COMMUNISTS: The Way of the Dupe

The first project of the spanking new American Peace Crusade had a familiar ring: a “peace pilgrimage” to Washington to protest the “armaments race,” to demand that the U.S. recognize Communist China and get out of Korea. Among the sponsors were the same tired names the Communists use over & over, in slightly different combinations, for all their fronts: Singer Paul Robeson; Ben Gold, president of the International Fur Workers; Author Howard Fast (see below); Artist Rockwell Kent. There was one other useful name and a distinguished one: Author Thomas Mann.

At the Mann home in California, Mann’s daughter Erika rushed forth with a voluble explanation. About two weeks ago, she said, 75-year-old Dr. Mann got a letter from “a Cornell University physicist whom we know,” inviting Mann to become a sponsor for a peace organization. The language was “highly civilized,” and the seven names on the letterhead seemed “flawless.” The names of Robeson, Fast et al. did not appear. “Otherwise, Dr. Mann would not have read further,” said Miss Mann flatly.

The letter sounded innocuous—it took two nations to start a war; it was all right to be firm with Russia, but we must lead the way in creating an atmosphere of wanting world peace. This aim seemed “praiseworthy” to Dr. Mann, and he wrote that he would be delighted to lend his name, but did not feel he could help as an organizer. That was the last he had heard until the announcement appeared.

It was the typical story of a Communist dupe—and Thomas Mann had shown himself to be only too susceptible to the Communist shell game. The Warsaw Peace Conference had elected Dr. Mann to its presidium in absentia, and Mann had had to cable a protest and his explanation: he had written France’s Communist Dr. Joliot-Curie refusing to attend the conference but expressing his sympathy for Joliot-Curie’s efforts for peace. Mann had refused to sign the Stockholm petition, but had sent a recorded message to Chicage’s Mid-Century Conference for Peace, taken over by the same gang.

Mann, in a time when every man must keep his wits about him, had not been paying strict attention.