◆ SpookStack

Henry Wallace A Bad Case of Fever E AMERICANS are not a calm and reflective people. W same traits which built a great nation—youth, vigor, enthusiasm—can be dangerous when turned to evil purpose. Americans, since the foundation of the Repub- lic, have’ been overready to see Jacobins, Bolsheviks ‘or Communists under the bed. Such hallucinations unbal- “anced us following ‘World War-l,..but-after a few years, - our sanity began to reassert itself. Now the disease has returned. The shrieking of the press, the war whoops in Congress, the foaming of professional patriots, the awful dangers which are hinted at in the recent presidential executive order requiring federal employees to be screened for loyalty—all these are designed to. give the average American a fever, a bad case of Red fever. If a man’s fever goes high enough, unless you watch him carefully there is no telling what he may do. _ a Several ways are open to treat the disease. One is to discover its causes, to remove them ‘wherever possible and to offset their damaging effects. The toud noises, for example, made by the press and Congress are clearly continuing to make the patient’s condition worse. Ad- mittedly, the noise is difficult to stop, but it might be offset partially by a few intelligible words of common reason. . Another therapy is to pretend to the patient that his hallucinations are justified, that these are real, concrete causes which have made him ill. This is the technique of the witch doctot exorcising evil spirits. To make it more plausible, a few innocent victims are hunted down, flayed and boiled. Presumably, the patient then gets bet- ‘ter. This would appear to be what the Administration considers a rational and scientific approach, — ; To many others, the testing operation, the litmus paper for loyalty which is proposed in the President’s executive forder, appears’ manifestly absurd. For one thing, the operation bears no relation to the size of the real problem. \ J. Edgar Hoover says that when Russia was taken over i the Communists, the country contained one Commu- nist for each 2,227 persons, while today in the United States there is one Communist for each 1,814—the in- ~ \ference being clearly that the US is in more danger now ‘than Russia was in 1917. Even if Hoover’s statistics were true—and I do not know where the gets thet he is overlooking other factors which are of overriding impor- t | tance. Russia in 1917 was not and never had been a democracy. Her despotic government had been smashed y 4 great war and the nation was utterly prostrate and helpless. To suggest that 77,000 Communists—on the asis of Hoover's statistics—could take over an American ation of 140 million people is too fantastic to deserve {serious consideration. ; I share the confusion of many other people in inter- al preting the President’s formula for smelling out Reds in the government. It appears that from now on the Attor- ney General will form all final judgments on this subject © for the American people. We are told that disloyal per- sons will no longer be tolerated in the government; so far, so good, though there is ‘no clear definition of what is meant by the word “disloyal” either in the President’s order or anywhere else. Among the conclusive bases for evidence is to be ‘membership in, affiliation with’ or Sym pathetic association with any foreign or domestic asso- NEW REPUBLIC ° & mippent masts ry ciation . . . designated by the Attorney General as totali- tarian, fascist, Communist or subversive. . . .” (Italics mine. — H. Ww.) Now it becomes a little clearer what the _ President means. The way to determine whether or not a man is loyal is to let the Attorney General declare whether’ or not he is disloyal. If he is declared disloyal, that shows he is not loyal. Q. E. D. | I THERE any reason ‘6 believe that our witch hunt will be successful? Mahy thoughtful students of history have already warned us that the best way to make the Communists a real threat is to drive them underground. To this I would add that one sure way to unsettle the faith of non-Communists in their government is for that government to badger and bait innocent men. Certainly there can be no doubt that every government executive should have the tight to dispense with sub- ordinates who have shown themselves incapable of giv- ing undivided, unqualified allegiance and fealty to the oath which they took on becoming public servants, J would not want as a colleague on the New Republic one who in his off-hours preached the sermons of reaction; I would not want the contents of the paper leaked in advance to some daily scribbler for another sheet. I have the right to demand that my co-workers be with me, and our government has the right to know that its servants cre SIS ee é dy. a a eT AR me ee ete