PARTS IN PEACE TIME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19382, 17 July 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

PARTS IN PEACE TIME.

A JOURNALIST'S NOTE-BOOK

To have beert one of Northcliffe's young men is, in itself, a guarantee of journal-

istie ability, arsd Ferdinard Tuohv, in The Cockpit of Peace" (Murray), displays in h;.s chaotic glimpses of life since the arraistic all the snap and verve which made him at that time a prominent member of the " white-headed boys' brigade." Northcliffe's favour, however, was capricious. " Once recruited to this brigade favourites of the chief one stood about as much ultimate chance of surviving m Carmelite House as an ailing wife in ancient Bagdad. But while it lasted, the going was lovely." Every day, messages, interspersed with extremely frank comments upon the work of the staff, were posted for all to read, and one morning Tuohy taw " Watch prohibition. These d—d Yanks will be drying us up before we know where we are." Out he went on the daily search for copy and ran to earth Tv. E. Johnson, of the U.S. Anti-Saloon League. It happened that while Johnson was talking dull statistics he received and opened a copy of the Kansas City Star. Right across the front page ran inch-high headlines " Pussyfoot Johnson to dry up John BuLL" At once the journalist scented the value of the nickname. Thus was' born a new -world-character and a new English word.

Shortly after a pussyfooting expedition to the United States (and Mr. Tnohy is not a prohibitionist) he was sent upon a costly and useless journey to Turkey in connection with the Kemalist rising. Unable to get copy he went off one day to Priakipo, an island in the Sea of Marmora,, where 1200 Rtissian women refugees were living, rationed by the British A.S.C., in the person of Sergeant Jones. In an unlucky moment Tuohy wrote an article Ujpon the island. Next morning the Northclifnan bulletin read thus: " Why is Tuohy spending my money on Russian women in Turkey when he ought to be in Scotland writing about drink, a subject of which he should not, however, be allowed to get too full ?"

This marked his farewell to Fleet Street and the beginning of his connection vrith j the New York World as its Paris corres- : pondent. | One of the most vitally interesting chapters deals with the French attitude to England and the reason for it. First of all, " the Somme has not entirely erased Waterloo; you are still les Anglais, with the faintest hiss, and the victors !n centuries of warring." Then the French Press has, with greater or less j virulence, impressed upon its readers (lj j that les Anglais fought indifferently in the war; didn't try half the time and withheld reserves the other half: (2) that England ruined the franc; (3) that her statesmen are mostly pro-German: (4) that she has worked to alienate the United States from France; and (5) that England's general " perfidy,' 4 as set forth above, renders John Bull's demand for the return of a single centime from France disgusting. The writer's suggestion for a corrective to this press campaign is that the big French papers shonld send over a trained body of journalists to investigate the true state of affairs in England; and that leading Englishmen, not necessarily politicians but possessing a colloquial knowledge of French, should speak facts periodically to French listen-ers-in by arrangement. The other subjects treated range from "The' Tiger's Swan-Song" {an account of Clemenceau's ineffective visit to U.S.A.), to an interview with Ludendorff. subsequently repudiated by the subject, the " story of my life," as told by Germaine Berton, Communist and murderess, and the chaperoning of Jack Derapsey. round the night life of Paris when the champion refused to take a drop of liquor or to smoke a cigarette and sat solemnly munching chocolate creams while the most hectic scenes were being enacted around him.