Mr. Knickerbocker & Mr. Sheean

Four correspondents and a cameraman --weary after many a sleepless night, nerve-racked from continual bombardment --last week boarded an Atlantic Clipper at Lisbon, returned to the U. S. from the wars. They were: the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Ray Sprigle, whose report on Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black's onetime Ku Klux Klan connections won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1938; Lloyd Allan Lehrbas of Associated Press, one of a lucky handful of newsmen who happened to be in Poland last year when Adolf Hitler's army moved in with them; Cineman Arthur Menken, who filmed the desolation left by Russian bombers in Finland, the swarms of German raiders flying over Britain; Vincent Sheean, prematurely greying veteran of the Riff rebellion, Spain's Civil War, the Nazi occupation of Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, who covered the Battle of Britain for North American Newspaper Alliance; carrot-thatched, bespectacled little Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker, roving war correspondent for Hearst's International News Service, who came home last winter long enough to deliver 88 lectures telling people that the odds favored a German victory and the U. S. ought to help the Allies.

In the Fifth Avenue office of Lecture Impresario William Colston Leigh next morning Newspapermen Knickerbocker and Sheean turned the tables on their own profession: granted an interview to the press. Like visiting diplomats (Sheean this week starts a ten-week lecture tour, Knickerbocker next week starts a four-month tour), they sat behind Mr. Leigh's massive desk and answered questions, while a dozen reporters leaned against the walnut-paneled walls.

Sheean told of two invasion alarms (both covered up by British censorship) that were sounded in Britain, one along the English Channel coast after midnight on Aug. 25, the other in the north on Sept. 7.

Said Sheean: "I was told that the fog rolling in over the beach was synthetic. I don't know whose fog it was--whether the Germans were trying it out or the British were practicing."

Said Knickerbocker: "We should go into war today--as soon as possible. The longer we wait the more chance we give the three gangster enemies of America to organize their attack upon us. ... If the British hold out until next spring and we aren't going to back them, they will say in effect: 'What's the use of going on? Why not make a deal with Germany at the expense of the U. S.?' "

A reporter: "Who is going to win the war?"

Sheean: "Nobody."

Knickerbocker: "We will, if we go into it at once. . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.