Augur

Argus was a mythological monster who never missed a trick, for some of his 100 eyes were always ajar. Considering that such a creature might well have been the pure prototype of the modern international journalist, Vladimir Poliakoff took "Argus" as a pen name in 1924, when he wrote an article for the British Fortnightly Review. By a mistake the printer made it "Augur." The accidental pseudonym served just as well for Journalist Poliakoff's political forecasts, and Augur it has remained. In 14 years that by-line has come to mean as much as 22K inside a ring. Last week Vladimir Poliakoff chalked up the latest of a long series of coups: a clean scoop in the London Evening Standard on a draft of the coming Anglo-Italian treaty (see p. 22). Next morning's august London Times, which usually ignores lesser publications, had to eat humble pie by virtually lifting Augur's account. What made the pie harder to swallow was the fact that Poliakoff served the Times twelve of his 20 journalistic years, and since deserting it last year (preferring to work for a paper "of news, not views") has also scooped the whiskered Times on: 1) Mussolini's fall "peace gesture," 2) Hitler's intention to forgo colonies for a free hand in middle Europe, 3) the February British Cabinet crisis.

These and a string of greater & lesser scoops stretching back a generation have come to Vladimir Poliakoff because he is a brilliant, self-assured, courteous Russian-Jewish gentleman who has ingratiated himself with the most impeccable diplomatic connections in Europe. His recipe: "Know your man ten years before you need him; give more than you take." In London he has profited recently by being thick with the Italian Embassy, perhaps partly because he strikingly resembles a jesting Mussolini. But he is suing the London Daily Worker for criminal libel because it said he was a liaison man in the British-Italian rapprochement.

Journalist Poliakoff circles over Europe like a hawk. He slaps no backs but never forgets a name or a face. At home in his six-storied London house he claims London's biggest private telephone bill. His work day begins at 5:30. Stopping only for snacks, Augur swiftly turns out his well-turned, exclusive, thrice-a-week Diplomatic Letters, restricted to 72 copies, over which every embassy in London pores. Poliakoff is equally proud of his weekly piece for the provinces, his occasional cabled stories to the New York Times. Somewhere he finds time to write books as varied as The Tragic Bride and Soviets vs. Civilization.

For relaxation he loafs in Hyde Park with his bounding black Afghan coursing hounds, Rib and Rab, one a gift from the King of Afghanistan. Their full names, Ribbentrop and Rabinovich, are Augur's private joke in defiance of Nazi anti-Jewish legislation. Trained to run down gazelles, Rib and Rab now lope with their master on his news hunts all over England, have committed nuisances in the sacred precincts of the Foreign Office itself.

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