Under the caption of "The Mighty Have Fallen," your...

Albert E. Lombard, Committee on Publication—Southern California,

Whittier News

Under the caption of "The Mighty Have Fallen," your issue of June 17 contained misleading statements and inferences relative to The Christian Science Monitor, and space is desired for comment regarding them.

In 1883, at about the time Mrs. Eddy established The Christian Science Journal, the first of the Christian Science periodicals, she wrote that, through it, "we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought. A great work already has been done, and a greater work yet remains to be done" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 7).

Approximately twenty-six years later, on Thanksgiving Day, 1908, the first issue of The Christian Science Monitor appeared, and in its leading editorial Mrs. Eddy said in part: "The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 353). Throughout the years the Monitor has had before it as an ideal these inspiring words of its Founder; and it has also been under another requirement of Mrs. Eddy, indicated in the Church Manual (Art. VIII, Sect. 14), that it shall be "ably edited and kept abreast of the times."

From the very first issue the editors of the Monitor have sought to present a clean, interesting, readable newspaper. Its news has been free from sensationalism and devoid of the harrowing details of disasters. Morbid items are excluded, and crimes without significance have no place in its columns. The editorials of the Monitor are outstanding for their accuracy; the news columns are fresh with good and dependable news from all parts of the world; its various feature departments are reliable, interesting, elevating, and instructive. Financial propaganda and news items of a misleading character are scrupulously avoided, and the contents of the paper are such that it is worthy to be read and relied upon by any member of any family. Manifestly, such exceptional reading matter is gathered at a great outlay of time and money, and the small subscription price of the paper does not by any means bear the expense of publication. The advertising columns of the paper are edited as scrupulously as its news columns, and objectionable advertisements are positively refused.

Thus it will be seen that The Christian Science Monitor continues to stand as an advocate of clean journalism; that it expresses a constructive viewpoint; and that it follows the high ideal established for it by its Founder, Mary Baker Eddy.

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