Henry Wallace and his angels had challenged the forces of darkness to battle (TIME, Nov. 25), and now he was ready to unlimber his new weapon. This week the first issue of the New Republic under his editorship hit the stands, looking only mildly destructive. The barrel was shinier (a cover in color), but the bore was the same; the ammunition more plentiful (64 pages instead of 32), but generally of the old caliber. One cheering note for the money-losing New Republic: the issue was abnormally ad-packed.*
Urged on new readers at a “special Henry Wallace rate” ($5 a year), the new New Republic had a printing of 85,000 copies, more than double its usual press run. Better-known new contributors (Vincent Sheean, Chinahand Theodore White) had “writing arrangements,” would have no say in editorial direction.
After the first Wallace issue the book section, famed in the days of Francis Hackett and Edmund Wilson, plans to review books quickly and earnestly for the busy, peppy progressive who will have much to think and talk about. Dyed-in-the-old New Republic liberals would miss the accustomed archaic intellectuality.
(Said the farewell issue under the old regime: “Today, we pick up our soapbox and move over to another corner. The old pitch was a good one. . . . But the traffic has changed. . . . We still can’t help feeling some twinges of nostalgia. . . .”)
That last sigh was drowned out by the fanfare of Wallace’s first editorial, full of brave, sometimes disjointed rhetoric. Wrote Wallace: “I prefer to accept the willingness of the Soviet leaders to think more and more in democratic terms. . . . We cannot hide the weaknesses in our democracy. If we take steps to overcome these weaknesses, then I believe the Russians, believing in the genuineness of our democracy, will move toward greater political freedom. . . .
“My field is the world . . . my friends are all who believe in true democracy . . . my master is the common man. … I seek no personal gain.”
* Including one ad which read: “Linguaphone greets one of its most distinguished students students-Henry A. Wallace.”
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