The Wall Street crash | 1 Nov 1929 edition
After a six-year bull market, the Wall Street bubble burst on Black Thursday: 24 October 1929. As losses of $5bn were reported, President Herbert Hoover tried to reassure the country and bankers attempted to prop up the market. But, within days, at the close on Black Tuesday, losses had worsened. It wasn’t until July 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, that the market bottomed out, down 89% from its peak. The Weekly published reports, comment and editorials, noting the record-breaking volume of trading as investors raced to offload their holdings (so fast the tickers could not produce tape fast enough), and pondering the causes of the bubble – cheap credit and a popular belief that securities would only ever rise in value.
“Another wild day on Wall Street” – Guardian editorial
[This leader is from the first day of the Wall Street crash when £1bn was wiped off share values.]
We have known many financial crises in this country, but never a gambling crisis of the magnitude witnessed in the past few days in America.
There is nothing the matter with American trade; there has been no setback in industrial prosperity; nothing has happened to cause the collapse except the pricking of a bubble.
The bubble was the belief … that it is possible to buy a security for a certain sum of money, to sell it again later at a higher price, and to continue the process indefinitely. The astonishing thing was that the process had been going on for several years … This was partly due to the fact that American industry progressed steadily and that its increasing profits did justify increasing security values.
But this basis of good reason served mainly to stimulate the public expectation of quick capital appreciation. It is very easy to secure by capital appreciation in a month a return greater than a full year’s dividend.
And as this was what many people actually succeeded in doing, month by month and even year by year, it is perhaps not surprising that some of them almost came to believe that they could go on doing it for ever. The greater the number of people who were persuaded to act upon this belief the truer it seemed to be. Until at last a large part of the nation seems to have gone security mad and to have thought of little else but how to raise money to put into some Stock Exchange security.
To what extent the purchases were financed on credit it is impossible to say, but clearly the amount of borrowing was so considerable as to cause grave concern to the authorities of the Federal Reserve banking system.
They resorted to the traditional method of curbing Stock Exchange speculation by a restriction of credit; but with little or no effect, owing, apparently, to the growth of the investment trust and the accumulation of resources outside the control of the federal reserve system.
So at last the dawn of a speculator’s paradise seemed to have broken. Up to a few weeks ago there was nothing to indicate how soon the illusion was to be shattered.
The Hindenburg disaster | 14 May 1937 edition
For a long time, the Weekly ran a front-page summary of the week’s news, before exploring stories in detail later on. This particularly busy edition from May 1937 featured news of George VI’s coronation; street battles in Barcelona during the Spanish civil war; fallout from the bombing of Guernica on 26 April; ominous warnings about Italian belligerence and Japan’s policy in China. Most spectacular was the Hindenburg crash in New Jersey, which killed 35 people on 6 May – with 62 escaping. The Guardian’s reporter captured some of the horrors of the crash.
Disaster to the Hindenburg – loss of 35 lives
By Guardian correspondent
The great German airship Hindenburg was wrecked at Lakehurst airport, New Jersey, on Thursday night of last week, with a loss of 35 lives. The airship had just completed a crossing. She arrived over Lakehurst during a thunderstorm at about four in the afternoon. Her commander decided that it would be safer to delay the landing till the storm was over. The airship hovered in the neighbourhood for three hours.
The work of mooring her was in progress when a loud explosion occurred; the airship burst into flames and fell to the ground in ruin.
The cause of the accident is under investigation. According to one account there was some misunderstanding among the ground staff about the hauling of the mooring ropes, with the result that the tail of the airship hit the ground and rebounded. Other accounts attribute the disaster to lightning, and there is also a theory of sabotage, though the evidence, if any, upon which it rests is not apparent.
Some of the passengers who had been waving greetings to those on the ground were shot out of the observation windows by the force of the explosion. Some members of the crew could be seen dropping with their clothing in flames, and many of the occupants were entangled in the fiercely burning mass which came to the ground.
The bombing of Hiroshima | 10 August 1945 edition
As a new Labour government took office in the UK and the Allies pronounced on the future of a defeated Germany, news came of the devastating conclusion to the war in the Pacific: the atomic attack on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, after Japan’s armed forces’ refusal to surrender unconditionally. Between 117,000 and 250,000 were killed in the world’s first atomic explosion (three days later another “A-bomb” was detonated over Nagasaki). In its 10 August issue (evidently printed on reduced-quality paper affected by rationing), the Weekly reflected on the implications of the bombing. It also featured a piece by science correspondent JG Crowther on the role of the paper’s home city in the birth of the bomb.
Momentous happenings
Guardian Weekly editorial
Momentous happenings have fallen thickly this last 12 months, but it is difficult to think that any single newspaper has ever contained news of so many far-reaching matters as are briefly dealt with in this issue. The completion of a new Labour Government in Britain – the first with a majority in the House of Commons – would have been sufficient in the way of “big news” for any ordinary week. It fell in the same seven days as the release of the Potsdam pronouncement on the future of a defeated Germany. Then, while the British people enjoyed their first August Bank Holiday since the end of the war in Europe, President Truman announced that American and British scientists had produced an atomic bomb and that it had already been used against the Japanese. He called it the greatest achievement of the efforts of science, industry, and the military in all history. After that, Wednesday’s news of a declaration on the future of Austria, Russia’s entry into the war on Japan, and an Allied agreement on the War criminals seemed superfluity.
“Sixteen hours ago,” began President Truman’s statement issued on Monday [6 August], “an American aeroplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.” But that one bomb, a small one in visible physical magnitude, had a significance that has given a tone of awe to all the utterances in which its story has been given to the world. It is not only that it has a power two thousand times greater than the ten-ton “grand slam,” which was the largest the RAF dropped on Germany: there is the further momentous fact of what the President has called “the harnessing of the basic power of the universe” first to the purposes of war, but potentially to useful production. Mr Truman added: “The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
Mr Churchill, in a statement which he prepared while in office, and which [new prime minister] Mr Attlee issued with his own introduction to reach us simultaneously with Truman’s announcement, strikes an even deeper note. He says: “This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from man, should arouse the most solemn reflections in the minds and conscience of every human being capable of comprehension.
“We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce to peace among the nations, and that instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe they may become a perennial fountain of world prosperity.” “By God’s mercy British and American science outpaced all German efforts,” says the ex-prime minister [Churchill].
The Suez crisis | 1 November 1956 edition
The Suez fiasco delivered an ugly final chapter to Britain’s long imperial history. The military misadventure by Britain, France and Israel to thwart Egypt’s President Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal was condemned internationally but, in the UK, much of the press supported the endeavour. The Guardian and Observer (not then under the same ownership) were thought to be the only national papers who argued consistently against the action. It was said that this fiery editorial, written the day after Israel attacked Egypt, by Guardian editor Alastair Hetherington was quoted on the paper for years. David Astor’s Observer leader on 4 November 1956 was hailed as one of the most significant of the 20th century.
To war
Guardian editorial
The Anglo-French ultimatum to Egypt is an act of folly, without justification in any terms but brief expediency. It pours petrol on a growing fire. There is no knowing what kind of explosion will follow.
There was, admittedly, about one chance in twenty that it might put out the fire. By sheer weight it might have extinguished the flames, temporarily at least. But it is far more likely to lead Britain into direct war with Egypt, and perhaps with the whole Arab world – as, on the latest reports, it seems to be doing.
What is more, countless other nations will consider Britain and France to be in the wrong. As the two governments must have known, it was exceedingly improbable that Egypt would withdraw its forces to the west of the canal. Why should it, except -possibly through fear of fighting Britain? Already it is engaged with the Israelis east of the canal and in the Sinai desert. If they are with-drawing from their grandiose raid – which for them would be the only sensible course, militarily and politically – the Egyptian command will want to pursue them and harass them as they go.
For the Egyptian forces to retreat behind the canal, one hundred miles inside their frontier, would be an admission of defeat. In the present mood of Egypt – of the government, army and people – it was most unlikely to happen. In the event, Egypt rejected the ultimatum. It declines to retreat.
The Prime Minister sought to justify the ultimatum by saying that we must protect our shipping, our citizens, and “vital international rights”. But what possible right have we to attack another country? The British and French military action will be -flagrant aggression. Protection of shipping – or for that matter of rights of transit through the Suez Canal – is no cause for making war, unless it is done with the authority of the United Nations. Nor can an assault on another country be warranted on the ground that we wish to safeguard the lives of British and French citizens (In fact our action is likely to place them in greater jeopardy). Nothing in the Charter, or in acknowledged international law, permits armed intervention in such a cause. As for the vital “international rights” of which Sir Anthony [Eden] speaks, what are they?
The British and French Governments have acted in a rash and precipitate fashion. To much of the world they appear to have seized upon the shallowest excuse to reoccupy the canal zone as they wanted to do a week ago. The Prime Minister says that no other course is open to us. He is gravely mistaken. The proper course would have been to call on Israel, through the Security Council, to withdraw its forces immediately to its own territory. At the same time both Egypt and Israel should have been reminded of the tripartite declaration. This would have been the way to promote peace. Instead the government has taken us well on the way to a bigger war.
The raid towards Suez has been a most dangerous move – and it seems likely to bring Israel into still greater difficulties. At present the best thing the Israel Government can do is to get its troops back within their borders. The sooner it does so the better [… ] The Israel Government ought by now to grasp the point that if it holds on in Egyptian territory it will be buying successes today at the expense of ruin tomorrow. But, as must be bitterly acknowledged, the British and French Governments are following a similar path. Yesterday’s events – and today’s – are all too likely to have a tragic ending for the West.