The Wilmington morning star., 1946-10-02
As Pegler Sees 1t
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLEE
Copyright, 1916, by King Features Syndicate
Inc,1

NEW YORK, Oct. line crop u
photo-art, dramatizing the personal problem
of Individual veterans who pitch camp WIN
their loved ones in pup-tents. jalopies ana
c1lverts is reminiscent of 1919, as reference
to the newspaper morgues will show. Ihese
TOUCHING scenes include picket-signs protest
ing against the ingratitude of the government
toward its heroes, and glimpses OF diapers
Usually, the baby leads the cast.
Why do we do such things in our BUSINESS
anyway?
We have had long experience with the
planted story and the self-synpathlzlng 1aKer
but still we pounce on this cheesecake Ike a
chicken on a June bug.
God knows the housing situation is desper-
ate, but cn1y a few specimens with an exag-
gerated appetite for pity ard publicity take
advantage of our journalistic weakness for
the sort OF story that we call HI or human
interest, and we never learn.
If were on the desk when a reporter came
back to tell me that the poor fellow living in
a flour-barrel in the park with his Olfe and
infant had spent three years in his country's
service, l would send him back to learn how
much time he had spent in the guardhouse
and what his sergeant or lieutenant had to
say. If he happened to be a former officer,
1 would Gig around FOR some reference on
his character and conduct. Outstanding men
DOM use their wives and babies to rattle tin
cups.
If a story. with pictures, came over my
desk about a captain or lieutenant toting bags
as a bellacp or a bomber pilot driving a cab,
1 would give it the so-What test. What of it?
Maybe he never had any experience in a
working job before the war and, anyway,
what is wrong with such jobso
What should the fellow be doing? Debating
to a pretty stenographer in q big office con-
corning important matters that he kneWs no
thing about, perhaps?
For several years I have been casually
acquainted with a bum, born and confirmed,
who was caught in the draft, served a few
months in camp in the United States, and
was discharged, with a disability rating, OF
course, which makes him a casualty on pen
sion for life. A panhandler by trade, his reg
ular touch is women who seem prosperous,
and he can weep at will. A policeman dis
covered that our friend held regular meetings
with two ladies, who appear to be prostitutes
and seem to be keeping him, and spends some
of his time hanging around handbooks. He
also seems to have cashed some government
checks issued to other veterans, although that
phase is still being investigated. He would
look conVlncingly sad in a picture showing
him curled up on a park bench and we are
just fools enough to oblige him.
We don't check far enough. Any bum can
sing a sad song about a h%eartless landlord
who dispcssessed him and his wife and their
infant and their little belongings. But what
would the landlord say? He might say they
were a pair of shittless tramps who sleep all
day and that he won't take a job and, if he
should take one, probably would steal the
stock and fixtures. They might be filthy, too.
and not quite housebroken.
Another phase of the same subject ~ e,re-
less reporting and editing concerns the absurd
publicity that has been devoted to three ex-
marines, Barney Ross, the former welter-
weight champion fighter, Brig Gen. Evans
Carlson and Jimmy Roosevelt.
Many other marines did more fighting in
the war whose names are absolutely unknown
their own immediate little outfits. but.
to hear us tell it, you might think these three
alone licked the Japs.
When Ross came back to HOLLYWOOD - and
why to Hollywood, by the way?-After a few
weeks at Guadalcanal, he was given a heroic
OF colossal dimensions while other
marines stayed on with no emotional colunists
TO glamor1ze them. He recently appeared in
a new role. the Wretched victim of narcotic
who had caught the drug habit from
hospital corps men while he was being treat
ed for malaria.
Narcotics that is a new medication for
malaria.
But we didn't question the story.
moreover, Ross could have put himself in
the way OF treatment quietly BY applying to
the Navy, instead OF appealing for %confine-
ment in a penal institution for civilians. and
counting notoriety.
General Carlson, a left-Wirser in his poll
teal tendencies, was one of the few. if not
the only American commanding officer, whose
OUTFIT was called in his own personal name.
since the Civil war when that sort Of ostenta-
tion was common. Other marines, without
the knack and the claque, remain unknown
to all but their own comrades and their
families and friends. Jimmy Roosevelt served
with hlm and somehow vas promoted to the
rank OF colonel even before Carlson, his COM
mandlng officer. Jimmy is now chairman of
the California Democratic State Central Com.
mlttee ana was, until his election to that Of
nee a paio propaganda Of the the so-called
DIVISION o. arts and sciences of the political
action front, Haunting his old mans mantle.
mus the marine CORPS is dragged into politics.
IL would be difficult to name, offhand. three
other individual marines as conspicuous. bv
reason 81 a steady program of publicity
amounting to propaganda, as Ross, Carlson
and Roosevelt. e.
Other patriots have somehow MANAGED IN
keep this scrt of thing under control. Admiral
husband =. Kimmel is one. Disgraced, sacri-
.lced by a brutal kangaroo court and denied a
lair trial in the Pearl Harbor case, he and
YRS. klmrlel absolutely forbade everyone au-
thor1zed to speak for the admiral and all their
friends ever to mention, in connection with