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Show WHO'S NEWS THIS I WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON Consolidated Features WNU Features. XJEW YORK. Elmer Davis once J- ' paid $50,000 to see a ball game. It is a story which the new director direc-tor of the Office of War Informa- OWI Chief Can by wL't Show Us How to give out. He Take Bad News js an ex" tremely modest mod-est man, it might seem likebragging. We had the story from the former editor of a national magazine of large circulation. In the reminiscent mood of the editor, the tale unfolded as follows: "With a. moving picture firm, we offered a prize of $50,000 for the best serial, the winning story later to be screened. We put up half the prize money and the picture company com-pany the other half. We whooped it up into a big national excitement, and entries came in from every corner cor-ner of the country. There was something some-thing over 90,000 of them in all. "The winner seemed to be the entry of a widely known New York novelist and magazine feature fea-ture writer, but there was another an-other serial that crowded it closely and finally, in a hairline hair-line decision, the judges picked the former. We had informed the novelist of her victory, when one of the judges recalled that she had published a magazine story several years before with a plot somewhat like her contest con-test entry. We looked it up. The similarity was slight, hut we decided de-cided it would bar the new offering. offer-ing. We telephoned the woman writer that we were reconsidering reconsider-ing our decision. "That left the field open to the runner-up, a piece submitted by one Elmer Davis, a former ace reporter who had left the city room and set up as a free lance writer of fiction and articles. We were eager to carry car-ry the good news to Mr. Davis. Everybody Ev-erybody who knew him said he was a mighty nice chap and rated good news if anybody did. "At Mr. Davis' little writing office, we were told that Mr. Davis had gone to the ball game. We left word for him to come to our office. "Back in our editorial rooms, there was a big stir among the judges. Miss Blank, the other finisher, finish-er, had telephoned that she could remove from her script any remote similarity. She, too, was a writer of the highest integrity, and we finally final-ly agreed that she get the prize. "Next morning, Mr. Davis came in. I told him what had hannened. You knew he was jolted, but you had to look closely close-ly to catch the flick of disappointment disap-pointment in his placid Hoosier eyes. Then he said: 'That was a pretty expensive ball game, wasn't it? "He went back to his office and started kicking out serials like an Indiana hired man in harvest time. I bought them. He came through." YOUNG Lieut. Delos C. Emmons, trying to transfer from infantry to aviation, was rejected three times because he couldn't hear a watch Well for Us That hfoundn Examiner Wasn't examiner Stickler for Rules ho saif: You could not hear a watch tick in an airplane, anyway. Forget it." He became just about the most valuable man that the air service ever came near losing and the Battle of Midway Island might not have gone so well for us had the examiner insisted rules be observed. Colonel Emmons holds the temporary tempo-rary rank of lieutenant general, as commander of the Hawaiian department, de-partment, and now President Roosevelt Roose-velt breaks all precedent by recommending recom-mending that he be jumped from colonel to major general. At 53, he will be the army's youngest major general. He has done as much knock-about flying fly-ing as any army man in the air, and is air-conditioned not only m hazardous flying exploits but m strategy and techniques, having taught flying at Harvard university in 1920 and 1921. About a year ago he secretly landed land-ed 21 of the biggest Flying Fortresses For-tresses in Hawaii. He had previous experience in the Islands, having been with the Eighteenth wing command com-mand in Hawaii in 1934; in 1936 he took command of March Field, Calif. BRITAIN'S old school tie gets half a column on the cables, in spite of airplane and battleship competition. competi-tion. They plan to scrap it, says Richard Austen Butler, president of the board of education, as a symbol of class education. Out of Cambridge, Cam-bridge, Mr. Butler rapidly advanced in the inter-war years as a member of parliament undersecretary for foreign affairs. He was born in India In-dia in 1902. At Cambridge he took honors in the classics and has swung many an impressive Latin quotation into British public life. |