Mania

Going on the principle that he is a shrewd fellow who gets away with what he can while he can-- but making a noise like a loose-tongued woman who is losing her reputation and tries to regain it at the expense of her neighbor's-- the Denver Posts, morning and evening phenomena published by Fred G. Bonfils, onetime river gambler and circus promoter, last week furnished their niche in the Rocky Mountains with as ingenious a piece of journalism as ever misled simple citizens.

The Denver Post headlined an event thus:

"COOLIDGE ASSAILS TRAITOR NEWSPAPERS THAT BETRAY THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT" and reported it, in part, thus:

"In one of the most remarkable speeches ever delivered by an American chief executive . . . speaking in New York as the guest of honor at the 20th anniversary dinner of the United Press, a Scripps-Howard news association, Mr. Coolidge told the offending editors to their faces that when any newspaper adopts the editorial attitude on American foreign policy which Scripps-Howard has pursued, every informed person knows that it has fallen from the high estate which is our common heritage, and becoming no longer worthy of regard, is destined to defeat and failure. No American can profit by selling his own country for foreign favor.

"It was the most blistering arraignment a President ever delivered to any set of citizens and its significance was heightened by the obvious deliberations with which it was prepared. . . ."

The obvious deliberation with which the gambling Post's report of the President's speech had been prepared, became apparent to alert Denverites who compared the Post's account of the President's speech (TIME, May 2) with accounts printed the same afternoon by the Post's rival, the Scripps-Howard News, which is served by the apparently heinous United Press. The News printed two accounts, one from a United Press man and one by the Associated Press, which serves the gambling Post but whose report on the Presidents speech Publisher Bonfils had seen fit to hash, jazz, garble and publish without naming its source.

From the accounts in the News it was seen that the President had not stepped out of his characteristically neutral attitude on all things to "assail" or "rebuke" anyone, but had discussed the U. S. press objectively, hypothetically, giving as much emphasis to his disapproval of too great nationalism therein as to his strictness on lack of patriotism.

Oddly enough the New's United Press man had overlooked it, and of course the Associated Press had omitted it, but the President's sentences to the United Press immediately preceding the "Whenever any section . . ." sentence quoted by the Post for its own purposes, were these:

"Because America is what it is, you [the United Press] are what you are. Your own independent and exalted position fully demonstrates that this country is worthy at all times of your service and your support."

From any but the Coolidge lips these sentences might have fallen cynically. In themselves they mean nothing. But in their context they were warm praise from a cautious man.

Fearful of the Scripps-Howard threat to his monopoly* of Rocky Mountain attention, Publisher Bonfils of Denver had taken, with a presidential speech, liberties which predicated not merely immorality but mania.

No Proper Person

When a whale or herd of seals is sighted near one of their villages, Eskimos, however hungry, are not so primitive but that they organize the hunt. They stand back until the community's ablest rifleman or harpoonist has armed himself and taken the lead. Smart young boys seeking to dash ahead, to show off and enrich themselves by making the kill, are firmly restrained; sometimes soundly thumped and sometimes even chased back to the igloo. Their inept shots would only scare off the prey. Any older Eskimo who should fail to curb such an overweening youth would be regarded as a traitor to the community, an Eskimoron.

The hungry community of U. S. editors was saddened last week when it became known that Editor Henry Goddard Leach of the Forum, monthly debate magazine, was guilty of the kind of negligence which, in an Eskimo community, would have earned the offender an extra-cold shoulder from all his neighbors. Editor Leach had failed to prevent an ineffectual shot from being fired at the editorial whale, the political herd of seals, that was sighted a month ago when Governor Smith of New York promised to answer an open letter addressed to him by a distinguished lawyer through the Atlantic Monthly (TIME, April 4).

Editor Leach of the Forum had accepted for publication and forwarded by secretary to Washington, an open letter to President Coolidge asking about Calvin Coolidge's intentions with regard to a third term. That the letter was not written by a proper person Editor Leach failed to realize until, his secretary having reached Washington and handed the missive to Edward T. Clark, the President's acting secretary, Mr. Clark figuratively shoved it into his pocket and declared the episode closed.

The community of U. S. editors, not to mention most politically-conscious citizens, were sorry the episode had ever occurred because up till then it had seemed likely that an open-letter-and-answer would be arranged and announced at almost any moment between Calvin Coolidge and some interrogator whom the President could answer with dignity. The text of the Forum letter and the presumption of its author were such that they promised to postpone further communications on the third-term subject indefinitely, if not discourage them altogether.

There is no such thing as dignity among newspapermen, and the author of the Forum's letter to the President was a newspaperman; by name, John F. Carter Jr., a bleak young man in his early thirties on the Sunday staff of the New York Times. An able reporter who writes with facile pedantry on almost any subject from ship news to esthetics, Writer Carter had brushed up on political precedents and, permitting himself a freedom he does not enjoy on the Times, had addressed the President as follows:

"Do you believe that the tradition of American politics is hostile to a substantive third term in the Presidency ?

"Do you believe that your re-election would be in harmony with the spirit of-the common law which has given you your present power ?

"Do you consider that your silence in no way infringes the dignity of the presidential office?

"Will you accord the electorate the leisure to consider whether it may be called upon to break the traditions of 140 years of the presidential office?"

Long and prodding, the letter went on to discuss statutes and customs; to mention the failure of two Republicans (Grant and Roosevelt) who tried to alter custom; to refer to "your recent public rebuff to Herbert Hoover"* and the alleged embarrassment felt by other Republican presidential aspirants due to their chief's silence.

While the Forum letter went the way of all inappropriate literature at the White House, James Francis Burke of Pittsburgh, onetime Republican whip in the U. S. House of Representatives, wrote such reply as seemed necessary, saying, among other things: "[The American people] have been seeking and are entitled to at least a few months' relief now and then from meddlers, mischief makers and apostles of unrest who have become the bane of our modern American existence."

The New York Times spoke out too, saying in connection with its employe's attempted exploit: "Though it may be true that a wise question is half of wisdom, it is also true that even a fool can ask questions which a wise man cannot answer."

Ignorant ?

George A. Doran & Co., Manhattan book publishers, lately announced that Dikran Kuyumjian, Anglo-Armenian novelist by pen-name Michael Arlen (Piracy, The Green Hat, etc.), would arrive in the U. S. coincident with the publication of his new novel, Young Men in Love (TIME, May 2). Either ignorant of Mr. Kuyumjian's movements, or reluctant to spoil the effect of sound publicity, Doran & Co. did not tell the press until last week that Mr. Kuyumjian had sailed, not for the U. S. but to Peru.

*Latest statements of Denver circulations: Post 145,000 ; News 32,000.

*A figment of the imaginations of other newspapermen. At a White House press conference last month, the correspondents sought to pry from the President substantiation for a rumor that Secretary Kellogg was to resign, that Mr. Hoover would succeed him. Nettled by insistent insinuations, the President answered sharply that Mr. Kellogg was not resigning and that, in any case, Mr. Hoover would not succeed him. Pining for a sensation, the correspondents rushed off and filled the press for days with one of their favorite words-- "slap." The President, they reiterated, had "slapped at" Secretary of Commerce Hoover. The President at first ignored this press palaver but, when it did not abate, reproved the correspondents by saying he considered Mr. Hoover capable of fitting any portfolio a President has to give.