Page:The Name of William M. Tugman Added to Honor Roll.djvu/18

 manager views or not. As the time for a vote on this issue in the city approached in 1944 intensified attention was given to it in the paper.

On the next to the last day of the year the paper took up editorially the question of Eugene as a wholesome "liberty town" for soldiers from nearby Camp Adair. Under the head of "Soldiers and Moral Problems" the editor said:

"We think that a great deal of good has come out of the "smoking out." Step by step her [the reporter's] stories have dragged out the real facts in something like the proper proportions. Eugene is not nearly so bad as the Adair officer's carelessly-worded statement to Mayor Large might indicate. Neither is it so good that we can afford to be smug.

On our end we need:
 * 1) Prompt exchange of information between Adair and civil authorities on all cases.
 * 2) More intensive policing of the entire Eugene-Springfield area and in this city, state and county officers must work together.
 * 3) Better controls on juveniles, and the proposed $20 fine on parents whose kids violate curfew seems good.
 * 4) Cooperation of schools, churches and every other agency to develop a recreation program which is healthy and sound.

There is no better community, anywhere, than this one, nor is there one with a finer and more generous attitude toward men and women in service. Nor is there any community more interested in "its own" and after all, the health and decency of our own is the big end of our problem."

It is noticeable that Mr. Tugman seldom carries on more than one important editorial campaign at any one time. It has been his theory that the readers' attention may thus be divided, to the detriment of the campaign.

Through the years this editor has increased both the strength and the felicity of his writing style with a dash of homely, salty humor on occasion. Crisp comments by Ajax McGurk, mouth piece of many of Mr. Tugman's crackling quips, often condense an idea into a minimum of space, while giving it a flavor to delight the reader.

Readers have come to look for those homely philosophic editorials in which Adrian Fuddle and family, of Mortgage Ridge, describe or satirize various odd characteristics of the American way of life.

These are more or less in the form of a short story in miniature or a trimmed-down one-act play. The characters are fictional,