U.S. PURGE OF BOOKS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27073, 23 June 1953, Page 9

U.S. PURGE OF BOOKS

Library Stocks Abroad

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, June 22. The “New York Times” said today that several hundred books by more than 40 authors had been removed from the shelves of United States libraries abroad. The removals were made in connexion with at least six confidential State Department directives be* tween February 19 and June 21, according to. a survey conducted by the newspaper’s correspondents in 20 world capitals. In only one—in Tokyo—“many” books and periodicals were acknowledged to have been “burned or scrapped for pulping,” the “New York Times” said. In. general, “undesirable” volumes were stored or hidden away, pending instructions from Washington on their disposal. No single specific instruction covered all the withdrawals. The nearest to a common factor appeared to be refusal by authors of the books to tell Federal investigators about Communist affiliations.

A dispatch from Tokyo said books considered undesirable in Japan included some “obsolete histories’’ that presented the Soviet Union in a favourable light, and books that contained material possibly objectionable to Japanese, including works on the Pacific war and others critical of Japan’s pre-war and war-time Government

The “New York Times’’ listed 16 authors named specifically in one of the confidential State Department directives which called for the banning of their works in libraries abroad, regardless of the title of each individual work. , Among them were Howard Fast a Left-wing historical novelist, who was imprisoned for contempt of Congress in 1950, and Dashiell Hammett, a writer of mystery stories and the author of “The Thin Man.” Hammett was imprisoned for six months in 1951 for contempt of Court. The “New York Times” also listed a number of other authors not specifically named in any State Department directives, but whose works—accord-

ing to interpretation in one or more of various United States embassies—was covered by other instructions pointing to discretionary banning.