THE CONGRESS: No Witches

John Edgar Hoover last week called upon U. S. patriots to join his G-Men in a holy war: on spies, murderers, foreignisms, burglars, alien-minded mongrels, Utopian praters, saboteurs, subversive lawbreakers of every sort. “Here,” cried the chief of FBI, “is a battle between priceless God-fearing principles on the one hand and pagan ideals and godlessness on the other. … In these troubled days, when you strengthen the hand of law enforcement, you add power to the muscles of liberty. . . .” He added piously, “Our efforts must not develop into a witch hunt.”

U. S. Attorney General Frank Murphy last week praised Mr. Hoover (for his measures to prevent industrial espionage), said the Department of Justice would be right behind him in the hunt on condemners of U. S. laws. Mr. Murphy also thanked the Dies Committee for its exposures, assured its Chairman Martin Dies that un-American wrongdoers will be remorselessly punished. But, said the Attorney General, his Department will act only on good evidence, will punish no citizen for his opinions—in short, will hunt no witches.

Congressman Jerry Voorhis of San Dimas, Calif., a little Leftist, was placed on the Dies committee last February to counterbalance its Red-hunting chairman. Jerry Voorhis soon was more appalled by his new view of U. S. Communists and Nazis than by the antics of Martin Dies. Having come to check and scoff, the new member remained to respect the work if not the chairman of the committee. But last week Mr. Voorhis suddenly drew back, cried: “I can’t vote for that!”

It was too late. Unhappy Mr. Voorhis, knowing not what he had done, had already voted to publish the names, addresses, titles and salaries of 528 Federal employes, 30 District of Columbia schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, etc., four teachers at Howard (Negro) University, all of whom supposedly were or had been members of the American League for Peace and Democracy. Martin Dies did not pretend that they were Communists. He flatly announced that they were being punished for staying in a League which his committee had exposed as organized and controlled by the Communist Party.

“A most damnable thing!” cried Democrat John Dempsey of New Mexico, who was absent (as usual) when the committee first voted to publish the list. Three minutes late at a meeting called to hear his belated objections, Committeeman Dempsey vainly stormed, with Mr. Voorhis vainly carried his protests to the House floor. Least excited were those immediately concerned. The League’s publicized members ranged all the way from a Capitol charwoman, who makes 50¢ an hour, to NLRB’s Edwin Seymour Smith, who makes $10,000 a year, and Assistant Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman ($9,000), who “joined” last year by contributing $2 to a fund for Loyalist Spain. A few did not even know that they were members of the League.

Dies Committeeman Noah Mason of Illinois proposed to have them all fired if they did not quit the League forthwith. “It is too bad,” said he, recognizing that some innocents are bound to be hurt. Michigan’s Republican Clare Hoffman introduced a bill to bar from Federal pay rolls all members of all organizations affiliated in any degree with the widely affiliated Communist Party (or with any other outfit which would overthrow the U. S. Government). Carried to its logical extreme in public and private employment, this form of retribution would turn up millions of witches in the besplattered League alone. A. L. P. D. has some 20,000 active members, claims 7,500,000 more through unions and assorted organizations whose leaders joined the League as a gesture against Fascism, toward peace, to help unionize grocery stores, boycott Germany, participate in 101 activities of no immediate interest to Moscow.

A rather “sordid procedure,” President Roosevelt called the committee’s action. Well aware that millions of U. S. citizens applaud what he is doing, dreaming of political rewards to come, Martin Dies in reply warned the President he had better mend his talk. Cried the chairman (by radio) : “There is nothing new about this latest attack by the Administration . . . except the occasion which prompted it. … The time has come when the country and those in control of the Government should determine whether or not we shall be … constantly handicapped, embarrassed and thwarted by Washington officialdom.”

Meantime the education of Martin Dies proceeded apace. A blustery, headline-hunter when he came out of Orange County, Texas, Chairman Dies is still hunting news space (“The only thing that counts in these investigations is what gets in the papers”). But last week he revealed an understanding that Reds and Nazis do not just grow out of thin air. Said he, projecting an ambitious new line of inquiry. “I want to give the nation a graphic picture of the deplorable conditions that breed Communism and Fascism.”