Mr. Cortesi Gets Mad

Arnaldo Cortesi is a patient and easygoing man. In his 17 years as New York Times correspondent in Italy, Cortesi managed to get along with Fascist officials while many another newsman was kicked out of the country. Cortesi (rhymes with more-lazy) had to get along: he was an Italian citizen. (His mother was from Boston; his father was Associated Press bureau chief in Rome for 29 years.*)

Lean, leisurely Arnaldo Cortesi was schooled in Italy and England, became something of a scholar and a connoisseur of wines. He learned to like the cafe life of Rome, and the way Mussolini's trains ran on time. Leftwingers loudly accused the Times of employing a Fascist apologist; and even other Timesmen rebutted him on occasion.

But Cortesi stuck to his tune, and the Times stuck to him--until Mussolini in 1939 forbade any Italian to work for a foreign newspaper. Thereupon the Times sent him, first to Mexico City for two years, then to Argentina. There he followed his old, pleasant habits. Only once did one of his articles offend: last August the Argentine Government jailed him for eleven hours, but (he wrote) "throughout . . . treated [me] with courtesy." Other foreign correspondents sneaked stories out (via Montevideo) about the oppressions of Argentine dictatorship. Reporter Cortesi argued urbanely with Argentine censors--but never once tried to by-pass them. Then, suddenly, fortnight ago, the glowworm turned.

"The Time Has Come." "By channels other than the normal ones" (as he put it), Reporter Cortesi sent the Times a boiling hot column-and-a-half dispatch. The Times gave it Page-One, Column-One play: ALL FREEDOM FOUND ENDED IN ARGENTINA. At long last, Cortesi was mad because censors had "mangled" one of his dispatches, and "The time has come to say . . . that things have happened in Buenos Aires recently that exceed anything that this correspondent can remember in his 17 years' experience in Fascist Italy. . . ."

Most or all of what he said about Argentina's strict censorship and jails crowded with political prisoners had been said before, in dispatches which other newsmen had sneaked out. But Cortesi packaged it all up, and with a good play by the powerful Times, it created a minor journalistic sensation. In San Francisco, it jarred the State Department's don't-let's-be-beastly-to-the-Argentines policy ; in Moscow, it got a jubilant reception.

Once he had discovered the delights of breaking censorship, Cortesi kept at it. Modestly, in the usual third person, he reported: "The dispatch . . . struck the military Government with the force of a high-explosive bomb. . . . Excited consultations . . . took place ... to decide . . . whether anything could be done to counteract the disastrous impression created throughout the continent by what he had written." Last week Argentina's Minister of the Interior summoned Cortesi, warned him "not to be surprised at any thing that may happen to you." Arnaldo Cortesi, to the amazement of all (presumably including himself), found himself acclaimed far & wide as a fearless, crusading, censor-defying journalist.

* Salvatore Cortesi, now living in retirement in Florence, gave the A.P. a world beat on the death of Pope Leo XIII in 1903. But he is best remembered by the A.P. for the character references he gave to an American surety company: "Giuseppe Sarto -- Occupation: Pope; Victor Emmanuel -- Occupation: King."

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