Days of our years.pdf

Van Paassen's autobiography, Days of Our Years, published in 1939, detailed many events that he couldn't mention in his earlier newspaper reports. It was the bestselling nonfiction book in the United States for almost two years. "Since I could not afford to be excluded from a single European country with so general an assignment, it was in my interest to remain on the good side of all the nascent censorships in Europe. Hence many things I investigated or saw remained unreported. For example, in 1928... [about] the methods of the reactionary governments of Rumania and Bulgaria in suppressing popular movements - twelve thousand peasants and workers had been slain in Bulgaria alone that year - I could not send out a word. The police dogged our every footstep.... The managing editor, Mr. John H. Tennant, warned me more than once that I had not been sent over on a crusading mission. He added, moreover, that there was no confirmation from any reliable source on that horrible business in Bulgaria. The local agency correspondents had not sent a word. So I, too, remained silent. It was the only policy. Correspondents like George Seldes, Samuel Spivak, David Darrah Gedye, and myself discovered only too soon that if we did speak out, we did not last very long, either in the countries in which we were stationed or in our jobs."