The Outlaw

If the New York Times is to be believed, Howard Hughes, who has given the United States such things as Jane Russell, contributed to the development of political, thought the other day--though probably without realizing it. In halting production at R.K.O. Radio Pictures for an indefinite period--ostensibly to weed out persons suspected of being Communists or having Communist sympathies--Hughes explained, according to the Times: "The extent of alleged Communist influence in Hollywood is such that 'every one' of eleven stories, selected as the best for filming out of 150 read by the studio over a period of six months, had to be discarded because 'information concerning one or more persons involved in the past writing of the script or original story' showed that those writers were suspected of Communist ideas or sympathies."

Socrates would have banished all the poets--writers, artists, what have you--from his society. And most political thinkers since, who haven't liked certain ideas, have merely suggested censorship of one sort or another. But this is the first time to our knowledge that anyone has suppressed ideas or works of art--if motion pictures can so be called--and avowedly the best available, on the ground that the writers were thought to hold undesirable ideas, even though these ideas apparently were in no way reflected in the work itself.

This is a subtle thought, difficult to grasp, and has all the tough-minded ear-marks of one of those realistic political principles forged under the pressures of the game hard-played and won or lost on a shrewd, intuitive knowledge of what the other fellow is apt to do next. The Hughes Principle looks to us as if it were tempered to deal with the hard political realities of the time--the reality that pressure groups in these United States no longer judge an idea, or a work of art, or even a motion picture on its meaning or intrinsic worth, but look to see who thought it, or who wrote it, and what groups he has been associated with. The Hughes Principle has sound basis in the present American political scene, and we bet motion picture producers, radio magnates, and publishers will find it increasingly useful in the troubled days ahead.