Booby-Trapped?

Gaunt old William Randolph Hearst, who always hankered to be or make a U.S. President, went out for one last try. Last week, on the front pages of Hearst papers throughout the land, a three-column editorial proclaimed The Man of the Hour: General Douglas MacArthur.

A legion of Hearstlings dredged the morgues for picture-page art. In Albany, a squad of Times-Union reporters was sent out to round up MacArthur votes and quotes, under stern orders not to take no for an answer. (At week's end, one reporter quit in disgust.) In Washington, MacArthur campaign offices were opened right "next to the Republican National Committee" with some of the black type usually reserved for ax-murderers.

In many a Hearst town, legmen sought out and gave reams of space to obscure insurance men and lawyers who had founded unobtrusive "Mac-for-President" clubs months ago. Boston's Mayor Curley, glad to do a favor for the Record and the American, endorsed MacArthur -- as a Democratic candidate. When opposition newsmen called him to check it, Curley laughed that he'd been "just kidding with the reporters." On second thought he said, "No, let the statement stand."

Here & there, the trained seals were dragging their flippers. A Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter refused to let his byline be put on his MacArthur story. On the Los Angeles Examiner, a wag cracked : "MacArthur will wade ashore at San Simeon when he comes home."

The rest of the U.S. press showed no hurry to get on the bandwagon. And Editor Edward T. Leech of the Scripps-Howard Pittsburgh Press felt downright sorry for the Man of the Hour.

"It looks as if General Douglas MacArthur has been booby-trapped," Leech mourned in an editorial. "For it is unbelievable that he deliberately would have sought the endorsement which . . . Hearst suddenly dropped down on him. . . . He's too smart to ask for a political kiss of death. . . . Some weird things have happened already in the campaign . . . but nobody else has suffered so extreme an embarrassment as that of becoming 'the Hearst candidate.' "

General MacArthur had a new press-agent last week, and Tokyo correspondents hoped for a new deal on news. Ex-General Frayne Baker, blamed by the reporters for much of the censorship trouble they had encountered in covering the Occupation (TIME, Feb. 2 et seq.), was transferred. His replacement was Colonel Marion P. Echols, 48, onetime P.R.O. at West Point.

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