Louis Adamic. The Native's Return. Armed Services Edition [B-54]. UVa

Strike Up the Ban

CONSIDERING THE CONSTRAINTS of wartime, it is remarkable how few ASE books were censored or banned. Before 1944, only a few books initially approved were dropped for political reasons.

The only full-fledged attempt to censor the ASE's arose from concern not over Communist or Axis propaganda, but over American political rhetoric. In 1944, Senator Robert A. Taft sponsored Title V of the Soldier Voting Law, which made it unlawful for Armed Services reading material to be slanted in favor of American political candidates running for office in 1944. Taft pointed out that soldiers overseas, who would be allowed to vote under the new law, did not get a chance to hear the direct opinions of any of the candidates running. Worried that the Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy might use reading material to promote President Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth term election bid, Taft proposed Title V to prevent government-sponsored literature "containing political argument or political propaganda of any kind designed or calculated to affect the result of any election."

The vague wording of the law caused the War Department to enforce Title V vigorously, banning books that contained the slightest reference to partisan politics. One non-ASE book was banned because it contained a portrait of President Roosevelt. Although Title V was never repealed during the ASE project, its restrictions were severely relaxed after bad publicity and public uproar.

Rejected ASE titles included George Santayana's The Last Puritan, considered to be vaguely antidemocratic; and Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, because of its anti-Mormon rhetoric. Louis Adamic's Native's Return was thought to contain passages sympathetic to communism, causing congressman George A. Dondero to attack the ASE program for distributing communist propaganda--in fact, Louis Adamic had removed the controversial passages before the book was reprinted as an ASE.

Catherine Drinker Bowen. Yankee From Olympus. Armed Services Edition [P-32]. UVa

Armed Services Editions that fell under a temporary ban included Yankee From Olympus, Catherine Drinker Bowen's biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes; Charles A. Beard's history of the United States, The Republic; and Sumner Welles' opinionated The Time for Decision.

E. B. White. Letter to John Y. Cole, 3 January 1983. Photocopy

In this amusing letter, E. B. White recalls the joy he felt when his own collection of humorous essays, entitled One Man's Meat, fell under the ban.