Press: Everyman's Columnist

Something significant will be missing this month from the press of the nation: Columnist Raymond Clapper has headed for Rehoboth Beach, Del., for his first vacation in two years. In those two years Clapper has more than doubled his readers (to 8,598,635, in 144 papers), has doubly cinched his unique place among U.S. columnists.

Five years ago Washington correspondents voted that Clapper (who had then barely started syndication for Scripps-Howard) was the "most significant, fair and reliable" columnist. Today a majority of his fellows would still probably give Clapper the same award. The quality which wins him such tribute from his colleagues is his plainness, as man and writer, in articulating a plain man's concept of democratic government.

Lone Wolf. Many political columnists prefer to run with the partisan pack, but Clapper declares: "In this business you've got to be a kind of lone wolf." He has refused to endorse any group, and he belongs to no political party. A pre-Hearst discoverer and longtime friend of Alf Landon, Clapper did not mince his criticism when Landon swung to the Old Guard in the 1936 campaign. He is still Landon's friend.

There are many more examples of his independence and, what is more striking, of his stinging criticism:

> A sympathizer with much New Deal legislation, he denounced Roosevelt's third term in one of the iciest phrases of the 1940 campaign: "Up to the time of that message [F.D.R.'s "draft" speech] I have had faith in Mr. Roosevelt. I have so no longer."

> On the morning Columnist Clapper read the announcement of Mayris Chaney's appointment to OCD, the Clapper breakfast-table peace was shattered by an oath that shook his family out of their seats. That day his column crystallized the general feeling that Mrs. Roosevelt should retire from politics. Nevertheless, Mrs. Roosevelt kept him on her visiting list.

> When he recently turned on Congress, calling its proceedings "99% tripe, ignorance and demagoguery.' he stepped on sensitive and corny toes. Said Clapper, "The very heart of democracy is Congress. In the scramble for X cards it was destroying itself, forcing the people to turn to somebody else for leadership."

Pragmatist From Kansas. The evidence of Clapper's levelheaded common sense shows not only in his column but in his attitude toward his trade. An isolationist until Munich, Clapper was roundly berated by some readers when he thereafter veered toward Roosevelt's foreign policy. Said he: "I try to learn from events. . . ."

Columnist Clapper confirms his pragmatism thus: "Public opinion will not tolerate indefinitely theories that don't work in practice." He consciously writes his column for "the people I knew out in Kansas," and his favorite maxim is "Never overestimate the people's knowledge nor underestimate their intelligence."

Clapper is a stocky, stoop-shouldered man with beaked nose, retreating forehead, thoughtful blue-grey eyes set in dark rings like small rain clouds. Younger looking than his 50 years, he gives the appearance of being easily transplantable back to the east Kansas farm where he was born.