Angel Steps Out

Manhattan's Maurice Wertheim is a cultured, Jewish international banker, a philanthropist, a founder of the Theatre Guild, a man of social conscience. Two years ago, Banker Wertheim bought for his Civic Aid Foundation Oswald Garrison Villard's famed old pinko weekly, The Nation, which was editorially strong at 70 but financially feeble. Mr. Wertheim kept hands off The Nation's policy, which was shaped by Editor Freda Kirchwey and her colleagues, Joseph Wood Krutch and Max Lerner. Under the Foundation's patronage, The Nation treated itself to a new format, the cartoons of brilliant David Low. With pinko-liberalism rampant in the land, circulation began to soar.

Last February, The Nation antagonized its angel by greeting Franklin Roosevelt's Supreme Court Plan with tempered approval as "a brilliant tour de force. . . . It is the task of progressives to support the measure--with an open-eyed awareness of its shortcomings."

To record his disagreement with this stand, Banker Wertheim took a page and a half in the magazine. Wrote he: "For the purpose of immediate progressive legislation we are asked to sacrifice the great democratic principle that fundamental changes in our system of government shall result only from the decision of the people. . . . Does The Nation not know that it is clear beyond question, that the people have not passed on this subject? . . ."

Last week The Nation's difference with its backer was neatly resolved. With an all-time high of 43,000 readers, The Nation has become selfsupporting, so Banker Wertheim felt free to sell it to Editor Kirchwey for " a substantial cash consideration."

A Barnard graduate, quiet, bobbed-haired Freda Kirchwey has worked on The Nation for 19 years. In private life she is the wife of Director Evans Clark of Edward Filene's sociological Twentieth Century Fund.

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