Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Elmer Roberts Papers, #2243, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Mrs. E. M. L'Engle, 1940.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1a.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kate Stratton and Jodi Berkowitz, June 2010

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

Diacritics and other special characters have been omitted from this finding aid to facilitate keyword searching in web browsers.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Associated Press--History.
• Europe--Politics and government--20th century.
• France--Politics and government--1914-1940.
• Germany--Politics and government--1888-1918.
• Holstein, Friedrich von, 1837-1909.
• Journalists--Cuba--History--19th century.
• Journalists--Europe--History--20th century.
• News agencies--United States--History--20th century.
• Roberts, Elmer, 1863-1937.
• Rosicrucians.
• Spanish-American War, 1898--Journalists.
• Steiner, Rudolf, 1861-1925.
• World War, 1914-1918--Journalists.

Elmer Roberts (1863-1937) was an Associated Press correspondent in Berlin, Germany, circa 1900-1914, and chief of the Associated Press office in Paris, France, 1914-1927.

The collection includes correspondence, memoranda, scrapbooks, political commentaries, and other papers, relating to Elmer Roberts's work for the Associated Press in Berlin, Germany, and Paris, France, and including extensive material on European political affairs before, during, and after World War I. Papers, 1914-1918, include correspondence, telegrams, extensive memoranda on various aspects of the situation in Europe and on American-French relations, and numerous instructions from Associate Press headquarters in New York reflecting problems of censorship, competition with the United Press and International News Services, and reporting techniques. Two informational communications, 19 September and 1 October 1917, from D. Nasson, apparently a member of the Lafayette Escadrille, are also included. Papers, 1918-1919, include memoranda on Germany's advance into Eastern Europe, Japan's occupation of part of Siberia, conditions in France following the war, press problems after the war, reactions of European Allies against President Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points and the United States in general, and a mimeographed confidential report on Neuse-Argonne by Captain Arthur E. Hartzell. Also included are correspondence with reporters in Cuba in the 1890s and a scrapbook of clippings about the Spanish-American War; a scrapbook about Germany, 1903-1904; correspondence, drafts, and source materials for Roberts's biography of Friedrich von Holstein; copies of lectures of Rudolf Steiner and other materials about Rosicrucianism; and other items. Undated items include political essays on such topics as "Georges Clemenceau at Eighty-five," conditions before World War I, reasons for the United States entering the war, growth of the German Navy, political morality, the Kaiser in exile in Doorn, Holland, and articles regulating press correspondents with the army. There are also photographs of political, diplomatic, and military personnel; the Associate Press newsroom; World War I trenches; and portraits of various persons including Elmer Roberts, his wife Claire Livingston Roberts, and opera singer Florence Easton.