Returning from China early in World War I via Europe, he covered a revolution in Mexico, learned to fly in 1915, and helped build the first dam in Samoa.

[1] The following year he and Leigh Wade, who had been the pilot of the Boston during the First World Flight, made the first non-stop automobile trip between Los Angeles and New York (167 hours and 50 minutes).

He married Fay Gillis on April 1, 1935, and, a few months later, they spent their honeymoon covering the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) for the Herald Tribune.

[2][3] After returning to the States to cover Hollywood for the Herald Tribune, he and his wife pioneered overseas radio broadcasts from Latin America in 1938 for The Magic Key of RCA.

[4] In 1939, at the suggestion of President Roosevelt, and in support of a secret British request, he and Fay investigated potential locations in Africa for a Jewish homeland.