Reformer Reformed

A Tammany politician who once threatened to sue a newspaper for libel was advised by his lawyer: "Never sue. They might prove it on you." Last week in Nanticoke, Pa. (pop. 20,160) another politician proved the wisdom of this advice. Until he ran for mayor, Anthony B. Dreier, a 47-year-old ex-coal miner, never made much of a mark around coal-mining Nanticoke. But he proved to be an aggressive campaigner, charged that the politicians in power were allowing horse books, slot machines and punchboards to run in Nanticoke, was elected mayor in 1949 on an antigambling "Reform" ticket. Last summer he put his own "Independent Citizens" slate up for election in the Republican primary. His opponents replied with a half-page ad in the weekly Wilkes-Barre Sunday Independent, making the public charge that Dreier had bought a new car and a $15,000 home shortly after being elected to the $100-a-month job as mayor. Jeered the ad: "Not bad, Mr. Mayor."

Forthwith, Mayor Dreier filed a $100,000 libel suit against the Independent for running an ad which pictured him as "unscrupulous, dishonest and corrupt." When Dreier's case against the Independent came to trial, the paper was ready for him. It put on the stand a cop who testified that he had paid Dreier $50 as a down payment for his job on the force. It also came out that city workers had fixed up the mayor's house with some $9,000 worth of improvements just before its tax assessment was reduced. Dreier's secretary stepped up and offered the clincher. The mayor had told her, she said, to lie before a grand jury investigating rackets and had also suggested that she falsify monthly reports of receipts for traffic fines.

As soon as Dreier's lawyer heard the testimony, he asked the court to dismiss the case, and the suit was summarily dropped. Last week Mayor Dreier was sitting mum in office while the district attorney looked over the record to see if there were grounds for criminal action. Said a headline in the Philadelphia Bulletin: PEOPLE OF NANTICOKE ASK "WHERE'S OUR MAYOR SINCE HE DROPPED THAT $100,000 LIBEL SUIT?"

In London last week, Prime Minister Winston Churchill dropped a libel suit against the London Daily Mirror, world's largest (circ. 4,500,000) daily newspaper. Churchill charged that the paper libeled him (TIME, Dec. 31) by implying, on the day of the last general election, that he was a warmonger. He withdrew his suit after the Mirror agreed to pay full court costs, print a front-page apology, and make a contribution to a charitable fund for elderly people that Churchill named. Said the Mirror's apology: "The statements and pictures referred to never intended to suggest that Mr. Churchill did not dislike war and the possibility of war as much as the defendants do themselves."

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