The Press: Tip for Whiskers

From Air Force Colonel Stevenson Burton Canyon, hiding out in a cave near the Russian border somewhere in the Middle East, came a radio message in a personal code far too beat to be understood by a Red square: THIS is THE, BIG GROOVE FROM COLORADO. THE BUSTERNIKS ARE PLANTING ELMERS AT THE BENT SHIV SO THAT THEY CAN PLEAD FIVE IF THE WESTERN J. EDGARS MAKE THE SCENE. TIP WHISKERS WE’RE CUTTING. THE LOCAL CHEESIES ARE RIPE FOR A RUMBLE SO WE’RE GOING FOR THE DEEP GREEN.* By last week, when the message was finally broken down, it was clear to thousands of Americans that Canyon had made a discovery of great import: looking toward the day when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. arrive at some sort of diplomatically negotiated arms agreement, the Soviets were already cheating, installing missile launching pads in a strip mine just outside their own territory, where international inspection teams presumably will not be looking.

There seemed little immediate cause for concern, since Steve Canyon is only a comic-strip hero who does his SAC time on the inside pages of 607 newspapers. But Canyon’s originator, Cartoonist Milton Caniff, is a careful student of real-life news, has a remarkable faculty for imagining headlines before they actually happen.

“Playing General.” In 1944 Milt Caniff, then drawing Terry and the Pirates, ran a plan for an Allied paratroop invasion of Burma. Recalls Caniff: “I simply sat down with a map of the China-Burma-India theater and played general. We were building up strength out there and what else would we do but fly our men in?” A couple of days after Caniff’s battle plan appeared in the papers, news broke that Burma had indeed been invaded by air (“People got pretty upset about that strip —particularly the British”).

Again, in 1948, Caniff sent Steve Canyon to the Persian Gulf, where he speculated that the Reds might be “bringing prefabricated subs in sections down to this ice-free gulf over the old supply routes—and assembling them here.” A year and a half later it was headline news that submarines were being prefabricated in Russia and being sent to warm-water Asian ports for assembly. Says Caniff: “When the Germans surrendered in World War H, we found they had been prefabricating subs. The Russians captured the factories. There was nothing to prevent them from doing the same thing. When I read about the Russians turning out fleets of subs, I figured they couldn’t be building them in their northern ports, some of which are only open a few months a year. They must be building them in warm-water ports, and they had to be prefabricated.”

“So Logical.” The same sort of figuring led to Steve Canyon’s currently ominous adventure. Says Caniff: “It’s such a logical thing for the Russians to buy land in weak, neutral countries, ten miles or so from the border, and ostensibly cut strip mines while actually making underground missile launching bases.” On the basis of his past record, he could be right.

* Translation: “This is Canyon. The Reds are burying gantrys at the Scimitar [name of the mine] so they may avoid the issue if Allied investigators arrive. Tell Uncle Sam we’re leaving. The local traitors are ready for a fight, so we’re heading for the Gulf.”