X's and ?'s

Just after pressing the buttons that started his new Chicago Sun, Marshall Field III had his picture taken with four of his chief aides: George De Witt, John Dienhart, Rex Smith and Publisher Silliman Evans. The group picture was hung in the Sun's cramped little wire room. De Witt, Dienhart and Smith fell by the wayside in the first eight months; some office commentator marked an X over each departed face. Sixteen months ago somebody put a large question mark over the heavy-jowled likeness of highly paid publisher "Ivans. He frequently joked about it.

Last week Marshall Field X'ed him out too. Announced reason: Evans' job of making the Sun rise had been done; he wanted to get back to his Nashville Tennessean. Speculated reasons: 1) long-simmering incompatibility between Field and Evans; 2) Field's realization (probably with Washington prodding) that in business-minded, conservative Evans he had the wrong man to run a newspaper tinted with New Dealish liberalism.

In recent months Field had listened less to Evans and more to outsiders who wanted the Sun to get in there and scrap with Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick's archconservative Tribune. Fortnight ago, after Evans' financial columnist, pompous Philip S. Hanna, had labeled the federal ballot for soldiers "a trick to dodge the Constitution," Hanna was summarily fired by Field.

First notice to the Sun's staff of Evans' dismissal was in the masthead: Marshall Field appeared as both publisher and editor. His chief helpers, it appeared, would be experienced, 48-year-old Clem J. Randau on the business side, and hard-boiled Frank W. Taylor on the editorial end.

Sun staffers generally cheered the Evans departure, observed that when the Sun had been flaccid and ineffective it had been so because Publisher Evans thought it smart business to be that way.

On the picture in the wire room the office commentator made his mark again. Over the handsome face of Marshall Field III was inked a question mark.

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