The Wilmington Morning Star

Inside Washington
By CHARLES P. STEWART

Swapping of newspapermen between the United States and Latin America is what we both need for the development of profitable as well as pleasant intercontinental relations both now and after the war.

Our big news gathering and disseminating associations handle their job efficiently, so far as concerns the stuff that journalists call spot news. These concerns wouldn't welcome any governmental butting in, and it wouldn't serve a desirable end.

Rather, more intimate chattiness is what is required.

Vice President Wallace's tour of our neighbors' capitals has been exactly the correct thing. Its only drawback is that, unavoidably, it has had to be too hurried. Henry doubtless has his adverse critics at home, but his temperament was made to order for our western hemispherical Latins. However, he ought to be assigned to circulate permanently among them and keep them lined up pro-Yankee-ly.

The vice president, incidentally, is a newspaperman. Maybe that is one of the reasons why he is so eccentric. It is immaterial, though, because, for the present, he can't be spared from here long.

There are some more Yankee newspapermen journeying southward and the Latins are sending some few of their craftsmen here.

It is a gratifying tendency, but it ought to be kept up.

We made a corking good start on Pan-American news unity in the era of World War No. 1.

We then called our organization the Committee on Public Information-presently compacted into COMPUB, just as the Office of War Information today is contracted to OWI.

George Creel progressed a darned sight more harmoniously with the COMPUB than has been the case with Director Elmer Davis of the OWI.

That is, Elmer's had a lot of friction; George had none to speak of.

For one thing, George is of a blander temperament than Elmer. The latter is decidedly pugnacious when provoked. He seems to enjoy controversy. George dodged it all he could and avoided calling names even when compelled to express himself in the face of criticism.

Conditions were different, too.

Creel's COMPUB started from scratch. No enemies were laying for it in advance. Lowell Mellett had been running the government's publicity ahead of Elmer's OWI and part of the criticism of Elmer's regime is a slo-over from Lowell's administration.

Politics didn't enter into George's operations, either.

Nobody ever accused him of plugging for an additional presidential term. His information bureau unquestionably was exactly what it purported to be-a convenient source of war news, and a reliable one. And unquestionably it tried to be so.

During most of the period of our participation in World War No. 1, I ran the COMPUB service, as locally territorial editor for the River Plate Republics, though the fact is that my area covered a considerable wider range than that, extending all the way up and down the South American east coast, from Patagonia up to, or somewhat beyond, the equator, and back into the interior as far as Chile.

Now, what we should have done was to keep that service going following the war's end.

It should have been maintained, rather for publicity-promotion than for news-distributing purposes, for our organization was liked, and we simply pinched it out. Of course that skwushed our news influence.

The nub is, our requirement is for a good bit of intelligent propaganda work, consistently kept up, to solidify this hemisphere. Maybe the Rockefeller inter-American bureau will accomplish the stunt, but it would have been a generation sooner with it if George Creel's work had been kept up to date, since the end of the last opportunity.