Lesson for the Teacher

OWI was in hot water again. To tell the Russians more about the U.S., it had been getting out a handsome, slick-paper magazine, America Illustrated, which is printed in Russian and sold in Russia for 15 rubles (90 cents). Of the first issue. 20,000 copies were distributed; OWI got glowing reports from Vladivostok, Murmansk and Tiflis. Last week it got reports, not so glowing, from Omaha, Nebraska, and Wichita, Kansas.

Omaha and Wichita were sizzling over an article in the magazine entitled "Profile of America," which had somehow reached the Midwest in translation. Describing the prairie land, it said: "The people in it are almost exclusively farmers. . . . Industry is almost nonexistent. Raw materials and fabricated goods must be imported from other states. . . . The climate of the region is very dry and it sometimes happens that a drought lasts for ten years in a row. . . ."

From Omaha's Chamber of Commerce came a yowl of rage. "The OWI description implies that the Midwest is a drought-stricken, poverty-ridden territory. It gives no thought to the important contribution Nebraska has made to the winning of the war. Nor does it take into consideration the rapid industrial expansion of the Midwest in recent years."

In Wichita, an airplane-manufacturing center, the Chamber of Commerce also saw red. Kansas' Representative Cliff Hope complained bitterly to OWI's Elmer Davis about his "presumably high-priced author." Said Hope: a fifth-grader would know better.

Elmer Davis, who comes from Indiana and does know better, admitted that the article was badly done (by a White Russian writer he refused to name) and "presented an unfair and inaccurate picture." Then he set about correcting the mistake. For use in the Russian schools, OWI prepared a map of the U.S. showing the vast resources of the prairie states (with Wichita plainly marked as an airplane-manufacturing center). In a forthcoming issue of America Illustrated there would be a new article on the Midwest--by a new author. The writer of the offending paragraphs had been fired.

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