George Ward Price


George Ward Price was a journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail newspaper.

Early life and career

Price was born to the Reverend H. Ward Price around 1886 and attended St. Catherine's College, Cambridge.

Journalism

After having some articles published by The Captain magazine, Price wrote to the Daily Mail asking to have a proposed walk across Europe financed. The proposed articles were turned down but Price was taken on as a reporter, 'paid by results'. After a year this arrangement resulted in him being given a five-year contract.
Colonel Sherbrooke-Walker recalled Price in this period when he came to report on a scout camp at Wisley:

Foreign correspondent

In 1910 he reported from Turkey and the First Balkan War. Following this, Price became the Daily Mail's Paris Correspondent at the age of 26. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand saw Price dispatched to Vienna to report on the funeral.

First World War

The outbreak of the First World War saw Price return to Turkey to cover the Gallipoli campaign on behalf of the Newspaper Proprietors Association members.
Following the evacuation he wrote:
After covering the evacuation which ended the campaign he moved to the Salonika front. Feeling things had quietened there he redeployed to the Italian Front and witnessed the retreat from Caporetto.
He turned down a CBE for his wartime reporting, preferring to wait until combatants had been honoured.

Inter-War years

In 1919 Price attended the meetings in Paris that paved the way for the Treaty of Versailles. It was here he interviewed Marshal Foch for what became a four column piece. He attended further conferences in Cannes, Genoa and Lausanne before following the French Foreign Legion in Morocco in 1933.
A 1928 advertisement for a share offering in Northcliffe Newspapers Limited lists Price as a Company Director. He is also listed as Director of the Associated Newspapers Ltd arm of the company.

European dictators and appeasement

The 1930s saw Price carry out several interviews with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. During Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria, Price accompanied Hitler's party as they entered Vienna. Of his interviews with Hitler, journalist John Simpson noted:
In newsreel footage of the scenes in Vienna, Price can be seen near Hitler on the balcony of the Hofburg Palace.
With the Munich Crisis, he covered the visit of Neville Chamberlain to Berchtesgarden and witnessed the entry of German troops in the Sudetenland.
Reporting on the concentration camps Price wrote:

Second World War

Price returned to his work as a war correspondent at the start of the Second World War, working for three months at Arras. However, with the conditions of the time there was little to report, so Price toured through south-east Europe. He visited Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia and Italy.
He did not return to the war until 1942, when he covered the fighting in North Africa.

Post-war period

Believing it may be the beginning of a Third World War, Price travelled to the Korean War in 1950 after learning of the outbreak while in Canada.
Price died on 22 August 1961 at the age of 75.

Images

George Ward Price and Henry Nevinson at Gallipoli –
George Ward Price in Germany, 1938 –