Press: Two Wars

China and Spain have jockeyed for preferred position on the world’s front pages for nearly a month, and up to last week China has had the upper hand. The Chinese war was a new upheaval; it burst squarely in the correspondents’ laps; there was virtually no censorship to plague the press. Shanghai was a Richard Harding Davis dream, and newspapers pushed the good luck while it lasted. Combining enterprise with luck, the Associated Press obtained one of the most complete picture beats of the year. It got a fine shot of the bombing of the Shanghai waterfront (see p.19) and many pictures of the dead piled up in the streets. The photographs were rushed by plane to Hongkong, put on the Clipper for San Francisco and delivered to U. S. member papers ten days after the cameras clicked. Other picture agencies were beaten by a week because their boat failed to catch the Clipper at Manila.

Meanwhile, in Spain the international civil war had been going on so long (nearly 14 months) that the 400-odd newspapermen covering it were footsore, seat-sore and weary. The novelty had worn off. The twin bogies of communication and censorship had cut down the number of scoops. With professional envy the correspondents in Spain were eying China, where their colleagues were stealing the headlines. But Spain from the press standpoint presented a far more significant job, for in Spain, the press was tackling the day-in, day-out job of covering a modern war.

The Game. Covering Spain is like covering a courthouse and not being able to get inside the courtrooms when anything exciting is happening. Faced with this problem, the correspondents had to develop a routine of their own. Since a few correspondents individually could not gather enough news, they have learned to cooperate. Whether at the Novelti bar in Rightist Salamanca or in the cafes of Madrid, reporters now congregate to exchange news if any. There is news aplenty, but except for a pushover job, such as the taking of Santander, the correspondents are kept a good eagle’s flight away. In the recent heavy fighting around Madrid and in the big push now under way in the Aragon front, both the Rightists and the Leftists were in agreement that correspondents were not wanted at the front. But 400 men. even under restraint, can gather considerable information and when pooled it generally provides an adequate account. Next problem is to get it out.

The Rightist censorship has been more rigid and systematic than the Government’s, which occasionally lapses into periods of semi-freedom. This usually happens when news is thin. But when a correspondent tries to telephone a big story from Madrid, the receiving offices in Paris and London often get a curious blend of bells, roars and radio speeches This sort of thing is so hard on the average correspondent’s nerves, that he usually sends most of his copy by telegraph, where the censorship is automatic and predictable. A little palm-greasing will sometimes get a dispatch by courier over the border into France, from either camp.

The Players. Most complete coverage of Spain to date has been by United Press, which has many Latin American customers who eat up as many as 10,000 words a day. UP has eight men in Madrid, four with the Rightist forces, 18 scattered through the country and six operating along the French border. Jean de Gandt, a French-Belgian, was head of UP’s Madrid bureau but working in Lisbon, when the war started. So he hopped General Franco’s trail and has been following him ever since. In Spain UP now has Irving Pflaumn. whose wife had a baby in Madrid early in the war, and Reynolds Packard, a veteran of the Ethiopian war. Other UP aces included Webb Miller and Henry T. Gorrell who had previously received “an invitation to leave” Italy.

Most colorful correspondent to develop during the war is Associated Press’s Edward J. Neil Jr., a 200-lb. ex-sports reporter who once bested Jack Dempsey in a friendly wrestling bout. Neil, always on the scene of trouble, found excitement even in the capture of Santander when a truckload of gas shells caught fire just back of him and he was caught without a gas mask. International News Service’s big gun is much-traveled Hubert R. Knickerbocker, whose brutal summary of the war is, “Vultures are the only ones with all the luck.”

Notable jobs done by other correspondents: Herbert L. Matthew’s (New York Times) vivid descriptions of the bombing of Madrid and Brihuega; Frank Kluckhohn’s (also Times) revelation that Italy and Germany were sending men. munitions and planes to the Rightists, (as a result he was expelled from Spain); Jay C. Allen’s (Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate) sensational account of a Rightist massacre of 2,000 Leftists in a bullring at Badajoz.

Most unusual press departure was Pierre van Paassen (Toronto Star), one of the best reporters in Spain, who suddenly went anarchist, stopped writing, was reluctantly fired by his paper, and finally disappeared.