The reliability of TIME as a foreign news source has been the subject of a vigorous controversy recently in the Norwegian press between Arnulf Overland, novelist, essayist, playwright and Norway's foremost poet, and communist author O1vind Bolstad.

The controversy arose as a byproduct of one of a series of lectures Overland has been making throughout Norway. A longtime, hard-hitting champion of democracy and the rights of the individual, Poet Overland, who passed four of the war years as a political prisoner in German concentration camps for his work with the Norwegian resistance movement, has been lecturing on "the problem of dictatorship or democracy." In a discussion of information from foreign countries at the close of his Oslo lecture, he gave TIME as one of his sources.

Two days later Oslo's leftish newspaper, Dagbladet, appeared with a contribution by O1vind Bolstad, which read, in part:

Arnulf Overland said in his lecture that TIME was a reliable organ. This statement must either be due to ignorance or bad memory, to put it politely. Every newspaper reader knows that TIME* here in Norway was regarded as Hitler's American mouthpiece. Overland was arrested in 1041. Consequently, he should be able to remember that TIME was the foreign source which the German press agencies quoted to support their case. The Norwegian newspapers were constantly spiced with items from TIME.

There are a good many people who would like to know on which sources Overland does support his views on foreign affairs.

Within two days, the Dagbladet published Overland's reply. Wrote he: . . am not a very diligent newspaper reader. But I know quite a number of people who are. And none of those I have asked understands what Mr. Bolstad is referring to. By means of his excellent memory he ought to be able to mention a few examples in support of his contention.

Maybe I can help him. There are two possibilities. The German propaganda did not shun the use of false quotations if it served their purpose. And they proved to be right when they reckoned that many people in this country would trust any falsification if only it proved sufficiently shameless.

There is also another possibility: The German propaganda may have found statements in TIME which, dressed in a proper way, can have been found useful. TIME may have used the freedom of the press existing in America for criticizing their own government or the Allied policy during the war. For in America and England it happens that politicians make mistakes--but never in a totalitarian state. These mistakes are mentioned in the opposition press, causing the enemy now and again a shortlived pleasure. . . .

The following facts about TIME are known not only by newspaper readers in this country, but by politically informed persons around the world. The magazine has an extensive readership outside of America because it carries reliable news about foreign affairs, to which it lays great stress. It has a large staff of specialists in this area, and the editorial management has always kept a clear anti-fascistic line. This cannot be said about the communist press from which Mr. Bolstad has reaped his wealth of knowledge. Its attitude in our time of need and fate was next to benevolently neutral toward Naziism.

And this may happen again.

To Norway's Overland, TIME'S thanks for his forthright defense.

Cordially,

* Which was intermittently banned by Hitler, Mussolini and Japan, and banned for keeps by Hitler in May, 1939.

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