Emporia's Sage

William Allen White, famed as a man never at a loss for words, was stumped last week. He was 75 years old (Feb. 10). For once he could not think of a thing to say. In a birthday editorial he told about the 75 roses the Rotarians had given him, then plainly groped for words. Said he: "It has been a gay 75 years. . . ." It had been much more than that.

For 48 years as editor-owner of the Emporia (Kans.) Gazette he had been more widely quoted, perhaps, than any other U.S. editor. Balloon-pricker, dauber of stuffed shirts, kindly philosopher, booster of the good, of Kansas, of Kansans, and of the Republican Party, Will White had been a solid force in the U.S. on the side of good will to man.

In 1890 Will White quit the University of Kansas in his senior year to work as printer on the El Dorado, Kans. Republican., He moved to Kansas City, where he reported for the Journal, which he left in 1892 because he felt it was slipping (it folded in 1942). In Kansas City he met and married Sallie Lindsay, a school teacher (their soth anniversary: this coming April 27). Then, in 1895, he borrowed $3,000, bought the Emporia Gazette.

In those days the Gazette had competition from the Emporia Republican. Circulation was 485, payroll $45 a week for two girl typesetters, a shop foreman, two reporters who also hustled ads. Circulation last month: 7,139 (Emporia's population: 13,188); White's payroll, $1,200 a week for 38 employes. The Republican had been erased.

With his clear, healthy, out-country look --5 ft. 7, a basketball middle, baggy, tweedy clothes, shoulders slightly hunched from the desk years, a cherubic, apple face and a toothy mouth out of which he talks enthusiastically sidewise--Will White had strolled into his office at 8:30 that morning, as always. From the chaos on his ancient rolltop desk he had picked, with deftness born of experience, the morning's mail, had summoned Mrs. Minnie Yearout, his longtime secretary, and dictated letters.

After lunch at home and his usual nap (in pajamas in bed), he had returned to his office about 3, dictated at machine-gun speed the editorials for the next day. By suppertime he was packed and ready to entrain for Washington, to attend an editors' convention, hoping to find new evidences of Democratic Party decay.

As an active Republican, he has fought Democrats all his life. His political activity hit top in 1936 when Kansan Alf Landon was running for President.

But Republican, Rotarian, Congregationalist, author (15 books), Will White is always an editor first.

His editorials range swiftly from gloom to sprightliness. In 20 minutes' dictation, he whips off a column croaking fearfully against the New Deal, then charges without hesitation into another column about the peonies in a neighbor's yard. Often, and excusably, he pops with pride, says something about his 42-year-old son, William L. White, whose name is on the Gazette masthead as publisher and who, as a foreign correspondent, has written two recent smash bestsellers: They Were Expendable and Journey for Margaret But most of the time Editorialist White is translating state and national issues into rich, rolling language full of human juices. His dominant trait: fairness.

When President Roosevelt returned from Casablanca, White wrote: "Well, it is now 60 hours since the Old Smiler returned to the White House from his great adventure. . . . Biting nails--good, hard, bitter Republican nails--we are compelled to admit that Franklin Roosevelt is the most unaccountable and on the whole the most enemy-baffling President that this United States has ever seen. He has added a certain vast impudent courage to a vivid but constructive imagination and he has displayed his capacity for statesmanship in the large and simple billboard language that the common people can understand. . . . Well, darn your smiling old picture, here it is! Here, reluctantly amid seething and snorting, it is. We, who hate your gaudy guts, salute you."

Such writing brought from the President a telegram that said: "Congratulations on reaching the three-quarter mark. I hope that during the next 25 years you will be with me all the time instead of only three and one-half years out of every four. I think that in a quarter of a century the firm of White and Roosevelt might be able to bring the Four Freedoms at least to this nation of ours."

When a reader complained that the Gazette had "been praising that old shyster," White retorted: "There are two ways of handling an opponent in politics ... to sneer at him ... to treat him fairly. . . . We have opposed [the President] now for three successive terms. . . . We are going to oppose him for a fourth term. But if, to oppose him, we have to make a more objectionable ring-tailed jackass of ourselves than nature made us, by saying that what F.D.R. does well is bad, then we shall . . . fail."

In many a congratulatory message to Will White last week, Americans wished the U.S. had more editors like him.

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