The Press: Ah, Travel

To celebrate his homecoming after a four-month tour of Europe, Hearst Columnist Westbrook Pegler last week penned a "Patriotic Pome" for his column. While it failed to prove conclusively either that travel is broadening or that Peg is even a bottom-rung poetaster, it did give him a chance for a rare and sardonic bow to his critics. Excerpts:

Flying across the ocean of beautiful

azure hue It certainly does make you proud of the

Red, the White and Blue . . .

Perhaps, mayhap, you have not heard

how our democracy

Is inculcating millions with ideals both

fine and free . . .

The Communists [were] put to rout,

those lowdown Red betrayers.

They tried to undermine us, but now

they're getting theirs.

And yet some critics carp and sneer,

with harsh, dishonest words

And call our people spendthrifts, throwing money to the birds.

That Pegler, for example, is a low

destructive cad

To read his vitriol you'd think we ne'er

done naught but bad.

He smears the memory of He* who,

ever in our love,

Will shine forth like a beacon from

eternal rest above.

And She who is by all proclaimed la

première femme de toutes

He often heaps with insults like a dame

of ill-repute.

Where'er he goes he somehow seems to

always find the "dirt"

Our finest leaders he does smear, democracy to hurt . . .

It sure has been a thrill to see the Stars and Stripes so brave

From London down to Naples and

upon the briny wave

Teaching the backward peoples of the

olden world to be

Intelligent and tolerant and noble, just like we . . .

So onward billions! On billions! Conquer All!