Exit from the Nation

In the midst of the journalistic battle among the liberals, the weekly Nation last week suffered some crippling casualties. Executive Editor Harold C. Field, righthand man of Editor Freda Kirchwey for the past two years, quietly resigned, effective the end of June. Two longtime contributors already had pulled their names from the Nation's masthead: Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, for 15 years a staff contributor, and Political Writer Robert Bendiner, contributing editor and onetime (1937-44) managing editor.

The resignations followed close on the charges of ex-Nation Staffer Clement Greenberg (TIME, April 2 et. seq.) that the writings of Nation Foreign Editor

Alvarez del Vayo usually ran parallel to the Soviet line. Nation staffers were shocked when Editor Kirchwey, who had refused to let Critic Greenberg have his say in the Nation, filed libel suits against him and the anti-Communist New Leader, which printed his story.

Said Theologian Niebuhr this week: "The libel suit . . . brought to a head my disagreement with the Nation on foreign policy." Added Bendiner: "I did not want the continued use of my name on the masthead to imply support of the suit against the New Leader ... a tragic mistake." Gossip in liberal circles said that Editor Field, too, disapproved of the suit, although he insisted he was leaving for "mostly personal reasons." But it was apparent that most liberals seemed to think a liberal publication should be a forum where differences of political opinion could be aired and debated, and that a court of law was only for people who have no other way to talk back.

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