POLITICAL NOTES: Platform for Henry

Henry Wallace, whose ignorance or distortion of the facts of U.S. atomic policy got him into a recent row with Bernard Baruch (TIME, Oct. 14), accepted a new job last week: editor and “guiding head” of the self-styled liberal weekly, the New Republic. Proudly the New Republic announced that it would expand its circulation “so that it will reach all those . . . who want to be fully and honestly informed . . . so that the issues of today and tomorrow may be decided on the basis of the facts.”

Wallace had had at least one other solid offer of a job since Harry Truman threw him out of his Cabinet—the job he had held before going to Washington. Dante M. Pierce, publisher of Wallaces’ Farmer and Iowa Homestead, of Des Moines, had wired him: “We have loaned you to the Government for 13 years. For 13 years we have been eagerly waiting for your return. . . . Your desk is waiting for you.” But Wallace chose the New Republic as a loftier platform (salary $15,000).

Said Henry with evident anticipation: “I shall have the opportunity of saying exactly what I think at a time when a bipartisan bloc mouthing the phrase ‘One World’ is really driving the world into two armed camps. . . .” As supereditor he will apparently assume a kind of intellectual seniority over kindly, rumpled Bruce

Bliven, who, as senior member of a board of editors, will probably continue to do the editorial chores.

Some wondered why Henry Wallace had chosen such a small sounding board (New Republic circulation: 40,594). Others, who remembered Herbert Croly, New Republic founder and first editor, who had given the magazine some of his own distinction and moral force, wondered why the New Republic wanted befuddled Mr. Wallace to take his place.