DEATH : Former Columnist Childs Dies

ST. LOUIS —  Marquis Childs, foreign correspondent, columnist and winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for commentary, has died at 87, it was reported today. The former Washington bureau chief for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had been in failing health for several months, said a spokesman for the newspaper. He died at a San Francisco hospital and had lived in that city since retiring in 1974.

Childs reported from the front during the Spanish Civil War and World War II and covered virtually every major diplomatic development from 1945 until his retirement.

He began his career with the Post-Dispatch in 1926 and left in 1944 to take over “Washington Calling” when syndicated columnist Raymond Clapper died in a plane crash.