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As a foreign correspondent, covering the A.E.F. in 1918, he outwitted military censors skillfully. Once he sent a long, inane, seemingly pointless dispatch containing, for no apparent reason, the names and home addresses of several Irish New Yorkers. Astounded at first, the Times's great Managing Editor Carr Van Anda finally realized James must be trying to say something. He sent reporters to the addresses. Soon he learned that all the men named were members of New York's great "Fighting Sixty-Ninth." Result: a Times scoop on the news that the Fighting Sixty-Ninth was going into action.
By 1919 James was chief of the Times's Bureau in Paris, where he so won the respect and friendship of French officials that he was made a member of the French Legion of Honor. In Paris he covered the arrival of Atlantic Flyer Lindbergh, considers that one of the most important stories he ever handled.
Careful, poised, experienced "Jimmy" James became the Times's managing editor in 1932, succeeding Van Anda, To Jimmy James goes the major credit for the Times's superb coverage of World War II. To the carefully chosen reporters he sends abroad James gives tremendous freedom. A departing correspondent is told, in effect: "The Times's attitude is that you are our ambassador.
If we did not have confidence in you, we would not send you. We will not second-guess you. We will go along with you, or we will bring you home. go on, now; and don't get us into trouble!" No Timesman's dispatch is cut except for space reasons, ever materially changed except for the necessary addition, by the paper's twelve cable copyreaders, of "ands" and "thes" (left out of cables to save tolls).
Proof that the Times does go along with its correspondents: though it buys seven press services, an estimated four-fifths of all the foreign news the Times prints (communiques excepted) comes from its own men.
Chessmen. Timesmen are by no means perfect. Daniel Brigham, in Switzerland, has often been fooled by German propaganda and has repeatedly missed accuracy, spurred by phony tips and his own imagination.
Cocky, cynical Frank Kluckhohn put his foot in his mouth early this year when he heard about President Roosevelt's imminent arrival in Africa. Kluckhohn, who was in Casablanca, demanded transportation to Dakar, where he was sure the President would land. He got it, had a fine view of Dakar while Roosevelt conferred in Casablanca.
Even able Hanson Baldwin, Times military analyst and perhaps the best in formed war writer in the U.S. today, in common with most experts predicted, soon after the German invasion of Russia, that the Nazis would win another quick victory.
But for every Timesmaris bobble, there are many triumphs.