Too Soon

The first to get excited was a Hearst newsman covering the White House. He misinterpreted a routine press release. (All the release actually said was that the President had asked Cabinet members and U.S. diplomats abroad to stay at their posts, keep away from the United Nations Conference in San Francisco.) Hearst's Chicago Herald-American promptly headlined: "F.D.R.--STAND BY FOR VICTORY." A Hollywood radio announcer, spicing it up a little more, breathlessly told a Blue Network hookup: "Electrifying news. . . . Official Washington thinks it will [come] momentarily."

This first phony peace rumor hardly had a chance to be denied last week before a new one cropped up. In San Francisco, a flash arrived from SHAEF: Eisenhower says Germans are whipped. Hearst's International News Service sent out an announcement that Germany had quit. Los Angeles Radio Station KHJ repeated it on the air.

In Chicago a judge heard the news, hastily adjourned a murder trial. In Manhattan, 2,913 telephone calls jammed the New York Times's switchboard. The Los Angeles City Council rose to its feet, solemnly recited the Oath of Allegiance, then learned that it had wasted its breath. All over the U.S., War Manpower Commission offices got calls from war workers, asking if they could quit their jobs now. Coming within two hours of each other, the two flashes gave the U.S. its biggest artificial pickup and letdown since the A.P.'s phony D-day flash last June.

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