Passion v. Reason

While U. S. correspondents in Europe's capitals were wondering how to get news back to their papers (see col. 3), at home their editors were pondering how to play what news they got. Two conflicting impulses made the U. S. press sound like a man arguing with himself. One was a voice of passion urging him to show his indignation over Fuehrer Hitler's aggression. The other was a voice of reason counseling detachment to keep the U. S. out of war.

In most news columns passion triumphed, while reason sat patiently wagging a finger on the editorial page. Typical was the tabloid New York Daily News. Like many another paper, the Daily News printed the French high command's terse, dry bulletins reporting the start of its drive against the German Westwall under headlines like a joyful yell:

NAZIS

FLEE

FROM FRENCH

But in its editorials the Daily News was saying: "We must keep as cool as we can unless we want to get into this war." As usual, most intemperate of all the Press's many voices were the cartoonists, who emitted characteristically simplified cries of horror, scorn and indignation.

In the absence of any authentic reports of Allied gains, most papers fell back on vague rumors of food riots in remote Reich cities, discontent deep in the underground chambers of the Westwall fortifications (". . . Dugouts are crammed with munitions ... air is foul ... a shortage of food. . . ."). An anonymous physician, just back from Germany, was quoted as saying that Adolf Hitler was under an alienist's care for paranoid manic-depression (see p. 77).

"Atrocity" story-of-the-week came not from France or Britain but from Germany. Frederick Oechsner, United Press correspondent with the German Army in Poland, cabled that he had seen 25 bodies in Bydgoszcz (Bromberg), supposedly civilians of German blood who had been killed and mutilated by retreating Poles. German officers claimed there were 800 others who had met the same death.

The press was unanimous in its editorial endorsement of the President's address to the nation (TIME, Sept. 11) on neutrality. But there was considerable uncertainty about what neutrality was. Wrote the Atlanta Journal: "Adolf Hitler has brought Europe to this disaster. But we can also see that America now can best serve her own interests ... by keeping out."

Some papers, like the Nashville Tennesseean, went shouting out into the street at the sinking of the Athenia: "German frightfulness . . . again roams the seas. . . . This nation wants no war, but there is no question where its sentiments lie." Others, like the Baltimore Evening Sun, remained stiffly in the parlor: "Neutral, as a nation, we are. And neutral we must be. A nation cannot afford the luxury of living-room emotions."

On the subject of propaganda most editorialists were careful to warn their readers against claims made by both sides in the war. But they could not resist the chance to take a sideswipe at radio. Wrote the Chicago Tribune: "Radio permits direct connection with virtually every European nation. The official liars will be as busy as they were a quarter of a century ago . . . but this time we will be able to listen to both liars and compare their claims."

The New York Times was indignant over French and British censors who were holding up its cables. In an editorial the Times said: "This newspaper will, as far as possible, make plain the sources of its news dispatches. It will not print rumors as fact." Same day the Times announced that it had at last abandoned its sole reliance on Associated Press (of which it was a founder) and its own men, to complete its war coverage had taken United Press service as well.

Most columnists were either violently partisan like Dorothy Thompson or violently non-partisan like Hugh Johnson and Boake Carter. In the New York World-Telegram Harry Elmer Barnes called down a plague on both Europe's houses: "The lip service paid to democracy is only a fake frosting to obscure the underlying imperialism. . . . The current conflict ... is in reality a clash of rival imperialisms."

General Johnson had declared a truce on verbal bombing for the duration of hostilities: "I am going to be ... careful ... to abstain from too many joyous wisecracks and in my small way hold up the hands of every person in public life who is trying ... to keep us out of war. ..." A few days later he forgot his resolutions when (in a column favoring censorship for radio) Dorothy Thompson wrote: "Do we want to hear General Johnson presented as a military expert and . . . make remarkable (and most inaccurate) statements about why we entered the last war?"

Back to his guns went the General to reply: "Bless your heart, Dorothy, my stuff isn't nearly as biased and inflammatory as yours. . . . Ever since Miss Thompson was rudely treated in Germany she . .. has been a breast-beating Boadicea urging us to flaming action. She sometimes seems to think that the issues of war are her and Hitler."

Thus at week's end the U. S. press showed that it was as much confused by war, as mistrustful of both sides and their issues, as the readers it served.

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