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is a highly independent and individualistic position. And yet it is, and cannot help but be, subject to the ultimate control of the publisher, but it can't be subject to the daily, intimate or immediate or frequent control in that sense because that isn't the kind of person you have as editor of the editorial page of the Times. As I say, I would think that on the great majority of newspapers this issue wouldn't arise because the editor really is the office boy of the publisher, to put it in a crude and probably unfair way. But that isn't true at the Times; it isn't true on other good newspapers, which value not only their own self-respect, but that of their principal executives. So the virtue of the position creates the difficulty, and yet that is the situation.

I don't think you can draw any lessons from this. This is going to be worked out over a long period of time. Punch and I have only been working together a year, almost to the day, as a matter of fact. Although there were some moments a few weeks ago when I wasn't at all sure that we could work out this thing, I now feel that we can, and I believe that the long conversations that we have had, trying at least to mesh our thoughts on the mutual relationship between publisher and editor and the degree to which the publisher should or shouldn't-and I include “shouldn't” very strongly in this-interfere with the work of the editor, have served to bring us to what will undoubtedly be a very satisfactory modus operandi.

There is one more footnote I ought to add to this. I recognize that on the matter of whom we support as a presidential or major political candidate, the issue that I've described really doesn't arise, because it's generally accepted that if there's a disagreement here on this issue between editor and publisher, the publisher's decision on the major candidates is the