The Hero

Not since the days when Red Grange was roaming the gridirons has ex-Sports-writer Westbrook Pegler found much to admire in men on the public stage. But last week Hearst Columnist Pegler, on a trip to the Dominican Republic (pop. 2,200,000), found a new hero: Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. In a series on Trujillo and the country he rules, Pegler wrote:

"Rafael L. Trujillo is one of the great men of his time in the Western Hemisphere ... I tell you the so-called dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in this island fortress against Communism is much better than ours in one particular . . . Trujillo is much more sensible, practical and helpful to his people than Roosevelt,

Truman or Eisenhower has been to ours [in that he] just won't let any . . . bums call a strike. How does he handle such things, then? Well, he just doesn't give union officials the power to call strikes . . .

"The people, too, are clean and laundered. There is a spirit and appearance of happiness and friendliness unlike any that I have ever seen anywhere else . . . [At one party] Trujillo and his brother, who is now President of the Republic, Trujillo's son, who is a general, and numerous other members of the family were up and down the board and I hadn't seen so much gold braid and stuff since the lying-in-state of George V. But why shouldn't they put on some dog? They have a flair for it, and the Court of St. James's is no more authentic than this one . . . Trujillo's enemies say that he and members of his family have reaped great financial profit. Well, so did the Roosevelts.

"You take a chance of being knifed or garrotted [in] New York and the streets are a filthy disgrace, but there is almost no crime here and you could eat your lunch off any street in town.

"Trujillo's wage level is low, but he is raising it ... and anyway these people have simpler needs than ours and hardly have any of our expensive foibles such as boozing and gambling and 'entertainment.' [Trujillo] is constantly quoted . . . and is almost invariably referred to as the Generalissimo . . . That, however, is only a native foible at worst and there is absolutely no doubt that he is a benefactor of the republic."

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