The Daily Alaska Empire

SAW EIGHT DAYS AHEAD

Some of the newspaper columnists who pride themselves on being able to predict the turn of world and national events before they happen had to take a back seat last month to the remarkable prediction of a fellow who doesn't write a column, but who is a superior type of newsman.

The prognosticator, in this case, was Glenn Babb, day cable editor of the Associated Press bureau in New York.

On October 8, he predicted the fall of the Japanese cabinet of Premier Kenoye. On October 16, the Kenoye cabinet folded up and on October 17 the new military cabinet under Premier Tojo was formed, a move which Babb had also anticipated in his article on October 8.

"How do they do it?" we always want to ask, when one of these journalistic predictions proves true.

Babb in this instance, said he was making his prediction on 'trustworthy advices' from the Eastern corner of the world. Here's a thumbnail sketch of his journalistic background:

Babb was graduated from the University of Missouri in 1913, spent brief periods on the staffs of the St. Joseph, Missouri, Gazette, and the New Bedford, Massachusetts, Standard, then went to Tokyo in 1915 as a reporter for the Japan Advertiser.

He took two years off to serve in the A.E.F., in 1917-19, including a year in France. Early in 1920 he returned to the Japan Advertiser, where he served as news editor and managing editor until 1922. After a few months of free-lance writing in China, he returned to Japan and in January, 1924, became acting chief of the Associated Press Tokyo bureau. In March, 1925, he joined the New York AP staff and was transferred to San Francisco as cable editor early in 1926.

In August, 1928, Babb returned to the Orient, as chief of the Tokyo bureau. During the Manchurian conquest, he went to the battlefields for the AP, then returned to head the Tokyo bureau in 1932, where he remained until he was transferred to his present job in New York the end of 1936.

All the big men of the Orient have been personal acquaintances of Babb's during the past 25 years. Many of them are close friends with whom he has kept up correspondence. Is it any wonder, then, that a newsman with that much background would be eligible for Oriental tips?