Common Sense Revisited

For nearly two months, 21-year-old Eugene Landy, No. 2 honor graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, had been officially dishonored. In refusing him the usual ensign's commission, the Navy said he had been "extremely close" to his mother, a former Communist.

As the Landy case flared across U.S. headlines, Navy Secretary Charles Thomas appointed a special board to review the decision. While the board pondered and Landy entered Yale Law School, the Air Force and Coast Guard cleared two men involved in similar kin-guilt cases. At length, the special Navy board arrived at a stubborn conclusion: still thumbs down on Landy.

Last week Secretary Thomas, after talking to Landy and making a personal "common sense evaluation," announced his own findings: Landy's association with his Communist parent was "the natural relationship of mother and son and not a sympathetic association with her political beliefs."

Clearing Landy and bestowing his belated commission, the Secretary said: "I could not ignore one of the fundamental principles on which our American way of life is based, and that is the opportunity of each individual to progress and succeed on his own merit."

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