The Press: Splendid Job

For the fourth time, the New York Times’s august Arthur Krock wrote last week that the U.S. Army is thinking of replacing civilian war correspondents with soldier reporters. The Army swarmed all over him. Growled Colonel Stanley Grogan, acting director of the War Department’s public relations bureau: “There has never been any study of the question by the War Department and none is contemplated.”

War Secretary Henry L. Stimson was kinder, but no less firm. “Has my good friend Arthur Krock been sending shivers down your spine?” he asked reporters at his press conference. “There is no plan in the War Department to use military correspondents to replace civilians. There are now more than 230 civilian correspondents in the war theaters and they are doing a splendid job.”