Henry Wickham Steed
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Henry Wickham Steed (10 October 1871 – 13 January 1956) was an English journalist and historian. He was editor of '' The Times'' from 1919 to 1922.


Early life

Born in Long Melford, England, Steed was educated at
Sudbury Grammar School Sudbury Grammar School was a boys' grammar school in Sudbury, Suffolk. The school was founded in 1491. In 1972, the school was amalgamated with other local schools to form Sudbury Upper School. History The school was founded in 1491 by a beque ...
and the universities of Jena, Berlin and Paris. While in Europe, he demonstrated an early interest in social democracy and met with a range of left-wing figures, including Friedrich Engels, Wilhelm Liebknecht,
August Bebel Ferdinand August Bebel (22 February 1840 – 13 August 1913) was a German socialist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP) in 1869, which in 1875 mer ...
, and Alexandre Millerand. His encounters formed the basis of his first book, ''The Socialist and Labour Movement in England, Germany & France'' (1894).


Foreign correspondent

Appointed by Joseph Pulitzer as Paris correspondent for the
New York ''World'' New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...
, Steed joined '' The Times'' in 1896 as a
foreign correspondent A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or commentator for a magazine, or an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, locati ...
, working briefly out of Berlin before transferring successively to Rome (1897-1902) and then Vienna (1902-1913). In 1914, he moved to London to take over as foreign editor of ''The Times''. During his time in Vienna he acquired a deep contempt for Austria-Hungary.Margaret Macmillan, ''Paris 1919'', p. 114f. An
anti-Semite Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...
and a
Germanophobe Anti-German sentiment (also known as Anti-Germanism, Germanophobia or Teutophobia) is opposition to or fear of Germany, its inhabitants, its culture, or its language. Its opposite is Germanophilia. Anti-German sentiment largely began w ...
, in an editorial published in '' The Times'' on 31 July 1914, Steed labelled efforts to stop the impending war as "a dirty German-Jewish international financial attempt to bully us into advocating neutrality". From 22 July 1914, Steed, in close agreement with ''The Times proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, took a very bellicose line, and in editorials written on 29 and 31 July, Steed urged that the British Empire should enter the coming war. Seen as a leading expert on Eastern Europe, Steed's views had much influence with decision-makers such as high-level bureaucrats and Cabinet politicians in the First World War and its aftermath. During the war, Steed befriended anti-
Habsburg The House of Habsburg (), alternatively spelled Hapsburg in Englishgerman: Haus Habsburg, ; es, Casa de Habsburgo; hu, Habsburg család, it, Casa di Asburgo, nl, Huis van Habsburg, pl, dom Habsburgów, pt, Casa de Habsburgo, la, Domus Hab ...
émigrés such as Edvard Beneš, Ante Trumbić, Tomáš Masaryk and Roman Dmowski and advised the British government to seek the liquidation of Austria-Hungary as a war aim. In particular, Steed was a very strong advocate of uniting all of the South Slavic peoples, such as the Croats, the Serbs and the Slovenes, into a federation, to be called Yugoslavia. The
British Ambassador to Italy The Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Italy is the United Kingdom's foremost diplomatic representative in the Italian Republic, and head of the UK's diplomatic mission in Italy. The official title is ''His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to the ...
claimed in a diplomatic dispatch that Steed's fondness for the Yugoslav concept derived from a relationship that he maintained for a number of years "filially I believe rather maritally" with a Slavic woman from the Balkans. In October 1918, Steed met with Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić to gain his support for the Yugoslav concept but was deeply angered when he learned that Pašić saw the new state as merely as extension of Greater Serbia and had no intention of sharing power with the Croats or the Slovenes. Steed charged Pašić with being a new "sultan" and severed his friendship with him.


Editor of ''The Times''

When the editor of ''The Times'', Geoffrey Dawson, resigned from his post in February 1919, Steed was Northcliffe's first choice to succeed him. Steed had worked closely with Northcliffe during the war, becoming an adviser to him on foreign affairs. Steed was forced to contend with Northcliffe throughout most of his tenure as editor, as the press baron retained considerable control over the affairs of the newspaper. After the war, Steed strongly disapproved of the Bolshevik regime in Russia. In an editorial written in another Northcliffe paper, the ''
Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
'' on 28 March 1919, Steed accused the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, whom Steed detested, of betraying the White Russians because of a plot by "international Jewish financiers" and the Germans to help the Bolsheviks stay in power. In 1920, Steed endorsed as genuine a notorious anti-Semitic forgery, '' The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion'', writing in an editorial in ''The Times'' in which he blamed the Jews for World War I and the Bolshevik regime and called them the greatest threat to the British Empire. However, he retracted his view on the ''Protocols'' in 1921, when his paper's Constantinople correspondent proved them to be a forgery. Steed was Northcliffe's personal choice for the editorship, but by 1922, the press baron was increasingly frustrated by Steed's failure to return ''The Times'' to profitability. After Northcliffe's death in August 1922, the new owners, John Jacob Astor and John Walter, dismissed Steed on 24 October and brought back Dawson as editor.


Final years

In 1923, Steed became editor of '' Review of Reviews'' (1923–30), the journal established by William Thomas Stead in 1890. In the early 1930s, he was one of the first English speakers to express alarm about the new German dictatorial chancellor, Adolf Hitler. In 1934, he caused sensation with an article claiming to have evidence of secret German experiments in airborne biological warfare. The British government was sufficiently alarmed to start stockpiling vaccines although a retrospective analysis by the epidemiologist Martin Hugh-Jones has suggested that Steed's evidence could not have amounted to much.Martin Hugh-Jones, 'Wickham Steed and German biological warfare research', ''Intelligence and National Security'' 7 (1992), 379–402. On the title page of his 1934 work, ''Hitler Whence and Whither?'', Steed is described as a lecturer in Central European History at
King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...
. He died in
Wootton, West Oxfordshire Wootton is a village and civil parish on the River Glyme about north of Woodstock, Oxfordshire. In recent years the village is sometimes referred to as Wootton-by-Woodstock to distinguish it from Wootton, Vale of White Horse, which was in Berks ...
.


In popular culture

Steed, played by actor Andrew Keir, appears in the 1974 miniseries '' Fall of Eagles'', bringing a rumour of the impending Bosnian crisis to the attention of King Edward VII, Georges Clemenceau, and Alexander Izvolsky.


Works

* ''The Habsburg Monarchy'' (1913) * ''A Short History of Austria-Hungary and Poland'' (1914) * ''Through Thirty Years, 1892-1922: A personal narrative'' (1924) * ''Journalism'' (1928) * ''The Real Stanley Baldwin'' (1930) * ''The Antecedents of Post-war Europe'' (1932) * ''A Way to Social Peace'' (1934) * ''Hitler Whence and Whither?'' (1934) * ''The Meaning of Hitlerism'' (1934) * ''Vital Peace: A study of risks'' (1936) * ''The Doom of the Habsburgs'' (1937) * ''The Press'' (1938) * ''Our War Aims'' (1939)


See also

* Robert William Seton-Watson


References

Notes Bibliography * Ferguson, Niall ''The Pity of War'', London: Basic Books, 1999. * Macmillan, Margaret ''Paris 1919'' New York: Random House, 2002.


External links

*
''The Habsburg Monarchy'' (1913)
eLibrary Austria Project (eLib Projekt) full text
''A Short History of Austria-Hungary and Poland'' (1914)
Historical Text Archive full text
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Steed, Wickham 1871 births 1956 deaths Academics of King's College London Antisemitism in the United Kingdom English male journalists 20th-century English historians People educated at Sudbury Grammar School People from Long Melford The Times people