ejournalist

te lezen, moge het dan waar zijn, dat
de laatste dikwijls een afspiegeling is
van de levende gedachten. Ik mag
deze Engelsche kranten niet. Ze zijn
me te sensationeel, te oppervlakkig,
te zeer toegespitst op onbelangrijke
gebeurtenissen. Zoo heb ik me stierlijk
verveeld met een verhaal over de
koningin van Engeland, die haar been
bezeerd had. Het werd de lezers in
een twee en een halve kolom lang
artikel in geuren en kleuren voorgezet
en het gebeurde met een kennis van
bijzonderheden, die me verwonderd
deed afvragen of deze collega's soms
dag en nacht aan haar tafel en haar
bed zaten. Een anderen keer las ik
het curieuze verhaal van een sprekende
hond. Het was misschien minder
verbazingwekkend dan de reporters
het hun publiek schilderden, want
de hond scheen het niet verder te ;
kunnen brengen dan het nogal simpele
„I want one". Het waren heus
niet alleen de conservatieve kranten,
die zich aan dezen onzin bezondigden,
ook Labour deed braaf mee.
De Waarheid — 2 September.
Alleen op Malakka bestaat
een onafhankelijke pers
Uit een onderzoek van Ass. Press
naar de omstandigheden, waaronder
de pers in Zuid-Oost-Azië werkt, is
gebleken, dat, ofschoon de oorlog is
geëindigd, in Siam en Indo-China
geen persvrijheid bestaat. Alleen te
Singapore en in de Maleische Unie
bestaat een onafhankelijke en objectieve
pers.
De situatie in de verschillende landen
van Oost-Azië, elk op zichzelf beschouwd,
is als volgt:
In de Maleische Unie, die historisch
een van de groote centra der journalistiek
in het Verre Oosten is, keerde
de volledige persvrijheid met de Britsche
bezetting terug. De bladen brengen
aan een publiek, dat weet te lezen,
een ruime selectie van wereldnieuws.
Bijna elke officieele maatregel wordt
op zijn waarde onderzocht en, indien
niet juist bevonden, vrijmoedig becritiseerd.
Het Britsche Ministerie van
Koloniën moet het daarbij dikwijls
ontgelden. Aan ingezonden stukken
wordt groote aandacht geschonken.
Het algemeene resultaat van een en
ander is geweest, dat het redactioneele
gedeelte der bladen een ongeëvenaard
prestige geniet en groote invloed heeft
zoowel op de openbare meening als
op de maatregelen der autoriteiten.
In Siam werd na den geheimzinnigen
dood van koning Ananda
Mahidol een volledige perscensuur ingevoerd,
omdat — zooals de officieele
toelichting luidde: de kranten lasterlijke
artikelen publiceerden, waardoor
de regeering in verband werd gebracht
met den dood van den koning. Volgens
den tekst van het censuurbesluit
zou de censuur beperkt zijn tot de
berichten en artikelen over den dood
van den koning en over het grensgeschil
tusschen Siam en Indo-China,
maar toen de datum voor de tusschentijdsche
verkiezingen (6 Augustus)
(Slot onderaan pag. 15)
12
AND THE SUF
I am always curious about the state
of our nation, so when I learned from
an advertisement in a morning newspaper
some weeks ago, that Mr. Ward
Morehouse, dramatic critic of the Sun
(an evening newspaper), was going to
make a cross-country motor trip and
describe it in a series of articles to be
called, simply but inclusively, "Report
on America," I determined to follow
his peregrinations with fidelity. My
plan, I foresaw, would entail giving
some attention, even if involuntary, to
other ingredients of the Sun, and I
looked forward to this with sentimental
disquiet. All my recollections of the
Sun are associated with my maternal
grandfather, whose favorite evening
paper it was. I have seldom had
occasion to look at it since his death,
twenty years ago. I feared, in renewing
the acquaintance, the sort of shock
experienced by the city man who
returns to the site of his boyhood
toboggan slide and finds it occupied
by part of a Robert Moses Autobahn.
As soon as I bought a copy of the
Sun containing the first installment
of Mr. Morehouse's Report, I could see
that I need have had no apprehension.
Nothing essential had changed since
1926. It seemed as perfectly preserved
as the corpse of Lenin, a first impression
I subsequently confirmed by examining
a couple of July, 1926, examples
in the Newspaper Division of the Public
Library. Morehouse, who has been
on the staff of the Sun since 1926 and
is well preserved himself, contributed
to my reversed time-machine illusion
by beginning his Report with a dispatch
datelined June 3rd — no year specified
— from Baltimore, entirely devoted to
an interview with H. L. Mencken.
Mencken, who is sixty-five, complained
that softshell crabs, for wfnch his
mother had paid twenty-five cents a
dozen, were retailing for twenty-five
cents apiece. This he cited as a sign
of the decay of the times, adding, as
another, that he never saw any beautiful
women any more, an observation
that may have had a subjective basis.
* *
*
Mencken's income as a writer — seven
dollars a week in 1899 — has, Morehouse
failed to note, risen rather more
than twelve times. The philosopher's
value has therefore been inflated,
rather than diminished (as he seems,
v/ithout statistical basis, to believe), in
terms of softshell crabs. The Sun is a
Republican paper, and this summer,
as in 1926, the Republicans are thinking
about Presidential candidates two
years in advance. Mencken told Mr.
Morehouse that Senator Vandenberg
was the best man the Party had but
that the nomination would probably
Stassen." (I noticed in the course of
my Public Library research that
go to "some fraud like Bricker or
twenty years ago George Van Slyke,
who is still one of the Sun's political
experts, was telling his concerned
public that President Coolidge would
not run again. The choice for the
nomination lay between Longworth,
Lowden, Dawes, Hoover, and Watson
— news which, viewed in retrospect,
renewed my faith in the designers of
the Constitution. Had they provided
for a plural Presidency, 1928—1932
might have been five times as bad.)
"People are in a state of imbecility,"
the Baltimore bonze told Morehouse in
valediction. "The country is a wreck.
Don't ask me the remedy."
Morehouse,, having establised suspense
by this beginning ("Will he find
the remedy?" I asked myself. "Will he
save us?"), pressed on to Washington.
There, under the dateline of June 5th,
he interviewed, by coincidence, Senator
Vandenberg. He described Vandenberg
as the "bland and incisive ... tall, articulate
... suave, vital, cigar-smoking,
Grand Rapids-born Senator, who, in
the opinion of many observers here, is
the outstanding man in the Reublican
Party." The most cheerful words
America's Reporter could wring from
the incisive and articulate statesman
were: "President Truman is a dear
personal friend of mine. He has my
very great sympathy in the tragic
responsibilities which he bears." So,
Morehouse, leaving behind him what
he called he "Potomac city of the
incommunicable beauty," pushed 'on
South, the remedy still undiscovered.
Vandenberg, who is sixty-two, is a
callow interviewee by Morehouse standards,
but the Sun man built up his
average at Raleigh, North Carolina, by
seeking counsel of Josephus Daniels, a
very elder statesman of eighty-four.
Mr. Daniels said, "I've seen the days
when capital said, 'The people be damned,'
but I never expected to see labor
say the same thing."
Banging along indomitably in his
car, "the doughty little coupe, WM125,"
which he has implacably personalized
throughout his journey, Morehouse
Reported two days later, "It's wet, as
wet as only north Georgia can be
during a cloudburst." (How wet was
that? I wasn't sure.) But he kept right
on going, apparently hitting his typewriter
as the dougthy coupe ran itself.
"I've slowed down to a crawl," he
reported. "Something's in the road
ahead — Yes, a mule cart driven by
a colored man." ("Stop typing. Ward!"
I caught myself crying. "Grab that
wheel! Don't hit that colored man!")
STOOD STILL
Apparently he didn't hit tne colored
man, for a few days later he was
calmly filing from Laurel, Mississippi.
"Some day I shall write a book about
going across America with two typewriters,
three extra tires, a camera, a
shotgun, half a case of shells, and a
case of neuritis," he said in beginning
his Laurel dispatch, and one found
oneself suspecting that perhaps he was
already doing so. "Mississippi — here's
a State with all the languor of the
deep, deep South ... Soothing on the
ear are the sounds of the South —the
Sunday morning tolling of churchbells
in an Alabama hamlet and the low,
faraway whistle of a locomotive in the
middle of the night." Up here in New
York, we-all Yankees put whistles on
the churches and automatic electric
guitars on the locomotives.
On June 25th, still in quest of the
remedy for the nation's ills, Morehouse
arrived in Tishomingo, Oklahoma.
There he sought the wisdom of former
Governor Alfalfa Bill Murray, seventysix.
This brought the average years of
his major political consulants to seventy-two.
"If you want me to tell you
about the country right now, I can
only tell you it's crazy," Mr. Murray
said. "I'm telling you that the groundwork
for a panic is already laid; it
will reach its zenith in about 1953. The
Republicans will have a chance in
1948, a good chance, and they probably
will be blamed, but Roosevelt really
started it." Turning to foreign affairs,
he said, "You can't harmonize a pagan
mind with a Christian mind, an Asiatic
mind with a Caucasian mind. When
a person talks of stopping war, he's
going against all the lessons of history."
Evidently the Murray interview
was discouraging, for Morehouse
quickly got away from politics and has
since confined his Report to observations
of a more superficial nature.
Soda clerks and filling-station attendants
are civil or uncivil or tolerably
civil, he has reported, and traffic on
the road is sometimes heavy and sometimes
light, depending. Hotel rooms are
hard to find, many veterans are back
in civilian life, and the legitimate
theatre outside New York is not what
it was when it was in a more flourishing
condition than it is now. Morehouse
arrived on the Pacific Coast
eariy in Juli, tying the transcontinental
record for oxcarts with gentlemen
outriders, and not long afterward
interviewed Jim Jeffries, seventy-one,
on the state of the prize ring. Mr. Jeffries
took a dim view of it. He lost his
most recent fight to the late Jack
Johnson, in 1910.
Mr. Morehouse chronicled an interlude
of gaiety under the dateline of
July 10th, from Beverly Hills, Reporting
that he had on that day seen Howard
Benedict, Howard Reinheimer, Howard
Clothes, Natalie Schafer, Hicks Coney,
Tom Cobley, Sammy Colt, Colt 45,
Grace George, Radie Harris, Tommy
Guinan, Lana Turner, Jimmy Stewart,
Beulah Bondi, Lucille Hille, Arthur de
Liagre II, Vinton Freedley, Bob Taplinger,
Alvin de Liagre III, Ray Massey,
Marjorie Rambeau, Reginald
Denham, Mary Orr, Peter Dayey, José
Iturbi, Hugh G. Flood, Alexander de
Liagre IV, Man Ray, Arch Selwyn,
Selig Archwyn, Mary Anderson, Ethel
Barrymore, Billy Selwyn, Belwyn, Jessie
Royce Landis, Battling Norfolk,
Louis Hayward, Joseph Gotten, Monty
Woolley, Jimmy Gleason, Humphrey
Bogart, Jack Goodman, Arigelo Rizzo,
H. B. Warner, H. B. Twentieth Century,
I. J. Pox, Charles Towbridge,
Armand de Liagre, Alaric de Liagre,
Hume Cronyn, Pat O'Brien, Walter
Slezak, Lionel Barrymore, Ray Arcel,
George Brown, Eddie Bitzell, James A
Mac-Donald, the Original Dixie Kid,
Frank Morgan, Leon Ames, Bob Montgomery,
Oscar Karlweis, Isobel Elsom.
Ollie Thomas, Delmore Schwartz, Corporal
Izzy Schwartz, Cyril Connolly,
One-Eyed Connolly, Jr., Jimmy Cagney,
Angus de Liagre, William Harrigan,
Jackie Kid Berg, Van Heflin, Barbara
Stanwyck, Katherine Emery, Burgess
Meredith, Peggy Wood, Edmund
Gwenn, Will Rogers, Jr., William S.
Hart, Jr., and Alfred de Liagre, Jr.
As I write, Mr. Morehouse has arrived
in the State of Washington, where
he may either jump in the Pacific
Ocean (since there is so little hope for
us) or decide to come home in time
for next season's first nights.
While pursuing Mr. Morehouse, I
have been, as I had anticipated,
bemused by other of the Sun's archaic
charms, which, like the taste of
Proust's madeleine steeped in tea
brought back the sensations of an earlier,
happier time. I have discovered,
for example, with a curious atavistic
excitement, that H. I. Phillips, the
Sun's artisan of light verse, still conducts
the column called "The Sun
Dial." Mr. Phillips, in the summer of
1926, wrote like this:
Here lies Mary Jane McNeil,
Shot down by Henry Wumps
For asking after ev'ry deal —
„Now lemme see — what's trumps?"
I am happy to report that he has
lost none of his skill, and that he has
adapted his themes to the times. One
of his recent poems, slyly entitled
"Readjustment," goes like this:
Hunter College bids farewell
To the U.N.'s cosmic spell.
Now the Bronx from fog is cleared —
Double talk has disappeared.
And another, entitled "Epitaph
Any Statesman," like this:
Here lies "X"
Flat on his musha;
He tried to get
Accord with Russia!
for
This one could as well have run in
the Sun on the July day in 1926 it
carried the headlines:
100 M.P.'S MEET
IN ANTI-SOVIET
MOVE IN LONDON
Moscow Sending Airplanes
to Afghans
You all remember the destruction of
London by the Afghan Air Force, or
Afghawaffe.
m s
Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Trolley
still clangs throught the Sun comics,
as it did two decades ago. What I took
at first glance to be a new comic
strip called "George Sokolsky" (I was
perhaps misled by the illustration)
turned out instead to be an anti-labor
column written by a man named
George Sokolsky, who once broadcast
for the National Association of Manufacturers
and made speeches for the
American Iron and Steel Institute. Dr.
Sokolsky (he received an honorary
degree from Notre Dame recently) uses
In het voortreffelijke Amerikaansche weekblad „The New Yorker"
troffen wij dit artikel aan. Wij hebben het met zooveel plezier gelezen,
dat wij onzen collega's hetzelfde genoegen willen bereiden door het
onverkort over te nemen. Dit is nu een typisch voorbeeld van (eerste
klas) Amerikaansche journalistiek: een zéér ironisch, zéér knap-geschreven
en.bovendien zéér gedetailleerd stuk werk, waarin de befaamde reporter
van „The New Yorker", A. J. Liebling, op even fijnzinnige als scherpe
W %£ e i en £ t % tk steekt met het wa * ouderwetsche New Yorksche avondblad
„ihe Sun . Geen détail wordt verwaarloosd. Tallooze feiten moesten worden
verzameld om dit artikel zoo gedocumenteerd te maken als het is en
bovendien: men moet de pen fijn kunnen hanteeren om — zonder grof te
worden en zonder pijn te doen — zulk een doodelijk steekspel ten beste
te kunnen geven. Lieblings aanval heeft een repliek van de zijde van
„The Sun" tengevolge gehad. En daarna nog een wederwoord. Misschien
nemen wij die in den volgenden „Journalist" op. Leest Lieblings liefelijk
artikel en geniet!
13