Judge — January 1937 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“Hit Maw yerself! Yer old enough to fight yer own battles.” REASONS FOR ANGER BY KYLE CRICHTON THERE ARE old settlers who remem- ber back to the time when H. R. Knick- erbocker was a reporter. He was work- ing in those days for the New York Post and his dispatches on European affairs won him both the Pulitzer Prize and the respect of his colleagues. He is now employed by Mr. Hearst. Being employed by Mr. Hearst is not so much being tapped for high fame as being tapped by a mallet. From the ink with which they sign the con- tract seems to emanate a gascous odor which turns the brain of the new hired hand into oatmeal. The intention they have brought to the Hearst organiza- Judge tion to take the tainted money and re- serve their integrity is metamorphosed into a zeal to please the old gentleman who sits in the castle at San Simeon. I very much doubt that Hearst is pleased by such prostration of the in- tellect. The game is a dead giveaway. A Knickerbocker who was the best re- porter in Europe becomes as deadly a hack, as persistent a perverter of facts as the choicest male prostitute of the French press. It would be far better for the honor of Hearst, pfd., if they operated in a subtler fashion. One book on the Abyssinian adven- ture of Mussolini was not given the at- tention it deserved. I refer to Wynant Hubbard's Fiasco in Ethiopia, which had less to do with the war against the forces of Haile Selassie than with the desperate struggles of the correspondents to manufacture war news. After much maneuvering, Knickerbocker managed to be the first aloft in a plane over the battlefields. According to Hubbard's ac. count, Knickerbocker was away two days and returned disgusted. In essence he said, “I flew everywhere and never saw even a man or beast, nor a tree nor a gun nor even a wandering warrior. . .. And now I have to sit down and turn out a raft of first page war stories.” Which he did. Karl von Wiegand of the Hearst staff did an equally fine job about a mysterious lost battalion, basing his story upon the fact that Hubbard had seen a column marching in the hills on his way to Addis Ababa. It is an exceptionally fascinating volume for anybody concerned with the purity of the press and the accuracy of the Hearst news treatment. But if Knickerbocker was good in Ethiopia, he is magnificent in Spain. He has been marching the fascist troops into Madrid every morning since June 22nd and it will be one of the great tragedies of journalism if the loyalists keep Knick from his triumph. There are signs now that the Hearst editorial columns are not pleased by such sup- pression of the freedom of the press and one may expect a violent campaign against the Spanish government based upon the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. There are cynical observers who contend that the fascist soldiers are worn down not so much by the fervor of the conflict as by marching in and out of Madrid every morning to keep Knickerbocker happy. The lack of hospitality of the loyal army in welcoming the Moorish troops into Madrid resulted in a very pained remon. strance from Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini and it is not to be expected that Mr. Hearst was any less hurt by this lapse in the customary gallantry of the Spanish. The race for the booby prize in Span. ish war correspondence has been hot between Knickerbocker and John Elliott and John Whitaker of the New York Herald Tribune, but the three have late. ly lost out to James Abbe of NANA, who is a photographer by profession but 14 comicbooks.com