"What the government of Athens needs is a good delousing station."
-- Unknown Greek author of very ancient but indeterminate date.

I WAS fairly well acquainted with the whole corps of Washing-
ton correspondents during the war and much better acquainted
with the present group. I don't know whether it was the war
atmosphere, and the strong cohesion of government itself
under war conditions, or whether it is a most astonishing im-
provement in technique -- but, as between the trying for any-
thing that would make news by that old crowd, and the literal
excavation of it by the new, there is about the comparison that
exists between a gimlet or a brad-awl and a dynamite gang
with a battery of five-ton steam shovels. I honestly believe that
nothing of importance goes on in the Capital that they do not
know it as soon as it starts -- and usually as soon as somebody
begins thinking about it.

A favorite method is for one man to come to you and say:
"There is some pretty bad stuff coming out of AAA about you
and NRA"; and so -- "bzz-bzz-bzz" -- never anything definite
-- never any names. And if in comment or discussion you let
anything pass your teeth of either a controversial or even ar-
gumentative nature the trick has been done. Back hot-foot
to AAA etc. "You really ought to hear Johnson on such-and-
such" -- something definite now and a name to use and there-
after -- back and forth like a shuttle. Pretty soon a fabric has
been woven which, with at least some faint color, can be head-
lined "Wallace and Johnson in Big Rift."

Multiply the possibilities of that by several scores of sub-
ordinate officials in both administrations. Combine and per-
mutate it as between officials in the same administration (which
leads to such headlines as: "NRA torn with strife") and some
idea can be gathered of the source of most of the unsettling

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