Loyalty Check

The staff of the Pacific Stars and Stripes had been fighting its own little war--mostly against its superior officers. In January the G.I.s publicly accused the "brass" of trying to muzzle their Tokyo daily. A month later Sergeant Kenneth Pettus, the managing editor, and Corporal Barnard Rubin, the star columnist, were fired from.the paper, ordered to Okinawa for reassignment. Explained an officer: the two had flunked a "loyalty check."

That made the staff even madder; they scribbled out a protest direct to General Douglas MacArthur. Last week MacArthur's inspector general, Colonel E. J. Dwan, answered them. Said he: "There is abundance of evidence that reflects adversely on the 'discretion and integrity' of [Pettus and Rubin]. It is evidenced that each has held membership in the . . . Communist Party and has at times flavored his public writings with Communistic thought."

Pettus said he never had been a Communist. Rubin said he had, but quit before he was inducted. Their staff seemed to be with them: seven Stars and Stripers immediately asked to be reassigned too.

The Army's attitude was put in unbrassbound language by Brigadier General Charles T. Lanham, head of the Army's Information and Education Section. Said he:

"A reporter on the Hearst papers is not at liberty to attack Mr. Hearst or the Hearst policy. If he does, first, it doesn't get in the papers, and second, he is fired. Why then should the staff of a soldier publication feel that it is entitled to attack the War Department? . . ."

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