Archibald MacLeish Denies "Fall of City" Is Defeatist

"If it is defeatism to look at your time full in the face and to describe that face, then I hope we all become defeatists and the sooner the better," Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress, stated recently when asked by the Student Union Dramatic Committee for a statement on his play "The Fall of the City."

"The play, though written beforehand," he commented, "is an almost too precise presentation of what did actually happen in Austria. Its implications have a pretty precise reference to what might very well take place in this country."

MacLeish, noted author and lecturer, served at Harvard last year as curator of the Nieman Collection of Contemporary Journalism.