Pegler Poll

"I know what your excuse is for running that awful stuff. . . . You say that is free speech. . . . Well, I'll bet you if you knew what your readers really think of Pegler, you'd drop him like a hot stove lid. If you would put the matter to a vote. . . ."

So wrote Indignant Citizen to the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat. Indignant Citizen had been roused by a characteristic Peglerian display of calculated bad temper, in which Pegler accused Secretaries Stimson and Forrestal of "a dangerous conspiracy . . . to abolish the freedom of the whole people." The Tallahassee paper, well aware that everybody talks about Pegler but nobody does anything about him, said it would take a vote if enough readers demanded one. The demands quickly filled three columns. Among them:

"I am not one of those people who can take Pegler or leave him alone: I have to take him! Day after day I have to take him, and I'm tired of it. You see I am. Your Proofreader, E.S.H."

Last week's Pegler balloting brought out as many votes as a Tallahassee city election. Final score: keep Pegler, 637; dump him, 551. Having given Pegler an un-Peglerian (fair) trial, the Democrat said that it would go on publishing the column.

That would make it easy for Indignant Citizen to follow blustery Pegler's latest scheme to win enemies & influence circulation: a one-man campaign to smash the voluntary wartime code of censorship, which all U.S. newspapers adhere to. Away with secrecy on the President's movements, said Pegler; next time Franklin Roosevelt goes to Hyde Park, I'll say so (if I find out about it).

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