Tactful William

In Manhattan every Sunday afternoon is published a flamboyant newspaper called the New York Enquirer. The Enquirer's headlines are so big & black that they have ceased to attract attention; its circulation is not listed with the Audit Bureau of Circulation. The Enquirer is violently anti-New Deal, violently pro-William Randolph Hearst, which has led some people to suspect that Mr. Hearst was an angel to the activities of its publisher, flamboyant William Griffin.

Although his grandfather migrated to Missouri some 100 years ago, Publisher Griffin is a professional Irishman. Nine months of the year he is a loyal Tammany man; in summer he usually goes to Ireland and makes speeches on trade, which the Hearstpapers dutifully report. What Ireland needs most, after independence, William Griffin thinks, is a chain of modern hotels. Occasionally Publisher Griffin starts a movement to draft William Griffin for mayor (1937) or Senator (1938).

Three years ago, when Publisher Griffin met Viscount Cecil in Paris, he made the novel suggestion that Britain should pay her War debt to the U. S. with the Queen Mary and Bermuda. Lord Cecil was courteously vague, but Winston Churchill rebuffed him, as did President Albert Lebrun, to whom Mr. Griffin suggested that France give up the Normandie. Since then Publisher Griffin has been more insistent than ever that the U. S. collect its debts.

Three weeks ago rambunctious Senator Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina introduced a resolution to send William Griffin abroad as a special envoy to remind European nations of their debts. Nobody paid much attention. Fortnight ago Congressman Chauncey W. Reed of Illinois introduced a concurrent resolution in the House. Washington wondered what it was all about, why a pressagent was needed to report William Griffin's progress. Last week half-a-dozen Senators, including two members of the potent Foreign Relations Committee, Georgia's Walter George and Kansas' Arthur Capper, plumped for the resolution. Washington's wonder grew. Best guess was that isolationists had hit on a new scheme to keep out of war: stir up bad feeling over the War debts, which nobody could do better than William Griffin.

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