Big Little Shift

Twin keystones of the U. S. liberal weekly press are the 23-year-old New Republic and the 72-year-old Nation. Each sells for 15-c-, each is published in Manhattan. Outsiders are likely to credit the Nation with having a little more wallop than the New Republic, the New Republic with having a little finer literary quality than the Nation. Politically they are not far apart. According to Editor-Owner Freda Kirchwey, the Nation "has followed a left-liberal policy all the way through, and it has shifted somewhat further to the left as times have changed." The New Republic, says Editor Bruce Bliven, is "working along every front to do away with repression, hunger, insecurity, injustice of all kinds, particularly in the U. S."

Because of the moderately intelligent, highly articulate and supremely argumentative nature of the New Republic'?, and Nation's readers (less than 70,000 all told) ructions among their editorial personnel tend to create more fuss than their mere circulation figures would warrant. So a major little editorial crisis shook the Left press last week when the New Republic'?, inside back page displayed this bulletin:

The New Republic announces that Heywood Broun has joined its staff. . . . The major event of 1937 has been the growth of organized labor. Central to the interest of New Republic readers is the unionization of writers, office workers, professional people; spokesman and leader in this field --Heywood Broun.

Practically unknown to the people who read his daily column in 40 newspapers is the fact that on & off for 10 years Mr. Broun, whose heart is as big as his stomach, has been contributing (almost literally) a weekly article to the Nation. First news that Editor Kirchwey had of his shift was when the New Republic sent in copy for an exchange advertisement in the Nation announcing the acquisition of Mr. Broun. However, Editor Kirchwey (who agreed to the advertising swap) had long been aware that the Newspaper Guild's unpressed president had not been happy in her columns. Last April, after two Nation writers opposed the Roosevelt court reorganization plan, Mr. Broun declared in its pages: "I'm getting a little sick of the Nation's policy of fair play, and everybody must be heard whether he has anything to say or not." And columnist and magazine had again disagreed in August on the advisability of the Guild's sponsoring issues so far afield as the cause of Leftist Spain without a national referendum.

Said the Nation's good-natured epitaph last week: "We liked Mr. Broun and his page, and we claimed for ourselves and our other regular contributors only the right we unquestionably gave to him--free expression of opinion. The irony of Mr. Broun's disapproval was that he and we saw eye to eye on the court proposal--as well as on most other major issues; we differed from him only in believing that it merited debate and that the opposition had a right to be heard. . . . We wish him well but we shall watch his future progress with some misgivings; we suspect that the spirit of fair play may search him out and plague him in the pages of the New Republic as well."

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