"Goodby, Mr. Pegler"

Since Westbrook Pegler is almost always attacking somebody, his attacks are sometimes embarrassingly ill-timed. Last week Pegler chose to belabor Navy Secretary Frank Knox; he was sore because Publisher Knox had "suppressed" Pegler's syndicated column in the Chicago Daily News (TIME, April 24). The reasons, according to Pegler: 1) the Daily News would print nothing unfavorable to Marshall Field because his Chicago Sun is a tenant of the News building; it would print nothing favorable to the Sun's powerful morning adversary, Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick and his Chicago Tribune.

The Daily News printed the Pegler column -- its first in many weeks. Over it (on Page One) was a statement by Editor Paul Scott Mowrer:

"We are discontinuing Mr. Pegler's column. . . . We have spoken highly of Mr. Pegler in the past. We believed in him. We were his cosponsors. We have repeatedly applauded his exposures of crooks and racketeers. If his judgment equaled his courage he would be a great newspaper man. . . . Mr. Pegler has developed antipathies of such violence that he has allowed his feelings to overcome his reasoning power. When the disease becomes chronic, it is serious. Take, for example, the Pegler column today.

"Mr. Pegler complains that when he wrote ... in blame of Mr. Field, and in praise of Mr. Field's rival [Colonel McCormick], the Daily News omitted his column. This is true. I killed the columns myself. ... If he had written one-sidedly in praise of Field and in blame of McCormick, my decision would have been the same.

". . . Mr. Pegler insinuates that under our contract ... we are preventing him from expressing his views in Chicago during the political campaign. The insinuation is typical of what we have come to dislike and distrust in Pegler. He knows, for he has been so informed, that we shall be glad to release the column immediately. . . "Goodby, Mr. Pegler."

The New York World-Telegram, the Cleveland Press and other Scripps-Howard papers omitted the Pegler column attacking Colonel Knox. Other Pegler subscribers, with no such well-timed kill order, ran the column. Secretary Knox died next day.

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