Newshawks, Seals

To cover the opening game of the World Series last week some 350 working newspapermen were actively engaged at Detroit's Navin Field. That night the momentous doings between the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago Cubs were swept from the nation's headlines to make way for War. In the heart of Ethiopia, in a city populated by 70,000 blackamoors, some 68 of the world's crack newsmen were feverishly at work reporting the biggest story since Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was snatched from his crib in Hopewell.

Most of them were newspaper career-men, highly competent, bent solely on getting the news, getting it right, getting it first. Also conspicuously on hand was an aggregation of what newspapermen call Trained Seals-cityroom slang for big-time correspondents who command huge salaries, get their names in headlines, seek color rather than fact.

Probably no news story ever presented greater handicaps. Problem One was to get the news. Problem Two was to get it out. Last week these problems had both newshawks and Trained Seals almost licked.

Problem One: No. 1 Ethiopian newspaperman is Emperor Haile Selassie, editor-in-chief of the country's only paper. Because he works 20 hours a day. Conquering Lion of Judah is almost inaccessible to the Press. Occasional handouts from his official press bureau, written in French, contain scant news. Last week, for their chief source of information, correspondents had to resort to private "pipe-lines." Only thus, through expensive bribes, could they track down the hundreds of rumors which flashed daily through the streets of Addis Ababa.

Typical early headlines of 10.000 DEAD, based on official Ethiopian handouts, were soon proved false. "Official" reports of 1,700 killed at Aduwa were later corrected to 56 killed.

Chief news source from the Italian side is General Staff Headquarters at Asmara, Eritrea. Last week Italian troop movements from the north were well covered, but no U. S. correspondent ventured into the malarial jungles through which Italian armies were closing in on Ethiopia from the south and east.

Problem Two: Even more complicated than newsgathering was the problem of communications. The Ethiopian Government's wireless station at Addis Ababa is open twelve hours weekdays, five hours Sunday. To get press messages through to London took one to four hours at first, later as much as 48 hours. Correspondents were limited to 200 words a day; the rate was boosted from 26-c- a word to 68-c-. Should the wireless station be destroyed by Italian bombers, correspondents can use the telegraph line which follows the country's only railroad into French Somaliland. Should both wireless and telegraph be destroyed, dispatches can be sent by runners to Gallabat, in the Sudan, or by chartered plane to the British cable station at Khartoum, 500 mi. from Addis Ababa.

Dispatches from Italian GHQ go by Government wireless to Rome, are subject to rigid censorship at both ends. Thus, while the reporters on the Italian side had plenty of news, censorship kept much of it bottled up. Reporters on the Ethiopian side faced an opposite situation. They had no censorship problem, but they also had practically no news. At Addis Ababa most of the reporters are crowded into the barnlike Imperial Hotel. Nights are so cold, sleeping bags are indispensable. Best description of life in Addis Ababa was sent last week by the New York Herald Tribune's Linton Wells. Excerpt:

"Lack of information, rumors in the bazaars, ineptitude, bribery; ram, lamb, sheep, mutton or goat twice a day; Somerset Maugham's rains, almost freezing temperature; fleas, lice, dirt; panhandling natives, lepers; a disquieting quietude; camels with halitosis, refractory mules, screaming hyenas, geese which hiss and nip at one's legs, then chortle. . . ."

As the AP's James Mills put it: "This is a crazy place. If we emerge with our sanity we'll be lucky."

Better off were the correspondents with the Italian army in Eritrea. They were given special provisions, treated as officers without rank. They ate at the officers' mess, billeted with the troops, were furnished transportation by motor, horse, mules. Toughest assignment was handed UNIPressman Herbert R. Ekins. Newshawk Ekins, who covered the Manchurian War in a battered Ford, was last week riding muleback with the Ethiopian army in the East. By means of courier to the wire-less station at Harar, he reported that he was full of quinine, covered with flea bites, that Ethiopian soldiers all around him were catching malaria.

Scoop of the week was scored by Webb Miller, United Press War Correspondent No. i, who got his news training in Chicago, remembers Mussolini as a fellow reporter at the Cannes Conference in 1921. Last week Newshawk Miller witnessed the start of the invasion of Ethiopia from the mountain-top observation post of skinny, goat-bearded General de Bono, sent an exclusive dispatch by wireless from Asmara (see p. 19). The message reached Rome before official dispatches, was relayed to London by telephone, thence by cable to New York and all U. P. wires.

First correspondent in Ethiopia, and first to die, was the Chicago Tribune's able Wilfred Courtenay ("Will") Barber, 31, who reached the country in June, sickened month ago in the "yellow hell" of Ogaden. Last week he died of tertian malaria, nephritis and influenza, was buried on a hilltop in Addis Ababa.

Dean of correspondents covering the war is high-strung, sagacious Karl von Wiegand of Universal Service, who postponed writing his memoirs to go to Ethiopia. Assisting him is Wynant Davis Hubbard, onetime (1919-20) Harvard tackle, who in 35 years has been a miner, missionary, cartographer, plumber, dentist, undertaker, explorer, geologist, big-game hunter, animal psychologist, author, cineman, scientist.

No. 1 Trained Seal is bluff, peacocky Floyd Phillips Gibbons, 48, whom Vanity Fair once nominated for Oblivion "because in 25 years of public battening on war he has always foregone the opportunity to mould public opinion toward peace, preferring to see war as a 'show'; because he is a professional hero, patriot and jingoist; because he recently continued his headline hunting at Shanghai, where he again exploited human tragedy." Patriot Gibbons, who lost an eye at Chateau-Thierry, is covering the Italian Army in the north for International News Service. It is his fifth war. He still begins his dispatches with "Hello, Everybody!" Last week he preserved his status as a Great Seal by using the word "I" at the rate of five times per sentence.

No. 2 Seal is an astringent, red-headed Texan, Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker. Of him Alexander Woollcott once wrote: "Not since I first met Richard Harding Davis five-and-twenty years ago have I myself encountered any journalist whose panache so completely fitted in with my slightly romantic notions about the profession." Son of a methodist clergyman, Newshawk Knickerbocker used to drive a milkwagon in Austin, Tex. He sold his route to study psychiatry in New York, studied journalism instead, conducted a vice crusade for the Newark Ledger, served briefly as head of the Department of Journalism at Southern Methodist University. While studying psychiatry in Berlin he introduced astringent, red-headed Sinclair Lewis to Correspondent Dorothy Thompson, got her job when Lewis married her. For his Berlin correspondence he won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize, is presently covering Addis Ababa for Hearst's INS. Last week the psychiatric eye of Newshawk Knickerbocker observed "people . . . laughing, hooting, singing-half mad . . . women weep and seek to quiet their nerves, overwrought by months of waiting for war."

Famed, but not as a newshawk, is Laurence Stallingst who accompanied the Ethiopian troops near Harar on behalf of North American Newspaper Alliance, the New York Times and Fox Movietone News. A captain of Marines in the last War, Stallings lost a leg in action, gained enough material for a famed book (Plumes}, a famed play (What Price Glory?), a famed cinema (The Big Parade}, a famed collection of photographs (The First World War). Although his newspaper experience to date has been largely confined to book reviewing, Author Stallings last week made a notable coup by discovering that Haile Selassie's chief-of-staff on the southern front was-none other than Wehib Pasha, exiled Turk, self-styled "Hero of Gallipoli," who predicted that Stallings would catch a fever (see p. 21).

Linton Wells (Herald Tribune) has been around the world nine times, visited every country on earth but five. He holds twelve foreign decorations, has commissions as a Chinese lieutenant, a Mexican major, a colonel in the Nicaraguan Air Force. With him in Ethiopia was his wife, brave Aviatrix Fay Gillis, who last week was reported on her way alone towards the Ethiopian troops near Harar.

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