dimension and edge to his reporting that was involving and memorable. He was not a reporter’s reporter, he was a
writer’s
reporter, and during the Spanish Civil War, covering it from the Loyalist side, he was greatly admired by the literary left and others in Europe and America who despised Franco. Hemingway, a friend of Matthews’, called him the “straightest, the ablest and the bravest correspondent, a gaunt lighthouse of honesty,” but Matthews at the same time was being called a Communist along the Catholic front in New York and elsewhere. A year earlier, in 1936, when Matthews had been the only correspondent to serve throughout the Ethiopian campaign on the Italian side, he had been called a fascist by many
Times
readers. There was something in the chemistry of Herbert Matthews that could activate readers, provoking them to extravagant praise or scorn. Matthews did not, like so many correspondents, play it safe with the official version of things, and perhaps only
The New York Times
could absorb within its ranks for so long such an endlessly controversial figure; but by the Nineteen-sixties, during Clifton Daniel’s years as the managing editor, after Matthews’ reporting on Castro’s Cuba had again hit the raw nerve of the nation, there was some question as to how much even
The Times
could take. It was not that
The Times
hierarchy would ever dismiss Matthews. He was too much a part of them for that. There were other ways. But in 1937 Herbert Matthews was one of the excitingyoung men on
The Times
, an inspiration to his juniors if a trial to his seniors, and his reporting from Spain was dramatic, his insight into its consequences prophetic.
Also reporting from Europe in those days, though he was sixty-five years
old
, was the former managing editor, Frederick T. Birchall, crossing and recrossing Europe as energetically as he had ever since replacing Edwin James as the chief correspondent five years before. In the process Birchall became as familiar with Cracow as Paris, Dublin as Geneva or Berlin, and from these places he cabled stories that at times focused on the visible signs of a tense Europe—such as when German customs officers held him up at an airport and forced him to strip to the skin while searching for a nonexistent supply of money they believed he was trying to smuggle out of the country. At other times Birchall’s stories caught the quiet eerie hours of Europe waiting for war. In one story from London Birchall described how, while walking through the park that after-noon, he had suddenly become aware of a strange new change in the city. At first he could not perceive what it was. He knew that it was not the result of the obvious preparations for war that he saw all around him—the sandbag craters, the wheel tracks, the balloon barrages, the shelter trenches. Then, he wrote, it began to occur to him as he walked “that in the whole park, formerly at this hour filled with laughing children playing ball, chasing each other and making merry in all sorts of ways, there was not a child in sight. Thinking back,” he went on, “it was also certain that throughout this week one had not seen anywhere a boy or girl below the age of 16. This was a childless city.”
Frederick Birchall’s reporting in the Thirties, particularly from Paris, was so often denigrating to the Germans that one night a
Times
editor in New York, anticipating the harm that might come to Birchall from the German agents in Paris, did something that
Times
men are warned never to do. The editor falsified a dateline. He scratched out “Paris” and wrote in “London” at the top of Birchall’s story preceding the date, thereby violating what was perhaps Sulzberger’s pet rule. A dateline on a
Times
story was sacred, Sulzberger had often said, adding that readers were always entitled to know precisely from where and when a dispatch had originated. Had Sulzberger known of the editor’s act, the editor would have been severely
writer’s
reporter, and during the Spanish Civil War, covering it from the Loyalist side, he was greatly admired by the literary left and others in Europe and America who despised Franco. Hemingway, a friend of Matthews’, called him the “straightest, the ablest and the bravest correspondent, a gaunt lighthouse of honesty,” but Matthews at the same time was being called a Communist along the Catholic front in New York and elsewhere. A year earlier, in 1936, when Matthews had been the only correspondent to serve throughout the Ethiopian campaign on the Italian side, he had been called a fascist by many
Times
readers. There was something in the chemistry of Herbert Matthews that could activate readers, provoking them to extravagant praise or scorn. Matthews did not, like so many correspondents, play it safe with the official version of things, and perhaps only
The New York Times
could absorb within its ranks for so long such an endlessly controversial figure; but by the Nineteen-sixties, during Clifton Daniel’s years as the managing editor, after Matthews’ reporting on Castro’s Cuba had again hit the raw nerve of the nation, there was some question as to how much even
The Times
could take. It was not that
The Times
hierarchy would ever dismiss Matthews. He was too much a part of them for that. There were other ways. But in 1937 Herbert Matthews was one of the excitingyoung men on
The Times
, an inspiration to his juniors if a trial to his seniors, and his reporting from Spain was dramatic, his insight into its consequences prophetic.
Also reporting from Europe in those days, though he was sixty-five years
old
, was the former managing editor, Frederick T. Birchall, crossing and recrossing Europe as energetically as he had ever since replacing Edwin James as the chief correspondent five years before. In the process Birchall became as familiar with Cracow as Paris, Dublin as Geneva or Berlin, and from these places he cabled stories that at times focused on the visible signs of a tense Europe—such as when German customs officers held him up at an airport and forced him to strip to the skin while searching for a nonexistent supply of money they believed he was trying to smuggle out of the country. At other times Birchall’s stories caught the quiet eerie hours of Europe waiting for war. In one story from London Birchall described how, while walking through the park that after-noon, he had suddenly become aware of a strange new change in the city. At first he could not perceive what it was. He knew that it was not the result of the obvious preparations for war that he saw all around him—the sandbag craters, the wheel tracks, the balloon barrages, the shelter trenches. Then, he wrote, it began to occur to him as he walked “that in the whole park, formerly at this hour filled with laughing children playing ball, chasing each other and making merry in all sorts of ways, there was not a child in sight. Thinking back,” he went on, “it was also certain that throughout this week one had not seen anywhere a boy or girl below the age of 16. This was a childless city.”
Frederick Birchall’s reporting in the Thirties, particularly from Paris, was so often denigrating to the Germans that one night a
Times
editor in New York, anticipating the harm that might come to Birchall from the German agents in Paris, did something that
Times
men are warned never to do. The editor falsified a dateline. He scratched out “Paris” and wrote in “London” at the top of Birchall’s story preceding the date, thereby violating what was perhaps Sulzberger’s pet rule. A dateline on a
Times
story was sacred, Sulzberger had often said, adding that readers were always entitled to know precisely from where and when a dispatch had originated. Had Sulzberger known of the editor’s act, the editor would have been severely
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