A Little Something

At 10:50 a.m. one day last week, Myrtle Bergheim, secretary to presidential Press Secretary Charles G. Ross, stuck her head into the White House pressroom. "The Boss says don't go away," said Myrtle. "He might have a little something later."

At 11:02, twelve correspondents were gathered around Ross's big walnut desk. "Close the doors," said Ross. "Nobody is leaving here until everybody has this statement." Then he passed out copies of a mimeographed handout. Merriman Smith of the United Press was first to read enough to catch the gist: "Evidence . . . atomic explosion . . . U.S.S.R." Whistling in surprise, he edged for the door.

The reporters hit the foyer at a dead run, tore through the lobby, and smashed the nose of a stuffed deer on their dash to pressroom telephones. "Bulletin! Bulletin!" shouted Tony Vaccaro of the Associated Press. Said Smith to the U.P.: "Flash!" Bob Nixon yelped at the International News Service switchboard: "Flash, goddammit, gimme the desk!" At 11:05, bells on U.P. and I.N.S. tickers in hundreds of newspapers signaled the big news flash. Three minutes later, the A.P.'s bulletin was on the wire.

No Ballscores. U.S. afternoon papers rushed out extras with bulletins and big headlines. But compared to the importance of the news, most papers showed a commendable restraint. They followed the advice which Defense Secretary Louis Johnson gave reporters: "I warn you: don't overplay this." Many newspapers gave the story no more play than the devaluation of the pound. (The equally restrained attitude of London's newspapers was summed up by one Fleet Streeter, who made the obvious crack: "Now they've devalued the atom.") The New York Post Home News omitted the usual front-page baseball scores, solemnly explained later: "Fateful as the Yankee defeat . . . might prove, we felt the juxtaposition of this news with President Truman's disclosure . . . might have been viewed as savage satire." Next day, many editorials were so determinedly unexcited (the San Francisco Chronicle: "Inevitable As Tomorrow") that they succeeded only in being determinedly dull.

In their early editions, the New York Mirror, the Des Moines Register and the Chicago Tribune even rated a love bomb over the atom bomb, put their banners on the story of a man charged with engineering an airplane explosion to kill his wife (see THE HEMISPHERE). The Trib also smugly reminded readers that Colonel McCormick was already building a bombshelter for himself and his staffers. The New York Daily News wrote the day's most heartfelt headline, a prayerful play on words: U.S. HAS SUPREMACY, WILL HOLD IT : AMEN. The Communist Worker combined propaganda, craftsmanship and a sly smile: TRUMAN: U.S.S.R. HAS IT; VISHINSKY: LET'S BAN IT.

No Hysteria. As Washington reporters drew blanks on any further bomb news from usually willing sources, the papers fell back on man-in-the-street interviews and unsubstantiated rumors from "reliable Swedish sources." Almost alone the Hearst papers made a try at spine-chilling; the New York Journal-American ran a half-page picture showing Manhattan engulfed in atomic "waves of death and havoc." Scripps-Howard's Newspaper Enterprise Association dug up an "exclusive" story: RUSSIA HAS 4 ATOM PLANTS. (N.E.A. got the tip from an "escaped Soviet industrial official.") The New York World-Telegram's scareheads on the story overshadowed advice at the bottom of the page, which most of the press had taken: NO REASON FOR ATOM HYSTERIA.

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