WHAT MAKES THE COLONEL TICK?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 427, 29 August 1947, Page 16

WHAT MAKES THE COLONEL TICK?

REFERENCES in the New Zealand House of Representatives the other day to the Chicago "Tribune" and its anti-British attitude, and the fact that that paper recently celebrated its 100th birthday, prompt us to publish this "profile" of Colonel McCormick, the publisher of the paper and the man who moulds its character so directly that it is an almost exact reflection of his own. The article is taken from the London "Observer"

N the streets of Chicago the crowds cheered and a few individualists booed; Lake Michigan was lit by a firework reproduction of Hiroshima and two lifesize Niagara Fallses, and at halfsecond intervals bombs were exploded. _ But to the lonely figure on the 34th floor of the Tribune Tower no sound penetrated the if-conditioned room with thick walnut panelling, rubbersprung floor and trick-locked double door. Accompanied only by his German police dog, Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick watched the 100th birthday celebrations of the Chicago Tribimne in splendid insulation. The Colonel-as he is known to all but the few intimates who call him Bertie-cannot claim to have directed the paper during the whole of its career, but members of his family. have been with the paper for 95 years, and he has himself built it up over a quarter of a century into one of the two newspapers in the United States with a daily circulation of over a million. The other

-the New York Daily News — was created by his cousin, Joe Patterson. The direction of the "Trib." has been the Colonel’s and the Colonel’s alone. He bought the Canadian forests from which the paper is made, he built the fleet which carries the paper across the Lakes, he plarined the four-colour presses which print coloured cartoons on the front page, he bought the radio franchise for the most powerful station in Chicago, and he saw that his paper was the first to be published in the wake of Americar troops on Luzon and in Tokio. They Earn Their Money None of his subordinates would deny that McCormick was the prime mover in everything the paper did, but all would claim that they earned their princely salaries in giving substance to the casual ideas that are thrust at them. The Tribune is the Colonel’s oyster; he provides the grit of ideas arid the staff produce the pearls. A sudden idea that the world is becoming over-populated leads to a note to the newsroom: "How much would we add to the known area of the world if the ocean bottoms were made into land? RRMc"; the restless cawing of rooks outside the McCormick mansion results in the farm" column being devoted to plans for improving shotguns; a suggestion to the editorial writers that New Zealand would be safer in the United States culminates in a campaign to make ail the British Dominions states of the Union, In this well-oiled machine the gap between idea and execution has been so nafrowed that, not unnaturally, a certain confusion exists in McCormick’s mind between the’ two, By a sort of neo-Cartesianism he reasons: "I think; therefore it is." A remarkable example of this form of induction was given in 1942, when the Colonel replied personally to a letter questioning his patriotism. He dumbfounded his critic by replying: You do not know it, but the fact is that 1 introduced the R.O.T.C. into the schools; that I introduced machine guns into the Army; that I introduced mechanisation; 1 introduced automatic rifles; I was the fitst ae ee, a oe ee oS serve artillery fire. Now I succeeded in making that the regular practice in the Reds Under the Beds In Britain, McCormick is best known as a violent Anglophobe, but to Americans this is only one phobia amongst the many which are magnified into policy by. his newspaper. For the Colonel, uncharitableness begins at home. Though he supported Roosevelt in°1932, McCormick reversed his stand overnight when the New Deal called for a 40-hour week for newspaper employees. This "threat to the freedom of the Press" at once produced a violent persecution complex in the Tribune’s publisher, and from 1933 onwards-as President Roosevelt said-‘"Bertie saw Reds under the Bed."

The New Deal was recognised as a Communist plot; "A band of conspirators," said McCormick, "plans to inflict this oriental atrocity upon our Republican people." The war on the New Deal has dominated the Colonel’s mind and# its extension, the paper, ever since, Every column of the Tribune wa thrown into the fight; from abroad Donald Day (who during the war broadcast for the Nazis) announced that Moscow was giving its full support to Roosevelt; in the comic strips "Little Orphan Annie" (the most moral tale since "Eric, or Little by Little") lisped the praises of free enterprise; one month before the 1936 elections the telephone opera-" tors were instructed to greet callers: "Good morning, only 28 more days to \ save the country." Roosevelt’s majority in the nation and in Chicago was a record that year. No Titles, Please The only remedy McCormick could find for the foreign ideologies of the New Deal was a return to "Americanism."’ This holy doctrine stood in danger of overthrow by revolution-organised by Russia-and of corruption by heresy -organised by the British. The wily British sought to seduce America once more into the harlotry of Europe by the vulgar display of such geegaws as ancient castles and noble titles. So intoxicating, even to a true American, is the power of titles that their use has been forbidden in the Tribune since 1943. Thus, suddenly, the British Ambassador became Edward Wood, and even a fellow publisher reverted to plain Max’ Aitken. However, King George. VI remains king George, for "king" is not a title but a badge. of office, like colonel. There have been thousands of attempts to solve the riddle of Tribune Tower: what makes the Colonel tick. Psychologists tend to see the explanation in his unhappy childhood, economic historians in his family background. McCormick was born in 1880, the scion of two of Chicago’s most important families-the McCormicks, whose ploughs had opened the mid-West prairie, and the Medills, who owned. the Chicago Tribune. In Chicago he was, what by nature he longs to be, an aristocrat. But he first went to school at the age of nine, in England, where his father was attached to the Embassy. There he was not an aristocrat, but an outsider-worse, in 1889, a Yankee, A few years later, at exclusive Groton _, School, in New England, he found that he was not even a Yankee, but a mere "Sucker" from the hick town of Chicago, a fit subject for ridicule by eastern aristocrats, even if, like Franklin Roosevelt, they were a year his junior in ‘school. His Great Chance The first people who were really kin to young Bertie were the people of Chicago, who elected him an alderman at the age of 24 and supported him through (continued on next page) —

(continued from previous page) six years of politics. McCormick did not forget his friends or his enemies when in 1910 he left politics to throw his boundless energy into the family property of the Tribune. But publishing did not wholly satisfy him; McCormick wished to be a strategist. In 1915 came bis great chance: he was invited to join the Russian Army, "not as a wer correspondent, but as a distinguished foreigner personally known to the Grand Duke." He came, he saw, he advised. Even after his departure the Russian Army fought on for nearly two years before admitting defeat. Though he took part with the United States Army in the battle of Cantigny — a memory enshrined in the name of his estate-and rose to the rank of Colonel, the victorious American generals seem to have had less interest in his strategic advice. While en route to Russia he had met another amateur strategist with rather greater practical opportunities. Me-, Cormick described , Winston Churchill in 1915 as "on the top for the last time," but he paid him the greatest compliment in his vocabulary by adding wAthat "if he had had a military instead « of an academic education he would shave made a great general or admiral." In the thirties, when Churchill visited America, he was allowed to stay with the Colonel and, until 1939, the room he used was. known as the Churchill Room. ' He Meets a Demand The Napoleon complex, which is the occupational disease of newspaper publishers, has grown with the years. During the recent war the Colonel took the

opportunity afforded by the intervals in a series of broadcast comic operas to explain to the radio audience how the war should be fought, and even, on oecasion, to lift the veil on the secret plan he had submitted to the General Staff in 1921 for repelling the British should they invade through Detroit. McCormick’s capacity as a military commentator is open to question, but his success as a publisher is beyond doubt. Even if the Tribune does not earn its (copyrighted) title, "The World’s Greatest Newspaper" it is certainly one of the biggest and most successful. With all its foibles, the Tribune has a great appeal to many mid-Westerners because it gives them much of what they want. They like to be told theirs are the best states of the best Union in the world, and if that involves raucous disparagement of the eastern states and of England, they are not sorry to be reassured of their superiority over those most worthy of comparison. Above all, they like a pape: that fights and pulls no punches, that hits its opponent with everything it has and thinks the Marquess of Queensberry an effete aristocrat. Mid-Westerners like the Tribune’s independence and keep their independence of it. Millions read it, but few vote by it. For nearly 20 years Chicago has rejected the Colonel’s choice for Mayor, Illinois has rejected his choice for President, the country has rejected his choice of policy. But in the mid-West the vistas are long and the Tribune has had only 100 years to save the country.