Prohibishop v. Publisher

God, politics, two women and the stock-market have been among the vital interests of Bishop James Cannon Jr. of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. All of his brethren deplored his gambling in stocks, and at the Dallas convention of his church last spring, he tearfully promised to gamble no more, was forgiven (TIME, May 26 et seq.). But four of his brethren in the South still deplored his conduct in general, which they felt unfitted him for the service of God. While he was honeymooning in Brazil with the second of the two women who have been dear to him, these Southerners instituted an inquiry by a court of elders to see if Bishop Cannon should be unfrocked (TIME, Sept. 29). Because of his conspicuous activity in public affairs ("The Prohibishop" is the Philadelphia Record's nickname for him) and because of his repeated private appearances in the news, the Press of the land has watched his career closely. Knowing well that a clergyman whose morals have been called in question is one of the most dangerous news creatures there is, most of the Press has been cautious. Unafraid, however, have been Publisher William Randolph Hearst and the Patterson-McCormick combine of Chicago. Both thoroughly Wet, neither of them deeply religious, both these powers of the Press have investigated the Prohibishop boldly, intimately. Last week, with his spiritual trial in Virginia yet to stand, Bishop Cannon turned sharply on one of his observers. He sued William Randolph Hearst, personally, for $5,000,000 for "false, scandalous, defamatory and malicious libel."

The Bishop does not object legally to newspaper accounts of his meeting and friendship with Mrs. Helen Hawley McCallum of Manhattan, who last year accompanied him to Palestine as secretary and last summer to England in the same capacity, and whom he married last July.

But he does object to a Hearst report: "On the night before his [first] wife [Lura Virginia Bennett Cannon] died, about two years ago, Bishop Cannon visited Mrs. McCallum in her apartment.

From there he remained in telephonic communication with his sons, who were at their mother's bedside in Washington.

When he learned his wife's condition was critical, he took the next train home." All false, pleads the Bishop, and suggestive of "improper, unseemly and immoral conduct." He denies that he was at Mrs. McCallum's apartment that night.

Nor has he objected to newspaper reports of his conduct aboard ship upon his recent return from Brazil -- the apparent indifference of the newly married couple to each other in public ; their seldom being seen together; her going to breakfast long after him, his leaving the table long before her; her traveling as "Mrs. Helen Hawley McCallum," his traveling as "Mr." Cannon; neither of them attending any ship's religious service.

But he does object to the Hearst papers stating that he tried to prevent the conviction of Harry L. Goldhurst, the Man hattan bucketeer who handled the Bishop's stock account and who now is serving a five-year sentence in Atlanta Penitentiary.

He avers that Publisher Hearst has instructed Hearstlings to the effect "that next to the World Court matter . . . the most important duty of the Hearst papers all over the country now is the destruction of the group which Bishop Cannon represents and controls, and that this can best be done by constant, though careful assaults."

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