Washington Gestapo II Washington Gestapo II
I first set eyes on a government investigator early in 1940. He was tall, bespectacled, humorless, and he eyed me sharply as he was directed to my desk in the office where I work as a minor government executive. I was cordial in my greeting and rather excited at the prospect of aiding in a man-hunt against some desperate criminal. I sat back in my chair expectantly as he produced notebook and pencil. "We are investigating Bill Smith," the investigator said, "and I understand you can give us some information about him." I smiled incredulously. Bill Smith has been a friend of mine since we were boys together, and I know no one more law-abiding, honest, and virtuous. But to the FBI he had become a government employee under suspicion of "subversive connections or being linked to Communist organizations." This was not apparent to me immediately; I suspected it as I was being questioned, and the suspicion was confirmed later by the seventeen-page report on Smith which eventually reached our office, transmitted by J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The investigator asked me a number of routine questions about Smith. His age? How long had I known him? His education? His marital state? Then a curiously fanatical look came into his eyes. Could I tell him why Bill Smith had grown a beard? What did he have to conceal? (He was trying to hide a receding chin about which he is inordinately self-conscious.) Why did he sometimes use an alias instead of his real name? (When we were boys and played on the sandlot baseball team we nicknamed Bill "Hicky" after some now forgotten pitching hero, and the name has stuck.) The FBI had received a report that Smith had installed powerful radio apparatus in his home. What could I say about that? (It was perfectly true that Bill's apartment was cluttered up wlth loudspeakers and amplifiers. But his radio was specially designed to receive high-fidelity broadcasts from a New York radio station that broadcasts record concerts. I said I believed that his set was patterned after specificatlons given by B. H . Haggin in his music column in The Nation.) Did he seem to play only Russian music on his phonograph? (I have often deplored Smith's devotion to Tschaikowsky.) "You say Smith reads The Nation?" The investigator pounced on my earlier comment. "Why, yes," I replied, "I think he has subscribed to it for years." My questioner made a note of this in his notebook. "Does he subscribe to any other subversive publications?" I said I did not regard The Nation as subversive. What made him think it was? He changed the subject quickly. Why did Smith sometimes have Communist newspaper stories on his desk? (They came in bales from the government clipping agency, which sends us everything that appears in print on the subject with which we are concerned.) Does he make a habit of frequenting Russian or foreign eating places? (I had to confess that Smith had often praised shashlik, but thought it better to suppress his preference for Russian dressing on his salad.) The investigator seemed stung by my increasing inability to take these questions as seriously as he meant them. I asked their purpose. He said that they were to determine Smith's character and Americanism. Then he became slightly bellicose. Did I think it was good Americanism to be always agitating for unionism? Did I know that Smith was reported to have said that all government employees ought to belong to unions? Was I aware that Smith was said to have supported sending medical aid to the Spanish Communists? Hadn't Smith made radical statements about our government, such as that "men like Mayor Hague are unfit to hold office"? Seeing that my irritation was doing Smith no good, I adopted a conciliatory manner and told the investigator at length my reasons for knowing that Smith was a good citizen. But he went away no more satisfied with my answers than I was with his questions. And without having ever seen Smith he prepared a report which indicated that Smith had Communist tendencies. In Smith's case I was easily able to show that the charges against him were completely without substance and provided no grounds for ousting him from government service. Hundreds of other government employees have been less fortunate in the same circumstances. Lacking old friends to defend them, they are out of jobs today, under the undeserved stigma of disloyalty, merely because spiteful and malicious persons have maligned them in secret to government sleuths whose standards of "good character" and "loyalty" are those of Father Coughlm and Elizabeth Diliing. Smith is still working at his job, but the dossier on him remains in government files. It is available to any reactionary Congressman who wishes to attack him or the agency for which he works. My encounter with the investigator who scented subversion in a liking for Russian food and the "Pathétique" was followed by so many similar incidents that I made it my business to find out to what extent my experience was typical of that of others. The chief agencies active against government workers, I learned, are the Civil Service Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "This police work," as Civil Service Commissioner McMillan has called the investigation of government employees (1942/522),* is divided almost equa!ly between these two agencies. The commission assumes the right to authorize the appointment of persons to the federal service or their transfer from one job to another "subject to character investigation" (1943/765). Persons already in the service against whom complaints are made, usually by an anonymous letter or telephone call to the FBI or Civil Service or by undercover informants employed by those agencies, are investigated by the FBI. This jurisdictional line of demarcation is more apparent than real. Actually, the investigative agencies work hand in hand with each other and the witch-hunting committees of Congress. Civil Service Commissioner Arthur S. Flemming testified before the House Appropriations Committee: "We tie in with the FBI. We tie in with the Dies committee and with Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence. There is exchange of information all around" (1943/768). At the same hearing Flemming told Joe Starnes of the Dies committee: "We have had the finest kind of cooperation from the Dies committee on the various investigations we have conducted" (l943/764). Attorney General Biddle likewise hailed this cordial entente: "The Dies committee has been most cooperative. They have given us everything that they had" (DJ1943/189).** The FBI's area of cooperation also takes in Military and Naval Intelligence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and contact men on "practically every law-enforcement agency" throughout the country (DJ1943/189). One of these contact men, it turned out, was the notorious labor spy and chief of the Los Angeles "red squad," William F. (Red) Hynes. Commissioner Flemming has told Congress that he spends practically all his time now on war matters, that the investigation of government employees "is a function that I have been very much interested in," that he personally reads the reports of his investigators (1942/522, 528, 529). A passion for investigating government workers developed in the commission almost immediately after he became a member in 1939. Previously, Flemming had been associated for over four years with David Lawrence, who has often used his column to attack the personnel of the New Deal. Before Flemming took the investigation of government workers under his wing, the commission's Division of Investigation confined itself to the verification of references, qualifications, and other statements made by applicants for government employment. For this necessary task four or five investigators and two dozen clerks and stenographers sufficed until 1939. In December of 1941 the number of investigators had grown to 400. Soon Flemming reported to Congress that he could use at least 1,000 (1943/766-67). Since then the staff of subversion-seekers has been steadily augmented. On several occasions Hemming has discussed the philosophy of his investigations with Congress—always enveloping the subject in the pseudo-scientific lingo dear to the hearts of personnel men. His investigators are not seeking violations of law, he has explained; they are trying to detect persons of "weak character" and prevent them from serving the government and causing "bad situations" (1942/330). "It is important," he has insisted, "to do everything we can to prevent undesirable persons from getting into the service and creating difficult situations" (Ibid.). "They may have had no association with Communists, Bunds, and so on, but if they have a weak character . . . we are eliminating that type of person . . ." (1942/529-30). "Weak character" and "difficult situations" are ingenious euphemisms, as is proved day in and day out by the investigators' questionings and the reports they write. Having read more than fifty reports of Civil Service hearings and talked to more than one hundred investigators, I can say flatly that "weak character" is double talk for liberal or progressive views, while "difficult situation" means that a person of liberal views has obtained government employment despite the vigilance of the Civil Service. An applicant may be eliminated from the service on the basis of information obtained not only from former employers but also from unfriendly neighbors. A man who plays his radio after neighbors are in bed, or has a crying baby or barking dog, or refuses to lend money or a lawnmower to a neighbor, does so at the possible peril of his livelihood. In one case a Scotty slipped his leash and uprooted plants in a neighbor's garden. The neighbor told an investigator that the dog's owner was obviously a man of "low moral character," and this was solemnly reported by the investigative agency to the man's employers. That rare fellow who is the darling of his neighbors, employers, foremen, superintendents, and janitors may none the less be listed in the files of the Dies committee, which are largely based on mailing lists, subscription lists, and newspaper clippings. If so, he is subject to another blackballing procedure. The Civil Service Commission values so highly the dubious files of Martin Dies—said by Representative Stefan to contain 750,000 names (DJ1943/19, 128)—that it has maintained a full-time employee in the filing rooms of the committee merely to facilitate its use of information assembled by Dies. We shall perhaps never know how many American citizens have been the victims of Civil Service investigative hysteria. One report to Congress, however, indicates that the number is in the tens of thousands. On December 11, 1941, Flemming told the Appropriations Committee that since June, 1940, the commission had declared "approximately 8,000 [persons]—7.5 per cent [of those investigated]—ineligible on loyalty grounds or because of connection with subversive organizations. This indicates, of course, that subversive connections are one of the primary items we take into consideration in connection with our investigations" (1943/766). It should be remembered that there is no legal definition of "subversive connections" or even of "subversion." Flemming's investigators apparently rely chiefly on their library of such texts as Elizabeth Dilling's "The Red Network," Joseph J. Mereto's "The Red Conspiracy," Lucia R. Maxwell's "The Red Juggernaut," R. M. Whitney's "The Reds in America," and Martin Dies's "The Trojan Horse in America." The operations of the FBI against federal employees have seen a growth parallel to that of the Civil Service Commission. In January of 1942 Attorney General Biddle told Congress: "I was confirmed on September 6, 1941. One of the first things I did was to...[institute] a new system of examination of all alleged subversive employees in the government." Soon afterward $100,000 was made available by Congress to the FBI to finance this large-scale inquiry. A list of 1,300 government employees was obtained from the Dies committee, and according to J. Edgar Hoover, 3,700 names were immediately added to the list by the FBI (DJ1943/127). "When we hear of some particular government employee who may belong to a 'subversive' organization we add that name to this list for investigation. In other words, this list is not closed" (DJ1943/129). The source of these names was indicated by Biddle: "Of course many of these complaints are without foundation. Thus we get quite a percentage of complaints from disgruntled employees without any foundation, and many of the complaints have charged employees with belonging to certain organizations. When examined, it has developed in many instances that the employees had never heard of the organizations'' ( D J1944/17). In each year after 1941 the FBI has allocated $200,000 or more to the scrutiny of government workers' thoughts and opinions. Increasing amounts of the time of the FBI's 14,377 employees are being devoted to this purpose. The results of such a policy may be seen in the fad that in February of this year Department of Justice officials admitted that they were six to nine months behind in the investigation of fraud cases arising out of war contracts and the procurement of war materials, such as falsification of inspection records on munitions for our fighting forces and those of our Allies (DJ1944/111). The Department of Justice investigators receive guidance both from the standard textbooks on subversion, such as "The Red Network" by the indicted Mrs. Dilling, and from a small group of officials in the department who have made a profession out of hunting what J. Edgar Hoover used to call "ultra-advanced thinkers." Hoover himself, who personally directed the notorious Palmer raids of the 1920's, has always suffered from a "radical" psychosis. He is joined in the Department of Justice by such men as L. M.C. Smith, chief of the War Policies Unit of 237 employees. This unit cooperates with the FBI in the effort "to know about and prepare for any necessary action to protect the country against any illegal activity by the leftist groups in the United States, such as the Communist Party of the United States, the Socialist Workers Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and so forth" (DJ1944/178). Dean Dickinson, also of the Department of Justice, has been secretary of the Interdepartmental Committee on Investigations, composed of the Civil Service Commission's legal adviser and representatives of old-line Washington agencies. On June 1 of last year he got out for the use of Washington department heads a mimeographed manual which assembled in convenient form the statutes and regulations which might facilitate firing government workers. Somewhat later he prepared, and Martin Dies put in the Congressional Record, memoranda which made ex parte findings against various organizations as being Communist or subversive. In these one of the most commonly applied criteria of "subversion" was opposition to the Dies committee. Of one organization it was stated that it had aided the C.I.0. "in staging a New Jersey...organizing rally." The National Negro Congress was singled out for criticism in the Dickinson memoranda for having indorsed the defense of the Scottsboro boys, Angelo Herndon, and Tom Mooney and for having "been an agitational force against lynching and all forms of so-called Negro dis- crimination" (my emphasis). The anti-Negro theme of these memoranda runs through all the investigations of government workers. Washington is a Southern town, and though the Roosevelt Administration has done much to alleviate discrimination, individuals who refuse to adopt the local attitude toward Negroes invite investigation. J. Edgar Hoover, who has steadfastly refused to include Negroes among his 4,800 special agents, has a long record of hostility to Negroes. Representative Ramspeck denounced him in 1940 for playing upon the race prejudices of a committee of Southern Congressmen by saying that the Civil Service Commission had sent "white applicants to colored doctors for physical examination." Government investigators are imbued with the same prejudices; they apparently consider that the most damning evidence they can present against a government worker is that he has had "mixed parties" or has entertained Negroes at dinner. Needless to say, racial bias is not only against Negroes. Anti-Semitism thrives in this atmosphere of stupid bigotry. In one instance it had to be explained to an investigator from the deep Ku Klux Klan South that membership in the Catholic church and in Catholic lay organizations did not prove the existence of a Popish plot against the security of the United States. The quality of the work done by the FBI is unfortunately no higher than that of the Civil Service sleuths. It is about what one might expect from detectives diverted from their normal pursuit of bank robbers and white-slavers into the misty world of opinion and intellect. The New Yorker has reported the case of the artist seeking government employment. An FBI man assigned to investigate him suspected that he was a Communist because it was reported that his painting was in the cubist style. The classic example of what happens when the G-men forsake the underworld of crime to spy on their fellow-workers occurred late in 1940. Representative Howard Smith, who was then, as he is now, investigating the New Deal, found in the files of the National Labor Relations Board, and put in the records of his committee, a letter marked "Personal and Confidential" over the signature of J. Edgar Hoover. The letter was a report to the NLRB that one of its employees was "known to have radical tendencies leaning toward communism." To back up this charge, Hoover reported solely that the employee had "studied anthropology'' and "visited Mexico City, Mexico, to observe the presidential election in that country in July, 1940" (Washington News, editorial, November 30, 1940). I remember that when that newspaper item appeared few government workers thought it funny. It is hard to laugh when pressure can be applied successfully to take away your livelihood because you play Tschaikowsky on your phonograph, or read The Nation, or argue against lynching, or make cubist drawings, or study anthropology. "Subversive" is a vague word. But it is being used freely in Washington as a club with which to beat liberals out of town. Attorney General Biddle, who presides over one of the agencies harassing government workers, gave the game away last February when he said to Congress: "What is `subversive'? I do not know. I do not think anyone knows definitely.... I have had only a terrible headache" (DJ1944/21). Biddle is not the only one. [This is the second and concluding part of an article on the inquisition in Washington by a necessarily anonymous government executive.] *Hearings before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations on the Independent Office Appropriation bill for 1942, p. 522. Other hearings are similarly cited. **Hearings before the same committee on the Department of Justice Appropriation bill.
Jul 24, 1943 / XXX
Washington Gestapo Washington Gestapo
[For reasons which this article itself makes clear, its author has deemed it necessary to guard his anonymity with especial care. His identity has been revealed only to our Washington editor, I. F. Stone, who as a friend of long stunding: is able to vouch for his absolute reliability. The personal experiences of the editors of The Nation, together with checks they have made with other government officials, fully bear out his charges. A second and final instalment will appear next week.—EDITORS, THE NATION.] I am a minor government executive. My job is helping to run one branch of a war agency in which several thousand persons are employed. We cheerfully work long hours, swelter in the country's worst climate, live jammed together like sardines—all this because we know that our work is vital to the war. We read the bulletins from our war fronts with a thrill of pride because we know that, though we are civilians, the army and navy rely heavily on us. We have done a great deal to help smash the Axis—far more than we can boast about in public. And we could do a great deal more if we were not daily growing more exhausted, bitter, demoralized, and even terrorized by the unceasing warfare carried on against us. The situation has been bad for a long time. It has now become intolerable. The fascists we are helping to destroy in Euro and Asia might well wish to destroy us, but this campaign is waged right here in Washington by persons working for the government, paid out of public funds. I do not refer to Dies and Kerr and Cox and Smith—their demagoguery, though annoying enough, is worse than their bite. Far more effectively the Civil Service Commission and the FBI, by their attitude toward government workers, are undermining Washington's strength and will to fight. Hitler could do no more. The weapon that is causing all the mischief is the so-called "character investigation" to which all workers in war agencies are subjected. It is made once, twice, sometimes over and over again. As an investigation it is a travesty. It is little if at all concerned with a man's character, loyalty, or sympathy for democratic ideals and forms of government. Sometimes one or two perfunctory questions are asked concerning possible sympathy for our enemies; sometimes none at all. A man I know has kept score on the last hundred investigators who have come to his office, consuming with their inanities, vicious or otherwise, some forty-eight hours of time that he could ill spare from his war job. He tells me that only seven of the investigators showed more than a casual interest in uncovering the facts that you or I would want to know about a man's suitability for responsible war work. (One of the seven wanted to know if the man in question was a "Nasi or a Fasi"—he made the two words rhyme and, when asked, said he wasn't sure what a "Fasi" was.) Before this comic and tragic investigation begins, a war worker has had to survive the thorough scrutiny of the agency which hires him. We are fussy about that and properly so. Job candidates usually have to be known to some one of us, and even then they have to run the gauntlet of many searching interviews, careful checking of references, and close questioning of friends and former employers. Then, often six months or a year after a man is hired, the FBI or the Civil Service sleuths swing into action. Every day, and sometimes four or five times a day—because I am personally responsible for the work of three or four hundred of my associates—an investigator approaches my desk, flashes his credentials, opens a notebook, and begins a routine that is both blood-chilling and exasperating. It is a sad display of confusion, bigotry, and lack of understanding of the war we are fighting. We are engaged in a struggle to the death with the fascists. Grand juries have returned indictments for sedition and treason against many of their henchmen in this country. Yet this city alone has several thousand government investigators ransacking the town for anti-fascists and using as their textbooks and tipsheets the propaganda publications of the very men and women now awaiting trial on the most serious of charges. The investigators who come to sit by my desk solemnly ask me such questions as the following. These are actual questions, written down as accurately as I can recall them, put to me and to people I know by Civil Service and FBI investigators. Has Jones ever agitated for labor unions? Does he favor the good or the bad unions? Does he support cooperatives? Does he mix with Negroes? Does he seem to have too many Jewish friends? Does his face light up when the Red Army is mentioned? Does he support a second front? How often does he read PM? Does he own pro-labor or radicalistic books? Has he ever criticized the Dies committee? Is he one-sided or advanced in his conversation? Is he always criticizing Vichy France? Docs he buy out-of-town newspapers? Does he stay up late every night? Does he turn first to Russian news in the paper? Does he think the colored races are as good as the white? Is he faithful to his wife? Why do you suppose he has hired so many Jews? Is it true that he reads The Nation and the New Republic? Has he ever solicited for the Russian War Relief? Did he ever say any other form of government is as good as ours? Does he praise the movie "Mission to Moscow"? Would you say he went far enough in condemning the Russian system? Does he talk a lot against the poll tax? Do you think he is excessive in opposing fascism or Nazism? Did you ever hear him whistle or sing the communistic "Internationale" or other subversive songs? Does he support the Newspaper Guild? Questions like these are being used as a sieve to strain anti-fascists and liberals out of the government. They serve no other purpose. You don't look for enemy agents or sympathizers among people who read PM, The Nation, the New Republic; among people who believe in the dignity and equality of all men; among people who condemn the poll tax, Vichy France, Dies, Jim Crow; among people who admire unions, cooperatives, and the heroic exploits of the Red Army. If investigators can manage to place Jones, the government worker, in any of those categories, the next step is a curt letter from the Civil Service Commission requesting his employers to fire him because his "suitability has not been established." This curious, weasel-worded phrase is the only indictment furnished against Jones; it usually means that he loves liberalism or hates fascism. The almost certain result is that the millions and millions of Americans who share his views and desperately need their expression in Washington will be deprived henceforth of his services. What sort of people do the investigators single out as victims? Ordinary, decent people like ourselves. Let me tell you about three or four typical cases. Professor A, whose honors, distinguished career, and scholarly publications would fill a quarter-page in "Who's Who," was found "unsuitable" after six months or more of investigation by both Civil Service and the FBI. No one questioned his qualifications. No one suspected him of sympathy for our enemies; he had been denouncing them for a decade. But that was his undoing. He was under the usual suspicion of being a Communist or of sympathizing with Communists apparently because a cranky neighbor had said that he had loud, boorish people, obviously Communists, "at his house and because a labor-baiter with a criminal record and drunken habits spun a fantastic tale of malice. The FBI and the Civil Service Commission gave Professor A no opportunity to confront his accusers and disprove their slander. Instead, they brought forth more nonsense. Professor A had given as reference another professor, even more distinguished, whose name is well and honorably known to most educated people. The FBI looked up this man in one of their favorite authorities and reported that he was said to be radical and communistic. Their sourcebook was "The Red Network," by Elizabeth Dilling, who was at the moment under federal indictment on charges of sedition! Take the case of Miss B, who was accused of having had "mixed parties" at her apartment and dismissed from her job. "Mixed" was defined, under pressure, as meaning "Negroes and whites"; later this was cautiously modified to "boys and girls." Miss B was an able, competent worker. It would be hard to say which of the , definitions furnished as a basis for her dismissal was the more frivolous. Mr. C, a scientist with hard-to-replace skills, was also found "unsuitable." He would have been perfectly suitable, it appears, if he had not been quite so active in connection with a committee organized to sponsor a concert by Marian Anderson after she had been jim-crowed by the D. A. R. (His fellow-sponsors included half a dozen Cabinet members, more than two score members of Congress, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Green, the Washington Chamber of Commerce, and an American Legion post.) Mr. D, a writer, incurred the wrath of the Civil Service because six years ago his agent donated an unsalable article to Fight, a magazine published by the American League Against War and Fascism. In this article D said that if the fascists of Germany and Japan were not discouraged by common action of the democracies they would some day attack us. While this prophet without honor in the government was under fire, the Civil Service Commission and the FBI made no objedion to the employment in a confidential post of a person who had been secretary to both the German and Finnish embassies, or of a person later arrested as an undercover propagandist for the Japanese. Too much reading of the works of Mrs. Dilling has given the investigators a "network" psychosis. They seem happiest when they can catch a number of people in the same flimsy spider's web. Then they have uncovered a great conspiracy and can bring about a mass purge of government workers. Investigating Jones, they discover that he knows Smith; Smith is a cousin of Brown; Brown in an unlucky moment once signed a petition calling for diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union, thus getting himself immortalized in the FBI's files. Smith, Brown, and Jones, all attend a party at which stranger Zilch, who has had six martinis, says that the Red Army, by saving Stalingrad, saved mankind. Jones, Brown, Smith, and Zilch are then linked together as subversives. Or take an actual case. An FBI agent somehow managed to copy a list of telephone numbers hanging by a government employee's telephone. The list included the plumber, the grocer, the laundry, the corner movie house and the name of a man in the same office who, when cross-checked in FBI files, turned out to be on one of Dies's lists. A dentist was also included. A man with a name similar to his had given money to a civil-rights organization. A social acquaintance whose number was given had a brother who was on the mailing list of a cooperative organization in ill repute with the inquisitors. This was all that was needed to piece together a whole Washington "red network"; the list of telephone numbers became a "contact list" and was actually offered as ground for firing the employee in question. By just such a trick Stuart Chase once proved that Martin Dies was a Communist; one could similarly prove that the King of England is a Nazi, or that you beat your wife. Absurd as it is, this is one of the devices of intimidation here in Washington. Through its use the most innocent of actions can be given a sinister tinge. For example, when a rabid Southern Congressman described the New York Times as a "Jewish Communist newspaper," an FBI man, within a week, asked me whether my acquaintance habitually read the Times. In any proper procedure of hearings the investigators' stupid prejudices and absurd evidence would be ruled out—just as a policeman's notion that a man is a murderer because he wears a striped suit vanishes in the fair trial that is guaranteed to any suspect brought into court. But the hearing afforded government workers by the Civil Service and the FBI is devoid of any color of fairness or justice. The investigators are prosecution, judge, and jury rolled into one. The accused is denied counsel, witnesses, and even a statement of the charges against him. He is not allowed to face his accusers. In secluded rooms, for all the world like Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, he is bulllied and intimidated and peppered with questions designed to trap him. The rankest hearsay passes for crushing evidence. The penalty for an investigatory finding of guilt is peremptory dismissal from the government. This means being blacklisted for life, a denial to a citizen of his right to serve his country in time of war, the inference—soon known to the whole community—that he is somehow a traitor, a seditionist, a disloyal fellow to be shunned by decent men. No government employee is safe from such an obscene attack on the elemental decencies. President Roosevelt himself could not qualify for work in a war agency. Did he not entertain the Soviet Premier, Molotov, in the White House? Busy as he is with questions of global war, he perhaps does not mark the steady weeding out from his agencies of those who could be counted on to push rather than sabotage his war program. But if the public allows the last liberal, the last anti-fascist, the last friend of the workingman and the consumer to be stoned out of Washington, or submerged until submissive in a Potomac ducking-stool, the results will be grave indeed.
Jul 17, 1943 / XXX
Sports and Defense Sports and Defense
This war is a war of machines; or so, at least, the experts insist. And for once events seem to confirm their opinion. It was doubtless the superiority of the German war machine that made possible all the German victories, both the bloody ones and the earlier, bloodless ones. The Poles, the Dutch, the Belgians, and the French were defeated because they didn’t have weapons equal to those of the Germans. So we have been saying all along. And from the time it was generally conceded that we too had to be prepared, there has been talk of nothing but machines of war—the building of which seemed to be preparedness enough. It isn’t enough, of course. The English say, “Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” The sentiment is valid in this war too—and in any war. Wars are always waged with men as well as weapons. Men must have a certain minimum fitness, or the finest bombing planes and tanks won’t help. It is strange that the United States of all countries should have forgotten this. For in the first World War the American troops demonstrated the importance of their athletic training for practical warfare. Half of the men in the famous 69th Regiment were New York public-school athletes. Nearly a hundred thousand—98,785 to be exact—of the volunteers from New York had participated in the activities of the Public School Athletic League. During the war itself, American Y. M. C. A. instructors helped direct the athletic training of soldiers here and in France. These instructors fostered sports that would improve the alertness, skill, initiative, and efficiency of their men. It was soon discovered that sports did more than stimulate fitness and morale; they improved the technique of the troops. It was found, for instance, that boxers could handle bayonets skillfully and that baseball players could throw hand grenades with deadly aim. Only after the draft act of 1940 was passed was it recalled that human fitness is a decisive factor in building a defense machine, and that sports are a decisive factor in acquiring fitness. Ironically enough, promoters of professional sports were the first who publicly connected sports and defense. They didn’t begin propaganda for sports as an integral part of the defense program. They simply voiced their fears. They were afraid that their highly paid and highly profitable boxers, baseball players, and football players might be drafted. However, things began to happen. The War Department ordered a million dollars’ worth of sports equipment and set aside $2,800,000 for sports activities in general. Gene Tunney was called upon by the navy to coordinate physical education. Dr. W. M. Lewis, president of Lafayette College, made a speech urging colleges and universities to make their sports facilities available to men of draft age. There were other speeches and suggestions. D. Benedetto, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, advocated doubling the sports activities organized and controlled by the A. A. U. as “the democratic answer to the dictators’ athletic program.” While Mr. Benedetto’s recommendation is by no means the whole answer, he is undoubtedly on safe ground in asserting that the dictators have a program that calls for counteractivity. Let's look for a moment at the athletic programs of the dictators. It wasn’t Hitler who started using sports as a preparation for war in Germany. It was most probably General Ludendorff. In October, 1914, a proclamation was read in all German public schools, ordering that five minutes of each recess period be devoted to running practice. The General Staff had decided that one of the reasons for the defeat on the Marne had been the inability of the German soldier to retreat fast enough. German schoolboys now had seven hours of gymnastics weekly, instead of two, as before. In 1915 the Juggendkompanien, or youth squads, were, founded, with compulsory participation for every boy over sixteen. The boys received military training camouflaged under the terms of a secret decree that said, “Care must be taken that these exercises appear athletic in character.” After the war of 1914-18, when the Weimar Republic attempted to purge gymnastics of militarism, the embittered former army officers organized youth leagues for Gelaendesport (open air athletics) with “political enlightenment” thrown in for good measure. Their Nationale Kampfspiele were not games but military exercises. The secret Free Corps, which went in for political assassination, developed logically out of them. Another of their products was the SA of the National Socialist Party. The SA (Sport-Abteilung) was founded in 1921 and proclaimed as “A special party section for gymnastics and sports.” It grew into the notorious Sturm-Abteilung, or Storm troops, thus completing a cycle; sports, introduced to win the war, became a screen behind which Hitler prepared for the next war. When the Nazis came to power, one of their first acts was to coordinate sports. A Sportsfuehrer was appointed. Every German must be fit to fight and must keep in shape. The Hitler Youth began playing rather curious games. They practiced marching, digging trenches, and crawling under barbed wire, and using bayonets. The students and the numerous workers’ organizations, as well as the SA and the SS (Schutz Staffel), had to practice shooting, marching, and gliding. When Hitler made sport a training school for his army, he borrowed his ideas partly from the old German General Staff and partly from Stalin. Since 1930 there have been no private sports at all in Russia. Sport is a state function, directed by the Council for Physical Education, and a tremendous advance has been made. In 1920 the very word “sports” was almost unknown in Russia. In 1934—no figures have been published since—there were more than 4,000 sports grounds and stadiums, more than 2,000 indoor arenas; there were more than 8,000,000 active, organized athletes. And 100,000,000 roubles a year was spent on their activities. But of course it wasn’t sport for sport’s sake. Some of the “sports” practiced were: hand-grenade throwing, swimming fifty meters with a rifle, shooting, reading maps. The German use of sports as a preparation for war was even more thorough than the Russian and on a greater scale. The Nazis admitted it openly. Shortly before the 1936 Olympic Games, Hermann Teske, sports instructor at the Zossen military school near Berlin, published a pamphlet in which he said: “All German sport must have a purpose. The goal of physical training is readiness for defense.” In the United States sports are taken seriously, probably too seriously. We know how to train our athletes. Our colleges and even our public schools are sometimes regular training camps. We want victories, and we get them. But what do these victories mean in the light of our defense preparations? We like to think of ourselves as the leading sports nation in the world. But are we? We hold most of the records, but records aren’t everything. When it comes to sports facilities, the Germans appear to be at least our equals, in proportion to their population. It is almost impossible to get anywhere by comparing the sports activities of different nations. Most nations, including ours, have never collected definite figures on active sports participants. And almost every nation stresses different sports. As for sports facilities, it is difficult to coordinate the various statistics. Playing fields and swimming pools can be of varying sizes and capacities. For purposes of reaching an approximate index, however, comparative sports facilities may be expressed in terms of the number of athletes using a hypothetical field of a given size. Such a playing field would be used: In the United States by . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 athletes In Germany by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 athletes In England by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 athletes In Russia by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 athletes In France by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .410 athletes While these figures show that American sports facilities are sufficient to train the same percentage of the athletic population as was trained in Germany before the war, Germany completely outclasses us when it comes to sports that are a direct preparation for war. For example, affiliated with the National Rifle Association of America are some 3,300 rifle clubs with B membership of about 300,000. The greater part of them, moreover, use the smallBore non-military rifle. In Germany, with’half our population, there are 13,942 dubs with a membership of 419,569. There are 732 practice fields for gliding in Germany, and thousands of German youths participated in this sport which, until a short time ago, was not even considered a sport in the United States. And in such splendid activities as crawling under barbed wire and digging trenches, we have no competition to offer at all. There are, of course, other important points. In the first place, with twice the population our potential sports activity is much greater than Germany’s, and in the end, it is always a question of potential rather than of actual power. If we consider men up to twenty-four years of age as active athletes, and examine the population according to age groups, we find that in the United States 18 per cent of the population could be mobilized as Athletes while in Germany before the war only 10 per cent were available. Of even more decisive importance are the conflicting basic ideas on which the sports of the two countries are founded. Something essential to fitness may be acquired through sports only if they are devoted to the development of the individual character, rather than to the perfection of strength; to the creation of initiative rather than to the creation of blind and unreasoning obedience. The Finns have the idea. They call it sisu—an untranslatable word expressing will and tenacious endurance until victory. The French had it; they called it morale. The English have it, of course, but they have no word for it. We have it too—we call it guts.
Mar 1, 1941 / Curt Riess
Fear is the Enemy Fear is the Enemy
Fear should not dictate our definition of democracy; a government should do all it can to protect and serve the basic liberties of all people.
Feb 10, 1940 / Eleanor Roosevelt
The Abraham Lincoln Brigades The Abraham Lincoln Brigades
Who were the brave young men who, against their country's orders, volunteered to fight fascism in Spain?
May 8, 1937 / Letters / The Nation
The Pacifist’s Dilemma The Pacifist’s Dilemma
In capitalist America it is mad utopianism to believe that the government can be armed for international war against fascist aggression or can enter such a war at a price tolerable...
Jan 16, 1937 / Norman Thomas
The Death of Will Rogers The Death of Will Rogers
Was there an American who didn't love Will Rogers whose death along with aviator Wiley Post in an Alaskan airplane crash shocks and saddens the entire country.
Aug 28, 1935 / Editorial / The Editors
A Year of Legal Liquor A Year of Legal Liquor
The demand for each and every variety of alcoholic beverage seems to be less than the supply. The new distilleries, that were set up in haste following repeal are finding marketi...
Dec 12, 1934 / H. L. Mencken
Calvin Coolidge Calvin Coolidge
That Silent Cal's political success was largely the product of GOP mythmaking was hardly a secret, but in the Roaring Twenties hardly anyone cared.
Jan 18, 1933 / Feature / Oswald Garrison Villard
The Future of Radical Political Action The Future of Radical Political Action
The last election did not settle the future of political parties in the United States. It rather demonstrated the discontent of at least seven million voters with existing alignments. The general trend was definitely in behalf of policies which would use the agencies of government for the social control of industry and finance. It was far from an expression of confidence that the Democratic Party is capable of bringing about such control. For all who, like the present writer, believe that it is thoroughly incapable of doing the needed work, the article of Norman Thomas in The Nation of December 14 on The Future of the Socialist Party raises the question of what instrumentality will be the efficient agent for radical political change. Mr. Thomas holds that the Socialist Party alone has the philosophy which meets the political needs. Such a position certainly simplifies the situation. But it also narrows it. In view of the size of the Socialist vote, and of the extent to which it was in part an expression of confidence in Mr. Thomas personally, and in another part a protest vote from non-Socialist liberals, it narrows the problem perhaps unduly. It is natural that Mr. Thomas should feel that the Socialist Party is the only way out. He has been twice the candidate of his party for the Presidency. There are divergences within the party, such as were manifest in the Milwaukee convention. It is not surprising that he should take the opportunity to set forth his solidarity with the section which officially controls the party; and that he should wish, even at the risk of ungraciousness to the non-Socialists who supported him and of indulging in recriminations, to clear his skirts of any leaning toward those who do not accept the ipsissima verba of official Socialist doctrine. But for the millions of the politically discontented who are outside the Socialist Party, the exigencies of the internal strategy of that party cannot go far to settle the larger question of the future of unified political action aiming at social control. In discussing the matter I feel free to approach it from the angle of the League for Independent Political Action. I do not do so because of Mr. Thomas's unfortunate references to that organization. The league is not a party and has no ambition to become a party. Its function is to promote education and organization looking toward the organization of the desired new alignment. Since it aims to act a s a connecting link, and as far as may be as a clearing-house, for groups and individuals who are seeking similar ends, it may stand at least as a symbol for one type of approach to the problem. We agree that a philosophy is needed a s a basis for an effective political movement. We have never prejudged the question as to just how far that philosophy agrees or disagrees with that which Mr. Thomas says is the only possible philosophy. I shall not now try to pass on that question. I shall rather set forth our philosophy positively; leaving it to the reader, Socialist or non-Socialist, to judge our degree of divergence and agreement. The first point in our political philosophy may be stated in connection with the charge brought by Mr. Thomas that the league holds "an intellectualized version of a watered-down socialism.'' For the statement shows a radical misconception of what our stand is. It is quite true that many of our planks are socialistic and agree with the more immediate demands of the Socialist platform. It is true that we recognize the educational work done by the party and by Mr. Thomas and are grateful to them. But the league's agreements are not imitative. It has not first borrowed and then diluted. We believe that actual social conditions and needs suffice to determine the direction political action should take, and we believe that this is the philosophy which underlies the democratic faith of the American people. The belief is the mark of a positive philosophy, not of the absence of one. If charges against the League for Independent Political Action signify that our program is, in an ultimate sense, partial and tentative, experimental and not rigid, we do more than accept them as a compliment. We claim them as indications of our philosophy. We are confronted with a situation in which certain long-span economic forces are operative and which are sufficiently definite to provide a basis for a constructive political program. But we know that this situation bristles with unknowns and we cannot assume that all issues are settled in advance. In saying this I am not charging the Socialists with being dogmatic or doctrinaire. I notice that Mr. Thomas in his statement calls for government ownership of the "principal" means of production and distribution. As far as the Socialist Party accepts the distinction between "principal" and other means, it inclines in the direction of what in the case of the League for Independent Political Action is dismissed as a "watered-down socialism." For how can "principal" ones be settled upon, save on the basis of actual conditions and tendencies? And while collective ownership of all natural resources is called for, there is evidence that the Socialist Party recognizes a gradation in importance and in urgency, and would concentrate first of all upon coal and the water power from which electric power is derived. So far, then, as the Socialist Party is not doctrinaire, there are no differences which are not subject to discussion and conferences—and not so much with the L. I. P. A. itself as, through it, with the other groups which are concerned with bringing about a new type of politics in this country. We are thus led to the second main point in the philosophy of the L. I. P. A. This is the belief that politics is a struggle for possession and use of power to settle specific issues that grow out of the country's needs and problems. There is very little difference of opinion among radical groups as t o what these issues at present are; there is more difference, though not to an amount insuperable for unity, as to how they should be dealt with. Since it believes that politics is a struggle for power to achieve results, the philosophy of the league stands for that strength which can be had only by unity. It believes in working far agreement, not for emphasizing and magnifying the differences that stand in the way of unity. I do not charge the Socialist Party with standing for sectarianism and division. I do say that we desire a union of forces to which Socialists can and should contribute. Because we desire a union of forces instead of that isolation and division which have so weakened liberal and radical forces in the past, we are strongly opposed to all slurs and sneers at the farmers, engineers, teachers, social workers, small merchants, clergy, newspaper people, and white-collar workers who constitute the despised middle class. Since they also constitute a great part of the American nation, and since they are influential and are sensitive to the injustices and inequalities of the present economic order, we do not indulge in the fantasy that effective power can be gained by taking pains to alienate them, by assuming, for example, that they are animated by anti-social class motives. This attitude does not signify that we think their present political views are, upon the whole, sufficiently enlightened to afford the basis of a political program, but that we do believe that they are readily capable of education under competent leadership. It is nothing less than misrepresentation based on ignorance to assert that this effort to reach the elements just spoken of is connected with disregard of the interests of the manual workers, to say nothing about those who go into the field of motives to search out unworthy ones, similar, for example, to those which members of the Communist Party constantly attribute to the Socialist Party. It has been a constant aim of the L. I. P. A. to find labor groups which believe in independent political action, to bring them together, and to carry on education among those labor groups which have not vet seen the light. We are opposed to the defeatist policy which assumes that there can be no effective radical political action in this country until the majority of the population have sunk into the "proletariat." We are not yet convinced that the Socialist Party has taken this latter position even though individual Socialists have done so. Because we are an organization working to secure unity of action where division now exists, we are necessarily exploring the field. We cannot prejudge the amount of unity that can be achieved. For this reason, we are proposing to have a conference of all progressive and radical groups in 1933 to consider this very question. Naturally we shall be disappointed if Socialist leaders slam the door in advance on all hope of cooperation. Since Mr. Thomas in his "As I See It" states that the essential is to achieve the substance rather than the name, we hope he may be willing, "without prejudice" as to any ulterior commitment, to recommend to the party of which he is the honored head that it enter upon the exploration discussions which are the necessary preliminary to the united action which alone will achieve desired results. But in any and every case the L. I. P. A. invites the cooperation to this end of all individuals and all groups who are of like mind about the need for political action to bring about radical changes in our present economic and financial system.
Jan 4, 1933 / John Dewey