THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE SINCE THE CIVIL WAR

By Harry W. Baehr Jr. '29, with Foreword by Royal Cortissoz, Dodd, Mead & Cos., New York, 1936. 420 pages. $3.00.

As a superb history of the United States since the Civil War this book goes straight to the top of the class with this reviewer. It proves a contention, long since held by wise reviewers, that a book dealing with objective material should have some central unity besides the mind of the writer of the book. Thus with, say the old Tall Tower of the Tribune (when the newspaper was in Park Row, that Fleet street of American journalism), as a point of observation, the reader is enabled through this book to look out upon the passing scene, to scrutinize not only the actions but the motives of the influential men of the post-Civil-War era. It is not in any sense the mere history of a newspaper. In fact it gives the newspaper its true place as a lens, through which the widely scattered beams of seemingly unrelated facts, are centralized and focused and made comprehensible.

In no way is the history a "glorified" one. The reviewer was able to detect no varnish nor white-wash in any of the situations in which the Tribune came out second-best, or was unable to justify its apparent inconsistencies. By such treatment, the newspaper becomes personified, it becomes an oft-erring human being, with the result of course that the reader is ever on the brink of suspense to know just what the paper will advocate on the morrow. In its principles the paper has preserved from the beginning a central unity which is decidedly consistent, perhaps the phrase quoted by the author "consider the cost and be deliberate" may come somewhere near it. But from the very beginning, and through all the years and changes that followed, the Tribune made an appeal to intelligence; Whitelaw Reid who followed the great Horace Greeley was one of the first newspaper editors to look to the colleges for men on the staff; the editorial page has always been, and is, a chief concern of the paper; in the times when circulation might easily have been run up by adoption of sensational features the Tribune chose to pursue that conservative course which made enemies describe it as being as dull as a "Grocer's Bill."

The paper was in the beginning a political publication the expression of the mind of Horace Greeley. In all the years of its existence it has put politics to the fore. In his Foreword, Royal Cortissoz, the last of the famous Whitelaw Reid group to remain on the staff, puts it this way: "It (i.e. the Herald-Tribune Tradition) is rooted in liberalism, in sustained dedication to the things of the mind and the spirit." Thus throughout the pages of Mr. Baehr's book, one follows the real "inside" of the spirited political campaigns of the period since the Civil War, campaigns which in their conduct and result point a direct route to the present economic and political condition of America. The facts reveal that the cry of "Partisanship," as Mr. Cortissoz notes, has little justification. The Tribune always took sides and was vigorous in its policies, but never neglected the opposition.

To one interested in newspapers, and a believer (like Mr. Freeman) in the enormous value of them as records, this book is rather thrilling. The background of it is scholarly, the research thorough, the style simple. And though for one really interested, it will take some time to read the book in order to recall or vision anew the events therein related, there is not a dull moment in it. The story of the TildenHayes Campaign, the Sinking of the Titanic, the chapters on the World-War, the pictures of Reconstruction in the South through Greeley's eyes, the performances of the brilliant personalities, Bayard Taylor, John Hay, Frank Simonds, and dozens of others all make for a lively and interesting narrative. Few people realize that Karl Marx was once a correspondent of the Tribune. Few would believe it, in fact. The picture of the present day, and the sketch of the present Herald-Tribune office should be read by every person interested in the columns of the paper. And incidentally, despite the name Herald-Tribune, the paper is still the Tribune, the hyphenated mast-head being the result of a specification made by the last Bennett of the Herald, when it was sold to Munsey and later to the Tribune. The name Herald goes to posterity in much the same way that the name Barnum in circus circles reached our day through the Ringling Bros. Circus.

It is of interest at this moment, when the growing influence of women in all branches of politics, culture, and business, ts so markedly emphatic,—note Pulitzer prizes, presidential appointments,—best sellers—even in the sports world,—that the Tribune was the first newspaper to reiease women writers from the stereotyped Woman's Page. And though the present Society" editor of the Herald-Tribune is a man, the heads of many departments, Sunday Magazine, Books, columns Children's Books,—are women. That this was to be an age of women was apparently first noted by the Tribune. Mrs. Ogden Reid, wife of the publisher, whose influence on the paper has been very great, may be partly responsible for this. Or, it may be just a sign of the age in which women's ability in these things is being recognized, although the recognition has come slowly and has far to go.

Newspaper men as a rule, care most of all for criticism within the ranks of their craft. A cub who hears an older staffworker praise his story feels that he has accomplished something very great. The reviewer doesn't know what Mr. Baehr thinks about such procedure, but he (the reviewer) took pains to get a few newspaper opinions on the book. The verdict of a "hell of a good story" seems to be the answer. The ambition of most newspaper men is to write a book, that will be discussed and praised some time in the magic hours between 3:30 and 5 A.M. by coatless men with feet on desks in the smoky atmosphere of the City Room wilderness, before janitors have come in to sweep up a world already past and dead. Mr. Baehr has achieved that distinction.

Ellis B. Jump '32 is the author of an article How It Looks to the Hut Master, which appears in the December number of Appalachia.

The September issue of the New England Quarterly contains an article on Rudyard Kipling in New England by Howard C. Rice '26. This article, with corrections and additions has been reprinted by the Stephen Daye Press of Brattleboro in an attractive booklet of 39 pages. Mr. Rice brings together a collection of anecdotes relating to Kipling's life in Brattleboro, Vermont, where he lived from 1892 until 1896. While there at Naulakha Kipling wrote the two Jungle Books, some of the stories in The Days Work, many of the poems in The Seven Seas, and CaptainsCourageous which was dedicated to a Brattleboro physician. Three fugitive essays brought together in 1920 and published under the title Letters of Travel were also written while Kipling was a resident in Brattleboro. In these he gives some of his impressions of the American scene.

Among recent publications by Dr. Edmund P. Fowler Jr. '26 are: Acoustictumors within the internal auditory meatus reprinted from The Laryngoscope for August; Depression in order of frequencyof the electrical cochlear response of cats reprinted from The American journal ofPhysiology for September; End-organdeafness in dogs due to the application ofcertain chemicals to the round windowmembrane reprinted from Annals ofOtology, Rhinology and Laryngology for September; and Normal hearing by boneconduction as measured with an audiometer reprinted from the same issue of the magazine.

The Journal of the Patent Office Society for December contains an article by John E. R. Hayes '95 entitled The InventiveConcept.

The December number of Appalachia contains an article by Charles N. Proctor '29, Skiing developments in Sun Valley,Idaho.

Dodd Mead and Company have just published a new edition of Americanshort stories edited by Fred Lewis Pattee '88.

Conversations with Wallace Rusterholtz, a brochure containing thirteen rather short poems by Wallace Rusterholtz '31, has been privately printed in an edition of 100 copies signed by the author. The first poem in the collection is entitled To a professor:

You ask me How long I have spent In writing poems For your class? —Twenty-four hours every day Since I was born, And God knows How long before!