As much as it depends on its paper and ink, this magazine, like all books and periodicals published in this country, owes its continuing existence to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees freedom of speech and the press, and to the Fourteenth, which requires the states to respect the same rights. Whenever a threat to these liberties arises, therefore, we must resist it. For this reason AMERICAN HERITAGE and its editor have become involved, together with a great many eminent historians, in one of the most curious legal cases in recent years, that of Frick v. Stevens.

The facts are a little complicated. The elderly plaintiff, Miss Helen Clay Frick, the only surviving child of Henry Clay Frick, the noted Pittsburgh steel master who died in 1919, nearly a half century ago, is angry about a book which in a few cursory references makes what she regards as defamatory remarks about her father. She wants either to alter it or to win an injunction halting further distribution. The defendant is Dr. Sylvester K. Stevens, a professional historian, executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission; he is also a member of the editorial Advisory Board of AMERICAN HERITAGE. His book, Pennsylvania: Birthplace of a Nation, was published by Random House in 1964. Miss Frick received a copy as a Christmas present and apparently turned at once to the index for references to her father.

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