Now It Can Be Unloaded

TOO EARLY TO TELL (506 pp.)--Jerome Weldman--Reynal & Hitchcock ($3).

Of all the thousands who stored up their impatience at the war jobs they were in, sharp, young (33) Jerome Weidman is one of the first to unload it in print. The man who wrote so ferociously of The Bronx, Broadway and the Garment Center in I Can Get It for You Wholesale and What's in It for Me? now spins a wicked, witty yarn about the OWI, where he served throughout the war. He calls it the BPC (Bureau of Psychological Combat), but that is about as much disguise as he bothers to wear.

Mr. Mahoney Roe was the tall, sad-faced chief of BPC's Overseas Division. He was also a poet, a famous literary light, a close friend of F.D.R. He was not, so office gossip ran, so close a friend of Journalist Clarence Carter, big boss of BPC. He had called a policy meeting in his Manhattan skyscraper office to worry over the expensive film that BPC's Motion Picture Unit had just made of German P.W.s in U.S. camps.

Remember? Where in heaven's name could BPC show the film? Mahoney Roe looked at the ceiling. Someone suggested England. "That's an idea," said Mahoney Roe, still looking at the ceiling. A pause. Someone else suggested Turkey. "Why Turkey?" asked Mahoney Roe, sadly. The other explained that that was where the match books imprinted with the Four Freedoms went, the ones that were intended to be dropped on France until the words turned out to mean something else in French. Remember?

More silence. Somebody then observed that maybe the P.W.s were shown eating pork in their mess halls, in which case Turkey would be out. "Something about the Moslem religion. Or maybe it's India. I'm not sure, Mahoney." Mahoney Roe gloomily agreed.

Finally, BPC's Overseas Division chief solved the problem all by himself. "We can send the films out to the School," he announced, looking now at the wall instead of the ceiling. BPC ran a training school for fledgling BPCsters at Vaudra-cour, a millionaire's estate up the Hudson (the OWI ran one on Marshall Field's estate at Huntington, L.I.). "Showing the films to the students," said Mahoney Roe, "I mean to every class from now on, that in itself would justify the expense of making them. What do you think, Whitney?" Up out of his coma sprang Whitney Trencher, head of the BPC Training School. "That's an idea, Mahoney," said he gravely, gazing at the great man with great respect.

Novelist Weidman does a saucy, skillful job in Too Early to Tell. Most of the story takes place among the wonderful acres, oak floors and glass plumbing fixtures at Vaudracour. If the satire is at points almost malicious, Weidman's general tone is understanding. But some of his old OWI bosses and colleagues, from Elmer Davis and Robert E. Sherwood down, may not be altogether amused.

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