The Lewis B. Sebring Papers, which include correspondence, speeches and writings, and notes, are an excellent source for evaluating the nature of wartime journalism. Sebring's experience in the Pacific theatre during World War II is even more interesting because his assignment permitted a close examination of General MacArthur's controversial relations with the press. Unfortunately, the papers offer only fragmentary documentation of Sebring's other years as a journalist--years which witnessed a rise from young reporter to night city editor of the New York Herald-Tribune.
The papers are organized into several series, including biographical material; personal, wartime, and business correspondence; speeches and writings; diaries and notebooks; and miscellany.
The BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL includes an annotated copy of Sebring's birth certificate, press releases drafted during various stages of his career, a twenty-five page autobiography, and news clippings which refer to Sebring.
CORRESPONDENCE is divided into three categories: personal, wartime, and business. The personal correspondence dates from 1917 to 1941 and from 1945 to 1969 and contains little documentation of Sebring's career as a journalist. Among the few professional correspondents are Joseph Driscoll and Russell Hathaway. There are also fragmentary references to his journalistic training at Union College and his travels which resulted during the 1930s in friendships with lecturer Arthur H. Merritt and Sir Wilfred Grenfell and a number of related free-lance articles. Other topics frequently noted include the Boy Scouts of America, photography and filmmaking, and local history and genealogy. A substantial amount of correspondence (primarily dated 1937 and 1938) relates to research done on his ancestor Dirik Romeyn, a founder of Union College.
The wartime correspondence, which comprises the most valuable and extensive portion of the collection, consists of correspondence between Sebring and his parents, other relatives, acquaintances, and friends in the United States, and acquaintances and friends in Australia and New Guinea. The correspondence to his parents, which was frequent, provides a detailed account of conditions in Australia, jungle fighting in New Guinea and New Britain, and some references to press censorship. Particularly noteworthy are the firsthand accounts of his travels with the 32nd U.S. Army Division during the Buna-Gona campaigns, his tour of Cape Gloucester, and the visits of Eleanor Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in 1943. The incoming correspondence from his parents includes both regular mail and V-Mail; although dating from the same period the two categories were separated to facilitate microfilming. Among Sebring's parents' mail is correspondence with Martin Agronsky and Raymond Clapper. Correspondence with Herald-Tribune Society Editor John G. Logan is to be found among mail from friends in the U.S. The correspondence with his Australian and New Guinean sources deals with press censorship, wartime conditions, and combat as well as his own social engagements. There are letters from Prime Minister John Curtin, the Australian publicity censor, and officials of the Australian Departments of the Army and Information, the Red Cross, and the Australian-American Association.
The business correspondence includes correspondence with the New York Herald-Tribune during the war and subsequent correspondence with publishers interested in Sebring's manuscript on MacArthur. Much of the correspondence between 1942 and 1944 is with Managing Editor George Cornish and Foreign Editor Joe Alex Morris, but there are also scattered letters to and from Helen Rogers Reid, Ogden Reid, and Whitelaw Reid. Possible publication of his book prompted correspondence with Frank Kelley and Drew Pearson.
SPEECHES AND WRITINGS is an incomplete file of Sebring's magazine and newspaper articles, speeches, and book-length manuscripts. In several cases several drafts of a particular manuscript are included. The section, which includes only by-lined articles, is most thorough in its documentation of the period August 1940 to December 1944; clippings prior to 1940 and from 1945 to 1949 are obvious in their absence. Materials relating to his column “On Second Thought” (1959-1972) were received after the original donation had been filmed. This material is consequently filmed out of sequence on Reel 13.
The section of speeches and writings also includes three drafts of Sebring's unpublished manuscript, “The MacArthur Circus.” Also in existence but not included on this film is a series of censored press dispatches to the Tribune which are part of the collection of Union College.
Much valuable material is also to be found in the section DIARIES AND NOTEBOOKS. In addition to diaries kept during his youth and first year as a journalist, this section includes forty handwritten memoranda books dating from Sebring's first assignment as a military reporter in August 1940, to his return from SWPA headquarters in June 1944. The pre-war notebooks detail such subjects as training, transportation and supply, recreation and entertainment, and camp construction. The wartime notebooks relate to such subjects as General MacArthur's strategic concept of the war, campaigns in the Southwest Pacific area, conditions in Australia and New Guinea, and press censorship.
MISCELLANY includes some undated notes, research materials, and printed matter generally relating to the activities of correspondents during World War II.
Because of its rapidly deteriorating condition, the Sebring collection has been microfilmed, and the originals discarded. A quantity of material relating to the Sebring-Daniel-Bulla family has been separately accessioned and is not part of this microfilm edition.
