Grey Owl Hushed

Even in the few countries where freedom of speech is still preserved radio broadcasts are officially or unofficially censored, often for interesting reasons. The dignified Government-controlled British Broadcasting Corp., during the great Coronation Naval review at Spithead last May, was shocked into cutting off the air an announcer who burbled "Damme! The fleet is all lit up!" (TIME, May 31). The offense which moved the censors on that occasion was obviously against sobriety. Last week BBC exercised its power of censorship again and Grey Owl, famed Ojibway of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, who a few days earlier had lectured in Buckingham Palace before Princesses Elizabeth & Margaret Rose, stalked out of BBC's studios rather than submit to censorship of his remarks.

The offense for which he was censored was not obscenity, irreverence, intoxication or treason. His proposed remarks were considered antisocial, an offense against an ancient British institution: Fox Hunting.

Grey Owl wanted to ask the children of Britain: "Will you promise never to take advantage of the weakness of another human being or animal? Never take the life of a weak and defenseless animal for your own amusement? Never join in a chase where foxes, stags, otters or hares are driven for miles & miles by crowds of dogs and men--and sometimes, I am afraid, by women and children? Is this fair play? Is this sport?''

Grey Owl, pride of the Province of Saskatchewan, is in point of fact not a native Canadian, not a born Ojibway, not a full-blooded Indian. Vague about his antecedents he believes he was born Archie McNeil, son of a Scottish father and an Apache mother from the U. S. After a childhood in the U. S. he was adopted into the Ojibway tribe in Ontario, given the name Wa-Sha-Quon-Asin, meaning Walks-in-Dark or Grey Owl.

During the War he served overseas with the Canadian troops, returned wounded in 1917 to become a forest ranger. In 1928 the sufferings of a wounded beaver turned him against trapping. He let his greying hair grow, braided it in pigtails, began to write children's nature stories which were eagerly bought by British magazines.

Married twice legally, five times according to Indian custom, Grey Owl travels with a French Canadian wife and a protector in the person of President Hugh Eayrs of Toronto's Macmillan Co., his publishers.* Mr. Eayrs's duty it is to keep the Grey Owl away from firewater and long-distance telephones, his chief extravagances, to allow him pocket money. From the Saskatchewan Government Grey Owl receives $75 a month as a warden, from lectures he receives up to $500 apiece, and he has a fortune estimated at $50,000. He has also had his portrait done by Britain's fashionable painter, Sir John Lavery.

After his snub by British Broadcasting Corp. last week Grey Owl announced that he was sailing immediately for the U. S. where 28 lectures await him.

"I deplore the official attitude," said he, fingering his braids, "but if I yielded to it I would be ashamed to face the animals and trees back home."

*Of Men of the Last Frontier, Pilgrims of the Wild, Sajo & the Beaver People, and Tales of ap Empty Cabin. All are published in the U. S. by Scribner and Dodd, Mead.

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