Hearst Caravan

Down from his California mountain last week went William Randolph Hearst to cross the Rocky Mountains for the first time in nearly two years. With his bulbous Son George and his keen-eyed Editor Arthur Brisbane he swept into Chicago for a preview of the Century of Progress. At luncheon there General Charles Gates Dawes revealed something that not even wise old Reporter Brisbane knew before: Publisher Hearst had underwritten last year's Fair to the tune of $500,000. twice as much as any other individual.

From Chicago, Publisher Hearst went on to Washington for his first visit with the man he had helped to put into the White House. Long after luncheon he and President Roosevelt sat talking about NRA. which Mr. Hearst last autumn called "a menace to political rights and constitutional liberties.'' They might also have talked of the Brain Trust, which Hearst papers once called ''infatuates, dogmatists, cheerio pundits." or the cancellation of airmail contracts which Hearst violently opposed. More happily, publisher might have congratulated President on the Stock Exchange Bill, which he warmly favors, or on the silver-buying program which he advocated last September.

Into Manhattan marched Publisher Hearst for the first time in three years. He held court at the Brisbane-owned Ritz Towers, received a hundred admiring Hearstlings, slipped away for a first glimpse of his newest grandson.

Next day Mr. Hearst boarded the S. S. Rex with his three sons. George, William Randolph Jr., John Randolph, their wives, and eleven friends. Ship news reporters interviewed him. Excerpts:

"[NRA] is much better than it was. General Johnson seemed to have a very judicious and admirable attitude. ... I have sympathy for NRA and all is right with it. ... Frankly I do not believe in a newspaper guild. ... I like to feel that a newspaper man is like a soldier in war. He should be willing to go out whenever there is a call and willing to work all day and all night on his assignment if it calls for it.

"Reporter: Work for love of it and starve?

"Hearst (laughing) : I don't think they ought to starve. It's not happened on our papers. . . . The Guild would tend to deprive the reporter of the character which makes a newspaper man a romantic figure."

The Hearst party sailed for Gibraltar where it will disembark, spend a month in Spain stalking antiques. After a visit to Italy Mr. Hearst will go on to Bad Nauheim where he will learn with interest that a rabid Nazi newspaper, Deutsche Wochenschau, has spread the word that he is a "notorious Jewish agitator whose real name is Herz." In London a caravan of automobiles has been engaged to whisk the chief & retinue to the Hearst castle in Glamorgan, South Wales.

France, which expelled Mr. Hearst as an undesirable alien three years ago, is not on his passport. Said he: "They don't particularly want me. That is the impression I one time got." Publisher Hearst glories in his quarrel with France, wears his exile like a decoration.

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