No-Men

Since he entered the White House, little love has been lost between Franklin Roosevelt and that journalistic triumvirate of New Deal nay-sayers--Frank Richardson Kent, Mark Sullivan & David Lawrence. Smarting under the President's smiling sarcasms as sorely as the President smarts under the unsympathetic reports they write about his Administration, Columnists Kent, Sullivan & Lawrence now fail to appear at White House Press conferences or maintain a dignified silence when Mr. Roosevelt talks to reporters. Not until last week, however, was a public issue made of the breach between President and press critics.

Herbert Hoover used to go behind the backs of editors and reporters to complain to their publishers when news treatment did not suit him. Franklin Roosevelt is known to have achieved better results by approaching the news writers and editors behind their publishers' backs. Fortnight ago he entertained junketing members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors at the White House. There was exciting, off-the-record talks by Harry Hopkins and John Edgar Hoover and, when his turn came, the President told his charmed audience that he wished the nation's news could be presented without "color."* And by "color" Mr. Roosevelt clearly meant the frank unfriendliness to be found in the writings of the three journalisits who have earned his personal displeasure.

To David Lawrence this was an unwarranted Presidential whack on a spot already raw from a merciless blow of the Democratic National Committee's canny old Pressagent Charles Michelson, Picking up a Republican handout which recommended, among others, the columns of Lawrence & Co., Pressagent Michelson, in the Democratic Committee's frankly partisan weekly letter, baldly remarked early in April that "the Republican National Committee has formally taken over the Three Musketeers of anti-Administration, Frank Kent, Mark Sullivan and David Lawrence."*

Regarding Michelson's observation as tantamount to an accusation that he and his colleagues had been bribed by Republican money, Mr. Lawrence needed only the additional stimulus of the President's off-the-road remarks to the visiting editors to unlimber his guns in retaliation. Last week in 146 newspapers Pundit Lawrence indignantly declared:

"President Roosevelt personally has set in motion a campaign to discredit, if possible, the effectiveness of those Washington correspondents who write articles critical of his Administration. . . . The direct connection between the public attack made by the Democratic National Committee on various Washington correspondents and the President's conversations in private is no longer a secret and in the public interest ought not to be. ... If writers who are conscientiously trying to write their impressions of what is happening in Washington are to be made the objects of a punitive campaign because they happen to disagree, this, too, ought to be fully disclosed so that the first signs of a real dictatorship may be recorded and so that the restraints being put upon the freedom of the press may be known to the reading public."

The arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune next day hastened to Mr. Lawrence's side with the cry: ''[Mr. Roosevelt] is showing again the Roosevelt who can't 'take it' -- the man who when he meets with criticism is moved by the desire to crush his critics by means foul or fair." To this the loudly pro-Roosevelt New York Post responded : "No President in American history has 'taken' more and taken it with better grace than Franklin D. Roosevelt. . . . But let one breath of criticism be directed at these three pompous commentators, and they rush to hide behind the petticoats of 'freedom of the press.' "

Without comment Frank Kent continued to criticize whatever he disapproved in the Roosevelt regime. Venerable Mark Sullivan took oblique notice of the controversy when he placidly explained : 'Congress is meant by the Constitution to be a 'noman' to the Executive. . . . The Democratic leaders within Congress . . . renounced that role in the early weeks of the Administration. ... In the lack of any other satisfactory 'noman' . . . the Press has this obligation to an exceptional degree."

*Dozens of ex-newshawks are employed by the Government to write press handouts and statements in which all the "color" is entirely in favor of the New Deal.

* Of Mr. Michelson's Republican competitor, GOPressagent Theodore Huntley, Columnists Drew Pearson & Robert Allen last week told an astonishing tale which Washington accepted is true in spirit, if not in fact. Greeting at his office Malcolm W. (''Bing!") Bingay, who left the Detroit news five years ago to edit he Detroit Free Press, Mr. Huntley said: "How do you do, Mr. Bingay--how are you and how's the Detroit News?" Editor Bingay's Free Press has for several years conducted a running Ight with Radiorator Charles Edward Coughlin. but Pressagent Huntley's next conversational ambit is reported to have been: "Mr. Bingay, our paper must have influence with Father Coughlin. Why don't you get him to open up on Roosevelt and the New Deal?" Mr. Huntley is then supposed to have led dismayed Editor Bingay into the office of Republican National Chairman Henry Fletcher, who heartily greeted him with: "Glad indeed to see you, Mr. Bingay. It is always nice to welcome folks from Wisconsin!"

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