New Digester

In 1905 William Seaver Woods, minister's son, onetime editor of the Wesleyan Literary Monthly, became editor of the Literary Digest. In the same year Arthur Stimson Draper was graduated from New York University, where he had been campus correspondent for the New York Tribune. Mr. Draper put aside his engineer's degree, went downtown and to work as a Tribune cub. For the next 28 years Editor Woods and Newshawk Draper served their respective publications. Last week Editor Woods, 60, erudite, kindly, somewhat deaf, resigned from the Literary Digest, planned to travel, write books; and Arthur Draper, 50, quit his job as assistant editor of the Herald Tribune to take Editor Woods's place.

Three years after joining the Tribune Reporter Draper was night city editor. In another two years he was private secretary to the editor. He was a great favorite of the editor's mother, the late Mrs. Whitelaw Reid. As a foreign correspondent he won fame and was supremely happy. For ten years, 1915-25, he directed the Tribune's foreign bureaus from headquarters in London. He covered the War, the Peace, the Fascist march on Rome. He adopted and has retained the attitude and habits of an English gentleman. His neighbor and good friend was Ramsay MacDonald.

Home again on the Tribune (which had been merged with Munsey's Herald) Arthur Draper worked in turn as foreign editor, assistant to the editor, finally as assistant editor, a somewhat anomalous position which was abolished after he vacated it last week.

Quiet, reserved Assistant Editor Draper acted as a sort of brake on his paper's news organization. He abhors sensationalism almost as much as he hated the 18th Amendment and the shabbier aspects of professional sport. Another Draper taboo was profusion of "features" in the news columns. But it was he who negotiated with Calvin Coolidge to write a daily editorial for the Herald Tribune's front page.

Mr. Draper's writing is informed but rambling. In a burlesque edition of the Herald Tribune printed for Mr. Draper's 25th anniversary in service, the Draper editorial style was satirized by City Editor Stanley Walker, thus:

"WHAT CAN A MAN BELIEVE?

"Let us make our position perfectly clear. Misunderstandings often wreck tempers. The American attitude toward liquor is curious; it is wanted because it is forbidden. What New York needs is more golf courses. . . . Even more than international amity and the friendship of the English-speaking nations we should like to stress youth. . . . Games are very fine. And yet this is called the mechanical age. . . ."

Like many another Herald Tribuner Mr. Draper commutes from a home at Great Neck, L. I. (known to the staff as "Goitre") where he raises Irish terriers. At the (now defunct) Engineers' Club he played golf in the 80's. He keeps up his membership in London's Middlesex Golf Club. Last week he retired to his summer home at Chestertown, N. Y. in the Adirondacks. He wears tweedy clothes, habitually mumbles his speech around the stem of a well-caked briar pipe. At Blake's, the Herald Tribune saloon where he lunches with staff mates, he prefers Scotch whiskey. Late at night he is sometimes known to burst into song--always English ballads. A son, Arthur Gibb, attends Cambridge. A daughter. Dorothy Frances, is at Skidmore College.

Publisher Robert Joseph Cuddihy of the Literary Digest had long been looking around for a new editor when his eye lit upon conservative Mr. Draper. Reputed salary: $40,000 a year, much more than he was paid by the Herald Tribune. The conservative Digest announced "no change of policy.''

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