A large amount of praise comes at intervals for The Christian Science Monitor; criticism, also, is received from those who differ from what they believe to be its policy. Criticism that is constructive is welcomed; criticism that fails in this respect is gladly answered.

It is exceedingly important that readers of the Monitor should appreciate the difference in function between the news columns and the editorial page of the paper. It is notable that readers who are occasionally critical fail to realize this distinction. Frequently letters are received in which the writers attribute to the Monitor the advocacy of some opinion or policy, when actually the Monitor has done no more than record in its news columns news which readers need to know in order to be adequately informed. The news columns do not reflect the editorial opinions of the Monitor. They record the news objectively on the basis of its social importance.

Because Senator A or Governor B is quoted as saying something with which the reader disagrees, the latter need not conclude that he can no longer read the paper. It is proper for the Monitor to print that which is news, news of sufficient importance to warrant a place in its columns, whether or not this news is in harmony with the Monitor's editorial policy.

Few readers would feel that, because of the political, religious, or fraternal affiliations of people under discussion, the Monitor should not publish items of importance about them, or quote their sentiments and report their speeches. Nor would they think it sound to regard the Monitor as unstable if it supports what is right and constructive in the acts of the government, whichever party is in office, or if it waits conservatively before criticizing that which is proposed but not tested.

There is much in the Monitor of value and interest, apart from its political news and articles, however important these articles are to the understanding of national and international problems. Its news of diversified subjects, its special pages and departments, its educational features, and its Home Forum page supply a variety of material designed to serve the different needs of different readers. Many of the subscribers to the Monitor take the paper because of particular features. Subscribers can hardly be expected to read every word that appears in its pages. That is not the manner of reading newspapers. In general, the reader examines the pages and reads what is of interest to him personally.

Certain it is that the great majority of the Monitor's readers, and they include non-Christian Scientists, would be quite at loss could they not have the Monitor. Who of us who know it could contemplate with equanimity the necessity of doing without it? Most of us recognize the Monitor as holding a great floodlight on world conditions, something discerning, searching, and analyzing, pointing the way from wrong to right, from darkness to light. Working for it is a band of loyal, devoted men and women who give of their best, and who are striving to discern the purpose its Founder designed for it, namely, "to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 353).

The fruitage from the Monitor's almost daily visits is not unacknowledged. A non-Christian Scientist reader has written:

Its editorials, while not in accord with much of my own social philosophy, are always informing and usually convincing. . . . It seems to me that the real value of the Monitor for the reading public lies not in any of those special forms of service, but in the final impact of the whole paper upon those who read it. I mean its education in true international thinking and feeling; its constant reminder that we are citizens not only of the United States, but also of the world and of the universe itself; its demonstration of the important fact that a daily life stripped of mental excursions through putrid areas of crime can be exciting; its subtle humor and above everything else, its giving to the things of the spirit their rightful place in the daily life of man.

An editor commends as "very attractive" the new column "The World's Day," with its "zip and attention command." One who is connected with a school of journalism testifies to the esteem and helpfulness of the Monitor in the school's work. One who received from a friend the Monitor in a country not his own writes,

Your paper has been not only a source of information, but also a source of inspiration and spiritual strength to me. . . . I cannot but congratulate you that of all religious viewpoints you are stressing the fact that only thought . . . can lift humanity out of the darkness . . . of materialism, ignorance, intense nationalism, racial antagonism and intolerance.

A recipient of the paper who resides in Samoa congratulates it on its "nose for news" proclivities, which result in its printing news that is fresh, even years afterwards. "Therein, lies one of the greatest values of the Monitor." One who received the paper in Alaska said, "It is the one thing that brings a little of interest from the outside world;" and another, referring to the "March of the Nations" column for June 3, said, "The love expressed in it was enough to stop war forever, and it changed my strong feeling of nationalism to one of brotherly love."