Shall I Have This Baby?

Said the Chicago Herarld-American's energetic Executive Editor John A. Malloy: "We are going to raise our price from 3-c- to 4-c- and we wanted to find something to help us over the bump. We were particularly interested in improving our circulation among young women--they're pretty important these days. We hadn't had anything like a lovelorn column since Beatrice Fairfax petered out about a year ago. So. . . ."

So the Herald-American's "War Romance Clinic" was born. Editor Malloy launched it amid typical Hearst ballyhoo; the wife of Chicago's Mayor Edward Kelly was persuaded to say for publication, "What a boon it will be . . ."; Herald-American delivery trucks had their sides plastered with promotion ads that screamed, "Soldier, You're Breaking My Heart!"

Sample case histories from the column: "I am 19. ... I foolishly trusted a man whom I met at a picnic. We talked of marriage. Later I found he was married. ... I no longer care for him. But what am I to do about our child? Added to that problem I have met a sailor from Boston who has fallen in love with me. . . . .Shall I have this baby and say nothing to the sailor? He does not know.

". . . Have your baby. . . . Do not mention your condition to the sailor. . . ."

". . . . My husband was classified in 1-A and, of course, was called . . . . All our friends are married . . . and kept asking this one man to be my escort [at parties ]. . . . I did not mind his company . . . . Now I yearn for it . . . . I am beside myself . . . . We are both in love, What am I do do?"

". . . . Tell him . . . if he is half the man your husband is he will not tempt you further."

"My daughter is in a pitiable condition. She is not yet 18 and about to give birth to an illegitimate child. The father is a married man who is in the service. He took my daughter to a tavern and gave her the first drink she ever had . . ."

". . . You can take action against this innkeeper. . . . "

"Is there any adequate substitute for silk stockings?. . ."

"A lady named Pavlichenko stood up in boots to her knees and slew 309 Germans. There were no comments from her fellow soldiers as to how her legs looked."

These little gems of solace and advice are produced by six Chicagoans of prominence whom Editor Malloy talked into counseling the trouble-smitten. The advisers: Judges Joseph Sabath and Justin F. McCarthy; Debutante Judy Waller; University of Chicago Coed Beata Mueller; Jessie Binford, "mother" of Chicago's Juvenile Court; and Mrs. Leo P. Cummings, mother of eleven. To do the anonymous but necessary paper work, Editor Malloy transplanted from his woman's page kindly little Mary Dougherty, a veteran of newspapering who once ran her own feature syndicate.

A month and a half old, the "Clinic" is thriving, evidence that intimate goo about other people's troubles is a salable product in war as in peace.

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