Loud Repore

As a new syndicated columnist in the Washington Times-Herald, eager Tristram Coffin* wanted to start off with a bang. One day last week, the former CBS correspondent came out with the loudest report he could think of: that Harry Truman might go to Moscow. "A relaxed, feet-on-the-chair session with Joseph Stalin is part of the program," wrote Coffin.

"No hard and fast decision has been made yet ... But if the Russian dictator won't budge from the Kremlin, Mr. Truman . . . may go there himself."

Overnight, Columnist Coffin's shot in the dark was heard around the world. Diplomats in Paris talked it up. The Vatican's Osservatore Romano came out strongly for a meeting between Harry and Joe. Moscow papers gave a significantly big play to a Tass dispatch quoting Coffin's prediction.

Then came some dashes of cold water. A presidential press secretary told newsmen that no such meeting was planned, although the President's invitation to Stalin to come to Washington was still open. And in Paris, Secretary of State George C. Marshall implied that such reports as Coffin's merely played into the hands of Soviet propagandists. The trouble with the tip--like all such tips out of Washington--was that readers could not tell whether it was irresponsible reporting or an irresponsible leak from an administration official. Coffin insisted that he had another call from a "close friend of the President" who had tipped him off, saying: "Don't give up. Your story may come true yet."

The New York Times permitted itself a genteel snicker: EGA UNDERWRITES LAUGHTER FOR GERMANS ; FINANCES COMIC AS WELL AS TRUE LOVE TALES. The story from Berlin, by Timesman Edward A. Morrow, * said that Generals Clay and Robertson had "approved" requests from Pulpsters Fawcett and Macfadden that they be guaranteed against loss in selling $87,000 a year worth of comic books, True Confessions, True Police Cases, etc., in Germany. A women's club convention in Manhattan promptly viewed the matter with shrill alarm, and the Christian Science Monitor huffed that it was an outrage.

Wearily, EGA officials in Washington deflated Morrow's story. No contracts had been signed with any publishers, they said. All that had happened was that Generals Clay and Robertson had found no ground for disapproving the comics and thrillers as being either Nazi or a threat to security. A week late, the Times quietly corrected the irresponsible story.

* Second cousin of Poet Robert P. Tristram Coffin. * Not to be confused with CBS Vice President and Correspondent Edward R. Murrow.

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