Reporter, Spare My Quotes

As is his custom, Bernard M. Baruch, 74, sat on a park bench one day last week --this time in London. He was not, as he usually is when sitting on his park bench in Washington, D.C., "in" to reporters. He would talk to only one: a man from Stars & Stripes. Corporal A. Victor Lasky and Baruch sat chatting together for a while, continued the conversation in Baruch's plush Claridge suite. When the phone rang (it was Churchill calling), Baruch, friend of the Prime Minister for 25 years, begged off for the moment. For Bernie Baruch had a point he wanted to get over to all G.I.s: quit worrying. After the war. there will be at least five to seven years' prosperity, "no matter what is done or not done."

Corporal Lasky quoted Baruch as saying then: "What happens after those five or seven years depends on the peace the big boys are preparing for us now. And one reason I am over here is to hold the big stick over the big boys to make damn sure they're not going to foul up the peace."

When Baruch saw the story Lasky wrote, he insisted on some major changes. One Baruch quote ("We've got to so de-industrialize Germany and Japan -- at least for a generation -- that they won't go to war again"), might make effective Ger man propaganda. The reference to the Churchill phone call might be considered too cavalier by his British hosts. And Mr. Baruch did not use language like "damn" and "foul up." Stars & Stripes obligingly cut out the offending passages -- but the Associated Press had already sent Lasky's original story back to the U.S.

Baruch's red-faced press secretary (who apparently believes that newsmen should not take down offhand remarks too literally) complained: "Lasky wrote his story as if he was covering a fire."

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