Word: coghlan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...grounds of Missouri's Capitol at Jefferson City repose three old cannon from bygone wars. Every time that Ralph Coghlan, a ruddy, owlish man who breathes fire and snorts the editorial page of the famed St. Louis Post-Dispatch, thought about them it made him mad. He thought they belonged on the nation's scrap pile. But Missouri's earnest, toothy Governor Forrest C. Donnell said he could not prove that the State owned the cannon, therefore could not give them away. This made Ralph Coghlan even madder...
Last week he took matters into his own hands. While planting some locust trees in his garden he discussed the cannon with a tree surgeon, one Sidney Stearns. Ralph Coghlan said he was "very serious" about wanting those cannon on the scrap pile. Upshot: Arborist Stearns agreed to get a friend and remove the cannon; Editor Coghlan agreed to pay the expenses. Further upshot: when Stearns and. friend tried to uproot the cannon they were arrested. The case was suddenly complicated when police found a loaded revolver, a full can of gasoline and a sixth tire in Stearns...
...four. (The other three: the New York Post's Rollin Kirby, the Baltimore Sun's Edmund Duffy, Scripps-Howard's Harold M. Talburt.) Behind the scenes at the Post-Dispatch his editorial opinions sometimes clash with those of his bosses, Publisher Joseph Pulitzer and Editor Ralph Coghlan...
Wrote Editor Coghlan: "Mr. Roosevelt today committed an act of war. He also became America's first dictator. . . . Undeterred by law or the most primitive form of common sense, the President is turning over to a warring power a goodly portion of the United States Navy. . . . We get in exchange leases on British possessions in this Hemisphere-but only leases. What good will these leases be if Hitler should acquire title to these islands by right of conquest? ... Of all sucker real-estate deals in history, this is the worst, and the President of the United States...
Appeasement? The Star-Times could not take this Blitzkrieg lying down. Next day, on page 1, the Star-Times struck back at Editor Coghlan. Calling the Post-Dispatch's piece a "fanatical diatribe, bred of mingled hate and fear," an effort "to win the Pulitzer Prize for Appease ment," the Star-Times bought the same space which the Post-Dispatch had taken in the New York Times and Washington Post to meet the attack...