ERROR FOR THE RIGHT
Mayer, Milton
Error For The Right The Muddled Faith Of Marshall Field FREEDOM IS MORE THAN A WORD, by Marshall Field. University of Chicago Press. $2.50. Reviewed by Milton Mayer IT is not easy, on the...
...Field's Sun, which is Truth...
...His news columns and news play, more particularly in his New York PM', but often in the Sun, are as violently editorialized as McCormick's...
...And whatjf, like Mr...
...The first is whether the community can afford to let any man—even though he be, like Mr...
...Just below the surface, however, Mr...
...He states clearly and repeatedly his conviction that men of great wealth should use it (as he tries to use his) for the benefit of the commonwealth...
...and why anybody with any political sophistication should read it...
...Oh, well, that's different...
...Let me hasten to say that I come into court in thi: case with prejudiced hands...
...He keeps emphasizing the fact that he has made great mistakes as a publisher...
...And here is the second question his little book raises: if only fine feelings were enough...
...Roosevelt or a lustj activity like war, on the other...
...Field's fine feelings have plummeted him into the softest and muddiest of morasses...
...After all, when I pick up my morning Tribune, 1 know I am picking up Error...
...Roosevelt, who was on the side of Truth...
...But he means well and his feelings are the finest...
...Field has come a long, long way—a wonderfullj long way...
...Behind Mr...
...why a press, and especially a university press of great scholarly eminence, should have published it...
...There is no other quarter-billionaire in the world of whom this statement can so flatly be made...
...Field's comforting should are 2 questions: Why should rich men use their wealth socially...
...He has not come far enough to know that not lynch ing, but justice must cover the crimes of Mussolini anc Hitler...
...But what if, like Mr...
...He has noi come far enough to know that Darlanism and Franco ism were not the work of some evil person in the State Department named Robert Murphy, but the policy o: a national administration and a national mentality which advanced the Murphys to ever higher rank...
...It is even more than all the words that the best-intentioned of us like to hear...
...THERE is, in a word, ho philosophy in Mr...
...If, in this book on freedom, he were to be asked, "Why should anybody be free?," he would simply sink out of sight...
...His theme— largely devoted to press freedom—is that Truth should fight Error...
...The Tribune has, as i happens, attacked and abused me from time to time But PM and the Sun, separately, repeatedly, and baldly and purposively, have lied about me...
...So instead of establishing a good newspaper, he establishes a sort of anti-Tribune Tribune...
...But what if Truth, represented by the Sun, supports the Kelly machine in Chicago, which Error, represented by the Tribune, also supports...
...and he has not come far enough to hesitate to draw an indictment against a whole people...
...Field's publishing ventures, if they are to achieve his ideal of doing the commonwealth any good at all...
...Ford, they simply don't want to...
...Ford, they aren't...
...If only the community could discover just how to infuse fine feelings into the noble lords of the universe generally, and if only...
...Field, though he is modest and even shy, is a lord, and his lordly position dominates his feelings...
...The Chicago Tribune, which is Error, is being fought by Mr...
...have got to be paved with something more than good intentions...
...it is straight confession...
...Field should have written this book...
...Mn-Field:has no answer to the first question, and, as for the second, I can imagine his saying, if anybody were so embarrassing as to ask it, "Why, they ought to be ashamed of themselves...
...Being lied abou by PM and the Sun has prejudiced me a little agains Truth...
...But they're colored, of course, on the right side...
...Field is, as I say, modest...
...Freedom is more than a word, or a bookful of words, or 2 newspapers full of words...
...But, though the Sun is continually improving in detail, there is no correcting the basic mistake of a well-intentioned man who hates what you say and will, in complementary effort with his enemy McCormick, deny to the death your right to say it...
...And his faith, being Godless, leaves him morassed in the soft and muddy notions of decency, fair play, and the right thing to do...
...Field's confession...
...Reviewed by Milton Mayer IT is not easy, on the surface, to see why Mr...
...With Mr...
...But he has not come far enough to know thai you do not settle any great issue very definitely by defamation and suppression, on the one hand, and deification of a lusty fellow like Mr...
...AS long as Mr...
...He has not come fai enough to know that an American may, at one and tht same time, try to keep America out of war and love democracy too...
...Field's generous and democratic feelings dominate his publishing ventures, press freedom will continue to be ground to a pulp between those 2 popular old millstones known as upper and nether...
...As long as PM, in such polls as that of the Washington correspondents, crowds the Tribune for first place as the least fair and impartial paper in the country, the country will have to go on reading that nasty old reactionary (but most fair and impartial available) paper, the New York Times...
...Kelly got out the vote for Mr...
...Field, the- best-inten-tioned among men—play with a quarter of a billion dollars...
...Like all well-intentioned people, he hates the Tribune and all its lies...
...Field's confession of bis muddled faith raises 2 great contemporary questions...
...Field, the modernized noblesse oblige, already common among the noble lords of the western European countries, comes to America...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 32
