Retraction Retracted

In the wake of Georgia's primary, 60-year-old Editor J. B. Hardy sat down and penned a bitter editorial for his Thomaston Times:

". . . In the country counties, where ignorance and prejudice rule, and there is a Negro problem, Ole Gene [Talmadge] got his big votes; but in the city counties, where education and enlightenment reign, . [James] Carmichael piled up a huge vote."

That was strong talk in Hardy's own country county. The day after his paper came out, ten men called on Editor Hardy at his home. Unless he went down to the office and apologized, they said darkly, they could not be responsible for what might happen. He went along with them, found 100 angry men waiting outside the Times and decided to eat a bite of crow. He had not aimed that editorial at anybody in Upson County (it had voted for Carmichael), he said, and if he had hurt anybody's feelings, he was sorry. He would say so in the next issue.

But the more he mulled it over, the more Editor Hardy felt that it was he who had the apology coming. Last week he wrote another editorial. Its title: "Freedom of the Press Cannot Be Displaced by Mob Rule." Its nub:

". . . It has always been our policy to discuss public men and issues as we saw them. . . . We . . . will not be intimidated by any threat, spoken or implied, of mob rule. . . ."

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