Fifth Column

Loud was the muttering last week from U. S. citizens who feared the fifth column within their gates. Many a citizen pointed with alarm at U. S. Communists, U. S. Nazis, urged any and all means to combat them before it was too late. Just as loud, and more vocal, were the outraged counter-cries from the Communist Party, meeting in New York City for its national convention. In a report which took him four hours to read, General Secretary Earl Browder praised Soviet Russia as the "only one really neutral Great Power" remaining in the world, the protector of weak nations, the "beaconlight" of the working class. Said Browder:

"Who are the 'fifth column' in the United States? . . . Martin Dies. . . . The Roosevelt Administration. . . . The Republican Party leadership."

Just as aggressive was the Party platform which promised to: oppose all war loans and credits to the warring imperialist powers; stop the sale and shipment of munitions and armaments to the belligerents; resist the militarization and armaments program of the Administration and Congress.

At week's end, in a raucous session attended by 22,000 in Madison Square Garden, waving red flags, U. S. flags, the Party nominated: for President of the U. S., Earl Browder, convicted of passport fraud and facing a four-year sentence, now out on bail pending appeal; for Vice President, Negro James William Ford.

Though the average U. S. citizen might feel concern at these public trumpetings of a political group openly devoted to a foreign State, official Washington was more concerned with another side of Communism--its real, underground activities. In Washington:

> The Senate approved a Presidential reorganization plan, already passed by the House, switching the Immigration and Naturalization Service to the Department of Justice.

> Attorney General Robert Jackson created a "national defense investigation unit" within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, put stern, jut-jawed Veteran Agent Hugh H. Clegg in charge. Jackson also recommended legislation to require the registration of all firearms. > The Civil Service Commission announced it would no longer certify for employment proven members of "the Communist Party, the German Bund, or any other Communist or Nazi organization."

> Representative Martin Dies, on a trail he has been snuffing up a long time, proposed legislation to outlaw both the Communist Party and the Bund, fix heavy penalties for membership, suggested the President create a council of home defense to coordinate the FBI, the Secret Service, Army and Navy Intelligence.

> Before the Senate was a drastic, catch-all bill, introduced by Texas' Tom Connally, which would deport aliens for (among other things) writing seditious articles, possessing dangerous weapons, engaging in prostitution.

> Already passed by the Senate was the twisted La Follette Bill (see p. 19).

> Planted in the Senate was Bob Reynolds, chief of the Vindicators, who avowed: "I'll be sittin' there every minute watchin' things, and ready to amend bills to deal with aliens whenever possible."

> Not part of the undercurrent but a ripple on the stream was a decision of the Supreme Court which held that the regulation of the Minersville, Pa. school board requiring school children to salute the flag was constitutional.

In other widely separated parts of the country citizens met, orated, resolved against Communazis:

> At the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union convention in Manhattan, Sol Arian Rosenblatt, impartial chairman of the cloak and suit industry, proposed that Communists be deprived of their right to vote, said to cheering delegates: "While we may not deprive these termites in our midst of their citizenship, laws may still be enacted--and properly--to deprive them of the highest exercise of that citizenship, which is the right to vote."

> District Attorney Buron Rogers Fitts of Los Angeles summoned law enforcement officers from all over Southern California, declared immediate war on the fifth column, invited the public to assist. Next day letters and telephone calls poured in.

> Attorney General Ellis Arnall of Georgia started a movement to withdraw from aliens the immunities and safeguards guaranteed to citizens by the Federal Constitution.

Many a liberal U. S. citizen dreaded the shape of things to come. The American Civil Liberties Union promised a court battle to test the Civil Service Commission ruling. The Workers Defense League met, warned one another that "we must do everything in our power to see that the rights and liberties enjoyed by our democracy are protected." George Norris rose in the Senate to recall World War I raids, when "hundreds of persons entirely innocent were arrested, shackled and handcuffed just because their enemies made false charges against them." Many could recall when anti-German feeling ran so high that it was hazardous to say "Auf Wiedersehen" on the street, when German opera singers were howled down, the Boston Symphony's German Conductor Dr. Karl Muck was interned, and the father of Senator La Follette was burned in effigy.

But the U. S. as a whole was less concerned with the immediate future of civil liberties than with the immediate future of the U. S. Said the New York Herald Tribune: "The whole shape of the world . . . has been destroyed before our eyes, and it has proved all but impossible to readjust our whole system of ideas and attitudes to the new reality which now confronts us . . . . There is an American case, worth arguing for, worth fighting for and worth dying for." Just dawning on the Western Hemisphere was the suspicion that Nazi Germany, like Communist Russia, was engaged in a world revolution.

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