"You Journalists"

P: The U. S. delegation to the World Economic Conference was composed of men with conflicting views on economics & politics; and the Press reported that.

P: The Conference Bureau announced a proposal from the U. S. delegation for an all-around tariff cut of 10%; the U. S. delegation repudiated the plan; and the Press reported that.

P: Fiscal experts of the U. S. delegation ventured a plan for temporary stabilization of the dollar, withdrew it; and the Press reported that. C. U. S. Delegate Morrison had never heard of famed Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister Benes; and the Press reported that.

P: Between times the Press picked up what news it could of the strangely behaving U. S. Delegates. Best tidbit of last week was the Delegates' failure to realize that invitations to dine with the "Fishmongers' Company'' meant a chance to banquet with one of London's richest guilds off sumptuous gold plates. Nearly half the Delegates invited threw away their Fishmongers' invitations, unaware that the banquet was being given by special request of His Majesty's Government. The Press also twitted two breezy Southern Delegates, Texas ice & utilities Tycoon Ralph W. Morrison and Tennessee's Samuel D. McReynolds for ''hardly opening their mouths." The Delegates wisely reported that they were playing a "waiting game."

So it went, until one dull afternoon last week when into the press room in the basement of the Geological Museum walked none other than James Ramsay MacDonald, president of the Conference. To the Press it was an unexpected honor. But Scot MacDonald quickly made it plain that he had come not to honor the Press but to scold it. Calling the reporters around him, Mr. MacDonald wagged his finger at them and began:

"You journalists--you always are targets for propaganda and rumors. I hope you will steadily resist both at this gathering." Peevishly he lectured them on optimism v. pessimism, practically warned them that if the world lost confidence in the Conference the blame would be on them.

Next day Secretary of State Hull put the Press over his knee, spanked it. Few days earlier, complaining that all his actions were "misconstrued" (see p. 17), he had proposed that "the newspapers could help best if they stressed the broad lines of the program and did not particularize." Now he flayed those correspondents who saw ''contradiction" between the U. S. domestic program for business revival and his own brand of low-tariff internationalism. Hardly had he issued his statement when the London Morning Post popped out with a cartoon of Uncle Sam standing on his head, and the caption paraphrasing Lewis Carroll:

"You are old, Uncle Sam, all the Delegates said; "And your hair has become very white; "And yet you incessantly stand on your head-- "Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

At that Secretary Hull called the newsmen together for another scolding.

Most irked was Delegate Samuel P. ("Waiting Game") McReynolds. To lash the Press he took to the air in a trans-Atlantic broadcast over the Columbia System. Artful, he strove to make out that it was only to the European Press that the U. S. delegation's difficulties seemed ludicrous. Said he: "I want to say that no delegation to an international conference ever met as fierce a barrage of criticism as that which practically all the British and French Press have leveled at us. ... I need not tell an American audience that these stories were as unfounded as they were malicious."

The logical comment on the Delegates v. Press fuss was made by the New York Times which observed that Scot MacDonald, for all his talk of propaganda, really wanted the newsmen to write his own brand of propaganda, viz. that the Conference was doing great things. Said the Times:

"It is palpably absurd to blame the Press for what has been happening at London. The correspondents do not invent; they merely report. . . . What was there for the correspondents to do but set forth the case as they saw it?''

MacLean for McLean

If Eugene Meyer were to name a man to manage his Washington Post as he would name his country estate or a private car. he might well choose a combination of his own first name and that of McLean, the wealthy Cincinnati family that purchased the Post 27 years ago. lost it last month to Mr. Meyer in a receivership sale. Last week he found such a man with such a name, promptly gave him the job.

But Manager Eugene MacLean was chosen not because of his name but because of his worth as an oldtime newspaper executive. Twenty years ago he worked for the late, great "Old Man'' Scripps as editor of the Cleveland Press, later as publisher of the San Francisco Daily News.

Vice President of the Post is the publisher's wife, Agnes Elizabeth Meyer, one-time staffmember of the New York Sun. Meanwhile Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, who wanted the Post but was outbid by Publisher Meyer, announced that on July 4 she will start a new Washington paper, a morning tabloid named the Enquirer. Mesdames Meyer and McLean already have stiff feminine competition in energetic Mrs. Eleanor Medill ("Cissy") Patterson, editrix of Hearst's Washington Herald.

Happy Howard

To the Orient two months ago went two potent newspapermen, friends but rivals. One was Kent Cooper, general manager of Associated Press; the other, Roy Wilson Howard, chairman of the Scripps-Howard newspapers, editor of the New York World-Telegram and onetime president of the Scripps-founded United Press. Arriving in Tokyo together, AP's Cooper and UP's Howard were wined and dined by all bigwigs from Prince Tokugawa down. After that Mr. Cooper visited Osaka. Shanghai, Hongkong. Mr. Howard flew in a military plane to Manchuria, interviewed Japanese and Chinese generals.

But Publisher Howard was not yet satisfied. Hence one day last week while Mr. Cooper was on a steamer in the Red Sea. on his way around the world, Mr. Howard was rolling up to the Imperial Palace at Tokyo, in an automobile with U. S. Ambassador Grew. There he had an audience with His Imperial Majesty Hirohito, 124th Son of Heaven, Emperor of Japan.

An hour later the cables burned with 988 words at 13-c- a word. Every word was printed in a story splashed across the front page of all 25 Scripps-Howard papers. Boasted the World-Telegram: "The Emperor has granted an audience to an American newspaperman for the first time in the history of the Japanese Empire."* Reporter Howard described it:

"Our meeting occurred in the Phoenix Hall, formal audience chamber, which is a relatively small but gorgeously lacquered room, hung with tapestries but devoid of furniture, except for the Emperor's chair, set between two ancient cloisonne vases of huge proportions. The Emperor wore the simple khaki uniform of a generalissimo, a service cap tucked under his left arm and his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword. At my introduction he extended his right hand in Western fashion for a firm handshake. . . . Outside the chamber entrance other somberly clad functionaries maintained equally blank faces, as though no word of the conversation penetrated their understanding. . . ."

Unfortunately, neither did any word of the conversation penetrate to Reporter Howard's readers. Court etiquet, he explained, forbids quoting the Son of Heaven. But Reporter Howard did find it "permissible to state" that the Emperor thinks Japanese-U. S. friendship important to world peace.

Unfortunately, too, for reader value, the present Emperor, skinny, spectacled, is anything but a glamorous figure.

But in a day when journalistic enterprise is rarely evident except in the lower order of scandal and crime, and when many publishers are better businessmen than newsmen, Publisher Howard had performed an original and diverting feat, had handled his story with skill. It strengthened further his ties with Japan, whose most potent newspapers are big customers of U. P. And it illuminated his newspapers' "open-door policy" toward Japan.

*By a hair's breadth Publisher Howard outdid famed Reporter Isaac Frederick Marcosson who in 1922 had an equally formal audience with Hirohito, then Prince Regent. Hirohito's father, Emperor Yoshihito, was out of his mind and near death.

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