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y ‘activities. The Hatch Campaign Ex- penditures Act was mentioned. Then the cryptic G-men sauntered out again. Since the Department of Justice had already completed one check of the CIO's 1946 political-campaign expend. . itures, Secretary-Treasurer Saul Mills of the Greater New York CIO Coun- cil decided something new was in the wind. He told reporters that it looked - as though the FBI visits “were calcu- lated to intimidate and harass unions and union members who have indi- cated their support for Henry A. Wal- lace for President.” Mills then’ reeled off a list of a dozen or so locals fa- vorable to the Wallace candidacy whose _.officials had_been questioned by the agents. (See Wallace article, page 11.) nn DOWN THE RATHOLE President Truman’s quarterly report on US aid to Greece and Turkey (the NR, February 23) made it quite clear that the original high purpose of help- ing the Greck people to get back on their feet had degenerated into an ineffective military operation with no end in sight. When Secretary Mar- shall the other day asked Congress for more money for Greece and Turkey, he made little attempt to disguise the “Operation Rathole” nature of the venture. | Marshall’s presentation, a brief let- ter to Senator Vandenberg, President of the Senate, and Representative Mar- tin, Speaker of the House, was quite a contrast to. the crisis-atmosphere joint session of Congress to which the Presi- dent proposed the original plan last year. Open military support to anyone engaged in killing Communists any- where is no longer a shocker on Capi- tol Hill. The Secretary spoke in frank terms of the “lines of supply” from the US to the Greek army. He claimed no more for the Truman Doctrine to date than that it had “contained” Russian- backed forces. All he offered for the future was a dogged belief that we could outlast Russia with more of the same. The $275 million for which Mar- shall asked will not be apportioned to Greece and Turkey in advance, but SED Les PL Dear Ee ee rmemee Be Made It PRACTICALLY ALL California politi- cal leaders this week conceded that the Independent Progressive Party (third party) would be on the ballot in November. The new party finished the most momentous petition campaign in the state’s history by filing 486,000 signa- tures of registered voters. Needing 276,000 names to qualify, accord- ing to the stringent election laws ef California, the IPP's 10,000 volun- teer petition circulators rolled up al- most twice the number, which .had been considered “impossible.” A majority of the signatures, 275,000, came from Los Angeles County, within which almost one of _| every four registered voters signed ‘for Henry Wallace. will be doled out where and as needed. Whatever share’ goes to Greece is for a negative purpose: to ‘prevent the establishment of “the dictatorship of a foreign-inspired minority” until the present Greek government can “stand its own grourid without outside aid.” Actual power in Greece today is in the hands of a tiny minority of arch-reac- _ tionaries and millionaires, and they are certainly “foreign-inspired.” They will never “stand their own ground” except as part of a fascist type of dictatorship. Thus the US’s moral outlook in Greece seems as precarious as the military one, and as dreary as the outlook of the Greek people for real democracy and prosperity. ee NO BEDS FOR NEGROES LOS ANGELES: (NR correspondent) Keep out. There are 22 hospitals in Los Angeles, but when one of ‘the city’s 160,000 Negroes gets sick, there is usually only one thing he can do: lie down until he recovers or until he dies. If he is lucky, he may gain admission to the County General Hospital, re- served foi charity patients. But he can make the rounds of the other 21 insti- tutions of mercy and never get any- where, because these are Jim Crow “hospitals, County General is the only hospital in Los Angeles which allows Negro physicians to ‘serve on its staff—it NEW REPUBLIC has two—and it is the only on¢ which will admit Negroes. The other hospi- | tals bar Negroes from their staffs, and the white doctors for the most part refuse to treat Negroes. Since they must consent to do so before a Negro patient is admitted, the effect is to bar the doors against the Negro race. The results of Jim Crow medicine in Los Angeles have been disastrous. In certain Negro sections, the tubercular rate is 400 percent higher than in com- parable white districts. In the main Negro section, deaths per 100,000 population from tuberculosis were , 142.8, whereas in a typical white area, the incidence was 36.8. Twin errors. Los Angelés authorities™~——— have not only, by condoning a Jim Crow hospital policy, refrained from taking effective steps to provide medi- cal care for Negroes, but they have also been apathetic in attacking the causes , of sickness in the Negro sections. Segregation of Negroes into crowded, unsanitary slum areas has built up reservoirs of disease which spill over into the rest of the city. The only real step forward has been taken by a non-sectarian, non-profit interracial organization of professional people who are planning construction of West View Hospital, which will contain 50 beds. When this insti- tution begins operation, it will admit patients without regard to race, creed or color, and its staff will include both white and Negro doctors. But 50 beds is small potatoes in view of what is needed. James Hamil- ton, former president of the American Hospital Association, says that the city must have 10,000. And ‘even then, these beds will be no use to Negroes until Los Angeles cures itself of its Jim Crow complex. FAKE RENT CONTROL A congressman received a telephone call a few days,ago from a constituent some 2,000 miles away who wanted to know: “Is of isn’t there any rent con- trol? Will the landlord be able to raise my rent this month? Am 1 likely to be evicted? If so, do I have to take the