POSTAL CENSORSHIP

WHY THE POSTOFFICE

HAS NO TIME

FOR YOUR MAIL

by Robert Gregory

In the two issues immediately preceding this one, Associate Editors Sten Russell and William Lambert have discussed various aspects of some ominous trends set in motion these days toward limiting and even proscribing what American citizens shall be permitted to read. The motivating agents of all this are paid public servants, subsisting upon comfortable incomes which we citizens provide from the public treasury, while using their vantage point of security as a base from which to indulge in all manner of illegal and improper behavior.

Managing Editor Robert Gregory now makes a thoughtfully penetrating analysis of such high-handed tactics, focussing his attention upon those petty, or high-level, postoffice functionaries who seem to have set themselves up to be the judges as to what you and I may be allowed to receive through the mails and to read. History all-to-grimly indicates that this sort of thing is but one short step removed from telling us next what we may think.

Editor Gregory carefully dissects the legal and philosophical backgrounds pertinent to such unsavory conduct and spells out some of the underhanded procedures being used to nibble away the very foundations of our American freedoms. He shows how blackmail-type techniques of intimidation and pressure have been directed against us, the very persons who are paying the salaries of these people and who should be entitled to receive from them in return some decent and honorable service. As all of these practices multiply, day by day, the postoffice keeps crying for more money, presumably for subsidizing still more such behavior.

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