Intrusive

U. S. newspapers long since assumed the robes of justice. For years the protagonists in sensational trials have been obliged to undergo scrutiny by a row, and lately a galleryful, of gimlet-eyed reporters, swift to pounce upon every crumb of speech or gesture; brusque, oily or slyly intrusive with their cameras at the courthouse door.

At the enormously popular Hall-Mills murder trial in Somerville, N. J., a syndicate press service last week introduced a reportorial method more intrusive than ever. It employed Fannie Hurst, smart Semite novelist of the "gusher" type with a working knowledge of popular psychoanalysis, to observe Mrs. Hall, widow and alleged destroyer of a faithless clergyman, a stolid-seeming woman whose expressionless demeanor upon the witness stand was baffling the sharpest gimlets in the press gallery.

Mrs. Hall did not marry until 37. One of her brothers is apparently deficient mentally. Individuals whom some physical maladjustment has rendered relatively unemotional are not at all uncommon. Yet this is the kind of thing Miss Hurst wrote and her employers syndicated for the newspapers:

"Cool slitted eyes. Calm-looking throat. Cold grey pallor. . . .

"In an age notorious for its laxity to the woman murderer; in a generation which tempers its judgment toward females in proportion to their so-called 'sex-appeal'; in a day when judges are known to order screens placed between the prisoner-at-the-bar and her jury, Mrs. Frances Hall, without any attempt, apparently, to clutch after youth or the allurements of her sex, sits grim as winter.

"Mrs. Hall is winter. It is in her eyes. It is in the leaden quality of her skin. It lies along her frosty-looking lips, which sag at the corners. . . .

"Winter is in her face, a careful, formal face held in cautious leash to mask whatever emotions rage behind it.

"Does any one beholding this woman sitting there in her stiff uniform of discretion . . . look into her lustreless-looking eyes and believe for a moment that those eyes are looking through anything but a mask?

"A grey muslin mask of a face.

"Not a face of grey granite. This face quivers. This grey face is the lustreless eyes [sic] of a gentlewoman whose tears must all be running inward.

"Terrible tears that drench and clog and sog* rather than drain off.

"Temperamentally, through all the crucifixion of the months that preceded the tragedy of the murder of her husband and Mrs. Mills, this woman's bitter, salty tears must have flowed inward, drenching the wounds in her heart and soul. . .

"Only God," wrote Miss Hurst in final desperation, "and Mrs. Hall probably know what is in her innermost soul."

And what newspaper interests employed Miss Hurst to write thus? Those of Publisher William Randolph Hearst.

Liberties

They say that Liberty, five-cent fiction weekly of Col. Robert R. McCormick and Major Joseph Medill Patterson, proud overlords of that opulent vulgarian, the Chicago Tribune and its get-rich-quick little grub-sister, the New York Daily News, was established as an outlet for accumulated moneys upon which the income tax was becoming burdensome. Loosely speaking it was founded to "lose money."

It is not well to speak loosely, however, particularly in this case. The millions that were poured into Liberty were bound to flow back again sometime, if only because the Patterson and McCormick temperaments love a fight and hate to lose. The publishing gyrations through which Liberty has been put in the past to catch up with its serene rival, The Saturday Evening Post, are hardly to be regarded as efforts at "losing" money. Some of these gyrations have even carried Liberty beyond the pale of impeccable publishing conduct--a prize fiction contest won from a large and able field by an author known to be thoroughly popular with the masses (Fannie Hurst); a deplorable Long Island society wife-murder and suicide republished, detail for detail, with only the names of the principals changed, in the guise of a fiction story.

Last week there came to light another of Liberty's liberties. It was a piece entitled "Golf's Greatest Goat-Getter: The Secret of Walter Hagen's Success, as Revealed by the Man He Fears Most --An article by Gene Sarazen." In it the onetime U. S. open champion, was found saying some exceedingly unsportsmanlike things about the two-time U. S. open champion, two-time British champion, four-time (successively) U. S. professional champion. Mr. Sarazen was found saying that Mr. Hagen is the master, consciously or unconsciously, of a "poisonous," a "virulent" technique of upsetting his opponent by remarks and ac tions too subtle for reprimand. Mr. Sarazen was found saying that, nevertheless, he, Sarazen, could upset Mr. Hagen in precisely the same way and that "of the players in my competitive circle ... I would make no mistake in picking Hagen. I can beat that fellow every day in the week."

The squabbles and boasts of two golf professionals, however able, were of no great import and the uncomplimentary things about Mr. Hagen were not without foundation, if credence is to be given eye-witness accounts of his conduct last summer in England, or to the famed note which Bobby Jones once sent the brazen-cheeked pro fessional, curtly notifying him that if he made a point of being late at the tee for their match, the match was off. But a question of publishing ethics arose when Gene Sarazen declared that not only had he not written the article--few famed athletes, of course, write the articles signed by them-- but he had been shown the article by its author, one Hubert I. Malkus of Manhattan, months ago, and refused to authorize its publication. Mr. Sarazen declared that he would sue Liberty for $100,000 libel damages. Behold the workings of modern publishing, at least as practised by Liberty. Executive Editor Harvey Deuell, upon hearing of the action, protested that he had bought the article from "a reputable literary agent" and printed it in good faith. The reputable literary agent, manager George T. Bye of the Putnam Syndicate, protested "either Malkus or Sarazen is to blame. We handled it [the article] for Malkus in good faith and the editors of Liberty bought it not doubting that it had been approved by Sarazen."

All of which was doubtless "in good faith," and Mr. Malkus seemed destined to be the eventual culprit. But the public had a glimpse of the labyrinth through which articles represented as being intimate, exclusive, confidential or first-hand may pass before they are served up under gaudy covers, a labyrinth through which no editor, at least not Liberty's, has time or inclination to check back on what he publishes. For the public it was a happy episode, with a deluder, for once, deluded.

*A verb, undiscoverable in standard dictionaries, invented by able Miss Hurst for the occasion.