Most Useful Sun

In Stanley Park, principal plaza of Vancouver, B. C., stands a stone monument called the Harding Memorial, erected by the Canadian Kiwanis Club. It honors Warren Gamaliel Harding, only President of the U. S. to visit Canada while in office, whose reception at Vancouver shortly preceded his death in San Francisco. But Vancouver Kiwanians squirmed with discomfort last week. Other thoughtful citizens deplored. U. S. visitors were in a ferment of indignation. For, despite many a protest, Vancouver's loud evening Sun ("Vancouver's most useful institution") was publishing serially The Strange Death of President Harding by onetime Federal Sleuth Gaston B. Means (TIME, March 31). The U. S. Consul General was besieged with outraged demands for formal action. One Californian wired to Senator Hiram Johnson urging "proper protest against . . . insult." Nothing happened. The Strange Death of President Harding was widely circulated and reported in the U. S. last spring. But the U. S. press, while feeling obliged to report the book's horrid insinuation that Mrs. Harding did away with her husband, at the same time took pains to set forth the unsavory record and reputation of Author Means, ex-convict. Not so the Vancouver Sun, which announced its feature with a sheet made up like the front page of an unspeakably yellow journal, topped by a shrieking headline: "WAS PRESIDENT HARDING MURDERED? ... Did His Shellfish Illness in Vancouver Provide 'Alibi' for Subtle Poison Plot? ... 'I HAVE NO REGRETS,' SAID MRS. HARDING, OPPOSING AUTOPSY." Of Author Means the Sun said: "He knew (as no other living person) the entire confidential story of the White House. And Gaston Means--close mouthed, silent, efficient-- did not talk--until--." The Sun also said: "This story is told as FACTS without the slightest attempt to make it spicy or to inject an element of sex." Other headlines on the page: "Harding's Love Affairs Involved Nation in Net"; "Girl and Babe Are Trailed"; "Family Quarrel in White House. ... 'I Never Loved You.' " The serial was started on schedule; Vancouver's reaction was reported as " unfavorable." The daily instalment was relegated to a comparatively inconspicuous position in the Sun and carried a subhead: "Any opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the co-authors [May Dixon Thacker with Means] and not necessarily the opinions of the Vancouver Sun." The Publisher. The Vancouver Sun is the "personal" journal of its publisher, good-looking, nattily dressed Robert James Cromie. When he acquired the paper in 1917, he was 30, "Canada's youngest publisher," but no newsman. He had been secretary to General John William ("Jack") Stewart, railway builder, when the latter bought the Sun, then a morning paper. According to legend, General Stewart went to Europe to direct railway construction for the Allied armies, leaving Cromie with power-of-attorney to run the paper. From that status, Cromie emerged as owner. Nearly his first act was to absorb the conservative News-Advertiser, only morning competitor. Because he was without newspaper knowledge, Publisher Cromie was unbound by tradition or habit. He has made the paper as he went along, made mistakes, done surprising things. Personable, affable, Publisher Cromie is, like all aggressive publishers, strongly liked and strongly hated. A confirmed culture," faddist, his "intestinal favorite fad gardening." is "health

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