In (1) Baer studied the following problem: If a torsion-free abelian group G is a direct sum of groups of rank one, is every direct summand of G also a direct sum of groups of rank one? For groups satisfying a certain chain condition, Baer gave a solution. Kulikov, in (3), supplied an affirmative answer, assuming only that G is countable. In a recent paper (2), Kaplansky settles the issue by reducing the general case to the countable case where Kulikov's solution is applicable. As usual, the result extends to modules over a principal ideal ring R (commutative with unit, no divisors of zero, every ideal principal).

The object of this paper is to carry out a similar investigation for pure submodules, a somewhat larger class of submodules than the class of direct summands. We ask: if the torsion-free i?-module M is a direct sum of modules of rank one, is every pure submodule N of M also a direct sum of modules of rank one? Unlike the situation for direct summands, here the answer depends heavily on the ring R.