WAR & PEACE: Attack from Within

WAR & PEACE

As European democracy retreated last week before the triumphant armies of world revolution. U. S. citizens talked distractedly of intervention, defense, democracy, appeasement, protection of civil rights, the fifth column—especially the last.

They could believe there might have been traitors and spies in far-off Scandinavia, in Belgium, perhaps in France; that a fifth column might now be operating in South America (see p. 32}. But they were still half-inclined to credit Hitler’s outburst last week, denying that there was any such thing as the fifth column, denying any Nazi concern with the U. S. (see P-37).

The existence in the U. S. of Bunds. Communists. Fascist shirt groups is no news. To U. S. ears last week there was something more blundering than sinister in the reported blurt of the Nazi Consul General in New Orleans, lean-faced Edgar Freiherr Spiegel von und zu Peckelsheim: “Germany will not forget that when she was waging a struggle for her very life the U. S. did everything in its power to aid her enemies.” When those words were published in the New Orleans States, the indignant baron said that he made the comment off the record. Later, he cried that he had been “misquoted.” Yet the U. S. felt something was wrong somewhere:

>The House of Representatives passed a bill to deport C. I. 0. west coast Maritime Labor Leader Harry Bridges, often accused of being a Communist, found innocent by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. Lamented the New York Herald Tribune: “Democracy is not to be defended by imitating the arbitrary legislative devices of despotism.”

>In California. Federal Judge Michael J. Roche canceled the citizenship of Communist William Schneiderman.

>State troopers in Pennsylvania seized Bund Leader Wilhelm Kunze and Bund-ster Gustav J. Elmer, questioned them for two days, let them go.

>In Pittsburgh, distressed at overhearing a worker gabbing about production results in a war-geared steel mill. Advertising Executive Robert Post began distributing posters reading: “Sealed lips stop tips. Don’t talk to strangers about your work. Silence is golden. Help preserve American industry.

“In Stamford, Conn., residents formed The North Stamford Breastwork & Overhead Menace Committee.

>Tips poured into the Department of Justice at such a rate (3,000 daily) that Attorney General Robert Jackson warned citizens to be calm, let FBI do the investigating.

> The Senate passed a bill requiring the fingerprinting and registration of the 3,500,000 aliens in the country.

>Attorney General Jackson announced a new doctrine in immigration policy. Henceforth, said he, immigrants will have to show that their admission to the U. S. “affirmatively appears to be for the American interest.”

>Secretary of State Hull said a close investigation of Italian consular services would be made by Government agencies. Military authorities disclosed that they were clearing suspicious aliens out of the Canal Zone.

>Indian Commissioner John Collier testified before a Senate Committee that fifth columnists had made no headway among his Indians, but that he could not say the same for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee which had approved a bill proposed and backed, said he, by “subversive” groups.

If all the evidence added up to very little concrete information about fifth-column activity, there was still good reason for the U. S. to be watchful and apprehensive, for the methods and intentions of the Nazis are no secret. Year ago Herman Rauschning (The Revolution of Nihilism) reported among other Nazi in tentions since acted on by Hitler that “In the National Socialist [Nazi] view, the political situation in America is unstable, and can be developed into an outright revolution; to do this is both a tactical aim … to hold America aloof from Eu rope, and a political one … to bring North and South America into the new order.” And Dr. Rauschning quotes Nazi Propagandist Goebbels’ boast: “Nothing will be easier than to produce a bloody revolution in North America. No other country has so many social and racial tensions. We shall be able to play on many strings.” Last week, the U. S. felt uneasily that a few of those strings were already being plucked.