For Freedom

A committee composed of an honorary chairman, two vice chairmen, a secretary, 52 honorary vice chairmen and 56 plain committeemen was formed last week to safeguard the Freedom of the Press. It was created under the auspices of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation and made public at a meeting of newsmen and Foundation leaders aboard the S. S. He de France in dock at Manhattan. By telephone from Chicago, Publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick, whose 51st birthday it was, formally accepted honorary chairmanship. Chairman is Claude Gernade Bowers, editorial writer of Hearst's New York Journal, late of the Evening World, keynoter of the 1928 Democratic national convention. Vice chairmen are Editor Marlen Edwin Pew of Editor & Publisher and Editor Frank Parker Stockbridge of the American Press. The rest of the committee are newspapermen great & small in all parts of the U. S.

Purpose of the Freedom of the Press Committee, so far as was revealed, is to intensify public sentiment in favor of press-freedom. Speakers at the meeting viewed with alarm the fact that the U. S. Supreme Court voted the Minnesota "gag law" unconstitutional by such a small margin as 5 to 4 (TIME, June 8 et ante). But the first specific function of the Committee will be a celebration of that vote, on Oct. 20 at Thomas Jefferson's ''Monticello" near Charlottesville, Va. One room of "Monticello," maintained by the Jefferson Foundation, is to be designated "Freedom of the Press Room." Sponsors of the idea expressed the hope that newspapermen from all the land would make annual "pious" pilgrimages to the home "to refresh our spirit in the fountain of freedom."

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