Chicago Daily Tribune THE WORLDS GREATEST NEWSPAPER FOUNDED JUNE 10, 1847 Part 1 Page 16 HR Friday, Oct. 23,1953 ENTERED AS SECOND CLASS MATTER MAY 14, 1903, AT THE POSTOFFICE AT CHICAGO. ILL.. UNDER ACT OF MARCH 3, 1879. All unsolicited articles, manuicrlpts, letters, and pictures sent to The Tribune are sent at the owners risk, and The Tribune company expressly repudiates any liability or reponsibility for their safe custody or return. BENSON DEFENDED President Eisenhowers defense of Secretary of Agriculture Benson was both timely and merited. Mr. Benson is, as the President said, an able and devoted public servant. He is under attack not because of anything he has done or failed to do but only because the New Dealers are trying to turn the discontents of the farmers into votes. That, of course, is politics. As the game Is played, it is within the rules to try to persuade contented farmers, if any, that they are the pitiful victims of other mens greed. It is also fair to tell them that all their troubles stem from the hard heart and ineffective mind of the secretary of agriculture. Hence all the clamor against Mr. Benson. A President without courage would have fired Mr. Benson or at least tried to stand at some distance from him while the brickbats were flying. It is to Mr. Eisenhowers credit that he did neither of these things but instead stood loyally by his man, praised his character, approved his course of action, and ridiculed those who expect the secretary to perform miracles overnight. Mr. Eisenhower might have added that the New Dealers are in no position to berate Mr. Benson for his agricultural policies. So far, he has made no recommendations for fundamental changes and the country is still running on the legislation enacted in the New Deal years by New Deal Congresses. It will be time enough to blame Mr. Benson after he and his advisory commission have submitted their recommendations to the next Congress and after laws he has recommended have been passed and given a period of trial. Meanwhile, if the farmers are in trouble because there is something wrong with farm legislation, the blame rests not on Mr. Benson but on the New Dealers themselves. TRUCKS IN THE LOOP A Loop business man whose company requires daily deliveries by truck protests in the Voice of the People today against the proposal to restrict deliveries in the hope of relieving traffic congestion. He asserts that trucks are being blamed unfairly for too much of the congestion and bolsters his argument with his own survey of illegal parking of passenger cars which he observed in a single downtown block. The survey, if accurate, indicates that enforcement of the anti parking ordinance in the Loop has again broken down. Our correspondent is right in his contention that there are other serious causes of downtown traffic jams besides trucks. We said the same thing in approving the proposed ordinance, noting that while it would not solve the problem of Loop congestion, it was one of many measures that will contribute to a solution. Traffic Chief Ahern may need to shake up his officers in the Loop again. If illegal parking is as widespread as our correspondent insists, some of the police are probably taking tips bribes to permit it. If parking lots cant keep their driveways clear of arriving patrons, police should wave on those waiting in the street instead of letting them block traffic. Efforts in many directions are needed if the downtown traffic jam is to be relieved. Truck regulation is one of the necessities. Business men will suffer a lot more if the Loop chokes to death than they will from the minor inconveniences in deliveries that the truck ordinance would impose. THE CENSORSHIP THAT LOST THE PEACE Russia never could have become the menace she is except for war time censorship. As Larry Rue reminded Tribune readers last Sunday, he and his fellow correspondents were not allowed, until the war was ended, to tell the American people the truths that had been learned about the Communists, with the result that Russia was widely regarded as a loyal ally and friend. Roosevelt and Truman were left free to make their secret deals with the Russians with the disastrous consequences which are all too familiar. Mr. Rue recalled that the censorship in Britain had kept him from reporting the disappearance of the Polish officers who had been captured in the early days of the war by the Russian army. We now know that these men, the flower of Poland, were murdered by the Russians in Katyn forest, but the censorship long protected the Russians. Much later in the war, the Russian armies reached East Prussia, where a Polish underground was operating. At Russian request, the Polish government in exile in London instructed the commanding officer and staff of the underground to report to the Russian commander. This was done with the result that every one of these officers was immediately taken out and shot by order of the Russian general. Once again censorship protected our Russian ally against exposure. A third instance cited by Mr. Rue concerned the American bomber crews which landed on Russian air fields. After long negotiations the Russians had consented to a plan which allowed our bombers to land at these fields instead of flying back to their original bases after dropping their bombs. This arrangement was intended to increase the effectiveness of our squadrons, but it didnt work because the Russians wouldnt allow the crews to fly the planes back. This, too, was known to the reporters, Mr. Rue says, but they werent allowed to mention it in dispatches. The suppression of these and similar stories didnt help our side win the war. The censorship did prevent the American people from knowing how depraved and untrustworthy our Russian allies were, and to that important extent promoted the unstable peace that followed the war. As Mr. Rue showed, the matter is today of much more than academic interest, for he quoted Gen. Gruenther, supreme NATO commander, as warning Americans today against saying anything which might offend another member of the North Atlantic Treaty organization. That is bad advice if it is merely advice offered for voluntary acceptance. It is unlikely that Gen. Gruenther believes he can enforce this censorship against anybodys will, but if he does cherish that mistaken idea, he should be made acquainted with the United States Constitution, which forbids the United States government to abridge the freedom of the press. LEFT WING SQUAWKS The left wing organization known as Americans for Democratic Action, which virtually absorbed Adlai Stevenson's campaign last year, has raised an outcry against Dr. Clarence E. Manion, demanding that Mr. Eisenhower remove him as chairman of the commission on intergovernmental relationships. The A. D. A. bases its objections to Dr. Manion on his readiness to debate the question, Does the federal government have too much power? on a television and radio network. In the opinion of James A. Doyle, national A. D. A. vice chairman, Dr. Manions readiness to consider the possibility that the federal government ever could have too much power demonstrates the chairman to be so biased as to be completely unfit to conduct any kind of rational or objective study on this subject. In the view of the A. D. A., it is impossible for the government ever to have enough power. A similar complaint has been voiced by Sen. Kefauver, the coonskin cap liberal, who cited the fact that Dr. Manion observed in the television debate that the Tennessee valley authority should be sold to private interests. We can conceive of no better reason to consider Dr. Manion thoroly equipped to deal with his task than the utterance of such opinions. The commission was established for the very reason that the Republican administration felt that thru such agencies as TVA the federal government completely overbalanced state and local governments. Mr. Eisenhower, who in the past has been critical of the TVA, hastened to disassociate himself from Dr. Manions opinion of the advantages of outright sale. He told his press conference that TVA was a historical fact and it might be pretty drastic to sell it to private industry, because that might wreck the TVA system. There are lots of government actions that have also been historical facts, at least temporarily, such as Roosevelts NRA, but that does not mean that they are necessarily good or that they must be continued indefinitely. Sen. Kefauver contended also that too many of the administrations special commissions were tackling their problems with a prejudiced viewpoint. He seems to be indebted for'this outlook to Tom Stokes, the canned New Deal columnist, who blubbered in print a couple of weeks ago because Dr. Manion was running his commission, Herbert Hoover was running a committee reorganize the federal government and eliminate as many functions as possible, and because another committee on government housing policies was not loaded with proponents of taxpayer built housing. Mr. Kefauver says the housing committee is rigged against public housing programs. Why it should be rigged in favor of them is not explained, unless the senator and Mr. Stokes think that it is the business of a Republican administration to load all of its commissions with known champions of New Deal social legislation. By the same token, it would have been the duty of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Truman to appoint to their multitudinous commissions only conservatives who espoused the Republican policies of Mr. Hoover and Mr. Coolidge. None of the Eisenhower commissions would exist if the feeling were not abroad that there is too much of the New Deal still in operation. Obviously, the way to rid the country of this liability is to appoint people who are skeptical of the blessings of the New Deal and are willing to try to undo the confusion. Instead, the left wingers insist that only true believers get the assignment. All they ask is the moon.