And I Quote

By R. J. HICKS

THERE is no doubt that the presentday reporter is a serious fellow who declines to let a single peradventure creep into the grim business of newsgathering. Anyone who has watched the worrying over detail that accompanies a running story as it comes in over the ticker knows this.

Take the dickerings between Presidential advisers and labor leaders at the White House. “On leaving the White House, John L. Lewis said he had no comment,” says a bulletin. Good. A few minutes later there comes an amplification. “As he left the White House, after his latest talk with Labor Secretary Lewis B. Schwellenbach, John L. Lewis told reporters, ‘I have no comment.’” Again good.

But we are by no means done yet. A few minutes later: “White House Press Secretary Charles G. Ross told reporters, following the departure of John L. Lewis, that there would be no statement forthcoming immediately on the result of the latest talks.”

And again, after some minutes: “Queried concerning his statement that there would be no statement [by the President] ‘immediately,’ Charles G. Ross, White House press aide, explained that there would be no further statement ‘at this time.’”

Now there must be a reason for this, and I think I see what it is. It can only mean that recorded history, up till now, has been disfigured by a series of rather hideous misunderstandings. The reporters hitherto have been careless, slapdash fellows. They have half heard somebody say something — Mazarin, for example, or General Stonewall Jacksonand, without stopping to check up, or get him to repeat it several times, they have charged off and rushed the whole thing into print.

And once a thing is printed it is virtually impossible ever to catch it up with the accurate original. Historical personages, therefore, have preferred to shrug and let it go, determining philosophically to live up to what has been put into their mouths. Kidding in public is highly dangerous. So is irony. The lightly whimsical (unless it is done by someone like’ Shaw, who is known to every reporter as having been consistently whimsical for the past half century) is fraught with disaster.

Let us examine what passes for the record.

It is not generally known that the remark which helped to lose Edward VIII his throne was uttered apropos a report which he had been reading on the vanishing schools of sperm whales. The report pointed out, justly enough, that unless drastic action were taken by British authorities, the whales might become extinct.

“Hmm,” said King Edward, musingly, “something must be done for whales.”

This was picked up by triggerhappy reporters during Edward’s inspection of a Welsh colliery. They filed the story but omitted the h. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin read it in the Times next morning, spluttered over his Lapsang suchong, decided it was unconstitutional, and from that moment the die was cast.

You recall the delightful episode which graced the eighteenth-century Battle of Fontenoy. The British and French Armies were drawn up, facing each other and ready to start. A French officer approached the British lines, swept off his hat, and remarked (according to the history books): “Que Messieurs les Anglais tirent les premiers! — May the English gentlemen shoot first.” Ever since, people have sighed and said those were the days of chivalry and so forth.

Actually it was a bit differently intended. The French officer had been instructed by his commander to try to bluff the British into calling the whole thing off and to get them to leave the field to the French without a shot fired.

He therefore called out, “Que Messieurs les Anglais se retirent les premiers! — Perhaps you boys would like to retire the first.”

The British officer nearest at hand was befogged. “What’s the frog babbling about?” he inquired testily.

A near-by combat correspondent undertook to help out. “He says the English can shoot first.”

No one could have been more taken aback than the French when the grinning British promptly whipped their muskets to their shoulders and let fly.

The scene is now the little French cemetery of Piepus (literal translation: Stingflea). The date: July 4, 1917. Several hundred top-hatted French notables are watching Major General John J. Pershing as he staggers forward under the weight of a vast wreath. “Bravo!” they murmur. “Ah, e’est bien émotionnant! — Ah, if is well emotional ing.” Fearful lest his chief stumble over the floral tribute, Colonel Charles E. Stanton steps smartly forward to lend a hand. Pershing is temporarily unsighted by the flowers he carries. He points vaguely to a tomb and whispers hoarsely, “Lafayette?” (It is in fact the last resting place of a wine merchant named L’Oiseau.) Stanton grabs Pershing’s elbow and swings him sharp left. “Here we are,” he replies reassuringly.

Later, over their cognacs, the war correspondents tried to get their stories straight. They finally agreed on the form of the words, but, not being so tidy as the present generation of newsmen, the order was slightly changed and the attribution was shaky. To this day, the stirring “ Lafayette, we are here!” is variously ascribed to Stanton and to Pershing.

Horace Greeley, as is fairly well known, had a pleasing lisp. (Had he lived in a later epoch he would have reported Coolidge’s classic bulletin as “I do not chwoose to wun.”

When a tiresomely persistent youth, who had become rather tipsy at a party, kept pestering him for advice as to his future, the kindly Greeley gestured towards a couch and replied, “Go west, young man.”

It was only the departure of the youth for Oregon the next day (where he did only moderately well as a tallow salesman, but later married a Canadian girl of means) that persuaded the astonished Greeley to accept the version that has been handed down by the society reporters covering the party.

The scene: The U. S. flagship on Lake Erie. The date: September 10, 1813. Commodore Oliver Perry takes a last look at the British hulks strewn around and goes to his cabin. “I suppose I must make a signal to Harrison now,” he says, scowling. “I’m so tired I could sleep for a week. This paper work is an infernal bore.” He turns to his Personal Assistant. “All right, Brownlow. To General William Henry Harrison, General in Command — ” His voice trails away. His eyelids droop. It had been a long day. “Yes, sir?” says Brownlow, quill poised. “Eh?” says Perry, starting awake. “Oh, yes. Well, now, let’s see. Old Harrison always likes everything explained from the beginning. So let’s say —” Begins: “We have met the enemy and they —” His voice dies again. He yawns cavernously. Brownlow again, quill poised: “Yes, sir.'” Perry (yawning): “Ah Ah-h-h — Ah-h-h—” His head falls forward. He snores.

Brownlow: “Commodore! The message is incomplete!” A renewed snore is his only response. Brownlow studies Perry for a moment; then with a shrug he dashes some sand onto his parchment, gets up, and leaves the cabin. Outside, a group of war correspondents assigned to the Navy await him. A clamor rises.

“Okay, Brownlow, how about it?” “Come, Brownlow, even with the swiftest of pigeons my week-after-next deadline is in grave jeopardy.” “We beg of you, do not tarry.”

“But, boys,” protests Brownlow, “there’s no story.” A chorus of protests. “No, but see for yourselves. The Commodore said, ‘We have met the enemy and they—’ See? That’s absolutely all that is written down here.”

The correspondents study the parchment angrily and disbelievingly for a moment. “What else did he say?” one asks menacingly.

“Nothing,” says Brownlow. “Nothing but a couple of Ah’s.”

“What do you mean, a couple of Ah’s? Now quit holding out on us, Brownlow, or our papers will have some pretty nasty comments to make on Navy public relations in their Michaelmas editorials. Just tell us exactly what he said.”

Brownlow (whining): “As heaven is my witness, fellows, the Commodore said, ‘We have met the enemy and they — Ah — Ah —’ ”

A reporter: “Why, you dope, you didn’t understand. What the Commodore must have meant to say was —”

And that is why General Harrison, reading the dispatch later, raised his eyebrows and remarked, “I always knew Perry was an efficient officer, but I had not realized that he possessed into the bargain a terse phrase-making ability. Unless I miss my bet, this may well become historically more famous than the encounter itself.”

And that, also, is why we must be patient when it seems on occasion that the modern reporter is overdoing the caution and the double-checking. The next time you read that when a White House aide said that he had no information on the Finnish envoy’s visit, what he really meant, according to a later check, was that he did not know anything about the visit of the Finnish envoy, do not be impatient, but spare a moment, rather, to pay mental tribute to a fine body of men who are determined to sift the facts and to ensure that history from this time forward will suffer from no taint of that perversion which has dogged it in the past.