Odyssey of a_fellow_traveler-jb_mathews-1938-283pgs-soc-com

ODYSSEY OF

A FELLOW TRAVELER

by J. B. Matthews

MOUNT VERNON PUBLISHERS, INC .101 Cedar Street, New York, N . Y.

COPYRIGHT BY J . B . MATTHEWS, 1938

fill rights reserved. No part of thisbook may be reproduced in any formwithout permission in writing fromthe publishers, except by a reviewerwho may quote brief passages in areview to be printed in a magazine

or newspaper.

First printing December 1938

ToMartin Dies of Texas

J. Parnell Thomas of New JerseyJoe Starnes of AlabamaNoah Mason of IllinoisHarold Mosier of Ohio

THREE DEMOCRATS, TWO REPUBLICANS : FIVE AMERICANS

CONTENTS

IIntroduction

IIReminiscence

IIIAncestry

IVYouth in Kentucky

VYears Abroad

VIPacifist

VIISocialist

VIIIIn the United Front

IxCommunists at Work

XDissenter Again

XIWitness

XIIConservative

J

INTRODUCTIONHate is at flood tide in the world today, a hate

born of the doctrine that man is arrayed againstman in an irreconcilable conflict of classes . It is ahate more deep-rooted and terrible than that ofinternational war .

The story of these pages is not intended to aggra-vate by ever so slight a degree this desperate maladyof hate. Political principles and social theories mustclash. It is one of the few inexorable necessities ofman's life on this planet that they should do so . Buthate beclouds understanding and weakens whatevercase is darkened by its unseeing passion .

Most of us find it difficult to forego the emotionalluxury of strong language. But epithets chargedwith intense feeling are dangerous substitutes forfacts in the intellectual diet .

Communism may be viewed properly as a mentaldisease which menaces the world today, but if sucha view be well founded it is all the more importantthat communism should be thoroughly, accurately,and calmly appraised .

It cannot be denied that communists and theirsympathizers object not only to a denunciation ofcommunism but also to a calm and critical examina-tion of its principles and practices . Strange as it mayseem, communists denounce those who merely cite

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ODYSSEY OF A FELLOW TRAVELER

the things of which communists themselves openlyboast in their own public statements. This phenome-non is so significant that it should be given concreteillustration.Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist

Party in the United States, once wrote of the positionof his party in the "united front" in the followingterms : "In the center, as the conscious moving anddirective force of the united front in all its phases,stands the Communist Party. Our position in thisrespect is clear and unchallenged ." 1 Unlike manycommunist statements, this one is not an exaggerationnor a distortion of the facts-facts supported by logicand events. If the Communist Party were unable toact "as the conscious moving and directive force ofthe united front in all its phases," it would haveceased long ago to expend the greater portion of itsenergies in initiating and building united frontorganizations. In the course of our narrative, it willbecome necessary again and again to refer to Brow-der's sober estimate of the position of the CommunistParty in the united front . For the present, we onlyobserve that any one who dares to apply Browder'sstatement to specific united front organizations, suchas the World Youth Congress, the Friends of theSoviet Union, or the American League for Peace andDemocracy, is denounced as a red-baiter not only byofficial communists and their official sympathizers butalso by numerous so-called liberals among editors,cartoonists, high-ranking government officers, andcollege presidents .

Browder also noted that "representative strata ofundifferentiated masses such as churches, Y. M. C .A.'s, small home-owners, small depositors, as well as

[8]

INTRODUCTION

definite middle-class groups, intellectuals and profes-sions" are being "swept into the broadened streamof radicalization" and that the Communist Party hastaken over the leadership of this movement of radi-calization . 2 Let any one else make precisely this sameobservation in these identical words and, if hisobservation is not calculated plainly to serve thepropaganda purposes of the Communist Party, hewill find himself set down as the unfortunate victimof hysteria-even in the editorial columns of themost obviously capitalist newspapers) To attempt anaccurate appraisal of the nature and extent of theCommunist Party's influence, as a means of under-standing our political drift, is, strange as it may seemto the uninitiated, mere red-baiting. To make thesame attempt in the presence of a gathering of Com-munist Party functionaries or for purposes of recruit-ing Party members is just good political sense .

"We could recite," wrote Browder, "a thousandlocal examples of the successful application of theunited front tactic, initiated by the CommunistParty." 3 There is not the slightest doubt about Brow-der's ability to recite a thousand such examples-or two thousand. But let any one else recite, outsidethe bounds of Communist Party purposes, twentyexamples of the "successful application of the unitedfront tactic, initiated by the Communist Party," orlet him recite only one such example, and all thespurious liberals in the land will accuse him offinding a red under every bed .

In an address to the students of Union TheologicalSeminary, Browder said: "You may be interested inknowing that we have preachers, preachers active inchurches, who are members of the Communist

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Party." 4 It is not of record that any of the theologicalstudents who heard this remark challenged its factualaccuracy. Nor is it conceivable that any newspapereditor indignantly demanded of Mr . Browder prooffor his remarkable statement . The factual accuracyof the statement is too well known to all, but unlessthe statement is made by the proper persons underproper auspices and with proper Party intentions, itis received by surprisingly large sections of the pressand public as just another sample of horrendous red-baiting.

In the Party Organizer, issued by the Central Com-mittee of the Communist Party, U. S. A., JohnWilliamson wrote of "the active participation andleading role our Party played in the great massstruggles at Goodyear, Firestone, Fisher Body, Re-public and Youngstown Steel, as well as the active,and in many cases, leading role of the Communistsin Ohio in organizing drives of the C . I. O. in theseindustries and many others. 115 When witnesses havetestified before the National Labor Relations Boardand the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee thatthe Communist Party has played "a leading role" inthis or that strike, they have been met with thehackneyed charge of red-baiting or of introducingwholly irrelevant matter. As will be shown in mysection on "Communists in the Trade Unions," it isfar from irrelevant, either from the standpoint ofcollective bargaining or from the standpoint of civilliberties, when the Communist Party plays "a leadingrole" in strike and union activities. It is, in fact,impossible to think of anything more relevant .

Of late, a spirited debate has been staged aroundthe person of one Harry Bridges, leader of the gen-

lob

INTRODUCTION

eral strike of 1934 in San Francisco and prominentC. I. O . chieftain of the longshoremen on thePacific coast. Is Bridges a communist? Those whosay yes are red-baiters ; those who say no are pro-gressives-at least some would have us believe so .The subject of the general strike of 1934 in San Fran-cisco was discussed fully by Jack Stachel in the Com-munist of November, 1934 . Stachel is the CommunistParty's generalissimo on all trade union matters inthe United States, and the Communist is the officialmonthly organ of the Communist Party in this coun-try. Stachel and the Communist together are thene plus ultra of authoritativenessI Here was whatthey had to say on the subject of the general strike inSan Francisco: "The San Francisco strike proves thatit is not only possible for the Communists to organizeand lead struggles in the A . F. of L. unions but thatit is possible to win the struggles."° This leaves nodoubt as to the claim of communist leadership in theSan Francisco general strike . Regarding the place ofBridges in that leadership, Stachel wrote in the Com-munist, as follows: "What will happen . . . if theworkers elect not only one Bridges, but hundreds ofBridges in the section and district leadership, not tospeak of national leadership? There will be bigstruggles. The workers will become revolutionized ." 7It would be difficult to think of a more explicitmanner in which the Communist Party might an-nounce that Bridges is a communist . Stachel's wordscan have no other meaning . Yet it is, apparently,reserved to Stachel and his fellow revolutionists toclaim Bridges as a communist. Outside the revolu-tionary circle of communists, the claim becomes red-baiting.

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The very essence of a free society is the right ofpublic criticism of public figures, institutions, andmovements. The fact that communists resent withunequalled abusiveness all critical discussion of them-selves-their principles and tactics-is striking evi-dence that they do not, in any fundamental sense,believe in a free society. We can hardly wonder atthis. A political movement, so closely allied to aland where those who disagree with the reigningbureaucracy are answered with the firing squad, isnaturally not disposed to enter into public discussionon a calm and factual basis with those who criticizeit even in countries which are not yet under thedictatorship of the proletariat . Abuse and vitupera-tion are the nearest approach to a firing squad whichcommunists are able to employ against their criticsin a country like the United States .However much communists might prefer to be

the only political group immune to all criticism andhowever much they may attempt to enforce thisimmunity with vituperation, it is important that thecritics of communism employ the restraint of civilizedemotions, a fine sense of balance, and perhaps aboveall their sense of humor while proceeding fearlesslyto the work of criticism .

It is not the least of the communists' contributionsto our political and social disorder that their relianceupon organized hate has called into being an oppo-sition which is likewise based upon organized hate .Collectivist fire is fought with collectivist fire . Theoriginal totalitarianism of hate which is labeledMarxism-Leninism has given rise to another totali-

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INTRODUCTION

tarianism of hate which differs from the originalchiefly in its label . If at this late date any proofis required for the assertion that Marxism-Leninismrelies upon organized hate, it is to be found, amongother places, in Maxim Gorky's glorification of hatein his volume entitled Proletarian Hatred, enlighten-ing excerpts from which have been published in theDaily Worker . 8 The one and only sure method ofavoiding a totalitarianism of any kind in the UnitedStates is to stop the further advance of communismin its tracks by an educational program equal inmagnitude to the vast output of communist propa-ganda, and superior to it in factual persuasiveness .Unless this be accomplished in the present stage ofour political life, there can be little doubt that Amer-ica's answer to communism will be fascism or some-thing so closely akin to it that the differences willnot matter greatly. No one should entertain theslightest fear that communism will ever triumph inthe United States. If the time ever comes when we areconfronted with the alternatives of communism andfascism, there can be no doubt of America's choice .He who would defend America from the emergenceof a fascist regime will do well to begin his worknow by disseminating an understanding of the theoryand practice of communism .

The sufficient justification for the publication ofmy experiences and observations as a fellow travelerof the communists is to be found in my convictionthat America may yet be spared the destruction ofits free institutions by any form of totalitarian gov-ernment. I have not the slightest inclination to exag-gerate my past connections with the communists or

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my intimate knowledge of communist theory andpractice. On the contrary, I regret profoundly thatmy training and comprehension in political andeconomic matters were too limited to spare me thispublic acknowledgment of a most distressing dis-illusionment and about-face .Thousands have been more deeply involved in

communist activities than I and have subsequentlyexperienced a disillusionment similar to mine . Onthe surface, it may appear strange that many of themhave not already given us the benefit of their politicalexperiences. There are at least important educationalvalues to be salvaged from the most bitter disillusion-ment. These values should be shared.

I think I know, however, why almost all dis-illusioned communists remain silent about their ex-periences. With good reason they do not relish thereactions to their story which are to be expected,oddly enough, in many quarters . They know exactlywhat to expect from the Daily Worker, the NewRepublic, and similar sheets . The response of theseis stereotyped and predictable abuse. What thedisillusioned wish to avoid, and in preference to itelect silence, is ridicule by notably capitalist journalswhose power to discredit is vastly greater, by reasonof their firmly established capitalist reputations, thanany damage which might accrue from Broun'sabusive distortions . Any degree of vituperationemanating from the Daily Worker, the New Repub-lic, or similar sheets, receives limited public atten-tion and is, indeed, a sort of flattery . The ridiculeof these others is harder to explain and many dis-illusioned communists draw back from incurring it .

In addition to the many thousands who have, after[14]

INTRODUCTION

a time, deserted communism, there are others whoremain in the movement despite their disillusion-ment. From some of these I have received the warm-est congratulations since my appearance as a witnessbefore the Dies Committee on Un-American Activi-ties. They have not yet severed all connections withthe communist movement for one reason or another,"moral" or economic or both. Some are convincedthat a W. P. A. livelihood or a Federal TheatreProject stipend depends on their good standing incommunist headquarters . Others feel the strong"moral" pressure which operates to hold them inline. They lack the simple moral courage to face thecharge of being quitters or renegades. The nether-most regions of the communist "hell" are reservedfor the so-called renegades . Ordinary capitalists getoff today with a regretful consignment to communist"purgatory" until such time as they are minded tobecome "progressives" and join the "angelic circle"of the People's Front.

Concerning other thousands of communists andfellow travelers, I have been asked frequently, of late,why they do not see the light and repudiate com-munism. The answer to this exceedingly difficultquestion is in many cases, I believe, that the issueof personal integrity has not yet arisen . The incessantround of activities which is expected of all fellowtravelers and demanded of all Party members leaveslittle or no leisure for those reflective moods in whichalone the issue of personal integrity is likely to arise .There is no time to stop and think, even if thinkingwere not discouraged. By that process which hascome to be known as rationalization, men are ableto do strange things to their minds . Step by step they

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call upon one justification after another to guard theinner citadel of personal sincerity . It thus turns outthat communists as a group are as sincere as anyother group in the population . Sincerity may be adangerous state of mind. Men usually become com-munists and fascists by gradual stages of faulty think-ing or inadequate understanding rather than byadding moral perversity to moral perversity . As forthe great majority of these modern collectivists, it isboth unsafe and unfair to charge them with anythingmore morally reprehensible than tragic mistakes inthe adoption of their premises. On the other hand,it is the tragedy of all collectivisms that the mostunscrupulous and most ruthless member is mostlikely to rise to the position of leadership, certainlywhen leadership means power. The organization ofvast political power and its successful retention in asingle hand is more likely than not to put a premiumupon qualities which we commonly associate withthe "big shots" of gangsterism .

In the pages which follow, I have incorporatedvarious autobiographical details which may or maynot have anything to do with my subsequent activi-ties as a fellow traveler of the communists. They arenot presented with any notion that they are soextraordinary as to prove interesting on their ownaccount. On the contrary, well-meaning friends towhose judgment I am glad to defer have suggestedthat they form a necessary and informative back-ground for the fellow traveler's portion of my narra-tive which alone could ever have given birth to thethought of an autobiography, even one as unconven-tional and unpretentious as this . Only ih a verylimited sense is it an autobiography at all . It is the

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INTRODUCTION

story of how one American thinks he became, bygradual stages, a fellow traveler of the communists,some of the things which he learned during thispolitical journey, and why he turned back eventuallyto reconstruct a political faith for which there is nobetter word than Americanism .

Inasmuch as it appears difficult enough for manyAmericans to believe even the best-documented state-ment about communism, I have adopted, with veryfew exceptions, the method of relating only thosethings for which there are original and indisputablesources in communist literature itself or for whichI have in my possession adequate proof in the formof documents. Left-wingers generally are enamoredof the conspiratorial life . Along with a few otherpsychological compensations, it provides the excite-ment in an otherwise dreary routine of committeemeetings, parades, demonstrations, money raising,and incessant "comrading" of associates whom onedislikes fundamentally. In the practical interest ofplausibility, however, I am convinced that it is wisernot to attempt to induct my readers into the fantasticworld of conspiracy to which they may be totalstrangers.

1 Earl Browder, Communism in the United States (New York : Interna-tional Publishers, September, 1935), p. 244.

2 Ibid, p . 243.Ibid, p . 55 .

4 Ibid, p. 3356 John Williamson, "Ohio Tackles Its Problems," Party Organizer, March,

1938, p. 1 .°Jack Stachel, "Our Trade Union Policy," the Communist, November .

1934, p . 1101 .T Ibid, p. 1104f.The Daily Worker is the official newspaper of the Communist Party .

U.S.A .

REMINISCENCEAccording to the Daily Worker, I am a liar, strike-

breaker, criminal, vigilante organizer, violent labor-baiter, hypocrite, and almost a murderer. With apair of epithets more, I could qualify as a Trotskyist .To this prized catalogue of my virtues, Arthur Kalletcontributes, also in the columns of the Daily Worker,an adventurer pure and simple . The New Massessays that I am a venomous man . For designation asa brilliant idiot, I have Earl Browder himself tothank. Mike Gold, with becoming restraint, lets meoff as a distinguished American strike-buster . Hey-wood Broun walked up and bravely told me to myface that I was despicable, and then shuffled awaydejectedly when I thanked him sincerely for hisflattery . To all these comrades and fellow travelersI am grateful for their compliments, fully cognizantas I am of the inverted ethical code which guidessuch master epitheticians .

Whatever color of shame for my past comes overme, I feel when I read the files of the Daily Workerand the New Masses from the days when my nameappeared so often with favorable mention in thesecomradely journals. I blush when I am remindedthat Simon W. Gerson, recently appointed AssistantBorough President of Manhattan, heard me addresstwenty-two thousand comrades in Madison SquareGarden and then wrote in the Daily Worker that

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"the crowd went wild at the mention of the need forthe united front by Matthews" and that "it seemedthat the very steel girders that arched across the roofwould bend from the ear-splitting cheers that wentup."' I confess to some chagrin when I read in theDaily Worker of another occasion when I addresseda comrade-packed Garden and "made a trenchantattack upon the illusions of bourgeois democracyamong the intelligentsia," 2 or when I read that I"struck the keynote of the demonstration" 3 of twentythousand gathered in Union Square under theauspices of the International Labor Defense, or whenI read that "J. B. Matthews, a leading revolutionarysocialist . . . was greeted with thunderous cheers" byfour thousand members of "Icor" in the New YorkHippodrome .4 Toward my platform performancesin those days, it can hardly be alleged that the com-rades were lukewarm. Before me is a letter fromthe American League Against War and Fascismwhich says: "We know we are risking being thrownright out of your office and onto the cold and hardpavement outside! But we are willing to risk lifeand limb to clear up some of these pathetic pleasfor J. B. Matthews. The latest one is from Newarkfor May 10th ; very large attendance expected ; protestmeeting on Fleet Maneuvers. The application forspeaker ends thiswise : `WE MUST HAVE J. B .MATTHEWS.' " The comrades would be happy toforget the stirring impressions which I made uponthem. So would I; and that makes it unanimous .Soberly and as a matter of fact, however, I find itas easy to shut the comrades out of my thoughtsas I do to forget the logarithms I learned in college-very easy, indeed . There are far too many satisfy-

[19)

nAxA

HARRY F. WARDCHAIRMANROBERT MORSS LOVETT

•

VICa•CNAIRMAMLINCOLN STEFFENSVICe-CHAIRMAN

•

EARL BROWDER•

v1<e-CHAIRMANWILLIAM P. MANGOLD

•

Tnewaunew

NATIONAL BUREAUROGER BALDWIN'EEROY E. BOWMANELMER CARTER•

MARGARET FORSYTHCLARENCE HATHAWAYHAROLD HICKERSON•

WILLIAM P. MANGOLDSAMUEL C. PATTERSON

•

HARRY F. WARD

SECRETARIAL STAFFArnuwnonaCHARLES WEBBER

•

OROA .,-...WALDO MCNUTT

•

ADMINI-RATIONIDA DAILES-slownonaLISTON M . OAK

DOROTHY MCCONNELL•

YOUTHJAMES LERNER

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AMERICAN LEAGUE

AGAINST WAR AND FASCISMA movement to units In common resistance to War and Fascism all organizationsand individuals who are opposed to An" allied_ destroyers of mankind

112 E. 19TH STREET. ROOM 505NEW YORK CITY

TELEPHONE : ALGONOUIN 4_1 07040700

April 17, 1935

J. B . Matthews,Washington, N.J .

Dear Mr . Matthews :

We know we are risking being thrownright out of your office and onto the cold and hardpavement outside? But we are willing to . risk life andlimb to clear up so;ae of these pathetic pleas forJ. B. Matthews .

The latest one is from Newark forMay 10th ; very large attendance expected ; protest meet-ing on Fleet Maneuvers . The application for speakerends this wise: "'RE MUST HAVE J . B. MATTIiEWS ."

DC

e

Dorothy ertakSneakers' Bureau

REMINISCENCE

ing things in life to dwell overmuch on communists .Reminiscence is a pleasurable mood for me as it is

for any one whose aggregate of satisfactions outweighshis regrets. It is a matter of no importance that weare not numbered with the great . It is enough thatwe have found life good . I like my past, despite analmost fatal case of pneumonia in childhood and anequally dangerous case of fellow traveling with thecommunists in later life .

I have traveled far and seen things, and, thanksto the endowment of an extraordinarily goodmemory, I can relive my pleasurable experiences asoften as I choose . I have at my beck and call tenthousand satisfactions, small and great, which willcome tripping from every quarter of the globe . Ihave no quarrel, therefore, with solitude ; I prefer itto a lot of company . Escape into idle reminiscenceis no bogeyman before whom I quake . The sternduty to be "socially effective" is one of the illusionsfrom which I have been freed . To have no place orpart in the crusades of our modern totalitarianknights is, for me at least, to be unchained.

Others have traveled in more elegance but not withmore enthusiasm, have seen more battles but notmore beauty, have met more of the great ones ofearth but not more of the gracious. When I thumbthrough the album of my past, here are some of thepictures I find :

Tramping as a boy over the 'mountains of westernKentucky, encountering a "blind tiger" or a patchof delicious blue huckleberries.

Hiking after study hour at night to High Bridgewhere the waters of the Kentucky and the Dix, chan-neled by great cliffs, flow together .

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Pictures from each of the forty-eight states of thisincomparably rich, beautifully varied, and free landof ours. By railway, boat, automobile, and airplaneI have traversed its vast distances again and again,lecturing in all of its great centers of population andtalking to students on more than two hundredcampuses. In each of several years, I have journeyedmore than twenty-five thousand miles throughAmerica.

Sitting with A. V. Williams Jackson, America'sfinest gentleman-scholar and my guru, and readingwith him in the original Sanskrit from the Rigvedaor the Mahabharata, or listening to him as he dis-coursed ramblingly upon Pali, Pahlavi, Mani, andthe Inscription of Darius .

Years of study under Robert W . Rogers whose likethe chestnut forest at Drew University shall neversee again and under whom I was awarded a travelingfellowship to pursue advanced studies in the lan-guage of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah . Whatanathemas on the superficiality of American studentsthis learned man could pronounce) A verbal violencewhich, paradoxically, remains a refreshing memory .

Chanting on the Arabian desert at sunrise thesuras of the Koran which were taught me by WilliamG. Shellabear, as noble an Englishman as ever servedwith the Royal Engineers, later a missionary-scholar,and finally a teacher whose knowledge of languageswas phenomenal . Or reading with him a seventeenthcentury Malay recension of the Ramayana from theBodleian Library at Oxford. Or collaborating withhim in the translation of a hymnal into the Malaytongue .Working over the textual puzzles of the Book of

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Job, the grandest book of all antiquity, with Fagnaniin New York and Buttenwieser in Cincinnati .

Graham Wallas, gentle Fabian, my teacher in acourse on the history of Jeremy Bentham and theUtilitarians, and also a never-to-be-forgotten friendin a moment of deep anxiety .

The feeling of complete fascination which the de-velopment of languages has always held for me andwhich I experienced at my introduction to Grimm'sLaw of Consonantal Change under the tutelage ofBrandl of the University of Berlin .

Student days in the glamorous Vienna of yesterday,with residence at the School of Oriental Languages,perfect Sundays up to Melk on the Danube, coffeeshops on the Ringstrasse, and grand opera heardmore than once as the guest of the President ofAustria in the box of the Hapsburgs .

Being a teacher and knowing the stimulation ofopening up to others the treasures of the race'sthought. I have no mean record as an instructor,having been on the faculties of forty-two colleges,universities, institutes, and summer schools in seven-teen states and five foreign countries. I have norecord of how many thousands of students have regis-tered in my courses, but I cherish deeply the number-less expressions of their appreciation .

An afternoon with Rabindranath Tagore and C . F .Andrews in Geneva and finding in these two pic-turesque figures the personalization of all the richculture of India from Gautama, Asoka, and Kalidasato Keshab Chandra Sen and Tagore himself .

Visits on several occasions in Moscow with Vladi-mir Tchertkoff, for years the intimate of Tolstoy andmore recently a lone patriarchal figure of dignity and

[23]


serenity in the midst of a world of vulgar violence .Strolling leisurely through Singapore's crowded

streets as the countless throng moved by and dwellingupon the prophetic statesmanship of Sir StamfordRaffles who acquired for Britain the island of Singa-pore when it was lying uninhabited at the tip of theMalay peninsula .

The decks of a hundred ocean liners at midnightwhen the stars seem closer than ever they do on land .Liners on which I have traveled far enough to circlethe globe seven times, and on which I have spentmore than a year of my life .

The delight of standing reverently in St. Peter's,Sancta Sophia, St . Mark's, Notre Dame, or on top ofBoro Budur: all architectural monuments to man'sundying faith and aspiration .

The ruins of the chapel under the cliff at Antiochwhere was `found the Chalice which now reposes ina vault in Wall Street .

Boys diving for coins tossed from the decks bytourists in the harbor of Honolulu or Hongkong .Lithe brown bodies moving with the grace of a swan .

Sailing at twilight on Japan's Inland Sea or stand-ing speechless before a flaming sunset across theCorregidor at the entrance to Manila's harbor .

White nights through the infinite wooded islets ofthe archipelago on the northern arm of the Baltic,and the Southern Cross in Melanesia .

Tropical fruits-and king of them all, the durian,whose lovers (count me among them) swear it to beworth a journey half way 'round the earth .Feasting with wealthy Chinese friends at their

weddings and funerals . A Chinese feast with its in-[241

REMINISCENCE

numerable dishes is a sensuous institution the likeof which is not found elsewhere on this planet .

Peaceful relaxation with friends on the heatheredsand dunes of Holland, or animated conversationwith hajis under the coconut trees of Java .

A revolution on the streets of Athens carried outless boisterously and not more violently than thecelebration of a football victory .

The calm after a general strike in Barcelona, thenoise of an Arab mart in Algiers, the peddlers atPort Said, and a camel train leaving Aden .

The tin mines on the island of Billiton, rubberplantations on the island of Sumatra, vineyards onthe island of Madeira, sugar plantations on the islandof Cuba, the gardens on the island of Bermuda,myriad rice paddies on the island of Java, and teaplantations on the island of Ceylon: men everywherecreating wealth from the soil .

Wilhelmina's birthday with the Sultan of Sambasin the interior of Borneo, or watching uncountablechimpanzees jumping and chattering in the treesalong the lazy tropical breadth of the Sambas river .

Climbing to the rim of the belching volcano,Bromo, in Java, the only human being within aradius of five miles .

Oberammergau and the Bavarian peasants beforeHitler, Reinhardt's Jederman in front of the Domin Salzburg, Straus's Fledermaus in Berlin: all amongthe recoverable moments of ten packed and adven-turous years abroad .

When I reminisce on this world of scholars andbeauty, I repeat that I like my past . The thing Idislike most about communism is, I believe, itstwisted mind for which the highest values that I have

[251


glimpsed in both western and oriental culture aremere rubbish . I resent the intrusion of its habitualdistortions of fact and its ugly philosophy of hatredinto the world of A . V. Williams Jackson and MontBlanc. I regret the ease with which it transformedmy foolish and impatient idealism into its tool, buteven from that I have a residue of knowledge whichmay have its own peculiar value .

1 Daily Worker, Feb. 27, 1935, p . 4.2 Ibid, April 7, 1933, p. 4.Ibid, April 15, 1933, p . 1 .

4 Ibid, May 24, 1935, p . 1 .

ANCESTRYThe Communist Party takes on and puts off an-

cestors with the ease of a Southern gentleman's liftinghis hat .

At the tenth national convention of the Com-munist Party in New York this year, Earl Browdersaid :

Our program for socialism is organically linked upwith, is a necessary outgrowth from, the traditionalAmerican democracy as founded by Thomas Jefferson,whose political descendants we are .' [Italics mine .]

Until the adoption of the new Party "line," Jeffersonhad not been admitted to the select company of Marx,Lenin, Stalin, and Browder. While he was still amember of the Communist Party, some years ago,Scott Nearing wrote :

Rebel spirits in Europe and the Americas had hailedthe bourgeois revolutions in the United States in 1776and in France in 1789 as the heralds of a new socialorder that would emancipate mankind from many ofthe ancient slaveries . These revolutions really usheredin the plutocracy as the owners and rulers of theworld . 2 [Italics mine.]

Within the past year, the Communist Party has laidclaim to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,Thomas Paine, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln,Walt Whitman, Paul Revere, John Greenleaf Whit-

[27]


tier (whiskers included), Daniel Boone, and JohnBrown. There are, indeed, new fashions in expropri-ating the capitalist classl But, for small favors, weshould be grateful, perhaps: the Party has left to usbourgeois folk, Sitting Bull and Rip Van Winkle .In the recent presidential campaign, the Commu-

nist Party puffed Browder as "the Abraham Lincolnof 1936 ."

Back in 1934, I went to Youngstown, Ohio, toorganize a branch of the American League AgainstWar and Fascism . A professor from a local college,who had been drawn into the united front as aspeaker for the occasion, had the temerity to suggestthat we should appropriate the tradition of ThomasJefferson in the work of the League. The professorwas promptly informed by the Youngstown organizerof the Communist Party that the suggestion was coun-ter-revolutionary-and informed in a tone and man-ner that threatened our united front on the spot .With an effort at my best diplomacy (for which 1now blush), I arose and explained to the communistorganizer that the professor really meant no harm,and to the professor that we should be tolerant ofgenealogical differences of opinion within our unitedfront.The new genealogy of the Communist Party dates

from the time when Dimitroff, at the Seventh WorldCongress of the Communist International in 1935,told the delegates to go back to their respective coun-tries and get themselves some new ancestors fromamong their national heroes . His exact words were :"Comrades, proletarian internationalism must, so tospeak, àcclimatize itself' in each country in orderto sink deep roots in its native land ."3 Browder came

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back to Yonkers and had the comrades look up someAmerican history . It wasn't easy at first, and somehistorical slips were bound to be made, but the "ac-climatizing" has now reached the point where thecomrades can hardly tell the difference between theSage of Yonkers and the Stalin of Monticello . Ofcourse it's all a fiction designed to advance, as Dimit-roff explained, the cause of proletarian international-ism, but one can imagine easily what Washington,Jefferson, Whitman, Whittier, Boone, and the restwould think and say of the fiction .

Daniel Boone's grave, high on the hill overlookingthe Kentucky River at Frankfort, was one of theplaces I visited most often in boyhood . I can imagineComrade Boone forsaking his solitude in the Ken-tucky wilderness for the solidarity of Union Square!Or sitting in a dirty office on 12th Street composingslogans for the tin can drive of the North AmericanCommittee to Worry About Other People's ExploitedWorkers!

If all of this sounds incredible, as so many com-munist manoeuvres do to ordinary Americans andsome extraordinary Cabinet members, the readermay go to the original and indisputable source ofit all in Dimitroff's book, The United Front, nowon sale at communist bookstores. There Dimitroffrelates how the Italian fascists have misappropriatedGaribaldi, the French fascists Joan of Arc, and theAmerican fascists Washington and Lincoln .4 There-fore, in effect says Dimitroff, communists must goout and do a little historical hijacking .

Whether inherited from my American ancestorsor not, I have enough of the spirit of did e_it to

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challenge these communist historical hijackers . Thereader may be familiar with the communists' boring-from-within tactics in trade unions and churches .That is not new. But this boring-from-within ourtombs and traditions is the last word in effrontery .I am inclined to believe, however, that amusementrather than anger is the appropriate mood in whichto register our protest against these grave-robbers of1938. When the "line" changes again, as change itmust, the Communist Party will give us back the"plutocratic" heroes of our "bourgeois revolution ."

Even if there isn't much in the theory that psycho-logical characteristics are transmitted in the bloodstream through many successive generations, I atleast derive a great deal of satisfaction from knowingthat my forebears were dissenters, fighters for free-dom, and men who were much given to heeding thecall of the sea .

Nine generations is as far back as I can go alonggenealogical paths to find an ancestor whose nameand circumstances are known . In the year 1678,seven years before the revocation by Louis XIV ofthe Edict of Nantes, my ancestor Thomas Lemont,a French Huguenot, left France and settled in Lon-donderry, Ireland . In the same year a son, ThomasLemont II, was born to him .

Thomas Lemont II and his wife Mary were the par-ents of ari adventurous son, John Lemont I . Before hewas eighteen years of age, John fell in love with aScottish girl, Elizabeth Mc Lanathan. One brightday when the winds were favorable a vessel set sailfrom Londonderry, with young John, age eighteen,aboard. He left behind him in Londonderry hismother and father and Elizabeth . When John

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reached the new world, he settled near what is nowBath, Maine. In his letters which have been handeddown, he wrote to Elizabeth that he knew this landwould please her well and that day by day he wasfelling the great trees of the forest and planning fortheir home . At last he was able to write to his motherand father : "Here is the money to take you andElizabeth hither . Come speedily to the place whereGod has led us ."

John Lemont I and Elizabeth Mc Lanathan weremarried on her arrival with his parents in Maine .Elizabeth bore five daughters and seven sons . Theirthird son was John Lemont II. The record says that"the crops grew well, the mill brought in muchhonest money, and many vessels were built for thecoasting and West India trade ." His father, Thomas,died on February 15, 1756, at the age of seventy-eight years, in Georgetown Parish (now Bath, Maine) .Ten years later at the age of sixty-four years, JohnLemont I died, survived by his wife Elizabeth andtheir twelve children .John Lemont II was born August 22, 1743, in

Georgetown Parish . He served as a sergeant with theEnglish forces during the French War . He was inthe battles of Ticonderoga and Crown Point and atthe capture of Quebec by General Wolfe. At theoutbreak of the Revolutionary War, he entered theAmerican service as a lieutenant together with fourof his brothers, and served under Colonel SamuelMcCobb. He and at least two of his brothers, Ben-jamin and James, were promoted to Captains . As aCaptain, John served under Colonel Gamaliel Brad-ford. Among the many battles in which he foughtwere White Plains and Saratoga, and he was present

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at the surrender of General Burgoyne . In 1788, hewas commissioned Colonel by John Hancock, theGovernor of Massachusetts . His wife was MaryRobinson Simonton whose first husband, CaptainSimonton of Portland, Maine, was a successful seacaptain and was lost at sea soon after her marriageto him. The third child of John Lemont II andMary Robinson Simonton was John Lemont III .John Lemont III was born on May 22, 1774, and

died in South America from yellow fever on February25, 1803 . He was a successful shipmaster . Whileengaged in the West India trade, he and his brotherSamuel were taken prisoners by the French and con-fined for some time in a West India prison . He wasmarried to Sarah Donnell who survived him bysixty-one years and who lived to the age of ninety .Sarah's second husband was lost at sea. She thenmarried John Brown of Litchfield, Maine .

Lavina Lemont was the only child of CaptainJohn Lemont III and Sarah Donnell . Lavina wasborn on July 12, 1798, and died on February 14,1871 . In 1822, she married James Brown of Litch-field, who had become her step-brother through themarriage of her mother, Sarah Donnell, to his father,John Brown. Edward Brown, the son of LavinaLemont and James Brown was my maternal grand-father. He was born in 1822 .

Edward Brown's second marriage was to MargaretBrown, on November 26, 1868. The only child ofthis marriage was Fanny Welborn Brown, my mother .Margaret Brown was born in Edinburgh, Scotland,on March 19, 1829 . With her parents, Peter andThomson Brown, she came to America when shewas not yet in her teens .

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From my grandfather, Edward Brown, who livedwith us during my childhood, I heard tales of the seaswhich fascinated me even more than the exploits ofMarco Polo. I think they awakened in me the lureof foreign shores. As a young man he had shippedon whaling voyages on the bark President and hadcruised along the coasts of Africa and Brazil . Laterhe shipped as carpenter on board the ship HumphreyPurinton from Bath, Maine, for Mobile, Alabama ."From Mobile they sailed to Wales, England, andloaded with railroad iron for Portland, Maine, whichport they reached in September, 1848, having beenone year in getting the cargo of iron for use on theKennebec and Portland R. R." In 1850, EdwardBrown decided to seek his fortunes in the West. Sub-sequently, he wrote of what occurred, as follows :"The gold fever was raging and I had a severe attack,but my finances were slim . . . . Therefore I boughtan emigrant ticket when I got to Cumberland, on theBaltimore and Ohio R. R. My ticket entitled me toa seat in a freight wagon, and as I had no overcoat,I concluded to walk to Brownsville, Pa ., a distanceof sixty miles." When he reached Mt. Vernon, In-diana, he abandoned his purpose to go to Californiaand instead found work on a flat-boat plying theOhio and the Mississippi as far as New Orleans .Later he settled in Mt . Vernon and became a build-ing contractor. During the Civil War, he commandeda company of Union militia in General Hovey'sArmy. In 1882, he was appointed postmaster at Mt .Vernon .

Edward Brown's father, James, was the son of JohnBrown who was also a Revolutionary soldier . Johnwas the son of Samuel who came to America from


England in 1742. Samuel Brown was parish clerkin Georgetown Parish from 1753 until his death in1771 .

My paternal grandparents were Riley Matthewsand Catharine Riddle Matthews of Osgood, NorthCarolina. My father, Burrell Jones Matthews, wasborn on January 16, 1860. When he was barely ayear old, his father went off to war in the Army ofthe Confederacy and was listed among the missingat the War's end . A younger brother died in infancy,and his war-broken and disspirited mother died short-ly after the War, leaving Burrell Jones, age six years,to make a living for himself without the assistanceof relatives or social security in the war-prostratedSouth. From a laborer in the mines at the age of sixhe found his way eventually, at the age of twenty-eight, a Singer sewing machine salesman, to Mt . Ver-non, Indiana, where he met and married the eighteen-year-old school teacher, Fanny Welborn Brown . Iwas the third of seven children of this marriage .

Even if Americanism could be inherited, we shouldalso need to earn it as a personal possession before itcould become a living force in individual experienceand in public affairs. Seven generations of Americanancestry were not enough, despite even their northernEuropean derivation, to save me from heeding theappeals of a collectivism which is at war with everybasic concept that has made America great. Amongmy ancestors, the last to arrive on these shores camewhen crossing the Atlantic was yet a hazard and ahardship, when embarkation was done with a prayerfor safety and landing with a prayer of thanksgiving .Others who have come, under the quotas, since the

[34]

last white sail was lowered from transatlantic passen-ger liners, have earned their Americanism more easilythan I .

Americanism is a living faith to which men haveaccess without regard to creed or color or race .

1 Earl Browder, The Democratic Front (New York: Workers Library Pubfishers, 1938), p. 88f.

' Scott Nearing, Where Is Civilization Goingf (New York : VanguardPress), p. 69 .

' Georgi Dimitrof, The United Front (New York : International Publish-ers, 1938), p. 80.

4 Ibid, p . 78.

YOUTH IN KENTUCKYWhatever may be true of the extent to which psy-

chological characteristics are transmitted in the bloodstream from generation to generation, there can be nodoubt regarding the importance, for life's laterchoices and inclinations, of the deeper impressionswhich belong to childhood's experience . Time andagain in later years when taking those decisive stepswhich led me gradually leftward in political activity,I found myself moved by the remembrance of long-forgotten events which crept back into consciousnesswith little of their original vividness impaired .Whether they had always been lurking around in mysubconsciousness, as ghosts from the past, awaitingthe arrival of the moment when they might partici-pate decisively in my political decisions, or whetherI dug into that subconsciousness in search of justi-fications for decisions made in complete indepen-dence of my childhood experiences, I do not knowwith certainty .

I was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky (known af-fectionately to its own citizens as Hoptown), a townof less than ten thousand inhabitants and chief mar-ket of the dark tobacco belt . The year was thatmarked by the accession of the last of the Romanoffs ;and the month was that in which Marie FrancoisSadi Carnot, President of France, was stabbed todeath at Lyons . The day witnessed the beginning

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YOUTH IN KENTUCKY

of preparations for the Chino-Japanese War whichended the suzerainty of the Manchus over Korea .Twenty-five years later, to the day, a treaty nowtattered and torn but not with age, was signed inthe Hall of Mirrors at Versailles .Not many years after my birth notice-I presume

there was one as a matter of routine-appeared in theHopkinsville newspaper, the town became the centerof one of America's violent agricultural uprisings .The tobacco farmers rose up as masked "night riders"to battle against the foreign capital of the tobaccowarehouses and buyers.

The picture of great warehouses in flames-lessthan two blocks from my home-with hundreds ofhooded men galloping through the streets and sometying up policemen, firemen, and telephone operatorswas one which a boy would long remember with deepfeeling. The editor of the local newspaper, who hadwritten vigorously on behalf of law and order, barelyescaped bodily harm by hiding in the coal bin of anearby church . Shots were fired into the home of aclergyman who preached against violence . Farmerswho clung to their individualism and refused to jointhe pool were flogged, and two or three who failedto understand their social obligation to collectivismwere killed . It was real war, not a fabulous radiodramatization to terrorize addle-pated men who havelost the power, thanks to something or other, to dis-tinguish between make-believe and reality .

We stopped our marble games after school in orderto debate the issue of the "night riders ." Some be-lieved that warehouses should not be burned even ifthey did belong to big foreign interests, and that menshould not be kidnapped and beaten even if they

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Tefused to join the tobacco farmers' pool . Some, onthe other hand, believed that the cause of the farmerswas so just that it should triumph even at the sacri-fice of much property and a few lives. There wereno local Marxist dialecticians-at least I think therewere none-to interpret the conflict for us in termsof historical materialism. I doubt-although I maybe in error on this point, too-that any committeewas organized in New York to come down into thenation's "Economic Problem No . 1" and save us. Iexpect to learn more about such details as these whenRobert Penn Warren brings out his GuggenheimFellowship book on the Kentucky "night riders ."(Robert Penn Warren's mother, before her marriagewas my second or third grade school teacher in Hop-kinsville .)

Like most of the citizens of Hopkinsville, who re-sented the violent invasion of their town by the"night riders," we were, in our home, definitely ofthe opinion that, however just were the farmers'grievances, their methods of redress were deplorable.The whole situation made the first indelible imprintof social conflict upon my mind .

When I was about five years old I had an en-counter with the prevailing sex mores, which leftme in a state of complete intellectual bewilderment .A boy who was several years my senior explained tome what he alleged to be the mystery of birth . Someyears later I learned that his account was substantiallyaccurate although couched in other than textbooklanguage. I thought the matter merely interestingand proceeded to pass the newly acquired informa-tion on to my older sisters in the presence of thecook. The cook was horribly shocked and announced

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YOUTH IN KENTUCKY

that my mother should be told what I had said . Adoubt arose in my mind as to whether my older play-mate had doublecrossed me. The cook appeared sovery positive, and it seemed to me that she shouldknow the facts of life . At any rate she told mother,and mother told father. Whereupon, without dis-cussion, I was severely thrashed . I naturally thoughtthat this settled the issue of the truth or falsity ofmy playmate's story. When I saw him next day, Iindignantly informed him that he had lied to meabout how babies were born . To complicate mattersfor me intellectually, he drew back his fist andloosened one of my front teeth . Then and there Idecided to let the matter rest. I explained the dentaltrouble at home as the result of a fall. I had not hadthe benefit of my experience as a witness before theDies Committee, and so I had not learned with thateventual finality that few men are warmly partisanto truth for its own sake. Having now experiencedsimultaneously the verbal thrashing of Earl Browder'sDaily Worker and Frank Knox's Chicago Daily Newsover my effort to recite some of the elementary po-litical facts of life-how communists are born-to aCongressional committee, I am struck with thethought of how early in life I was introduced to thereal world-the world where "What is truth?" is aless important query than "Who wants to hear it?"

At the age of six, during my first week in school, Ilearned something of the inviolability and dignity ofestablished authority. The principal of the schoolwas a man who carried himself with the erectness ofan army officer, and with a severity of countenancewhich matched it perfectly. In his otherwise darkhair, there was a patch of white, about the size of a

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quarter, which earned for him, among the boys atleast, the nickname of cotton top. One morning onour way to school, we caught up with the principal ."There goes cotton top," some of the boys whispered .When we passed him, I responded to his stiff "goodmorning, boys," with a friendly "good morning, cot-ton top." What happened can be guessed easily .Stopping with the abruptness of one who has beenordered by a superior to halt, he commanded me toreport to his office on my arrival at school . Withconsternation at his tone of voice, I fled home in-stead of proceeding to school. An hour later, how-ever, I arrived at the principal's office in companywith Hopkinsville's chief of police-my father . Tomy deep satisfaction, the matter was disposed of with-out resort to the bundle of hickory switches whichstood in the corner of the principal's room. Afterreceiving a grave caution not to repeat the offense,I apologized to the principal as sincerely as I hadgreeted him by his nickname on the street that morn-ing. The episode did not hurt my standing with theboys. They credited me with the heroism of a youngfool; and but for me the principal might never haveknown his nickname . . . . It was, I think, an earlymanifestation of a streak. Little incongruities-notto mention big ones-have always appealed to mysense of humor, or, should I say, have often temptedme to speak out of turn . The little white patches onthe pretenses of the mighty have often invited scru-tiny; and if communism is not the mightiest pretenseof our day, then I do not know much about it . Andwho but a fool would desert the quiet and enjoymentof a beautiful hillside in New Jersey to which I re-tired several years ago in order to appear as a volun-

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teer witness before the Dies Committee, with a fullknowledge of the penalties of derision from bothcommunist and capitalist newspapers?

Among other enterprises, my father owned andoperated several quarries where limestone wascrushed into ballast for building and maintainingrailroad beds. One of these was in Powell Countyin the mountains of eastern Kentucky . Thither wewent to spend the three and a half months of oursummer vacations .

Kentucky's picturesque Natural Bridge is locatedin Powell County not far from Glen Cairn, the siteof the stone quarry and crusher. Until recent years,highways and, for that matter, anything that couldbe called roads, except by courtesy, had not pene-trated into these mountains . Blind tigers and old-fashioned mountain feuds flourished at the turn ofthe century. The excitement of these was commingledwith the Sunday excursions which brought hundredsof visitors from Cincinnati and Louisville on alter-nate Sundays, one-day outings at Natural Bridge forcity folk .

The railroad which provided entrance from theBlue Grass to the mountains was much more than asoulless corporation. Along its route from Clay Cityto Jackson at least the trainmen and the mountainfolk were close personal friends . During my firstsummer in the mountains, in 1900, I came to knowNick Daly and Frank Atchison, engineer and con-ductor, who made the round trip from Lexingtonto Jackson each day. Thirty-six years later I wentback to Natural Bridge and Glen Cairn. At ClayCity my car mired on the modern highway, and Iwaited for the train in order to continue the journey .

[41]


( could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw FrankAtchison step from the coach with a light and rhyth-mic movement that I would recognize anywhere onearth. When I told him who I was, he asked : "Doyou know who's in the engine cab?" Yes, it was NickDaly. Forty and forty-five years respectively, they hadbeen running that train . One generation had passedaway; another had been born and grown to middleage. Two men seemed more enduring than the land-scape itself. A sensation of incomprehensibilitybrought a lump to my throat when I ,saw them . Theirvery presence called back to life a thousand deadmemories which I had buried under a quarter of acentury of nomadism, of wandering geographically, in-tellectually, and spiritually over the face of the earth .

In the summer of 1900, I was one of the two waterboys for the hundred Negro hands who quarried thewhite stone from the face of the mountain, broke itwith mighty blows from their sledge hammers, andcarted it to the waiting mouth of the crusher. Myfather had a queer notion that work-hard work-was good for a boy, even for a boy of six. I was proudof my job and the dollar I received in an envelopeeach Saturday night at the end of a sixty-six hourweek. Two of us-mere infants-ministered throughthose long blistering summer days, under a southernsun, to the parched throats of a hundred blacks .When we tarried a minute too long in the shade atthe spring, one of them was sure to start a swellingand imperative chorus of "water boy, where are youhiding now?" It was as though a persistent claquecalled endlessly for an encore until the six o'clockwhistle signalled for the dropping of picks, shovels,hammers, and water buckets, and we hurried away

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YOUTH IN KENTUCKY

to the swimming hole while the dynamiting crewprepared for the blasting. An hour before quittingtime each day, Frank Atchison and Nick Dalybrought their train down the valley from Jackson,its wheels and whistle singing merrily of an earlyrespite from sun and sweat . We ran-the water boys-to wave to them, and they waved back . Of courseI have learned since that it was an immoral business,this working of children ; but, heaven be praised, itwas not retroactively illegal .

On Saturday nights, there was revelry . Corn whis-key from some blind tiger nearby or bourbonbrought from Lexington drowned the consciousnessof aching muscles. The Negroes sang in harmony .Sometimes the night ended in a debauch of quarrel-someness, and occasionally there was fighting, butthese were not the rule .

In the early hours of one Sunday morning two ofthe Negroes quarreled over a woman . Their nameswere josh and Ed. I do not remember which of themhad the more valid claim to the woman . Josh wasthe drunker and that was the all-important fact ofthe quarrel . With the agility of a jungle animal, Edleaped upon josh's back and drove the long bladeof his knife deep into the quivering yellow flesh ofthe mulatto. Josh staggered for a hundred yardsfrom the Negroes' quarters up into the quarry, anddied. Early Sunday morning I watched them lay hisnaked body upon rough boards and wash away theblood clots from eleven gaping slits . And that washow, at the age of six, I learned of murder . Ed wastaken away to the county seat at Campton, where hewas soon tried and acquitted . I heard them say, be-fore the trial, that his acquittal was certain. They

[43]


spoke of "nigger killing nigger" in such a way thatI sensed vaguely the existence of an unwritten codeto which this special kind of murder was not a verygrave concern . The formal defense, however, hadto do with protecting a woman's honor ; and that washow I first learned about that .

Down the valley a mile or so, there was a littlemountain school house where father organized aSunday School and to which, through his arrange-ments, there came on alternate Sundays a Methodistcircuit rider . Probably the severest thrashing I everreceived-and thrashing was the word for it in any-body's language-was for snickering audibly in Sun-day School when the circuit rider appeared one hotsummer's day in white flannels . They were the firstpair I had ever seen, and the thought that the parsonhad arrived absent-mindedly sans culotte struck meirresistibly. Father always followed the old-fashionedmethod of punishing with a severity that was exactlyproportioned to his momentary anger . On this occa-sion I do not think that he was proceeding withdeliberation to instil into my irreverent mind a duerespect for all things religious, including the parson'sattire. At any rate, the full fury of a paternal stormbroke upon me the instant I reached home after themorning service was ended . I have a suspicion thatmy father's anger was compounded of a sincere re-gard for religious etiquette and a pride which wasoffended because his privately established churchhad not duly impressed his own son .

The excursion trains from Louisville and Cincin-nati reached Natural Bridge shortly after the noonhour each Sunday. Early in his pastorate, the Metho-dist circuit rider must have learned that the whistle

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of the approaching train should be a signal for ahasty conclusion of his sermon and the doxology .The older boys and men in the congregation weregripped with restlessness when they heard the trainmiles away down the valley . They were eager to beout of the little school house and on hand when thetrain pulled in at Natural Bridge . Under the thinlyveiled guise of excursionists, girls who combined holi-day and business were always on the train .

One Sunday at Natural Bridge I saw two feudistsstand face to face at arm's length and empty theirpistols at each other. Every bullet took effect, butboth men survived .

Year after year my summers were spent in the Ken-tucky mountains. There were lights as well as shad-ows. In fact, the pleasures of growing up so farexceeded the pains, that my youth does not appearto me to have been at all abnormal . I have dweltupon the shadows only because they contributed anabundance of the raw material of experience whichfound its first interpretation in the prevailing theo-logical doctrines of my environment . I knew nothingabout the class struggle, conscious race prejudice,economic royalists, or maladjusted personalities .Everything dark was as simple as sin, and men neededonly to repent and be saved in order to set every-thing right .

*During my college days, also in Kentucky, I em-

braced my first panacea. College life from 1910 to1914 was not what it is now, certainly not in theBlue Grass of Kentucky. For one thing, we weretold by such distinguished men as David Starr Jordanthat the era of endless peace had dawned at last upon

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the world. In our naive way, most of us in America,whether college students or older, believed that warhad vanished from among the age-old institutions ofthe human race . Despite this notable achievement,however, there yet remained the task of Christianiz-ing the world. College students by the tens of thou-sands heard a slogan which reverberated on Americancampuses: the evangelization of the world in thisgeneration. John R. Mott was the man who stirredour imaginations, who lifted our horizons beyondAmerica. It was in all probability a species of re-ligious imperialism, a logical concomitant of anAmerica looking outward . Nevertheless, it strucksome of us with the forceful appeal of the finalcrusade to remake the world . Woodrow Wilson'sNew Freedom of 1912 made an impression upon me,but it was slight and did not elicit from me any ofthe loyalties of a crusade . I resented the way inwhich the Baltimore Convention had turned downChamp Clark. My first real vision, therefore, wasthe evangelization of the world in this generation .In line with my religious upbringing, I am afraidthat I envisioned the whole world's becoming some-thing very much like a Kentucky Methodist meetinghouse, with its resounding hallelujahs . The crusadewas conceived, so far as I was concerned, in deepignorance of the outside world. I must say in passing,however, that I would rather see the world cut tothat naive pattern than to see the success of thesemodern college sophisticates in the American StudentUnion who have compounded naivete, crass material-ism, and notions of sentimental slaughter, to producethe almost perfect imbecility of Moscow's crusade toremake the world .

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At any rate, I stood on the threshold of my majoritywith a panacea which, like all of its successors, wasshortly to confront the stubborn facts of the world .

YEARS ABROADIn college I majored in Greek and Latin, that is,

so far as I had a formal major. Actually I spent thegreater part of my time in extra-curricular activities-athletics, college publications, music, and debatingand literary societies . My real education began inJava .

Java introduced me to ethnology, anthropology,the cultural pluralism of the race, the history andvaried institutions of religions, and a serious studyof languages. Java is richer, in every respect, thanits smaller sister of Insulinde, Bali .

In the middle of the nineteenth century, CharlesDarwin and Alfred Russel Wallace found much ofthe material for their epoch-making studies in theIsland of Java. "Java," wrote Wallace, "may fairlyclaim to be the finest tropical island in the world,and equally interesting to the tourist seeking afternew and beautiful scenes ; to the naturalist whodesires to examine the variety and beauty of tropicalnature; or to the moralist and the politician whowant to solve the problem of how man may be bestgoverned under new and varied conditions ."

With a teeming population of more than forty mil-lions inhabiting an area the size of the State of NewYork, Java is a veritable cultural palimpsest . Super-imposed one upon the other are to be found thecultural layers of the succeeding civilizations of its

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conquerors . At the base, but protruding vitally intothe everyday life of the present, is found a layer ofpre-historic animism. In many aspects of life, ani-mism is still a dominant force even after a millen-nium of the political ascendancy of hostile modes ofthought. Hindu and Buddhist thinking and custom,often merged in a striking eclecticism, are still evi-dent above the animistic level . Religiously speaking,Islam is theoretically supreme in all aspects of lifeand actually so in many. Numbering less than twoper cent of the total population, the Chinese never-theless represent the most commercially energeticelement in the population . Finally, western culture,through the colonial rule of the Dutch, has come tobring its own many and varied contributions ineconomic, political, and social forms .

The earliest literary reference to Java is found inthe Sanskrit epic Ramayana which dates from thethird or fourth century B . C. The wealth of theisland is mentioned in the passage which reads :"Yava-dvipa, adorned by seven kingdoms, the goldand silver island, rich in gold mines ."

Another early reference to the island comes fromthe diary of the Chinese Buddhist traveler, Fa Hien,who, on his way by sea from India to China inthe year 414 A.D ., stopped in the island of Java .In a passage of extraordinary brevity, but one whichspeaks a volume, Fa Hien recorded :

Thus it was for more than ninety days until theyreached a country called Yeh-p'o-t'i [Java], wherethere were plenty of heretics and Brahmans but notenough Buddhism to be worth mentioning . After hav-ing stopped in this country five months, Fa Hien againshipped on board another large merchant vessel whichalso carried over two hundred persons .

[49]


It is clear from the records, as well as from thecultural deposits, that established trade routes be-tween India and China existed near the beginningof the Christian era and that Java was the midwaystop on these routes. The earliest permanent migra-tions to Java during the historical period were fromIndia, and these migrations were responsible for thepronounced Sanskrit elements in Javanese culture .

It was not until the year 1294, however, thatHindu political development reached its height inthe island. In that year the first king of Majapahitascended the throne . He combined under one ruleseveral smaller kingdoms which had been warringfor supremacy in Java . A striking phenomenon isto be found in the fact that this first king, Kertara-jasa Jayawarddhana by name, showed no religiouspartiality between Sivaism and Buddhism, religiousfaiths which were implacable enemies in India . Thethird ruler of the Majapahit dynasty of Java was awoman, Tribhuwanottungadewi Jayawishnuward-dhani, who extended the sway of Majapahit to in-clude the islands of Bali, Lombok, Madura, Sum-bawa, and parts of Celebes. A son was born to herin 1334 and she immediately abdicated in his favor,although she ruled in his stead until he reached theage of sixteen. Thereafter his reign lasted for thirty-nine years, and he brought the whole of the MalayArchipelago within his empire, including even thestates of the Malay Peninsula . In 1478 Majapahitfell and a new Hindu kingdom, Mataram, arosewithin smaller boundaries . Political unity in theMalay Archipelago was at an end for all time .

After nearly three centuries of Hindu politicalsupremacy in Java, Islam began its phenomenal

[50]

YEARS ABROAD

spread throughout the Malay Archipelago . Whenthe Europeans arrived at the end of the fifteenthcentury, they found Islam dominant both in stateand in religion .

The passion for exploration which stirred men allover Europe toward the close of the fifteenth centurywas a significant fact for the history of Java . Spainand Portugal were then the dominant world powers .By the famous decree of Pope Alexander VI, stag-gering in its simplicity, Portugal received title tothe Island of Java . In 1580 Spain seized Portugaland used her fleet as a part of the Armada whichperished in the historic battle with the English .This marked the end of Portuguese claims in theEast Indies, including Java, and the beginning ofthe rivalry between the Dutch and the English forthe mastery of trade in the Archipelago .In 1602 the Honorable Dutch East India Company

was established with a charter which conferred uponit a monopoly of Dutch trade in the East Indies.With the exception of a period of five years duringthe Napoleonic wars, when England held Java, theDutch have been in possession of Java ever since .

For vulcanologists, among others, Java is a para-dise on earth. It has some forty-five craters, manyof which are active simultaneously. Among these,the volcanoes Bromo, Smeroe, Selamat, and Merapiare the most majestic . In 1883 the volcano Krakatau,just off the west coast of Java, gave the world itsgreatest eruption of all time. As far back into his-tory as the folklore of the people penetrates, the lifeof Java has been intertwined with its volcanoes . Myfavorite recreation during my six years of residencein Java was the climbing of its rambunctious fire-mountains.


Java is renowned the world over for its remarkabletemple remains from the Hindu period of its history .Foremost among these is the Boro Budur of whichAlfred Russel Wallace wrote :

The amount of human labour and skill expended onthe great Pyramid of Egypt sinks into insignificancewhen compared with that required to complete thissculptured hill-temple of Java .

There are scores of these temple shrines which arein a state of excellent preservation or satisfactoryrestoration. I have spent unforgettable moments onthe terraces of these temples .

One of the most important results of my residencein Java was what its rich and varied intellectual ex-periences did to my first panacea . Hardly had Iplunged into a study of its culture and languageswhen my vision of a world refashioned after thepattern of a Kentucky Methodist meeting housebegan to grow dim . I had gone to Java to teach .I received infinitely more than ever I imparted .

I went to Java to teach in one of the ChineseNationalist schools, a number of which were estab-lished in the island by overseas Chinese patriotsshortly after the overthrow of the Manchu dynastyin 1911 . The official religious viewpoint of theseschools was Confucian, and all of us who taughtin them were under contract not to voice religioussentiments in conflict with that view, not at leastduring school hours . I have taught in the educa-tional institutions of four races-Chinese, Malay,white, and Negro-and, among them all, my Chinesestudents as a group stand out in my mind as themost conscientious in their efforts to learn and themost apt in acquiring learning .

[521

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My teaching in the Chinese school left me thelarger part of my time for language study . Threeand a half months after my arrival in Java, I mademy first public address in the Malay language. Ibegan the day of my arrival in the island to strivefor a thorough mastery of Malay. By the end of myfirst year, I was prepared to immerse myself in itsprose and poetry. After two and a half years, I hadcompleted my first translation, Henry Van Dyke'sStory of the Other Wise Man . Shortly thereafter,I became the editor of a Malay paper. When I leftJava, I had completed the work of editing theMethodist Hymnal in the Malay language, includingone hundred two of my own translations . I can recallfew moments of greater satisfaction in my life thanthat of the night I passed through a Malay villageand paused outside a little bamboo church to listento the singing of one of my translations, CardinalNewman's Lead Kindly Light .

My residence in Java afforded me opportunity forextensive travel throughout the Orient as well asthrough many of the islands of the Malay Archi-pelago. It was clear, as long ago as twenty-threeyears, that the framework of nineteenth centuryEuropean imperialism would not last far into thetwentieth and that great political upheavals ofthe future would occur throughout Asia . Down tothe last native village on the remote islands of theMalay Archipelago, not to mention the great centersof Oriental population, the World War was damag-ing irreparably the prestige of the white race andundermining European political ascendancy in Asia .Men everywhere talked of Japan as the only powerto emerge a victor from the War. I was living at

[541

YEARS ABROAD

the center of a long dormant but awakening Asia,with the result that politics in a world arena camealive for me .

During my six years of residence in Java and insubsequent years, I traveled in forty-four countries,including five brief visits to the Soviet Union. Butthis is a personal political odyssey and not a trav-elogue, and I have meant here to give only someintimation of the fact that Java was a transitionalperiod in my life : the leaving behind of one naivepanacea rooted in the Kentucky mountains and thepreparation for embracing yet other and equallynaive panaceas rooted in the universal political andsocial turmoil of my time .

PACIFIST

My introduction to radicalism was via the religionof the social gospel into which my earlier religiousfundamentalism had been dissipated . This is notthe place to attempt a critique of the social gospel .It is, perhaps, enough to observe that the social gospelhas more to do with Rousseau than with religion,and that no panacea has ever ricocheted more grace-fully, and with less of a stir, over the stubborn factsof human relationships than that of Rousseau .

I returned to America at a period when some ofthe leading theological seminaries had abandonedreligion and taken up the social gospel instead, andwhen "religious education" was the special frothon the social gospel. Despite the fact that I spentthe following years in graduate study of languages, I,was exposed to the social gospel atmosphere of thesetheological seminaries. Along with my study ofArabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Sanskrit, and Persian, Ifelt the need for a panacea, and, accordingly, I em-braced the one nearest to hand .

Good Marxists, as a rule, do their utmost to coverup their Christian backgrounds-in cases where theyhad one. I have known them to go to amusing limitsin order to invent a non-Christian past which wouldappear more consistent with the Marxist professionof faith. It does not seem to bother them to admitor even to boast that they were digged from the pit

[561

PACIFIST

of capitalism. But to be compelled to acknowledge,under the pressure of being scoffed at by Marxistswith a non-Christian background, that they weredigged from the pit of Christianity, has its peculiarlypoignant sting. Now that I have no Marxist repu-tation to defend against the accusation of a Christianpast, I can freely admit that I was terribly in earnestabout the Christian social gospel . For more than fiveyears I worked at it tirelessly .

Interracialism and pacifism became the dominantfeatures of my brand of the social gospel. Both, sofar as I was concerned, were predicated entirely upona religious basis.

On the political side, I advanced to the point ofespousing the La Follette crusade of 1924 . Duringthat campaign, I held a teaching position on thefaculty of a graduate college in Tennessee . Address-ing political rallies from Knoxville to Memphis, Ibore the chief burden of the speaking campaign' inthat state . I came perilously near difficulty with mem-bers of the board of trustees of the college in whichI was teaching, over one of these speaking engage-ments. On a Sunday night I addressed a gatheringof three thousand in the Pantages theatre in Mem-phis, and a Unitarian minister presided over themeeting. Next day, the Methodist preachers' meet-ing of Memphis adopted a resolution of censure formy activity and forwarded it to my board of trustees .I had, in the first place, desecrated the Lord's Day bymaking a political speech . I had also spoken in atheatre in a city where there was a Sunday-closingordinance, and, to add insult to injury, I had beenintroduced by a Unitarian clergyman . There wasalso some hint of alarm at my political irregularity

[57]

F _'Q

La Follette--Wheeler

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BM. Saturday NightOCTOBER 18, 1924, 7:30 %.

`~ PROF. J. B. MATTHEWSand Others, Will Speak!

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LADIES ESPECIALLY INVITED !

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PACIFIST

in supporting a candidate other than the Democraticnominee .Work in the La Follette campaign brought me

into close touch with the leaders of the AmericanFederation of Labor in Tennessee, and for severalyears thereafter I spoke for them on numerous occa-sions, including their annual state conventions . Atone of these conventions, I clashed with MajorGeorge L. Berry on the question of pacifism. Thedelegates were overwhelmingly on my side of thedebate .

I addressed the Tennessee Legislature in favor ofthe child labor amendment, but I was something lessthan persuasive . The lawmakers proceeded to rejectthe amendment by the same vote with which thesame men had passed the world-famous "monkey"bill-the anti-evolution statute which led to theScopes' trial with the appearance of Clarence Darrowand William Jennings Bryan as opposing counsel .How far the fame of the state spread, I learned twoyears later when a Turkish official at Smyrna lookedat my passport and remarked : "Oh, you are fromthe monkey state!"

For several years during my teaching career inTennessee I took an advanced position on the ques-tion of race relations in the South . I had grown upin the South and, in general, I had inherited itstraditions on the subject of race relations, but thesocial gospel seemed to me to call for bold and radicalexperimentation in eliminating race prejudice .

Around my experiments in race relations, theregathered a considerable group of southern whitestudents, all of us imbued with the idea that theprinciples of Jesus called for an obliteration of race

[59]

PROGRAM FOR THE

Convention of the Tennessee Federation of LaborAnd the Railroad Brotherhoods

Nashville, May 3, 1926

MEETS IN McADOO HALL AT 10 A. M.Called to Order by-

ALBERT E . HILL, Chairman of Committee on Arrangements

Invocation by-DR. W. ANGIE SMITH . Pastor Tulip Street M . E. Church

Addresses of Welcome-

E . E . WOODWARD, President Trades and Labor CouncilHON. AUSTIN PEAY, Governor of TennesseeHON. H. E. HOWSE, Mayor of Nashville

Response to Addresses-

H. V. REID, Chairman of Joint Committee of the Tennessee Federationof Labor and Railroad Brotberhodds

Convention Called to Order by Chairman Reid .

Addresses by-

WILLIAM GREEN, President American Federation of LaborFimenwt.

D. B. ROBERTSON. President Brotherhood Locomotive Firemen andEnginemen

W. B. PRENTER, President Brotherhood Locomotive Engineers .

W. G. LEE, President Brotherhood Railway Trainmen.

W. E . SHEPARD, President Order of Railway Conductors

WM. L. HUTCHESON, General President United Brotherhood Carpentersand Joiners

DR. J. B. MATTHEWS. Scarritt College

K. D . MCKELLAR, United States Senator

MRSAGNES G. STRONG, Grand Chief Ladies' Society B. L. F . of E .

The delegates will visit the O'Bryan Brothers Co . at 4 p.m .

Public meeting Tennessee War Memorial Building, 8 p.m .

PACIFIST

lines in social, economic, political, and cultural rela-tions . We held this view with all the sacrificialearnestness of crusaders . We organized interracialforums. We opposed Jim Crow regulations . We mettogether, members of both races, on a plane of socialequality . Our sole interest was in living our ownlives according to our conception of the Christiansocial gospel . We did not seek publicity . Inevitably,however, rumors concerning our activities began tocirculate, and we attracted far more attention thanwe desired or anticipated .

The most elementary modesty, if that were theonly factor to be considered in this narrative, wouldmake it impossible for me to include some of thewidespread and highly favorable comments whichmy work elicited . But they are a part of the record,and, without respect to personal inclinations, there-fore, I must indicate something of the measure ofsuccess which we had in impressing others with thecourage and effectiveness of our crusade. The presi-dent of a Negro University, on whose faculty I laterserved, wrote :

I first came to know Mr . J . B. Matthews as a man whowas fearlessly experimenting with truthful human re-lations in a difficult situation involving one of ourmajor social problems . His writing and thinking com-mand respect because they are the words of a man whotries to live, as he speaks, straightforwardly .

The responses from numerous members of myown race were even more emphatically approving,if possible. The editor of a church paper in theSouth wrote with respect to a series of addresseswhich I delivered in Raleigh, North Carolina, and

[61]


in which I touched again and again on the impossi-bility of reconciling race prejudice with the prin-ciples of Jesus, as follows :

J. B. Matthews brought each day a message fresh fromhis communion with God, spoken out of a burningpurpose to reveal the way of Jesus to his fellow workersassembled there . . . . Classical in thought, clear anddefinite in utterance, convincing, powerful in delivery,tender in appeal, drawing all men to the lifted Christ,the series made a contribution to the spiritual life ofthose who heard, a contribution which will deepenand broaden and intensify with the ripening influenceof time.

These addresses were subsequently published byDoubleday, Doran & Company under the titleChristianity The Way . Among numerous commentson the subject of race relations, I wrote the following :

No one who knows the situation could fail to begrateful for the progress that is being made in the re-lationships of the races, but there is still much hardwork to be done before we can call those relationshipsChristian. It is a time for consecration rather thancongratulation . Race prejudice scales upward fromthe low forms of lynching and barbarous convict-beating to those refined attitudes of condescensionwhich do not tear the flesh but leave their scarsupon the souls of men, especially upon the souls ofthose who indulge the attitudes .

At a summer institute in North Carolina, I gavea course on the social teachings of Jesus . Amongnumerous favorable comments on this course, I findthe following were published in one of the churchpapers of the South :

[62 ]

PACIFIST

There is a charm about his personality, a fascinationand forceful appeal in his speaking, that would have acompelling influence on his hearers even if -he wereonly "saying his ABC's." . . . He invited questioning,and was very patient in his explanations, especiallywith those questioners who did not agree with him insome of his positions .No one could sit under his voice and not be impressedby his deep spirituality, the exaltation of Jesus in hisown life, and his desire in helping us to make Jesusand his teachings supreme in our own lives-in ourevery day living .

During this period I served on the faculties ofnumerous institutes and short-term training schools .Everywhere I went I was crusading for better inter-racial relations and pacifism . I find that I taught ininstitutes and training schools at the following places :

Fayette, Missouri, June, 1923 .Fayette, Missouri, June, 1924 .Durham, North Carolina, June, 1925 .Ashland, Virginia, July, 1925 .Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, August, 1925 .Mount Sequoyah, Arkansas, August, 1925 .Chattanooga, Tennessee, February, 1926 .Tallahassee, Florida, April, 1926 .Mobile, Alabama, April, 1926 .Talledega, Alabama, June, 1926 .Ashland, Virginia, June, 1926 .Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, July, 1926 .Dermott, Arkansas, October, 1926 .New Orleans, Louisiana, November, 1926 .Chattanooga, Tennessee, March, 1927 .Mobile, Alabama, May, 1927 .Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, June, 1927 .Nashville, Tennessee, June, 1927 .Silver Bay, New York, June, 1928 .Charlottesville, Virginia, March, 1929 .Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, June, 1929.

[63]


Providence, Rhode Island, July, 1929.Atlanta, Georgia, June, 1930 .Forest Park, Pennsylvania, June, 1930 .Toronto, Canada, June, 1930 .King's Mountain, North Carolina, May, 1931 .Honfleur, France, September, 1931 .King's Mountain, North Carolina, June, 1932 .

It was inevitable, perhaps, that sharp criticism ofmy interracial activities would make its pressure feltwith the board of trustees of the college on whosefaculty I was regularly employed . As soon as thishappened, I offered my resignation . I did not pur-sue a course of forcing my dismissal from the insti-tution. That, as I understood the situation, wouldhave been the Marxist but not the pacifist procedure .Accordingly, I sent a letter of resignation to thepresident of the college, in which, among otherthings, I wrote :

I do not think that Jesus ate with the social outcastsof his day for the purpose of shocking Pharisees, orgetting a "kick" out of the unconventional, or edu-cating the Pharisees and other socially respectableclasses to do likewise . I think of his attitude as justnormally human, and based upon his unbounded re-spect for personality .I believe that personal relationships lie at the veryheart of religion, constituting its ethical aspect . Thisis the true social gospel, as opposed to a so-called socialgospel which thinks only of men in the mass. Wetouch the social order only as we touch other persons .I cannot in my present state of mind make my con-duct "geographical." For six years I lived with peopleof color in the Orient on a basis void of all discrimina-tion, social or otherwise . In my relationships withthem any admissions on my part that geography wouldmake a difference, would, I believe, have beenfatal . . . .

[64 ]

PACIFIST

What I have said thus far applies chiefly to my ownpersonal conduct. I do not demand that the constitu-ency follow, nor would I call it disloyal to Christ ifit does not understand its duty as I do mine. I believein recognizing the social, economic, and psychologicalgrounds of prejudice, and in the practice of unlimitedpatience in dispelling it by successive steps toward thefull Christian position as I see it. . . .I believe it proper for me at this time to place in yourhands my resignation from the faculty to take effectat the end of the present school year .

Without any disposition toward punishing me, sofar as I know, the board of trustees accepted myresignation. I felt neither ill-treated nor crucified .I was jobless but that seemed to me no considerationcomparable to the gain of standing for what I be-lieved. It was tough to have heavy responsibilitiesand to be jobless at the same time, but I harboredno regrets. Years later when I opposed communistson grounds similar to those which cost me my facultyposition, I was taunted, to my back, by arch-conserva-tives who mistakenly believed and said that my anti-communist stand was in line with the interests of mypocket-book . The left-wing, of course, has nomonopoly on crude and cynical materialism, andsome conservatives who throughout their drab exist-ence have never felt the stirring passion of followingan ideal into penury will never be able to understandthe motives and choices of a crusader . As spiritualbrothers-in-materialism, they are among the ablestallies of the communists. Of course, as I shall tryto make clear, idealistic crusaders are about as use-less to human progress as crass materialists of eitherthe right or the left .When I left my position on the faculty of this

[65]


southern college, the students who were receivingadvanced degrees that year wrote me, as follows :

No doubt you realize what an almost impossible taskit is to put into writing one's appreciation of another,yet we want to attempt the almost impossible .The class of '27 feels very deeply their indebtednessto you for many things. You have been, to many of us,a constant source of inspiration . You have been a con-stant challenge to us to search deeper for truths, tounderstand more fully the world in which we live,and ever to live true to the convictions that are ours .You have demanded the best there is in us at all times .

end from the first year post-graduate students camethe following letter :

We are grateful to you for the way you have sharedyour real self with us . In these few months we havecaught a glimpse of some of the eternal truths of theuniverse. . . . The challenge of your life has strucksympathetic chords in our lives and we are trying torealize our highest ideals . Nothing can symbolize ourgratefulness to you for that Christian ideal which youso perfectly manifest .

All of the foregoing hyperbolic sentiments were,and still are, deeply appreciated . They representedsome of the inevitable applause from very sincereidealists. I am guilty, perhaps, of gross immodestyin publishing them, but they point up a phenomenonwhich interests me greatly . There is scarcely anylimit to the approval which one may receive as aresult of breaking with traditions-even approvalbordering on hero-worship . But to break with thecommunists) Ah, that's a very different matter . Thenthe brickbats come thick and fast-naturally enough

[661

PACIFIST

the brickbats of slander from the communists them-selves, but not so naturally the brickbats of ridiculeand suspicion from the general run of right-wingers.The phenomenon interests me as some indicationof the incredibly subtle influence of communists overconservatives. In its fashion, it should go a long waytoward explaining why communists assume that con-servatives are, above all things, stupid . It shouldalso throw some light on how a relatively smallminority of left-wingers may eventually create a socialtension which is bound to snap with extreme vio-lence, precisely as it has done in one Europeancountry after another .

My experience in the academic world with theknotty problem of race relations led me somewhatmore to the left . A position of anti-capitalism beganslowly to form in my mind, and the issue of pacifismassumed a dominant place in my crusading .

During the World War, I had plumped hard forWilson's slogans about saving democracy and the warto end war. Along with thousands of my generation,I suffered an early post-War disillusionment with re-spect to the liberalism that had cloaked the Allies'conduct of the War. Pacifism seemed to be the an-swer to the Wilsonian tragedy, and it became, there-fore, a new panacea for me .When the first World Youth Peace Congress con-

vened in Holland more than ten years ago, I obtaineda delegate's card although I was somewhat above theage of most of the delegates. I arrived at the Congressanticipating nothing more than the role of a silentparticipant.Among the five hundred delegates from all over

the world, there were nineteen communists and, as[671


usual, they were vociferous enough to give the im-pression of constituting a much larger proportion ofthe gathering. They had had nothing to do with theorganizing of the Congress, and it was not, therefore,a united front in the usual sense of the word . Theycame with instructions to break up the gathering,and they set about the business of trying to do so atthe first session .

When it seemed that a hopeless impasse had beenreached, I made a proposal which met with wide-spread approval among the delegates . Immediatelythere arose a clamor that I assume the chairmanshipof the Congress . Handling those nineteen commu-nist delegates and preventing them from disruptingthe Congress completely was as difficult a job indiplomacy as I ever expect to be called upon toundertake.

After I had returned to the United States that sum-mer, the secretary of the British Federation of Youthwrote me, as follows :

I want to add a personal note of thanks to you foryour wonderful leadership at the Congress . Perhapsyou do not realize to how great an extent the successof the Congress (and I feel that it was in a very realsense a success) must be attributed to you .

A young professor from an Indiana university whowas a delegate to the Congress wrote an article inwhich he said :

The commission was presided over by Professor J . B .Matthews . . . whose major field of study is Sanskritand oriental languages . His major field of interest,however, is in keeping in touch with young people asthey search for the best things in life . It is faint praiseto say that he was the most popular man in the con-

[68]

PACIFIST

gress. Our highest wish for the academic world is thatit may be blessed with a host of his type .In the summer of 1929, Paul Jones left the secre-

taryship of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, largestpacifist organization in the United States, and I wasinvited to become one of its two executive secretaries .A few hours later on the same day, I received aninvitation to take the chair of Hebrew in an easternuniversity. I have speculated often on what a differ-ence it might have made in my subsequent activitiesif the telegram offering me the chair of Hebrew hadarrived a few hours earlier .

For four and a half years I was one of the executivesecretaries of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Inthat position I traveled and lectured extensively . Ialso engaged in numerous radical activities of asocialist and pacifist complexion . As I look backupon that work, it seems that I had a finger in almosteverything radical. Concerning one of my annualreports, the national chairman of the Fellowshipwrote me:

That is a wonderful report of yours, monumental, infact. I wonder how you have been able to get somuch into twelve months . As a member of the F . O. R .and its Council I want to thank you for the greatservice you have rendered and the fine spirit youhave expressed .I just want to say this, so that you will realize thatwhen I have sent you minor criticisms they have beenmerely that I want your great work to be still moreeffective .

A professor at Teachers College, Columbia Univer-sity, who was also a member of the Council of theFellowship, wrote me :

[69]


I have read your report with the greatest possible en-thusiasm. How you manage to do so many thingsthat need doing and escape doing other things thatshould be neglected by all of us, I do not see! Yourreport is an amazing document.

In some quarters, there was a misconception regard-ing the political connections of the Fellowship ofReconciliation. It was radical, but not in any senseconnected with the Communist Party . Its funda-mental tenet of pacifism clashed with a basic hostilityof the communists toward pacifism .

During the political campaign of 1932, I conducteda poll of the membership of the Fellowship of Recon-ciliation on its preferences for the various presidentialcandidates . In an article which I contributed to theWorld Tomorrow, there appears the following tabu-lation of the results of that poll :

Thomas1284, or 75.1%Hoover348, or 20.4%Roosevelt49, or 2.9%Foster 28, or 1 .6%

The few votes which Roosevelt, the Democratic can-didate, and Foster, the Communist candidate, re-ceived indicated, as I wrote in my article, that paci-fists were not "deluded by the claims of liberalismnow being made in behalf of Roosevelt," and furtherthat communism had an even smaller appeal to them .

Another poll of the Fellowship of Reconciliationmade in the following year indicated that sixty percent of the membership was definitely anti-capitalist .

In the fall of 1933, the membership of the Fellow-ship became embroiled in a debate on what pacifistsshould do in the event of a hypothetical class war .The issue boiled down to whether or not pacifists

[70]

FOR RELEASE FRIDAY MAY 22nd 1931

J . B. MATTHEWS, ChairmanJoint Demenst ation Committee383 Bible House, New York CityTelephone : Stuyvesant 9-0675

MARCHERS WILL "PICKET" THE AIR DEMONSTRATION SATURDAY

Bringing to a close International Good-will Week onSaturday afternoon, New Yorkers will witness not only the moststupendous army air manoeuvers of all history but also a good-will, anti-air-manoeuvers and general disarmament parade alongFourth Avenue from Cooper Union to 26th Street .

The parade will form at noon at Cooper Union and willproceed with banners protesting against the monstrous abuse ofgood-will week by the most gigantic army air propaganda of ourhistory .

The parade is not designed to reveal the true propor-tions of the peace sentiment of New York, but to dramatize thepresence of an "idea" that stands irrevocably opposed to arma-ments and war preparations .

The following groups are acting as sponsors of thedemonstration :

Bronx Free FellowshipCommittee on Militarism in EducationConference for Progressive Labor ActionFellowship of ReconciliationNew History SocietyPioneer Youth of AmericaUnion Church of Palisade, N . J .War Resisters' LeagueWomen's Peace SocietyWorld Peace Commission of the Methodist Episcopal ChurchYoung People's Socialist LeagueYouth Peace Federation


should support the working class despite its resort toarmed force . In this discussion, I took the positionthat we could not fail to support the cause of theworkers no matter what tactics they used in securing"the abolition of capitalism ." As a result of myposition, I was let out of the secretaryship, and againI was jobless over a crusade which commanded myallegiance . Of course, the Fellowship was absolutelyright in refusing to reappoint me as one of its ad-ministrators .

As a result of my testimony before the Dies Com-mittee, some have erroneously concluded that mychief, if not exclusive, radical activities were in theunited front movement of the Communist Party .The truth is that I had other and more numerouscontacts with non-communist radical, labor, and anti-war groups. A tabulation of these connections willindicate something of the scope of my activities dur-ing that period . After the name of each organization,I have shown my connection with it . In the follow-ing chapter of this odyssey, I shall discuss my mem-bership in the Socialist Party, but in the tabulationwhich follows I shall anticipate that discussion byincluding organizations which had official or semi-official connections with the Socialist Party or whichwere socialist in their general complexion :

Anti-War Organizations

World Youth Peace Congress, chairmanAmerican Committee of the World Youth Peace Con-

gress, chairmanFellowship of Reconciliation, executive secretaryInternational Youth Leaders Conference, chairmanJoint Peace Council (International), treasurerPacifist Action Committee, secretary

[72]

06u DCSImpme f/ISVIENNA VIL (Awrra)

JOINT PEACE COUNCIL(A. Ads- Cummhae)

CAMPAIGN AGAINST MIUTARY TRAINING.A+em+.vd O!"i"se'e7

AND CONSCRIFnON

nu .wur a .M~,m .uw

r...

esar

December 10, 1930

Dear Friend :

Ten thousand letter. and copies of the 'Manifesto Against Coo-soription and Military Training of Youth' have already been sent to thepress In more than fifty countries . In the MEW YORK TIM of Sunday,October 12th this Manifesto, together with the list of distingutehedsigners, was given prominent space .

This campaign is an activity carried on by the cooperation ofeight prominent international peace organizations (listed above) . Fora long time persons have asked: Why do not the pate . organisation co-operate more effectively? Here is an answer to that question in theformation of the JOINT PEACE COUNCIL for this urgently needed campaignagainst conscription and military training . Mr . Farmer Brockway, Mem-ber of Parliament, is chairmen of the Council .

The campaign has started well . Will you help ue oerry It for-ward throughout the world? Thirty million men are .till under arms af-ter all the disillusionment of war and twelve year. of peace effort .We must unite In creating public opinion against this stupendous wastewhich is a constant threat to further waste and destruotion .

'Military tralming 1s training of mind and body In the tech-of killing . It is education for war . It Ie the perpetuation of

the war mantaltty . It prevents the development of the will to Peace .The older generation commits a grave ones against the younger genera-tion when Sn school ., universities, official and private o rganizations .i t educates youth, often under the pretest of physical t raining. in thescience of war .' Thus spoke many of the world -. foremost citizens Inthis Manifesto of the JOINT PEACE COUNCIL.

Tb)e Manifesto Se an important human document . Perhaps youom post St where it will attruet attention . Will you not also send uyour contribution, as large as possible, eo that the work of educationagainst this `crime' of older men may be pushed with n11 possible speed?

JBM :AR

Sincerely yours .

rawmvn i. (As U.iad drm,I . 8 MATTHEWS.

7A7 Bible Ness', As,Pa4Ns Yerk N. T.

Ca-.a . w lie U.(od Savec.dueed er

Twe Com êrrs oN MwruawEsoc ono

W Nile Noose, A .ur Pl..eN.. York, N . Y .


International Fellowship of Reconciliation, delegateInterorganizational Council on Disarmament, councilmember

Green International, memberPeace Patriots, memberUnited Youth Conference Against War, speakerNational Conference on the Cause and Cure of War,

speakerNational Council for the Prevention of War, speakerThe Fellowship of Youth for Peace, speakerThe War Resisters' League, speakerPennsylvania Committee for Total Disarmament,

speakerWomen's International League for Peace and Free-

dom, speakerEmergency Peace Committee, executive committeeConference on Churches and World Peace, delegateJoint Demonstration Committee, chairmanNew York Conference Against War, executive commit-

tee

Race Relations

American League for India's Freedom, executive com-mittee

Committee on Economic and Racial justice, executivecommittee

National Interracial Conference, delegateNational Urban League, speakerNational Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople, member

Committee on Race Relations (Quakers), speakerCrisis, contributor

Labor

National Religion and Labor Foundation, nationalcommittee

Public Committee on Power Utilities and Labor, ad-visory committee

New York Committee for Progressive Miners' Relief,committeeman

[741

PACIFIST

National Committee Against Labor Racketeering,national committee

New Deal Citizens Group, Local No . 3, I .B.E.W.,chairman

Brookwood Labor College, speakerUnited Shoe and Leather Workers' Union, speakerBrotherhood of Brooklyn Edison Employees, speakerConference for Progressive Labor Action, member

Socialist

Socialist Party, memberRevolutionary Policy Committee, chairmanRevolutionary Policy Publishing Association, chair-man

'The Militants of the Socialist Party, memberYoung Circle League, speakerEugene V. Debs' Club, speakerRevolt, associate editorLeague for Industrial Democracy, board of directorsStudent Outlook, associate editorNew Leader, contributorAmerica for All, contributorWorld Tomorrow, contributor

Unemployment

Joint Committee on Unemployment, executive com-mittee

Washington Conference on Unemployment, delegateUnemployed Union of Western Queens, executive

committeeUnemployed Leagues, speakerAssociation of the Unemployed, speaker

Miscellaneous Radical

International Relief Association, national committeeReconciliation Trips, speakerCommunist Party Opposition, speakerPioneer Youth of America, speakerPeople's Lobby, member

[75]


American Civil Liberties Union, memberOpen Road, leader of tour to RussiaDiscussion Group, secretaryProgressive Friends of Longwood, memberNew America, speakerLabor Age, contributorRevolutionary Age, contributorLabor Action, contributor

SOCIALIST

My pacifism gradually shifted from a religious to apolitical basis. The pacifist movement was and ispredominantly anti-capitalist and socialist .

My reasoning with respect to the necessary politicalbasis of pacifism was similar to that of many otherpacifists. In the World Tomorrow, I wrote :

The recognition of capitalism as a war system israpidly spreading through the ranks of those whoare working for peace. Many of those who first ap-proached modern social problems through the peacemovement have come to see that capitalism with itscompetitive nationalism and imperialism can no moreestablish an enduring peace than greed can be trans-formed into generosity . Specific wars may be avertedunder capitalism, but war itself will be ended onlywith the establishment of a commonwealth of socialistnations which have organized their economic lifearound the principle of production for use instead offor profit.

There is at least one big hole in this argumentthrough which a factual behemoth may walk withease. Socialism (or any other form of collectivism)is essentially a war system in itself . A constantmobilization of the mass mind, of material resources,and of military force is necessary to the maintenanceof a system of collectivism. The totalitarian stateshave taught us this, and for that particular lesson

[771


we should be duly grateful . The argument thatsocialism would end war was nothing but the oldillusion of a war to end war, in a new dress. Never-theless, it seemed to me to be a valid argument tenyears ago .

My red card shows that I joined the Socialist Partyin Manhattan on November 6, 1929 . I joined theParty for no other reason than that most of mypacifist associates belonged and I shared with themthe viewpoint which I expressed in the article in theWorld Tomorrow . James Oneal, editor of the NewLeader, and other socialists, however, profess to be-lieve now, looking at my joining in retrospect, thatI brought with me a sinister motive into the Party .After my appearance before the Dies Committee,Oneal wrote in the New Leader :

Not since the early days of force Anarchism in Europewhen the fiery Michael Bakunin planted conspiratorygroups in the Labor and Socialist movement andplotted to so implicate persons and public officialsin his conspiracies that their reputations would becompromised, has a story been told like the one relatedby J. B. Matthews before the Dies Congressional Com-mittee in Washington for the past ten days . . . .Matthews was a sinister figure in the old SocialistParty before he and others of his kind wrecked it . . . .We always suspected his motives in the old partyorganization and charges were brought against himas a Communist by the Old Guard. Quietly joiningit in Queens County, for some months he said littleand did little to warrant suspicion . Later he beganto show his colors . . . . We knew that Matthews waseither a Communist or a provocative agent but whichhe was we were uncertain .

All of which is very, very funny, and should make"the fiery Michael Bakunin" turn over in his grave . .

[78]

STOP WAR!ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC30 Lafayette Ave., near Flatbush Ave., Brooklyn

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

FEBRUARY 7th, 3 P. M .Speakers :

HEYWOOD BROUN

MORRIS HILLQUITB. C. VLADECK

OSCAR AMERINGERCHIH MENG

T. S. MIYAKAWAJ. B. MATTHEWS

-ALGERNON LEE, Chairman

Fight the Threat of War Now !

War Won't Cure Hard Times F

AUSPICES SOCIALIST PARTY NEW YORK CITYAll Subway surface lines to Nevins St. or Atlantic Ave .

-lop


Communists and socialists have difficulty in under-standing the obvious ; they incline toward suspicionsof conspiracy. My conduct in the Socialist Party wasobvious, if anything .

Very early in my membership in the Socialist PartyI ran into intrigues, petty and grandiose . These in-cessant schemings were, on the surface, conductedaround great socialist issues . Underneath, I am cer-tain that they were simply a very human situationin which young careerists plotted to displace anintrenched Party bureaucracy and in which thebureaucracy plotted in dead earnestness to preventthe young careerists from getting the chairmanshipof this committee or the leadership of that demon-stration. Many were the times that I myself declinedthe leadership of one move or another which wasaimed at despoiling the Party bureaucracy . I wasnot interested in petty intrigues for the control ofwhat was so patently a pitifully weak political party .I am not conscious of ever having coveted power,but I know that I never grasped for the hallucinationof power .

I would be fascinated if I could take the credit,or any of the credit, for having wrecked the oldSocialist Party and reduced its respective splintersto their present magnificent futility . I must, how-ever, in faithfulness to the record plead not guilty .

The schemes of the young careerists in the SocialistParty did not stop at winning a few committee chair-manships from the old guard bureaucracy . Theycontemplated the shelving of the Leader himself,Norman Thomas. For one thing, Thomas was notrevolutionary enough ; and furthermore, it was saidto be a bad thing for socialism to become a one-man

[sod

STOP 9THE NEXT WAR sAnother WarWON'T

Cure Hard Times!

DemonstrateAGAINSTWAR!

MADISON SQUARE(Near N,e PEACE LIGHT)

SATURDAY

FEBRUARY 612 :30 P. M .

S P E A K E R S

NORMAN THOMAS, soei.G.t Leads,MARY W. HILLYER,

Leaòe for Indootri.l Demoe.cy

J. B. MATTHEWS,Fellowship of RecondWtion

RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE,Free Syn.gogo.

McALISTER COLEMAN, Aath.r

REINHOLD NIEBUHR,Editor, World Tomorrow

JULIUS UMANSKY,Young People . Soinlliwt League

1.,. tarowana ewiu..r/ 1r.nr

HEYWOOD BROUN,War Resists . Laag. .

EDWARD MURROW,National Student Federatesn of Am."

.ROGER BALDWIN,Ameriew Civil Ltbertie Uaa.

B. CHARNEY VLADECK,1swi.h Daily Forward

FREDERICK V . FIELD,Institute of P.eifie Relation .

FANNIA COHN,International Ladies Caraxat Worke rs Llni m

FRANCIS HENSON,N.tion.l Co .aeil Y. EL C. A .

GREAT ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION AT BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSICSUNDAY AFTERNOON 3 P. I I.

AUSPICFA : SOCIAL 5T PARTY

For further informaioq call Ah ;onqui. 45665, or STuyyesent 9 .0675 . Room 1003-112 E 19th Se,


show. The perennial candidacy of Thomas was evi-dence, said the young socialists, of the poverty of theParty . At one point in the scheme to displaceThomas, I was urged to qualify myself (by amena-bility to Party discipline) for the emptiness whichhis removal would create . The plan left me un-interested. Some of the young comrades were in-discreet enough to put these things into writing, andby the merest accident I kept their letters. When itwas clear that I had no interest in the proposition,Roy Burt was selected as the comrade eventually todisplace Thomas. That was almost five years ago,and apparently it has been no easy matter to breakthe Thomas precedent .' My first difficulty in the Socialist Party arose over

a speech on Russia which I made at a conferenceof the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1931 . In thatspeech which was designed to be a challenge to paci-fists to outdo the communists in their zeal for re-making the world and thereby to bring about changesthrough non-violent methods, I failed to mentionthe fact that there were tens of thousands of socialistsin the prisons of the Soviet Union . This speech wasnot brought to the attention of the Socialist Partybureaucracy until the summer of 1932, but whenthey did get around to noticing it, I was ordered toappear before the discipline committee of the Party .On the same night, Heywood Broun was on the car-pet before the discipline committee for writing in hiscolumn in the World-Telegram that he had joinedin the demonstration parade for Al Smith at theChicago Democratic Convention . Broun's case wassettled amicably and speedily when he explained thathe marched only metaphorically . I was warned to

[82]

T1Ie New York Conference Against WY'ROOM 1101

112 EAST 19TH STREETNEW YORK CITY

At.---.

Todaythe world is threatened with or . Imperialist ambitions,Increased economic tenslan and strain within nations

aswell

asbetween

lotions ; the recrudescence of lace hatreds ; the glutting of world markets asthe peoples starve ; the increase in military preparedness in all countries -bring ever nearer the danger of war .I,,.

troops of Mussolini, Hitler and the Little Entente form a ringof steel about Austria .

The agents of the ambitious Nez1s have filtered into every Chan-callory of Europe from the Baltic o the Aegean .

In the Far East the movements of Japanese and Soviet troops fill theworld with constant rumors of clashes which may be the signal for ear .

And in the Jungles of the Chaos, span war has boon raging, with theestablished instrumentalities of peace - the World Courts and disarmamentpacts - powerless .

Our own country is staggering under the greatest military and navalbudget since 1919 . Eves within the Recovery program . battleships are beingbuilt es •public works •, the C.C .C . .are placed under military control andattempts to regulate industry have put the country on a basis which would makefor rapid mobilization 1%, ase of war - as Speaker Rainey recently pointed outto a delegation in Washiton.

War can only be prevented if those who are opposed to it unite withall their strength in a

commonprogram to fight against St . Workers, organized

and unorganized, liberal, professional, peace, church and student groups mustadopt a program and effectively carry it through if they ore honest Sn theirhatred of war and destruction .

We call upon Your organization officially to enter the New YorkConference Against War . which will meet Friday afternoon . April 8th at theTown Hall to work out a program for action . Will you at once endorse and jointhis Conference and elect to it delegates? There must be at least 1500 dele-gates tram the hundreds et organizations in New York which are opposed to wThe time 1a short yet the need is urgent . Fill out end send in at once the

ir

aclosed bleak . Each organization joining the conference is to pay $3 .00 todefray its share of the expanses . %. fee for each delegate is 250 . The an-closed blank carries the details of

resentation to which you 11: e titled.all has been sent to all the organizations which we believe

can find .= n heels for action .

Yours for a Common Struggle Against War,

es

Ic. AOU~esr+PtitM4L

oto wm osuHLG=• Do MAN LA

W-e TS -1. LLIAN PICteNS_•

a. [ASSIpY

1A .. N. NU- .x BL-ACHNe!

xA6wT w.LLAIDLedN

~P.yyrtxtme t See LAxD

I0NDtaSods LO OY w711D1T

JOfaP11 P. UD -we

ALp ppa:A-' VIILA. .UI eos m. sot

a, . ma NANLa6

pgLpsIDNaY x ooLDRwni

,?News

rnx-ArLi{w "tsxxsm NsRLSIONR


include some reference to the imprisoned socialistsin Russia whenever I made a speech on communism .

In the following year, I made a speech under theunited front auspices of the Communist Party inMadison Square Garden . For this act I was formallycharged by the Socialist Party with "conduct unbe-coming a member of the Party." Once again I foundmyself in the company of Heywood Broun who re-ceived a letter from the Socialist Party threateninghim with disciplinary action if he persisted in speak-ing under Communist Party united front auspices .Broun resigned from the Socialist Party . My casewas brought to trial and I was reprimanded with awarning that if I engaged in further activities of thesort I would face more serious penalties .

Two months later I became chairman of one ofthe Communist Party's united fronts, the organizingcommittee for the first United States Congress AgainstWar. The League for Industrial Democracy, of whichNorman Thomas was director, was officially partici-pating in the same united front . I had the authori-zation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, of whichI was an executive secretary, to enter this unitedfront. In view of the fact that Norman Thomas him-self was involved in the situation and in view of theuncertainty of my own dual position as a member ofthe Socialist Party and as executive secretary of theF. O . R., no disciplinary action was taken againstme immediately by the Socialist Party. Eight monthslater, however, the Socialist Party of New Yorkmustered its courage and brought charges againstme. My sentence was one year's suspension from theParty. James Oneal was in error when he wrote inthe New Leader recently that charges were brought

[ 84]

League for Industrial Democracy

Speakers1934 -1935

Fascism - War - Revolution !

Which Way America?

NORMAN THOMASJENNIE LEE

ELLEN WILKINSONJ. B. MATTHEWS

ROY BURTHARRY W. LAIDLER

Write to : League for Industrial Democracy, 112 East 19th St., New York City

ODYSSEY OF A FELLOWTRAVELER

against me "as a Communist by the Old Guard ."There were six specific charges, the first of whichwas for speaking at a dinner of the Lovestonites .The second was for allowing my name to be usedas a sponsor for a conference of the Friends of theSoviet Union. I can readily understand that theSocialist Party comrades were puzzled over tryingto classify me as a communist tool . The Lovestonitesand the Stalinites were the most bitter of enemies,and still are. But here I was in the position ofspeaking under the auspices of both Lovestonitesand Stalinites. If I had been acting under the secret in-structions of either group it is perfectly clear that thatgroup would not have permitted me to speak underthe auspices of the other . The fact was simply whatit appeared to be on the surface, and nothing more :I believed wholeheartedly in the united front of allradical groups and accepted their invitations withoutregard to the bitter enmities which separated them .This was so obvious that even Norman Thomasunderstood it at the time. On the day following mysuspension from the Socialist Party, Thomas invitedme to become a "special lecturer" for the League forIndustrial Democracy, and I was immediately listedas such on the letterhead and in the literature of theL. I . D. But even Thomas professes to believe nowthat I was acting as an under-cover worker for theCommunist Party.

It is quite true that I had moved considerablyfarther left since joining the Socialist Party, andthat I belonged to the group of militants who wereworking for the adoption of a more revolutionaryposition by the Party itself, but all of this was in theopen and well-known in Party circles. The worst

[86 ]

SOCIALIST

charge that the record will sustain against me is thatI was an individualistic bull in a collectivistic chinashop. And, oh how precious and fragile are thevessels of all left-wing party doctrine. Even theparties slip and break them, the Socialist as well asthe Communist .

Take, for example, the left-wing parties' "line" onthe subject of John L. Lewis. Throughout the periodof my membership in the Socialist Party, I was taughtto believe that there was one betrayer of labor whoseguilt was unwashable, and his name was Lewis. Butin 1935, one of the members of the national execu-tive committee of the Socialist Party wrote, in theModern Monthly, that "the radical movement is deli-cately adjusting itself to a different evaluation ofLewis, whose history within the United MineWorkers of America has been far from creditable ."I have before me an illuminating example of howthe Socialist Party "delicately" adjusted itself toLewis. This example consists of three documents,all published within a period of about three weeks .The first was an article on Norman Thomas writtenby Robert Morss Lovett for the New Republic . Com-menting on Thomas' bravery, Lovett wrote :

When the mining counties of Illinois were under thebloody terror of John L . Lewis and the Peabody CoalCompany, Norman Thomas went in to hold meetingswhere none had been allowed for years .

A few days later, the socialists published a campaignpamphlet urging Thomas for the presidency. Thearticle by Lovett was published at the beginning ofthis pamphlet . But it offered a new version of thepassage which I have just quoted :

[871


When the mining counties of Illinois were under thebloody terror, Norman Thomas held meetings wherenone had been allowed for years .

No dots to indicate a deletion! The Illinois terrorhad become anonymous. A few days later still, thefriends of Norman Thomas gave him a birthdaydinner. In the announcement of the dinner, sentout by Reinhold Niebuhr, Lovett's article was re-published. But this time the entire sentence wasdeleted, and still no dots! Braving even the anony-mous terror of Illinois, had ceased to be usable evi-dence of Thomas' courage . The "delicate adjust-ment" of the Socialist Party to John L . Lewis wascomplete. The socialists, like the communists, haddecided to get on the coattails of Mr . Lewis.

Following my suspension from the Socialist Party,a group of revolutionary socialists organized them-selves into what they called the Revolutionary PolicyCommittee. I was made chairman of the group . At theDetroit convention of the Party in 1934, it appearedto me that the Revolutionary Policy Committeewas working for an outright split in the SocialistParty. When I was fully convinced of this, I publiclydenounced the group . That should have been finalevidence of my desire to be fundamentally loyal tothe Party to which I belonged . Denouncing the Com-mittee of which I was chairman would have beenmuch too subtle for me if I had been acting as anunder-cover worker for any outside group . Andsubtlety in politics was never one of my skills .

While I believe it important to distinguish forspecific purposes between the various leftist groups,socialists, communists, and other anti-capitalists, Icannot doubt that the final result of the significant

[88]

J. . LOVItTON(

a D . Wott lam. snow

Revolutionary AgeW4t NP.OO

ogwN

.•x ..rxt sees.

Att[ 4M1COMMYRISt PARTY U. a A (N*d., Ony7OR MAwww Av,NUN

Nlw Toot

July 2nd . 1931 .

Dear Comrade Thalheimer :Comrade J .B. Matthews, whom

I am herewith introducin , ie a conscious Communistsympathizer, and a friend of our group . He is verymuch interested in the situation in Germany, partic-ularly in the conditions in the Communist and labormovement .

I'd appreciate it very muchif you would arrange to spend a little time with Com-rade Matthews and exchange opinions, information andimpressions with him . I have just seen Comrade Matt-hews before his leaving so he's pretty much up to theminute on affairs here .

As ever,

1

Outside of books, I learned most about Communism from1 ovestone. The Browderites will probably say that's the reasonI learned it so poorly.


growth of any one of them or any combination ofthem will be disastrous to the free institutions ofAmerica. In a most important respect-their ulti-mate influence upon . our liberties-they may well belumped together as a disease of the age .

IN THE UNITED FRONTThe winter of 1932 found me prepared to become

a full-fledged fellow traveler. America was at thedepths of the depression, and I had read myself intothe acceptance of the view that everything was work-ing out according to the Marxist schedule . I mar-velled at what appeared to me to be the propheticinsight of Karl Marx who at his table in the LondonMuseum had formulated the rules according to whichthe game of history is played . He had, beyond cavil,performed the supreme intellectual feat of all time .Because his prophecy was based, as I thought, uponcases tirelessly assembled, it was scientific and notmystical, scientific and therefore incontrovertible .The age-old quest of the human mind for an answerto the riddles of social organization was at an end .The grail had been found. Added wisdom, findingthe answers to all the questions, proletarian purity :these would come with the complete mastery of Marx,and for this mastery I had acquired all the books .Marx had predicted infallibly ; why not let him pre-scribe infallibly? I was on the side of history whereI could look across and view with sincere pity thefloundering liberals and the obstructing capitalists .History would crush them like a juggernaut .

During the summer of 1932 I was in the SovietUnion-my fifth visit in as many years . I traveledfrom one end of the Ukraine to the other . I heard


whisperings about a great famine through what wasonce known as the "bread basket of Europe ." I evensaw with my own eyes such appalling sights of povertyas would move the coldest heart : thousands of menand women fighting like wild animals to board thetrains, women separated from their children in themad struggle and screaming hysterically long afterthe train had left their offspring behind . One of thegirls in the party which I was conducting spoke Rus-sian. She said it was famine but I was incredulous .I explained it on the spot as the economic and cul-tural backwardness which was a legacy from Czardomand which the second Five Year Plan would liqui-date. Furthermore it was oriental, and I strove tocomfort my questioning traveling companions withthe assurance that one must go, as I had done, toIndia really to see rags and hunger. Comparisonswith America were unfair, even intellectually dis-honest: this was the orthodox answer to every sceneof misery or horror. Of course there was no famine!My will was set to believe there was no famine . Inthis grim determination I was assisted by the bestnon-Marxist American newspaper men who were re-porting for -the American press that there was nofamine. Three years later when Harry Lang, staffmember of the Jewish Daily Forward, wrote a seriesof articles for the Hearst newspapers in which hetold of the terrible sufferings from the famine in theUkraine, the editors of the Daily Worker called meand asked me to issue a denial of Lang's stories andto denounce his betrayal of the working class . With-out reading Lang's articles, I complied with the re-quest, and my statement was published on the firstpage of the Daily Worker' along with similar denun-

[ 921

IN THE UNITED FRONT

ciations of Lang by Reinhold Niebuhr, James Water-man Wise, and Margaret Lamont . I had no morethought of lying than of flying, and I have no doubtthat the same was true of the others who respondedto the request of the editors of the Daily Worker.Good Marxist intentions did not make my statementfactually correct, however. In one way or anotherall of us were fellow travelers ready to help the Com-munist Party in its predicament . Not one of us wasa member of the Party-a circumstance which in somecircles gave weight to our words. In my own mindthere was the dominant thought that the SovietUnion was "the fatherland of the working class," thegreat Marxist fulfillment of history . How, therefore,could it have a famine which would take its toll oflives by the million, even though I had seen theevidences of it with my own eyes? How Stalin'sbureaucrats, who later admitted the fact of the fa-mine, must have laughed with cynical contempt atour naivete. Three million dead of hunger, but noNorth American Committee to Aid the UkrainianStarving, no Mass Demonstration at Madison SquareGarden to Save the Ukraine from Stalin's Terror!Verily, when Marxist theory comes in the door, factsgo out the window. Marxism a scientific answer tothe riddles of social organization? What a colossalpiece of self-deception!

If the completely antithetical substitute for sciencemay properly be labeled scientific, then and onlythen may Marxism be called scientific! Science isthe alias under which Marxists practice their particular brand of voodooism . I mean, of course, Marxismas a whole, its Weltanschauung and not its occasionalresearches in libraries for the a priori purpose of

[931


buttressing its faith with carefully selected facts .Marxism is, to date, the best device for dispensing

with knowledge . It is a political Baedeker for mak-ing travel superfluous, a vade mecum with all theanswers. At a distance of ten thousand miles, Lenincould write the definitive work on American agri-culture, and Harry Gannes could produce a volumeon China telling us what's what and why in that vastcountry. All that is needed is to apply a half dozenuniversally valid dogmas to any scene no matter howdistant. Find what you want to find, and the rest isunimportant. The rapturous incantation of slogansmanufactured from the stuff of the dogmas makesintellectual effort a waste of time . It would, however,be a grave mistake for any non-Marxist to fail torecognize that there are facts which give the colorof validity to Marxist dogmas . Misplaced emphasison one set of facts and the omission of another set,together with a sprinkling of invented "facts," willappear to establish that validity completely .

And yet Marxism as a scientific proposition com-manded my wholehearted allegiance in the winterof 1932 just as it does that of tens of thousands ofother Americans today. As a novice in Marxism, Ideplored the fact that Marxists were divided intowarring sects more bitter in their attitudes towardeach other than they were toward the class enemy,capitalism. There is no hatred or suspicion like thatof one leftist group for another. There is nothingextraordinary, from the standpoint of leftist history,about the mass execution of communists by com-munists in the Soviet Union today. The disputationsamong the leftist groups in the United States arethoroughly murderous in spirit. It remains only for

[94]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

the authority of the State to fall into the hands ofone of them to set that particular authority-possessinggroup on the course of exterminating all the others.I was well acquainted with the history of the warringsects of Christendom, but I had never found anythingin the history of religious strife to compare with theanimosity of leftist rivalries . In this deplorable stateof affairs, I decided to devote my energies to theunited front-not a united front of manoeuvre onbehalf of one leftist group against another but asolid and genuine rapprochement among all Marxists .There is no other key to an understanding of mypolitical conduct during the several years that fol-lowed. I believed that the triumph of Marxism de-pended in large measure upon the achievement ofgenuine unity among Marxists . This may have beena stupid notion possible only to one of immensepolitical ignorance but it was hardly sinister fromthe standpoint of the movement . I had friends andset about to make more among all leftist groups-Socialists, Stalinists, Lovestonites, Musteites, Trots-kyists, and even the I . W. W. and the Socialist LaborParty. I spoke at meetings under the auspices of allof these groups. The catholicity of my radicalismis in the record beyond dispute. I made morespeeches for the Socialist Party and its candidatesfor office in more widely scattered parts of the UnitedStates than any other member of that party, exceptingonly Norman Thomas. On one occasion, Thomasacknowledged publicly that I was second only to himin this respect . I engaged actively in a score of theunited front organizations of the Stalinists, makinghundreds of speeches on their behalf in all parts ofthe country. One day I demonstrated or spoke for

[95]


the Lovestoneites and the next day for the Musteites .I wrote for the New Leader (Socialist Party), Americafor All (Socialist Party), The World Tomorrow (so-cialist viewpoint), Fight (communist united front),Soviet Russia Today (communist united front), theDaily Worker (Communist Party), the New Masses(Communist Party), Revolutionary Age (Love-stoneite or Communist Party Opposition), LaborAge (Musteite or Conference for Progressive LaborAction), Labor Action (Musteite), and Revolt(League for Industrial Democracy or socialist) . 2 Iconsidered some of these leftist groups to be betterMarxists than others, but I believed that all wouldbe more effectively Marxist if acting in unity than ifdivided in violent disputation . The one thing whichseemed to me more important than all others in theleftist world was to substitute symphony for theexisting cacophony.

I had become not only a Marxist but a confirmedexponent of the united front . Not one of the existingleftist groups exerted more than a microscopic influ-ence in the American scene . Norman Thomas polledalmost a million votes in the election of 1932, butthese reflected a widespread belief that he personallywas an ornament to the social conscience of Americarather than the influence of the party of which hewas the leader. Among all the leftist groups, theCommunist Party alone was energetically workingfor the united front . It did not matter to me at thetime that the Communist Party's conception of theunited front was radically different from my own .Its united front activities seemed to be the place tospend my own efforts to help the pitifully weak leftistgroups to combine their resources in order to make

[961

IN THE UNITED FRONT

a real Marxist impression upon the American scene .I became, during the next three years, officially or

otherwise active in more than a score of the organi-zations which the Communist party set up for thepurpose of putting the leaven of revolution intoAmerican public opinion .

Student Congress Against War

The first of my experiences with the communistsin a united front was the Student Congress AgainstWar, held at the University of Chicago, December28-29, 1932 . I was officially associated with this unitedfront as a member of its National Committee. Otherson the National Committee were Henri Barbusse,George S. Counts, Leo Gallagher, Donald Hender-son, H. W. L. Dana, Corliss Lamont, Scott Nearing,Margaret Schlauch, Frederick L. Schumann, andRobert Morss Lovett. Earl Browder, Scott Nearing,Joseph Freeman, Jane Addams, Upton Close, and Iwere the speakers at the Congress .The Student Congress Against War was a direct

outgrowth of the Amsterdam World Congress AgainstWar which had been held August 27-29, 1932 . TheAmsterdam World Congress must receive furtherattention when we come to the history of the Ameri-can League Against War and Fascism . At this point,it is not necessary to say more than that it was initi-ated and controlled by the Communist International-a fact which has not, to my knowledge, ever beenchallenged .

No one disputed the fact that the Student CongressAgainst War was a communist united front gathering .The National Student League organized the StudentCongress, and the NSL was everywhere known as the

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Communist Party's agency on American campuses.Students of other political persuasions than com-munism, such as socialists, Lovestonites, pacifists, andso-called liberals, participated in the Chicago Con-gress, but there was no serious difficulty in obtainingthe adoption of a set of resolutions which conformedcompletely to the "line" of the Communist Party,including an endorsement of the Amsterdam move-ment. We must not forget Browder's words : "In thecenter, as the conscious moving and directive forceof the united front in all its phases, stands the Com-munist Party. Our position in this respect is clearand unchallenged."

In the Student Outlook, organ of the StudentLeague for Industrial Democracy, Ben Fischer wrote :"The tenor of the Chicago conference can be gath-ered from the enthusiasm that greeted J. B. Mat-thews' challenge to Jane Addams, that he was notopposed to a war that would end capitalism, afterthe heroic old lady of Hull House had appealed tothe Congress against all violence ."3 The New YorkTimes reported my clash with Miss Addams as fol-lows: "J. B. Matthews . . . advocated the idea thatdistinction should be made between imperialistic andnon-imperialistic wars . Mr. Matthews said war hadalways been justifiable in the overthrow of tyrants . . .Miss Addams pleaded that the students unite in afight against class wars ."4 Both the communist andsocialist students rose to their feet to applaud withenthusiasm my statement of the Marxist position onwar.

The National Student LeagueAfter the Chicago meeting of the Student Congress

Against War, I was much in demand as a speaker for[98]

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the National Student League . Scarcely an importantmeeting of the NSL was held in the vicinity of NewYork during the following year at which I was notlisted as one of the principal speakers . In a DailyWorker announcement of an NSL demonstrationnear the Cuban Consulate to be followed by a marchto the Sub-treasury building on Wall Street, I waslisted as the principal speaker . 5 On several occasionsHeywood Broun and I were the speakers for the NSLat the City College of New York. At a demonstrationof the National Student League at Columbia Uni-versity, Reinhold Niebuhr, Robert W . Dunn, andI were the speakers . 6Active in the National Student League were

Donald Henderson, its secretary, Edmund Stevens,Adam Lapin, Joseph Starobin, Joseph Cohen,Nathaniel Weyl, and John Donovan . Donovan wasamong the many communists who later went toWashington to take jobs in the New Deal Adminis-tration . He was unceremoniously discharged byGeneral Hugh Johnson when he stirred up a rowin the NRA .

On page 1 of the Daily Worker of May 16, 1933,William Browder and I are listed as the speakers ata Columbia University demonstration on behalf ofDonald Henderson. According to this same newsstory, there was a casket labelled "Academic Free-dom" placed at the feet of the statue of Alma Mater,and Nicholas Murray Butler, president of the Uni-versity, was liquidated in effigy . The Daily Workerreported that "John Donovan raised the effigy highover his head while he denounced Dr . Butler's poli-cies" and then "with an expression of supreme disgustand contempt he slammed the effigy to the ground,smashing it in pieces ."

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In the spring of 1933, Columbia University refusedto renew, for the following academic year, its teachingcontract with Donald Henderson who had been aninstructor in economics in the University . For anumber of weeks the National Student League con-ducted open air protest meetings in front of Colum-bia University, at which we endeavored to makeHenderson's "dismissal" into an issue of academicfreedom. The University charged Henderson withthe neglect of his classes. Privately, Henderson ad-mitted the charge and explained to me that it wasthe Communist Party's plan to invest him with thestature of an academic martyr and thereby obtain forhim a kind of publicity which would be useful ina larger Party service which was then contemplatedfor him .

American Student UnionIt is important at this point that I should depart

from a chronological order of events in order to ex-plain what became of the National Student League .In the . fall of 1935, the National Student League andthe Student League for Industrial Democracy (so-cialist in its complexion) were merged to form thepresent American Student Union .

For several years the communists of the NSL hadurged the socialists of the SLID to form with theman organic union of leftist students. The socialists,long experienced with the tactics of the communists,had rejected all overtures for an amalgamation .Joseph P. Lash, who was then secretary of the StudentLeague for Industrial Democracy, minced no wordsabout the communists' proposal for organic unity .Highly instructive are Lash's words in the light ofhis present leadership of the American Student

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Union. In the Student Outlook of November-Decem-ber, 1934, he wrote :

The Student L. I. D . is firmly convinced that youngCommunists will hesitate at nothing to build theCommunist movement which in their hearts is equiva-lent with the social revolution . The Student L . I. D.,although it wishes fervently for the unification of allwho are united in their desire for a workers' world, isconvinced that the Young Communists in the Na-tional Student League envision amalgamation as agod-given opportunity to smash the influence of theSocialist movement and socialist ideas in the studentfield. The National Convention of the Student L . I .D. meeting in December will doubtless again considerthe offer of amalgamation made by the National Stu-dent League. You will pardon us, comrades, if wethen decide to decline?

Lash also reminded the young communist studentsthat "Stalin robbed banks ." In the course of the fol-lowing year, however, Lash abandoned his deter-mination to resist the amalgamation of the two stu-dent groups, and the matter came for a vote beforethe Board of Directors of the League for IndustrialDemocracy in the middle of September, 1935 .

I was a member of the LID's Board of Directorsand was present at the meeting at which the amal-gamation was voted . After discussion of the matterat some length, the individual members of the Boardcast their votes openly. I cast mine for the merger .When I stated that I was voting yes, Norman Thomasremarked: "Though he slay me yet will I trust him ."I was engaged at the time in fighting the communistsin a so-called strike at Consumers' Research, andThomas' remark was an acknowledgement of thecommunist leadership in that strike . Despite the fight

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I was having with the communists at Consumers'Research, I still believed, as a convinced Marxist, inthe united front of all leftist groups and accordinglyI voted for the establishment of the American Stu-dent Union.

Since the achievement of this merger, Joseph Lashhas resigned from the Socialist Party, and the Ameri-can Student Union of which he is the executivesecretary has become the sort of communist unitedfront of which he wrote so clearly in the StudentOutlook . Again we are reminded of Browder's state-ment that "in the center, as the conscious movingand directive force of the united front in all itsphases, stands the Communist Party."

The outstanding event of the American StudentUnion each year is the annual "anti-war strike" oncollege campuses-an event in which more than150,000 students have participated on a single occa-sion. In the spring of 1935, before the formation ofthe Student Union, I was the principal speaker forthe "anti-war strike" on the campus of the Universityof Virginia at Charlottesville. There I found thatthe affair was entirely under the direction of thestudent members of the Communist Party .

The American Student Union held its most recentannual meeting at Vassar College at the end of 1937 .At this gathering the Union formally abandoned itscommitment to the so-called Oxford Pledge, the paci-fist's oath . It also endorsed the principle of so-calledcollective security, the principle on which the Com-munist Party, as well as the Anglophiles, has reliedto involve the United States in war on behalf of theSoviet Union. As long as the Communist Party an-ticipated that the United States would, if it went to

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war at all, be on the side against the Soviet Union,it favored students taking the Oxford Pledge againstbearing arms in any war in which the United Statesshould become engaged . When it became convincedthat the United States would probably go to war onthe same side as the Soviet Union, it denounced theOxford Pledge, and the American Student Union,responsive to every change in the Communist Party's"line," followed suit. This the Student Union didunder the leadership of Lash who had once remindedthe communists that "Stalin robbed banks" and thatthey would, if they achieved an amalgamation of theradical student organizations, "smash socialist ideasin the student field ." Sure enough the socialist stu-dents opposed the communist program at the Vassarmeeting last December and were duly "smashed" asLash had predicted . Writing in the Daily Worker,Harry Raymond said of the Vassar meeting of theAmerican Student Union : "The Young Socialistsfought to the last for a complete isolationist programbut voted for such points as the boycott with theYoung Communists and the other advocates of aneffective plan ." 8 It is important to note that theprogram adopted at Vassar is described by HarryRaymond as that of "the Young Communists andother advocates of an effective plan ." In a later issueof the Daily Worker, Lash himself thanked this com-munist newspaper for its "full and impartial cover-age" of the Vassar meeting of the Student Unions

American Youth Congress

Closely associated with the American StudentUnion and deriving much of its impetus and direc-tion from it, is the American Youth Congress. Ac-

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cording to the official version of its history, the ideafor an American youth congress was conceived fouryears ago by one Viola Ilma who was alleged to havebrought back fascist sympathies from a trip toEurope. In one of its pamphlets, entitled "Young-ville, U . S . A ., the American Youth Congress has thefollowing to say about Miss Ilma : "She invited repre-sentatives from national youth organizations, reach-ing all the way from the Boy Scouts to the YoungCommunist League. Her arrangements were re-markably efficient and all-inclusive . And that washer mistake ." 10 The fact was that because Miss Ilmawas so all-inclusive in her invitations, the YoungCommunist League in concert with left-wing socialistscaptured her organization in its infancy and threwher out. This is made clear in Wolf Michal's Reportto the Sixth World Congress of the Young Com-munist International . Writing of this capture, WolfMichal said : "Thanks to the joint participation andwork of the young American comrades with theSocialist and other non-fascist youth at the YouthCongress . . . our Young Communist League of theUnited States helped to bring about the unity ofseveral non-fascist organizations with a membershipof over a million."" Addressing himself to the mem-bers of the Young Communist International gath-ered in Moscow, Wolf Michal said further : "Thisis an example of how to influence the masses of youthinstead of commanding them in a bureaucratic way .Not all our Leagues have understood how to employsuch forms of mass work in practice . "12 What couldbe plainer than this claim that the Young CommunistLeague used influence [italics are Michal's] instead

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of bureaucratic commands to achieve its purposeswith the American Youth Congress?The words of O. Kuusinen addressed to the

Seventh World Congress of the Communist Inter-national are equally plain . Speaking of the AmericanYouth Congress, Kuusinen said :

Our American comrades achieved a great success atthis youth congress . . . the congress was transformedinto a great united front congress of the radical youth .And when, somewhat later, a second general youthcongress was held, our young comrades already en-joyed a position of authority at it. This authoritativeposition was due to the confidence which they hadgained by their new mass policy, and also to the factthat they had learned to approach and conduct thework in the right way. 13

Kuusinen said further: "The comrades of the YoungCommunist League of the United States have learnedthat it is essential to enter the big youth organizationsled by the bourgeoisie. . . . In the course of not quitea year the Young Communist League in the UnitedStates has succeeded in creating 175 fractions in thesemass organizations ."14 And finally, Kuusinen said :"The Communists alone have been able to foster inthe right way the radicalization of the youth in theranks of the bourgeois organizations ."15 At this pointit is important to state that the communists use theseso-called fractions which they organize within suchgroups as churches, the Y. W. C. A., and trade unionsto elect communist delegates to united front gather-ings. Ostensibly a delegate may be an ordinary mem-ber of a trade union or the Y. W. C. A., but actuallythe delegate is a communist or, better yet, a fellowtraveler in a bourgeois disguise .

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Whatever more needed to be said was voiced byEarl Browder this year when, speaking of the "riseof the American Youth Congress," he observed : "Wecan be very proud of our Young Communist Leaguethat it has from the beginning, small as it is, been aliving force in the broad youth movement," with thetask of "educating the youth of America in Marxism-Leninism, and in the program and spirit of ourParty." 16The communists are far more clever than certain

college presidents who could be named .The American Youth Congress is an excellent ex-

ample of the methods and purposes of the CommunistParty's united front . Among the organizations whichhave been persuaded to endorse the Youth Congressand to participate in its communist-guided work, wefind numerous groups of Christian young people,such as the National Council of Methodist Youthand the Christian Youth Conference of North Amer-ica. Ostensibly these Christian organizations are asso-ciated with a youth movement which is dedicated topeace as one of its major goals . Actually they arebeing made the innocent dupes of a carefully con-trived manoeuvre. By peace, as the communists un-derstand it and work for it, is meant a breathingspell during which the world revolution of the pro-letariat is prepared . Wolf Michal, in his Report fromwhich I have quoted already, declares that the Amer-ican Youth Congress fights for peace because, amongother things, "it means that the world proletariat isgiven still more time to rally its forces for the finaloverthrow of capitalism ."1T [Italics mine.] Or peace,in the disguise of collective security, may be nothingmore than agitation for war . In either case, what the

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Communist Party understands by peace is not whatthe ordinary person understands by the word. To thecommunists, peace is an alias under which to preparefor class war or to agitate for international war onbehalf of the Soviet Union .

It is entirely unnecessary to deal in surmises orguesses with regard to the communist leadership inthe American Youth Congress . Nor is it necessaryfor us red-baiters to formulate accusations of com-munist leadership; we need only to quote the com-munists themselves who have affirmed it over andover again. If that host of assorted liberals, collegepresidents, newspaper editors, and churchmen, whorush into print to deny this communist leadership,has a quarrel with anyone, it is first of all a quarrelwith the communist leaders themselves who claim tobe building a revolutionary youth movement throughthe device of the Youth Congress . A final quotationfrom 0. Kuusinen, who discussed the AmericanYouth Congress at some length before the SeventhWorld Congress of the Communist International,must suffice for the present . "We need," declaredKuusinen, "a revolutionary youth movement at leastten times as broad as our parties . . . . That this isentirely possible in many countries is shown by theachievements of our French and American youngcomrades ." 18 If these words mean anything, theymean that the communists claim to have achievedsuccess in building "a revolutionary youth movementat least ten times as broad as" the Communist Party,and they have done this in America through theAmerican Youth Congress. Furthermore they havedone it with the assistance, slight though it may be,of a Methodist Bishop, a United States Senator, three

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National Board members of the Y. W. C. A., twopresidents of women's colleges, and the Governors oftwo states. If these distinguished American citizensdo not believe that they have performed this functionfor the Communist Party, their quarrel, I repeat, iswith the communist leaders who have publiclyacknowledged their service to this American -"revo-lutionary youth movement at least ten times as broadas" the Party. Comrade Kuusinen obligingly in-formed these American citizens and the world whatthe Communist International proposes to do withthis "revolutionary youth movement" which theyhave helped to create. "We want," he said, "to attackour class enemies in the rear, when they start the waragainst the Soviet Union . But how can we do so ifthe majority of the toiling youth follow not us, but,for instance, the Catholic priests or the liberalchameleons?"19 How is the American Youth Congressto be used "to attack the Communist Party's classenemies in the rear?" Kuusinen is as bluntly forth-right about the matter as it is possible to be . TheAmerican Youth Congress, he said, is to come to theaid of "the Soviet country, the fatherland of theworkers of all countries . . . by transforming theimperialist war into a civil war against the bour-geoisie."20 All these words were uttered in 1935 andare a part of what is sometimes called the new "line"of the Communist International . They are, further-more, published in pamphlet form by the CommunistParty and are currently on sale at its bookstores . TheNew Republic brushes all this aside as "the positionthat the Communists took twenty years ago,"21 butthat is a better commentary on the reliability of theNew Republic than it is on contemporary communist

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strategy . It is hardly conceivable that even one ofthe editors of the New Republic believes that theCommunist International abandoned its revolution-ary position twenty years ago-or three years ago-but if there is one such, he should be reminded ofthe words of Manuilsky concerning present-day com-munist tactics . In his pamphlet on the work of theSeventh Congress (1935), Manuilsky wrote : "Tactics,generally, may change, but the general line of theCommunist International, the course it is steeringfor the proletarian revolution . . . remains unchanged .. . . Only downright scoundrels . . . and hopelessidiots can think that by means of the United Fronttactics Communism is capitulating to social democ-racy."22 Dimitroff also had some unkind things tosay about these "downright scoundrels" and "hope-less idiots" (the words are not mine, please) . In hiskeynote speech at the Seventh World Congress,Dimitroff said :

There are wiseacres who will sense in all this adigression from our basic positions, some sort of turnto the Right of the straight line of Bolshevism . Well,in my country, Bulgaria, they say that a hungrychicken always dreams of millet . Let those politicalchickens think so .23

It is deplorable enough when American citizens,youth or older persons, are committed to the buildingof a revolutionary movement for "transforming im-perialist war into civil war against the bourgeoisie,"but the position has its own Marxian logic and issincerely held by convinced revolutionists . For the"hopeless idiots" or "political chickens" who aid and

abet the building of a "revolutionary youth move-ment" in this country without having the slightest

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comprehension of what they are doing, one may haveprofound pity but no logical defense .

World Youth CongressIn August, 1938, the American Youth Congress

was host to the World Youth Congress on the campusof Vassar College . This World Youth Congress wasnothing more nor less than one of these united frontmanoeuvres dedicated to forwarding the aims of theforeign policy of the Soviet Union . Anyone whodenies this is either the unfortunate victim of deceitor a wilful deceiver .

In a statement purporting to reply to the chargeof communist influence in the World Youth Con-gress, the American Youth Congress officials askedrhetorically: "Will the single delegate of the YoungCommunist League of the United States outweighall the other 49 American delegates?" 24 This state-ment couched in the form of a rhetorical questionwas obviously intended to lead the reader to believethat the only communist delegate in the Americanrepresentation was there in his capacity as a memberof the Young Communist League-a lone communistamong 49 non-communists . The statement was whollyfalse in its implication and its authors knew it to befalse, and it should speak volumes concerning thecharacter of the American Youth Congress in whosename it was issued . The statement, however, con-fronts us with a typical united front tactic of thecommunists. Last winter, for example, the Com-munist Party, as such, withdrew officially from theAmerican League for Peace and Democracy. EarlBrowder, in addressing the League on the subjectof the Communist Party's withdrawal, said :

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I do not think it necessary for me to say that thisdoes not mean the withdrawal of Communists fromactive participation and support of the League . . . .We will do our part more energetically than everbefore. . . . I myself am not only a fraternal delegatefrom the Communist Party but also am an officialdelegate from the International Workers' Order, afraternal organization of 135,000 people and in thatcapacity I want to take my part in this Congress andthe work of the League hereafter .25

The International Workers' Order is one of thelargest of the many communist united front groups.Browder out of the American League for Peace andDemocracy as a delegate from the Communist Partyand, at the same time, Browder in the AmericanLeague as a delegate from the International Workers'Order add up to a situation in which there has beenno change other than a purely tactical one .

This same International Workers' Order had adelegate at the World Youth Congress . So did theNational Negro Congress, the Youth Committee toAid Spain, the United Office and ProfessionalWorkers, the American Youth Congress, the UnitedCannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workersof America, the American Student Union, the Ameri-can League for Peace and Democracy, the AmericanFriends of the Chinese People, the Workers Alliance,the International Fur Workers' Union, and theSouthern Negro Youth Congress . 26 Here we havetwelve organizations in addition to the Young Com-munist League, all of which are widely known to becommunist united front outfits or organizations un-der the complete domination of the CommunistParty. At the World Youth Congress, each of theseorganizations had a communist delegate ; whether a

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Party member or a fellow traveler makes not theslightest difference. But these were not all. TheReport of the Congress lists 61 members of the dele-gation from the United States, and of these not lessthan 35 followed the leadership of the communists,as sympathizers, fellow travelers, or Party members.In this group of communists I am not counting theAnglophiles who are allied at present with the com-munists in the espousal of the doctrine of collectivesecurity. The communists want the United Statesto pull Soviet chestnuts out of the fire of war, andthe Anglophiles want the United States to pull Britishimperialist chestnuts out of the same fire .

My testimony before the Dies Committee in whichI stated that the World Youth Congress was a com-munist united front manoeuvre was based upon myextensive and intimate knowledge of the wholeunited front movement, upon my knowledge of thepersonnel of the organizers of the Congress with anumber of whom I have worked in communist unitedfronts, and upon my personal knowledge of the com-munist views of many of the delegates . In my testi-mony, I said nothing whatever about the Congressspeakers' political views and nothing whatever aboutthe Congress's endorsing the Loyalist Government ofSpain. My testimony is a matter of record, and itshould, therefore, be impossible for any hostile criticto get away with distortions of it . Nevertheless, left-wing critics are boldly reckless . The ChristianCentury, in an editorial captioned "Was the YouthCongress `Communist Controlled'?", had the follow-ing to say: "The ground on which Mr. Matthewsbases his accusation . . . is twofold: first, speakers ofthe communist persuasion had a place on the plat-

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form; and second, the congress gave many tokens ofa prevailing sentiment in sympathy with loyalistSpain." 27 There is not a word in my testimony oranywhere else in anything that I have said or writtenwhich supports, either directly or by implication,this statement of the Christian Century . From be-ginning to end, it is pure invention . Ordinary per-sons who saw this editorial in the Christian Centuryshould be excused for assuming that the editor ofa Christian publication would quote exactly or para-phrase carefully in ascribing words to one who iscriticized. But the ordinary person is, unfortunately,a stranger to left-wing ethics, a code in which anyinvention is held to be fair when the truth will notsuffice to make a point.

I would not want it understood in anything whichI have said about the leaders of the American YouthCongress, the editors of the New Republic, or theeditors of the Christian Century that their statements,demonstrably misleading as they are from the stand-point of ordinary ethics, involve any departure fromright as it is understood in their own codes. Theproblem is very much the same as it was with thosewho practiced suttee in India or head-hunting inBorneo. It is not only permissible under the leftistcode to indulge in misstatement, but, on occasion,it is virtuous. We may reject the code, just as we dothat which permits suttee or head-hunting, but weshould understand that it has arguable premises . Itis a code of war ethics under which there has neverbeen any regard for the niceties of accurate statementwith respect to the enemy .

To revert to the "single delegate of the YoungCommunist League of the United States" who, the

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leaders of the American Youth Congress implied intheir question, would not be able to outweigh theother 49 American delegates, it must be pointed outthat all the American delegates might have been com-munists or fellow travelers and the truth or falsity ofthe leaders' statement would not have been affectedin the slightest. All that they said was that there wasonly one communist delegate from an admittedlycommunist organization . They said nothing aboutthe dozen or more communist united front or com-munist-controlled organizations which had delegatesin the Congress. Inasmuch as there are many morethan fifty such communist-controlled organizationsin this country, the entire American delegation mighthave been communist, and the leaders could stillhave said that there was only one communist-froman acknowledged communist group. When it is stra-tegic to deny it, communists never admit that a par-ticular united front belongs to them or that a par-ticular fellow traveler or even Party member is oneof their number .

I must emphasize the fact that it is a deliberatetactic of the communists and their sympathizers topoint to the absence of a majority of CommunistParty members in a united front organization or ina labor union as proof that it is not controlled bycommunists. This is done only for deceiving thepublic, however. The actual communist theory whichis basic to its work has always presupposed that it wasentirely unnecessary to have a majority of com-munists in any organization or movement in orderto control it or to influence it in a desired direction .The theory holds that the tail can and does, in fact,wag the dog, when the tail consists of a group of

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highly disciplined communists . The CommunistParty itself has never aimed at becoming a majorityparty. In fact it has always opposed the idea of itsbecoming large enough to count in its Party mem-bership a majority of either the voting citizens oreven of the so-called working class . This is knownas the "vanguard theory," by which is meant that theCommunist Party aspires to be only the "generalstaff" of the proletarian revolution . 28 It is as mean-ingless to argue, as communists and their sympathizersdo for public consumption, that the American Leaguefor Peace and Democracy and the World Youth Con-gress are not communist organizations because theyare not composed of a majority of Communist Partymembers as it would be to argue that the SovietUnion is not controlled by the Communist Partybecause the Party in Russia numbers only about twoper cent of the population .

The words of Earl Browder on this subject are,I repeat, clear beyond any disputing their meaningand they give the lie to all denials of communisticcharacter which are based upon the absence of acommunist majority . "In the center," says Browder,"as the conscious moving and directive force of theunited front movement in all its phases, stands theCommunist Party . Our position in this respect isclear and unchallenged ." [Italics mine .]

At the closing session of the World Youth Congressduring the climax of signing the "Vassar Peace Pact,"the delegates sang the "Marseillaise" with such fer-vor. The chorus of the "Marseillaise" runs :

To arms, comrades, form your battalions)March, march, till impure bloodOverflows our ditches .

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Since the establishment of the Front Populaire inFrance several years ago, the Communist Party ofFrance has taken over the "Marseillaise" and givenit a place among its revolutionary songs along withthe "International ." Two years ago, I went to acommunist demonstration outside the city of Parisand heard fifty thousand French communists makethe welkin ring with their lusty singing of the "Mar-seillaise" as well as the "International ." Before theCommunist International decided that its sections inthe various countries should appropriate their re-spective national traditions, both the "Star SpangledBanner" and the "Marseillaise" were looked upon bythe comrades as expressing counter-revolutionarysentiments. All that is changed now-at least for thetime being. Little doubt may be entertained thatthe "Marseillaise" accurately reflected the bellicosesentiments of a majority of the delegates at Vassar .

One left-wing group always knows when anotherleft-wing outfit is in control of a gathering or anorganization. They are schooled in the finer left-wing political distinctions which escape the notice orthe comprehension of the non-revolutionist . Writingin the Socialist Appeal (Trotskyist), Hal Draper hasthe following to say :

The "Second World Youth Congress," recently heldat Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N . Y., with about500 delegates from 54 countries, gives a compositepicture of a caricatured League of Nations Assemblyand a typical Stalinist "innocent" congress . . . thedominant tone was given by the Stalinist line of col-lective war which was put across.29

The Socialist Call (official organ of the SocialistParty) calls the method of adopting the "Vassar

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Peace Pact" a vicious maneuver. Writing in theCall, Judah Drob describes the method, as follows :

The Pact was an out and out avowal of collectivecoercive action by the democratic imperialists, againstthe fascist imperialist powers . It was sprung on theCongress at the last minute, and the moral pressureof the crowd and the ignorance of the contents of thepact were used to make the heads of most of the na-tional delegations sign it. 3 o

Drob has described a typical communist manoeuvre .It was all directed from behind the scenes by mastertacticians. In all my experience with hundreds ofcommunist meetings, committees, congresses, andunited fronts, I have never known one instance inwhich the communists lost complete control of thesituation .

My qualifications for discussing the World YouthCongress are not based upon any direct personal con-nection with the gathering . On the other hand, myexperience in the united front movement generallyhas qualified me to recognize communist manoeuvreswhen I see them, and, furthermore, I have beenpersonally and directly connected with at least nine-teen of the organizations which had delegates atVassar .

In any discussion of the communist united frontin the United States today, the American YouthCongress must be given an outstanding place . EarlBrowder is, of course, eminently right when he says :"Who wins the youth wins the future of America ."31Browder thinks the Communist Party has been re-markably successful, to date, in progressing towardthis objective. "The Young Communist League, withthe assistance of the Party," he says, "has from the

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beginning played an important part in building theYouth Congress movement and formulating its pro-gram and activities . "12 The evidence is all on Brow-der's side in this claim, and it is against those who forsundry reasons deny it .

Unemployed Councils

Prior to the formation of the Workers Alliance ofAmerica, the Communist Party maintained its ownrigidly controlled groups for the unemployed, whichwere known as the Unemployed Councils . Underthe auspices of these Councils, a "hunger march" onWashington was staged in 1933 . I worked with themon sundry matters of arranging the march upon thenation's capital . In the Story of the Fellowship ofReconciliation, John Nevin Sayre wrote :

In Washington, D. C., when the whole town wasagitated by the coming of the hunger marchers, MaryKlaphaak and J . B. Matthews telephoned to Fellow-ship members and Quakers to secure hospitality intheir homes for the women and children who mightneed it. They also went to the hunger marchers withsome food and did what they could to watch outagainst police violence.3 3

I was likewise frequently a speaker for the Unem-ployed Leagues, supported by left-wing socialists,which were subsequently merged with the Unem-ployed Councils to form the Workers Alliance ofAmerica. In particular, I spoke a number of timesat the Greenwich Village Unemployed League ofwhich David Lasser was in charge .

At the United States Congress Against War, Istrongly urged the merger of these two organizationsfor the unemployed and personally brought David

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Lasser and Herbert Benjamin, their two leaders, to-gether on the platform of the Congress. HerbertBenjamin, national secretary of the Workers Alli-ance, is a member of the Central Committee of theCommunist Party of the United States, and DavidLasser has, since the formation of the Alliance, be-come either a Communist Party member or a faithfulfellow traveler.

Max Salzmann, Communist Party organizer inMissouri, was correct when he said : "We support theWorkers Alliance . We work with it. We are re-sponsible for it. We created it." The Workers Alli-ance, like the American Student Union, was organ-ized as a result of the initiative of the CommunistParty .

Communist Party Mass Meeting on Fascism

On April 5, 1933, the Communist Party held amass meeting in Madison Square Garden. The com-munists had finally come to the realization that theirpolicy in Germany had been a complete failure andthat the Nazis were firmly in possession of power .This Madison Square Garden mass meeting was theirfirst large anti-Nazi rally . Efforts were made to turnit into a united front affair, but Roger Baldwin andI appeared to be the full extent to which they wereable to carry the united front into effect on this occa-sion. We appeared so often in that role that Baldwinand I came to be known as the "united front twins ."Congressmen, Bishops, and college presidents werenot so plentiful as fellow travelers in those days .Among other things, I said in my speech :

Essentially, fascism is capitalism turned nudist . Bour-geois democracy is a fig leaf to hide the naked realities

[1191


of the capitalist system . But just as soon as revolu-tionary action is threatened from the working classthe fig leaf is thrown aside. Workers do not destroydemocratic institutions; capitalists take care of that indue time. Bourgeois democracy creates the illusionthat there is fundamental freedom for all . There maybe a measure of freedom for the working class to agi-tate and organize under the institution of bourgeoisdemocracy, but it is not an instrument of fundamentalsocial change from capitalism to socialism . . . . I wishto distinguish sharply between dictatorships, on thebasis of purpose. A dictatorship which aims to main-tain at all costs the privileges and power of thecapitalist class is one thing. The dictatorship of theproletariat is an entirely different thing .

When I reached that point in my speech, the twenty-two thousand comrades in the Garden broke intotumultuous applause. There were cheers, hand-clap-ping, singing of the "International," and marching .The band played its loudest . I had never before re-ceived such an ovation . It lasted almost ten minutes.I liked it. It was, in fact, thrilling.The Daily Worker, two days later, reported that

I "made a trenchant attack upon the illusions of bour-geois democracy prevalent among the intelligent-sia . " 84

International Labor Defense

In the middle of April, 1933, Union Square inNew York was filled with twenty thousand commu-nists and fellow travelers who had gathered at thecall of the International Labor Defense to proteston behalf of the Scottsboro boys. Roger Baldwin,Donald Henderson, and I were among the speakers .The Daily Worker, reporting the meeting, said thatI "struck the keynote of the demonstration ."35

[120]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

Former Representative Vito Marcantomo, who isagain a candidate for election to the House of Repre-sentatives, is national president of the InternationalLabor Defense and a member of its legal advisorycommittee. This particular communist united fronthas been especially distinguished by its ability tocommand the services of members of the Congressof the United States. Earlier this year, the Inter-national Labor Defense had the help of CongressmenBernard and O'Connell in its clash with Mayor FrankHague of Jersey City.Stanley High, writing in the Saturday Evening

Post, says that the International Labor Defense "isdescribed by Socialists as `the legal department of theCommunist Party' ."36 That is indeed true, but inthe case of this particular communist organization itis unnecessary to rely upon the testimony of socialiststo establish its communist character . The DailyWorker itself, than which there is no higher or morereliable authority on such matters, calls "the Inter-national Red Aid, the parent body of the Interna-tional Labor Defense ."37 Furthermore, a majority ofits national officers, as listed on its letterhead, arewell-known- communists.

Also on the legal advisory committee of the Inter-national Labor Defense is found the name of Abra-ham Lincoln Wirin who until not long ago was amember of the legal staff of the National LaborRelations Board .

Free Tom Mooney CongressFrom April 30 to May 2, 1933, there was held in

the city of Chicago a meeting known as the FreeTom Mooney Congress. It was called as a united

[121]

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front gathering and was completely under the domi-nation of the Communist Party. I had made noplans to attend this Congress, but on April 29 I re-ceived the following telegram from Chicago :

Leading congress committee members unanimouslyagree further united action of working class wouldbe enormously strengthened by your presence herestop congress opens two o'clock tomorrow lastingthree days with vast stadium massmeeting Mondayevening

Signed ScottMooney Molders Defense Committee

The signature on the telegram is that of Louis B .Scott who was the personal representative of TomMooney. It is hardly necessary for me to say that thelanguage of the telegram was a gross exaggeration andthat the communists who were responsible for send-ing it would undoubtedly hasten to admit as muchtoday. Nevertheless, it is instructive as indicatinghow effective the communists once thought my unitedfront efforts were. On receipt of the telegram, I leftimmediately for Chicago where I participated in theCongress as a speaker at the "vast stadium massmeet-ing" and as a member of the presiding committee. 38Other members of the presiding committee includedClarence Hathaway, Robert Minor, William L . Pat-terson, Robert Morss Lovett, Roger Baldwin, andA. J. Muste .

National Tom Mooney Council of Action

Following the Chicago Congress, a permanent or-ganization was set up under the name of the NationalTom Mooney Council of Action . I was a memberof the national committee . On May 15, the followingofficers of the Council were elected : 39

[1231


Charles Bloma, ChairmanA. J. Muste, Vice-chairmanWilliam L. Patterson, Vice-chairmanJ. B. Matthews, Corresponding SecretaryRobert Minor, Organization SecretaryFrank Palmer, Publicity SecretaryRoger Baldwin, Treasurer

National Scottsboro Committee of Action

Among the members of the executive committeeof the National Scottsboro Committee of Action, aslisted in the Daily Worker, were Roger Baldwin,J. B. Matthews, Heywood Broun, and JoshuaKunitz .40

In my testimony before the Dies Committee, Istated that Heywood Broun and I, who were bothmembers of the Socialist Party at the time, werethreatened with disciplinary action in the SocialistParty for our participation in this communist unitedfront. I also said that Broun called me aside one,dayat a socialist meeting and informed me that he wasresigning from the Party in order to have greaterfreedom to work with the communists . My notesfrom the time indicate that this conversation betweenBroun and me took place in the Rand School about8:30 P. M. on April 28, 1933. In my testimony,' Icommented that from that time forward Broun hadmore and more consistently followed the CommunistParty "line" in his speaking and writing .

Broun took the stand following my testimony and,under oath, stated that he had not told me anythingof the sort. I also testified under oath . Either Brounor I had a serious lapse of memory . At the time ofmy appearance before the Dies Committee, I did notrecall that Broun had written of his resignation from

[124]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

the Socialist Party in his column in the Scripps-Howard newspapers . I have since found that hewrote in his column, the day after he told me ofhis forthcoming resignation, that "in getting out ofthe Socialist Party one should leave by the door tothe left ."41 That much is plain enough . "I wouldhate," wrote Broun further, "to have anybody thinkthat I quit because the party was too radical for me."He went on in this column to say that he "was aboutto be fired" for "speaking at a meeting held undercommunist auspices" and that the meeting was forthe Scottsboro defendants at the Bronx Coliseum.That he left the Socialist Party, therefore, in orderto be more free to work with the communists, hehimself has put in the record of the Scripps-Howardnewspapers.

It is still possible, however, that he did not tell meof his intention to resign or his reason for doing so .But he states in his column from which I am quotingthat Julius Gerber, executive secretary of the SocialistParty, reminded him, in a letter threatening disci-plinary action, "that one comrade had already beenbrought up on charges for a similar offense ." I wasthe "comrade" to whom Gerber referred and whomBroun mentioned in his column . On April 12, 1933,at a meeting of the executive committee of theSocialist Party charges were preferred against me forspeaking at the Mass Meeting of the CommunistParty in Madison Square Garden on April 5 . OnApril 28, the very day that Broun spoke to me, theexecutive committee of the Socialist Party decidedto bring me to trial for my action . Inasmuch as Iwas seeing a great deal of Broun in those days atvarious communist united front meetings, it appears

[1251


probable that he would tell me of his intended resig-nation from the Socialist Party and of his reasonsfor resigning. We were similarly engaged on behalfof communist united fronts, and we were similarlyunder fire in the Socialist Party . I leave it to thereader to judge between my sworn testimony andBroun's sworn denial .Whether Broun has or has not more and more

consistently followed the "line" of the CommunistParty since his resignation from the Socialist Party,any one may ascertain for himself by reading hiscolumn. It may, of course, be the sheerest coinci-dence that Broun and the Communist Party haveseen eye to eye so often and have shifted their view-points simultaneously . In the Daily Worker of March26, 1935, Broun is quoted as calling President Roose-velt "Labor's Public Enemy No . 1," at a meeting heldin St. Nicholas Arena in New York .4 2 Two days later,on March 28, 1935, William Dunne appeared beforethe Committe on Education and Labor of the UnitedStates Senate, as official spokesman for the CommunistParty, and declared : "The Roosevelt administrationtoday is the focus point for American fascist reac-tion." Dunne was denouncing the pending NationalLabor Relations Act. He concluded his statement byproposing the "overthrow" of the United States gov-ernment and the establishment of "the dictatorshipof the working class, headed by the CommunistParty.' '43 Anyone will note the striking similaritybetween calling President Roosevelt "Labor's Public'Enemy No. 1" and calling the Roosevelt Adminis-tration "the focus point for American fascist reac-tion." The views of Broun and the Communist Partyare still remarkably alike on the subject of the Roose-

[126]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

velt Administration although both are even moreremarkably different from what they were in March,1935. The communist "line" is a sort of game inwhich Stalin says "thumbs up," Stalin says "thumbsdown," and Stalin says "wiggle-waggle ." The com-rades and the fellow travelers do their best to giveprompt compliance with Stalin's commands . Brounmay not be playing, but his ideological thumb seemsto be up or down or wiggle-waggling in perfect syn-chronization with Browder's. Perhaps Broun is justa kibitzing fellow traveler, not really in the gamebut merely peering over Browder's shoulder .

National Committee to Aid the Victims of German Fascism

This organization was affiliated with the inter-national communist organization known as theWorkers' International Relief . When the NationalCommittee was set up in the spring of 1933, I wasmade its treasurer. I also spoke for it on a numberof occasions .

Concerning the National Committee to Aid theVictims of German Fascism, Earl Browder has pub-lished two comments which apply, in principle, withequal force to other communist united fronts. "Thiscommittee," wrote Browder, "has been allowed todrift along and spend most of the little money thatit has collected for the expenses of the collection ."44

On several occasions, I tried as treasurer of theorganization to obtain an accounting of funds raisedand expended, but without success .A competent stenographer who was not a com-

munist, who was employed by this communist unitedfront, came to me to complain that she was beingpaid a salary of only five dollars a week . I advised

[127]


her to resign. Investigation would reveal that suchcallous exploitation of labor is not uncommon inthese organizations which exist ostensibly to advancethe living standards of workers. In the case of theunderpaid stenographer, what we needed obviouslywas a national committee to aid the victims of theNational Committee to Aid the Victims of GermanFascism .

The other comment of Browder to which I referis quite enlightening . "On this anti-fascist commit-tee," wrote Browder, "we placed Muste as chairman. . . merely as a ùnited front' decoration.' '45 Tech-nically, of course, Muste was elected chairman bythe united front committee itself, but Browder iscorrect when he says that "we," meaning the Com-munist Party, placed him in that position . When Itestified before the Dies Committee that Browderand his colleagues chose me to head the AmericanLeague Against War and Fascism, I, too, like Brow-der, was going behind the technical fact that I waselected chairman of the League by the continuationcommittee of the U . S. Congress Against War . In apublicity story released by the American League fol-lowing my testimony, it was stated that my testimonyon this point was "quite false ."46 Anyone familiarwith the operations of the communist united frontknows that no one is ever "elected" by the unitedfront committee to head a united front organizationunless he is first "chosen by Browder and his col-leagues."

It is also noteworthy that Browder says that Mustewas placed in the chairmanship merely as "a deco-ration." There are today literally several thousandsof more or less prominent citizens, including high

[128]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

government officials, who as dupes, stooges, and de-coys are readily lending their names as decorationsfor these manoeuvres of the Communist Party.

Early in May, 1933, the New York District At-torney's office raided the headquarters of the NationalCommittee to Aid the Victims of German Fascism . Ina letter of protest against the raid, sent to DistrictAttorney Thomas C. T. Crain over my signature andthat of the other officers of the organization, we notedthat "well known citizens such as George Soule ofthe New Republic, Heywood Broun of the NewYork World-Telegram, Roger Baldwin and othersare included in this committee ."47

Later in the summer of 1933, I resigned from theCommittee to Aid the Victims when Alfred Wagen-knecht sent out a letter to Socialist Party branchesasking them to ignore their leaders and to join ourunited front. This was the tactic known as "theunited front from below." Norman Thomas broughtthe letter to my attention, and I resigned immedi-ately .

International Committee to Aid the Victims of German Fascism

According to the Daily Worker of May 10, 1933,the following persons were American representativeson the International Committee to Aid the Victimsof German Fascism: A. J. Muste, J . B. Matthews,George Soule, John Dos Passos, H . W. L. Dana, andAlfred Wagenknecht.48 I confess that I do not recallever having heard of this International Committeeuntil I read this statement in the Daily Worker, morethan five years after the event . There is nothingextraordinary about communists using the names ofpersons without their permission .

[129]


Federated Press

For two years I held a press card from the FederatedPress. There is no secret about the communist con-nections of this press service . For many years, FrankL. Palmer has run it, and he has also been prominentin numerous other communist united fronts .

Teachers' Anti-War Conference

From a united front publication, I take the follow-ing report :

The anti-war movement amongst New York Cityteachers was initiated by the Teachers' Anti-War Con-ference that met on May 19th in the CommunityChurch. 250 teachers from public and private schoolsand universities in and around New York partici-pated. After hearing addresses by J . B. Matthewsand Arthur Garfield Hays, the conference adoptedthe Amsterdam pledge, and elected a permanent com-mittee to guide the anti-war struggle in the NewYork schools .49

In the course of my activities in the united front,I met many New York City teachers who were com-munists or fellow travelers .

Anti-Imperialist League

For a number of years, the Anti-Imperialist Leaguewas the Communist Party's approximate equivalentof the present American League for Peace andDemocracy although it never exerted the extensiveinfluence of the latter.

In the spring of 1933, a demonstration under thejoint auspices of the Anti-Imperialist League andthe American Committee for the Struggle AgainstWar was held at one of New York's piers on the oc-casion of the landing of a distinguished Japanese

[130]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

diplomat, Yosuke Matsuoka . William Simons (laterthe Communist Party's organizer in Omaha, Nebras-ka) was the secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League .He and I were the speakers at this demonstration .Simons insisted before the demonstration that wemake every effort to provoke and defy the policewith a view to compelling our arrest by them . Simonshimself went through with his suggestion, and whenthe police ordered us to disperse, he was clubbedand arrested . I was knocked from the chair on whichI was standing while trying to make a speech in themidst of the general confusion .The New York World-Telegram reported the in-

cident, as follows :

A second man arrested by the 150 police at the sceneof debarkation was William Simons, secretary of theAnti-Imperialist League, of 80 East 11th Street, whogave four cops a tussle when they tried to halt aharangue delivered atop a box car . Simons wasdragged down minus coat and shirt. 5 °

I emphasize this incident especially as it is typicalof the communist tactic of provocation . It is the ruleon all such occasions to make it as difficult as possiblefor the police to avoid arresting the demonstrators.Arrest and imprisonment, preferably with a littleclubbing thrown in for good measure, are held tobe proof of the brutality of the capitalist class andevidence of the inevitable violence of the class strug-gle. It is held essential in all communist labor con-nections with employers to use this provocative tacticto the limit, first in making demands that are almostcertain to be impossible of acceptance by the em-ployer-including the invention of grievances where

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none in fact exist-and then in the use of all possibleprovocative violence against the employer with aview to placing him in an unfavorable light withthe public when he takes measures to protect his lifeand property. These things are elementary in thelabor union tactics of communists and are as wellknown to the labor administrators of the federalgovernment as to anyone . On no other subject havethe communists written more voluminously andclearly than on this subject of their labor uniontactics .

I was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League'sdelegation to Cuba in November and December,1933. The other members of the delegation wereHarry Gannes, columnist of the Daily Worker;Alfred Runge, Workers Ex-Service Men's League ;Henry Shepard, Trade Union Unity League ; andWalter Rellis, National Student League . We hadnumerous meetings with the leaders and membersof the Communist Party of Cuba . The Daily Workerof November 9, 1933, said : "The delegation plansto arrange numerous mass demonstrations in Havanaand other cities" and is taking "banners, letters andother expressions of warm revolutionary greetingsand solidarity." Actively, but secretly, cooperatingwith this delegation was Dr. Antonio Guiteras whoat the time was holding three cabinet posts in thegovernment headed by Ramon Grau San Martin .Guiteras was later killed by the troops of Batista inthe course of plotting a revolutionary overthrow ofthe present Cuban regime. Once Guiteras met ourdelegation after midnight and gave us a pass to travelthrough the island although martial law was in forceat the time. Subsequently we were arrested when we

[1331


reached the center of the island, and ordered by themilitia to return to Havana .

American Friends of the Chinese People

The first public meeting of the American Friendsof the Chinese People was held in Irving Plaza,New York, on June 1, 1933. The Daily Worker an-nounced : "Among the prominent speakers will beJ. B. Matthews, William Simons of the Anti-Im-perialist League, Winifred Chappell, Li Wei, andC. A. Hathaway."" Winifred Chappell was for manyyears the secretary of the Methodist Federation forSocial Service and was widely known as a communist .C. A. Hathaway has long been the editor of theDaily Worker.

I have personal knowledge of the fact that theAmerican Friends of the Chinese People, too, is oneof the Communist Party's united front disguises . Inhis recent article in the Saturday Evening Post, Dr.Stanley High describes this organization as "authen-tically non-Communist ."12 This is incorrect. Dr.High's error was undoubtedly accidental, but it indi-cates something of the difficulty to be experiencedby the novice who tries to identify the many unitedfronts of the Communist Party . Dr. High errsthroughout his widely read article by understate-ment of the relationship of the united fronts to theCommunist Party. He says, for example, that theAmerican League for Peace and Democracy "is notofficially Communist," and that the American Stu-dent Union "is not organically Communist ." Nounited front disguise of the Communist Party is ever"officially" or "organically" Communist. Far more

[1341

IN THE UNITED FRONT

accurate than Dr. High is Earl Browder who says :"In the center, as the conscious moving and directiveforce of the united front movement in . all its phases,stands the Communist Party ."

Maxwell Stewart, one of the editors of the Nation,is now the national chairman of the AmericanFriends of the Chinese People. Its publication isChina Today .

The American Committee for the Struggle Against War

The American Committee for the Struggle AgainstWar was the forerunner of the American League forPeace and Democracy .

Early in January, 1933, I addressed a mass meetingof the American Committee, which was held at theBattery in New York. Malcolm Cowley, one of theeditors of the New Republic, was chairman. Aboutfive thousand persons were on hand for the demon-stration. Its special attention was directed to theJapanese seizure of Manchuria . Other speakers wereMargaret Schlauch of New York University, JosephCohen of the National Student League, MollySamuel of the United Council of Working ClassWomen, and Carl Brodsky of the Communist Party .The Daily Worker quoted me as having said that"capitalism and war are the twin scourges today, andpeace can only be established with the triumph ofthe working class." 53

In May, 1933, I became a member of the nationalcommittee of this united front . The organization'spublication announced my adherence and that ofDorothy Detzer, secretary of the Women's Interna-tional League for Peace and Freedom, under theheadline "American Committee Gains Important

[135]


Members," and stated that "personal adherence tothe Amsterdam movement, not the official supportof the organizations with which Miss Detzer and Mr .Matthews are connected, is indicated by this action.""Malcolm Cowley was the national chairman of theCommittee .

At this point it is necessary to take notice of theformation of the World Committee Against War,better known in united front circles as the Amster-dam movement.

The World Congress Against War was held inAmsterdam in August, 1932, under the chairmanshipof the distinguished French communist, Henri Bar-busse. It was called at the instance of the CommunistInternational which had become alarmed over thetrends toward war. Japan's conquest of Manchuriahad thoroughly aroused Stalin's fears of a unitedattack by the capitalist powers upon the Soviet Union .Barbusse's new united front might well have beencalled the World Committee to Pull Stalin's Chest-nuts Out of the Fire .

The World Congress was overwhelmingly Stalinistin its complexion . It could hardly have been other-wise. The Communist International ordered that itshould be an application-an urgent one-of theunited-front-from-below tactic, which meant thatrank and file social democrats, pacifists, and liberalsshould receive warm invitations to attend, with in-sults to their leaders appended. In other words, theleft-wing political babies of the world should beweaned from the breast of counter-revolution andreared to ideological maturity under the foster par-entage of Stalin . The scheme worked poorly, as italways did. Of the 2,196 delegates present at Amster-

[136]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

dam, 830 were avowed communists and most of theremainder were communists or fellow travelers dis-guised as delegates from the Anti-Imperialist League,the Friends of the Soviet Union, or the World Com-mittee to Aid the Victims of Something or Other .

The Manifesto issued by the Amsterdam Congresswas "written" in Moscow. Scarcely anybody any-where was fooled . It declared that "all capitalistpowers treat the Soviet Union as a common enemywhich they are attempting to undermine and over-throw."55 The Congress called for "a program ofstruggle against the growing threat to Soviet Russia,"and for the sabotage of "the manufacture and trans-port of war munitions against the Chinese people andthe Soviet Union ." It was assumed by Stalin in thosedays that the United States would, i f it entered thecoming imperialist war, be among the capitalistpowers determined to destroy the Soviet Union . Thatis what I told the Dies Committee . I did not say thatStalin "fully expected" war between the Soviet Unionand the United States in 1932 . Nevertheless, despitethe fact that my testimony is on record where it can-not be challenged successfully, the St . Louis Post-Dispatch invented testimony and put it into mymouth. According to a Post-Dispatch editorial, "J . B .Matthews . . . said the Communists, in 1932, `fullyexpected an American-Soviet war' ." 58 By thus falsi-fying my testimony, it was easy for the Post-Dispatchto poke fun at it by saying, "this must be news toMoscow." The average American citizen would beshocked to know to what extent the journalisticstandards of the Daily Worker are now found insubstantial "capitalist" newspapers, thanks chiefly to

[137]

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IN THE UNITED FRONT

the energetic work of comrades and fellow travelersin the American Newspaper Guild .

The World Congress Against War set up the WorldCommittee Against War, with Henri Barbusse aschairman. The American League Against War andFascism said in its first Organization Hand Book(1935) that "the movement started at the WorldCongress was carried onl" and that "the delegatesfrom the various countries went home and beganimmediately to lay the groundwork for national con-gresses." In the same Organization Hand Book, theAmerican League traces its descent directly from theAmsterdam Congress. (See chart on next page .)

National Organizing Committee for the First United StatesCongress Against War

The American Committee for the Struggle AgainstWar was a little slow in carrying out Moscow's planfor a United States Congress Against War, but inJune, 1933, it got the business under way .

I was the logical choice to head the proposed Na-tional Organizing Committee for the First UnitedStates Congress Against War. From the foregoingpages it should be clear that I was the inevitablechoice. Browder and his colleagues assured me thatthere was not even a second choice under consider-ation. During the previous five months, I had partici-pated actively and enthusiastically in fifteen com-munist front organizations. The record is in theDaily Worker, which the comrades can hardly refute .I had been officially connected with eight of thesefifteen united fronts, and had spoken or worked tire-lessly for the others . No other person in the UnitedStates had such an impressive united front record .

[139]

UNITED STATES CONGRESS AGAINST WAR

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IN THE UNITED FRONT

Consequently, at a meeting in the New School forSocial Research in New York, the National Organiz-ing Committee was formally set up and I was electedchairman unanimously, on the motion of DonaldHenderson.

The first task which I set for myself was that ofpersuading the Socialist Party to enter the new unitedfront. Socialists generally were well aware, throughmuch experience, of the nature and purposes of allcommunist united fronts . Nevertheless, the nationalexecutive committee of the Socialist Party, meetingin Reading, Pennsylvania, accepted my personal in-vitation to make one more try at a united front withthe communists . For several weeks thereafter it ap-peared that a united-front-from-above (as commu-nist jargon expressed it) had been achieved. I waselated, but such an achievement ran contrary to oneof the basic purposes of the communist united frontwhich aimed at separating the so-called rank and fileof the Socialist Party from its own chosen leaders .The Communist, official monthly organ of the Com-munist Party, had but recently declared that "thehighest moment of the united front is when the socialdemocratic masses will turn against their leaders ." 57On the very day that I succeeded in gaining the ad-herence of the Socialist Party to the united front,Earl Browder was saying in his report to the Extra-ordinary Party Conference of the communists: "Theunited front is not a peace pact with the reformists. . . . Have you forgotten that precisely the reasonwhy we make the united front with them is becausewe have got to take their followers away fromthem?"68 It was clear that some of the CommunistParty functionaries were taking the new united front

[141 .]


at face value, having lost sight of the fact that it wasmerely a manoeuvre . "Have you forgotten?" Brow-der asked them . At any rate, here were the leadersof the Socialist Party actively participating in a com-munist united front! The situation was intolerablefrom the standpoint of the prevailing communistunited front theory. Something would have to bedone about it . Immediately, the Daily Worker, offi-cial newspaper of the Communist Party, began aseries of articles in which the Socialist Party's leaderswere vilified with the best communist baiting ." Thearticles had as their calculated purpose, so Hendersonadmitted to me, the driving of the Socialist Party'sleaders out of the united front by insults . The aimof the Communist Party was to have the rank andfile socialists repudiate their own leaders for disrupt-ing a promising united front . The Daily Worker'sinsults were effective, and the Socialist Party with-drew from the National Organizing Committee . Therank and file socialists, however, did not live up tocommunist expectations. They did not repudiatetheir leaders .

Edward Levinson, later on the staff of the NewYork Post, was in charge of the Socialist Party's nego-tiations with the communists on the question of theSocialist Party's participation in the united front inthis instance. The National Executive Committeeof the Socialist Party had appointed a committee ofthree to handle the delicate matter, but one of themembers, Harry W . Laidler, was out of the city,and the other member, Julius Gerber, was inactivethrough incredulity about the possibility of a genu-ine united front with communists . Levinson's wasthe chief responsibility for deciding whether to stay

[142]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

in the National Organizing Committee or to get out .At the time, I criticized Levinson bitterly for hisdecision to withdraw the Socialist Party. I did not, inthe least degree, share the communists' theory ofthe united front as a manoeuvre for destroying otherorganizations. I believed, however, in my naiveMarxist way that, given unlimited patience, we couldcreate a genuine united front of all leftists, that wecould even win the communists over to such anhonest unity if we persisted despite all insults .

Parenthetically, I must say that I myself did notread the Daily Worker in those days. I had not seenthe Daily's articles which offended Levinson and didnot see them until a few days before writing thesewords. I made a habit, while engaging in unitedfront activities, of avoiding the Daily Worker. I didnot wish to run the risk of having my faith in thepossibilities of the united front shattered . In thethree years of my work in the united front I did notsee more than a half dozen issues of this communistpaper. I did not even know there was such a personas Harry Gannes, famous Daily Worker columnist,until he and I got on the boat to go to Cuba asmembers of the Anti-Imperialist League's delegation,and that was several months after the events of whichI am now writing .

Clarence Hathaway, who ranks second to Browderonly in the American Communist Party, also hadsomething revealing to say about the CommunistInternational's new drive for the united-front-from-below in the summer of 1933-the period of the pre-liminary work in setting up the American LeagueAgainst War and Fascism. In the Daily Worker, he

[143]


summed up the position of the Communist Interna-tional, as follows :

It makes this proposal in the sense of calling the bluffof the reformist leaders, with the viewpoint of ex-posing these treacherous mis-leaders as the opponentsof united action, as the enemies of the workers . . . .In this way, the masses will become convinced of theanti-working class character of these bodies and oftheir. leadership. They will be won for the Commu-nist policies, and for the Communist Party .8 °

Norman Thomas, William Green, John L. Lewis,and other so-called reformist leaders were to be in-vited into the new united front of the communists,but only for the purpose of calling their bluff, ofexposing them as treacherous, of alienating theirrank and file members from them, and of winningthese alienated masses to the Communist Party. Thenew scheme in operation today, which has the sameultimate objective of building the Communist Partyout of the wreckage of trade unions and other or-ganizations, works infinitely better .

In very few cases was it possible to enroll A. F. ofL. members in the new united front. In those days,five years ago, the communists were still practising"dual unionism." They had set up their own redunions under an international body with headquar-ters in Moscow. Among these red unions which wereparticipating in the newly formed National Organiz-ing Committee were the National Textile WorkersUnion, the National Mine Workers Union, theMarine Workers Industrial Union, and the NeedleTrade Workers Industrial Union . Some of thesewere largely "paper" unions without any significantmembership, but as long as they existed they were

[144]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

"dual unions." Their presence in our united frontwas all the proof that A. F. of L. unions generallyneeded to prove the communist control of the or-ganization. There were, however, a few A. F. of L.unions in which communists were effectively boring .Although they constituted an insignificant numericalminority in these unions, the "planted" communistswere instructed by the Party to introduce resolutionsof affiliation with the National Organizing Commit-tee. A number of these resolutions were adoptedalthough the union membership generally had noidea of what it was doing . Like many other organi-zations, it is comparatively easy to commit the heed-less membership of a trade union to almost anyresolution that an enthusiastic member offers .

When I complained repeatedly to Donald Hender-son that we were making such slight progress in en-rolling A. F. of L. unions, he reminded me that mywork was to enroll the members of middle-class or-ganizations and that the Communist Party wouldtake care of the trade unions . He assured me thatthe Communists already had several strategic menin important plants and industries where they wouldbe in a position to sabotage vital processes in theevent of war-just in case the United States shouldbecome involved in a war against the Soviet Union .In this connection, Henderson was especially boast-ful of a revolutionary nucleus in submarine plantsin Connecticut and of the work of Harry Bridges inthe shipping industry on the West Coast. They were,Henderson claimed, secretly allied with the Ameri-can League.

Earl Browder himself left no doubt upon the ques-tion of the function of such middle class persons as

[145]


myself, namely, that we were to let the CommunistParty itself take care of organizing the AmericanLeague's work among the trade unionists . In hisreport to the Central Committee of the CommunistParty, in 1934, Browder wrote :

These elements [the middle class] are valuable ; theircontribution to the League has been considerable,but they will themselves be the first to admit that themost important work of the League-rooting it amongthe workers in the basic and war industries-cannotbe done by them, but only the trade unions andworkers' organizations, and first of all by the Com-munists.81

On the letterhead of the National Organizing Com-mittee for the First United States Congress AgainstWar, appear the following names of its supportingorganizations :

American Committee for Struggle Against WarA. F. of L. Trade Union Committee for Unemploy-

ment Insurance and ReliefAnti-Imperialist League of the United StatesBonus Expeditionary Force, Rank and File of AmericaCommunist Party of the U . S. A.Conference for Progressive Labor ActionFarmers National Committee of ActionFarmers Union Cooperative Marketing AssociationFellowship of ReconciliationFinnish Workers' FederationFriends of the Soviet Union"Icor" Association for Jewish Colonization in U . S .

S . R.Intercollegiate Council, League for Industrial Democ-

racyInternational Committee for Political PrisonersInternational Labor DefenseInternational Workers Order

[146]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

John Reed Clubs of the United StatesLabor Sports UnionLeague for Industrial DemocracyLeague of Professional GroupsLeague of Struggle for Negro RightsMarine Transport Workers Industrial Union, I. W. W .Marine Workers Industrial UnionNational Committee to Aid the Victims of German

FascismNational Farmers Holiday AssociationNational Lithuanian Youth FederationNational Miners' UnionNational Student Committee for Struggle Against WarNational Student LeagueNeedle Trades Workers Industrial UnionOhio Unemployed LeaguePennsylvania Committee for Total DisarmamentSteel and Metal Workers Industrial UnionTrade Union Unity LeagueUnemployed Councils, National CommitteeUnited Farmers LeagueUnited Farmers Protective AssociationVeterans' National Rank and File CommitteeWar Resisters LeagueWomen's International League for Peace and FreedomWorkers and Farmers Cooperative Unity AllianceWorkers Ex-Servicemen's LeagueWorkers International ReliefWorld Peaceways, Inc .Women's Peace SocietyWorkers Unemployed Union, I . W. W .Young Communist LeagueYoung Pioneers of AmericaYouth Section, American Committee for Struggle

Against War .6 2

There are forty nine organizations listed here . Thirty-two of these were communist united front organiza-tions, in addition to the Communist Party and theYoung Communist League. Only the remaining

[147]


fifteen were in any way independent of the Com-munist Party. Twenty-three of these organizationsare no longer in existence .

Upon these forty-nine groups and some otherswhich were communist in about the same proportiondepended the activity for enrolling delegates to thefirst United States Congress Against War . Not oneof the non-communist groups was especially enthusi-astic in forming delegations.

Late in the summer of 1933, the communists, actingon instructions from Moscow, added fascism to their"scares." It may shock the average person to learnthat the Communist International, in the earlymonths of Hitler's triumph in Germany, officiallyviewed fascism as a sort of unwitting ally of commu-nism in their common goal of democracy's destruc-tion. This will certainly not make sense to that largegroup of "hopeless idiots" (as Manuilsky calledthem) or "political chickens" (as Dimitroff dubbedthem) who are now clustered around the CommunistParty's spurious "defense of democracy." The blamefor this lies, however, with the "hopeless idiots"rather than with the Communist Party. The lattermade its position perfectly clear in its official pub-lication, the Communist International. It declared :

The establishment of an open fascist dictatorship, bydestroying all the democratic illusions among themasses and liberating them from the influence ofsocial-democracy, accelerates the rate of Germany'sdevelopment towards proletarian dictatorship .

Nothing could be clearer than that. In August, 1931,when the Nazis called for a plebiscite in Prussia witha view to overturning the social democratic govern-

[148]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

ment, the Communist International ordered the com-munists of Germany to vote with the nazis! That'shistory. I landed in Berlin after an airplane trip fromMoscow the day after the plebiscite . Under a pseu-donym I wrote in Lovestone's Revolutionary Age:

Yesterday was the historic occasion of the Prussianplebiscite. Tonight, the papers announce its failure,generally interpreted as the result of non-cooperationby voting communists . Why a last minute decision tovote with the "Right" was made, was obviously farfrom clear to the millions of voting "Lefts ." While itwas probably an ill-advised decision, the central par-ties are taking too much encouragement out of thefailure of the plebiscite . Their papers tonight areinterpreting it as evidence of their own strength andprospects for a new lease on life .63

The next time the reader hears communists or com-munist sympathizers throwing a spasm about fascismor talking about rallying all progressive forces for thedefense of democracy, why not ask them about thegreat and communist-welcomed work of the nazis in"destroying all the democratic illusions among themasses" and the way in which the Communist Inter-national worked with the nazis toward this end inGermany?

United States Congress Against War

At the end of September, 1933, a dingy old hall,known as the St . Nicholas Arena, in New York,housed the first United States Congress Against War .I presided over most of the sessions of the Congress .

Two thousand six hundred and sixteen delegateswere registered at the Congress . They were over-whelmingly pro-Stalinist, due to the fact that only

[149]

U. S. CONGRESS AGAINST WARFRIDAY, SEPT. 29-

8 P.M.

MASS RECEPTION OPENING SESSION"We Iiave been depending on statesmen and diplomatsto preserve the peace of the world . We can do so nolonger. The time has come when we must act ourselves ."

GUEST SPEAKER : HENRI BARBUSSE Co

of "UNDER FIRE". Secretary, WorldSPEAKER :

Committee for Struggle Against War and fascismm

William N . Jones

A. J . Muste

William Pickens

Devere Allen

Harriet Stanton Blotch

Earl Browder

bjjpl

SAME SPEAKERS AT BOTH MEETINGS

MECCA TEMPLE, 135 West 55th Street REINHOLD NIEBUHR, Chairman

ST. NICHOLAS ARENA, 69 West 66th Street J. B. MATTHEWS, Chairman

OPENING OF MEETINGS BY DONALD HENDERSONSecretary, Arrangements Committee, U. S. Congress Against War

CONGRESS SESSIONS-SEPT. 30-OCT. I

BUILD A MASS CONGRESSIN ST . NICHOLAS ARENA

AGAINST WAR!DELEGATES REGISTER ALL DAY FRIDAYIN ST . NICHOLAS ARENA

ELECT DELEGATES!

ADMISSION :

TICKET STATIONS :25c -35c U.S. CONGRESS AGAINST WAR, 104 FIFTH AVE ., Room 1610

RESERVED SEATS WORKERS BOOKSHOP, 50 East Thirteenth StreetO M E . D O L L A R

LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY, 112 E . 19th Street

IN THE UNITED FRONT

the Communist Party among all the participatinggroups had really shown any enthusiasm for the af-fair. Almost from the first moment of the first sessionof the Congress, it was evident, as Browder later toldthe Executive Committee of the Communist Inter-national, that the Communist Party was securelyentrenched in the leadership .

When time came to select a "presiding committee"for the Congress, a member of the Lovestone groupof non-Stalinist communists presented the name ofJay Lovestone to the gathering . Lovestone had onceheld the position now occupied by Earl Browder inthe American Communist Party, but he had beenremoved from the general secretaryship and expelledfrom the Party by the direct intervention of Moscow .When the congress heard his name, pandemoniumbroke loose. There was a literal riot which involveda large section of the hall . My pleas for order wentunheeded and for the most part unheard even witha public address system in operation. I made themistake of inviting Earl Browder to the speakers'stand to ask for the restoration of order . His firstwords were a direct incitation to further riotingagainst the Lovestoneites. The next day, the DailyWorker euphemistically declared that Browder's"first words were overwhelmed in a mighty storm ofapproving applause ." A new way of describing gen-eral disorder and fisticuffs! In the inner circle of thepresiding committee that night, the non-Communist-Party leaders served an ultimatum on Browder whichforced him to choose between allowing a Lovestoneiteto sit on the presiding committee or to face the com-plete breakdown of the united front. Browderyielded, but there was a face-saving device whereby

[151]

PROGRAM OF SESSIONS

UNITED STATES CONGRESS AGAINST WAR

OPENING SESSION

Public Mass Reception

Friday, September 29th, 8 P. M.

St. Nicholas Arena, 69 West 66th StreetChairman : .J . B. Matthews

Mecca Temple, 135 West 55th StreetChairman: Reinhold Niebuhr

Opening of Congress:

Donald Henderson, Secretary, Arrangements Committee, U . S .Congress Against War.Henri Barbusse - Chairman, World Committee for StruggleAgainst War and FascismDevere Allen-Editor, World TomorrowHarriot Stanton Blatch -Feminist, PacifistEarl Browder- General Secretary, Communist Party, U . S . A .Alphonse Goldschmidt - Exiled from Germany, Former Pro-fessor of Economics . University of Leipziq

IN THE UNIT FRONT

one of Lovestone's lieutenants, C . S. Zimmerman,head of Local 22 of the International Ladies' Gar-ment Workers' Union, was seated instead of Love-stone himself. This arrangement was opposed as asubterfuge (which it was) by only one non-Stalinistmember of the arrangements committee, namely Jo-seph P. Lash who has since become the thoroughlyregular pro-Stalinist head of the American StudentUnion .

Without the knowledge of the organizing commit-tee, Browder planned for the dramatic moment ofthe Congress which was to be the unannounced ap-pearance on the speakers' stand of a fully uniformedsoldier from the United States Army . A few daysbefore the Congress, Browder called Mary Fox ofthe League for Industrial Democracy and me to hisoffice on 12th street and let us in on the secret . Thosewere days before the Communist Party had put onthe mask of one hundred per cent American patriot-ism, and it then made no bones about having aninsurrectionary "fraction" of the Party within theUnited States Army. Careful plans were made by theCommunist Party to insure against the soldier's arrestand against his being photographed by news photog-raphers who were present. Comrades were placed inreadiness to block all the aisles of the hall in whichthe Congress was meeting in the event of an at-tempted arrest by secret service men, and committeeswere deputized to take care of all news photographerswith instructions to smash their cameras if they in-sisted on making "shots" of the soldier as he addressedthe Congress. James W. Ford, vice-presidential can-didate of the Communist Party, took my place in the

[153]


chair to introduce the soldier . Whether or not theman in the uniform was a bona fide member of theUnited States Army, I have no way of knowing . Atany rate, his appearance on the platform duly elec-trified the assembled communists who were in thosedays frankly committed to the revolutionary over-throw of the American government and just as frank-ly tampering with the armed forces of the land tothat end. "We also had a delegate from the UnitedStates Army," Browder subsequently told the Execu-tive Committee of the Communist Internationalwhen he appeared before it in Moscow . 64 As one ofits unalterable principles, the Communist Party be-lieves that it must create widespread disloyalty in thearmed forces of a country in order to carry througha successful proletarian revolution. The soldier atthe congress of the American League was hailed asa symbol of the revolutionary moment when enlistedmen dishonoring their solemn oaths would turn theirweapons against their officers and the government .

The United States Congress Against War adopteda manifesto, the ten-point program of which readsas follows :

1 . To work towards the stopping of the manufac-ture and transport of munitions and all other ma-terials essential to the conduct of war, through massdemonstrations, picketing and strikes .

2. To expose everywhere the extensive preparationsfor war being carried on under the guise of aidingNational Recovery .

3. To demand the transfer of all war funds to reliefof the unemployed and the replacement of all suchdevices as the Civilian Conservation Camps, by a fed-eral system of social insurance paid for by the govern-ment and employers.

[154]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

4. To oppose the policies of American imperialismin the Far East, in Latin America, especially now inCuba, and throughout the world; to support the strug-gles of all colonial peoples against the imperialistpolicies of exploitation and armed suppression .

5. To support the peace policies of the SovietUnion, for total and universal disarmament whichtoday with the support of masses in all countries con-stitute the clearest and most effective opposition towar throughout the world ; to oppose all attempts toweaken the Soviet Union, whether these take the formof misrepresentation and false propaganda, diplomaticmaneuvering or intervention by imperialist govern-ments .

6. To oppose all developments leading to fascismin this country and abroad, and especially in Ger-many; to oppose the increasingly widespread use ofthe armed forces against the workers, farmers andthe special terrorizing and suppression of Negroes intheir attempts to maintain a decent standard of living ;to oppose the growing encroachments upon the civilliberties of these groups as a growing fascization ofour so-called "democratic" government .

7. To win the armed forces to the support of thisprogram.

8. To enlist for our program the women in industryand in the home; and to enlist the youth, especiallythose who, by the crisis, have been deprived of train-ing in the industries and are therefore more suscep-tible to fascist and war propaganda .

9. To give effective international support to allworkers and anti-war fighters against their own im-perialist governments .

10. To form committees of action against war andfascism in every important center and industry, par-ticularly in the basic war industries ; to secure the sup-port for this program of all organizations seeking toprevent war, paying special attention to labor, veteran,unemployed and farmer organizations.

It was recognized at the outset and at all times subse-

[155]


quently that only so-called imperialist war was to beopposed by the members of the American League assuch. Other kinds of war were admissible . The ques-tion frequently arose in our meetings as to the atti-tude of the American League toward a war by certainpowers upon the Soviet Union. The answer was al-ways two-fold: if the United States joined in an attackupon the Soviet Union, the American League's firstand only loyalty was to the Soviet Union and to theend of fulfilling this loyalty efforts would be madeto cripple the basic industries of the United Statesand bring about this country's defeat, including mu-tiny in the army; if, on the other hand, the UnitedStates should side with the Soviet Union, then theAmerican League would wholeheartedly support theUnited States, and the war would not be called animperialist war but rather class war on an inter-national scale .

Outright pacifists who abjured all wars, includingclass war, were to be exposed and fought . In theNovember, 1933, issue of the Communist there ap-pears immediately after the Manifesto and Programof the American League, the following excerpt froma resolution of the Sixth World Congress of the Com-munist International :

This duty implies above all a determined political andideological fight against pacifism . . . . The masses mustbe patiently enlighteneas to their error and urgedto join the revolutionary united front in the struggleagainst war. But the pacifist swindlers must be relent-lessly exposed and combated. 65

Recently the American League for Peace and Democ-racy held a parade in New York. Harry ElmerBarnes, newspaper columnist, was among the parade's

[156]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

marshals who were invited to make speeches for theoccasion. Apparently Mr. Barnes went too far in hispacifism and suggested that the United States shouldstay out of war, even a war in defense of the SovietUnion! When the officials of the American Leaguesaw an advance copy of his speech, Mr. Barnes waspromptly notified that he would not be allowed toact as a marshal in the parade or to make a speech .The most pathetic thing about this incident wasBarnes' statement to the press that he had not knownthat "the holy war boys" had got hold of the Ameri-can League. There is hardly any excuse for anymoderately informed adult in the United States whosays that he thought the American League was apeace organization! From its very inception downto the present moment (and this bears constant re-iteration), the American League has been, in effect,a part of an international communist conspiracy toinvolve the United States in a contemplated war onthe side of the Soviet Union, or, failing in that ob-jective, to cripple the United States through mutinyin the Army and the stoppage of basic industries andto inaugurate class war and revolution here. It mustnot be forgotten that Lenin wrote a letter to Ameri-can workers in which he said: "The Americanworkers will not follow the bourgeoisie . They willbe with us for civil war against the bourgeoisie . " 611The Communist Party of the United States has notyet repudiated Lenin or this statement of his . TheBarnes incident should make it perfectly plain, evento certain high government officials in Washington,just what the objectives of the American Leaguereally are. Similar incidents occurred in the beginningof the American League and have recurred since .

[1571

AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM104 FIFTH AVENUE-ROOT 1410

NEW YORK CRYTELVNONE, ALOONOVIN 4-7014

Browder wrote in the Daily Worker recently that I was hiredand fired as secretary of the American League Against War andFascism. Above is the official letterhead of the organization .

IN THE UNITED FRONT

At the close of the last session of the United StatesCongress Against War, Browder came to me and saidwith extraordinary feeling that the Communist Partycould not have put the Congress over without thecontribution which I had made to its success .

Joseph P. Lash, who has already appeared in thisstory as a leader in the Stalinist-dominated AmericanStudent Union and World Youth Congress, wrote inthe Student Outlook of November, 1933, his personalappraisal of the United States Congress Against War .Said Lash :

Possibly the most valuable result of the Congress wasthe re-establishment of communications between re-sponsible representatives of the Communist Party andother organizations . And this is mostly to the creditof Mary Fox and J . B. Matthews 67

The American League Against War and Fascism

At the adjournment of the first United States Con-gress Against War, the committee which had beenselected by the Congress to form a permanent organi-zation met and elected me national chairman of theAmerican League . Donald Henderson was electedsecretary and Ida Dailes was made assistant secretary .Both Henderson and Miss Dailes were members ofthe Communist Party . Earl Browder was elected vice-chairman, as was also William Pickens of the Na-tional Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople .

In a speech in which he purported to reply pub-licly to my testimony before the Dies Committee, andwhich was published in full in the Daily Worker,Earl Browder said :

[159]

Prepare to Stop W A R !!Demand Pubfic Works - No War Works!

MassDemonstrationAGAINSTW A R !!

Farragut S Q.17th & 11 Sts; NW

12 NoonJANUARY29, 193 4

SPEAKERS

Corliss Lamont

Clarence Hathaway

J. B . Matthews

Ella Reeve Bloor

Henry ShepherdCharles Spencer

H. W . L. Dana

AUSPICES

There is no time to waste!Our Governments are preparing for war . War appears to the rulers

..^s a way out of the crisis! WAR is becoming a POLICY with everyimperialist power, including the United States .

What are these C. C . C . camps if not training grounds for .the futurearmy to he used in the war?

What is military training in the schools if not preparation for war?What are these numerous "war games" on the water and in thee air

if not preparations for war?What is this modernization of the army, modernization of battle-

ships, and the huge increase in aerial forces of the United States,, if not_preparation for war?

While we are speaking such phrases as : War is impossible ; UnitedStates does not want war ; U. S . Government is a peace government-munition plants are working overtime ; poison gas is being manufacturedin huge quantities ; tanks and armored cars are being turned_ out by thethousands.

THE BULK OF THE APPROPRIATIONS FOR PUBLICWORKS IS TURNED TO MILITARY PURPOSES!

Yet there are no funds for the millions of unemployed!Yet there are no funds for teachers!Yet there are no funds for schools!Yet there are no fu-tds for libraries and playgrounds!YET the government employees are cut 15 per cent!ACTION IS NECESSARY!The Unemployed cannot, eat bullets or live in battleships . They

need relief.The young men do not want to be regimented in . forest camps, the,c

want jobs .The children need schools, and play grounds and parks .

WE MUST SET UP A MIGHTY PROTEST AGAINST WARPREPARATION . WE MUST APPEAL TO YOU WORKERS, STU.DENTS, TEACHERS. INTELLECTUALS, NEGROES, GOVERN-MENT EMPLOYEES-TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE NOTHINBUT MISERY AND DEATH TO GAIN FROM WAR-PROTEST!

JOIN WITH US TO STOP THE WAR PREPARATIONS O :OUR GOVERNMENT!

SUPPORT THE DELEGATION TO THE WHITE HOUSCWHICH IS BRINGING THE DEMAND: "NO WAR WORKS-BUT PUBLIC WORKS!"

COME TO THE MASS DEMONSTRATION AT FARRAGUT PARK

OF AMERICAN LEAGUE AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM .Washington Branch, 532 17th Street N. W.,

The speakers listed above were all communists or fellow travelers.

IN THE UNITED FRONT

Their star witness was a certain J . B. Matthews whofor a short time, several years ago, was a secretary for[the American League for Peace and Democracy]which he now pretends to "expose from within ." . . .When he was hired as secretary by the AmericanLeague it was not at Communist initiative, and whenhe was fired the same thing was true . 68

This is as good a specimen of communist lying as onecould ask. I was national chairman, without salary,of the American League . Of course Browder knowsthis, but habit is a tenacious force . I was not hired assecretary of the League, and I was not at any time byany stretch of the imagination-even a communistimagination-fired from any position which I everheld in the League . All of this is well known toBrowder. It is, furthermore, spread over numerousissues of the Daily Worker that I was national chair-man of the organization. It would, obviously, havebeen just as easy for Browder to state this simple factof my chairmanship as it was for him to falsify therecord, but communists, it must be borne in mind,have a strange predilection for falsehood even whenthey have no reason to expect a class advantage frommendacity. All of us are liable to lapses of memorywithin certain limits, but that is not a possible ex-planation in this instance . I leave it to the Methodistclergymen and the professors of Christian Ethics atUnion Theological Seminary, who are closely associ-ated with Browder's manoeuvres, to explain away theethical characteristics of their communist associates .

The most ambitious, and eventually the most influ-ential, of all the Communist Party's united front or-ganizations was under way . To avoid any confusion

[161]

cum V--M V R- AREPORT OR DELEGATION'

JUST RETURNED FM DATTLEFIELD

JIBIMatthewsThe Iaertcar, tease I oa!crt

tear' and Fascism, keca+ ng that Hers_ '

CN A 1-R M F~papers tell very little of the-truthatout what is rappee?Cts'io CCEG

D e vised t sand omereack-,1ih

A M E R I C R Nto ir.ves-gate and ccmatak"-rtl: ey,efitness reports . The Delegates spent

FQjtwoweeks visttirg Government ^fficals

Soldiers, '-Workers Studer.'ts, and,speak1eg

_ACQFIINaT-at ma s aeetinps . :attended ty all sectionsof the- population .

t . ee cea is, Ap a1l Chairman ^_'f.

~~ ~The American League k.gFrst Warar &3

EFascism

Founded at the U . S . Coegr-ss ipaicet War .-Beis executive Secretary.of the Fell wsht*` of

AN DFe coccilatioc,and a wester of the'$OCtF11at-

FAS C I S Mparty .

Will telll what me saw in ICUtF .LR BORo NSTtsTUTE-SL A

.uvr,TUES. J FU N, 23 8P•m-At1ERICEHN

ADMISSION Z5%LPW, KE

THIS INCLUDESHGF 1N5T

TWO MONTH* SUB .ToWAR &

"PICrI`-ITFF 5CISM

MFRCiRZINEA6RINST WAR &FASCi 5M

ReTO', Rn PSOe of eke,,.meo Lncaa .

Notice of a meeting of the American League Against War and Fascismin Philadelphia .

IN THE UNITED FRONT

of names in dealing with subsequent events, it shouldbe stated here that the name of the American LeagueAgainst War and Fascism was changed in November,1937, to the American League for Peace and Democ-racy. Almost simultaneously the Canadian LeagueAgainst War and Fascism became the CanadianLeague for Peace and Democracy. Unlike the leop-ard, the Communist Party can change its spots withthe greatest of ease .

The American League now claims four million ad-herents. It is safe to say, however, that many of theseso-called adherents are not aware of their adherence .Communists have a nice way of calculating grand to-tals, such as these four million American Leaguers,and the even more impressive forty millions for whichthe recent World Youth Congress was declared tospeak, or the fifteen million young people who are al-leged to be represented in the American Youth Con-gress. If a real or alleged delegate of the MethodistEpworth Leagues appears in one of these unitedfronts, for example, then the entire membership ofthe Epworth Leagues is counted as adhering to themovement. It does not matter that relatively fewEpworth Leaguers may have heard of the unitedfront organization. But even when we make due al-lowances for peculiar communist mathematics, itmust be conceded that the American League forPeace and Democracy has made its influence felt inwide circles-an influence large enough to justify thepride of the Communist Party in its handiwork .

The influence of the American League for Peaceand Democracy is, perhaps, better measured in quali-tative terms than by the number of its adherents,real or alleged . When, for example, the League helda "peace" parade in New York on August 6, 1938, the

[163

J . B. MATTHEWSNational Chairman of the American League Against War and Fas .cism - Former National Executive See'y of the Fellowship of Re •conciliation - Member Executive Committee League for IndustrialDemocracy - On a recent Anti-imperialist Delegation to Cuba tostudy conditions there - Noted Journalist - Leader in the StruggleAgainst War and Fascism .

WkU Speck On :

"Is America Going Fascist?"WEDNESDAY 10 JANUARY

8.00 P . M .

1 9 3.4

At The

FRANKLIN UNION HALL41 Berkeley St., near Appleton, Boston, Mass.

REV. GEORGE L. PAINEGreater Boston Federation of Churches,

Will Also Speak

PROF. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW DANA, Chairman

Auspices:

AMERICAN LEAGUE AGAINST WAR AND FASCISM

ADMISSION FREE

ALL WELCOMEI

Notice of a meeting of the American League Against War and Fascismin Boston .

IN THE UNITED FRONT

Daily Worker proudly displayed a telegram of en-dorsement of the parade from no less a personagethan the Solicitor General of the United States, Rob-ert H. Jackson 88 For its 1937 parade in New York,it boasted Elmer Benson, Governor of Minnesota, asits principal speaker . 70

In the closing days of the Seventy-Fifth Congress,the Honorable Jerry J . O'Connell of Montana in-serted in the Congressional Record a statement pre-pared by the American League for Peace and Democ-racy. The statement purported to list 1000 unions,in 46 States and Canada [sic], which, at the solicita-tion of the American League, had asked the Congressof the United States for the passage of the so-calledO'Connell Peace Act .

We may pass over the question of the propriety ofa Congressman's claiming the support of Canadianlabor unions for a measure which he has pending be-fore the Congress of the United States . The interfer-ence of Canadian unions in legislative matters whichare strictly the business of the government and peopleof the United States naturally would not suggest med-dling to a group which owes its existence to explicitinstructions from the Communist International andwhose entire program is carried out under directionsformulated in Moscow .

According to the statement inserted in the Con-gressional Record by the Montana statesman, theCanadian unionists petitioned the Congress of theUnited States to enact legislation "denying our eco-nomic resources to the war-making treaty-breaking ag-gressors." Just how any part of the title to "our eco-nomic resources" came to rest with Canadian union-ists is a question which Mr. O'Connell may be able

[165]


to answer with satisfaction to his Montana constitu-ents. It is interesting to observe that the full list ofthese 1000 unions appeared in two publications only-the Daily Worker and the Congressional Record .

To argue that the American League for Peace andDemocracy is a communist organization is like argu-ing that Lansing is in Michigan . To the first na-tional chairman of the organization, or to any poli-cally informed person acquainted with leftist groups,it is preposterous that any one should be either soignorant or so wilfully mendacious as to deny that thecommunists launched the League and have, eversince, dominated it .The New York Post, for reasons best known to its

editors, seriously misrepresents the situation when iteditorializes "that there is strong Communist influ-ence in the American League for Peace and Democ-racy." 71 The American League is not a case of a gen-eral peace organization, coming from only the Postknows where, into which communists have pene-trated in order to establish themselves in a positionof "strong influence ." At least one writer on theNew York Post, Edward Levinson, could have in-formed his colleagues more accurately, because it wasLevinson more than any other individual who as-sumed the responsibility for keeping the SocialistParty out of the American League for the expressreason that it was a Communist Party organizationinitiated and controlled by the Communist Party .The National Organizing Committee of the FirstUnited States Congress Against War, from whichLevinson withdrew the Socialist Party, was nothing

[1661

IN THE UNITED FRONT

more nor less than the American League in one ofits incipient stages .

Apart from the facts which I have already cited,there is the fact of Henri Barbusse's connection withthe founding of the American League to reveal thehand of the Communist International in setting upthis united front . A recent issue of the Daily Workerstates categorically that Henri Barbusse was thefounder of the American League . "Henri Barbussewho came here to found the American LeagueAgainst War and Fascism," is the exact language ofthe Daily Worker . 72 In the closing years of his lifeBarbusse was among the foremost international fig-ures of the Communist International . In fact, thisfamous French writer died in the Kremlin shortlyafter completing an absurd biography of JosephStalin. He was already a victim of advanced tubercu-losis when the Comintern sent him to the UnitedStates to appear at the first United States CongressAgainst War and to tour the country on behalf ofthe newly founded organization . Certainly theunited front arrangements committee which con-vened the first Congress of the American League hadnothing to do with inviting Barbusse to this country .Even I as chairman of this committee was notified ofthe arrival of Barbusse only a few days before hislanding in New York .

It was in his capacity as chairman of the WorldCommittee Against War that he came to the UnitedStates in the fall of 1933 to aid in launching theAmerican League. The Constitution of the Commu-nist International states explicitly that "the Sectionsaffiliated to the Communist International must main-tain close organizational and informational contact

[167]


with each other, arrange for mutual representationat each other's conferences and congresses, and withthe consent of the E . C. C. I. [Executive Committeeof the Communist International] exchange leadingcomrades." It is perfectly clear that comrade Bar-busse was in the United States "with the consent ofthe E. C. C. I .," and not by invitation of the unitedfront arrangements committee of the United StatesCongress Against War .

Shortly after the founding of the AmericanLeague, Earl Browder went to Moscow where he re-ported to the Thirteenth Plenum of the ExecutiveCommittee of the Communist International, as fol-lows: "Our most successful application of the unitedfront has been in the anti-war and anti-fascist move-ment. We led a highly successful United States Con-gress Against War. . . . The Congress from the begin-ning was led by our Party quite openly. ."13 Thisshould dispose, once and for all, of the question ofwhether or not the American League was launchedby the Communist Party . It should enlighten thegoodly number of the clergy, professors, trade union-ists, and other innocents who have been gulled intothe Party's activities without knowing it .An amusing instance of "innocence" occurred at

the American League's third annual congress whichassembled in Cleveland. A local Jewish Rabbi hadbeen invited to give a welcome address to the assem-bled Stalinists and their fellow-travelers . Naively hewalked right into a faux pas by urging that the taskof the American League be broadened to include afight against communism as well as against war andfascism. Instead of taking the Rabbi's suggestion asan affront, the delegates buzzed with amusement .

[168]

BILLION

WHILECLOSE

DOLLARS

UNEMPLOYED ARE-HUNGRYWORKERS LIVE IN MISERY

FOR WAR!

FARMERS LOSE THEIR LAND

United States Governmenttalks peace tad work. for war.

585 million dollars of PublicWorks' money has been given_ tothe Army and Navy. This is inaddition to the regular budget ofhalf a billion dollars for war par-poses .

On January 29th, a large dele-gation of the AMERICANLEAGUE AGAINST WAR ANDFASCISM is going to Washingtonto protest against this use of pub-lic funds . The delegation will daawnd that this money be used for

LIFENOT

DEATH!

The delegation wants your sap .pert. It will be backed up byhuge mane meetings all over thecomiry. Two of the delegateswill come back from Washingtonby airplane afar visiting the Pres-iaenn the secretaries of War andof the Navy, and Congress.

SUPPORTTHE DELEGATION BYCOMING TO THE MEETING

TO DEMAND:

PUBLIC WORKS-NOT WAR WORKS!

CASH RELIEF AND UNEMPLOY.MENT .INSURANCE-

NOT .BOMBING PLANES!

BUILD SCHOOLSNOT BATTLESHIPS!

MASS MEETING

solar

AGAINST

THE BILLION DOLLARWAR BUDGET

AT

ST. NICHOLAS ARENA69 WEST 66TH STREET

MONDAY, JANUARY 29th, AT 8P. M.

0

SPEAKERS :

J. B. MATTHEWS

EARL BROWDERHAROLD NICKERSON LEROY BOWMAN

Chairman: Dr. ADDISON CUTLER

TICKETS: MAIN FLOOR, 35cBALCONY..25c

AUSPICESAMERICAN LEAGUEAGAINST WAR AND FASCISM104 FIFTH AVENUE Room 1610ALGONQUIN 47514

The meeting at which Harold Hickerson caused Miss Dorothy Detzerto become so enraged over the communist united front-and justlyenraged .

f


Anyone who has doubts about who controls theAmerican League may apply a simple and sure-firetest. Let him arise at a meeting of the organization,or at a meeting of any one of these other unitedfront manoeuvres, and propose a resolution which inany way reflects the view that the Soviet Union issomething less than paradise or a resolution whichsuggests that we should not have a communist regimein the United States. On the basis of what happensafter that, the doubter may resolve all his doubts .

The National Peace Conference,, to which prac-tically all of the peace organizations of the UnitedStates are affiliated, has to date declined with empha-sis all proposals that the American League for Peaceand Democracy be admitted to its affiliated bodies .The action of the National Peace Conference hasbeen based upon the knowledge that the AmericanLeague is a communist united front organization .In October, 1938, the Women's International

League for Peace and Freedom severed its affiliationwith the American League for Peace and Democ-racy." In doing so, the Women's InternationalLeague went out of its way to cast reflections uponthe testimony which has been given before the DiesCommittee. Inasmuch as my own testimony dealtmore extensively than that of any other witness withthe question of the communist character of theAmerican League, I may be permitted to assume thatthese disinguished ladies were challenging my state-ments on this point. I have in my possession letters,written in January, 1934, in which the executive sec-retary of the Women's International League mincesno words about the way in which the communistswere running the American League . She wrote :

[170

IN THE UNITED FRONT

I'm through with this group . We don't really belongin it. The only two times I've spoken before theLeague the Communists have followed and had thefinal "say." . . . I'm dead tired struggling to keep theW. I. L. in a group where the speakers do what hap-pened tonight. . . . I hardly remember a time whenI have been so enraged and furious as I was when Ileft that meeting . . . and I think the answer is thatI personally have no place in the United Front or-ganization. There are limits to how much people arewilling to be kicked in the face either publicly orprivately, and I am about at the end of my patiencein regard to it.

Despite the fervor of those remarks by its executivesecretary, the Women's International League forPeace and Freedom continued its affiliation with theAmerican League for several years . Having nowsevered its affiliation at this late date, the Women'sInternational League may be applauded for its ac-tion, but it performed a work of supererogation whenit undertook to berate the work of the Dies Commit-tee and the testimony of the Committee's witnesses .

The American League got off to a poor start . Not-withstanding the fact that the Communist Party putthree of its international figures on tour for the pur-pose of publicizing the American League, there waspractically no response anywhere to the organizationalefforts of the united front. Large audiences, com-posed almost entirely of the middle-class intellectuals,went to hear Henri Barbusse, Tom Mann, and JohnStrachey-the three horsemen of the communist apoc-alypse who had been imported from abroad-butneither individuals nor new groups joined the Amer-

[171]


ican League in any but trivial numbers . The organi-zation was everywhere known to be under the leader-ship of the Communist Party, precisely as Browderhad claimed it to be, and the Party had not yetadopted the "Trojan horse" tactic of boring fromwithin trade unions and middle-class organizations bythe use of what Georgi Dimitroff was later to de-scribe as "transitional slogans ." 75 Party speakers andParty literature for the next two years were deliver-ing stinging tirades against bourgeois democracy ;Earl Browder was declaring that "Roosevelt operateswith all of the arts of `democratic' rule, with an em-phasized liberal and social-demagogic cover" and that"Roosevelt is carrying out more thoroughly, morebrutally than Hoover, the capitalist attack against theliving standards of the masses and the sharpest na-tional chauvinism in foreign relations" ; 76 HeywoodBroun was faithfully following the Party "line" bycalling from the highest perch of the American News-paper Guild that Roosevelt was "Labor's Public En-emy No. 1 " ; and the Communist Party was statingofficially that if the united front meant the endingof the struggle by the communists against John L .Lewis, "this condition the Communists will neveraccept, because this condition is a united front againstthe working class." 77 Eventually when the Partydropped the "dictatorship of the proletariat" fromits vocabulary and adopted the "transitional slogan"about the defense of democracy, it had better luckwith its united front ruse .

To the end of building a mass revolutionary baseamong the workers of the major industries, commu-nists and non-communists in the American Leaguerecognized the importance of having some good

[172]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

middle-class window-dressing in the form of nameswith news value. Whatever may be true of its self-appointed leaders, the proletariat has a distinct in-feriority complex which, as communists assume intheir united front manoeuvres, leads it to join what-ever the "best" people have joined or sponsored. Themost valuable middle-class decoys in the communistunited front are those whose names have not beenassociated too publicly with radical causes. Therewas, therefore, great jubilation in the headquartersof the American League on the occasion when wewere able to print the name of Mrs . William DickSporborg, General Federation of Women's Clubs, asa speaker at one of the mass meetings of the League .(Mrs. Sporborg is no longer an officer of the Federa-tion.) The first half dozen such decoys were the hard-est to get; after that the decoys decoyed each other,and the ease of assembling an impressive lot ofmiddle-class window-dressing increased by geometri-cal progression . When any one of these united frontdecoys suspected that he had been drawn into a com-munist manoeuvre, he was reassured that such couldnot be the case and was asked rhetorically if he be-lieved that this Methodist Bishop or that Union The-ological Seminary professor looked like a communist .The law of diminishing returns operates to reducethe decoying power of names which have been usedover and over for years. The disguise has been wornthin, for example, in the case of such names as thoseof Professor Robert Morss Lovett, Bishop Francis J .McConnell, Arthur Garfield Hays, Professor Rein-hold Niebuhr, Professor Harry F . Ward, and RogerN. Baldwin .

In my organizational tours as chairman of the[1731

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IN THE UNITED FRONT

American League, 1 was compelled to have initialcontacts with, the undercover respectables who do theCommunist Party's work as united fronters in theircommunities. The Party had no choice but to supplyme with the names of these persons . At Amherst Col-lege there was a professor of economics who was al-ways available as Party window-dressing . At JohnsHopkins University there was an instructor in philos-ophy who performed the same service for the com-rades. Here, there, and yonder, were authors, clergy-men, professors, lawyers, and club women . Some ofthem were willing and knowing stooges, others wereinnocent joiners of, or speakers for, almost anythingthat had a good slogan with a flavor of idealism . To-day, the Communist Party has thousands of themstrategically placed in middle-class society, most ofthem having a stoopdown rather than an uplift com-plex from which they derive the thrill of vicariousidentification with what they imagine to be the down-trodden proletariat. They include more than a dozenUnited States Senators and Representatives, at leastone member of the President's cabinet who is a pres-idential aspirant, three or four Methodist bishops,and some eminent authors and scientists .How was the American League financed? The

procedure was four-fold. First, there was the nickel-dime-and-quarter drive upon the masses and the in-nocents. Next came the money-raising banquets forthe upper middle class with Henri Barbusse, JohnStrachey, or Tom Mann as speaker . When thesewere insufficient, money was borrowed on notessigned by Corliss Lamont-the original midget onMorgan's lap. And finally, in a pinch we got Browderon the telephone and had him send over cash from

[175]


the Party chest which, I was told, was regularlystocked from Moscow. When one of our publicitystories included the name of Corliss Lamont, therewas a rule that his family connections with the Houseof Morgan should be given appropriate emphasis .

What little united front of leftist organizationsthere was in the American League was breached bythe conduct of the Communist Party in connectionwith a demonstration on behalf of the Austrian social-ists who were being suppressed by the regime ofChancellor Dollfuss . The demonstration was sched-uled for Madison Square Garden on February 16,1934, under the auspices of New York trade union-ists and socialists . Some 500,000 workers of NewYork joined in a citywide demonstration, a generalstoppage of work having been declared for threeo'clock. Madison Square Garden was packed to ca-pacity, and among the announced speakers wereMayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Matthew Woll . Atthe very outset of the meeting in the Garden, mem-bers of the Communist Party precipitated a riot whichmade all speeches impossible and which finally brokeup the meeting . I was in Detroit at the time tryingto set up a local branch of the American League . Ireceived a telegram from Earl Browder asking foran interview with me in Detroit . When I met Brow-der, the substance of his defense was that the Com-munist Party had so conditioned its members to ahatred of LaGuardia and Woll that it was powerlessto control them at a meeting where these two wereannounced to speak . Without any hesitation, Brow-der shouldered full responsibility for what had oc-

[176]

CLASS OF SERVICE

This Is a full-rateTelegram or Cable-gram unless its de-ferred character is in-dicated by a suitablesign above or precedeinrt the address,

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JSIGNSWESTERN

UNION (24)

n. a. WNITi

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feaaleENT

CHAIRMAN 01 THE BOARD

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,13a

time as ahortn lathe dateline on full-rate telegrams end day letters, and thetimeof receipt atdeatfaation as shown on all mnages, is STANDARD TIME.-,

Received at 124 East Kearsley Street, Flint, Mich . Telephone 25151

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WL BROWDER~.


curred at the Garden, and made a plea for me to re-main as chairman of the American League . TheGarden incident was much too raw for a completewhitewash of the Communist Party, but the Ameri-can Civil Liberties Union set up a committee whichissued a pussyfooting statement on the episode .

I resigned the national chairmanship. of the Ameri-can League as a gesture of protest against the be-havior of the Communist Party at Madison SquareGarden. Harry F. Ward, professor at Union Theo-logical Seminary, succeeded me in the position andhas retained the chairmanship of the League eversince. Professor Ward is also chairman of the Ameri-can Civil Liberties Union and of the Methodist Fed-eration for Social Service . Under his leadership, theAmerican League has been rebuilt into a far moreeffective united front agency of the Communist Partythan it was before the affair of the Garden .

From Michigan, I telegraphed my resignation asnational chairman of the American League . It wasclear enough to me that the chairmanship was theonly relationship which I had with the League .Nevertheless, the communists who remained prac-tically alone in the League's National Bureau at-tempted to make it appear that I was still supportingthe League as some sort of member. Personally, Iam still at a loss to understand why they set suchgreat value upon my connections with their unitedfront, but the record is perfectly clear that they con-sidered me of some vital importance to their pur-poses.

In order to leave no doubts about the completeseverance of my connection with the League, I sent

[178)

IN THE UNITED FRONT

the following letter to the League's Bureau :

40 West 93rd Street,New York, N. Y .,March 11, 1934.

Ida Dailes, Assistant Secretary,American League Against War and Fascism,112 East 19th Street,New York City.

Dear Ida :I have read with astonishment the statement in the

release prepared by the Bureau of the AmericanLeague Against War and Fascism that "at the sametime the Chairman of the Executive Committee re-signs his post without resigning from the League ."This is certainly suggestive of the drowning manclutching at strawsl The League must be desperatelyput to it when this sort of a statement is sent out .What could it possibly mean to resign from theLeague? I am not and never have been a member ofthe League . In fact there is no such category as thatof "member of the League ." Besides the affiliatedorganizations, there have to my knowledge been only"enlisted supporters," and a few individuals like my-self who were officers of the League without eitherrepresenting an organization or being enlisted sup-porters. My only connection with the League was mychairmanship of the Executive Committee which mademe ex-officio the chairman of the Bureau. If there isany doubt in any quarter about the extent of myrelationship to the League as I have thus defined it,then let us clear up any further possible misunder-standing by making it final and unequivocal that Ibear no relationship of any character whatsoever tothe League .

In my letter to the Bureau in which I stated brieflymy reasons for resigning I closed with the followingwords: "The United Front must not die. But that isnot the same thing as saying that any particular united

[1791


front enterprise must be kept alive after it has ceasedto hold possibilities for expressing the united front ."How is it possible that these words could be misunder-stood? I do still believe in the crying need for a unitedfront of all working class elements in the fight againstwar and fascism, but I am convinced finally and with-out any equivocation that the League is now and mustcontinue to be a hollow gesture of a united front .Elsewhere in the letter I stated that in my opinion"the difficulties of continuing at this time are insur-mountable." By insurmountable I mean insur-mountable!

I had hoped that this judgment would be sharedby all those who had been in the League, though Istated that it would be impertinent for me to try toinfluence the rest of you, after I myself had foundit necessary to withdraw . On the evening of March1st when I talked with Roger Baldwin at the Fra-ternity Clubs Building I stated to him categoricallythat I was out of the League. If any of the rest ofyou feel that there is anything left of the united frontin the League, I have not wanted to make your taskmore difficult by attacking the League, and I hope youwill not by any further misrepresentation of my posi-tion draw from me a statement which will have to beinclusive in its indictment .

Sincerely yours,J. B. MATTHEWS

From the foregoing letter, it should be clear that Ihad not abandoned my belief in the need for a gen-uine united front of all Marxist and near-Marxistgroups. In fact, I continued to work to that end formore than a year following my resignation as na-tional chairman of the League .

In April, 1935, I received a letter from the Leaguewhich stated that "it was unanimously decided" toinvite me to become a member of the League's Bu-

[180]

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NATIONAL BUREAU

ROGER BALDWINLEROY E . BOWMANELMER CARTER

MARGARET FORSYTHCLARENCE HATHAWAYHAROLD NICKERSONWILLIAM P. MANGOLDSAMUEL C. PATTERSON .HARRY F . WARD

SECRETARIAL STAFF

CHARLES WEBBERWWALDO

LDO M cNUT7

IDAmDAILES

DOROTHY MCCONNELL

JAMES LERNER

.393

AMERICAN LEAGUE

AGAINST WAR AND FASCISMA mov.m.M to unit. i n common n,i,bna fo W.r .nd F.wum .11 org .nu.tbmmod individm.l, ,ho .r. oppoud to to, .II'Nd d.,troy.n of -kind

112 E. 19TH STREET. ROOM 605NEW YORK CITY

J . B. MatthewsWashington, N . J .

Dear Mr . Matthews :

At the meeting of the National Bureau on April 1 5th .i t was unanimously decided that you be invited to ac-cept a place on the Bureau if you can find it possibleto attend the meetings on the first and third Mondaysof the month, at 5 :00 p.m .

If you find that it is absolutely impossible for youto attend these meetings regularly, we should like youto accept membership on the National Executive Committee .Membership on this Committee will not necessitate atten-dance at the Bureau meetings .

We would appreciate very much your decision to accepteither of these positions and will be grateful for yourprompt response . We will send you notice of the nextBureau meeting should you so wish.

Sincerely yours,

ID . IF

Administration Secretary

TELEPHONE: ALGONOYIN E_ S ETE4

nesHARRYI F . WARD

April 29 . 1935ROBERT MORSS LOVETT

LINCOLNS

EFFENS

EARL BROWDER

WILLIAM P . MANGOLD


reau once more. (See photograph of letter on pre-ceding page.) I accepted this invitation, and re-mained a member until my resignation following theeffort of communists to destroy Consumers' Researchof which I was vice-president.

In my testimony before the Dies Committee, I didnot say that I resigned from the Bureau of theLeague (September, 1935) "because of any patheti-cally shattered 'idealism .'" Yet the American Leagueissued a release in which it imputed such testimonyto me. This is simply one more case of the familiarcommunist technique of denying what was not said .I resigned from the League's Bureau, as my letter ofresignation to it plainly states, because I did not wishto embarrass the League. I was engaged in fightingthe communists in their effort to destroy Consumers'Research, and the American League being a commu-nist united front organization was naturally embar-rassed by the spectacle of having one of its officers soengaged. Stupidly, and as though unable to compre-hend the English language, the American Leaguepublished my letter in its release in which it de-clared that I had not resigned because of an y "pathe-tically shattered idealism ." Even though opposed tothe communists in the specific situation at Consum-ers' Research, just as I had opposed them over theMadison Square Garden incident and on other occa-sions, I still considered myself a fairly good Marxist-a believer in the need for a revolutionary overthrowof capitalism-and my letter proves just that. In thatletter, I said : "In taking leave, may I express mydeepest hope that the work of the League may growin effectiveness day by day as it confronts the deepen-ing crisis of the world situation ." Certainly that is

[182]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

not the language of one who has given up belief inthe desirability of the united front .

In addition to my unmistakably clear letter of res-ignation to the Bureau of the League, I sent a letterto Professor Harry F . Ward who had succeeded me asnational' chairman of the League . Professor Ward re-plied to this letter, as follows :

Oct. 13, 1935 .Dear J. B .

I greatly appreciate the spirit shown in your resig-nation from the Bureau of the American League .Your readiness to subordinate your personal for-

tunes to the advancement of the common cause atthis point commands my respect .I wonder if you would care to have me show your

letter to Browder and Hathaway .Faithfully,

(Signed) HARRY F . WARD

My united front activities ceased at the time of theso-called strike at Consumers' Research, but it wasnot until many months later that I finally reachedthat point in my thinking where I believed that col-lectivism-whether of the right or the left-would, ifit continued its march, usher in a new dark age formankind. I had been years in arriving at a belief insocialism (or communism in the sense in whichMarx expounded it), and I was equally slow in re-jecting that belief. To the last moment of a gradu-ally expiring faith, as long as I could discern thefaintest possibility that substantial contributions to-ward the making of the New World might lie in theleftist movement, I clung to a belief in radicalism. Icannot name the precise day on which I became asocialist or the precise day on which I ceased to be

[1831


one. Both processes were extended and cumulative .What I do know and what I did tell the Dies Com-mitee was that I had reached

the deep conviction that present-day radicalism ingeneral and communism in particular is the most com-plete illusion ever born in the human brain, that itsusually sincerely held ideals of liberty, fraternity,equality, and security are certain to be negated bytheir extreme opposites if communists ever come intocomplete possession of the government of this country .

We are now prepared to look at the genealogy ofthis most successful of all communist united fronts :The Communist International begat the Amster-

dam World Congress. (August, 1932)The Amsterdam World Congress begat the World

Committee Against War. (1932-)The World Committee Against War begat the

American Committee for the Struggle Against War .(1932-1933)The American Committee for the Struggle Against

War begat the National Organizing Committee forthe First United States Congress Against War. (June-September, 1933)The National Organizing Committee begat the

First United States Congress Against War. (Septem-ber 29-October 1, 1933)

The First United States Congress Against Warbegat the American League Against War and Fas-cism. (October, 1933)The American League Against War and Fascism

was rechristened the American League for Peace andDemocracy. (November, 1937)

What the offspring of the American League for[184]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

Peace and Democracy may be, only time will tell .The League now wishes ardently to father a Soviet-American military alliance in the world war whichit anticipates. To this end, it is now passionately woo-ing the New Deal Administration. It is sending boxesof "collective security" chocolates daily. It went intoa veritable fit of love-making when its advances weregiven the encouragement of the President's "quaran-tine the aggressor" speech in October, 1937 .The League, however, contemplates an alternative

fatherhood. If it should fail to win the hand of theNew Deal or any other administration of the UnitedStates government, it will then revert to its first love,Discontent, with the hope of begetting Civil War.Its progeny, Civil War, will, according to its fondparent's hopes, "attack the class enemy in the rear"in the event that the United States joins in the attackof the capitalist powers upon the Soviet Union .[Whichever of these wars the American Leaguemight beget first (if either), the Communist Partyitself hopes eventually to destroy American capitalismthrough civil war .]

Committee for Investigating Conditionsin the Furriers' Union

In the summer of 1933, I was invited to become amember of a committee to investigate the labor situ-ation in the fur industry. This invitation came fromthe National Committee for the Defense of PoliticalPrisoners, which I knew to be a communist unitedfront organization .Factional warfare among the fur workers had

reached the point of extreme violence and bloodshed .No one could doubt the need for a thorough and im-

[185]


partial investigation . I consented to serve on theinvestigating committee, with the hope that the situ-ation might be fairly probed . I was not long in dis-covering, however, that my hope was an idle dream,and, incidentally, I learned a great deal from first-hand experience about the technique of communistunited front investigating committees .

Hearings were held at the Labor Temple on 14thStreet in New York, but the witnesses were all of onefaction. Norman Thomas and other socialists wereinvited to appear, ostensibly to make the hearings im-partial, but Thomas and the socialists declined the in-vitation in view of the origin and composition of theinvestigating committee .

The communist device of "investigating" is to setup packed committees whose only. function is tobring in findings which are in the nature of a white-wash for the communist faction involved in the dis-pute and an indictment of the communist faction'sopposition . Usually a stooge, whose chief gift is alarge amount of political naivet6, is made chairmanof the committee. Two or three other stooges are oftenfound sprinkled among the committee's membership .The general outlines of the findings to be reportedcould be written in advance by any left-wing politi-cally informed person, even though he were in re-tirement on the slopes of Mt . Everest .

Even at the time, it did not appear to me to be anact of gross impropriety or a confession of socialistguilt on the part of Norman Thomas when he de-clined to appear as a witness before our committee .Two years later, however, when Norman Thomas ac-cepted membership on an equally packed communistunited front committee which was set up under the

[186]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

chairmanship of Reinhold Niebuhr for the ostensiblepurpose of investigating the so-called strike at Con-sumers' Research, I was expected to be naive enoughto walk into the trap by appearing as a witness be-fore the committee . Knowing all about the func-tionings of such committees, however, I declinedto appear .

When the committee "investigating" conditionsamong the workers in the fur industry brought in itsfindings, my name appeared as one of the signers,even though I had not signed the report . In thecommittee's publicity which was printed in the metro-politan newspapers and the Daily Worker (August 8,1933, page 3), my name was falsely included in thelist of signers. There had, in my opinion, been noinvestigation as I understand the word . I issued apress release repudiating my signature, and at leastthe New Leader carried this repudiation in its issueof the following week. I had no intention of be-coming a factional tool of the Communist Party ; andI should be permitted to point out that this was atthe very peak of my united front activities .

Acording to the press release issued by the fur in-vestigating committee, its report was signed by thefollowing persons : Horace Kallen (chairman), ThyraSamter Winslow, John Chamberlain, Kyle Crichton(alias Robert Forsythe), Lucille Copeland, TheodoreDreiser, Benjamin Goldstein, J . B. Matthews, andJerome Michael. I do not know how many of thesesignatures were authentic. I only know that minewas not .

Friends of the Soviet Union

Shortly after the formation of the American League11871


Against War and Fascism, Herbert Goldfrank, secre-tary of the Friends of the Soviet Union, asked me toundertake a nation-wide speaking tour on behalf ofthe FSU . I consented to do so . In a letter fromGoldfrank, dated October 28, 1933, I was given thefollowing information :

You will notice that we have arranged your first meet-ing in Cleveland on Friday, November 24th . This isdone because of the eagerness of the Cleveland com-rades to have you there on that night . . . . We haveadvised our branches that your subject will be "TheSoviet Union in World Affairs."

Due to an impending split in the Fellowship ofReconciliation, of which I was one of the executivesecretaries, I considered it necessary to cancel myagreement to make the scheduled tour for the FSU .

Subsequently, I contributed two articles to themagazine of the FSU, Soviet Russia Today, becamea member of the organization's national committee,and from time to time made speeches at its meetingsin many parts of the country .

In 1935, I addressed mass meetings of the Friendsof the Soviet Union in Milwaukee and Chicago . Atboth of these meetings, Congressman Ernest Lundeen(now United States Senator from Minnesota) wasthe principal speaking attraction on the program .In March, 1935, I addressed a similar gathering inDetroit where Congressman Lundeen was also sched-uled but failed to appear when the flight of his air-plane from New York was cancelled . In Detroit,Maurice Sugar was running for judge of the Record-er's Court . Sugar's campaign was the first of theCommunist Party's efforts to launch a labor party in

[188]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

this country. His campaign paper, It's About Time!,had the following to say concerning my speech :

A ringing call to the people of Detroit to elect MauriceSugar judge of the Recorder's Court was made by J . B .Matthews, of New York, one of the most prominentnational figures in the Socialist Party, at a mass meet-ing in Deutsches Haus on Sunday, March 10 . Themeeting was called to protest the campaign of theHearst press against Soviet Russia and the Americanlabor movement. "The best way to answer Hearst,"Matthews said, "is to elect Maurice Sugar . . . . Itwould be a great step forward toward uniting laborin an independent political movement ."78

Under the auspices of the Friends of the SovietUnion, I addressed a mass meeting at Madison SquareGarden in February, 1935 . I have already notedwhat Simon W. Gerson wrote of my speech on thatoccasion, in the Daily Worker. In a regular newsreport, the Daily Worker, also said :

Speaking as a Socialist, J . B. Matthews roused theextraordinary feeling of solidarity which pervadedthe meeting to an immense pitch by declaring : "Theoutstanding need that faces us is the need for workingclass unity .". . . An extraordinary wave of feelingand enthusiasm swept over the meeting, with thou-sands of workers rising to their feet cheering, asMatthews declared : "We can unite to build a partyof the working class, and this party must include theCommunist Party ." 79

Congressman Ernest Lundeen, Corliss Lamont, andJames Waterman Wise were also among the speakerson this occasion .

Columbia Anti-War Committee

Early in 1934, the communist students at Columbia

[1891

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IN THE UNITED FRONT

University organized a conference under the auspicesof what they described as the Columbia Anti-WarCommittee. Earl Browder and I were among theprincipal speakers.

Book Union

Late in 1934, the Book Union was formed for thepurpose of pushing the sales of the comrades' books .I became one of the national sponsors of the organi-zation .

National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners

Early in 1935, the immigration authorities in thiscountry considered deporting John Strachey as anundesirable alien engaged in communist propaganda .On March 20, 1935, the National Committee for theDefense of Political Prisoners held a "Strachey Pro-test Meeting" at which I was the principal speakerand Heywood Broun was the chairman . Accordingto the Daily Worker, this meeting was also sponsoredby the New Masses, Communist Party weekly publi-cation . 80

"Icoi"On May 22, 1935, I made a speech for "Icor" in

the New York Hippodrome . The Daily Worker re-ported that "J. B. Matthews, a leading revolutionarysocialist . . . was greeted with thunderous cheers ." 81

Labor Sports Union

The Labor Sports Union is the American sectionof the Red Sports International . I complied with arequest to furnish an endorsement of the work ofthis communist united front .

[1911


League of Women Shoppers

An old human trick which had whiskers whenMethuselah was a boy is to deny with vehemence anallegation which no one has made . Charge a manwith lying and, if he replies with indignant vehe-mence that he has not committed petty larceny, hecreates strong presumptive evidence of his guilt onthe count of lying, at least in the minds of all but theincurably gullible who mistake vehemence on onepoint for innocence on another . In modern times,communists and their stooges have worked this trickovertime. They make a habit of denying or of hav-ing their stooges deny what has not been alleged .We have, for example, the case of Mrs. Arthur

Garfield Hays and the League of Women Shoppers .In my testimony before the Dies Committee, I said :"Throughout the period of incubation of the Leagueof Women Shoppers, I was consulted as to its organi-zation and program. This, too, was in the springand early summer of 1935 . It was at that time thatthe Communist Party decided to launch a whole newseries of ùnited front' organizations dealing ostensiblywith the interests of consumers ." According to anews story published in the Daily Worker, Mrs. Hayspromptly sent a long telegram to Representative Dies .The Daily Worker printed her telegram in full . Hermessage does not contain a word which either directlyor indirectly denies anything which I said . My testi-mony is, of course, a matter of record . Her mes-sage does, however, through a series of highly ques-tionable assertions finally reach the following con-clusion: "By this definition Mr. Matthews could nothave honestly become a member ." 8' The DailyWorker's headline for this remarkable telegram of

[192]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

Mrs. Hays states that I "was ineligible for shoppers'groups." These communists are, among other things,incredibly funny . Of course I was "ineligible" formembership in the League of Women Shoppers. Cer-tainly, as Mrs. Hays announced, I "could not havehonestly become a member ." Never in my life haveI assumed the guise of a woman . Or am I mistakenin believing that a league of women limits its mem-bership to that sex? At any rate, it is pertinent to raisethe query as to why Mrs. Hays thought it relevant tosay that I could not have honestly become a memberof the League of Women Shoppers . What has thatto do with the fact that I was consulted as to the or-ganization and program of the League throughoutthe period of its incubation, as I stated in my testi-mony before the Dies Committee? I was so consultedand have letters on the official letterhead of theLeague to prove it . I challenge Mrs. Hays to denywhat was allegedl It was precisely because I was con-sulted several times on the matter of launching theLeague of Women Shoppers that I am in a positionto know that it was initiated by communists for com-munists as one of several "united front" manoeuvresdealing ostensibly with the interests of consumers .Susan Jenkins, concerning whose communist connec-tions there are court records, was the person who ap-proached me regarding the League on at least six oc-casions . She it was who also arranged for RebeccaDrucker, one of the first behind-the-scenes promotersof the League of Women Shoppers, to make a specialtrip to Washington, N . J., where the two of them un-successfully sought the cooperation of Consumers'Research in the work of the League . One of theprincipal questions which we raised with both Susan

[193]


Jenkins (who told us that the Communist Partywanted her to take the executive secretaryship of theLeague) and Rebecca Drucker (whose apartment onMadison Avenue in New York was long a rendezvousfor Communist Party plotters) had to do with thematter of whether or not the newly formed Leaguewas to be merely another letterhead "united front"with a lot of stuffed shirts, or whatever the females ofthat species are called, on it. Both of these womeninformed us that it was too late to withdraw their in-vitations to such stooges as Mrs . Arthur Garfield Hayswho had already consented, whether she knew it ornot, to serve as window-dressing for the League .Susan Jenkins did state, however, that she and IsadorSchneider (the two prime organizers of the Leagueaccording to her claim) would certainly kill the or-ganization if by reason of its letterhead stooges itturned out to be a stuffed-shirt affair .

Innumerable examples of this old human trickof denying what has not been alleged could be citedfrom the public statements of communists and theirstooges. The tactic is, perhaps, seen best in the nowclassic affair of Shirley Temple. Shortly after mytestimony before the Dies Committee, member ofthe Young Communist League in New York put apicket line in front of the Federal Building . Thecommunist picketers carried placards which said :"Tut tut Mr. Dies Shirley Temple is not subversive!"Even that select little company of fans who put stockin what Heywood Broun writes do not need to bereminded that nobody said Shirley Temple was sub-versive. The Young Communist League was simplydenying an allegation which was neither made nor im-plied in anything which was said before the Dies

[194]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

Committee . These denials are backhanded lies inthat they falsely imply the allegation which is denied .Now and then communist lies, whether backhandedor direct, are so cute that they defeat their own ends .The Shirley Temple piece was clearly such a case .

Canadian League Against War and Fascism

I have already pointed out that the CanadianLeague Against War and Fascism changed its nameto the Canadian League for Peace and Democracyat about the same time that the American Leaguewas renamed.

On the letterhead of the Canadian League, thereappears in parentheses under the organization's namethe line, "Canadian Section, World MovementAgainst War and Fascism ." The line's reference isto the so-called Amsterdam Movement which waslaunched by the Communist International in 1932 .

The letterhead of the Canadian League lists thefollowing persons as endorsers: Henri Barbusse, LordMarley, Ernst Toiler, John Strachey, Harry F. Ward,Robert Morss Lovett, Rabbi Edward L . Israel,George S. Counts, Maxwell S. Stewart, and E. C.Lindeman. All of these persons are well-known ascommunists or frequently found in the companyof communists .

In the spring of 1935, I was invited to go toToronto as the principal speaker at a Conferenceof the Canadian League . In his letters to me regard-ing this Conference and my appearance, the chair-man of the Canadian League wrote, among otherthings :

Sunday evening we are going to stage a mass meetingin Massey Hall, which holds 3500 people. It is abso-

[195]


lutely imperative that you remain over for this, forwe shall have to build the meeting around you and'your world-wide reputation . . . . We will do ourdamnedest to arrange a polite deportation for you .

In this account of my communist united frontactivities, I have given the names of twenty-eightorganizations or committees. In fifteen of these, Iheld some official position. I made speeches for notless than nineteen, and I am able to account for atotal of 106 such speeches delivered solely for theCausel To the best of my ability I can account foronly $330 received toward traveling expenses, anda single $10 honorarium . The check for this $10honorarium is still in my possession uncashed . Itwas a rankly individualistic phenomenon in a whirl-wind of speech-making for collectivism .

These united front activities brought me into con-tact with most of the communist leaders and prac-tically all of the outstanding fellow travelers of theperiod. How shrewdly these contacts are sometimeshandled is well illustrated by a letter and a telegramwhich I received from Joseph Pass, editor of Fight.These communications, which are reproduced onthe following pages, were sent on the same day, asthe dates on them verify . In the letter, Joseph Passinformed me that my suggestions concerning an ar-ticle on NRA had been accepted. In the telegram,Pass asked me to meet Earl Browder for a conferenceon articles which were to appear in Fight . Ordinarily,when Browder or any of the other comrades wishedto see me about any matter, the telephone was used .In the case of this telegram signed by Pass, therewas the single exception to the rule of using the

[196]

NATIONAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

UNITED STATES CONGRESS AGAINST WARCHAIRMAN. J. B . MATTHEWS

TRMDERU . ANNIE C. GRAY

UECRETARYI DONALD HENDERSON

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J .B .Natthews40 Rest 33rd `St.New York City

Dear J .B .

In reference to the NBA article, it is agreed that weshould follow your proposals . I am cutting andchanging the galleys and will send 4ou the proof as soonas it comes back .

Nov . 1, 1333

Yours as ever, n

Joseph Pass

CLASS OF SERVICE

This is a full-rateTelegram or Cable-am unless Its de-

ferred character is in-dicated by a suitablesign above or preced-ing the address.

PATRONS ARE REQUESTED TO FAVOR THE COMPANY BY CRITICISM AND SUGGESTION CONCERNING ITS SERVICE

NAM12 15=NEWYORK NY 1 1029A

J B MATTHEWS=

40 WEST 93 ST=

CAN YOU MEET BROWDER THIS AFTERNOON TO GO OVER MAGAZINE

MATERIAL PHONE ME FOR APPOINTMENT=

PASS

N1933 NOV I AM 10 37

12019

SIGNSDL = Day Letter

NM = Night MessageNL a Night Letter

LOO a Deferred Cable

NLT - Cable Night LetterWLT - Week-End Letter'1rNEWCOMBCARLTON . taaato1NT

J. C . WfLLrVga MRnT V tee.eRae,OvNT

The filing time as shown in the date line oa full-rate telegrams and day letters, and the time of receipt at destination as shown on all messages, in STANDARD TYME,

Received at 2483 Broadway; New York

MINUTES IN TRANSITFVLL•BATa

DAT LETTER

IN THE UNITED FRONT

telephone. I met Browder that afternoon at a cafe-teria on Seventh Avenue just below 14th Street . Hedid not wish to see me concerning articles for theforthcoming magazine Fight, but about somethingwhich was not even remotely connected with sucha matter. He did not once mention any such articles .What he did talk about to me would have interestedthe United States Department of State and theSecret Service Bureau of the Department of justice(or would it?) if it had materialized . It seems obvi-ous that the telegram and the letter which Pass sentme were calculated to make a record of what Browderdid not talk about to me .'Daily Worker, April 17, 1935, p. 1 .I Some of the articles which I contributed to various left-wing publications

were, as follows :Revolutionary Age (Lovestone)A series entitled "Europe As I Saw It" appearing in the issues ofOctober 24 and 31 November 14 and 28, December 5, 1931 .

Labor Age (Musteitej"War Threatens," December, 1931."Storm Over Europe," September, 1932 ."The Soviet Union in 1932," October, 1932 .

America For All (Socialist Party)"Socialism and the Negro," October 15, 1932 .

The New Leader (Socialist Party)"The Blood International," October 8, 1932 ."Socialism Marches On," November 5, 1932 .

The World Tomorrow (Socialist viewpoint)"Ukraine White Coal," October 19, 1932 ."Pacifists Prefer Thomas," October 26, 1932 ."Tolstoyans Migrate to Kuznetsk," November 16, 1932 ."The Pact in Perspective," August 31, 1933;c

Revolt (Student League for Industrial Democry : socialist)"Class War in Germany," October, 1932."Planned Sabotage," December, 1933 .

Labor Action (Musteite)"Foreign News," January 21, 1933 .

Daily Worker (Communist Party)"Largest U . S . Pacifist Group Splits," December 18, 1933 .

Fight (Communist united front)"Germany and the War Peril," November, 1933 ."49th State in Wall Street's Union," January, 1934 .

The New Masses (Communist)"Is Pacifism Counter-Revolutionary?" January 2, 1934 .

Soviet Russia Today (Communist united front)"The Soviet Peace Policy," November, 1933 ."A Socialist Looks at the Soviet Union," May, 1935 .

3 Student Outlook, February, 1933, p . 5.4 New York Times, December 29, 1932, p. 8 .5 Daily Worker, August 23, 1933, p. 6 .6 I bid, May 3, 1933, p . 3 .

[199]


7 Student Outlook, November-December, 1934, p. 35 ."Daily Worker, January 1, 1938, p . 3.0Ibid, February 4, 1938, p . 6 .10 Youngville, U.S .A ., p. 29.11 Wolf Michal, Youth Marches Toward Socialism (New York: Workers

Library Publishers, 1936), p. 39.11 Ibid, p. 40 .1s O. Kuusinen, Youth and Fascism (New York : Workers Library Publish-

ers), p. 14f.14 Ibid, p. 18f .11 Ibid, p. 24.1" Earl Browder, The Democratic Front (New York: Workers Library

Publishers, 1938), p . 77.17 Wolf Michal, Youth Marches Toward Socialism, p . 41 .,s O . Kuusinen, Youth and Fascism, p . 29 .11 Ibid, p. 29 .2" Ibid, pp . 28, 29 .n The New Republic, August 31, 1938, p. 86.22 D. Z . Manuilsky, The Work of the Seventh Congress .2" Geor i Dimitroff, The United Front (New York : International Publish-

ers, 1938 . P . 91 .34 Daily Worker, August 8, 1938, p . 5.°Ibid, November 29, 1937 .2" Youth Demands a Peaceful World, p. 47f.27 Christian Century, September 7, 1938, p . 1052.2" See Joseph Stalin, Foundations of Leninism (New York : International

Publishers, 1934), p. 117.29 The Socialist Appeal, September 10, 1938, p. 2.30 The Socialist Call, September 3, 1938, p . 1.31 Earl Browder, The People's Front (New York : International Publishers,

1938), p . 45.22 Ibid, p . 44.11 John Nevin Sayre, The Story of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, p . 12 .94 Daily Worker, April 7, 1933, p. 4 .11 Ibid, April 15, 1933, p . 1 ."Stanley High, "Communism Presses Its Pants," The Saturday Evening

Post, July 9, 1938, p . 33.s7 Daily Worker, August 23, 1933, p . 6 .""Ibid, May 1, 1933, p. 1 ."Ibid, June 1, 1933, p. 2 .10 Ibid, May 3, 1933, p. 2 .41 New York World-Telegram, April 29, 1933, p . 11 .42 Daily Worker, March 26, 1933, p . 4.4s Hearings before the Committee on Education and Labor, United States

Senate, on S . 1958, p. 586f ." Earl Browder, Communism in the United States (New York : Interna .

tional Publishers, 1935), p . 125.45 Ibid, p. 125.4" Daily Worker, August 24, 1938, p. 3."Ibid, May 12, 1933, p. 4.4 "Ibid, May 10, 1933, p . 4 ." The Struggle Against War, published by the American Committee for

the Struggle Against War, June, 1933, p . 2.

[200]

IN THE UNITED FRONT

"New York World-Telegram, March 24, 1933, p . 2.61 Daily Worker, June 1, 1933 .62 Stanley High, The Saturday Evening Post, p. 33."Daily Worker, January 6, 1933, p . 2.k The Struggle Against War, June, 1933, p. 2 .66 Manifesto of the World Congress Against War, published by the Amer-

ican Committee for the Struggle Against War, 1933 .66 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, editorial, August 28, 1938 .67 "The Tactics of the United Front," The Communist, October, 1932, p .

937.s' Earl Browder, Communism in the United States, p. 149."Daily Worker, July 29 and August 1, 1933 .60 Ibid, June 3, 1933, p . 3 .63 Earl Browder, Communism in the United States, p . 266 .68 A letterhead in the personal files of JBM .68 Revolutionary Age, October 31, 1931 ." Earl Browder, Communism in the United States, p . 184." The Communist, November, 1933, p. 1124 ."Lenin, A Letter to American Workers, p. 17 ." Joseph P. Lash, "United Front Against War," The Student Outlook,

November, 1933, p . 15 ."Daily Worker, August 27, 1938, p . 4 ."Ibid, August 4, 1938, p . 2 .70 See August files of Daily Worker, 1937 .71New York Post, August 22, 1938.72 Daily Worker, May 17, 1938, p. 7 .v6 Earl Browder, Communism in the United States, pp . 183-18471 New York Times, October 17, 1938, p. 17 .7s G'eorgi Dimitroff, The United Front, p . 76."Earl Browder, Communism in the United States, p . 115 .11 Ibid, p . 264 .78 It's About Time, April 1, 1935, p . 3.70 Daily Worker, February 27, 1935, p . 2 .80 Ibid, March 18, 1935, p. 4 .91 lbid, May 24, 1935.82 lbid, August 24, 1938 .

COMMUNISTS AT WORKMike Gold who writes a column for the Daily

Worker thinks that I overrate the subtlety of thecommunists. "It is all too deep and secret . Thesecommunists are too darn subtle, as J . B. Matthewscan inform you," writes Comrade Gold .' As a matterof fact, communists are anything but subtle to me,or to anyone else who has worked closely with theirmovement, or to anyone who has taken the troubleto read their literature thoroughly . They have ex-pounded their tactics and their objectives volumi-nously where all who care to do so may read andunderstand. If communists are subtle in any sense,it is only by contrast with much of their opposition .Communists work at the business of revolution nightand day. It is their meat and drink . The oppositionto communism, on the other hand, is made up of themillions of men and women who are busy doing theconstructive work of the world and whose awarenessof any threat to the established order of things is nottoo acute . It is easy to assume that things will con-tinue to go along fundamentally very much as theyare and that those who believe otherwise must bemistaken alarmists .

I must repeat, in order to make clear the characterof my own alarm, if such it may be called, that I donot believe the people of the United States will everembrace communism . If communism continues togrow in strength and influence, the ultimate resultof its progress will be to call forth a devastating re-action against it . Those who fear fascism in the

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United States will do well to consider that the con-tinued growth of communism is the surest way tomake fascism inevitable and, in all probability, theonly way. Meanwhile, short of attaining their ownobjective of seizing power and establishing a SovietAmerica, communists may work incalculable damageboth to the physical and to the spiritual structure ofAmerican society .

The first measure of protection against the damagewhich communists may do to a society is an under-standing of their methods of work and their ultimateobjectives-an understanding widely disseminatedamong the people. The close association which Ihad with the communist movement and with prac-tically all of its leaders in the United States, andwhich the records of communist publications as setforth in the preceding chapter clearly establish, madeit inevitable that I should come to a fairly good un-derstanding of the tactics and the goals of the Com-munist Party . Nevertheless, it is entirely unnecessarythat I should ask for credence in my unsupportedword on these matters. The proofs are in the Com-munist Party's own books, pamphlets, and publica-tions .

Marxian Ethics

It will be impossible to understand the tactics andthe statements of communists and their fellowtravelers unless their very special code of ethics bekept constantly in mind . Lenin summarized thismorality when he said: "Our morality is entirelysubordinated to the interests of the class struggle ofthe proletariat . . . . For the Communist, moralityconsists entirely of compact united discipline andconscious mass struggle against the exploiters . We

[2031


do not believe in eternal morality, and we exposeall the fables about morality ." 2 In the first place,this is a bald collectivistic morality in which theidea of one man's standing for his conception ofright against the world is nonsense . In practicalterms, this means that the individual communist'sethical judgment is rigidly subordinated to the willof the Communist Party, and the will of the Com-munist Party is in turn whatever its most politicallypowerful member decides it shall be. In the secondplace, we may ask : what if truth, as the ordinary per-son understands the word, should conflict with "theinterests of the class struggle?" Both in its theory andits practice, the communist code of ethics says thattruth must give way to class advantage . The highestof all virtues in the communist's scale of ethical valuesis the service of the interests of the class struggle . Weare face to face with the rather striking fact thatcommunists have put the world on notice that theirword, whether under oath or not, has only so muchvalue as their conception of the interests of the classstruggle may dictate .

In complete accord with their ethical code, com-munists and left-wingers generally commit perjuryas easily as a schoolboy downs an ice cream soda .After all, the reasoning goes, the courts are capitalistinstitutions, and communism is at war with capi-talism; and in war of any kind men have few, if any,qualms about their dealings with the enemy . If thecapitalist courts, the NLRB trial examiners, and theLa Follete Civil Liberties Committee are gullibleenough to accept the perjured testimony of commu-nists and other left-wingers, the Marxists figure that

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they, as well as the government's functionaries, haveserved the interests of the class struggle well .

Very often it takes only the second round of Scotchand soda at the get-togethers of the comrades to startthem vying with each other in relating their accom-plishments in the field of perjury, destruction ofproperty, the beating and maiming of "scabs," shoot-ings, stabbings, kidnapings, and bombings . Surpris-ing as it may be to the gullible portion of the Ameri-can public, these stories are related with a spirit ofhigh virtue. Virtue, be it remembered, is definedwith exclusive reference to the class war in whichthey are engaged, and not with reference to any"eternal morality" which is, according to Lenin'sown words, a fable of the ruling class.

If the comrades should ever come to power, theseviolations of "capitalist morality" would be the prin-cipal adornment of their memoirs, the evidence oftheir heroism in risking the punishments of the"capitalist courts." "Stalin robbed banks," wroteJoseph P. Lash, but that was a subject for perjuryonly and not boasting as long as the inviolabilityof the capitalist banks was the law of Russia .As for wrecking trade unions, the comrades could

hardly have been more explicit on the subject oftheir methods and intentions . A. Lozovsky, head ofthe Red International of Labor Unions, is the authorof the principal textbook on trade unions now in usein the Communist Party's Workers' School . Lozovskywrote :

There is no need to shout from the house tops "de-stroy the unions" as was done in Germany . But thatwe want to break up the reformist trade unions, that

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we want to weaken them, that we want to wrest themfrom the workers, that we want to explode the tradeunion apparatus and to destroy it-of that there can-not be the slightest doubt . 3

Lenin was equally clear in his description of themethods for entering the trade unions in order toaccomplish the objective defined by Lozovsky . SaidLenin :

It is necessary to be able . . . to agree to any andevery sacrifice, and even-if need be-to resort to allsorts of devices, manoeuvres, and illegal methods, toevasion and subterfuge, in order to penetrate into thetrade unions, to remain in them, and to carry onCommunist work in them at all costs 4

Such is the ethical code of those whose politics thetrial examiners of the NLRB have declared to beirrelevant .

One of my old acquaintances from days in Singa-pore, twenty-four years ago, who has since becomea Marxist, wrote me in a chiding but friendly man-ner beseeching me to yield to communists despitethe probability that they were entirely wrong (judgedby ordinary ethical standards) in the issue betweenus. An excerpt from this letter should serve to en-lighten those who are not familiar with the Marxistethical code . He wrote :

If my own father were the employer during a strike,and I knew him to be right, still my sympathies wouldbe entirely with the strikers . "Right" is a relativeterm, with many connotations . Being on the rightSide is more important by far than doing precisely theright thing in a given instance . One cannot drawfine distinctions when social organisms clash .

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In the case of the strike which my erstwhile friendposited, it is plain from his argument that he wouldgo to court-if the case reached a court-and commitperjury against his father, the employer whom heknew to be right .

This very special code of war ethics is frequentlythe subject of animated discussion in left-wing circleswhen new recruits to radicalism are troubled by theirChristian idealistic hang-over . Their stomachs arenot yet fully conditioned to the new Marxist cuisine .They are told not to be soft, that revolution is a he-man's business, and that after all the war is beingwaged for a new world of justice, peace, plenty, fra-ternity, and security . The code remains, nevertheless,a hard and cynical one. Nor is it strange that thosewho become accustomed to practicing it in theirdealings with the class "enemy" eventually practiceit in their dealings with each other when internaland factional disputes arise .

A distinguished professor in Union TheologicalSeminary, Reinhold Niebuhr, has given this Marxistethical code at least a partial theological respectabilityamong a large group of younger Protestant clergymenin this country over whom his influence is significant .In his book, Reflections on the End of an Era,Professor Niebuhr has expounded the view that weare shut up, as social moralists, to a "choice betweenhypocrisy and vengeance ." 5 Professor Niebuhr holdsthat the capitalist world is possessed by the "demonof hypocrisy," and that the communist or radicalworld is possessed by the "demon of vengeance ." Asbetween these two, Professor Niebuhr prefers the"demon of vengeance" because it is, in his opinion,capable of "purer moral insights ." Under this ethical

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theory of deliberately taking one's stand with the"demon of vengeance," a significant clerical groupunder Professor Niebuhr's influence is able to ra-tionalize and to some extent at least justify the per-petration of almost any crime because it serves, asLenin said, "the interests of the class struggle of theproletariat ." Professor Niebuhr has recently becomethe secretary of a group of clergymen which callsitself the United Christian Council for Democracy .Among the basic principles adopted by this groupof clergymen, are the following :

1. We reject the profit-seeking economy and thecapitalistic way of life with its private ownershipof the things upon which the lives of all depend .

4.- We propose to support the necessary political andeconomic action to implement these aims .6

Communists and ReligionIn the light of the communist code of ethics, the

undebatable proof for which I have presented fromLenin's own writings which are now on - sale at theCommunist Party's bookstores, it is not surprising tofind the Communist Party in the United States en-gaged in a systematic effort to lure the churches, espe-cially the Catholic Church, into the net of the Party'sunited fronts. Such duplicity transcends the boundsof understanding on the part of those who are notacquainted with the Communist Party's clear pro-nouncements on the churches and religion .

"We extend the hand of fellowship to our Catholicbrothers," announced Earl Browder at the recenttenth annual convention of the Communist Party .Earlier in the year, the Daily Worker declared that"it is not, and never has been and never will be, the

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objective of Communism to wage a religious waragainst those who believe in God or who hold anyother religious faith .'

In a pamphlet which the Communist Party has notbothered to withdraw from sale at its bookstores, thepublic, as well as the comrades, is informed that "itis necessary to link the fight against the church andreligion with the fight against capitalism and im-perialism."8 In the same official pamphlet, we arereminded that "the Soviet Union under a workers'and peasants' government is the only country in theworld where religion and the churches are being com-bated with the active cooperation of the govern-ment." 9 In another of the Communist Party's pam-phlets, Corliss Lamont writes of "the unaltering de-termination of the Communists [in the SovietUnion] to do away with religion and the inclusion ofthis aim as one of the chief features of the educationalsystem from one end of the country to the other." 1°Adds Lamont : "The Red Army is one of the mostactive centers for the dissemination of atheism . Itsrecruits are given systematic instruction in anti-re-ligious theory just as they are in other Communistdoctrines."" I have cited four statements from offi-cial communist literature . They are proofs whichshould satisfy the most incredulous . Set these fourstatements, which are a part of the current Partyliterature, alongside the spectacle of Browder's ex-tending "the hand of fellowship" to Catholics andthe statement of the Daily Worker that "it is not,and never has been and never will be, the objectiveof Communism to wage a religious war against thosewho believe in God."

Contrast this current twaddle of communists about[209]


religion with some of the things which Browder wrotein his book, What Is Communism?, two years ago. Atthat time, he was stating with frankness the positionof communism on religion. Among other things, hewrote :

We communists do not distinguish between good andbad religions, because we think they are all bad forthe masses.

Or consider the following frank avowal of one of theaims of the communists in forming united frontswith religious groups :

It is significant that the Communist Party, morethan any other labor group, has been able to achievesuccessful united fronts with church groups on themost important issues of the day. This is not due toany compromise with religion as such, on our part .In fact, by going among the religious masses, we arefor the first time able to bring our anti-religious ideasto them [Italics mine .]Corliss Lamont, faithful apologist for the Krem-

lin's views, quotes approvingly Marx's statement that"the social principles of Christianity are lickspittle,whereas the proletariat is revolutionary ."12

In its Christmas, 1937, issue, the Daily Workerpublished an article which purported to show thatthe objectives of Christianity and Communism arepractically the same. For weeks thereafter, the DailyWorker published letters from comrades who ap-plauded the achievement (?) of this synthesis ofChristianity and Communism. Comrade H. G. ofDetroit wrote :

It helped me recruit two couples into the CommunistParty. . . . And now that the Daily Worker has

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printed the statement of the Pope on accepting theCommunist offer of the "outstretched hand," it'll bea snap to recruit . 13

Precisely when the Pope accepted the "outstretchedhand" of the Communist Party, it would take theDaily Worker, with its genius for mendacity, to say .Comrade E. D . ventured the opinion :

Think what it would mean if the religious masseswould come to understand that we are fighting forthe same cause that Jesus fought for, only on a scien-tific basis . 14

Yes, Comrade E. D., think it over in the isolation ofyour undesignated whereabouts! And don't forget"the scientific basis!" Departing from its fashion ofgiving initials only, Mrs . N. L. Franklin wrote inher letter to the Daily Worker :

I had just been telling my daughter that the Com-munists had now taken over the revolutionary move-ment of 1775 and it was about time that they hadmentioned the fact that Jesus was a real revolutionary .. . . So I hope more use will be made of Jesus as aproletarian fighter." ,

Comrade A. S. wrote from Superior, Washington, of"the old superstition about Communists waging waron religion.""'

Naturally I have no way of checking the authen-ticity of these letters which appeared in the DatlyWorker, but I have been told by one who workedon the staff of this communist "newspaper" that anew Party "line" is often established by printingletters which the editors write to themselves . The

[2111


device is known as "hearing from the rank and file ."At the Seventh World Congress of the Communist

International (1935), a resolution was adopted whichdeclared it to be "the duty of Young CommunistLeague members to join all mass organizations of thetoiling youth (trade union, cultural, sports organi-zations) formed by bourgeois, democratic, reformistand fascist parties, as well as religious organizations;to wage a systematic struggle in these organizationsto gain influence over the broad masses of youth ." 17[Italics mine .] It would be interesting to know howmany of the accessions to churches in the past threeyears, candidates for baptism and confirmation, aremembers of the Young Communist League actingon instructions of the Communist International . Tonumerous newspaper editors, a number of Congress-men, and some Cabinet members, it may appear pre-posterous that we have in the United States todaya novel collection of Methodist comrades, Baptistcomrades, Presbyterian comrades, and Y . W. C. A .comrades, but some of us have watched them inaction. When these distinguished and abysmallyignorant figures in our public life think they arehaving fun at my expense, by ridiculing my testimonyon communism, they are, without knowing it, con-victing themselves of unfitness for their public trusts .

Communists and Civil Liberties

It is so well known that it should require only amere statement of the fact that the communists' in-terest in the preservation of civil liberties is for thepurpose of building their movement to the pointwhere they may destroy every vestige of these liber-ties. In this regard, we have only to quote from their

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own authoritative writings to prove the assertion .Lenin is supreme among communist authorities . Inhis book, The State and Revolution, Lenin wrote :

The dictatorship of the proletariat produces a seriesof restrictions of liberty in the case of the oppressors,the exploiters, the capitalists. We must crush themin order to free humanity from wage-slavery ; theirresistance must be broken by force .18

It would be pertinent to inquire of the editors ofthe New Republic, who have apparently assumed therole of mouthpiece for the Communist Party on whatit considers fundamental doctrine, whether or notthe foregoing view of Lenin has been repudiated .Again in his book, Two Tactics, the supreme authorof the Russian revolution wrote :

In the final analysis, force alone can settle the greatproblems of political liberty and class struggle, andit is our business to prepare and organize this forceand to use it actively, not only for defensive purposes,but also for the purpose of attack . 19

Communists and their fellow travelers are now busytrying to persuade the public that they have onlypredicted, not advocated, the use of violence in theclass war. They seem to say that they have somesort of infallible insight into the future which per-mits them to see the capitalist class resisting theirattempt to seize the power of the state, and they,the communists, are merely in favor of defendingthemselves against this capitalist aggression . To theordinary person, preparing and organizing force"for the purpose of attack" means only what it ap-pears to mean . In his book, The Paris Commune,Lenin wrote :

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Every state, including the most democratic republic,is nothing but a machine for the suppression of oneclass by another . The proletarian state is the machinefor the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the prole-tariat . 20

This is a plain statement to the effect that the govern .ment of the United States is "nothing but a machinefor the suppression of one class by another," andthat the communists intend, if and when the oppor-tunity arrives, to turn the government of the UnitedStates into a "machine for the suppression of thebourgeoisie by the proletariat."

In the Communist Party's pamphlet, The Negroesin a Soviet America, James W. Ford, the Party's vice-presidential candidate, wrote :

We emphasize that capitalism cannot be done awaywith by the ballot .

. Anyone who tells you todepend upon the ballot and civil rights for yourdefense is betraying you . 21

In his speech at the Seventh World Congress, Dimit-roff explained that it is important for communists toget into government positions, and, once in the gov-ernment, that it is their proletarian duty to use theirofficial position primarily for the purpose of "armingthe proletariat." In this connection, he denouncedthe communists in Germany who got into the govern-ment but failed to do this . Said Dimitroff :

When participating in the government, the Commu-nists should have used their positions primarily forthe purpose of arming the proletariat . 22 [ItalicsDimitroff's]

Dimitroff excoriated the "Right opportunists" for[214]

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"instilling into the workers the illusion of a peacefulparliamentary passage from the one dictatorship tothe other." 23 Dimitroff was speaking of the transitionfrom a capitalist society, which communist theoryhas always held to be a dictatorship of the capitalistclass, to a communist society or the dictatorship ofthe proletariat. The editors of the New Republicintimated, if they did not say categorically, that theCommunist Party abandoned this position twentyyears ago and that only a handful of Trotskyists stilladhere to this view . At its tenth annual convention(1938), the Communist Party of the United Statessent its "warmest revolutionary greetings" to Dimit-roff, with the words : "At the Seventh Congress ofthe Communist International under your leadershipwe learned how that victory could be attained24

Red-baiting

It is often assumed that red-baiting is a device ofreactionaries for taking some kind of unfair advan-tage over communists or for falsely labeling thosewho are merely liberal and progressive . Withoutdoubt men have sometimes been called "red" when,in fact, they were not .

Red-baiting as a widely used device is not, how-ever, a trick of reactionaries . On the contrary, it isthe almost perfect trick of the communists themselves,employed with a very high degree of success for thepurpose of silencing the critics of communism . Thiscry of red-baiting into which communists and theirfellow travelers can put so much lung power is thebest trick ever invented, short of the firing squad,for making short work of anybody who dares to ob-ject to communist theories or practices . If he is not

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effectively silenced, he is at least thoroughly dis-credited among that vast flock of citizens who enjoythinking of themselves as liberals . A twentieth cen-tury American "liberal" would rather face the chargeof slapping his grandmother than to be accused ofred-baiting .Any critic of communism who hopes to escape the

charge of red-baiting by holding his criticism rigidlywithin the bounds of fact and good temper is simplydeluding himself. The communists, their fellow trav-elers, and, sad to say, muddle-headed "liberals" per-mit no distinctions . Any criticism of communists is,per se, red-baiting. Communists may vituperate withall the abandon which an epithetically rich languageand their own deliberately cultivated ill tempersallow. When it comes to carefully planned cam-paigns of abusiveness, ridicule, and mendacity, com-munists are the world's best baiters. They bait mostsuccessfully when they accuse their best-informedcritics of baiting .

It all sums up to a knowledge, or at least a fairlystrong suspicion, among communists that their move-ment stands no chance of advancing in the face ofcriticism .

The stifling of criticism is a shelter for knaves .

Exploiting Discontent

"Our task," wrote Lenin, "is to utilize every mani-festation of discontent, and to collect and utilizeevery grain of even rudimentary protest ."25 He mighthave added, inasmuch as the literature of communismamply supports the thesis, that it is the Party's taskto transform rudimentary protest into bitter hatred

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and from this to fashion the instruments of class warfor the overthrow of capitalism .

The communist science of revolution is foundedupon the organization of discontent, and its methodis the united front. The individual's disaffectiontoward capitalism may be deep or slight ; the Com-munist Party caters to every taste in discontent andoffers a united front organization as the medium forexpressing and exacerbating every protest . One ormore communist united front organizations havebeen set up to bid for the support of each of thefollowing groups : farmers, students, youth, con-sumers, social workers, poets, writers, artists, dancers,musicians, film lovers, athletes, social scientists,women, aliens, Sinophiles, Hispanophiles, Jews,Negroes, physicians, lawyers, the clergy, the intelli-gentsia, pacifists, war veterans, laborers, the unem-ployed, technicians, and architects . Hardly any per-son in the whole population is overlooked as a poten-tial united fronter .

Tens of thousands-the communists say millions-of well-intentioned and idealistic Americans areparticipating in these united front activities withoutthe slightest knowledge of the true character of theunited front and its objectives . The CommunistParty plans it that way . Its main purpose wouldfail of accomplishment if all, or even a significantportion, of those who receive their introduction tothe revolutionary movement through the tactic ofthe united front were aware of its purposes .

If there is current sentiment for peace as ordinaryfolk understand the word, it is the business of theCommunist Party to utilize that sentiment for itsown ultimate objectives. If there is current distress

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in the economic affairs of the country, it is the busi-ness of the Communist Party to utilize that distressfor its own ulterior purposes . If there is even rudi-mentary protest against the curtailment of civil liber-ties anywhere (outside the Soviet Union), it is thebusiness of the Communist Party to organize andutilize that protest for building up its own move-ment. All this is the major strategy in the commu-nist science of revolution. The Communist Partyhas no interest in peace, or job security, or civil liber-ties as most Americans understand these things. Theyare simply the temporary ideas and ideals which theCommunist Party utilizes for its objective of bring-ing class war, almost universal insecurity, and thecomplete abolition of civil liberties.

"Transitional Slogans"

In understanding the work of the CommunistParty's united front, it is necessary to distinguishbetween manoeuvre and principle, between tran-sitional slogans and ultimate objectives .The principle to which communism has always

adhered and still adheres is "the dictatorship of theproletariat." The current manoeuvre adopted bythe Communist Party is to speak everywhere, inseason and out of season, of the need to "defenddemocracy ."

The principle which is unalterable in communismis that violence, in which communists take the offen-sive against the bourgeoisie, is necessary for the set-ting up of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thecurrent manoeuvre of the Communist Party is to tryto impress the gullible with the belief that the Party

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is in favor of wholly peaceful methods of bringingin communism .

The principle, stated again and again in commu-nist literature, is that the so-called reformist tradeunions must be entirely destroyed . The currentmanoeuvre of the Communist Party is to claim adeep and genuine interest in building up these sametrade unions .

Georgi Dimitroff, in his much publicized speechmade at the Seventh World Congress of the Com-munist International, explicitly called attention tothe need for what he described as "transitional slo-gans"-propaganda devices to be used in the periodpreceding the dictatorship of the proletariat . 26 "Thedefense of democracy," "peace," "the hand of fellow-ship extended to Catholic brothers," and "buildingthe trade unions," are all transitional slogans whichare to be discarded when the moment arrives to seekopenly the attainment of communism's objectives .

Composition of the United Front

There are four orders of individuals who make upa communist united front. We used all of them inthe work of the American League ; and, with fewexceptions, they are fairly easy to identify in allunited fronts .

First, there are the Communist Party members .Sometimes their membership is secret, but often itis a matter of public record or open acknowledg-ment. Party members are subject to orders in theuse of all their time, or, let us say, practically all of it .They are assigned to this or that united front, or tosome other phase of Party activity. Party membersinvariably occupy strategic positions of control in the

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united fronts. These may be minor positions so faras titles go, but they enable the Party to direct,manipulate, and execute manoeuvres with a mini-mum of interference from the non-Party constituentsof the united front .

Second, there are the fellow travelers who as a rulego along, in the limited duties expected of them, asfaithfully as if they were actually Party members .Usually these are middle-class intellectuals-profes-sors, writers, clergymen, and even Congressmen . Inmany cases, the fellow traveler is a far more valuableinstrument of the Party's purposes than a Party mem-ber would be. If the fellow traveler is a middle-classintellectual, he would probably find Party member-ship the best possible springboard into a quick re-action against communism. He could not, for long,tolerate the complete obliteration of individual in-telligence which is so essential an ingredient in themake-up of an undeviating Party member . TheCommunist Party understands this well, and, withcomplete revolutionary good sense, keeps middle-class intellectuals at arm's length as fellow travelers .Stalin himself has explained that the free admissionof such elements into the Party would have produceda state of frustration in which the Party "would havebeen inundated with professors and students ." 27Communist history is replete with the dishonorabledischarge of these intellectuals who made a braveeffort to be Party members but who could not clicktheir mental heels fast enough or loud enough tosuit the top sergeants of the New Social Order . Thefellow traveling intellectuals are much better at win-ing, dining, and dancing for Spanish Democracy (theliquor, food, and women of revolutionary quality

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notwithstanding) than they are at believing that it'strue today because Stalin said so, and untrue tomor-row for the same reason .

Third, there are the stooges . These are personsof prominence whose names have considerablepublicity value. They are the best decoys whosenames do the work of covering up the communistcontrol of the united front. They know little ornothing about left-wing politics and are really ignor-rant of the fact of communist control . The Organi-zation Hand Book put out by the American Leaguefor Peace and Democracy advised, as follows : "In-active individuals whose names command respect anddraw support in the community, may be put on theProvisional Committee if they are willing to lendtheir names for this purpose ." 28

Finally, there are the innocents, so called by thecommunists themselves. The innocents are supposedto make up the overwhelming number of adherentsto the united front. The chief object of the unitedfront is to draw them gradually closer and closer tothe Communist Party until they are at last completelyunder its influence. There are few words that rollmore mellifluously from Browder's lips than "theParty's wielding its influence over the broad masses."The Party members do most of the hard work in

the united front . The fellow travelers are the go-betweens who bring the communist world and thecapitalist world together . The stooges are the im-portant camouflage for the united front manoeuvre .The innocents are the fodder for revolution .

United Front Repeaters

t is relatively easy to identify the professional[221


united fronters or fellow travelers who do cover-upwork for the Communist Party in the united frontmanoeuvres. Any person in this class is almost certainto bob up at a number of places in the wholemanoeuvre. Take for example Mr . William P. Man-gold who is one of the contributing editors of theNew Republic . Mr. Mangold is, and has been forseveral years, the treasurer of the American Leaguefor Peace and Democracy. The same Mr. Mangoldrecently appeared in the Nation's capital as the rep-resentative of the North American Committee to AidSpanish Democracy where he succeeded in obtainingthe signatures of sixty members of the Congress ofthe United States to a greeting to be forwarded tothe Loyalist Government of Spain . 29 Again the sameMr. Mangold appeared at a session of the stockholdersof the Borden Company on behalf of the League ofWomen Shoppers."

Now, since the publication by the Department ofState of its list of registered foreign agents in thiscountry, it turns out that Mr. Mangold is also thepaid agent of somebody in Spain .The New Republic took vigorous exception to my

testimony characterizing Mr. Mangold as "one ofthe editors" of that usually fellow traveling weeklyjournal. Its protest was labeled "Nailing One Lie." 3 1

Declared the New Republic: "Mr. Mangold is notand never has been an editor of The New Republic .He is listed as a 'contributing editor,' because forsome time he was a regular contributor . . . ." Now,if I have the matter straight, the New Republic in-sists on my designating both the genus and the spe-cies. I would be most happy to comply if it werenot for the fact that the New Republic, in its effort

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to set me right, has left me in complete confusion .Honestly, I do not know what Mr. Mangold is interms of New Republic relationships and its use ofthe English language. They tell me that he was aregular contributor. From these tenses I am led toconclude that Mr. Mangold is either "a non-contrib-uting editor" or "an irregular contributing editor"who is too busy working for the Loyalist Govern-ment of Spain and various communist united frontsto enable him to meet, with that strict regard forthe species of the genus which the New Republicdemands of me, the duties implied in his presentNew Republic listing. I will compromise and callMr. Mangold "one of the gentleman contributingeditors of the New Republic," borrowing the analogyof the gentleman farmer who works not at all or onlyoccasionally at farming. At any rate, I am glad tohave the assurance of the New Republic that Mr .Mangold, when he was a dirt contributing editor,was engaged in "objective reporting of the laborscene." I take it that he is now engaged in "objectivereporting of the Spanish scene ."

Summarizing the New Republic's argument, it ap-pears that Mr. Mangold is listed as something becausehe was something which he no longer is. If this is anice illustration of Marxian logic, as I believe it is,we have a key to the quality and the quirk of leftistmental processes; and we have not wasted our timein a picayunish prolongation of a debate which is,per se, devoid of significance .

The Charge of the Letterhead Brigade

The relatively permanent united front organiza-

[2231


tions, such as the American League for Peace andDemocracy, the Friends of the Soviet Union, theInternational Labor Defense, and the InternationalWorkers' Order, are not the rule with the Commu-nist Party .

Communists did not originate the idea of all-things-to-all-men, but they have developed its appli-cation to new highs of proficiency. In the moresubtle aspects of revolutionary manoeuvre, all-things-to-all-men is the cardinal principle. Around everyinjustice which might conceivably stir a spark ofprotest in the bosom of some middle-class citizen, thecommunists have built an organization-replete withexecutive secretary, chairman, sponsors, slogans, andletterhead . The revolutionary tactic runs somewhatas follows: If we cannot catch them with the baitof the Scottsboro Boys or the Release of Mooney orthe Plight of the Arkansas Sharecroppers, we may,perchance, draw them into the Struggle for the Terri-torial Integrity of China .

The formula of the proletarian revolution requiresthat the masses be activized on the basis of theirnatural impulses to protest . It isn't necessary thatproletarian leaders' tears over the Territorial In-tegrity of China be genuine. It is enough if theyare copious and contagious .

Few words are used so frequently in the counselsof the Communist Party as this word activize. "Howshall we activize the hitherto unreached and confusedelements of the working class and the bourgeoisie?"asks one communist of another. Usually the answeris the printing of a new letterhead, with, of course,a brand new and impressive name for each succeed-ing soft-pedal-the-revolutionary-aspect club. There is

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a monotonous sameness in the list of obliging spon-sors whose names are believed to possess the greatestpowers of enticement among the unwitting groupsof the middle class . If the enticement is effective,which it rarely is, the enticed are forthwith activized(customarily by receiving the privilege of making afinancial contribution for the printing of the letter-head and the expenses of the improvised nationalheadquarters), and in their being activized they aredrawn within the ambit of the potentially revolu-tionary mass.

The alacrity with which the Communist Party'ssoft-pedal-the-revolutionary-aspect clubs come and gomakes the task of compiling a complete directory ofthem an impossible one. The Housewives' League ishere today-sweeping the country, representing threemillion members-and gone tomorrow . New letter-heads and a slight shuffling of sponsors must be usedto provide fresh stimulus for flagging zeal and thuskeep the masses incessantly activized. Furthermore,the un-communist world obligingly offers fresh in-justices which call for new committees, new leagues,new associations, new boycotts, new picket lines, newunanimous resolutions, and, of course, new letter-heads .

It should be apparent to all that some of thosewhose names appear on the letterheads of commu-nist united front organizations are not communistsat all, nor even conscious fellow travelers . Underthe guidance of their misdirected sympathies withthe victims of injustice, they have enlisted for theduration of the letterhead .

[225]


Communists and Namt-Borrowing

The Communist Party will borrow for its purposeany name whose owner is careless enough to lend it .The Communist Party relies heavily upon the care-lessness or indifference of literally thousands ofprominent citizens in lending their names .In my testimony before the Dies Committee I

called attention to the fact that the French com-munist newspaper, Ce Soir, featured hearty greetingsfrom Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, James Cagney,and Shirley Temple. I stated further that a list ofsuch persons could be extended almost indefinitely .Their names have definite propaganda value whichthe Communist Party is quick to exploit.

My testimony concerning the newspaper, Ce Soir,was not and cannot be refuted . The best the Partyand its fellow travelers could do was to attempt acampaign of distortion and ridicule . In this, it re-ceived the assistance of numerous editors, columnists,cartoonists, and even two members of the President'sCabinet. The President of the United States himselfwas drawn into the scheme. In newspaper reports ofa presidential press conference, we read :

Attempts to identify the New Deal or the "purge"with Communism, the President said, were on a parwith accusing Shirley Temple of being a Communist . 82

When this can happen here, Americans have causefor sadness .

One point involved in the tactic of communistname-borrowing requires careful elucidation if weare not to misunderstand the Communist Party'sobjective. A leading newspaper asks us editorially

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not to underestimate "the sturdy liberal resistanceto contamination" 33 on the part of many outstandingcitizens who lend their names to united frontmanoeuvres. The fact is, of course, that the Commu-nist Party has not the slightest desire to contaminatethe thinking of these citizens . Its sole purpose is toborrow their names for the purpose of contaminatinga large group of undistinguished citizens. A promi-nent citizen listed in a communist united front mayremain wholly unaffected in his own political views,but his name will be used by the Communist Partyto affect the political views of thousands of others .

The present is not the period of barricades andcivil war. It is the period of communist aggressionon the ideological front. In this ideological warfareof the present, the Communist Party stoops to theuse of the names of non-communist motion picturestars, government officials, distinguished writers, andothers who can be tricked in any way into this rela-tively slight service of communism . If indignationis in order, which it assuredly is, the logic of thosewho really believe in Americanism suggests the com-munist tricksters as the appropriate object of thisindignation-not those who expose the trick .

Strategically-Placed Comrades

In Communist Party circles it is a matter of prideand boasting that the Party has its friends and sym-pathizers situated strategically in every importantinstitution in the land - newspapers, magazines,churches, women's clubs, trade unions, governmentagencies, and educational institutions. OfttimesParty members themselves are so situated .

Individually these strategically-placed persons may[2271


not do a great deal for the Party, but cumulativelytheir influence on behalf of the Party is consideredof the greatest importance.

A leading business journal which no one wouldor could suspect of communist leanings must sufficefor a striking illustration of how strategically-placedcommunist sympathizers do their work . In a state-ment concerning the 1937 elections in the SovietUnion, this business journal declared :

That all candidates have the same platform in thesense that all are 100% in favor of the StalinistAdministration, does not make the elections meaning-less. 34

Found in this particular American business publica-tion, the foregoing comment on the Russian electionsis almost incredible. It is impossible of explanationexcept on the theory that some communist sympa-thizer did his daily stint for the Party . The statementis not isolated from its context with any resultingdistortion. On the contrary, its context provides theadditional statement that

In June, 1936, an important step was taken towardthis [the day when, with an educated electorate, gov-ernment in Russia could be made truly democratic]with the promulgation of the new Stalinist Consti-tution, revolutionary point of which was the provisionfor secret elections, the hallmark of democracy .

The Daily Worker could not possibly have donebetter in the way of a misleading claim that theSoviet Union has taken an important step towarddemocracy or that its elections are not meaninglessfrom the standpoint of a free electorate as Americansunderstand it.

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Misleading Names

Numerous Communist Party organizations andpublications bear the most innocent-sounding names .These are calculated to deceive the unwary who donot recognize their communist personnel and ad-dresses. Many persons are also unable to make skill-ful political analyses which would reveal dearlyenough the communist objectives and viewpointswhich are promoted by these organizations and pub-lications .

When the title The New South and the subtitleA Journal of Progressive Opinion appear on a maga-zine, many persons do not suspect that the publica-tion is one of the organs of the Communist Party .Even with the names of James W . Ford, Ben Davis,Jr., and R. F. Hall-all high functionaries of theCommunist Party-listed as contributing editors ofthe New South, there are still many Americans whodo not see at a glance that the magazine is an organof the Communist Party . The way in which suchan innocent-sounding name as The New South-AJournal o f Progressive Opinion serves the purposesof the communists is sufficiently well illustrated bya recent nation-wide radio broadcast of Jay Franklin,newspaper columnist and radio commentator for theNational Broadcasting Company. In his broadcast'from Atlanta, Georgia, at 10 :45 P. M. on October 7,1938, Jay Franklin quoted the New South on thesubject of the Georgia "purge" effort. This publi-cation was the only one used by Mr . Franklin inthis particular broadcast, and he was careful to readits subtitle, A Journal of Progressive Opinion . Hedid not say that he was reading from one of the pub-lications of the Communist Party . Naturally, the

[2291


quotation from the New South which Mr. Franklinread to his nation-wide audience reflected the viewsof the Communist Party (identical with those of theNew Deal) on the subject of the attempt to "purge"Senator Walter F. George of Georgia . Not many ofMr. Franklin's listeners could have been expectedto know what he did not tell them : that he wasreading from a communist publication . For manyof them, this would have made a very great difference .

The Communist Party has for many years main-tained an organization known as the Labor ResearchAssociation, located at 799 Broadway or 80 East 11thStreet (two entrances to the same building) in NewYork. Even Father Coughlin's magazine Social jus-tice was hoodwinked by the innocent-sounding nameof this organization . In one of its issues, Social Justicedescribed the Labor Research Association as "a non-political, unbiased investigative group ." 35

Champion Labor Monthly is a publication emanat-ing from 799 Broadway, New York. The name of.the publication has distinct possibilities for decep-tion. The address of its offices and many names onits masthead are enough to inform the wary, but theymean little to many other Americans . Listed as con-tributors and members of the advisory board areAngelo Herndon, Langston Hughes, James Lerner,Joseph Starobin, Frank Palmer, Rose Terlin, andRobert Morss Lovett-all widely known as commu-nists or fellow travelers . The name of United StatesSenator Lynn J . Frazier heads the advisory board,but I have it on excellent authority that SenatorFrazier many months ago demanded that his namebe removed from this publication . It was still there,however, in the issue of September, 1938 .

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COMMUNISTS AT WORK

It would be difficult to give a complete list of thecommunist organizations and publications whichbear these innocent-sounding names, but the countryis full of them. They constitute one of the most ef-fective tactics which the Communist Party has yetdevised .

Opportunistic Coalitions

In his Letter to American Workers, Lenin fur-nished the key to an understanding of the politicalvagaries of the Communist Party. Many have foundit difficult to comprehend the shifting attitudes ofcommunists who at one period have denounced theNew Deal with unbridled language and at anotherhave defended it just as warmly. In explaining hisalliance with a certain French monarchist, Leninwrote :

I did not hesitate for a moment to come to a certain"agreement" with French monarchists . . . . This wasan example of an "agreement" of which every class-conscious worker will approve, an agreement in the in-terests of Socialism . We shook hands with the Frenchmonarchist although we knew that each of us wouldreadily hang his "partner." But for a time our in-terests coincided . . . . Such tactics will lighten thetask of the Socialist revolution, will hasten its ad-vance, will weaken the international bourgeoisie, willstrengthen the position of the working class which isconquering it. 3"The communist historian of the future will write

concerning communism and the New Deal : "For atime our interests coincided." So far as the Com-munist Party is concerned, its ardent support of theNew Deal "will lighten the task of the Socialist revo-lution ."

Lenin used the tactic in 1918 ; Browder uses it in[2311


1938 . It was not so long ago that Browder declared :Behind this smoke screen, Roosevelt is carrying outmore thoroughly, more brutally than Hoover . . . thesharpest national chauvinism in foreign relations 37

But today Browder writes :Only the courageous implementing of the policy laiddown by President Roosevelt in Chicago can save ourcountry and all the capitalist world from unparalleledreaction and catastrophe .38

These are by no means the only illustrations of howthe interests of communism and the New Deal, oncedivergent, have come to coincide . Communist liter-ature of the past two years is full of them . No moretireless campaigners than Earl Browder and his com-rades have given themselves without stint to the sup-port of the New Deal .

It was not so long ago that the Daily Worker calledJohn L. Lewis a "scab head," and declared : "JohnL. Lewis has long history of treacheries," including"strike-breaking ."39 Today, as every one knows, JohnL. Lewis has become a national hero to the commu-nists. In his address to the ninth convention of theCommunist Party, Earl Browder said :

The Committee for Industrial Organization has takenup the task of organizing all the mass production in-dustries of America in industrial unions . The successof this effort is a basic necessity upon which dependsthe future of the American labor movement in allother respects . The Communist Party unconditionallypledges its full resources, moral and material, to thecomplete execution of this great project .40

Both the New Deal and the CIO have generouslyreciprocated these communist favors . Hundreds of

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communists have been employed as CIO organizers .Several CIO unions are headed by well-known mem-bers of the Communist Party.

Prominent New Dealers have given aid and com-fort to the united front organizations of the Com-munist Party. Without attempting any complete listof such activities of New Dealers, attention may becalled to the telegram of endorsement which RobertH. Jackson, Solicitor General of the United States,sent to the Peace Parade held under the auspices ofthe American League for Peace and Democracy ; alsoto the address which Harold Ickes delivered beforethe National Negro Conference '41 another commu-nist united front manoeuvre ; and to the address ofAubrey Williams before the Workers' Alliance ofAmerica .

How high left-wingers of communist sympathieshave been able to rise in the agencies of the New Dealis well illustrated by Paul Sifton, assistant to the Wage-Hour administrator, and David J . Saposs, chief econ-omist of the National Labor Relations Board .In the beginning of the American League for

Peace and Democracy, Paul Sifton was one of ourfellow travelers. On one occasion, Sifton, Kyle Crich-ton, and I made broadcasts for the American League .The first issue of Fight, magazine of the AmericanLeague, carried an article by Paul Sifton . Addressingthe workers, Mr. Sifton wrote :

You do the leading ; set the Fat Boys back on theirbottoms and keep them there ; keep them blocking ;keep them ducking; don't let them tie you up withtheir bull about Patriotism. . . . Tell them you knowthat they know they're sunk unless they can start awar to make their $200,000,000,000 in debts look bet-

[2331


ter than a train-load of waste paper ; tell them theyand their fancy pieces of paper and the wholecapitalist shell game can sink and be damned. Tellthem that we've got another war on, closer home, awar to establish a workers' peace, a workers' govern-ment. (They know this anyway, but they hate tobe told.) If you want to make it snappy, just tellthem that workers have been played for saps longenough. Tell them to go to hell! Then make itstick 142

These were the words of a man who has become theassistant administrator of one of the most powerfulgovernment agencies ever set up in this country forthe control of the capitalist system-the system whichMr. Sifton said can sink and be damned!

David J. Saposs was for some years a member ofthe faculty of Brookwood Labor College . He is theauthor of Left Wing Unionism, a book bearing theimprint of the Communist Party's publishing con-cern, International Publishers, and in use at theParty's Workers' School . Mr. Saposs is reported inthe press as having said that this book was an objec-tive study for which he received a doctor's degree .Passing over the question of the objectivity of Mr .Saposs' book, let us see what he had to say in otherwritings . In Labor Age, December, 1931, both Mr.Saposs and I had articles . In his article, Mr. Saposswrote :

But bourgeois democracy is a sham . When it is evi-dent that Socialism is the only remedy it is not worthsaving a democracy in which socialist parties onlycollaborate with capitalism . . . .If in the attempt to carry out such a program

political action fails, then the workers must unhesi-tatingly resort to organized force . The International

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COMMUNISTS AT WORK

must take the position that if another war occurs theworkers will destroy capitalism. With that end inview the workers must be prepared to stretch armsacross the frontiers in case. of war and definitely winpower for themselves . 43

There are hundreds of men holding views similar tothese of Sifton and Saposs who are now in importantpositions in the New Deal government. Naturally,communists and their sympathizers demand that theDies Committee cease its investigations .

The United States Department of Labor needs alot of investigation . The extraordinary warmth withwhich the Secretary of Labor responded to the de-mand of Martin Dies that Harry Bridges be deportedhas not yet received an adequate explanation .

The United States Department of Labor last yearpublished a book detailing the history and statistics ofstrikes in the United States from 1880 to 1936 . Noteven once in the 183 pages of the study did the wordcommunist appear. So far as the record of this de-partment of government was concerned, communistunions and communist strikes did not exist at allduring these fifty years of American labor history .

At least three communist unions were named inthe Department of Labor's volume: the NationalTextile Workers, the Needle Trades Workers Indus-trial Union, and the National Miners Union. Theseand other unions were formally affiliated with theRed International of Labor Unions having worldheadquarters in Moscow . Nevertheless, the Depart-ment of Labor gave them the designation of "inde-pendent unions ." The voluminous literature of theCommunist Party usually referred to these tradeunions as "revolutionary" but not as "independent ."

[2351


Less independent unions could hardly be imagined .The Department of Labor committed an even

greater historical inaccuracy when it declared, in itsstudy, that the three communist unions alreadynamed "merged with A. F. of L. affiliates." Whenthe Communist Party reached its decision to disbandits revolutionary unions and to send their membersinto the A. F. of L. unions, nothing that could becalled a "merger" occurred-a fact of which the De-partment of Labor was fully apprised. The membersof the disbanded communist unions joined the A . F .of L. unions as individuals and, so far as possible,without disclosing to the leaders of the A. F. of L .unions their former communist trade union connec-tions. "If we work cleverly, they will not succeed inisolating us," wrote Jack Stachel, the CommunistParty's trade union leader and tactician, at the timeof the shift in the Communist Party's trade uniontactics in 1934." Working cleverly meant obviouslythe concealing of their identity as former membersof communist unions, a concealment which wouldnot have been possible if a merger had occurred .

Communists in Trade Unions

It would be difficult to imagine a more colossalpretense than that which holds that the communisttheory of trade unions and the congressional theoryof collective bargaining embodied in the NationalLabor Relations Act are one and the same thing, ornot fundamentally contradictory .The communist theory of trade unions rests upon

the premise of "the subordination of the economicstruggle to the political struggle of the working class ."A. Lozovsky, head of the Red International of Labor

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Unions, is the author of a book entitled Marx andthe Trade Unions, which is a textbook in use at theCommunist Party's Workers' School (in 1938, notin 1918) . In his book, Lozovsky observed correctlythat "Marx always stressed the primacy of politicsover economics." According to Lozovsky, Marx at-tached "tremendous significance to the economicstruggle of the proletariat and the trade unions,"but at the same time "he placed the political all-classtasks of the trade unions higher than the privatecorporative tasks . "15 The phrase, "private corporativetasks," is the communist's way of describing the indi-vidual union's interest in collective bargaining overwages, hours, and working conditions .

Unless one holds the highly dubious theory thatthe Democratic majority in Congress consciously in-tended to commit suicide-by-legislation, it cannot bepresumed that the congressional intent embodied inthe Wagner Act was to "place the political all-classtasks of the trade unions higher than the private cor-porative tasks." On the contrary, it must be assumedthat the interest of Congress was limited to the estab-lishment of the principle of collective bargainingover wages, hours, and working conditions .

All Marxists, whether communist or socialist, andother radicals as well, hold that trade unions are thechief instrument for building a political movementwith which to destroy capitalism. In a context whichclearly showed adverse criticism, Norman Thomasobserved that "A. F. of L. unions are primarily con-cerned with establishing the principle and workingthe machinery of collective bargaining ." 45 With whatelse should they be concerned, primarily or secon-darily? For many years, radicals of every hue have

[2371


held the A. F. of L. guilty of "reformism" or "busi-ness unionism ." (Again, it must be observed thatthe majority of Congress which enacted the NationalLabor Relations Act was unquestionably thinkingonly of "reformism" or "business unionism .")

In the literature of radicals, trade union "reform-ism" is customarily associated with the leadershipof Samuel Gompers. A. Lozovsky, who wrote thetreatise which guides the Communist Party in itstrade union activities today, said :

The Marxian spirit can be sensed in demonstrations,in bloody strikes and hunger marches of the unem-ployed in the U. S. A. Revolutionary Marxism iswinning one position after another . . . . In whosefavour is history working? Evidently in favour ofrevolutionary Marxism and not Gompersism .47

With the strictest relevance to recent American laborhistory, it may be asked : "In whose favor is theNational Labor Relations Board working?" Theanswer is : "Evidently in favor of revolutionaryMarxism and not Gompersism ."

Communists would like to have the general publicbelieve that they are interested in the advancementof trade unions as they are commonly understoodby the American people and by the legislators whopassed the Wagner Act. They have, however, filledcommunist literature with the opposite theory thattrade unions are bad, counter-revolutionary, class-collaborators, fascist, and deserving of destructionunless they are "a useful auxiliary to the political,agitational and revolutionary organizations." Theseare Lenin's own words .

Karl Marx said that "the trade unions are schools[ 238 )

COMMUNISTS AT WORK

of communism."18 In a letter dated February 18,1865, Marx wrote to Engels that "the working classis revolutionary or it is nothing ."49 With reference tothis latter statement of Marx, Lozovsky observed :"This is what defines the line of action of KarlMarx." It also defines the line of action of commu-nists today .Roger Baldwin who runs the American Civil

Liberties Union stated the Marxist position as it isgenerally understood by radicals when he said :"Trade-unionism alone furnishes a class base of revo-lutionary power for the exploited masses ." Baldwinfurther remarked :

I would rather see violent revolution than none atall . . . . Even the terrible cost of bloody revolutionis a cheaper price to humanity than the continuedexploitation and wreck of human life under the set-tled violence of the present system . 5°

Communists have been just as frank in stating theirtheory of strikes as they have been in discussingtheir theory of trade unions. Lozovsky put the mat-ter bluntly, as follows :

It means that the revolutionary Marxists have theirown strike tactics-differing radically from the striketactics of the anarchists and reformists . 61

What are these special Marxist strike tactics whichdiffer so radically from those of the reformists?Lozovsky explained :

We have already seen that Marx and Engels referredto strikes as "social war," as "economic revolt," "realcivil war," "guerilla war," "school of war," "advanceguard collisions ." 52

[ 239]


Communists envision the eventual overthrow ofcapitalism through civil war . It is only natural,therefore, that they should attach great importanceto the small-scale rehearsals of civil war which theyfind possible in strikes. (But once more, it is evidentthat by strikes the communists mean something verydifferent from what was in the minds of the majorityof the congressmen who enacted the Wagner Actinto law.) Let Marx, Engels, and Lenin refute theofficers of the National Labor Relations Board whoassert that communist leadership in a trade unionor a strike is wholly irrelevant to the administrationof the Wagner Act. Concerning strikes, Marx wrote :

In this struggle-a veritable civil war-are united anddeveloped all these elements necessary for a futurebattle; once having reached this point, associationtakes on a political character ."

Note the emphasis on training for a future battle andthe frank admission that strikes, as far as communistsare concerned, are political in character . From thepen of Engels, we have the following illuminatingevaluation of strikes :

They are the school of war of the workingmen inwhich they prepare themselves for the great strugglewhich cannot be avoided. . . . And as schools of warthey are unexcelled . 54

The master teacher of them all, Lenin, summed uphis discussion of strikes in these words :

Here we have the programme and the tactics of theeconomic struggle and the trade union movement forseveral decades to come, for the whole long period in

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which the workers are preparing for a "futurebattle." 68

Aside from training the working class in the art ofcivil war, strikes serve other subsidiary purposes .First, they constitute an important method of sabo-taging the whole capitalist system. Lozovsky wrote :

Marx knew that the economic strike was an importantweapon in the hands of the proletariat against thebourgeoisie, since everything that deals a blow to thecapitalists deals a blow also to the capitalist system . "56

Second, strikes are indispensable for developing lassconsciousness in the minds of workers . Lozovsky ex-plained that Marx proved

the vast significance of strikes for turning the pro-letariat into a class .57

Third, we are indebted to none other than DavidJ. Saposs, chief economist of the National LaborRelations Board, for the statement that strikes de-velop class-struggle "muscle" in a trade union andtransform its members into those who pay their dueswillingly. Wrote Saposs:

It is also true that unorganized and particularly immi-grant and unskilled workers must develop enthusiasm,solidarity and understanding through mass action andthe strike before they can be interested in becomingpermanent, dues-paying members. 58

Saposs' book, Left Wing Unionism, bears the imprintof International Publishers which is the CommunistParty's publishing house in the United States, andthe book itself is a text in use at the CommunistParty's Workers' School .

[241]


Committed as they are to the view that strikesare unexcelled as schools of war, it would be theheight of folly to allege that communists (or radicalsin general) exert themselves to keep picketing withinpeaceful bounds. Of course, no such thing is true,as anyone well knows if he has ever been even moder-ately close to the trade union activities of commu-nists. On the contrary, the communist tactic instrikes is invariably to provoke violence from theside of the management and the police . This is soelementary in radical practice that it borders on theridiculous for anyone to ask proof for it. All theproof needed is in the Marxist theory of trade unionsand strikes . Nevertheless, Mrs. George Soule whohas written a pamphlet for the Communist Party'sInternational Labor Defense declared :

I have been in many strikes, and I have never seenany trouble started by any labor group 6 9

Unless there is a "catch" in Mrs . Soule's declaration,there is no avoiding the conclusion that somethingis wrong with her eyesight. The usual "catch" whichis implicit in any such statement made by a commu-nist or a fellow traveler is that the "trouble" is al-ways started by employers if they do not promptlycomply with whatever demands the communist unionleaders present . In communist circles, it is reckoneda "provocative" thing for an employer to be slowin yielding to even the most absurd and impossibledemands. The non-provocative employer-the onewho starts no trouble-is one who turns over his plantto communists to do with as they will, who takes nomeasures whatever for the defense of his constitu-tional rights to life and property, and who otherwise

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recognizes that a Soviet America would be vastlysuperior to what we now have. An employer's refusalto do any one of these things may brand him asguilty of having started the trouble. Of course, afterthe employer has started the trouble by his stubborn-ness, the workers are then free to demolish automo-biles and buildings, to stone or beat the employerand non-striking workers, and to inflict whateverother damage they may choose to inflict . If, in doingthese things, they come into conflict with local officersof the law who, like the employers, are stubborn, itis the function of the American Civil Liberties Unionto see that the communists incur no penalties forhaving continued the trouble which the employerstarted, and it has been the practice of the NationalLabor Relations Board to prosecute the employer forfailing to yield to the communists' demands .

In the outline for its course on trade unionism atthe Workers' School, the Communist Party lists threeconcepts of trade unions: (a) Reformist, (b) Anarcho-Syndicalist, and (c) Marxist. According to the out-line, reformist trade unions are those which acceptthe idea of class collaboration and "arbitration as ameans of settling labor disputes." The anarcho-syn-dicalist unions are those which hold the "theory thatthe union is the primary organ to wage the classstruggle" along with a "repudiation of the need fora workers' political party ." The Marxist unions arethose which have the structure of "industrial union-ism" and which are based upon the theory that tradeunions are "schools of socialism ." The CIO was theanswer to the Marxists' prayers of a generation .

In the light of all the foregoing authoritative state-ments-of the communist or Marxist theory of trade

[243]


unions, it is apparent that nothing could be morerelevant than for the National Labor Relations Boardto ascertain the extent to which any particular tradeunion is under the leadership of communists . Atrade union under communist leadership is not atrade union at all in the sense which Congress musthave intended in its enactment of the Wagner Act .Such a labor organization is "a school of socialism"conducted under the guise of trade unionism. Astrike under communist leadership is likewise not astrike at all ; it is "an advance guard collision . . .in which the workers are preparing for a future bat-tle." Did Congress set up an agency for the promotionof schools of socialism and for training workers, asMarx said, in "real civil war"? Since Congress hadno such intention, then the National Labor RelationsBoard has been guilty of the most colossal betrayalof American institutions to be found in the historyof this country .

In recent years, communists and their fellowtravelers have put forth the argument that commu-nists cannot dominate a trade union unless they con-stitute a majority of the union's membership . DavidJ. Saposs himself has given the lie to this cunningargument . In discussing "Propaganda Under theGuise of Trade Union Action," Saposs wrote :

But propaganda bodies, chiefly dedicated to the dis-semination of sentiments and ideas may exercise far-reaching emotional and intellectual influence with asmall membership and little material opulence .80

The New Republic stated recently that communistsare in the CIO unions in "about the same propor-tions as they exist in the communities from which

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their membership is drawn." 81 This statement iscompletely evasive of the real issue, which is onethat concerns the nature of the activity of commu-nists in the unions . Who would think of trying todismiss the problem of gangsters and racketeers intrade unions with the cavalier observation that theyare in the unions in "about the same proportions asthey exist in the communities from which their mem-bership is drawn"? If, as is clear to all, gangsters arein unions with the purpose of collecting swag, of ex-ploiting workers mercilessly, and of maintainingpolicies which are at variance with the purposes ofunions as these are commonly understood, then allwho are interested in trade unions will strive for theelimination of the gangsters irrespective of the nicetyof their proportional representation in the unions .Communists are not gangsters in any ordinary senseof the word, but they may be quite as dangerous asgangsters wherever they are able to manoeuvre them-selves into positions of trade union leadership . Com-munists have publicly announced their determinationto destroy the so-called reformist trade unions, andhave frankly declared their policy of turning theunions which they control into schools of commu-nism and training schools for real civil war . In somerespects, therefore, communism may be even more ofa cancerous growth in trade unions than gangsterism .The New Republic offers the equally disingenu-

ous argument that union membership is made up ofCatholics, Jews, Protestants, Republicans, and Demo-crats, as well as "a mere sprinkling of Socialists, Com-munists, Trotskyites and Lovestoneites." Everyoneknows that a worker's religion is irrevelant to histrade union membership for the obvious reason that

[245]


there is no special trade union "line" held by Catho-lics, Jews, or Methodists as such . The churches donot send their members into trade unions with rigidinstructions to carry out a specific policy . The Com-munist Party, on the other hand, not only requiresits members to join whatever union they may beeligible to join, but it also charges them, on painof Party discipline, with the responsibility for execut-ing carefully drawn plans for work in the tradeunions . These things are as well known to theeditors of the New Republic as they are to anyoneelse .

John Brophy is the author of yet another type ofargument. Addressing the National Council of Catho-lic Women, Mr. Brophy said :

After all Communism is the outgrowth of the denialof workers' rights, a thing that has grown out of thesoil of repression and oppression. Labor unions haveto take the workers that the employers have broughttogether. We don't question a man about his politicalaffiliations .62

It is equally true that gangsterism is believed bymany to grow out of the soil of undesirable socialconditions. Should gangsterism in a trade union betolerated simply because it is a natural growth fromthe soil of poverty and psychological maladjustment?. . . The arguments of Mr. Brophy and the editorsof the New Republic also spring from a clearly recog-nizable soil-the soil of perfect congeniality to thepresence of communists both in our communitiesand in the trade unions .John L. Lewis has been quoted in the press as

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saying that employers hire communists . This state-ment, too, is entirely without relevance to the issueinvolved. According to the La Follette Civil Liber-ties Committee, certain employers have also hiredthugs l

In 1934, I was chairman of the RevolutionaryPolicy Committee which was organized within theSocialist Party on the initiative of Jay Lovestone .In the first issue of the Revolutionary Socialist Re-view published by this group, Francis Henson, whoof late has been the administrative assistant to HomerMartin in the leadership of the United AutomobileWorkers' Union, was designated as acting secretaryof the Revolutionary Policy Committee . In an ar-ticle in this issue of the group's publication, Hensonwrote :

The R. P. C. does not shy at the term communist .. . . It is primarily interested in building a unitedrevolutionary socialist party with an effective programin the organized labor movement .63

Mr. Henson left no doubt about his views on dic-tatorship in the United States. He envisioned forthe United States a more impregnable dictatorshipthan exists in the Soviet Union. Mr. Henson, itmust not be forgotten, is only one of several thou-sands of left-wingers now unusually active or occupy-ing high positions in the American labor movementwho hold the view that

Once the workers firmly establish a dictatorship of theproletariat in any highly industrialized western state,it will be even more impregnable than the presentSoviet Union which grows more able every day todefend itself against all enemies .

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With men like Henson so prominent in the leader-ship of the CIO, there should be no difficulty in un-derstanding the CIO's use of the revolutionary meas-ure of the sit-down strike . However, the sit-downstrike with its arrogant lawlessness is merely a mildprelude to what is envisioned for the future by thesemen. If they have their way, America's future willbe more terrible than Spain's present. Here is whatHenson wrote in the first issue of the RevolutionarySocialist Review :

Therefore the working class state will be an entirelynew type of state based on workers' councils, histori-cally suited to serve as the organs of liberation. Work-ers' Councils organized in direct response to a growingrevolutionary situation shall constitute the basic unitor organ by which the working class can carry throughan armed insurrection .

Even the more moderate left-wingers are accustomedto measure progress in terms of industrial strife . Forthis reason if for no other they are determined topermit no modification of the Wagner Act. Themore strife the more encouragement they have fortheir revolutionary hopes . I have before me a letterfrom a former comrade which many Americans willfind it all but impossible to understand, but here iswhat it says :

I am more hopeful than ever about conditions aroundhere right now . We have a wave of strikes on thatis sweeping the entire state.

The Communist Smearing Technique

Among the Communist Party's most highly devel-oped and most unscrupulous techniques is that of

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smearing its critics. Its smearing is not confined tothe use of abusive epithets in its publications .- Itassumes its most effective form in organized whis-pering campaigns of unbridled scurrility .

The effective use of the whispering campaigndepends largely upon the aid of persons who are notgenerally known to have any communist connectionsor sympathies. Such persons are provided with men-dacious and criminally libelous stories which they,in turn, circulate as widely as possible among non-communists and even among pronounced right-wingers. Little, if any, responsibility attaches to thefilthy work of the whisperer, and the CommunistParty proceeds on the assumption that the middle-class world is composed largely of suckers who devourgossip eagerly .A certain well-known left-wing writer who was

once a member of the Communist Party will serveas one example of the whispering campaign. Thestory is widely circulated by Communist Party mem-bers and sympathizers that this erstwhile Party mem-ber was expelled for absconding with a sum of$40,000 which he carried in cash on his person andwhich belonged to one of the Party's united fronts .I have heard one variation of the story which recitedthat he lost his senses completely while under theinfluence of liquor in a house of ill-repute, and thesum was stolen from him by one of the girls . Theman who is the object of this particular whisperingcampaign would find it all but absolutely 'impossibleto track the story down to its original authors or tohold them or any one else responsible for its circu-lation .

It is the rule to provide conservative and middle-[249]


class suckers with whatever kind of story they aremost likely to find appetizing to their craving forgossip. The desertion of one's children, wife beating,financial irregularity, philandering, habitual inebria-tion, and stoolpidgeoning are among the favoritebits of gossip employed by the communists and theirsympathizers for the purpose of paralyzing the effec-tiveness of a critic among conservatives and othernon-communist groups. The Communist Party, itmust be remembered, has thousands of individualsat its disposal for this work of smearing. It relies onthe gullibility of that very large group of personswho believe that a twice-heard tale must be true . Itcounts upon the phenomenon that the truth neveror rarely catches up with a lie, and a lie is, therefore,vested with a certain net effectiveness for revolu-tionary purposes.I know one prominent person who has waged a

tireless campaign against communism and who thecommunists publicly declare is now confined in anasylum for the insane. Despite the fact that thisdistinguished anti-communist is a person of extraor-dinarily sound and vigorous mind and makes fre-quent public appearances, there are undoubtedlythousands of persons who believe the tale of theinsane asylum . The technique works, thanks largelyto a pervasive gullibility among conservatives andother non-communists, and workability is the onlytest of a good revolutionary technique . The Marxiancode of ethics is the most cold-blooded pragmatismthe world has ever seen .

Of course the classic smearing campaign in whichthe communists of this country have engaged is thatwhich they have directed against their foremost

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journalistic critic, William Randolph Hearst. Thecommunists have found writers like Ferdinand Lund-berg and George Seldes especially useful in thisbusiness of answering anti-communist facts with scur-rility .

A Schedule of Revolution

The manner in which all of these united front,trade union, and other activities of the CommunistParty are integrated into its whole strategy should besketched briefly . The Party aims ultimately at revo-lution-the complete overthrow of the system knownas capitalism and the liquidation of the bourgeoisie .This ultimate aim is, however, to be attained instages which are conceived to follow logically oneupon the other. These stages must be understoodin order to comprehend the meaning of any commu-nist tactic at a given moment .

The present stage in communist strategy is theunited front phase. This is the period during whichthe Party extends its influence in the many deviousways which I tried to elucidate-a little radicalizationhere, a little there, boring, penetrating, infiltrating,ceaselessly manoeuvering for some gain howeverslight. The program is aimed more at winning anenormous number of sympathizers than at increasingthe card-holding membership, although the lattershould not be underestimated .

In the next stage, the Communist Party hopes tocontribute no little help in bringing about a disin-tegration of the Democratic Party by driving a wedgebetween its so-called liberal and its so-called conserva-tive wings. Before the Communist Party can hopeto advance far toward its revolutionary goal, it under-

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stands rightly that there must be a sweeping realign-ment of political parties in this country . That re-alignment is sought at the price of the very existenceof the Democratic Party. Out of the chaos of theDemocratic Party's destruction, it is expected that anational farmer-labor party would emerge . The back-bone of this new political grouping would be theindustrial unions, a single bloc numbering millionsand susceptible of being moved as chess pieces uponthe political board. The two communist authors ofMen Who Lead Labor already see this stage of therevolution arriving . A year ago they wrote :

What lay ahead was clear . . . . As industrial unioniza-tion advanced, as groups battered by political issuesfound their new positions in the transformed politicalscene, the progressive forces within the disintegratingDemocratic Party, in alliance with the already existingfarmer-labor groups, would evolve into a nationalFarmer-Labor Party-an American People's Front.°*

The effort of the Communist Party will be every-where to hold a commanding influence-not neces-sarily a numerical majority-in these industrialunions and consequently in the farmer-labor party.The desired place of the Communist Party in thisdevelopment was defined by Lenin many years ago,when he said :

The Communist Party is the organized political leverby means of which the more advanced section of theworking class leads the whole proletarian and semi-proletarian mass.a6

The two communist authors of Men Who LeadLabor have hailed Heywood Broun's contribution

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to this politicalization of the labor movement, inthese words :

Broun stressed the need to politicalize the labor move-ment, to build a Farmer-Labor Party that would rallyall liberals and progressives in the middle classes tothe support of a militant working class."

With a farmer-labor party in power, the CommunistParty would exert every ounce of its influence touse that party as a means to the sabotage of thecapitalist system of production by placing upon thatsystem burdens of restrictive legislation and enervat-ing taxation. These ends would, it is hoped, beachieved by the slogans of social security, unprece-dented sums for relief of every conceivable sort, untilthe collapse of the currency and the drain upon pro-duction induced a major crisis in the working of theeconomy. Meanwhile vast political power would bebuilt upon these governmental hand-outs-a verita-ble monster of politics insatiable in its appetite forcompensation without toil . Not only upon the econ-omy's currency but upon every other front of thecapitalist system, this incessant sabotage would doits work until finally the system would require areceiver.The Communist Party would then step in as the

most militant, cohesive, and highly disciplined mi-nority available to take over the functions of govern-ment. Thus would the dictatorship of the proletariat-no longer any pretenses about democracy-inaugu-rate a Soviet America . The reactionary propertyholders and the idealistic believers in democracy andcivil .liberties would have to be slaughtered-notbecause the communists love violence and bloodshed

[2531


but because they look upon themselves as the fash-ioners of a new destiny for mankind .

So far on the road of this development, the Com-munist Party is doing remarkably well, thanks tosubstantial assistance from many quarters, but some-where before the end of this schedule there is, with-out any doubt, an unscheduled stop. Whether thatpoint is reached soon or late will determine whetheror not America is to be spared the fate of thoseEuropean states which ignored the peril of commu-nism while educational methods were still sufficientto cope with it .

' Daily Worker, August 30, 1938, p . 7 .' Lenin, Lenin Speaks to Youth (New York : International Publishers,

1936), pp . 13, 16.' A . Lozovsky, RILU Magazine, February 15, 1932, p . 245.' Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, p . 38.•

Reinhold Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of An Era, p . 272 .' The Social Questions Bulletin, Methodist Federation for Social Service,

January, 1937, p. 1 .7 Daily Worker, February 9, 1938 .' Bennett Stevens, The Church and the Workers, p . 31 .•

Ibid, p . 27f."Corliss Lamont, Soviet Russia and Religion, p . 21f .17 Ibid, p . 19 ."Karl Marx, Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung, September 12, 1847."Daily Worker, January 14, 1938, p. 6.'4 Ibid, January 21, 1938, p. 6."Ibid, January 24, 1938, p . 6.1° Ibid, February 16, 1938, p . 6 .17 The Communist, October, 1935, p. 923." Lenin, The State and Revolution, p. 73 ."Lenin, Two Tactics, p. 21 ."Lenin, The Paris Commune, p . 54 ."James W. Ford and James S. Allen, The Negroes in a Soviet America,

p . 14 ." Georgi Dimitroff, The United Front, p . 74." Ibid, p. 75 ."Daily Worker, June 1, 1938." Lenin, What Is To Be Done', p . 83f."Georgi Dimitroff, The United Front, p . 76 ."Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, p. 111 ."Organization Hand Book, American League Against War and Fascism, p .

iv-3 ."Daily Worker, February 3, 1938.

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"New York Herald Tribune, April 16, 1936, p . 14 ."The New Republic, August 31, 1938 ."" New York Herald Tribune, August 27, 1938, p. 1 .""Ibid, August 24, 1938."4 Business Week, November 20, 1937, p . 56.

41 Daily Worker, September 28, 1933, p . 4.42 Fight, November, 1933, p . 11 .43 Labor Age, December, 1931, p. 22 .44 The Communist, November, 1934.4" A. Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p. 25 .w Norman Thomas, America's Way Out, p . 265 .4r Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p . 105.48 Ibid, p . 175.11 Ibid, p. 41 ."0 Roger Baldwin, The Socialism of Our Times, p. 77.61 Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p . 137.51 1 bid, p. 134 ." Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, Collected Works, Vol . xviii, p. 34 ."' Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 ."" Lenin, Teachings of Karl Marx, p . 34.""Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p . 135 ."' Ibid, p. 134."" David J. Saposs, Left Wing Unionism, p . 147 ."" Isobel Walker Soule, The Vigilantes, p. 9."° David J. Saposs, Left Wing Unionism, p. 171 .n The New Republic, January 26, 1938, pp. 323-324 ."" The Sunday Worker, January 23, 1938.a The Revolutionary Socialist Review, November, 1934."Bruce Minton and John Stuart, Men Who Lead Labor, p. 245 .a Lenin, stenographic report of the Second Congress of the Comintern

(Russian edition), p. 369."Bruce Minton and John Stuart, Men Who Lead Labor, p. 142.

" Social Justice, October 5, 1936, p . 15 ." Lenin, A Letter to American Workers, p . 14f ."r Browder, Communism in the United States, p . 115 ."" Browder, The New Republic, February 2, 1938."" Daily Worker, January 5, 1933, p. 3 ; September 16, 1933, p . 4.40 Browder, Democracy or Fascism, June 24, 1936, p . 25f .

DISSENTER AGAINWithout regard to what it may reveal in the way

of intellectual instability, I have acknowledged theembracing of a succession of panaceas. By describingmy past beliefs as panaceas, I do not mean to say thatI now reject all of their ideas and ideals as totallyworthless or lacking in validity. I do mean to saythat in each, as I understand it, there was a largeand varying admixture of error, and, furthermore,that the manner in which each was held and espousedgave it the form of a crusade .

I claim partial justification for my past crusadingtemper in the observation that enlisting in crusadesis a peculiarly American disposition . What we joinmay be, and, indeed, often is, un-American, but theact of joining is typically American.

I do not believe that the psychology of the socialcrusader has been adequately analyzed . Its essentialquality is that of intoxication with a feeling of power,even though the power may be experienced only inimagination . The thought of thoroughly overhaulingor pulling down a social structure and of rebuildingit according to one's own plans involves the exerciseof vast power. The mere thought is enough to intoxi-cate its possessor. Men in the modern world, as wellas the ancient, have gone mad with the idea, not tomention their driving whole nations to the brink ofdestruction in their efforts to translate thought intodeed.The way some Americans made a round of the

speakeasies in the 'twenties and early 'thirties had its

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striking similarities to this going from panacea topanacea. Each panacea provides its own degree ofintoxication, and many who begin to make the roundof the panaceas are certain to make their final stopat Sloppy Joe Stalin's before they swear off and decideupon a course of political sobriety .

In my successive selections of panaceas, frameworkafter framework dropped away, but the central ideapersisted that I must contribute my share towardremaking the world . (Many Americans will recallthat one of the prominent figures of the New Deal'searlier days wrote in his youth: "I will roll up mysleeves and make America over .") I moved from re-ligious fundamentalism to the social gospel. Fromthe social gospel with it earnest humanitarianism, Iwent to political reform . From political reform a laLa Follette the Elder, I moved to pacifism . Afterpacifism came socialism of the Norman Thomasbrand. I went, finally, from socialism to communism.

The inevitable feeling of inadequacy with respectto each succeeding panacea suggested that some morepotent dosage of social medicine was required by thepatient. I have no difficulty in understanding thoseAmericans of former generations who came under thespell of the traveling medicine shows. The commu-nist soap boxer is the patent medicine barker in a1938 edition .The atmosphere surrounding each crusading enter-

prise was that of urgency . Whatever was to be donehad to be done "in this generation." Originally, itwas "the evangelization of the world in this genera-tion." Finally, it was the communization of theworld in this generation .

In the course of these twenty-five years of enlisting

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in one crusade after another, I had other interests .Crusading was, for the most part, an avocation . Dur-ing many of those years I was engaged in linguisticwork which required the most meticulous regard foraccuracy. I acquired something of a Dr . Jekyll's ap-preciation for scholarship, even if I did not attainthe intellectual stature of a scholar . I had the advan-tages of working under and with some of the distin-guished scholars of our time . There is a high moralquality in the respect which true scholarship has forfacts-even for little and often apparently inconse-quential facts. In my work as a Mr. Hyde of therevolution, I was forced by the Marxist code to ignorefacts or to do them violence by misplaced emphasis .I learned eventually that Marxists are "virtuous"liars-men who lie for a Cause whose claims uponthem are paramount. Sooner or later Mr. Hyde's"virtuous" lying had to come to grips with Dr .Jekyll's reverence for facts, with a resulting spiritualcrisis which could be resolved only in the death ofthe one or the other . When I now assert that Mr .Hyde of the Marxist revolution died in that innerpersonal conflict, it is not, I hope, with any claim toethical uniqueness. It was simply that deeper personalsatisfactions or more preferred pleasures arbitratedthe issue in favor of Dr . Jekyll's mode of life .

Throughout the entire period of my fellow travel-ing with the communists, I had serious differenceswith the Communist Party's leaders . I was, apparent-ly, not as good a Marxist as I thought at the time,despite the numerous flattering references to mywork which are a part of the Communist Party's ownrecord and which it cannot at this late date expungefrom the columns of the Daily Worker.

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I call attention only to those differences betweenthe Communist Party and me which are a part ofthe public records and which cannot, therefore, beregarded as post facto inventions of mine designed tojustify my present repudiation of communism andall its works. One of these incidents occurred in1933, another in 1934, and the final one in 1935 .The first of them I have already discussed under theheading of Committee for Investigating Conditionsin the Furriers' Union . In that episode, the commu-nists faked my name as a signatory to the investi-gating committee's published report . I publicly repu-diated that signature, and my repudiation may befound in the files of the New Leader of the time . Thesecond sharp difference which arose between theParty and me resulted in my resignation as the na-tional chairman of the American League AgainstWar and Fascism. That, too, I have discussed underits appropriate heading, and it is also a matter ofrecord in numerous documents available to thepublic .The third and final breach which, like the other

two, was based primarily on ethical grounds occurredin the summer and fall of 1935 in connection with aso-called strike at Consumers' Research .

For a number of years, I had been a member ofthe board of directors of Consumers' Research andalso its vice-president . Early in the history of thatorganization, I became acquainted with its founderand present president, F . J . Schlink. Consumers' Re-search as conceived and administered by Schlink isan organization engaged in making comparative rat-ings of consumers' goods and in publishing theseratings as a confidential service to ultimate con-

[2591


sumers . Whatever may have been the political view-'points of some of us who were connected with Con-sumers' Research, the only political view which couldpossibly be implicit in the organization's own natureand functioning is one which presupposes an eco-nomic system of free, private, and competitive enter-prise. Under a totalitarian or collectivist state inwhich politicians assume all control over the produc-tion and distribution of goods, there could not andwould not be 'tolerated any independent agency fortesting and rating consumers' goods . Under a com-munist state, there are no competing brands whoserelative merits may be considered . All the evils longassociated with monopoly are present in the highestpossible degree in a society where the state becomesthe absolute monopolist-the lone capitalist, if youplease-in production and distribution .

For many years, the communists took the positionthat consumers as such could not be organized forrevolutionary purposes. It neglected, therefore, toset up any united fronts whose purpose was to exploitconsumers' interests, on behalf of Moscow . In 1935,this position was reversed and the communists de-cided to launch a whole new series of united frontorganizations for consumers . I have related alreadyhow I was called into consultation on the formationof the League of Women Shoppers . That organiza-tion was the Communist Party's first venture intothis field .

Arthur Kallet and Susan Jenkins were the Party'sadvisors-extraordinary in this enterprise of gullingconsumers into the peripheral movements of com-munism .

In a prospectus of the People's Press, a radical[260]

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paper of which he is one of the editors, Arthur Kalletwas described as the "leader" of the strike at Con-sumers' Research. Kallet, in turn, described SusanJenkins as the leader of the same strike, in an articlewhich he wrote for the New Masses of September 17,1935. The fact was that the two of them were co-leaders of the strike .

Kallet denies publicly that he is a member of theCommunist Party; and he told me under circum-stances which would lead me to place complete cre-dence in his statement that he did not carry a Partycard. At the same time, he assured me that he tookhis "political directives" from the Party . In connec-tion with launching the Communist Party into thefield of consumer agitation, Kallet informed me thathe had been in frequent touch with a certain Mr .Siskind whom he described as the Communist Partyorganizer for New York ' City. I had not heard atthe time (July 7, 1935), of any one by the name ofSiskind who was among the high functionaries ofthe Communist Party, but I have since learned fromthe Daily Worker (January 3, 1935), that a GeorgeSiskind was known officially as "agit-prop director ofthe New York District of the Communist Party ."Whether Kallet holds a Party membership card or

not is of no special significance . The cumulative evi-dence of his public statements and activities leaves nodoubt about his being a communist in his views orabout his closeness to the Communist Party . In astatement on consumer cooperatives which he wrotefor publication, he said :

Cooperation does provide a splendid escape fromparticipation in the day to day struggles against thecapitalist system; it permits a great many people to

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express their resentment by "playing store ." But theemphasis is not on "tomorrow a new society" but"tomorrow maybe we'll be able to begin paying divi-dends." As consumer cooperatives are generally runthey are a business, not a revolution .

The foregoing view of Kallet's was the orthodoxCommunist Party position on consumer cooperativesat the time it was written. Since that time, however,the Party has changed its "line" on the subject, andKallet has altered his view accordingly. Both havebeen busily engaged in recent years in an effort tobring consumer cooperatives within the Party'sunited front movement. In some instances, they havehad notable success . Nevertheless, the statementwhich I have quoted from Kallet is a clear expositionof communist ideology and should leave no doubtconcerning its author's political allegiances .

One of the Communist Party's numerous unitedfront publications is a magazine called Health &Hygiene . Kallet is currently listed in this magazineas a member of its editorial board .

In the November, 1937, issue of Scribner's maga-zine, Don Wharton wrote an article on Kallet, inwhich he said :

He [Kallet] will tell anyone that he dislikes oureconomic system, that he feels it is doomed, and thathe hopes the Russian experiment works out so wellthat we shall be compelled to adopt it . He deniesthat he is a member of the Communist Party and sodoes many a man whose name is right there on theparty rolls .

In the February, 1938, issue of Scribner's, Kallet pub-lished a reply to Wharton's article, but nowhere in

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his reply did he repudiate, directly or indirectly, thisdescription of his communist views and hopes .

In the December, 1937, issue of Sales Management,Kallet was quoted as saying that he was a "NewDealer 'way over on the left." That is as good adescription of present-day communists as one canfind. It fits Earl Browder as well as it does Kallet .

The first strike-office which Kallet opened in NewYork at the time of his attempt to capture Con-sumers' Research was at the headquarters of the NewMasses, known to all as a Communist Party weeklypublication .

Shortly after the calling of the strike at Consumers'Research, Kallet held what was called a "public trial"of F. J . Schlink and me in Town Hall in New York.Heywood Broun was named as "presiding judge" andVito Marcantonio as "prosecuting attorney ." It is amatter of public knowledge that Broun and Marcan-tonio are fellow travelers of the Communist Party .When Kallet proposed a list of names of persons

to act as investigators or arbitrators of the strike atConsumers' Research, he included, along with thoseof well-known fellow travelers, the name of ClarenceHathaway, editor of the Daily Worker . NormanThomas was irate at my refusal to accept any of thenames which Kallet had presented.Among the sponsors whom Kallet chose to adorn

the letterhead of the western branch of his presentcommunist united front, Consumers Union, wasHarry Bridges.

I have gone into the documentary evidence of Kal-let's relation to the Communist Party at some length,because it is not possible otherwise to indicate clearlythat I had my final break with the Communist Party

[2631


over the issue of the strike at Consumers' Research .Susan Jenkins, Kallet's co-leader in the strike, ad-

mitted under cross-examination in the ChanceryCourt of New Jersey that she had worked for theDaily Worker, and further that she had omitted tostate this fact in her application for employment atConsumers' Research.Among other ends which Kallet and Susan Jenkins

had in view in furthering the work of the CommunistParty in the field of consumer agitation, was the cap-ture of Consumers' Research as an auxiliary for theParty. Kallet maintained, however, that it would benecessary to eliminate F . J. Schlink from the organi-zation in order to do this, or at least to deprive himof his dominant control over it. Kallet alleged thatSchlink was a fascist .

Occupying the influential position which was minein the many united fronts of the Communist Party,as well as my position in Consumers' Research, I wasnaturally called into the deliberations to lay plansfor eliminating Schlink. I refused, and refused withemphasis, to go along in the scheme, for precisely thesame reason that I denounced publicly the Revolu-tionary Policy Committee, of which I was chairman,when I believed that it was a manoeuvre of Love-stoneites to split the Socialist Party . At no time in mynumerous left-wing political activities did I con-sciously engage in any of the conspiratorial movesto wreck or seize control of other organizations . Ibelieved in a genuine united front of all radicalgroups and persons, not in united front ruses suchas characterize the history of the Communist Partyfrom its beginnings .

I was duly warned by Kallet and others that a[264]

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campaign of character assassination would follow myrefusal to serve the Communist Party in the mannerproposed. Sheer decency, even revolutionary decencyas I conceived it, left me no course but to fightKallet's move to capture Consumers' Research . Icontinued up until the moment that the strike wascalled to hope that my high standing with Commu-nist Party leaders would cause Kallet to hesitate incarrying out his plan .

Nevertheless, the strike was called on the pretextthat three employees at Consumers' Research whohad written contracts for temporary jobs with theorganization had received notice of the terminationof their employment on account of their union activi-ties. Two of them had contracts which expired atthe end of the summer and the usual routine notices,three weeks in advance of the date of expiration ofthese contracts, were sent them . The third man wasemployed on a six months' trial basis, and, havingbeen found unsatisfactory, he, too, received the usualadvance notice of the termination of his contract .The union under the leadership of Kallet and SusanJenkins demanded the reinstatement of these threemen on the ground, as Miss Jenkins herself stated onthe stand at the hearings of the NLRB, that "humanrights" took precedence over "the fact that under theterms of their contract, Consumers' Research had aright to dismiss them when they did ." Despite thisfrank and unqualified admission on the part of SusanJenkins, the National Labor Relations Board eventu-ally ordered the reinstatement of these three men (aswell as all those who had gone on strike) and thepayment to them of $3,106 .75 as back salary . Whena government agency assumes the power to order an

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employer to make permanent a temporary job forwhich there was a written contract freely enteredinto by both contracting parties and explicitly statingthe temporary character of the job, then we mustconclude either that a revolution in the fundamentallaw of the land has occurred or that the governmentagency is guilty of unlawful conduct . At least twoof these contracts for temporary employment weresigned before the law which set up the NationalLabor Relations Board was enacted . The NLRB,therefore, assumed the power to alter a contractualrelationship which existed prior to its own being .It is clear enough that the NLRB brushed aside allquestions of the legality of these contracts and en-tered the business of falsely imputing motives forwhose existence there was not the slightest evidence .As a matter of fact, not one of the three men or

any of the strikers was ever reinstated . Furthermore,the sum of $3,106 .75 which the NLRB ordered paidas back salary to the three men was never paid . Inan eventual settlement of the case out of court, therewere discussions-no written evidence-to the effectthat two of the three men should receive $50 each .According to the letter of settlement, it was statedthat this claim of $3,106 .75 "has been amicably ad-justed by the payment of $1,500, which also coversother matters." The clause, "which also covers othermatters," meant that the three men were to receivea sum whose lower and upper limits were onecent and $1,499.99. How much of the $1,500 wasfor the "other matters," and what were the "othermatters"? The answer to these two questions is left,so far as the letter of settlement is concerned, inStygian darkness . Naturally, the question now arises

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DISSENTER AGAIN

as to why a government agency spent thousands ofdollars in "defense of workers' rights" and ultimatelyagreed to a settlement which left the amount of thematerial compensation to the allegedly wrongedworkers in complete darkness somewhere below thelevel of $1,500 . That question, too, is easy to answer .The communists set out to take over a consumers'organization or, failing in that, to organize one oftheir own united front manoeuvres to draw con-sumers, as such, into the sphere of the CommunistParty's influence. By the time the above settlementwas made, the communists had already failed com-pletely in their first alternative and had succeeded inthe other. Their own united front for consumerswas functioning, and there was, therefore, no longerany useful service which the NLRB could performfor them by attempting to enforce its preposterousorder. Such are the ways of the Communist Party,and such the ways of government in this new ageof the abundant lifel

Rarely have I derived more satisfaction from a jobthan that which I experienced in helping to defeatthe communist conspiracy to capture effective controlof Consumers' Research. I had not at any time con-sidered myself a permanent member of the organi-zation's staff, but when Kallet and Susan Jenkinscooked up their little plot to take over the organi-zation I remained on the staff long enough to see thematter through to its final conclusion . When thesettlement was finally made, I offered my resignationimmediately, and on June 30, 1938, I severed mystaff connections.

I have already said that my experience with thiscommunist effort to obtain control of Consumers'

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Research did not cure me of my addiction to left-wing panaceas . My exchange of letters with HarryF. Ward, six weeks after the strike began, is docu-mentary evidence of this . It is easy enough to saythat I was incredibly stupid not to learn faster . Itwould be still easier to say that I was just as stupidfor ever becoming a leftist or a fellow traveler withthe communists . But, as I have already tried to makeclear, I believe that a man who has acquired hispolitical faith over a long period of years and at nosmall disadvantage to himself is not likely to partwith it the moment he runs into personal difficultieson its account. I did not repudiate the Marxist posi-tion, which I thought I held, because my name wasfaked to the report of the fur investigating commit-tee. I did not renounce communism because of theshabby affair of the Madison Square Garden riotwhich prompted me to resign the chairmanship ofthe American League Against War and Fascism .All of these conflicts with communists, includingthe final one which headed up in the strike at Con-sumers' Research, had their cumulative effect in myeventual disillusionment with the Marxist panacea .But it was not until months after the strike beganthat I had an opportunity to begin a thorough re-examination of the fundamental postulates of thecommunist movement, and it was then through asystematic study such as I had not before undertakenin my life that I found myself a political andeconomic conservative .

Once again I am a dissenter. From the drift ofthe age toward stateism, or government intervention-ism, or collectivistic regimentation, or whatever itshould be called, that plagues the nations of our

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time, I am in dissent. I cannot hope that my dissentwill carry weight, but if the tragedy of my personalpolitical odyssey throws any light upon what com-munism is and how it works I shall be satisfied . Com-munism, whether judged by spiritual, or intellectual,or economic tests, is, I am convinced, the most com-plete illusion ever born in the human brain .

WITNESSReporting my testimony before the Dies Commit-

tee, a leading New York newspaper said that I de-scribed myself as "a disgruntled communist ." Whollyapart from the fact that this was a journalistic in-vention, I must protest that I did not have any causefor being disgruntled . Up until the moment that Imyself reached the decision to break with the com-rades on grounds of personal conviction, I was theobject of their emphatic approval, as the evidencewhich I have adduced makes clear . At the very hourthat I was beginning the fight against Kallet'smanoeuvre to capture Consumers' Research, the officeof the Friends of the Soviet Union called me by longdistance telephone to ask me to be the principalspeaker at a mass meeting in Cleveland. Diplomatic re-lations between the Soviet Union and the United Stateswere unharmonious due to a charge by the RooseveltAdministration that the Soviet Union was violatingthe agreement which was made at the time of recog-nition. This was early in September, 1935 . TheFriends of the Soviet Union planned a national pro-test rally in Cleveland, and it was for this rally thatthey wished me to speak .

Of course, it ought to be plain on the face ofthings that even if I were "a disgruntled communist,"I would not describe myself in such a manner. It ishard to avoid the suspicion that the writer responsi-ble for the error in quoting me was moved, con-sciously or unconsciously, by an impulse to discreditmy testimony . This suspicion is supported by numer .

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WITNESS

ous instances of the same kind of incorrect reportingof my statements. Serious attention is not likely tobe accorded one who is merely disgruntled .

Testifying before the Dies Committee was some-thing of a liberal education, although I cannot claimto have had many surprises-least of all any surpriseswith respect to the manner in which members of theNewspaper Guild handled the news of what I said .Too well I knew the extent to which communists andtheir fellow travelers have penetrated into the pressorganizations of the country, as well as into everyother institution where indifference or pseudo-liberalism leaves a door open .

On hundreds of occasions I have spoken at publicgatherings, on college campuses, in churches, andbefore civic clubs when the burden of my remarkswas to assail the economic system which underliesour institutions. I cannot recall any instance, underthose circumstances, when my remarks were distortedor ridiculed in the press. Ponder this situation : whenone attacks the capitalist system from the standpointof a communist philosophy, he is widely received asone of the intelligentsia ; but when he attacks com-munism from the standpoint of a capitalist philoso-phy, he is widely rejected as a crank or an alarmistwho has some axe to grind-a poor disgruntled vic-tim of ugly complexes.

Despite this extraordinary situation, I still believethat, taking the' press the world over, the Americanpress is the most untrammeled and the most efficientin reporting the news accurately . It cannot long re-main so, however, if the ambitions of the presentleaders of the American Newspaper Guild are real-ized .

[2711


The American Newspaper Guild is not only alabor organization, and, therefore, hardly in a posi-,tion to handle impartially the news which grows outof disputes to which labor is partisan ; it is also affili-ated with a particular faction of organized labor . Itis, furthermore, not only affiliated with a particularfaction of organized labor; it is also aligned throughits present leadership with the extreme left-wing ofits own labor faction . The president of the News-paper Guild, Heywood Broun, is demonstrably acommunist fellow traveler, and at least one of theGuild's vice-presidents, Gunnar Michelson, is analien communist . Under these circumstances, it issheer nonsense to believe that the American News-paper Guild, considered as a whole, is anything moreor less than a new and dangerous propagandisticforce in our journalism .

How cleverly left-wingers do their propagandizinghas its classic example in the Institute for PropagandaAnalysis. Of all the possible names for a propagandaagency, that is undoubtedly the most completely dis-arming.

I do not wish to leave the impression that I thinkthe press should have given more space to my testi-mony or to that of any other witness who has ap-peared before the Dies Committee . On the whole,the Committee's hearings have received the amplespace which they merit. The point which must bemade, however, is that communists, fellow travelers,and other left-wingers are widely distributed in stra-tegic journalistic positions where they avail them-selves of every opportunity to "slant" the news ac-cording to their own political views .

One of the oldest and supposedly most reliable

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newspapers in America recently dismissed the testi-mony which I presented to the Dies Committee withthe airy observation that it stood up only until theaccused had time to formulate their answers. Theseanswers have been amazing. A few typical examplesshould go a long way toward establishing the accu-racy of the testimony.

In a recent appearance before the Dies CommitteeI cited an article written by Paul Sifton, assistant ad-ministrator of the Wages-Hours Administration. Mr .Sifton wrote: "The whole capitalist shell game cansink and be damned ." Mr. Sifton acknowledged theauthorship of the article, but answered to the effectthat it was written for an anti-war magazine to whichmany non-communists contributed. If that is to beconsidered an answer, then the dictionary is in direneed of revision . Let us imagine that Mr. Siftoninscribed his statement on the Pearly Gates . Thatwould still leave him something less than pro-capitalistl His so-called answer did not contain aword which even intimated a repudiation of theview expressed in his article .

I also cited an article written by David J . Saposs,chief economist of the National Labor RelationsBoard. The article contained such passages as "bour-geois democracy is a sham" and "if another waroccurs the workers will destroy capitalism ." Mr.Saposs and his superior, J . Warren Madden, answeredthat the article was an objective piece of reporting,that the views expressed were those of others andnot the reporter's . Despite this answer, the articlecontains ample evidence of the reporter's own views.However, it may be pointed out that Mr . Saposs,at the time of writing the article in . question, was a

[2731


member of the national executive committee of theConference for Progressive Labor Action and, assuch, subscribed to a program calling for "the com-plete abolition of planless, profiteering capitalism,and the building of a workers republic." It will beinteresting to read Mr. Saposs' and Mr. Madden'sanswer, if any, to that!

Perhaps the most significant exposure made as aresult of the work of the Dies Committee was anindirect one-the self-exposure of the Roosevelt Ad-ministration in its unprecedented hostility to thework of the Committee. Nothing which has beenbrought out directly before the Committee itself ishalf so significant as having the New Deal show itshand on the subject of communist activities in thiscountry. If the American people had spent tentimes $25,000, they would still have learned inex-pensively something that is of the utmost importanceabout their present government .

America owes Martin Dies and his congressionalassociates a debt of everlasting gratitude . If the workwhich they have begun-for it is, indeed, only a be-ginning-receives the support which the people andthe Congress will undoubtedly give it, the light ofpitiless publicity may yet be the only necessary curbupon the communist program to sovietize the UnitedStates.

CONSERVATIVEI had an inheritance of conservative traditions .

Now, after almost twenty-five years of politicalnomadism, I am back at the beginning. But politicaland economic conservatism is no longer merely aninheritance . It is a personal faith .

Many others have reacted against socialism andcommunism, only to fall back to some less extremeposition where a more vaguely defined collectivismprofesses more moderate aims and relies upon mildermethods. I am of the opinion that they have failedto raise fundamental questions regarding the natureof collectivism . Their assumption appears to be thatthere was nothing wrong with the collectivistic ideaas such. It was simply misapplied by malevolentleaders. I believe that collectivism itself engendersmalevolence in its leadership .

It is my conviction that the collectivistic cure for .the ills of a free society inevitably brings on greatermaladies than those for whose treatment it is pre-scribed. The collectivistic dose is not one whichwill kill or cure . It is invariably lethal, without apossible alternative outcome .

I see America faced, in the twinkling of an his-torical eye, so to speak, with the imperative necessityfor conserving on the economic side the gains ofthe industrial revolution and on the political sidethe achievements of the American Revolution. Thedanger is not so much that sinister plotters motivatedby ill-will are at work to rob us of these gains as itis that reformers are on the rampage, reformers itch-

[2751


ing to roll up their sleeves and make America over .The objective result of their work will not be dif-ferent, if they continue in authority, from what itwould have been if they were men of sinister design .

Only a static mind will see no possibility forprogress and correction in the best of human societies .There have been many things to set right in thecourse of our national development . But progressand correction are safe only in the hands of menwho are first of all devoted to the principles thathave made America great .

The type of reformer most common in the world,and in America today, is the one who throws thebaby out with the bath. As a matter of fact, it shouldbe stated the other way around : he throws the bathout with the baby . Getting rid of the dirty water is,for him, only incidental to getting rid of the baby .This is plainly apparent from the fact that he pro-ceeds at once to fill the tub with even dirtier water-minus the baby. It's the baby, not the dirty water,that he dislikes .

Monopoly, for example, has long been a politicalscapegoat. Americans, for at least two generations,have found monopoly distasteful, and in the pastthere have been political leaders who foughtmonopoly and at the same time defended privateinitiative and enterprise. Today, the run of anti-monopolists want to throw out private initiativealong with the dirty water of monopoly . In fact,there is ample evidence to indicate that they areinterested only in getting rid of private initiativeand not at all in getting rid of monopoly . For theycome right back with proposals for even greatermonopoly-the absolute monopoly of the collectivis-

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CONSERVATIVE

tic state . For private capitalism with its relativelysmall monopolies, they propose to substitute statecapitalism with its Gargantuan monopoly . Laughat a communist or any other collectivist when hedenounces the monopolistic tendencies in a systemof free enterprise. Laugh at Harold Ickes when hedelivers his verbal assaults upon sixty mythicalfamilies, and then, without blushing, donates hisoratory to the service of communist united frontgatherings where the assembled comrades all believein a system of one-family real monopoly.

Or, for another illustration, take wage slavery .There have been, and are now, trade unionists whoseobjectives were the greater independence of wageearners and the keeping open of the doors of oppor-tunity for men of initiative and ambition . But howdifferent are these from numberless administrators ofcollective-bargaining statutes and leaders of organizedlabor in the United States today, men who find ourcollective-bargaining rights merely a useful instru-ment on their way to a collectivistic state where wageslavery is made absolute . The most disadvantagedwage earner in America today is a wonderfully freeman by contrast with the wage earners in the com-munist Utopia. Yet twelve of the forty members ofthe new C.I.O . Council are communists or fellowtravelers, and some of the others are reckless of thevalues in the American tradition .

Unquestionable devotion to the principles of theindustrial revolution and the American Republicis the indispensable prerequisite for those who maybe trusted with progress and correction in our society .

The mark of a conservative is unqualified andprimary concern for the methods of government .

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Objectives are of lesser importance. The most whole-some objective uttered with the vocal sweetness ofa skylark is still nothing more than a combinationof syllables . The charlatan does not live who cannotframe ideal social objectives, in words, as rapidly asa modern power press hands out newspapers . Thetotalitarian states are teaching us that "due process"is, perhaps, the most precious right embodied in theAmerican Constitution. Men live primarily by meth-ods. Methods of government are the real factors con-ditioning the people's freedom and happiness . Nobleobjectives have meaning and value only as they arerigorously incorporated in methods which are corre-spondingly noble. Some of our present-day govern-mental agencies of administrative law have objectiveswhich are noble enough, but they look with con-tempt upon the methods of "due process" by whichalone our liberties may have their maximum safe-guard. Destroy "due process," and the best objectiveis lost with the method .

Not long ago an Irish humorist went up in anairplane and suddenly found himself an Americanhero. I apologize for using his daring feat to explaina contemporary political phenomenon about whichthere is not the slightest humor . In aviation one mayactually reach a given objective on the earth's surfaceby starting out in the opposite direction . Startingfrom New York on a course set toward Dublin, onewill reach Los Angeles if he flies far enough, thanksto the rotundity of the earth . In politics today thereis an alarming degree of Corriganism . Politicalleaders are asking us to believe that their course isset for a given objective while they are actually mov-ing in a direction away from it . Politics differs from

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CONSERVATIVE

aviation in this respect : it is not possible to reach agiven objective, no matter how far one travels, bymoving constantly in the opposite direction . Inpolitics you do not get more freedom by destroyingfreedom. In economics you do not get more goodsby producing less . Even a phrase such as the moreabundant life will not work that miracle .

In one important respect, however, aviation andpolitics are similar. In both, one may go into atailspin and crash .

I believe that the essential soundness of privateenterprise has been demonstrated anew in the trage-dies of every collectivistic experiment of our time .

I believe that political freedom and economic freeenterprise must go hand in hand, and are nowherefound the one without the other .

After the evidence which the modern world offers,I do not understand how men can look upon thepromised security of collectivism as anything morethan a snare of insecurity. At no other point is themoral degeneracy of many modern young people soapparent as in their preference for security overopportunity .

I believe that reliance upon the state is a deadlysubstitute for individual initiative, and, furthermore,that it is an economically destructive force in society .

Once I wrote of profit as "pirate king." I amconvinced now that the fashionably-berated profitmotive is the steadiest and most practicable stimulusto business ; and, further, that the profit motive ac-quires a hitherto unsuspected nobility by contrastwith the alternative motives of collectivism .

I believe that central planning by the state, ofwhatever form, is a fabulous vision and, wherever

[2791


attempted, will produce a chaos that can be con-trolled only by extremes of physical force . To meit is clear that the automatic planning of the freemarket (the freer the better) comes nearer to pro-ducing a balance of all economic factors than anyamount of state intervention to obstruct its working .

I believe that business institutions are nationalassets, that their health is the nation's wealth, and,further, that a demagogue, by whatever politicalname, who deliberately seeks to prejudice the publicmind against business, as such, is as dangerous as anycommunist could be to the welfare of the people ofAmerica .

I believe that stark tragedy for America lurks inany crusade to salvage civilization in other parts ofthe world, and that, if civilization is to be saved inthis generation, there is plenty of work for everyAmerican at home .

I know that conservatives who would oppose suc-cessfully the left-wing illusions of our time must droptheir divisive interpretations of what lies back of thecommunist and socialist movement .

In opposing the collectivistic movements and tend-encies of the day, I do not believe that misrepre-sentation can be successfully answered with misrepre-sentation, or hate with hate . Many years ago, I taughtin a Chinese Confucianist school . I learned theresomething of the great Chinese conservative sageand his law of measure or balance. It was when Ineglected this precept that I stumbled into the left-wing politics of this distraught age of ours wheremen are in such frenzied haste to make the worldbetter that they seize upon hatred, vulgarity, andimmoderation as means toward their end . I marvel

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CONSERVATIVE

at the facility with which communists have put forthmere hoodlumism as an ideal, have dressed the nakedlust for unearned power in the garb of a utopian im-pulse; but for myself, I have confidence in the wisdomof the ages, and I must, therefore, put aside bothhaste and hate as the self-defeating urges of bar-barians who have not shared in the cultural heritageof mankind .

I do not propose either quietism or defeatism inthe presence of the colossal conceit of bolshevism .I wish only to express the belief that the advance ofcommunism can be stopped in this country beforeit reaches the stage of the barricades and civil war,and that our ability to accomplish this depends inlarge measure upon our own care for facts and ourown coolheadedness in confronting a foe who isanything but collected despite his philosophy ofcollectivism .

INDEX OF ORGANIZATIONS

American Civil Liberties Union, 178, 239 .American Committee for Struggle Against War, 135-139 .American Federation of Labor, 59, 60, 144f, 237f .American Friends of the Chinese People, 111, 134-135 .American League Against War and Fascism, 8, 19f, 28,

110f, 156-185, 233, 259.American League for Peace and Democracy, see above .American Newspaper Guild, 172, 271f .American Student Union, 46, 100, 102, 111 .American Youth Congress, 103-110, 111 .Amsterdam Congress, 136-139 .Anti-Imperialist League, 130-134 .

Book Union, 191 .British Federation of Youth, 68 .Brookwood Labor College, 234 .

Canadian League Against War and Fascism, 163, 195 .Catholic Church, 208 .Champion Labor Monthly, 230 .Christian Century, 112-113.Christian Youth Conference of North America, 106 .Columbia Anti-War Committee, 189, 191 .Committee for Industrial Organization, 232f, 248, 277 .Communist Party, see especially chapters on "In theUnited Front," and "Communists at Work ."

Communist Party Opposition, 86, 89 ,96, 149, 151,(sometimes known as Lovestoneites) .

Communist Party's Workers' School, 205, 234, 243 .Consumers' Research, Inc., 101f, 182f, 187, 259-268, 270 .

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INDEX TO ORGANIZATIONS

Federated Press, 130 .Fellowship of Reconciliation, 69f, 82, 118 .Free Tom Mooney Congress, 121-123 .Friends of the Soviet Union, 8, 86, 187-189, 270 .Furrier's Union, Investigating Committee of Conditions

in, 185, 259 .

General Federation of Women's Clubs, 173 .

Health & Hygiene, 262.

Icor, 19, 191 .Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 272 .International Committee to Aid the Victims of German

Fascism, 129 .International Fur Workers' Union, 111 .International Labor Defense, 19, 120f, 242 .International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 153 .International Workers' Order, 111 .

Joint Demonstration Committee, 71 .Joint Peace Council, 73.

Labor Research Association, 230 .Labor Sports Union, 191 .La Follette Civil Liberties Committee, 10, 204, 247 .League for Industrial Democracy, 84f, 101 .League of Women Shoppers, 192-194 .

Methodist Federation for Social Service, 178 .

National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople, 159.

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National Committee to Aid the Victims of German Fasc-ism, 127-129 .

National Committee for the Defense of Political Prison-ers, 185, 191 .

National Council of Methodist Youth, 106 .National Council of Catholic Women, 246 .National Labor Relations Board, 10, 121, 204, 206, 238,

240f, 244, 265-267, 273 .National Negro Congress, 111 .National Organizing Committee for the First UnitedStates Congress Against War, 139-149 .

National Peace Conference, 170 .National Scottsboro Committee of Action, 124 .National Student League, 97-100 .National Tom Mooney Council of Action, 123f .

New Leader, 259 .New Republic, 213, 222f, 244-246.New York Conference Against War, 83 .

People's Press, 260.

Revolutionary Policy Committee, 88, 247f .

Seventh World Congress of the Communist Internation-al, 28, 105, 107, 109, 212, 214, 219 .

Sixth World Congress of the Young Communist Inter-national, 104.

Socialist Appeal, 116 .Socialist Call, 116f.Socialist Party, 78-90, 125, 141-143, 176 .Southern Negro Youth Congress, 111 .Student Congress Against War, 97 .Student League for Industrial Democracy, 98, 101 .

The New South, 229-230 .

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Unemployed Councils, 118 .Unemployed Leagues, 118 .Union Theological Seminary, 9, 161, 178, 207f .United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and AlliedWorkers Union, 111 .

United Christian Council for Democracy, 208 .United States Congress Against War, 149-159.United States Department of Labor, 235f .United Office and Professional Workers, 111 .

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom,135f, 170f.

Workers Alliance of America, 111, 118 .World Committee Against . War, 136 .World Youth Congress, 110-118 .World Youth Peace Congress, 67.

Young Communist League, 106, 110f, 194f, 212 .Young Men's Christian Association, 8 .Young Women's Christian Association, 105 .Youth Committee to Aid Spain, 111 .

Odyssey of a_fellow_traveler-jb_mathews-1938-283pgs-soc-com

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