Allen's Alley and Blue Hens

On a Sunday night two weeks ago Fred Allen was cut off the air for the twenty-five seconds he took to read a rather funny, inoffensive, and absolutely clean line which intimated, at least to the self-appointed censors of NBC, that radio's organizational set-up might not be completely perfect. Other programs, attempting to extract laughs from the incident, were likewise gagged. In New York this week one John Sumner, of the Society for Supression of Vice, led three detectives in a raid on the offices of Random House publishers. For reasons best known to himself he ordered confiscated all ten available copies of a widely unknown book of poems, "The Blue Hen's Chickens," and served a summons on a clerk who was so unacquainted with the book that she inquired if it were "a juvenile."

Incidents such as these, while not so newsworthy as the blasts of the intolerant to "stop Wallace," are of at least equal significance to the interest of freedom of expression in the United States. Censorship of literary or artistic works, usually carried on by non-official groups, can all too easily pass from the field of the outright indecent and slip into material that is socially or politically repellent. In any case the censorship should not be effectuated by "elderly men morbidly interested in reading obscene books so that they can keep them away from others" or by groups who are directly concerned with the material under scrutiny.

Under the guise of protecting the public from exposure to indecency, mayors, police commissioners, or decrepit vegetarians often suppress works of considerable artistic or educational merit. While some degree of censorship may be necessary in order to keep real filth from unsuspecting readers or playgoers, the censorship can most safely be conducted by a jury--the system preferred by such an expert in this field as Professor Chafee. Certainly a verdict rendered by twelve untainted citizens is likely to be less biased than one coming from some group that habitually deals in vice, and feels that it has a "mission" to perform.