It is at least a coincidence that the Daily Chronicle should
have thus changed hands at a moment when that journal was developing
into an outspoken critic of Lloyd-Georgian policies. Just as there
are other ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream, so there
are other ways of silencing newspaper critics than by conferring on
them the Order of the British Empire.
(9)
The Star (17th October, 1918)
One thing we may be certain of there will
be no repetition of the leading article which complained that Sir
Douglas Haig had never received the congratulations of the Prime Minister
and the War Cabinet on his brilliant series of victories. The article
appeared in the Daily Chronicle on Thursday morning. On Friday
night the Prime Minister's representative had taken charge of the
offices of the newspaper and Mr. Donald had resigned. Fleet Street
knows the Prime Minister does not spare those who cross his path.
General Maurice, who ceased to be a Director of Military Operations
when he exposed the Prime Minister's speeches, is now the Military
Correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, and it will be interesting
to see how long he holds that post.
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