AMERICAN REASONS

Some of you may have heard these poems on the ""Voice of Freedom"" program; some may have read them in PM. To many -- as to me -- they will be wholly new. And I venture to predict that they will appeal to a wide public, for they touch familiar chords, they say what many would like to be able to say for themselves. There is something of the fineness of John Brown's Body -- there is the essence of American concept of life. There is challenge, too, on problems of today. A soldier, chance met on a train, tells why he joined up; a young wife explains why she is determined to keep the home even in her husband's absence; a business executive pauses to wonder whether the creed he has accepted through life is the right one: a woman in her kitchen looks back and realizes that the last peace was too shallowly fashioned; a Negro soldier tells how it seems to be outside looking in; a writer confesses the impossibility of finding words to express the message he would give the world. This for today, may catch the public that found what it wanted in The White Cliffs yesterday.