Broun on Colleagues

As a rule newspaper columnists ride their own political hobby horses, politely ignore the hobby-horsemanship of their colleagues. For that reason the writing craft chortled last week as Heywood Broun, in his first time out on The New Republic (TIME, Sept. 20), charged at some contemporaries not Left enough for him:

Of Walter Lippmann: "For several reasons the mind of Walter Lippmann has been open to visitors every day except Sunday, when a small admission fee is charged, and so any comment here would be superfluous. Anybody can go and see for himself. He will find the excursion listed in the guide book under the heading, 'Cave of the Winds.' "

Of Dorothy Thompson: "She is a victim of galloping nascence. Most of her newspaper training was received abroad when she was an active if not particularly profound foreign correspondent. Returning to her native land, she is suddenly filled with the same fervor of discovery as 'Stout Cortez' or Columbus. . . . If all the speeches she has made in the past twelve months were laid end to end they would constitute a bridge of platitudes sufficient to reach from the Herald Tribune's editorial rooms to the cold caverns of the moon. Dorothy Thompson is greater than Eliza because not only does she cross the ice but breaks it as she goes. Moreover, she is her own bloodhound."

Of Westbrook Pegler: "The case of Mr. Pegler, 'that peril to placidity.' is simplest of all. Peg was bitten by an income tax while still a boy a few years ago."