THE CONGRESS: Nazi Hunt

Month ago German Ambassador Hans Luther marched into the State Department in Washington and slapped down a formal protest. In Manhattan the American Jewish Congress, the Assembly of Hebrew Orthodox Rabbis, the Federation of Palestine Jews, the Jewish Legion, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. Young Judaea. Young Poale Zion and many other Semitic organizations were about to put Adolf Hitler on trial as an enemy to civilization. Was not such a proceeding an unfriendly act? Dr. Luther demanded. Undersecretary of State Phillips shrugged his well-tailored shoulders and retorted that free speech still exists in the U. S., that no U. S. official was taking part in the “trial.” So Nazi Germany had to sit by while 20,000 anti-Nazis met in Madison Square Garden and heard Alfred E. Smith, Raymond Moley, Senator Tydings of Maryland, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of

New York. Samuel Seabury and many another denounce its Chancellor. Last week the State Department knew that it was going to have more trouble with Dr. Luther. Representative Samuel Dickstein, a small, slick Tammany Democrat from Manhattan’s Bowery district, got the House of Representatives to adopt (168-to-31) his resolution to create a special committee to investigate everywhere throughout the land “the extent, character and object of Nazi propaganda in the U. S. and the diffusion within the U. S. of subversive propaganda. . . .” Last winter Congressman Dickstein, who chairmans the House Immigration Committee, went through an unofficial dress rehearsal of his anti-Nazi inquiry at which appeared a mysterious “Mr. X” with armfuls of “evidence” to make scare headlines. Now that he had the formal sanction of the House, Mr. Dickstein proposed to do an even better job of spreading on the record the plight of members of his own race in Germany. Said he last week: “We have dozens of spies coming to America as sailors on German boats. They are trying to spread hate among our people.” If the Dickstein investigation has its way the U. S. Capitol will be turned into a public forum in which Nazis will be pilloried day after day and timid citizens will be led to believe that Chancellor Hitler is about to oust President Roosevelt. The Administration may officially refrain from taking part, but, worse, from the diplomatic standpoint, some of the Administration’s best friends are certain to be heard. Raymond Moley was this week publishing in Today a series of articles entitled “Hitlerism Invades America.” According to Today, Nazi groups have been formed in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Manhattan; they have upwards of 6.000 members; they hold meetings, collect dues, wear Nazi uniforms and sometimes drill in turnhallen; members of the League of Friends of the New Germany pledge: “I do not belong to any secret organization of any kind [Freemasons, etc.]. I am of Aryan descent, free of Jewish or colored racial traces”; their political ideal “is organically conceived and consequently the very antithesis of liberal Democratic ideas. Believing in the authority of leadership . . . we advocate a state of truly sovereign authority which dominates all the forces of the nation.”

Such examples of German propaganda will make fine material for political oratory on and off the floor of the House. Four years ago New York’s Red-hunting Representative Fish demonstrated how a little material could be piled into a mountain of headlines when he headed a footling House inquiry into Communist propaganda in the U. S. (TIME, June 2, 1930, et seq.). Prime difference will be that at the time of the Red hunt the U. S. and Russia were not on speaking terms.

The nearest parallel to such an investigation as Representative Dickstein is about to launch against a friendly power occurred in 1911. Outraged by stories of pogroms by Tsar Nicholas’ whip-wielding Cossacks, the House of Representatives passed a measure repealing the Russian-U. S. trade agreement. President Taft, realizing that there was ammunition for a serious diplomatic explosion, intervened before the bill reached the Senate. Secretary of State Knox announced that the treaty was being abrogated in accordance with its own terms.

Russia’s reply to Congress at that time was given by Foreign Minister Sazonov to Ambassador Curtis Guild:

“No self-respecting nation can act under pressure from abroad to change her treatment of the Jews within her borders. . . . Russian experience has been that the presence of Jews within her borders is a perpetual menace not only to the integrity of the country, but to law and order. . . . Not cynically, but seriously, while Russia cannot abandon her restrictions on Jews we are prepared to consider an arrangement by which the United States might cooperate for the transfer of all Jews from Russia to the United States.”