Mr. Gardner: "We looked into that."

Sen. Ferguson: "Is it still going on?"

Mr. Gardner: "It has produced excellent results."

Sen. Ferguson: "I want to see that."

Mr. Gardner: "Copies of the reports were provided to your committee. I was pleased to see that the results of that work were really fine."

Conant High-Jinks

Kelso had another exclusive on the appointment of President-Emeritus James B. Conant as High Commissioner to Germany last February. Compare the Post articles on the confirmation of Conant with the regular Associated Press stories, and you will find the AP's lead often buried in the fifteenth or sixteenth paragraphs of the Post. The Post deemed significant the fact that "Conant appeared to be talking nervously over the phone" after appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The day the AP reported Conant's confirmation virtually certain, the Post headlined PROTESTS MOUNT OVER CONANT, and Kelso predicted the fury generated by the appointment of Charles E. Wilson, with his General Motors stock, would be insignificant compared to the storm Conant's appointment would kick up.

This, then, is what becomes of objectivity on a McCarthy newspaper. For the Post, and along with newspapers equally influential in other parts of the country, are papers on a great crusade in which the normal standards of news reporting are just a deterrent. John Fox and the Post are becoming to Boston what Colonel Robert McCormick and the Tribune are to Chicago: for specific purposes, good or ill depending on your point of view, a vital, moving force in the thought and actions of the community.

A number of years ago, a Royal Commission studied the British Press. Compiling its report, it asked editors by what criteria they angled and reported the news. All professed strict standards of objectivity, except one, who said: "News is what we think is socially significant." John Fox might agree, at least if he were not told that the name of that paper was the London Daily Worker.