Mayer says that the subcommission never advocated interference in the dissemination of information; that, on the contrary, the group had gone on record as opposed to any restriction of free press aside from already existing laws about treason, incitement to violence, obscenity, and libel.

Won't Violate Constitution

The code could not violate the Constitution, wrote Mayer, because it does not compel any signatory nation to limit freedom of expression in any way whatever.

The Tribune described Chafee as "one of the most vigorous definers of the Soviet view on freedom of the press." Mayer merely points to the similarity in sound of the verbs "define" and "defend."

"Niebuhr has preached socialism and denounced capitalism for many years," Hughes charged. "Niebuhr attacks what he calls the Marxist illusion in many of his works," Mayer replied.

The Tribune article concluded its case against the Commission by saying that "these 12 professors repeated the accusation in their report that newspaper owners and workers possess the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth."

This statement, said Mayer, is "a misrepresentation of a misquotation from William Allan White." Furthermore, he added that not all the commission members were professors.

At the end of his article, Mayer quoted a statement made in a Tribune editorial in 1947, commemorating the Chicago paper's hundredth anniversary. It said:

"The Chicago Tribune lives and grows because it is first of all a newspaper. It spares no expense, no effort, to gather the news of every significant development and trend at home and abroad. And it prints it, completely and without compromise, in the public interest.