Republican Bites GOP

The New York Herald Tribune, a pretty good Republican itself, does not make a practice of biting other good Republicans. Last week it bit two: Clarence Budington Kelland and GOP Chairman Joseph Martin.

Mr. Kelland had just got a new job. Joe Martin had appointed him GOPublicity Chief, to replace Franklyn Waltman. Best known as a highly paid writer of commercial fiction, wry-faced "Bud" Kelland is a hardshell, old-style GOPman who once cracked: "The fifth column in this country is headed by that fellow in the White House."

He was also, when there were such things as isolationists, a veritable monadnock.

Among U.S. citizens who learned of the appointment by reading the news in the paper was the nation's foremost Republican, Wendell Willkie. Among those who thought the appointment a bad one was the Herald Tribune. When Bud Kelland, making his first pronouncement as a GOPundit, declared that it was every citizen's bounden duty, even in wartime, "to engage vigorously in politics," the Herald Tribune let out a growl and jumped for him.

"Mr. Kelland was so busy being a Republican in the last year," the Herald Tribune snarled, "that he could not seem to get excited about the German menace or the Japanese menace or any other national issue. While Mr. Willkie was pleading for a truce in politics with respect to foreign affairs, Mr. Kelland was kicking the Administration in the shins. . . . Now he is out pleading for politics and more politics. He does not say criticism . . . but politics. Perhaps a wronger choice could have been made by Mr. Martin. But we can't think just how. . . . The Republican Party has faced a lot of hard luck in its day, but Mr. Kelland is just too much. . . ."

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