Poison on the Bookshelves

When Mr. John Fox took over the Boston Post, he immediately began looking for Communism in Boston. He picked a good to look for it--the public library. There, Mr. Fox found the shelves filled with subversive literature written by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. He bypassed these and went on to the periodical room where he found a few magazines in Russian and one in English filled with communist propaganda.

Mr. Fox licked his typewriter keys and banged out a piece denouncing communism in general and the publications in particular. "We believe," he wrote, "that pro-Soviet literature should be suppressed in our public libraries because its only interest is to weaken and prepare our people for the slavery which is communism." Mr. Fox's editorial paid special attention to New World Review, a periodical presenting a pro-Soviet analysis of the news.

Mr. Fox believes that beady-eyed subversives sneak into the library, read the New World Review, and preach its message to wide-eyed children. One gets the impression, in fact, that Massachusetts citizens are unwittingly paying for Kremlin communiques.

Actually New World Review is not even on the Attorney General's list of subversive magazines, and anyone can subscribe to it through the mail. As a matter of fact, anyone who wants this magazine must tell the librarian why. But even if New World Review were an English translation of Pravda, there should be no argument about its place in a public library. People deserve the right, if they wish it, to see both sides of any argument, even if one is all black. They also have the right to know what their enemies are saying about them. If Mr. Fox succeeded in ripping books from the shelves of public libraries, he might try his luck next on college and private collections. From here, it would be only one step to wholesale book-burnings.

Mr. Fox's editorial accompanies the Post's publication of Senator Joseph C. McCarthy's new book, McCarthyism. Loud and random red chasing ostensibly won McCarthy a Wisconsin primary, and obviously, Mr. Fox thinks this strategy can sell newspapers for the financially shaky Post. Fortunately, both Mayor Hynes and Milton E. Lord, director of the library, have resisted the Post's blasting. The elimination of books, and for that matter newspapers as well, should occur in one way only--by people refusing to read them of their own accord.