The Press: Hearst Over Air

Having given sovereign approval to an attack by one of his princelings on European dictatorships, 75-year-old Publisher William Randolph Hearst stepped to a microphone in San Simeon one night last week and performed a more congenial task in person. Europe’s so-called “democracies,” he shrilled, are no better than its Fascists and Nazis. “France is Communist in character,” he snapped, and England is still “perfidious Albion,” striving by hook & crook to line up the U. S. army and navy behind its Imperialist designs.

Quoting Britisher Winston Churchill’s short-wave plea for a “resolute gathering of forces” by all English-speaking peoples, Publisher Hearst snorted: “English soft soap.” NBC donated a hookup of 62 stations on its Blue network for the Hearstian blast, later short-waved excerpts in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese.