The Moon Is Green

As foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in Ottawa, balding Eugene Griffin handles many a special job for Colonel Bertie McCormick. Last winter, when the Colonel heard that an un-American blight was mottling the Ivy League, Griffin toured the Harvard, Yale and Princeton campuses. He proved (to the Tribune's satisfaction at least) that the Colonel had heard right. This fall the Trib got around to Dartmouth. When Griffin arrived, notebook in hand and hatchet up his sleeve, he got a cordial welcome. President John Sloan Dickey had reserved him a room at the Hanover Inn, and offered to show him everything--including a brand-new "Quality in Newspapers" exhibit in the library.

The exhibit pained Griffin. It gave examples of how news is distorted. Its examples were marked clippings from the Trib and from the Communist New York Daily Worker, contrasted with clips from the New York Times and Herald Tribune. Correspondent Griffin muttered darkly that "this will make the Colonel mad."

Dartmouth didn't wait for the Colonel to get mad. It hastily sent 2,000 key alumni a fill-in on what was up. Correspondent Griffin, the Hanover Bulletin pointed out sympathetically, "is a pleasant fellow, but there was no doubt . . . he had been sent on a mission and that he was mostly interested in proving a point. For example, he said . . . 'if the Colonel says to do a story to prove that the moon is green, we go out and prove it.' "

Last week the Tribune's four-installment series on Dartmouth came out with a blast against the "cult of America-Last internationalism" and President Dickey's famed "Great Issues" course. The "Quality in Newspapers" exhibit seemed to hurt the Trib most of all.

Furthermore, the Dartmouth rebuttal had touched a tender spot. One of the alumni who saw it was none other than Tribune Managing Editor "Pat" Maloney (Dartmouth '13). The Trib promptly called Ottawa to ask Griffin about that "moon is green" crack. Griffin issued a blustering denial: "The Dartmouth bull about me was just a lot of goddamn lies by some scared, chickentrack Dickey jerks who can't contradict what I wrote. They were afraid the alumni will look into what's going on at Dartmouth, so they tried like hell to get me fired."

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