The Postwar World

  -- to provide leadership in stimulating student thought
  -- to combat racial bigotry and promote intercultural education
  -- to foster world understanding and peace
  -- to encourage efforts for cooperation in adjusting social and economic grievances
  -- to accept responsibilities in solution of local school and community problems. (Statement of Associated Collegiate Press, quoted in CDB, 1/28/46.)

 Russian communism is today ranged against American capitalism and the public is frightened. Our little microcosm, UCLA, reflects that fear and it manifests itself frequently in criticism of the Daily Bruin. (Editor James D. Garst, DB, 1/7/49.)

 We wish to state once more what a newspaper is. Simply -- it prints what is going on in the world. Our world is this campus. We do not cause people to have loyalty oaths so that there are stories about loyalty oath controversies. We do not cause discrimination, so that there are stories about discrimination. These things exist, and as a newspaper it is our job to print these items. (Editor Hal Watkins, DB, 5/23/50.)

 Is it really possible to dissociate the university from the social tides of the times? Isn't politics only the practical side of ideas? And isn't it the job of the university to deal in ideas? . . . It is of course possible to read what Professor Laski says, but if education is worth its salt it will rely on more than the written word. If the tools of education were only books, we could cast out our professors and convert all our buildings into libraries. The spoken word is more often more vivid than the written word, and when it comes from as lively a speaker as Professor Laski, it is bound to jolt, to shock, and perhaps to set one to thinking. (Editor Grover Heyler, commenting on the Administration's denial of permission for British Socialist Harold Laski to speak on campus, DB, 4/1/49.)

 A pall of fear, the likes of which I never conceived . . . has settled over this campus. It has extended over students, faculty and Administration and is attempting to bury any strain of unorthodoxy, unconformity or possible source of controversy . . . To be specific, we can refer to the article in Monday's Bruin written by a UCLA student concerning McCarthyism, which all but brought the roof down on the Bruin. (Editor Al Greenstein, DB, 12/4/53.)

These quotations from Daily Bruin editorials illustrate the range of emotion that suffused America and the UCLA campus during the decade after the close of World War II -- from hope and optimism in 1946 to a "pall of fear" in the early 1950s. It was an eventful ten years, which brought to the Bruin no less than two staff strikes, twenty rejections by Student Council of staff nominations (including three editors and four managing editors), an irate letter from the Governor, a bill for censorship in the State Legislature and -- the usual amount of good times, parties, staff marriages, ink under the fingernails and blisterings in the Razz Editions.

The decade brought with it, too, a crop of returning veterans, who appreciably raised the average age of male staff members. But the postwar period began with a woman -- Hannah Bloom -- still in the editorship, and shortly thereafter 18-year-old Bill Stout was named to the top post. The Bruin continued to print school songs on Wednesdays, and it was using an all-down-style of editing, including the headlines. On Sept. 17, 1945, it resumed its daily schedule and the name "California Daily Bruin."

Despite the uproar caused by participation of Bruin staffers in the Hollywood film strike, relations between the Administration and the Bruin at the beginning of the postwar decade were fairly tranquil. Dean of Students Miller wrote to Provost Dykstra
 

 I must confess that there have been times when I have wished for the establishment of administration censors, but after sober reflection on all the fundamental issues involved, I always find myself back on the side of the tradition of a free student press which has prevailed in the University of California for something like 75 years. (Arch, Box 327, Folder 40, 11/23/45.)

And Dykstra himself was friendly toward the Bruin, possibly the only person in the Administration who ever understood the rationale behind the Bruin's slate system and the staff's insistence on "the work-up system." Replying to a complaint by Blue Shield, an alumni booster group, about the Bruin's being "in the hands of a clique, which has perpetuated itself, " (Arch, Box 335, Folder 105, 11/12/45), Dr. Dykstra said:
 

 I think our work with The Bruin must be constructive and I have been discussing that matter with Dean Miller. I am hopeful that the Bruin can be made a good credit to us without faculty censorship. It must be remembered that work on the Bruin is arduous and it is undertaken only by the most enthusiastic of our students who had a hankering for journalism. The social groups on the campus will not put in the time to compete for places on the student newspaper. (Arch, Box 335, Folder 105, 12/18/45.)

Though the Bruin was often criticized for playing up political news at the expense of campus publicity, it did not actually do so. For example, the lead story for Dec. 17, 1945, was headed "Bruins hail provost with Yuletide carols," while the second lead was "Choral groups present Yule holiday program." A much more far-reaching story, politically, took the third spot, "Regents consider disloyalty; Board acts to curb UCLA radicalism." Campus events and activities continued to dominate. As the decade progressed, the scope and depth of Student Council and University Board of Regents coverage improved.

Bruin editors showed they were able to act effectively when material they considered inappropriate was printed. Editor Stout dismissed sports editor Al Franken for running a "Sportsmen's Page" featuring a glamorous photograph of film star Esther Williams in place of the regular sports page on Jan. 29, 1946, leading an irate reader to ask "Is it, Mr. Editor, because Mr. Franken refused to read the People's World that he was removed from his duties?" (CDB, 2/4/46.) Two years later, Editor Grover Heyler fired columnist Eric Julber because of a column in which he called the Student Council a "crew of red-baiters and stallers." (DB, 4/21/48.) He was ostensibly removed not for that expression of opinion but for the several errors of fact in the article. Acceptance by Bruin editors and other students of their responsibility led Clyde S. Johnson to note that because students had kept within the bounds of the University's policy of good taste,
 

fewer and fewer controls by the faculty and administration have been placed upon those enterprises and activities which the students . . . have desired to sponsor. No form of faculty pre-censorship has been evident. (Johnson, 1948, p. 95.)

 Despite the swing of Bruin editors in a narrow arc from left-of center to right-of-center, the policy of the newspaper remained basically the same between 1945 and 1955. It was a policy of "no policy," as Editor Anne Stern said in 1946.
 

 [A] great majority of readers have never run across a policyless paper before . . . anyone accustomed to reading newspapers finds it hard to acclimatize himself to the absence of any strictly observed editorial "line." Being used to finding of Norman Chandler's or W. R. Hearst's or Manchester Boddy's political leanings distributed in bits and chunks all over their respective journals he goes around trying to piece together what he reads in the Bruin in one coherent policy. (CDB, 3/6/46.)25

Nevertheless, this attitude was in itself a policy the traditional Bruin policy of opening its feature columns to all comers and allowing each incoming editor full rein to express himself individually in editorials. Editor Roy Swanfeldt said as much in 1938: "[T]he editorial policy of the Daily Bruin should not be made by the hand of the dead."

The fact that liberal voices could be heard in a student-operated newspaper disturbed the Student Council, University Regents and at least one legislator -- Assemblyman Thomas Harold Werdel of Bakersfield, who introduced a bill in 1946 providing for censorship and control of both the Bruin and the Daily Californian. (CDB, 1/30/46.)

The Student Council adopted the policy of beginning its meetings with a critique of the Bruin. At one meeting, council members criticized "allowing just anyone to write an article without first trying to ascertain its effect on the student body and the outside world." (SEC, 3/13/46.) Six weeks later, a Fraternity Forum expressed its "lack of confidence" in the Bruin by noting that "news stories were non-professional in style and editorials did not adequately represent student opinion." It was suggested that "more fraternity and sorority members turn out for Daily Bruin staff positions, that journalism courses be offered, and that a stronger personality be named Director of Publications." (Chanc, 1946, Folder 40, 2/1/46.)

An explosive situation was building. The Board of Regents began to discuss "control of student publications," and President Sproul asked Provost Dykstra for a
 

memorandum from you as to the condition which you would like to have established on the Los Angeles campus. I propose to have plans of my own to present to The Regents, rather than to defend myself and the student publications against the plans presented by others. (Chanc, 1946, Folder 40, 2/1/46.)

Student Council acted first. On Jan. 17, 1947, it rejected the Bruin's nomination of Alan Beals as managing editor and appointed Chally Chalberg. And it also threw out Greta Greenfield, the staff choice for city editor, appointing a cub reporter, Paul Simqu, a transfer from Cal Tech, in her place. Simqu served under editor Frank Mankiewicz, and then later was appointed editor by the Student Council in place of the preferred Bruin staff choice (no record exists as to that person's name).

Simqu remembers that Mankiewicz had a "superb intelligence and, most of all, a sense of humor." (After graduation and a career as a journalist, Mankiewicz became press secretary to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and, even later, a vice president at Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm.) Mankiewicz opposed Simqu, whose Council appointment was met with staff hostility. Typewriters were destroyed, Simqu said, and he was "hissed out of restaurants in Westwood." (Questionnaire.) Simqu recalls that
 

SEC and the Bruin seethed through my term as editor, primarily over NSA [National Student Association]. Once the Young Communists League, then changed to American Youth for Democracy, it applied for recognition as NSA, and I personally fought it . . . [T]he Bruin during my term contain[ed] many letters calling me a "fascist," "enemy of democracy," and (from my sports editor in the -30- edition) a man ". . . who represents everything I detest about UCLA." Something to that effect . . . .[This genealogy by Simqu is suspect; I recall that NSA was a grouping  of college student associations with a liberal agenda.]

FBI once told me they thought there were three card-carrying Communists at UCLA -- two of them only occasional contributors to the Bruin, and the third an on-again off-again reporter of little consequence. You must remember that at that time the whole of the Western world never went to sleep without looking for Communists under the bed, so I feel that charges of Communist infiltration were unfounded. Those accused were little more than sophomoric idealists who met occasionally to sing "Joe Hill" and others of that ilk . . .

The Bruin did have spirit, but it declined just about the time I stepped in. Some predecessors like Mankiewicz and Stout were brilliant far beyond their years, and gathered about them some excellent staff. It existed only because of them . . . What I call brilliance turned into sloppy social-significance, a dis-regard for journalism, and the spitting, messy underground sheets prevalent through the campuses today. (Questionnaire.)

The controversy over Simqu's appointment brought the inevitable split between liberals and conservatives, with the Communists lining up with the liberals. Student Reports, a publication of the off-campus Student Communist Club, claimed a "smear campaign" had been at work. (Chanc, 1947, Folder 105, 6/5/47.) This assistance from the Communists, of course, convinced the conservatives they had been right about the liberals all along.

Simqu, who served in fall 1947, was succeeded by Elmer L. (Chally) Chalberg, who was several years older than the rest of the staff and had been editor of the Humboldt (S. Dak.) Journal and sports editor of the South Dakota Evening Huronite before going in the Army, where he edited a regimental paper. (CDB, 1/15/48.) Simqu remembers that Chalberg "brooked little ideological nonsense. Went at it like it was a chore." And Charles G. (Chuck) Francis, who succeeded Chalberg, recalls him as having
 

contributed a great deal toward raising the paper's journalistic standards . . . We were supposed to start work at noon to get the paper together and, if I was ten minutes late, Chally would chew me out like one of the old-time "Front-Page" city editors. Our "salaries" . . . were something like $20 a month and we spent at least a 40-hour week on the paper. (Questionnaire.)

During Chalberg's term, the name of the paper was changed to "UCLA Daily Bruin" by an 8-6 vote of the Student Council. Representative-at-Large Bill Keene expressed the feeling of the losers when he complained, "Step by step we are drifting away . . . from Berkeley and the tradition of One University. I wish I had Sproul's eloquence to put that across." (CDB, 2/26/48.) Unremembered by student leaders of that day was the fact that the "UCLA Daily Bruin" name had been recommended by Publications Board and rejected by Student Council twenty years earlier. (SEC, 1/29/28.) The Bruin, which had switched back to an up-style by this time, greeted its new appellation with light-heartedness:

Local Yokels Localize
Tag of Daily Rag!!

 What? You didn't see anything different about today's paper? We are thoroughly ashamed of you!

 Faithful readers of The Bruin will note that, as of today, they are reading not the California Daily Bruin but the UCLA Daily Bruin, which is the new official name of the publication. We like it. (DB, 4/2/48.)

Meanwhile, despite the light-heartedness, the "pall of fear" was beginning to descend upon UCLA. As early as March 1947, it was evidenced by Provost Dykstra's sending a message to Paul Robeson, who was appearing in concert at Royce Hall, asking the famed African American (and leftist) singer to "refrain from expressing any ideological views on our stage tonight." The University of California, Dykstra explained somewhat contradictorily, has a "right of free discussion but not of the promulgation of any ideology." (Chanc, 1947, Folder 105, 3/19/47.)

The Cold War had begun in earnest. Czechoslovakia was captured by the Communists in a coup d'état. A land blockade of West Berlin was begun by the Soviet Union. Henry Wallace broke with President Truman and announced his candidacy for president on the Progressive Party ticket. The screws were being tightened on free thought. Managing Editor Charles Francis wrote
 

Composure, Not Complacency

 College students on this and other campuses who believe in the principles of the First Amendment and are attempting to steer their thinking and action by a policy of composure without complacency are having a difficult time these troubled days.

 Yesterday a student on this campus who is known and respected for his liberal principles by all who know him came to this editor's desk and asked for advice in composing a letter protesting the unanimous blackball of a Mr. O'Connor from an NSA post because of his membership in the American Youth for Democracy. "How can I phrase it," he asked, without being smeared as a Communist, without being labeled and suspected of all manner of things?" The only answer to that question, of course, is that no matter how you phrase it, there is no escaping that fear, timidity and prejudice with which this campus is riddled . . .

 It is not being an alarmist to be frightened when students at Pasadena Junior college pelt a radio commentator speaking on behalf of a candidate for the presidency of the United States . . . A few days later it was fists and fruit used to break up a political rally at Los Angeles City college. It is not inconceivable that next month or next year it can be clubs and carbines.

 . . . it will not be either a pleasant or a soothing occupation . . . to speak out loudly . . . [Those who do] will be maligned and branded with a whole assortment of ugly names. It is necessary, however, if we are to bring some bit of composure back to this jittery campus. (DB, 4/21/48.)

Francis, who was named editor in the fall term, 1948, did not lay the sole blame on the conservatives for this state of affairs. As a matter of fact, he quite readily took on the left wing in a series of front-page editorials entitled "Gideon's Dirty Linen" in which he claimed that the Students for Wallace had been taken over by the Communist-dominated Labor Youth League. (Dean Hahn later quoted the series approvingly in his 1957 testimony before the state Senate Committee on Un-American Activities.)

 [T]heir activities are planned to harass and harm the reputation of the University of California at Los Angeles. Their methods in dealing with the university and student organizations are dishonest, sub rosa, and insincere . . . [A]s long as the rest of the students continue their present unwillingness to contribute articles representing their own viewpoints and convictions, The Daily Bruin feature page will be dominated by the ideas of a militant minority. Lastly, I have learned that to do business with the Students for Wallace is to be double-crossed, smeared, and misguided. (DB, 10/24/48.)

Twenty-two years later, Francis, who had become communications director for the IBM Corp. in White Plains, New York, remembered the controversy well:
 

 . . . as the Senator Joe McCarthy era was ushered in, the relations with the SEC and the Administration became increasingly strained. The communist issue was severe and there is no question that students with leftist political leanings tried to make an impact upon the paper, either by contributing articles to the feature page or by working up the ladder to some of the editorial posts. We made many attempts to solicit all shades of political opinions . . . but, as is almost always the case, the most militant students always had the sharpest and busiest pens . . .

Dean Hahn was most fair and statesmanlike . . . I remember no requests from the Administration that were unreasonable . . . They just said they wanted a free, "balanced" paper . . .

 Almost every day I would get a visit from some of the most militant students complaining that the Daily Bruin was not covering the social and political issues the way it should. A typical comment: "Why aren't you carrying on the front page stories about the police brutality in Watts?" I tried to explain that we tried to use our scarce space to cover only those events which occurred on, or were closely related to the campus community . . .

 I wrote the ["Gideon's Dirty Linen"] editorials to get some of these people off our backs so we could get on with putting out a good paper . . . Even Barbara Klipper, now Mrs. Charles Francis, who was then woman's page editor, forgave me for the editorials and we were married in June of 1949 -- that's a long time ago . . . (Questionnaire.)
 

The "Students for Wallace" period was closed with this story in the Bruin:
 

UPSET! TRUMAN RE-ELECTED

Amazing Victory
Gives Truman
Demo Congress

 Crow became a very common edible in the nation as President Harry S. Truman pulled one of the most astonishing upsets in American political history by winning Tuesday's presidential election . . . (DB, 11/4/48.)

Managing Editor Richard Hill commented in his editorial that day, "The next four years will be better than any of us had dared hope."

The years were not to be tranquil. Still ahead were the trial of Alger Hiss, NATO, the Smith Act, the hydrogen bomb, the Rosenberg executions -- and the Korean War.