Two Pictures

One after another, through the same Manhattan courtroom where Alger Hiss first came to trial, paraded the witnesses in the trial of William Remington, onetime Department of Commerce economist who quit his job last year to avoid being fired. The charge was the same: perjury. Remington had told a grand jury that he had never been a Communist. Behind the formal charge was the same, even graver accusation that Remington had passed on Government secrets to a Red spy ring.

Box 1692. In ten days the Government produced an array of eleven witnesses, who painted a detailed picture of a dedicated Communist. Old associates swore that he had certainly behaved and talked like one when he worked as a messenger for TVA in 1936-37; that he got his mail at a Communist letter "drop" (Box 1692 in the Knoxville post office) used only by party members; that he went to private Communist meetings.

From the mouth of Elizabeth Bentley, onetime courier for Soviet Spymaster Jacob Golos, came corroboration of the damaging testimony already given by Remington's divorced wife. Ann Moos Remington had told of their solemnly intellectual college romance; of how, when he proposed, she had exacted his promise that "he would continue to be a Communist"; of how, later, when he was working for the War Production Board, he passed on war secrets to Miss Bentley (TIME, Jan. 8). Miss Bentley said that she had met Remington secretly and frequently in Washington, that he paid party dues to her and that he slipped her such information as figures on aircraft production.

The Young Radical. The defense was unable to shake the story of any Government witness. But it tried to show the picture in an entirely different focus. One ex-Communist said that Box 1692 was not an exclusively Communist address; it was used, he said, by the organizers of a labor group. Another former TVAer described Remington as a half-baked young radical who affected old shoes tied together with strings and put-putted around Knoxville on a motorcycle. The portrait was of an earnest decrier of entrenched privilege, but no Red.

That was also the picture painted by a dignified, stern-looking man with white hair and a white goatee--Frederick Remington, 81, retired employee of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., father of the man on trial. Son William, he said, had served as an acolyte at the family's Ridgewood, NJ. church. The elder Remington, a staunch Republican, did not agree with his son's "idea of New Dealism...he was radical in that respect." But Frederick Remington was confident that his son had never been a member of the Communist Party.

"In God's Service." Last week, fingers clasped, impeccably dressed, 33-year-old William Remington gave his own version of his life to the jury of seven women, five men. As a boy, he had no definite social views until his mother had introduced him to the ideas of the Oxford Group, after which "I tried to place all my thoughts and acts in God's service." At 16 he went to Dartmouth, where he gained some campus notoriety as a radical, largely because of his vehement defense of the underdog. He sometimes sardonically told his classmates that he was "a bolshevik because I want to blow you up." Actually, he was only dreaming of a better society.

He and Ann Moos had given money to Miss Bentley, but it was for an antifascist organization. Flatly, he repeated that he had never been a member of the Communist Party. What about the story that he had passed on war secrets to Elizabeth Bentley? He did not deny that he knew her. He said that he had been introduced to Joe North, editor of the leftist New Masses, at his mother-in-law's home in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., where North was living in Mrs. Moos's garage; that North had introduced him to a "John somebody" (who turned out later to be Jacob Golos); that Golos had introduced him to Miss Bentley. He had given her some information, but it was harmless stuff, not secret; he had thought Miss Bentley was a journalist.

As for Ann's testimony about their romance, he had a slightly different account of their discussions. "She was worried about what she thought was my ambition," Remington declared, "and asked me if I would promise her I would not be dominated by a desire to become a successful businessman. She was quite concerned about the Republicanism in my family. I promised her that I would never become so anxious to get ahead in the world that I would give up my concern for...the underprivileged."*

In a final attempt to save himself from a five-year prison sentence, Alger Hiss appealed last week to the Supreme Court to set aside his conviction, because, among other things, Whittaker Chambers had "fabricated" the evidence against him.

* A passage which so fascinated Columnist H. I. Phillips that he wrote a moonstruck parody. Excerpts:

"Oh, my darling, how can I be sure? You might not only go into business but become SUCCESSFUL! !"

"There's nothing to indicate I would ever be come successful, dear."

"But once a man goes into business there is always the possibility."

"Not in my case . . . Marry me and I will pledge my word to be a FAILURE in the world of trade."

"But there's another thing . . . It's pretty terrible for a girl to be proposed to by a man with Republicans in his background...Mightn't you have some G.O.P. leanings?"

"Be mine and I promise not to register as a Republican." "OH, I BET YOU SAY THAT TO ALL THE GIRLS."

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