Surprise

One morning last week a group of ship news reporters and photographers rode silently down New York Bay. Those who were not cynical were sour. They were on their way to board the Mauretania. Their assignment was to interview and take pictures of John Pierpont Morgan, who dislikes to be interviewed or pictured, as he had plainly told them many times before.

Not many hours later those same newsmen and photographers rode up the Bay. Once more in their respective newspaper offices, they were greeted by skeptic city editors with the usual dubious grunts. Conversation in one Manhattan city-room ran something like this:

City Editor: Well, whatchagot? Nothing, eh?

Newsman: Sure. There's a column in it.

C. E.: J. P.--a column? No pictures, of course.

Newsman: Lots. Posed on deck, pipe in hand, front and side.

C.E.: -- -- -- -- -- -- .

Newsmen wrote. They told how, after a gentle suggestion from a bold photographer, the strikingly handsome Banker Morgan had shifted to a more advantageous position on the deck. They praised the amiable Morgan disposition. They described the Morgan apparel (grey lounge suit, grey fedora). Finally, they related the general Morgan conversation, which was not on Reparations, but on his Mediterranean cruise aboard his yacht Corsair. Of his yachting guest, Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, Banker Morgan told the newsmen:

"I wanted to do some good for the health of some of my friends. The Archbishop was not in good health, and I was informed by his friends that if he did make the voyage I would have to be most careful of him, and I was. I had to go to his doctor and get permission to take the Archbishop away for the cruise. The doctor said he was a sick man, but he let me have him, and when the head of the Episcopal Church in England returned I think that he looked better for the sea voyage."

The eight people in the Banker's party (including a son, a daughter-in-law, grandchildren) were given free entry of the port because his trip had been on government business. But Banker Morgan, unaware of the honored privilege, had already declared his luggage and permitted a customs inspector to open three suitcases and examine their contents. Perhaps never had so great a banker appeared in so happy a light.