Old-Fashioned Oracle

Old-Fashioned Oracle M. STANTON EVANS HE IDEAL end of political journal- ism is to bring perspective to the flux and drift of daily events. Too seldom is the end achieved. The un- certainty of principle which afflicts the age has enfeebled journalists quite as much as the rest of us. The In the Nation, by Arthur Krock. McGraw Hill, $7.95 fallacies and enthusiasms of the hour are endorsed all too readily by the very people who are supposed to be sifting and weighing them with de- tachment. Thus if we cast back over the really scandalous errors of recent decades, we shall find the nation’s newsprint oracles leading the fren- zies rather than restraining them. Whether the subject has been “agrarian reform,’ “missile gap,” Soviet “growth rate,” or Buddhism in Vietnam, our principal journalists have been promoters of the folly, if not in fact the originators of it. There are, of course, exceptions— men who have maintained critical equilibrium while their colleagues rush to embrace the popular delusion. This handful of independent spirits has attempted, when others prated of Castro’s magnificence or the corrup- tion of Chiang Kai-shek, to discover whether the matters being talked of were fact or fancy, and to discern whether some demanded course of action would, in the light of principle and experience, lead to the results projected for it. Aouone THE SMALL sprinkling of na- tional journalists who have brought this kind of judgment to the evalu- ation of the news, Arthur Krock has been pre-eminent. Performing for

Replace shabby LP covers with quality white Hi-gloss cardboard covers. Plastic-lined inner § sleeves with see-thru window, and covers for

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M. Stanton Evans

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Old-Fashioned Oracle M. STANTON EVANS HE IDEAL end of political journal- ism is to bring perspective to the flux and drift of daily events. Too seldom is the end achieved. The un- certainty of principle which afflicts the age has enfeebled journalists quite as much as the rest of us. The In the Nation, by Arthur Krock. McGraw Hill, $7.95 fallacies and enthusiasms of the hour are endorsed all too readily by the very people who are supposed to be sifting and weighing them with de- tachment. Thus if we cast back over the really scandalous errors of recent decades, we shall find the nation’s newsprint oracles leading the fren- zies rather than restraining them. Whether the subject has been “agrarian reform,’ “missile gap,” Soviet “growth rate,” or Buddhism in Vietnam, our principal journalists have been promoters of the folly, if not in fact the originators of it. There are, of course, exceptions— men who have maintained critical equilibrium while their colleagues rush to embrace the popular delusion. This handful of independent spirits has attempted, when others prated of Castro’s magnificence or the corrup- tion of Chiang Kai-shek, to discover whether the matters being talked of were fact or fancy, and to discern whether some demanded course of action would, in the light of principle and experience, lead to the results projected for it. Aouone THE SMALL sprinkling of na- tional journalists who have brought this kind of judgment to the evalu- ation of the news, Arthur Krock has been pre-eminent. Performing for

Replace shabby LP covers with quality white Hi-gloss cardboard covers. Plastic-lined inner § sleeves with see-thru window, and covers for