The War Nobody Liked

When Collier's devoted a whole issue to defeating Russia, in its own preview of World War III ten weeks ago, it thought it had hit a journalistic jackpot. Collier's (circ. 3,150,000) sold an extra 500,000 copies (TIME, Oct. 29) and planned to cash in further by fighting "The War We Do Not Want" all over again in book form. By last week, the jackpot began to turn out wooden nickels. Simon & Schuster, which had contracted to publish the book, dropped the project. Reason: three of Collier's star "correspondents" in the war--Playwright Robert E. Sherwood, CBS Commentator Edward R. Murrow and U.A.W. President Walter Reuther--had decided that they didn't want their articles reprinted.

Sherwood, one of the top directors of U.S. psychological warfare in World War II, was aghast at the reaction that his lead article on the "history" of World War III stirred up in Washington. One State Department expert on Russia moaned that the Collier's issue might "wipe out all the good our propaganda may have accomplished in the past year" In Europe, non-Communist newspapers denounced Collier's for its "warmongering." Even the United Nations, in whose name Collier's fought the war, lodged an official protest against the magazine's use of the U.N. symbol.

In view of all this, Sherwood wrote Simon & Schuster's Dick Simon: "All of us who participated knew that we were running the risk that our motives might be widely misunderstood and misinterpreted, but it seemed a risk well worth running. The misinterpretation has certainly occurred, and I feel that it could only be increased ... by book publication."

Ed Murrow, "noted CBS commentator [who] flew in the B-36 which A-bombed Moscow at midnight, July 22, 1953," was in Paris when the special issue came out. "The net effect among my friends there," said Murrow last week, "was unfortunate."

Walter Reuther, whose article had described setting up "free" unions in liberated Russia, got a hot reaction from his brother Victor, who was in Europe on a union mission. Practically everybody Victor Reuther talked with was in violent objection to the entire series. Walter Reuther had hoped the series would produce some serious thoughts for peace. "The failure," he said in a letter to the Nation, "was due ... in great measure to the terrifying and horrible scenes depicted in the art work."

Only Collier's was unwilling to admit that the issue was a bad idea. It still insisted last week that the only reason the book had been canceled was because reproducing the art work presented "mechanical and production difficulties." Said Dick Simon: "We hadn't planned to use the art work."

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