The Colossal Innocent

REPUBLICANS

In the strongest excoriation ever directed at Senator McCarthy by one of his Republican Senate colleagues, Vermont's Ralph Edward Flanders last week accused him of 1) paralleling Adolf Hitler's brand of antiCommunism, 2) "setting church against church," 3) resuming "his ax-happy efforts to split" the Republican Party. 4) spreading "division and confusion wherever he goes," and 5) helping the Communists.

Flanders likened McCarthy to Dennis the Menace, explaining that McCarthy displays the "colossal innocence" of children "who blunder . . . into the most appalling situations as they ramble through the world of adults." Flanders wanted the Mundt committee to examine "the real heart of the mystery": the personal relationships between McCarthy, Counsel Cohn and Private Schine. Conn "seems to have an almost passionate anxiety" to retain Schine, observed Senator Flanders. As to Schine, he continued: "At times [McCarthy] seems anxious to rid himself of the whole mess, and then again, at least in the presence of his assistant [Cohn], he strongly supports the latter's efforts to keep the Army private's services available. Does the assistant have some hold on the Senator? Can it be that our Dennis, so effective in making trouble for his elders, has at last gotten into trouble himself?"

Flanders concluded: "Were the junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists, he could not have done a better job for them." Promptly, Joe McCarthy made his kind of answer to Senator Flanders: "I wonder whether this has been a result of senility or viciousness."

Later, when the two men met in a Senate Office Building subway car (see cut), they did not speak.

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