• U.S.

INVESTIGATIONS: Professor on Trial

2 minute read
TIME

The case of Owen Lattimore, the Johns Hopkins professor who powerfully influenced U.S. thinking and U.S. policy on China, finally reached the courts last week. In the three years since Senator Joseph McCarthy called Lattimore a “top Russian agent,” the professor has 1) written a book in his own defense, Ordeal by Slander, that won applause from liberals; 2) appeared before one group of Senate investigators (the Tydings committee) whose majority cleared him handsomely; and 3) argued before another Senate hearing (Internal Security subcommittee) which denounced him as a “conscious, articulate instrument of Soviet conspiracy” and urged that he be brought to trial for perjury.

Last week a federal grand jury in Washington, after sifting evidence presented by the FBI and Justice Department attorneys, indicted Lattimore. The grand jurors charged that he had willfully lied to the Senate Internal Security subcommittee when he said under oath that he:

¶ Never promoted Communists or Communist interests;

¶ Was not told that Dr. Ch’ao Ting-chi, who worked for the Institute of Pacific Relations and subsequently became a high

Chinese Communist official, was a Communist;

¶ Did not know that “Asiaticus,” a contributor to the I.P.R.’s magazine, Pacific Affairs, which Lattimore edited, was a Communist;

¶ Did not knowingly publish articles written by Communists;

¶ Did not confer with Soviet Ambassador Constantin Oumansky during the period of the Soviet-Nazi pact;

¶ Did not handle the mail of White House Assistant Lauchlin Currie while Currie was away;

¶| Did not prearrange a trip to Communist China in 1937 with Red authorities.

Lattimore once more lashed out against “such vengeful harassment as I have been subjected to for three years.” He added: “All that I can do is, in the words of a namesake of mine, to ‘be of good comfort and play the man’. . .”*

Arraigned before District Judge James R. Kirkland, Lattimore was asked how he pleaded, answered with a ringing “Not guilty!” He was released in $2,000 bail, and his trial was fixed for early March.

*A reference to Hugh Latimer, 16th century Protestant bishop who was burned at the stake during Queen Mary’s reign. As he prepared for death, Latimer said to a fellow victim and bishop, Nicholas Ridley: “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as, I trust, shall never be put out.”

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