The Wilmington morning star., 1944-05-20
By WEsTBROOK PEGLER

NEW YORK-It is always embarrassing to
honest, ethical reporters to have to answer
President Roosevelt's charges of misrepresen-
tatlon and the suggestion that reporters write
TO their bosses orders, because we know that,
in at least one conspicuous case the President
knows what he is talking about. That is the
case of John Boettiger, formerly of the Chi.
cago Tribune, who married the Roosevelts'
daughter, Anna, and changed his politics when
ne changed employers. Mr.. Bottiger is over
seas now in the business of administering rnil-
ltary government in conquered countries, pre-
sumably on leave from MIR. Hearst's Seattle
Post-lntelligencer, of which he was editor, al
though l am not sure of his present status
there.
Undoubtedly when he was counting the girl
and visiting the White House in the evenings
back IN the early days of the new deal, the
President and John had many laugh over
the strange situation in which h y found
themselves. John would go to the Presidents
press conferences and ask him sly questions
and then go back to the office of the Chicago
Tribune and write pieces for the paper warn
ing the country that that man in the White
House and the new deal professariat, as Hugh
johnson called the brain trust, were plotting
the absolute ruin of this fair beloved land of
ours. Having done THO under his own sigma
ture, which was assurance to his readers that
he sincerely believed what he had writttn
he would shove back his chair and tear up
the street past the Treasury to visit the fam
lily winch he was about to join. It is doubtful
that, as early as that when most of the people
and the papers were honeymooning with the
new administration and Withholding judgment
on It's ultimate aims and apparent defects
any other individuals in the United States
wrote with such undertaking suspicion and bit
terness about the President anc his program
and the aims of the people about him. He
saw communism all over the place then and
warned the people, to the best of his ability
(Which is not to be laughed at for he is a
pretty good craftsman), that there was plot
foot to increase taxes on business to a point
at which the private operators would have
TO give up, and then to suck private business
into the federal bureaucracy under govern
ment management. You could make an ex-
cellent republican campaign book for the 1914
contest out of reprints of Johns warnings and
predictions, some of which have come true
published under his signature in those early
days. The TACT that John wrote such pieces
under his name is important because it means
either that he believed what he wrote and
scrapped all his beliefs in a snap of your
fingers when he left Robert R. Mccormick
to go to Mr.. Hearst; or that he was colorng
his stuff and writing contrary to his convic.
lions and with intent to deceive the public in
return for the salary which he was receiving
from Mccormick. lie was positively ferocious
against the nw deal and most of its person.
alities.
Now it is true that Mr.. Hearst is no new
dealer and l do not understand the arrange
ment by which John was enabled to be
dealer when ne went to Seattle Hearst
heo taken bad licking from the Newspaper
Guild and the straight fascist regime which
Dave Beck of the Transfers union had set
up in Seattle and the entire northwest He
may have yIelced to tie quaint Southern po1t!-
zeal dictum which say IF you CAM .ick 'e,.s,
join EN-. Anyway, afttr he married the
Presidents daughter AID took over me io,
If Seattle, Johr became a new dealer as
ardent now as he had been bitter short
TIME before, and his IS the most consplcuo1s
conversion of all. Meanwhile, during his edi-
torsh1p, Dave Backs fascist regime, which
was pure Mussolinian fascism as far as if
went, continued to thrive under the general
political auspices of t h administration To
which Beck's superior, Dan Tobin, is a priv
LEGGED adviser.
PRESIDENT Roosevelt could have mis- own SON.
l1i-laW IN mind in his occasional aspersions on
TIE Fl confessional Integrity of men who under
take to inform and advise the readcrs of
newspapers on matters affecting their 1ber-
ties. NO other journalist of the time has so
openly invited a suspicion that in opposing
the new deal he sang for his supper.
N9 IT. III Mt