"Beg Your Pardon!"
Under the heading "Beg Your Pardon," the Chicago Tribune has just installed a new department, devoted to correcting errors of fact which "creep into" the paper. It is not a column for the airing of differences of opinion.
The Tribune is carrying a one-column box heading on the corrections. On Memorial Day it decorated the first page of its second section with four amendments of statements claimed by interested persons to be errors. That hair-splitting is still a popular pastime is indicated by the nature of some of the objections. Here's a sample:
Seymour Stedman decided that he ought to deny the interview with him in yesterday's Tribune, and deputized St.-John Tucker to write the denial. Save that the reporter neglected to distinguish between the locutions "peace meeting" and "peace terms meeting," there was no misquotation of Mr. Stedman.
The New York World conducts a similar department, directed by The World's Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play.
Couldn't Fool the Peepul
Editor C. E. Ingalls, of the Corvallis Gazette-Times, recently presented a scheme for the annihilation of the U-boats. The plan, which he modestly ascribed to one Ima Nocker, of Corvallis, contemplates simply that the Atlantic ocean be drained and the submarines run down with armored Fords.
Two of his discerning readers, however, refuse to believe that the plan is practicable. Signing themselves "Two Who Know," they come right back at the editor (he says) with a stinging comment. "We believe," they are quoted as saying, "that you are attempting to fool the people about a very important matter. In the first place, the plan of draining the ocean would not be feasible in our judgment, and in the second place we do not find Mr. Nocker's name in the telephone directory or on the tax list. Your alleged interview is unreasonable, and we denounce it as pure fiction."
Having been properly caught with the goods, the culprit editor could do nothing but to comment, in sorrow, "There are just too many doubters in this world, and that's a fact."
Recognition of the service given by the newspapers of Oregon was accorded recently by Governor Withycombe when he declared that the enthusiastic co-operation of the press of the state had made Oregonians better informed as to their duties in the war census than those of probably any other state.
