THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves The Last Column NO PART of wartime America has taken a more relentless or more needless pounding than what is known as the country's morale. Somehow the multitudinous arms of...
...Marshall, "inspired'-' by President Roosevelt, it now develops, told the boys they could say that one of the "highest officials" had revealed that labor-management disturbances had prolonged the war and made necessary the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of additional American lives...
...The Washington Bureau of the Sun reminded readers when the Marshall prophecy broke in the press, that "one of Marshall's spokesmen" met with newspaper men on June 26, 1941, and, on the basis of the best intelligence available, predicted "complete defeat of Russia by the German Army within three months...
...Marshall Wrong Before It so happens that both the British and American listening stations could report that labor-management issues in America had received negligible attention on Axis radios...
...That prediction," the Sun said, "unquestionably had Marshall's approval...
...M.H.R...
...The elementary fact that a mature, democratic people will respond to the truth appears not to have entered the high-powered minds of our master moulders of public opinion...
...The result has been an unfortunate confusion in the public opinion and a profound cynicism over the veracity of the news...
...So Marshall, a great soldier, a great Chief of Staff, and, in most respects, a great American, made a fantastic mistake in a purely military field when he relied on reports from inside Europe...
...Then comes a battery of undertakers to take us by the hand and lead us from the bright sunshine of headline victories to the gloom of a black-curtained chamber where a masked spokesman croaks out the terrifying intelligence that a half-million American boys are doomed to die in 90 days...
...Gloom, but a painfully accurate description of how otherwise responsible public officials have made a faucet of our morale, turning it off or on, right or left, hot or cold as it suited their plans of the moment...
...Sunshine and Dr...
...Now, so far as anyone can discover, the Chief of Staff offered not a line of corroboration for this astonishing statement...
...The General called in an extremely select group of Washington columnists and commentators (so select that the representatives of three of the most passionate Administration papers were not invited...
...It isn't often that we are indebted to Marshall Field's Chicago Sun, but in this case it provided the best answer to the apologists...
...Is it too far-fetched to suspect that his sources may again have led him to make an equally wild miscalculation in a field in which he is far less experienced and gifted...
...At New Year's time, the nation received another blow from a masked spokesman...
...While the nation is still trembling, another masked undertaker, who also likes to deal in big, round, un-verifiable figures, calls us together again and, in a hail of profanity, spits out the news that the war may have been prolonged by months and hundreds of thousands of additional lives sacrificed because of a threatened railroad strike...
...As soon as the evidence became clear that Axis radios had not featured the U. S. labor difficulties as a morale-builder, apologists for Marshall's statement rushed into print with the implication that the Chief of Staff, of course, had superior facilities for gathering information which he was not at liberty to mention...
...are getting complacent...
...Quite apart from the unhappy effect they have on public morale, the masked spokesmen represent a new and dangerous trend in the public relations of a democracy...
...For weeks the War and Navy Departments will release communiques which gloss over our reverses, our casualties, and our problems, and enable a circulation-hungry press to plant the dangerous illusion that the war is almost over...
...Somehow the multitudinous arms of government dealing with our hopes and fears have worked on the theory that morale was like a faucet, to be turned off or on, hot or cold, at will...
...A Dangerous Trend Now, this is no allegory about Dr...
...Thus, at Christmas time, Economic Stabilizer James F. Byrnes called the press boys in, wined and dined them, and then told them to announce in their papers and over the radio that hundreds of thousands (some reporters thought three, some four, and some five hundred thousand) would make the supreme sacrifice within 90 days...
...Under this new technique, the public official calls in a select group of news and radio reporters, friendly ones, of course, and proceeds to unload some terrifying prophecy, judgment, or interpretation, while disclaiming responsibility by ordering the newspaper men not to divulge the identity of the "high official...
...This one turned out to be Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, who by almost unanimous consent is one of the great soldiers of all American history...
...This goes on until some master pulse-taker for the Administration concludes that the people (the people, mind you...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 3
