Snafu

Congress' effort to protect the G.I. mind from political propaganda (TIME, July 10) by last week had the press, the public and the Army itself thoroughly befuddled. Some of the results:

P: President Roosevelt's letter announcing his willingness to be re-elected was played down and half-reported in the European and Mediterranean editions of Stars & Stripes.

P: The C.I.O. was hopping mad because a pamphlet that presented the steel workers' case for pay increases was returned by Army censors as unmailable to soldiers.

P: Some publishers set up howls of "censorship" and "favoritism" over an Army directive barring from post exchanges, camp libraries, etc. all magazines containing political material except those on a "preferred" list of 18. The facts: 1) the "preferred" list consists of the magazines which various tests and surveys have shown that soldiers themselves want to read*; 2) The Soldier Vote Act exempts from its anti-propaganda ban only general magazines and newspapers "for which preference by members of the Army has been established"; 3) the preferred list is comparatively small because comparatively few of the 300-odd U.S. general magazines are widely read (the 18 preferred account for over 80% of U.S. newsstand sales, exclusive of comic and women's magazines) and transportation facilities are crowded. Any soldier anywhere may still subscribe to, receive from home, or buy at a public newsstand, any magazine he wants.

P: American News Co., which supplies magazines to most post exchanges, reported that few of them had canceled orders for magazines not on the preferred list.

P: Senator Robert A. Taft, author of the Soldier Vote Act provision which has caused all the rumpus, agreed to meet with the Army's enforcing officers to see if they can agree on just what the law means. Republican Taft declared that the Army "has badly misinterpreted both the letter and the spirit of the law."

*The 18 "preferred": American, Click, Collier's, Coronet, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Liberty, LIFE, Look, National Geographic, Newsweek, New Yorker, Omnibook, Pic, Reader's Digest, Redbook, Saturday Evening Post, TIME.

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