"Pure Fiction"

If an old New England town-crier cried false reports, he would be placed in a ducking stool, soused again and again to the applause of those whom he had gulled. Last week many a person in Manhattan chuckled at the thought that perhaps Town Crier Alexander (''The Great") Woollcott deserved to have his pudgy body tied to the end of some modern ducking stool and to be plunged screaming into some terrifying bath. For either Crier Woollcott had broken all rules of good town-crying and good reporting, or John Joseph Pershing had worse than weaseled.

Of all Manhattan dramatic critics Crier Woollcott was once the most conspicuous if not the most famed. A certain peculiarity of gait and of voice marked him as he minced in lobbies between acts, shrilly giving his views.

Now writing for the New Yorker, Manhattan sophistisheet, Mr. Woollcott also speaks over radio station WOR, calling himself the "Town Crier."

Last week in a voice that quivered from excitement, Crier Woollcott told his hearers that he had ''a news beat." He told that General John Joseph Pershing, visiting Financier Bernard Mannes Baruch on his Scotland estate, had gone grouse shooting. This in itself was not news; generals are expected to like to pull triggers now and then. The news was that General Pershing had been so careless as to hit in the face Supreme Court Justice Richard Paul Lydon instead of a grouse.

Newsmen, scarcely believing Cracker-shot Pershing could commit such an error, tried to verify the Woollcott beat. From Paris, the general was quoted as saying: "There is absolutely nothing to it." In Manhattan Financier Baruch insisted: "It is pure fiction. I ought to know."

Confronted by these statements, Crier Woollcott did not seem to care that reputation was at stake. Petulantly he rasped : "It happened. I should not have told the story, except that I think anyone who shoots at birds, even though he's a general, ought to be told one."

Again General Pershing was queried. This time he seemed not so sure. "Why should I be obliged to say . . ." said he. It appeared that Crier Woollcott, his reputation safe, deserved no ducking.