In the summer of 1919, Norman Walker journeyed to Mount Clemens, Michigan, to testify in the trial of a libel suit by Henry Ford against the Chicago Tribune. The newspaper had characterized Ford as an "anarchist" because of his opposition to U. S. intervention in the chaotic situation in México.

The articles on this page were taken from the 11 and 12 June 1919 issues of the Washington Post and New York Times, respectively.

After a 98-day trial, "the jury found with Ford against the Tribune and awarded him six cents for damages and six cents for costs. McCormick didn't pay, hoping that Ford would appeal his lack of payment. Ford did not."

TELL OF AMERICANS SLAIN BY MEXICANS

Witnesses at Ford Trial Relate Horrors on Border Prior to June, 1916.

Mount Clemens, Mich., June 10. - The story of disorders along the Mexican border, from the first rumblings of the revolt of Francisco Madero against President Porfirio Diaz, in 1909, down to June 23, 1916, continued today in the hearing of Henry Ford's libel suit against the Chicago Tribune, which on the latter date published an editorial headed "Ford is an Anarchist."

The witnesses were John R. Harold, immigration inspector at Brownsville, Tex.; E. T. Reynolds, chief inspector in that district, and Norman Walker, for twelve years an El Paso newspaperman and since 1916 correspondent of the Associated Press at El Paso, gateway of most of the news of northern Mexico.

Harold was the translator of the "Plan of San Diego," taken from the person of a captured Mexican, Bacilio Ramos, in 1915. The document bore the signature of about twelve Mexicans, and outlined a plan for an uprising of Mexicans in border States and negroes in other States, and the formation of republics.

Mr. Harold told of a railroad train which was wrecked by Mexican bandits, who invaded Texas, October 15, 1915. He said all the passengers were robbed, three killed and five or six wounded by Mexican bullets. In his official capacity, he testified, he talked to thousands of Mexicans and learned that sentiment was strongly anti-American among them. He and a deputy, he said, had a personal encounter with two Mexican editors whose paper "El Democrata", published in Matamoros across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, had published rabid anti-American articles and a vicious and unfounded attack on the immigration service.

At another time Carranzistas and Villistas battled for three weeks for the possession of Matamoros. Bullets fell in Brownsville, he testified, and citizens took measures for self-protection. Hundreds of refugees found asylum in a relief camp established at Brownsville. In 1919, the correspondent said, Francisco Villa captured Juarez and stray bullets killed or wounded eighteen persons in El Paso. This testimony was replete with incidents, among them that of the return of twenty American negro soldiers, who had been prisoners in the hands of Mexicans for a month. "They were weak and only half clothed," said the witness.

ATTORNEYS CLASH IN FORD LIBEL SUIT

Mexican Situation at Time of Villa's Raid Told by Witnesses.

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich., June 11. - Bitter repartee was exchanged today between the rival attorneys in the Ford-Chicago Tribune libel suit.

"It would be ludicrous if it were not so untrue, this talk of Ford ever doing anything to help the Government," exclaimed Mr. Stevenson of counsel for the Tribune. "I want to take exception to the entirely unwarranted assertion that Ford ever did a thing to help the Government unless he got a big profit out of it."

"He has done a million times more than your client," shot back Mr. Lucking of counsel for Ford.

"He is as thoroughly un-American as any Pro-German or Pro-Mexican," was Stevenson's retort.

Lucking protested without avail against the admission of testimony by Norman Walker, manager of the Mexican Bureau of the Associated Press, saying that the case had been allowed to get so far from the real issue that he doubted if three-fourths of the people in the court room knew a libel suit was being tried.

Testimony concerning conditions in Mexico and the relations between the United States and Mexico at the time of Villa's raid on the border occupied most of the day. The Ford attorneys are seeking to show that the Tribune called Ford an anarchist because he opposed intervention in Mexico.

Walker said he knew of no reputable correspondent or news agency which had published colored reports regarding Mexican border conditions. He had never been approached by any propagandist, German or otherwise, asking him to send out false reports. He had never heard that the Standard Oil Company or the International Harvester Company favored intervention in Mexico as alleged by the Ford attorneys.

The witness said he had met many persons, Americans and Mexicans, who thought this country should intervene in Mexico.

"Do you know the population of El Paso has been greatly increased recently?" asked Mr. Kirkland of The Tribune counsel.

"Yes. I learn that 10,000 Mexican refugees have fled to El Paso for their lives," was the reply.

Oscar G. Thompson, of Glen Springs, Texas, who lives about eight miles from the border, told of a raid by 125 Mexicans on his settlement. In the subsequent fighting three American soldiers were killed and six wounded. Thompson's four-year-old son was shot through the heart by a Mexican bullet.

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich., June 11, (Associated Press.) - In the continuance of the Ford-Chicago Tribune libel suit today Elliott G. Stevenson of Tribune counsel sought to question Norman Walker, El Paso correspondent of The Associated Press, as to reports of a new threat of fighting at Juarez, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, but the testimony was not permitted. Stevenson argued that the new developments should go into the evidence as showing that the situation in Mexico in 1916, when The Tribune called Mr. Ford an anarchist, continued even now, but Judge Tucker held that as the witness had the information only from newspapers and telegrams, it was not admissible.

Walker was the medium through which two official statements, one from President Wilson and the other from Secretary of State Lansing, were introduced.

Mr. Lucking, for Mr. Ford, read an appeal to the press by President Wilson, made in March, 1916, soon after the Columbus, N. M., raid by a Villa band in which American citizens were slain.

Mr. Kirkland of counsel for The Tribune replied to the Wilson letter by introducing a letter of Secretary of State Lansing to Carranza three months later. In this letter Mr. Lansing recited a long series of outrages against Americans and accused Carranza of protecting bandits. Mr. Lansing's letter was written in reply to one from Carranza, in which Carranza demanded that General Pershing's troops be recalled from Mexico.