Happy Union

When Herbert Sebastian Agar, Pulitzer-Prize winning author (The People's Choice), got his discharge from the Navy, he had a good job awaiting him. After four years' leave, he could return to edit Publisher Barry Bingham's prosperous Louisville Courier-Journal. But this week Agar turned up with a smaller platform to speak from and he was happy about it, too. In January, he will become the British Isles editor of Freedom & Union, Clarence Streit's small, earnest voice of federal world-government (TIME, Sept. 23).

Englishmen with a hard word for Herbert Agar are hard to find. U.S. Ambassador John Winant borrowed Lieut. Commander Agar from the Navy late in 1943 to convince doubting Britons that the U.S. would be not only the arsenal of democracy but a provider of men. Later, as London OWI head, tall (6 ft. 4 in.), handsome Herbert Agar did a notable job of helping to dissolve British-U.S. differences. He exhorted factory workers in their own language, patched up tiffs between British mayors and U.S. troops. On first meeting, people might think Herbert Agar was also soft; but not after they heard one of his impatient let's-get-on-with-it outbursts.

Says the London News Chronicle's veteran editor Robin Cruikshank: "Agar probably contributed more towards a good understanding of America in England than any other man in history, and was the best counter-agent to Hollywood."

Back to Britain. Long before the war (1929-34), Agar had been in London as freelancer, literary editor of the English Review and correspondent for the Courier-Journal. When the Courier's owner Robert Bingham was sent to England as Ambassador by F.D.R., he and son Barry enthusiastically plotted Agar's future, made him a C-J columnist in 1935, editor in 1940. In 1942 he resigned to join the Navy (he had been an enlisted man in World War I).

As Streit's counterpart in England, Agar will boost world federalism in Britain, report British viewpoints for Freedom & Union. He will work in his flat off Berkeley Square "because it's easier for me to be quiet there," will spend much of 1947 on a book which will tell "how our government developed the way it has." After that, it will be Freedom & Union full time.

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