Flummery

What is the greatest newspaper in the U. S? The New York Times, say critics. What is the most important page of that newspaper? Its editorial page, say readers. Who should take the most care to read this editorial page? The men on the copy desk* and the telegraph desk,/- the reporters and all the paper's employes, say the editors. Do they read it? No, they do not, says the public, enlightened by a painful piece of flummery which occurred last week.

One of the able editorial writers on the New York Times began it when he composed a venomless little essay comparing Yale, Harvard and Princeton. He called it "Three Sons to College," and wrote as follows:

True child of Massachusetts, Harvard is individualistic, skeptical, intellectually venturesome, and inclined to be lax in morale. Yale was founded to counteract its free thinking, to assert the voice of authority, and so we have the ground-gaining Eli. Princeton, largely recruited as of old from the South, avoids extremes in both morality and intellect, inclining to the picaresque.

In due course of time, the editorial arrived at the desk of the chairman of the Yale Daily News, undergraduate daily. It seemed an obvious thing to quote; so he marked it for quotation on the editorial page of his own publication. Next day, sure enough, students read in the News:

True child of Massachusetts, Harvard is individualistic, skeptical, intellectually venturesome, etc., etc.

Now the printer who set up that bit of copy had made no reference to the New York Times believing that it had sprung from the forehead of the News editor. The New Haven correspondent of the New York Times seized upon it and wired it to Manhattan. Thus it reached the individuals who function on the telegraph desk of the Times. They were interested. A very well-written little article. So that was what Yale thought of Harvard, of Princeton, of itself, eh? In the morning, readers of the

Times came upon the following item on the front page:

The Yale Daily News today compared Harvard, Princeton and Yale as follows in an editorial:

True child of Massachusetts, Harvard, etc., etc.

It is needless to say that readers of the Times were shocked. They saw that the august newspaper whose pontifications determine their views had been duped into reprinting as a quotation from a college journal an editorial which had been written in its own offices. The more choleric among them sat down to compose heated letters. "Let the right hand of the Times," they suggested, "find out what its left is doing."

Flagrant

Readers of the New York Daily News were intrigued last Saturday morning by a headline. Those who were able to spell out the glaring slur read it aloud to their friends and chuckled; it was a good line, the sort of thing that makes the News their favorite newspaper. They bent to scrutinize the photograph that was printed below-- a picture of the funeral of the Queen Mother, Alexandra. There were King George and the Prince of Wales stalking with solemn strides; there were King Christian of Denmark in a plumed hat, the King of Norway and the King of Belgium, all marching with a sad air through the snow in the wake of the coffin.

Said the cut-caption: "By the marvelous Bartlane process of photo-transmission by cable, THE NEWS today is able to print the above photo of kings and princes yesterday trudging in the snow to pay last tribute to Queen Alexandra. . . ."

So much was clear. Readers of the Daily News again perused the headline that had attracted them. Across the top of the front page, right over the picture, ran the huge black letters: RUM ENDS HER DANCE OF LIFE

That was great; good stuff, and new too; what other paper had the courage to tell the truth about Alexandra? Since the readers of the News think, as they read, by pictures, a remarkable tableau rose in their minds: They saw the Dowager Queen in her last moments--a bejeweled crone lifting her glass for the last time in a toast, perhaps to the physicians who had tended her. . . . "Good old sport!" they murmured.

Of course, this ludicrous and flagrant bit of editorial quackery by the News had its ostensible explanation. Death, soon after it had come to the Queen, leveled, after long debauch, an unfortunate and abandoned creature whose story the editors had selected as the feature for an inside spread. Under the obnoxious headline appeared, in tiny type, the clue: Story on page three

*At the copy desk sit the men who edit the local stories in a daily newspaper.

/-At the telegraph desk sit the men who edit the stories that come by wire.