The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-04-02
BY DIOGENES, JR.


 Spring being a season of change from the custom of the imme- diately preceding period, it is the time, too, when burgeons the de- sire to be once again a columnist. Not even sharp memories of other columns from which city editors dragged forth the best stuff for more prominent place in the paper seems sufficient to abort this urge.
 So, tongue in its accustomed place at right angles to the left cheek, start is made of what, probably, will be as mixed an as- sortment of items as ever blos- somed in the same amount of space. First, look at the record of some years back:
 It was Spring twelve years ago in Hartford when the State of Connecticut stretched Gerald Chapman's thin neck out at Wethersfield prison. Judge Fred erick Groehl, Chapman's chief of counsel, had wept his midnight tears and was sad again at the cemetery where the mysterious woman in black" was one of the few mourners under a blue and white sky of an early April morn ing.
 By friendship with certain employe of a telegraph company, this reporter had learned the identity of Chapman's mysterious woman in black, featured by the tabloids as gangster'S mol, as a partner in the $2,000,0O0 mail rob- bery of Chapman and Dutch" Anderson in New York. A tabloid even had offered $1,000 for in- formation as to the woman's iden- tity.
 Now $1,OO0 is quite a sum to many a person. And, without at tempting to be too, too noble, a friend and friends job are worth more. So, for these twelve years, only few persons, possibly only one other and myself outside the relatives of the woman, in ques- ton, Chapman's lawyers, bound by ethics to keep secret such af- fairs, actually knew the identity of the woman who was refused admission to Wethersfield prison that sultry night in April when they hanged Chapman.
 No adventures, no gangster's mol, this woman. A plain house. wife, "the mysterious woman in black" turned out to be cousin of Chapman, married, the mother of three children, living on Long Island. Her name never entered the case.
 It seems to me, as the years pass, that newspapers discrimin- ate in the printing of news in- volving personalities as its pleases their editors, no matter how stub- born the claim that, i've print everything that is news"
 Granted that the hardship of being involved in legal matters becomes public property, still there remains nice matter of taste in how such themes should be presented. By improper and biased presentation of even minor items, newspapers can spread a fester where no fermentation of some sordid affair could have re- suited otherwise. Usually, such matters derive from the handling of these stories by persons un- qualified to wear the title, news paperman."
 For a neWSpaperman of the school which yet brides itself on being a profession, not a trade, is committed to the ideal of serving the community in which his news paper is published. His writings and his captions" or heads, his editorials, are designed to re- fleet public opinion and not to create distaSte for either the newspaper or the neighbors living down the street who, until they were smeared in their trouble, at least could work their difficulties out in private.
 A newspaper is no place for ex- precision of spite and bitterness. That newspapers engage in war fare among themselves is their own concern, at the least. But the attempt to work out prejudice against a person, or persons, by the use of ill-treated news" items, remains despicable, the lowly spewing of slime from a level where such refuse must have habitat.
 Too few persons one meets are "big" in the sense that they can Put Yourself in His Place." as Reade's great book immortalized the theme. A small person, whe- ther he be newspaperman or broker, public official or itinerant vendor of scandal has not the im- agination to want to grow, to take the effort to heart to be "big." It requires effort to grow beyond ones habituated stature, granted, and it is far easier to cavil. to sheer at learning rather than to apply oneself to enlightenment.
 Of this grist comes the apathy of unhappiness, in the ultimate. Failures who have never missed a meal, at the last will find grief as much as they can feel, but grief over their incoherence in the matt