The Morgan Mess

"They should have 'wiped it up," said my uncle Toby, "and said no more about it."--Tristram Shandy.

U.S. journalism took a second look at its part in the Morgan affair (see INTERNATIONAL), and what it saw turned its face red--or should have. In quoting Lieut. General Sir Frederick Morgan about an organized Jewish "plot" (the press's word, not Morgan's) to smuggle the Jews out of Europe, the press had told some of the truth, but not the whole truth.

It had fanned the General's casual and candid remark into an inflammatory "attack," and the torch had been taken up by Jewish leaders who are usually responsible, by some who are usually not, and by comedians like Eddie Cantor (TIME, Jan. 14). Even the New York Times had tossed some faggots on the blaze. Its off-the-cuff editorial judgment of General Morgan's remarks: "It was an insult to six million tortured dead." Walter Winchell, who writes for the Hearst press, said it louder: "Morgan must not only be fired, he must be repudiated by His Majesty's, Government and stripped of his uniform. . . ."

What was the truth of it? Manhattan's hyperthyroid leftist PM put out a screaming Page One headline about GEN. MORGAN'S HITLERITE ATTACK ON EUROPE'S JEWS, but four days later its own Correspondent Victor Bernstein cabled from Germany "it must be emphasized that a great part of Morgan's statement . . . had firm foundation in truth." Sobersided New York Timesman Raymond Daniell corroborated him: "There is a regular underground organization;" it "maintains secret collective centers . . . gives Jewish refugees false papers and cash for the journey."

As the facts rolled in, too late to quell the clamor, it seemed that General Morgan 1) had spoken, in somewhat exaggerating fashion, the truth; 2) he had not talked, as first newspaper accounts implied, in anti-Semitic fashion. General Morgan was said to be out--but at week's end, he was still on the job.

Correspondent L.S.B. Shapiro of the North American Newspaper Alliance cabled from Berlin that, after all, the general had made "casual observations based on what he saw . . . but the controversial remarks were taken out of the context and put together by correspondents."

Responsibility for what followed, said Shapiro, fell 1) on the correspondents; 2) on Sir Frederick, who should have known better; 3) "on extremist elements on both sides of the Jewish problem, who compounded the misinterpretations." The New York Herald Tribune's Carl Levin chimed in: "Observers here . . . are positive of [Morgan's] sincerity, and know he had no intention of feeding the fires of anti-Semitic propaganda."

Last week in Manhattan, scholarly Archibald MacLeish, ex-assistant Secretary of State, pointed the moral. When the press had finished with Sir Frederick, MacLeish said, "the sum total effect was a lie and a disastrous and evil lie.

"This brings up the question of journalistic standards. In a world as closely integrated as this one is, the question must be asked: what is the standard of truth in journalism? When the journalist is dealing with an inflammatory subject and so reports it that verbally his story is true, but the overall effect is false, are the standards of truth satisfied?"

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