Retreat

In the face of small-arms fire from U.S. editorial pages, the Army retreated in lumber-footed embarrassment last week. It had blundered, the Army admitted, in dishing up a fortnight ago the warmed-over, spiced-up story of pre-Pearl Harbor spying for Russia by Japanese and German Communists in Japan (TIME, Feb. 21). Most of all, it had blundered in charging, without documentation, that leftish Journalists Agnes Smedley and Guenther Stein were actually Russian spies.

In an honest confession on behalf of higher brass, Colonel George S. Eyster, deputy chief of the Army Public Information Division, called the whole thing a "faux pas." Said the colonel: the report had been "improperly edited," and should never have been put out "with the philosophy that Americans might well look askance at their neighbors." The Army, he said, had no evidence of spying by Stein or Miss Smedley, and it was not a U.S. policy to "tar and feather people without proof." Journalist Smedley said she was grateful, but added: ". . . the retraction rarely catches up with the lie ..."

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