The Forgotten Freedoms

Last week, before burly guards stifled his anxious cries, the voice of the little man loudly intruded itself upon the august deliberations of the United Nations at Lake Success. Rising to his feet with the shout, "I want freedom too!", 34 year-old Joseph Gamba rushed down from the gallery to upset the table signs of Algeria through Lebanon, even jarring Mexico, before he was dragged off to the ignominy of a mental observation ward.

Interrogation disclosed that the freedom Mr. Gamba was seeking was freedom from his wife, a deliverance that the courts of New York state had denied him for some seven years. Perhaps his case seems small when matched against the problems of Koreans, South African natives and Eastern Europeans. But who is to say that among these less fortunate groups are thousands to whom freedom can only mean what it does to Mr. Gamba? There may well be myriads for whom dissolution of marital bond would mean far more than breaking the shackles of political servitude and economic slavery.

How many imaginative American entrepreneurs advertise: "Add a Fifth Freedom, freedom from---," and fill in the blank with such items as catarrh, termites, furnace-stoking, or more generally, toil of any kind? Surely a body devoted to general human welfare, such as the UN, cannot afford in its concern for the great to forget the small.

Mr. Gamba's urgent demand dramatizes the need for a Forgotten Freedom Committee. Or, at the very least, it shows the need for a "Secondary Freedom Week" to be observed at the most disagreeable time of the year. And to be chairman of this Week, we think it fitting and proper to nominate Mr. Gamba. If New York continues to deny him his freedom, it is the least Albany can do.