NIEMAN FELLOW CALLS BAN ON COUGHLIN RIGHT, NECESSARY

Calling the Administration's recent ban of Social Justice from the United States mails thoroughly justifiable, Nieman Fellow Donald S. Grant said yesterday that he would rather have the Government do too much, too early, than too little, too late.

A reporter on the Des Moines Register Tribune last year, Grant is the author of a recent article in the Nation, in which he claimed Boston is the new hub of American fascists.

Coughlin Is Nazi Mouthpiece

According to Grant, Father Coughlin, who recently took full responsibility for all Social Justice policy, is the chief mouthpiece of Nazi propaganda in the United States. He added that although Coughlin might well be allowed to print such propaganda in peacetime, publishing it in wartime is a different matter.

"Freedom of the press is relative, not absolute," the Nieman Fellow stated. "Moreover, there are many precedents backing up the Government's action, such as President Lincoln's reasons for closing down the Chicago Times during the Civil War. Here was a paper well out of the war zone, but the fact that it was abusing its privileges was sufficient excuse to warrant Lincoln's policy."

Grant also favored the ban on the grounds that Democracy must make a show of force in times of crisis. Comparing Coughlin's Social Justice with Hitler's abortive Beer Cellar Putsch, which took place in the days of the Weimar Republic, Grant said. "At that time, German Democracy showed that it was either weak or else that it had no confidence in itself, by handling the conspirators with kid gloves and letting them off with relatively easy sentences. Had the German government been stronger or had it had more confidence in itself. Hitler might well have not risen to power in later years."