THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE AMERICAN JOURNALSIT

ARNO DOSCH FLEUROT (1879-1951): DEFINING

AMERICAN LIBERALISM IN WORLD WAR
ONE ERA THROUGH THE LENSE
OF FOREIGN REPORTING
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A Thesis

Presented to the

Faculty of

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California State University, Fullerton
____________________________________
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In Partial Fulfillment
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of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

in
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History
____________________________________

By

Angelina Slepchenkova

Thesis Committee Approval:

Volker Janssen, Department of History, Chair

Benjamin Cawthra, Department of History
Cora Granata, Department of History

Summer, 2017




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 ABSTRACT

This study examines life and times of Arno Dosch Fleurot (1879-1951), the

American veteran newspaperman, who was a foreign correspondent in Europe since 1914

and reported to Americans about many important world events – World War One and

World War Two, revolutions in Russia and Germany to name a few. The focus of this

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research is Dosch Fleurot’s experience as a foreign reporter during World War One and

in the early 1920s, in the period that became the determinant for his professional and
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personal life. His witnesses and opinions about the war and its outcomes reflected in his
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articles for the Worlds Work, a monthly magazine, the New York World, and some other

newspapers that published or syndicated his articles and his correspondence with family

in Portland, Oregon exemplify the challenges the conflict brought to people with a liberal
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outlook. Indeed, the war experience raised doubts among the ranks of American liberals,

and Dosch Fleurot was not the exception, about their core belief in the inevitable spread

of democracy throughout the world. The purpose of this study is to examine Dosch

Fleurot’s evolution of this idealistic belief and illustrate how American liberals tried to

reconcile their advocacy of the spread of democracy with the national interests of the

United States. Since the beginning of World War One, the question of how international

the American foreign policy should be became a controversial issue in the American

society. The debate continues to this day.

ii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... ii

INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1

Chapter
1. REPORTING FROM THE WESTERN FRONT (1914-1916): WAITING
FOR A SOCIAL REVOLUTION......................................................................... 14

American Neutrality in Action ............................................................................ 15

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Neutrality of Spirit ................................................................................................ 28
Grasping the War .................................................................................................. 37

2.
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ARNO DOSCH FLEUROT IN REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA: AMERICAN
RESPONSE TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917 ............................... 45
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Building Russian Democracy ............................................................................... 46
Russia Must Fight ................................................................................................. 56
Arno Dosch Fleurot and Bolshevism .................................................................... 64

3. THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR ONE: THE COLLAPSE OF

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AMERICAN IDEALISM IN 1920S ..................................................................... 73

Disillusionment with the German Revolution ...................................................... 74

The Spread of Bolshevism .................................................................................... 79
The Postwar International System ........................................................................ 91

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 104

BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 117

iii
 1

INTRODUCTION

May be there won’t be war, though the Bolsheviks just will not let you live in peace in
the same world with them. I have been trying to make this thought register for thirty-odd
years, but people do not learn anything until it hits them. 1
— Arno Dosch Fleurot

Arno Dosch Fleurot, a veteran newspaperman, belonged to the generation of

American foreign reporters who emerged during World War One. He came to Belgium

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with the first group of American correspondents in August 1914, and from then on one

can describe his life as a series of thrilling adventures. Starting as a war reporter on the
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Western Front in 1914 he was transferred to Russia where he witnessed two Russian
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revolutions and the beginning of the Russian Civil War. When World War One was over,

he could have returned to his native country, but he chose to stay in Europe. His long

assignments alternated with short visits to the United States. Following major world
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events, Dosch Fleurot moved from country to country and became a true cosmopolitan

and an expert in world politics.

Dosch Fleurot was born in 1879, in Portland, Oregon, to a well-to-do family of

first-generation immigrants. His father, Henry Ernst Dosch came to the United States

from Mainz, a city in Western Germany. Shortly before the beginning of the American

1
Arno Dosch Fleurot (ADF) to Marcus (Marguerite Dosch Campbell), January
19, 1951. All letters are in possession of John Wilson Special Collections, Multnomah
County Library, Portland, Oregon.
 2

Civil War, he settled in St. Louis, a city with a big German community. When war broke

out, Henry Dosch decided to join the Union army and enlisted in the cavalry service.

After his discharge in 1863, he took the Oregon Trail and moved westward. He had tried

different jobs before he settled in Portland, Oregon where he eventually became a

successful merchant and horticulturist. In 1866, he married Marie Louise Fleurot, who

was born in France and came to the United States as a little girl. Henry and Marie Dosch

had ten children, four of which died in childhood.2

Dosch Fleurot graduated from Harvard Law School and could have become a

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lawyer. Instead, returning to his native city he decided to be a journalist. At first, the

young writer tried himself in the newspaper business of his native city, first as a reporter
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for the Oregonian and as an editor of the Pacific Monthly. When the 1906 San Francisco

earthquake happened, he was sent to the city as a correspondent of the Oregonian and
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decided to settle there. After the unsuccessful attempt to start an illustrated weekly, the

East and West, he wrote for the San Francisco Call and the San Francisco Bulletin.3 In
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San Francisco, Dosch Fleurot met his first wife Elsie Sperry, who was helping in the soup

kitchens after the earthquake. She was a girl from a prosperous California family, pretty

2
Fred Lockley, “Reminiscences of Colonel Henry Ernst Dosch,” The Quarterly of
the Oregon Historical Society 25, no. 1 (March, 1924): 53-71; Sunday Oregonian, April
16, 1922, 6.
3
Harvard University, Secretary’s Second Report Harvard College Class 1904
(Cambridge: Crimson Printing Company, June 1910), 81.
 3

and well-educated, spoke different languages and had taken several trips to Europe. Arno

and Elsie married in January, 1908. 4

By the time of his marriage, Dosch Fleurot had accumulated a big debt as a result

of his failed venture with the publication the East and West. His father helped him repay

a part of it, but he still owed some money. His marriage came with the understanding that

now he should not be as reckless as he had been before. He wrote to his father: “Being

married put it up to me every day not only to look out for the present but to plan into the

future.”5 When Dosch Fleurot’s first daughter Betsy was born in March, 1909, it brought

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new responsibilities. In the search of new perspectives, he decided to move to New York.

“Nothing of real advantage is open in this town [San Francisco] and I have acquired an
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idea that my talents need a lager field,” he wrote to his father. 6 In New York, Dosch
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Fleurot gradually became a successful free-lance writer, but it was also the first time, he

“had to do a good deal of hack-work, to keep the things going.” He recalled that once he

had written “in less than three months . . . almost a quarter of a million words for the
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year-book of an encyclopedia.” Finally, he found more creative money-making

opportunities writing muckraking stories and selling those to different magazines. Most

often, he contributed to the Pearson’s and the World Works.7

4
Daphne Berenbach, Essay about Elsie Sperry Dosch-Fleurot. Courtesy of
Middlebury College Special Collections and Archives, Middlebury, Vermont.
5
ADF to Henry Ernst Dosch (HED), March 16, 1908.
6
ADF to HED, April 18, 1908.
7
Harvard University, Secretary’s Third Report Harvard College Class 1904
(Cambridge: Crimson Printing Company, June 1914), 138-139.
 4

Coming to Europe at the beginning of World War One as a correspondent of the

Worlds Work, Dosch Fleurot soon was hired by the New York World and continued with

this newspaper as its foreign correspondent in different European countries until the

paper folded in 1931. Most of the 1930s, he worked for William Randolph Hearst’s news

corporation in Germany and France. He quit in 1937, amidst Hearst’s financial crisis. For

a short period of time, he wrote for the New York Times, the New York Tribune and the

Baltimore Sun until 1941, when he became a correspondent of the Christian Science

Monitor in Vichy France. When Vichy France was occupied by Germany in November

1942, Dosch Fleurot was interned and spent thirteen months in detention in one of the

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hotels of Baden-Baden, Germany with other American newspapermen, diplomats, and
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Red Cross workers.8 When the internees were released, he continued with the Christian

Science Monitor as its Spanish and North African correspondent until his death in 1951. 9
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Although during his lifetime Dosch Fleurot earned a reputation in the newspaper

business, he is almost unknown today. On the one hand, it happened because writing for
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American newspapers, he eventually became a cosmopolitan, and in his wanderings

around the world was gradually lost for the next generations. On the other hand, he did

not like publicity. If it was possible he tried to avoid public speaking. If he had to give

lectures during his visits to the United States, he did it reluctantly. Once he wrote to his

father, “I much prefer to write what I have to say, and let people read it.” 10 Moreover,

8
New York Times, November 12, 1942, 3.
9
Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 1944, 1; New York Times, April 17,
1951, 29.
10
ADF to HED, September 27, 1920.
 5

Dosch Fleurot never considered himself a strong storyteller and felt that his vocation was

straight news reporting. Partly because of this, he delayed the publication of the book

about his journalistic experiences during World War One until 1931. For the same

reason, Dosch Fleurot based his book mainly on his newspaper and magazine articles and

made only slight changes to his wartime narrative.11 Additionally, he was always busy

with day-to-day news and did not have time for writing a book. For example, he

published his book about the same time when he lost his job in the New York World. The

next opportunity for writing a big story appeared only during World War Two. During

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his internment in Baden-Baden, he decided to write his memoirs for his grown-up

daughters and tell about his professional path. Dosch Fleurot was able to take these
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memoirs with him when he left Germany. He added some parts to them later and

entrusted his daughters to publish his manuscript. They never did it. At the beginning of
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the 1990s, they were still in possession of Dosch Fleurot’s second daughter Daphne, who

allowed historian Ken Hawkins to transcribe the text from an onion-skin paper copy. 12
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This transcript is now in the possession of John Wilson Special Collections (JWSC),

Multnomah County Library at Portland, Oregon. The fate of the original is unknown.

Since the copyright of Dosch Fleurot’s unpublished memoirs is unclear and only

their transcript is available, I have decided not to use them in this MA thesis. However,

JWSC houses a large number of Dosch Fleurot’s letters to his family in Portland, Oregon.

11
Arno Dosch Fleurot, Through War to Revolution: Being the Experience of a
Newspaper Correspondent in War and Revolution, 1914-1920 (London: John Lane,
1931).
12
Berenbach, Essay about Elsie Sperry Dosch-Fleurot.
 6

Being a part of the Henry Dosch Papers, this correspondence comprises Dosch Fleurot’s

letters to his parents and siblings since the beginning of the twentieth century until his

death in 1951. The letters provide an interesting insight into his private life and

professional activities. Another big group of primary sources in this research are Dosch

Fleurot’s articles for the Worlds Work, a monthly magazine, the New York World, and

some other newspapers that published or syndicated his articles. Additionally, in 1921,

the New York World issued as a brochure five of Dosch Fleurot’s articles about the

prospects of social upheaval in the United States. The articles were based on Dosch

Fleurot’s observations that he made during his travel across the United States. 13 Dosch

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Fleurot’s views about the development of American journalism are reflected in the book
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review of Brisbane: A Candid Biography (New York, 1937).14

Dosch Fleurot’s brief autobiographies written before World War One are
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available in the second and third reports of his class at Harvard University. 15 Different

facts about Dosch Fleurot’s private life and career can be found in the American press of
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his time. Two items were crucial on the initial phase of research: a brief biography of

13
Arno Dosch Fleurot, How Much Bolshevism Is There in America? (New York
World, January 1921).
14
Arno Dosch Fleurot, Review of Brisbane: A Candid Biography by Oliver
Carlson, The Public Opinion Quarterly 2, No 3 (Jul. 1938): 497-500.
15
Harvard University, Secretary’s Second Report Harvard College Class 1904;
Harvard University, Secretary’s Third Report Harvard College Class 1904.
 7

Dosch Fleurot in the Old Oregon and his obituary in the New York Times.16 Dosch

Fleurot’s family background is described in his father’s reminiscences and his daughter

Daphne’s essay about her mother Elsie Dosch Fleurot. 17 Some valuable information can

be found in journalist works and memoirs of different American correspondents. 18

In 1980s, the life of Dosch Fleurot attracted attention of Ken Hawkins, a young

Portlander who was interested in local history. Hawkins got access to the Dosch family’s

papers which at that time were in the possession of Henry Ernst Dosch’s grand-son James

Driscoll. Driscoll subsequently transferred them to Multnomah County Library and they

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became known as the Henry Dosch Papers. Hawkins wrote his MA thesis on Dosch

Fleurot’s experience during World War One, but he placed the main emphasis on the
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analysis of his articles about the Russian Revolution. He paid less attention to Dosch
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16
Mildred Wilson, “Meet Our Alums,” The Old Oregon 24, no7 (March, 1943):
2, 9; New York Times, April 17, 1951, 29.
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17
Lockley, “Reminiscences of Colonel Henry Ernst Dosch,” 53-71; Berenbach,
Essay about Elsie Sperry Dosch-Fleurot.
18
Irvin S. Cobb, Paths of Glory: Impression of War Written At and Near the Front
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1918); Will Irwin, “Detained by the Germans,” Collier’s,
October 3, 1914, 5-6, 23-27;Will Irwin, The Making of a Reporter (New York:
G.P.Putnam’s Sons, 1942); Will Irwin, “Wreckage of War,” American Magazine,
November, 1914, 49, 70-78; John McCutcheon, “McCutcheon Describes First Day with
Germans,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 24, 1914, 5; John McCutcheon, Drawn from
Memory [Autobiography] Containing Many of the Author's Famous Cartoons and
Sketches (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950); James O’Donnell Bennett, “Stories of
German Atrocities Have no Foundation in Fact,” Albuquerque Morning Journal,
September 21, 1914, 30; Wythe Williams, The Dusk of Empire: The Decline of Europe and
the Rise of the United States, as Observed by a Foreign Correspondent in a Quarter
Century Service (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937); Florence MacLeod Harper,
Runaway Russia (New York: The Century Co, 1918).
 8

Fleurot’s experience as war reporter on the Western Front. 19 Although Dosch Fleurot is

often mentioned among the American correspondents on the Western Front, many

episodes of his war reporting remain unknown. 20 The American historian Christopher

Lasch briefly referred to Dosch Fleurot in his study of the American response to the

Russian Revolution. Alton Earl Ingram mentions Dosch Fleurot in the connection with

the American diplomatic mission of Eliot Root to Russia in 1917, which was sent to

investigate the young republic’s political situation.21 In two recently published books,

Helen Rappaport, a British author, and Chris Dubs, an American military historian, listed

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Dosch Fleurot among American witnesses to the Russian Revolution because of Dosch

Fleurot’s book Through War to Revolution. Rapport also uses Hawkins’ MA thesis,
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which remains the only in-depth research of Dosch Fleurot’s life. 22
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19
Ken Hawkins, “Through War to Revolution with Dosch-Fleurot: A Personal
History of an American Newspaper Correspondent in Europe and Russia, 1914-1918,”
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(master’s thesis, University of Rochester, 1986).

20
Emmet Crozier, American Reporters on the Western Front (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1959); Anita Lawson, Irvin S. Cobb (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling
Green State University Popular Press, 1984); Ed Klekowoski and Libby Klekowski,
Americans in Occupied Belgium, 1914-1918: Account of the War from Journalists,
Tourists, Troops and Medical Staff (Jefferson, North Carolina: Mc. Farland and
Company, 2012); Chris Dubbs, American Journalists in the Great War: Rewriting the
Rules of Reporting (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017).
21
Christopher Lasch, The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1962); Alton Earl Ingram, “The Root Mission to
Russia, 1917” (PhD. diss, Louisiana State University, 1970).
22
Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd, Russia, 1917-A World
on the Edge (St. Martin’s Press: New York, 2017); Dubbs, American Journalists in the
Great War.
 9

My MA thesis is another contribution to the understanding of Dosch Fleurot’s life

and career that coincided with a period of tremendous political and social changes in the

world. During his life, humanity experienced two world wars, several revolutions, and

civil wars that drastically changed the world – physically, culturally, and ideologically.

Dosch Fleurot was interested in those major events and processes as an observer and a

reporter. However, it was World War One that became the determinant event of his

professional and personal life. His witnesses and opinions about the war and its outcomes

reflected in his articles and correspondence exemplify the challenges the conflict brought

to people with a liberal outlook. Indeed, the war experience raised doubts among the

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ranks of American liberals, and Dosch Fleurot was not the exception, about their core
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belief in “the inevitable spread of democracy throughout the world, by orderly change or

by revolution, as circumstances might dictate.” 23 Dosch Fleurot’s evolution of this

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idealistic belief is the subject of this essay. The development of his political views

illustrates how American liberals tried to reconcile their advocacy of the spread of
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democracy with the national interests of the United States. Since the beginning of World

War One, the question of how international the American foreign policy should be

became a controversial issue in the American society. The debate continues to this day.

The analysis of Dosch Fleurot’s reportages from the Western Front shows that the

notion of American neutrality clashed with the democratic values and multiracial

character of the American nation. Dosch Fleurot, who came to Europe in 1914 with the

hope that the war would lead to a social revolution in Germany and Austria—and which

23
Lasch, viii.
 10

in turn would produce the foundation for a new democratic Europe—struggled to

maintain impartial attitude to the events. Simultaneously, his attempt to respect

sentiments of his German-born father prevented his reports from any blunt statement

about Germany and during the first months of the war, even made an impression that he

justified some actions of the German army during the invasion of Belgium. In fact, his

observations strengthened his pro-Allied sentiments and his vision of the conflict as a war

of democracy against autocracy.

Unexpectedly, the war caused revolution at first in Russia, not in Germany, and

Dosch Fleurot, who at that moment was on an assignment in the Russian capital, was able

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to witness and report about the events. After the abdication of the Russian Emperor
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Nicholas II in February 1917, the country became a republic ruled by the Provisional

Government. Simultaneously, the February Revolution created in Russia a new form of

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government in the form of the Soviets (councils), which competed for power with the

Provisional Government and were under control of moderate socialists. The United States
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positively responded to the Russian Revolution, and diplomatically accepted the Russian

Provisional Government. However, because in one month after the revolution, the United

States entered the war on the side of the Allied Powers, the American attitude toward the

Russian democracy was constrained by the national interests and a goal to win the war.

Although the Soviets were based on a principle of direct democracy and initially did not

forbid participation of non-socialist representatives in the elections, the American official

position was to support only the Provisional Government, which guaranteed the further

participation of Russia in the war. The political ignorance of the Soviets as a too radical

body also led to the underestimation of their political influence in the country. The last
 11

point was based on the opinion of the American Ambassador David Francis and members

of the Root Mission, which visited Russia during the summer of 1917.

Dosch Fleurot’s point of view differed from the position of the US Department of

State. While the Soviets leading by Russian moderate socialists were gradually taking

control over the country, many Americans were puzzled and disappointed, but not Dosch

Fleurot. He believed that the Soviets were only a radical form of western democracy.

While Russia was controlled by a joint power of liberals and moderate socialists and

while it remained the war ally of the United States, Dosch Fleurot had been witnessing

the Russian political experiment with curiosity.

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His position started to change when the Bolsheviks took power during the second
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revolution in October 1917. For the next five months, Dosch Fleurot had been trying to

decide how to regard government suggested by the Bolsheviks, a dictatorship of the

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proletariat, which rejected equal rights of citizens. This period of Dosch Fleurot’s life is

hard to evaluate. There is no direct evidence of Dosch Fleurot’s support of the

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Bolsheviks, but after the October Revolution, the language of his reporting changed. His

contempt for the Bolsheviks, which he had been expressing for eight months, vanished.

Instead, he started to write about them with more respect and sometimes with favor, often

emphasizing his personal acquaintance with one of the Bolsheviks’ leader Leon Trotsky.

While Lasch and Hawkins explain this change with the fact that Dosch Fleurot accepted

the Bolsheviks as strategic partners in the war with Germany, it also could be a part of his

journalistic strategy to pass his articles through the Russian censorship. At last, the first

critique of Bolshevism appeared in the article that Dosch Fleurot wrote in Stockholm,

outside of Russia in March of 1918. From that moment until the end of his life, he
 12

expressed hostility toward Bolshevism and regarded the Russian socialist experiment the

main political catastrophe of his time.

The revolutionary events in Russia deeply influenced Dosch Fleurot’s private life.

His first marriage collapsed after two and a half years that he and his wife had spent

apart. They divorced, but Dosch Fleurot continued supporting his children and from time

to time met with them. During this time, after his return from Russia, Dosch Fleurot

maintained many contacts among the Russian community in Europe. Here, he met

Russian émigré Anna Sredinsky. Anna became the most important person of his life – his

wife, his friend, and his soul mate. This marriage became a consolation for Dosch

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Fleurot, who needed somebody who could understand his feelings towards Russia. For
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Dosch Fleurot, the Russian Revolution became the most significant event he ever

witnessed in his life, and he considered its outcomes not only the failure of the world
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democracy but also as his personal tragedy. During his stay in the country, he felt in love

with Russia, and now he wished to see it free from the rule of the Bolsheviks. As that did
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not happen, his wife Anna became his “little Russia.”

The German Revolution that finally happened in November 1918 was a

disappointment for Dosch Fleurot. At the beginning, Germany was at risk of repeating

the Russian scenario and creating a Soviet republic. When this did not happen, the

country seemed to swing too far to the right and Dosch Fleurot regretted that Germany

had not become a true democracy. The postwar international order created by the Paris

Peace Conference also became a subject of unending criticism and pessimism for Dosch

Fleurot. The spread of Bolshevism, the unfair treatment of defeated countries, and the

passive attitude of the United States toward European affairs were only some of his
 13

commonly expressed dissatisfactions. Dosch Fleurot’s experience during World War One

once and forever shattered his belief in the possibility of a world democracy.

During the interwar period, Dosch Fleurot noticeably changed his political views.

His optimism about the inevitability of the world democracy was crushed by years of

political instability and military conflicts. His concerns about the spread of Bolshevism

led him to the conservative assessments of the world politics. Through the 1930s, Dosch

Fleurot developed a suspicion that President Roosevelt was too radical in his domestic

and foreign policy and involved in a communist conspiracy. This idea influenced Dosch

Fleurot’s views of World War Two. During the early stage of the war, he argued for the

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American neutrality in the conflict, and after the military defeat of France, he embraced
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the efforts of Philippe Petain, the head of Vichy France, to avoid the further involvement

of the country into the war actions. During the development of the conflict, Dosch Fleurot
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realized the necessity of the American intervention in the war and supported the Allies’

fight against the Nazi Germany. However, after the end of World War Two, he continued
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his criticism of the U.S. foreign policy arguing against political and economic isolation of

Spain. Dosch Fleurot believed that Spain was amongst a few countries in the world that

had potential to resist the danger of Bolshevism.

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CHAPTER 1

REPORTING FROM THE WESTERN FRONT (1914-1916):

WAITING FOR A SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Since the beginning of 1914, Dosch Fleurot had been working very intensively.

He had planned a European vacation in the middle of August, and had been trying to save

as much money as possible to pay for travel expenses. Arno promised his wife Elsie a

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bicycle trip through Southeastern France, and at the beginning of the summer he was able

to book the tickets from New York to Marseilles. The choice of the place was not
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accidental. Dosch Fleurot intended to visit his French relatives from his mother’s side in
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Burgundy. His five-year-old daughter was in California with Elsie’s parents. It seemed

that nothing could change his plans. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria

and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28 did not attract much attention in the United States.
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Surprisingly, the assassination escalated old European rivalries and became the reason of

a new war. At the end of July, Dosch Fleurot received an assignment from the Worlds

Work to go to Europe and write about the conflict. He had to rebook his tickets, choosing

London instead of Marseilles, and in order to save vacation plans at least partly, he

decided to take Elsie with him. It was agreed that while Arno was working, Elsie could

spend some time with her aunt, who had a house in London. 1

1
ADF to HED, June 12, 1914; ADF to Parents, August 6, 1914.
 15

The day before the departure, Dosch Fleurot wrote to his parents in order to

appease them:

I doubt very much that I will be able to get where the real things are doing. As a matter of
fact I it is the social situation, the revolutions that will follow that I am most interested in,
so mother need not worry. I doubt if I will get anywhere there is fighting. 2

From the board of the American liner St. Paul, he explained to his father more
explicitly:

I look for a social revolution in Germany after the war, and I want to see that too. I fancy
there will be a United States of Germany including Austria, making a real German nation

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and not an autocratic Prussian monarchy spreading itself over the whole country. 3

The hope of new democratic Europe became central for the life and career of
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Dosch Fleurot during World War One. Desire to witness this social transformation not
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only led him to this continent but also incited to relocate his wife and children there. In

retrospect, this decision became a turning point of his career and life in general. In

Europe, he started to enjoy the life of cosmopolitan and found his professional path of a
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foreign reporter.

American Neutrality in Action

By the time Dosch Fleurot and his wife entered the board of the American liner

St. Paul on August 7, 1914, the novice foreign correspondent realized that a new

European assignment could open up new horizons for his career. However, Dosch Fleurot

was realistic. He did not have the necessary connections in military and governmental

2
ADF to Parents, August 6, 1914; Hawkins, 11.
3
ADF to HED, August 14, 1914; Hawkins, 12.
 16

circles, so the chance to receive the official accreditation and go to the front was little. At

the same time, interested more in the aftermath of the war than in real fighting, he was

not too upset. He believed that the trip would be successful anyway. He wrote to his

parents, “I can get what I want anyhow. We have had very little war news that looks

authentic. It is all coming from England and tells of nothing but German defeats.” 4

Meanwhile, all American reporters who came to Europe in August 1914 found that none

of the belligerents wanted any correspondents on the front and issued accreditations

reluctantly. The practice of correspondents accompanying armies developed through the

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second part of the nineteenth century, but the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Boer

War showed that newspapermen could be dangerous for the military cause. The lack of
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accreditation leveled the playing field for all journalists and allowed Dosch Fleurot to

come as close to the front as more experienced and famous reporters.

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Although military officials did not give official accreditations to correspondents,

they could not prevent them from going to the war zone at their own risk. In this
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situation, neutrality that the United States declared at the beginning of World War One

put American journalists in a unique position. Both belligerents had their own plans

towards the United States. Britain and France hoped that the United States would enter

the war. Germany wanted it to stay neutral. Even though belligerents did not trust

American journalists, they tried to avoid conflicts with the United States, and in many

situations, military officials turned a blind eye to American neutrals. Probably, the most

4
ADF to HED, August 14, 1914.
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unique situation developed during the first weeks of the war when Dosch Fleurot and his

companions were able to move freely around Belgian and German armies. 5

On August 16, 1914, Dosch Fleurot arrived in Brussels after he had left his wife

Elsie in London. He was in the company of three other American journalists, whom he

had met on board of the liner St. Paul. Among the group, the most famous and best-paid

reporter was humorist Irvin S. Cobb of the Saturday Evening Post. The reporter and

cartoonist John McCutcheon, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, was also well-known

in the United States. Will Irwin represented the Collier’s magazine, and American

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readers remembered his reports from the San Francisco earthquake in 1907. A freelance

writer for magazines from New York, Arno Dosch Fleurot was the less renowned. Irwin
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described him as “dark-haired, blue-eyed, full of the sparkle of youth and adventure.” 6

Nobody in the group had ever been in Belgium before. Only McCutcheon had experience
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in war reporting during the Spanish American War. Both Irwin and Dosch Fleurot could

speak (limited) French, and the latter also had meager German skills. 7
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5
The Belgian experience of American journalists is well described in firsthand
and secondhand accounts. For the firsthand accounts see Irwin, “Detained by the
Germans,” 5-6, 23-27; Irwin, “Wreckage of War,” 49,70-78; Irwin, The Making of a
Reporter; McCutcheon, “McCutcheon Describes First Day with Germans,” 5;
McCutcheon, Drawn from Memory; Cobb, Paths of Glory, Bennett, “Stories of German
Atrocities Have no Foundation in Fact,” 30. For the secondhand accounts see Crozier,
American Reporters on the Western Front; Klekowoski and Klekowski, Americans in
Occupied Belgium; Lawson, Irvin S. Cobb; Dubbs, American Journalists in the Great
War.
6
Irwin, The Making of a Reporter, 209.
7
The first two weeks in Belgium Dosch Fleurot describes in “Louvain the Lost,”
Worlds Work, October, 1914, A-G; “The “System” of the German Army,” Worlds Work,
November 1914, 61-65; Through War to Revolution, 1-33.
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In Brussels, Dosch Fleurot and three other journalists tried to obtain permission to

go out of the city toward the advancing German army, but they were rejected. This did

not stop the reporters, and they decided to leave the city without official passes. On

August 19, four Americans hired a taxi cab and asked the chauffeur to go as far as

possible. The journalists had American passports and documents from Ethelbert Watts,

the Consul-General in Brussels, confirming their citizenship. The taxicab was stopped a

couple of times by civilian guards and gendarmes, who checked their documents, but

nobody prevented them from leaving. The taxicab passed from one barricade to another

and soon the correspondents were outside of the city. Soon, they started meeting Belgian

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refugees and scattering groups of retreating Belgian soldiers. Some of them looked at the
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strange company in the taxicab with surprise, but everybody was busy with their own

problems. Only two English motion picture men warned them not to go further. The
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warning frightened the taxicab driver, but not the journalists, who continued on foot. 8

The correspondents entered the city of Louvain and in a couple of hours they saw
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the first German soldiers on the streets, and soon realized that it was the invasion of the

German army. Dosch Fleurot and his colleagues tried to get lost in the crowd of

townspeople, but finally understood the necessity to report themselves to the German

officials because they could be taken for British correspondents and treated as spies. The

Germans handled the situation with understanding and humor. It seemed curious that four

American correspondents came “to the war in a taxicab”, but the German officers

believed them. The American journalists were asked politely, but at the same time

8
Dosch Fleurot, Through War to Revolution, 2-7; Cobb, 31-39; McCutcheon,
Drawn from Memory, 267-268.
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unconditionally, to stay in Louvain until the German army had marched through the

town. However, the journalists were never real prisoners in the city. They stayed in a

hotel, ate in restaurants, bought food in the store, and visited the barber. The Germans’

march lasted for three days, and on August 22, the reporters were free to go. They

returned back to the Belgian capital, which was already occupied by the Germans. 9

In Brussels, Dosch Fleurot, Cobb, Irwin, and McCutcheon decided to team up

with three other Americans – Harry Hansen of the Chicago Daily News, James

O’Donnell Bennett, correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, and Roger Lewis of the

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Associated Press. These eight American reporters determined to follow the German

offensive despite the fact that they had official permits to stay only in Brussels and its
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vicinity. On August 23, they hired a horse carriage and moved south toward Waterloo,

where they believed the next big battle would take place. At the end of the day, Irwin,
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who had a fever and sore throat, went back to Brussels. Dosch Fleurot stayed with the

group for one more day after the correspondents caught up with the rear columns of the
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German army but then turned back to Brussels too. He had to write down his

observations and send an article before the deadline. The rest of the group continued with

the German army until the German command finally decided to arrest bothersome

Americans for three weeks.10

9
Dosch Fleurot, Through War to Revolution, 8-18; Cobb, 47-51, 90-105;
McCutcheon, Drawn from Memory, 269-270.
10
Dosch Fleurot, Through War to Revolution, 19-25; Cobb, 56-81, 90-105;
McCutcheon, Drawn from Memory, 271-274; New York Tribune, September 4, 1914,1, 4;
Lawson, 117-121.
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When Dosch Fleurot reached Brussels, he met with Irwin and Richard Harding

Davis, a journalist celebrity from the New York Tribune. Just recently, the Germans had

issued a deportation order for Davis. He had raised suspicion by coming too close to the

German army. Dosch Fleurot and Irwin decided to join Davis as well as two other

American journalists Mary O’Reilly and Glen Morgan. On August 27, they were put on

an empty troop train that carried them to Aix-la-Chapelle, a German city on the Belgian

border. The train passed through Louvain, and the journalists were able to observe the

last stage of the city’s destruction, which the German army had started after Dosch

Fleurot and his colleagues had left the city a week prior. From Aix-la-Chapelle, they all

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safely traveled to London through neutral Netherlands, except for Mary O’Reilly, who
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turned back to Louvain for a sensational story about the destiny of Belgian civilians. 11

Returning to London, Dosch Fleurot decided to test his neutral status once more.
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On September 5, 1914, Dosch Fleurot and his wife left London, bought tickets for the

Southampton-Le Havre boat, and the next day they were in Paris. Everybody was sure the
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city would fall. Until September 10, no news from the front was available, and a couple

stayed in the French capital. When news about the Allied victory arrived, Dosch Fleurot

and his wife dared to penetrate the war zone. Their destination was a château on the river

Aisne that belonged to Elsie’s aunt. The couple had only their American passports and

permits to stay in Paris. On bikes, they went through different French cordons and finally,

left the city. Nobody stopped them. They finally reached the château that stood very close

11
Dosch Fleurot, Through War to Revolution, 25-33; Irwin, The Making of a
Reporter, 228-239; South Bend News Times, September 17, 1914, 9; Dubbs, 39.