The Press: Pegging the Dollar

Terrible-tempered Westbrook Pegler proved to be too hot to handle last week for the New York Journal-American, his No. 1 outlet. It killed a Pegler column warning readers not to buy U.S. bonds, although the Washington. Times-Herald and some other papers thought it fit to print. Wrote Peg: "Any corporation . . . promoting the purchase of Government bonds on the pretense that such bonds are good investments, is either a party to a confidence game or a victim of stupid management. In either case I am not kidded.

"During World War II, the Treasury importuned me several times to act as runner for a swindle which it was operating . . . [i.e.) the sale of Government bonds]." But Pegler did not intend to make the same mistake again: "In honesty, I can't, because the value of the dollar is going steadily down . . . The dollar ... is so cheap now that it won't buy a meal in a second-rate restaurant ... Is it terribly unpatriotic of me to go on this way, disillusioning our people about Government bonds?"