Vancouver Coup

Just above the northwest corner of the U. S., at an editorial desk from which he peers across the Pacific into the Orient, across North America at Europe, and across the years into the Future, an earnest, tireless idealist named Robert James Cromie publishes the Vancouver Sun, dominant daily of western Canada. Publisher Cromie is even more widely known than his newspaper. As a reporter, he takes the world for his beat, traveling all over it frequently, meeting and observing its famed persons and places. When he returns home he writes editorials for his paper, ambitious in conception, abounding in hope and prophecy, eloquent in a style not unlike that of grandiose Publisher Hearst (whom he despises). To his friends in the wide world for which he has made Vancouver his lookout station he often mails copies of his writings-- urging monetization of silver for a great new trade with the East; calling for magnanimous U. S. reduction of War Debts; etc. etc.

Last week Publisher Cromie gloried in a great coup. On May 11 he had mailed out copies of an editorial entitled "World Rulership Swings West," in which he said: "When President Roosevelt issued invitations to his White House Party two weeks ago, there was no question then as to who was running the world; and there was no question as to where world headquarters is, and probably will be for some time. ... If the world rejects Roosevelt leadership it will stay exactly where it is today, and humanity will continue to suffer and retrogress. If the world accepts the new leadership of United States, it will be a new world indeed. . . ."

Only five days later President Roosevelt addressed his Disarmament Message to the rulers of 54 nations (TIME, May 22). Here indeed, felt Publisher Cromie, was World Rulership swinging West. Exulted he: "The President's world message proves it! . . . One hour after the message went out to the Powers, the world was scrambled into a unit that shall never again unscramble. One hour after that message left the White House, man looks out on a new kind of world, one that will have to be handled as a unit and for some considerable time, from Washington . . . because Europe's thought is militant and politic. North America's thought is social and economic and that's what the world needs and wants."

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