New Outlook

Offspring of Manhattan's teeming Lower East Side, alumnus of the nation's most notorious political machine, Alfred Emanuel Smith has by the liberal quality of his ideas, the forthrightness of his character made himself a leading voice in the choir of U. S. thought. But currently he seems to sulk in his high Empire State Building, almost a man without a party. Certainly Mr. Smith is a man without a rostrum; expired is the contract under which he had written a weekly feature for McNaught Syndicate since January 1931.

Lately Alfred Smith had a telephone call from a man he had never met. Then there was an interview. Last week the name of Alfred Emanuel Smith was in gold letters on an editor's door at No. 515 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. From that office, late this month, will emerge the first issue of the New Outlook.

Having bought bankrupt Outlook, one-time vigorous commentator on U. S. affairs, at auction last month (TIME, July 11), gruff-voiced, ambitious Publisher Frank Aloysius Tichenor pondered how to bring it to anything like the power it had when the late Theodore Roosevelt was its star contributing editor. Writers he could get, and funds from his backer, Republican National Committeeman Frederick Stanhope Peck of Providence, R. I. But he wanted much more. Publisher Tichenor got it. Mr. Smith accepted the post of editor-in-chief, at a salary not revealed save as being "plenty." Publisher Tichenor called the acceptance last week "America's second chance at a once and recently wasted opportunity for counsel."

For managing editor New Outlook got big-framed, red-haired Francis Walton, 30, from the New York Herald Tribune. Ten years a newsman. Managing Editor Walton is aware that editorial comment on world news is customarily based upon second-hand information. He planned to have much of New Outlook's, comment written by newsmen on the spot. Editor Smith will not only help shape policies but will also write editorials and articles.

Publisher Tichenor last week did not need to point out what many a U. S. Liberal discerned: that the 1932 Presidential campaign would now have the Smith utterances that distinguished the one in 1928; that Editor Smith would now be entirely free of party politicians. Publisher Tichenor is a reverent admirer of Theodore Roosevelt. In his announcement last week he deftly coupled a Rooseveltian maxim "aggressive fighting for the right" with a familiar epithet "the Happy Warrior."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.