Evening Star Newspaper, April 25, 1940, Page 9

e THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1840, : —9 How America got the news of Norway’s Benedict Arnolds N MONDAY EVENING, April 8, Leland Stowe —white-haired, 40-year-old correspondent for the Chicago Daily News and its syndicate —sat in Oslo’s Grand Hotel talking idly about Europe’s dormant war. No guns rumbled nearer than the Sylt. The good burghers of Oslo were safe in their beds. The hot breath of battle seemed far away. » At half past midnight the city heard its first warlikeé sound in a hundred years. A noise like a thousand angry motorists stalled in a traffic jam—the raucous bellowing of air-raid sirens. At 7:45 the next morning, Stowe and his colleagues, Edmund Stevens of the Christian Science Monitor and Warren Irvin of N.B.C,, watched Nazi bombers roar over the trim Nor- wegian housetops. All morning the German Junkers came, not in sky-darkening swarms, but by twos and threes. No bombs fell. Scarcely a shot was fired. In the streets, at public buildings, men acted like curious children. There was little terror. Only bewilderment. » By 2 in the afternoon, the incredible had happened. The tramp of Nazi boots, the rum- ble of Nazi lorries, were echoing through Oslo streets. The conquerors, marching by threes, made the thin gray column look longer. Un- armed city police held back a crowd that num- bered thousands of brawny young Norsemen of fighting age. People gaped like yokels on the Fourth of July at the spectacle of 1500 Ger- mans taking possession of a city of 253,000— a handful of invaders so sure of easy conquest that they had a brass band! Was this aninstance of awesome Nazi might? «.of a little neutral’s pathetic unprepared- ness? To the keen mind of Leland Stowe, sharp- ened by experience with European intrigue, familiar with Oslo’s defenses, the thing didn’t make sense. ««. the brass hats arrive «..into Oslo led by a band » Stowe got busy and, little by little, began to pick up the pieces of the most fantastic story of the war. A story of a small but potent Nor- wegian war fleet in the harbor whose crews had been deliberately ordered ashore. A story of fortresses and anti-aircraft batteries that didn’t fire, or fired startlingly wide of the mark. A story of mines whose electrical control system had been disconnected. A story of a free people infested through and through with spies, who could never have crept into key positions with- out the aid of traitors. » Chauffeured by a fair compatriot with a smiling comeback to German gallantries, Stowe " escaped to Stockholm and gave the world the news of Norway’s gigantic inside job. Another feather in the cap of the reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1930...the man who wrote the most eloquent dispatch of the Finnish “in- cident”. .. the 40-year-old man who was told by a New York newspaper last fall that he was “too old to cover a war.” * * * Take a poll among newsmen for ace corre- spondent of World War II, and Leland Stowe’s name would probably top the list. But there would be-runners-up... » Lochner of AP and Oechsner of UP, cover- ing Berlin. Walter Kerr of the N. Y. Herald Tribune. Columbia Broadcasting’s Ed Murrow in London. Otto Tolischus of the N. Y. Times. Frank R. Kent, Jr, of the Baltimore Sun. Young Bill White of Emporia, Kansas, doing the old man proud in Germany and Finland. Yet no one man, not Richard Harding Davis himself, could cover the present war. For fotal war means total reporting—and total reporting means manpower. All told, it takes 10,000 men to report the holocaust in Europe. For war rages today, not on a single front, but on thou- sands. The economic front is everywhere. All news- men help to cover it. The correspondent in the dugout, noticing how the men are fed and clothed. The man in the capital gathering facts on production. The traveling thinkman with eye peeled for slowdown or sabotage. The edi- tors or bureau heads who fit the jigsaw puzzle together. Then there is the diplomatic front, a laby- rinth where only the most experienced can find their way around. And the propaganda front o Leland Stowe «..reactions of the people...how they take the new ration order...how much of the ideological spray sinks in—all this takes the shrewdest kind of reporting, » The din of battle, the colorful event, is just an incident in this war. It is the touch of red with which a painter brightens a somber can- vas. It means something only when seen against the rest of the picture. Just the same, we all love red, so the news- men go through hell and high water to give it to us. And a whole long year ago, TIME, the Weekly Newsmagazine, began to paint the background that would give those flaming sto- ries meaning—in Background for War, TIME's famous panorama of Europe on the brink. » In every new issue, TIME changes and illu- minates the shadows behind the crackling, red- hot stories of the week. Stories from TIME’s own big and growing foreign staff, from the Associated Press, of which TIME is a member, from the ace correspondents (with enthusiastic credit). TIME gives the total coverage that total war demands. TIME unravels the economic and diplomatic snarl. TIME reconciles conflicting stories—weighs one against the other, knows the sources and the mental slant of each re- porter, comes up with the composite, clarified answer. ' TIME helps beat the censor, tells whether a backhand story like “The government denies that there is any truth in the rumor...” really means “The government denies it, but it’s a fact.” » No man knows where the next explosion will be and neither does TIME...But TIME knows and tells where thé TNT is stored. It’s pretty important to know where we are in this war. TIME shows you both the woods and the trees. This is one of a series of advertisements in which the Editors of TIME hope to give all the readers of this news- paper a clearer picture of the world of news-gathering, news-writing, and news-reading—and the part TIME plays in helping you to grasp, measure, and use the history of your lifetime as you live the story of your life. TIME