The Press: For the Benighted

The autocrat of the Chicago breakfast table, the Tribune’s Robert Rutherford McCormick, last week laid down the law on two subjects: woodsmanship and military history.

Over WGN (for World’s Greatest Newspaper) and 135 stations of the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Colonel had some helpful hints to little girls. Said he: “Every Girl Scout should carry a compass, a watch and an electric torch.* The torch is a precaution against becoming benighted. . . . The military compass, by the way, has an interesting story. In the South African war. . . .

“[In the woods] you must find out exactly how far you stride. When I was in France, my stride was exactly one meter. I even checked the maps by my stride.”

In Washington, D.C., before the Advertising Club, he explained the sad state of U.S. diplomacy: “President McKinley [was] the last of a long line of great American diplomats.” He told the admen that foreigners who had been ungrateful before (“Our allies never gave us credit . . .”) would certainly have to do honor to the U.S. this time. Said he: “It will be impossible to explain away these victories as the victories of 1898 and 1918 were explained away, and there will never again—thank God—be a class of groveling, obsequious snobs, who will seek to be better than other Americans by admitting inferiority to foreigners.

“Our Western Pacific fleet was annihilated under command of a Dutch admiral, while the principal squadron of three American and two Australian heavy cruisers, to protect the landing at Guadalcanal, was surprised and sunk under the British Admiral Crutchley.

“Across the Atlantic, our only check, at Kasserine Pass [North Africa], was with our troops under foreign command. The blunders in Italy were not American blunders. The landing in Normandy was under command of General Montgomery, and General Bradley’s famous breakthrough at St. Ló came only after the original plan of campaign had failed. Thereafter, all the victories, offensive and defensive, in France, Belgium and Germany were exclusively American victories.

“All of the important land and naval victories in [the Pacific] were American victories. All the distinguished admirals and generals in this war are Americans!”

*Anglophobic Colonel McCormick occasionally lapses into Briticisms (torch for flashlight)—a relic of several years in English schools.