Death of Croly

Death of Croly

Asked to enumerate U. S. liberal editors of consequence, one might name Oswald Garrison Villard (The Nation), Herbert David Croly (The New Republic)--and search one's mind in vain for others. Last week the little list was halved by Death, which came to Editor Croly in Santa Barbara, at the age of 61, of progressive paralysis.

It was in 1914, during a sea trip, that Herbert David Croly met the late financier-diplomat Major Willard Straight & Mrs. Straight, sister of Financier-Sports-man Harry Payne Whitney (she is now Mrs. Leonard K. Elmhirst of England). Greatly impressed were the Straights by the liberalism which their fellow voyager expounded with a quiet intensity which had the ring of personal, religious convictions. Son of a Manhattan journalist, he had studied philosophy at Harvard, edited the Architectural Record, written The Promise of American Life (1909), a book

whose striking political philosophizing earned the praise of Liberals everywhere. Backed by the Straights (Mrs. Straight was also a founder of the Junior League), Mr. Croly began editing The New Repub lic in November 1914. Its appeal was almost immediate. To. enlightened young men emerging from college, unwilling to immerse themselves entirely in their professions or industries, it offered repeated, cultivated doses of broadmindedness, enquired with dignified persistence into the affairs of the Commonwealth. In the editorial office sat "H. C.." smoking incessantly, speaking in a voice scarcely above a whisper, writing with the great caution and difficulty of one who must check each utterance by the most exacting dictates of his conscience. Her bert David Croly had performed the ad mirable function of providing a suitable journal for a promising decade. It is not surprising that The New Republic became almost the official organ of the White House during the Wilson Administration. With the War everything changed. Editor Croly naturally espoused the League of Nations--devoted an issue to denouncing its enemies after the Versailles Treaty and the defeat of President Wilson's original plan. His was then not a popular attitude. Much potential pre-War Liberalism had turned reactionary in the War- time fever, and The New Republic lost 40% of its 48,000 circulation. After the War it faced a nation whose tempo had suddenly, nervously quickened, whose major thought tendencies, expressed in journalism, philosophy and literature, were toward the satire, horselaugh and Menckenian sneer, hardly sympathetic to the earnest, didactic, creative attitude of The New Republic. Dismayed by the scene around him, Editor Croly's faiths subtly changed; his belief in progressive movements weakened, he began to feel that in individual development lay the real future of Liberalism. With the collapse of the LaFollette boom in 1925 the magazine suffered another relapse, since when it has slowly recovered a circulation of 25,000 based largely on its literary and critical ingredients.

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