THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves ... The Last Column THAT MAN FROM MARS would have had himself a baffling session with the daily press if he had turned up for one of his occasional visits last week. In...
...Quote Of The Week W. D. Herridge, whose challenging little book, Which Kind Of Revolution?, will be reviewed soon in The Progressive, has a devastating description of the lounging liberals at home who confine themselves to shaking their fist at the enemy...
...Dilemma Of The Week Wisconsin Democrats are not certain whether they want to be educated or entertained at their state convention...
...When I hear men upon the home front valorously defying the enemy in fierce, fighting words, I know where to look for faint hearts—for you will find that, in time of crisis, timidity has a fashion of exploding into volubility...
...Any flight from reality is reactionary," he writes...
...Conversion Of The Week I had occasion to mention last week that Samuel Grafton, the syndicated columnist, was beginning to see the danger of building hopes for the future on an international police force...
...Then two pictures show the slain heiress (all murdered girls are heiresses in the papers) and her husband...
...But of Ball, Burton, Hill, and Hatch, or of Connally, Vandenberg, Pepper, and Barkley, there were no pictures, no stories, no indication that they were alive and kicking over a resolution which the editorials said was important, urgent, and historic...
...is not a plan for feeding the hungry, or for improving the world's standards of living...
...In Chicago, for instance, papers like Marshall Field's Sun and Frank Knox's Daily News carried solemn editorials and learned columns on the "historic debate" in the Senate on foreign policy, the "public clamor" for bold, swift action pledging the United States to global collaboration, and the "surpassing importance" of the conflict between those supporting the Connally Resolution and those holding out for the B2H2 variety of post-war policing...
...Any cutting of paper dolls, when there is really work to be done, is reactionary...
...They're always being grilled in the papers...
...Day after day the boys who lay out Page One showed their contempt for the importance, urgency, and historic character of the debate by ignoring it...
...Although still an internationalist, he argues, as we have, that advocacy of the world police idea "may come to be a reactionary position...
...The other picture shows Anne Shirley and Victor Mature, Hollywood lovebirds...
...Here's one typical day: NOT GUILTY, CRIES HEIRESS' MATE ADMIT FAKE GAMBLING RECORD WOMAN'S BODY DUMPED WHILE HYMN IS SUNG HEDGING LAID TO SLEUTH IN OAKES TRIAL Yes, all these, and others, too, but not a word on Page One about the important, urgent, and historic debate...
...First there was a picture of five Chicago policemen being grilled...
...Grafton's conversion now seems complete...
...On three successive days, for instance, the supposedly high-minded Sun splashed heads like these on the front page: BROWNE TELLS OF MUSCLE MEN'S RULE N. Y. TO GET HUSBAND OF SLAIN HEIRESS POLICE KEEP ADMIRERS OUT AS GABLE TELLS OF RAIDS OAKES FINGERPRINT CLUE UNDER FIRE All these, and many more, but not a word on Page One about the important, urgent, and historic debate the editorial writers and columnists were beating their breasts about...
...it is a plan for keeping the peoples of the world from making too much of a fuss should we fail to do these things...
...But he would have searched in vain for a single word...
...M.H.R...
...We weren't able to keep as complete a check on Knox's Daily News, but there, too, the boys who write the editorials were sure the public was biting it3 fingernails worrying whether the Senate would be "bold • enough and farsighted enough" to strengthen the Connally Resolution, whereas the boys who make up Page One under the cold eyes of the circulation department were sure the public was really worrying about who threw the candlestick at the naked lady on Beekman Hill...
...Newspaper dispatches quoted Thomas R. King, party chairman, as saying the boys wanted either Vice President Henry A. Wallace or Chicago's Mayor Edward J. (Sanitary Ed) Kelly to keynote their convention next month...
...Having assured himself that the debate in the Senate was urgent, important, and historic, our man from Mars might have been pardoned if he had turned to the front pages for reports of the epoch-making struggle...
...There were four pictures on the front page of the Daily News...
...Any pill that puts the people to sleep when there is really thinking to be done, is reactionary...
...This description seems to me especially apt for war-mongering editors who seem somehow to have been too young (or something) to fight the last war and too old (or something) to fight this one...
...Often men quake as they quack...
...The world police force...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 45
