Revolt on the Mall

Live-wire Editor Louis Seltzer thought Cleveland needed a World War II Memorial, preferably a big one. In 1945, his promotion-conscious Press began beating Page-One drums to raise a $100,000 memorial fund, soon thumped it over the top. Seltzer then asked Sculptor Marshall

Fredericks, 41, a World War II veteran, to design a suitable statue to adorn a fountain on Cleveland's Mall.

Finally, this spring, Fredericks was ready with a one-twelfth scale model of his design: the nude figure of a young man, with one arm stretched upward. Seltzer, who keeps the Scripps-Howard Press a proper "family newspaper," was not perturbed at the statue's absence of fig leaf, and the Fine Arts Committee of the City Planning Commission liked the model. When the Press ran a "progress report" on the memorial, with a front-view photograph of the Fredericks model, only two readers felt strongly enough to write protests.

After thinking it over, the Cuyahoga County chapter of the Gold Star Mothers of America passed an angry resolution: "Public display of such a figure is objectionable as obscene to many of our citizens . . ." Agreed the Catholic War Veterans: "[An] architectural abortion . . ."

Hurriedly, the Press asked Sculptor Fredericks for his interpretation of the controversial work. Explained he: "It is essentially religious . . . The statue of the youth, reaching upward toward his God, is a symbol of the souls of the men who fought and died. It represents their hope for a world free from war, pestilence and fear." Last week, all further work on the statue was temporarily stopped. If public opinion insisted, Editor Seltzer was prepared to edit the statue. Said he: "We don't want to impose anything on the people they don't want."

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