It Seems to Will White

At 75, William Allen White remains one of the country's most sapient reporters, with a special knack for observations which others have felt but never quite got down in Will White's bumblebee prose. Fortnight ago Editor White, back home from a trip to Washington and New York, stuck his stubby legs under his rolltop desk in the Emporia Gazette office and dictated three editorials. Once again, Editor White came up with much that was simple, clear and knowing.

Staccato, Adagio. At the White House with a group of U.S. newspaper editors, Will White had stood in the front row to keep a sharp eye on the President: "He seemed to be gay, sure of himself, a bit festive at times, informative, indeed illuminating. . . . He has grown notably heavier since he came to the White House. . . . His growth has not been in paunch. It has been above his navel. His shoulders have widened. His neck and jowls have filled out. His head has taken a new form. . . . He is a vital person. . . ."

That night, Will White sat with 800 others in the new Statler Hotel as Franklin Roosevelt made his Lincoln's Birthday speech. Will White found a different man: "In the five hours he had grown tired. As his speech went on his voice seemed to lose its fire. . . . In the final sentences his voice dropped and I could not hear his last three words. But I could see then that the steam in the old boiler chugging along for ten years had taken its toll of rust. . . .

"I suppose I am not the one to assess Mr. Roosevelt. The Republican Party has two schools of thought about him. Two methods of assessment. One wing rather casually sometimes speaks of him 'trippingly on the tongue' as 'that God damn Roosevelt,' short, snappy and staccato--but without grinding the vocal gears. The other crowd snarls it savagely, adagio, making two words out of God--like Gaw-ud--and two out of damn--like da-yam--growled with heart-pumping scorn and generally with a table-pounding drum beat. I belong to the lighter, staccato left wing."

Jurassic Morality. Will White "sensed uneasily . . . evidences of a revival of Jurassic morality." He sensed it in the "domestic war" fought in the various war boards in Washington. "It is silly to say New Dealers run this war show. It's run largely by absentee owners of amalgamated industrial wealth . . . for the most part decent, patriotic Americans . . . giving to the American people superb service. If you touch them in nine relations of life out of ten they are kindly, courteous, Christian gentlemen. But in the tenth relation they are . . . mad, ruthless . . . determined to come out of this war victors for their own stockholders--which is not surprising."

Cheap, Cheap, Cheap! Finally, Republican Will White declared a plague on both political parties.

"In New York I got scared about the Republican Party. I heard so many bitter, raucous, desk-pounding diatribes against the President and the New Deal. Which is all right. . . . But the trouble with the Republican leaders in Congress and such as I found in the more violent wards of the New York bedlam is that they are just ferninsters They are 'agin' everything and 'for' nothing. . . ."

Will White found the President's 48-hour-week proclamation a "New Deal mistake that stinks," a case of kowtowing to labor. "But are the Republicans doing anything about it? Not for a minute. They are as scared of labor as the President is.

"Those things one sees in the East, in high circles, in both parties. It's all cheap, cheap, cheap! The sight of these cheap statesmen is certainly painful when one thinks of the terrible need to . . . save this country from the real faults of administration and from a political theory heading us to the rocks."

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