The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 4, 1952

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that South Korean troops had repulsed three Chinese Communist assaults on "Sniper Ridge" in predawn darkness this date, in hand-to-hand combat in sub-zero weather. Two of the attacks had been described as suicidal, as the Communist troops charged up the icy slopes of "Pinpoint Hill", the commanding height within "Sniper", behind an artillery and mortar barrage of more than 5,000 rounds. The South Korean troops, according to a U.S. Eighth Army officer, stood firm and by mid-day, the Chinese troops had withdrawn. Action elsewhere along the front had been minor.

U.S. Sabre jets were credited with another destroyed MIG in the air war.

Rowland Evans, Jr., reports that Wage Stabilization Board chairman Archibald Cox—future Watergate special prosecutor eventually fired at the direction of President Nixon in the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre" of October, 1973—resigned his post this date after the President had effectively reversed the Board's decision to deny 40 cents of the previously negotiated $1.90 per day wage increase for the UMW coal miners. Mr. Cox, a Harvard law professor who had held the position for four months, resigned in protest the day after the White House made the announcement. The President, in overturning the Board's decision, stated that he did not want a coal strike crisis awaiting President-elect Eisenhower at the start of his term on January 20. While the move averted a nearly certain coal strike, it also opened the door to possible increases in coal prices to consumers and touched off unrest among public and industry members of the WSB. The seven industry members said that they would boycott all Board meetings until they had conferred on the questions raised by the President's action. The WSB had scheduled a meeting for this date.

At the U.N. in New York, the General Assembly's 60-nation Political Committee turned its attention from the prisoner-of-war debate in Korea to the dispute over Tunisian demands for independence from France. The Assembly turned the responsibility over to Foreign Minister Lester Pearson of Canada to deliver to Communist China and North Korea the Indian peace plan, overwhelmingly approved the previous day by the Assembly, providing for a five-nation commission to oversee the repatriation of prisoners. The Communists had already indicated their rejection of the Indian plan and little hope existed, therefore, for their acceptance of the proposed resolution to eliminate the remaining obstacle to an armistice in the Korean War.

A House Judiciary subcommittee began investigation into alleged efforts by the State and Justice Departments to delay or tone down a Federal grand jury charge of Communism among American employees at the U.N. The charge had been made by a member of the grand jury which had issued a report the previous Tuesday on the matter.

The International Monetary Fund disclosed that its secretary had been fired after refusing to tell a Senate Internal Security subcommittee whether he had ever been a Communist or a wartime spy. The secretary, Frank Coe, refused comment from his home in Arlington, Va., but had denied that he was a Communist in sworn testimony before HUAC in 1948. He had been secretary of the Fund since it had been set up in 1946, designed to stabilize world currencies and foster world trade relations. Acting chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Herbert O'Connor of Maryland, demanded Mr. Coe's ouster, saying that his refusal the prior Monday to answer the subcommittee's questions on the subject was "the sorriest spectacle" he had ever witnessed.

In Washington, the Federal grand jury received from the Justice Department the large Congressional file on Owen Lattimore, accused by the Senate Internal Security Committee of lying to them during his testimony the previous summer regarding his not knowing that people with whom he had worked on Far Eastern relations were Communists and that Outer Mongolia was under the control of the Soviets. Mr. Lattimore had consistently denied any connection with Communists, and at one point during the hearings had called Senator Joseph McCarthy "a graduate witch burner".

After the Citizens for Eisenhower Committee had disclosed the previous day that it had spent 1.2 million dollars in pre-convention activities on behalf of the General, Congressman Hale Boggs, chairman of a House committee investigating campaign expenditures, told reporters that the expenditure report indicated a need for new legislation requiring accountings by such groups for how much was collected and spent during an entire campaign. Other committee members expressed similar sentiments, but agreed that the main problem facing Congress was the question of whether control of primary elections and pre-convention activity was a field in which Congress had jurisdiction. Previously, Congress had deferred to the states to govern campaign spending prior to the general election. The Citizens Committee, under existing law, was not required to report expenditures other than in a general election. There had been no pre-convention figures reported by Democratic groups, but the committee hoped to obtain some information from DNC chairman Stephen Mitchell. It also was seeking amounts paid to the radio and television broadcasters by candidates. The director of government relations for the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters had told the committee the previous day that listeners and viewers had begun to show apathy toward the end of the campaign because of the heavy schedule of political programming. He said the industry had become worried after many had turned off their sets, concerned as to how long it would take to win them back.

Get some more of them good programs in 'ere like that there "Superman".

Two unnamed Senate Republicans were in disagreement over whether Senator Taft had ruined his chances to become the new Majority Leader after his attack on President-elect Eisenhower's choice for Secretary of Labor, Martin Durkin, a Democrat, head of the plumbers union, who had opposed Taft-Hartley. One of the Senators said that he believed a draft would take place of Senator Styles Bridges for the post, while the second said that he believed an organized effort would continue on behalf of Senator Taft. According to the New York Herald Tribune, Senator Bridges, who had indicated a desire to step down as the party floor leader, was now willing to accept the position in the interest of party harmony. The only named rival to Senator Taft for the position was Senator William Knowland of California, who had said he would run against anyone except Senator Bridges.

Governor Adlai Stevenson said this date that he and the President were in complete agreement not to wage war against President-elect Eisenhower's program simply for party advantage, and that they did not intend to seek to cause Democrats in Congress to obstruct, delay or imperil the national welfare or the new Administration's program. The Governor told reporters at a White House news conference that the Democratic Party's two major problems were to wipe out a deficit of more than a half million dollars and to serve the public interest. He said that he had made no immediate plans for the future, after he would leave the Governor's office in January, other than to take a long rest and possibly to travel abroad. He also said that he was aware of no plans to change the DNC leadership, but believed that it might be necessary to reorganize it because of the deficit funding.

UAW president Walter Reuther was expected to be chosen president of the CIO this day by the UAW annual convention in Atlantic City. But the forces backing Allan Haywood, the labor organization's executive vice-president, continued to promote him and were not conceding. Two unions who had previously been favoring Mr. Haywood, however, the Brewery Workers International and the American Radio Association, had changed their support to Mr. Reuther. It was estimated that out of the 700 delegates, Mr. Reuther controlled delegates representing about three million rank-and-file votes, compared to 2.5 million controlled by Mr. Haywood.

Walter J. Donnelly, according to unnamed sources in the Administration, had tendered his resignation as U.S. High Commissioner to Germany, wishing to enter the private sector after 30 years of service as a diplomat, most of which had been spent in South America, having also been the U.S. High Commissioner to Austria between 1950 and mid-1952. He had taken over the post in Germany the previous July as the successor to John J. McCloy.

The Veterans Administration this date issued an advisory that because the hospitals normally bought sufficient quantities of magazines, playing cards, puzzles and games, such would not be in demand by the patients during the coming holidays. Some of the patients, because of their conditions, could not use certain types of gifts, such as diabetics unable to consume sweets. Bulk gifts of Christmas "goodies" and other food packages for distribution by hospital managers were acceptable. Books of canteen tickets, in one-dollar and five-dollar increments, which veterans could use to shop at the VA canteens, were recommended, as well as cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco and smoking utilities such as lighters, plus toilet articles such as shaving lotion and hairdressing, fountain pens, automatic pencils and stationery, clothing such as handkerchiefs and socks, and phonograph records to suit the individual patient's musical tastes.

That's right, send them lots and lots of cigarettes for Christmas, to assure that they will have a happy, healthful 1953 and onward. Send it along with the appropriate record...

More rain, snow and overcast skies were predicted over wide areas of the nation this date, as the cold temperatures had subsided.

In Tokyo, the "Queen Bee of Anatahan", the only woman among 31 men on the tropical island for five years, had presented her stage debut, but had flopped. Patrons had paid double prices the previous night to hear her story of how she had four husbands, two of whom had been killed because of jealousy over her, and another drowned, leading her to renounce any intent of further marriage. After the show, about 100 of the customers demanded their money back, but were instead given tickets to see the show again.

She perhaps needed to spice up the show by invoking Dr. Freud's discussion of primal society, suggesting that the trappings of which had caused a return to totemic religion, and the need to eat the totem in expiation for the sin of killing one, then two of their "brothers", in quest of the mother figure. The totem, in this instance, would probably be some specie of bird, as developed further by Audubon, or Darwin.

In Miami, Fla., a man wept after receiving his second "traffic ticket" from the same patrolman in North Miami Beach the previous day, after having refused to accept the initial citation for reckless driving, then allegedly slugging the officer when he attempted to take the ignition key. The officer radioed for help and the driver, according to the officers, rolled up his car window and locked himself in, whereupon the police dropped a teargas pellet through an opening in the canvas top. The driver denied having slugged the officer, but was arrested on a charge of assault and battery and jailed in lieu of posting a $250 bond.

Ava Gardner, saying that she was still "feeling pretty sick" from dysentery, flew from London back to Africa this date to continue making the movie "Mogambo" with Clark Gable, after shooting had been interrupted two weeks earlier so that she could receive treatment.

Hope she doesn't upchuck in the middle of a scene.

On the editorial page, "Better Loyalty Program Needed" tells of each passing week making it clearer that the President-elect would first need to have the loyalty program in the country reviewed by a nonpartisan group of eminent persons, eliminating its many imperfections. The McCarran Internal Security subcommittee, during its many months of work, had never answered the key question of whether the State Department, the Executive Office, or any responsible U.S. agency, had ever asked U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie to obtain a U.S. security clearance for Americans who applied for work at the U.N. Secretariat. It regards it as an important matter in fixing responsibility for the apparent presence on the U.N. staff of reported subversives.

Robert Morris, counsel for the subcommittee, had told the editors of U.S. News & World Report that it was known that the U.N. had asked the State Department for loyalty reports for all American citizens working or applying for work at the U.N., but he had never said whether the State Department provided such loyalty reports. The Federal grand jury investigating the matter had issued a report the prior Tuesday, saying that the State Department had supplied adverse reports against one American citizen in the employ of the U.N., but that the U.N. had failed to take action. A State Department statement, however, had said that of 28 persons fired or suspended by the Secretariat, 24 had been given an unfavorable loyalty report.

The piece indicates that every nation had the right to have loyal people representing it at the U.N. and that if the machinery had not been set up to protect that right, it ought to be. The time was long overdue for the strengthening of the country's laws against treason, espionage and other subversive activities, and for establishing fair but inflexible loyalty standards for all Americans who were employed in sensitive positions. The President had made a commendable move in that direction by naming a commission in early 1951, headed by Admiral Chester Nimitz, to study the loyalty review process and make recommendations, but the effort had come to naught when Senator Pat McCarran's Judiciary Committee refused to grant the employees of the Commission relief from the conflict of interest laws which forbade persons associated with firms doing business with the Government from working for the Government. That prompted Commission members to resign because the law had blocked the hiring of qualified temporary assistants. It ventures that perhaps the Eisenhower Administration would have better luck with the new Congress.

"A Frontal Assault Is in Order" tells of the Citizens Committee of North Carolina having been formed from the Citizens for Eisenhower movement during the campaign, with the goal of promoting good government, urging both major parties to select their best candidates, and the like. It indicates that such goals were worthy, but it wonders whether the Committee was being realistic. It urges them to take their new enthusiasm and energy into the state Republican Party to give the organization a needed shot in the arm, extending the two-party system established in the election nationwide to the local and state offices. It indicates that it would take a long time to build such a party and that the job had to be tackled frontally, not by flanking maneuvers, which would not fool anyone, especially the Democrats.

"One Asset in Ike's Legacy" tells of Fortune having taken a look at the growing White House establishment and concluding that the President might be remembered as having been the first to set up machinery under which future Presidents would be able to handle their work, something which had been missing previously. President Truman had been moved to act in that direction by the fact of his own experience, having come to office without preparation or briefing, leading to great confusion during the first months of his Administration. President-elect Eisenhower was accustomed to the staff system, preferring to appoint able persons to handle the detailed administration of office. The piece suggests that he would find the White House system useful during the first trying months of the new Administration.

"A-Bomb Defense" indicates that if another world war were to come, the likelihood of use of atomic bombs had increased based on the rate at which the U.S. and Russia were producing them. They would be aimed at cities, and Charlotte, as a key distribution center with a population of nearly 150,000, would be a possible target.

If it were to happen, it would be best to be prepared, and, to that end, recommends to civic and church organizations that they sponsor the showing of several films on civil defense, provides the phone number of the organization which distributed them.

Just remember three words: duck and cover.

A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Mechanical Twirlers", tells of an invention from Québec, the mechanical spaghetti fork, which enabled twirling of spaghetti before eating it. It wonders whether the Italians would accept it, finds it difficult to picture an Italian family sitting around the table with mechanical spaghetti forks as they consumed their traditional dish, believes that they would continue manual wrist-twirling.

Carlos Romulo, Philippines Ambassador to the U.S. and its permanent representative to the U.N., in a speech delivered before the Asia Institute in New York, tells of the "Marco Polo tradition of looking at Asia and its peoples" having run its course, and that equally outmoded was the habit of regarding Asia merely as a "source of wealth and an outpost of power for others". He urges that a more dangerous trend in recent times was regarding Asia as a poor relation at the Western table.

Efforts were being made to save Asia from Communism, but he asks for what ends, in whose interests and by what means. Those questions, he asserts, had no clear answers. It was not certain that Asia would be saved for freedom or that it was to be saved by means other than military.

The experience of the prior decade had shown several things: that Asian peoples would no longer tolerate colonialism and wanted a status of equal partnership and voluntary cooperation with other peoples; that they aspired to human dignity and economic well-being; that they would not fight for the vague concept of a free world and would fight on the side of the free world only if they had a stake in freedom as free peoples; that the West had to work with the responsible nationalist movements in Asia rather than through puppet regimes which had no popular support; that military measures were at best a short-term device for staving off the immediate threat of Communist aggression, that the long-term solution had to be economic assistance which would enable the Asian peoples to raise their standard of living.

He lists, in addition, four other apparent desires of the Asian people, and urges that better understanding needed to transpire between Asia and the West, inspired by "generous sentiments of humanity", resting on "the solid foundation of valid and objective information", as being sponsored by such organizations as the Asia Institute.

It was believed, incidentally, that when Secretary-General Trygve Lie had announced in recent weeks his resignation, his most likely successor would be Ambassador Romulo. Instead, however, the General Assembly would elect Sweden's Dag Hammarskjold the following April to the position.

Drew Pearson tells of politics not supposed to be on the agenda for President-elect Eisenhower's trip to Korea, but that he would meet with South Korean President Syngman Rhee, hero to millions and despot to a few, regarded by most as the man who had kept the light of Korean independence burning for 50 years. President Rhee had told the Korean people that General Eisenhower had come to liberate their country, placing the President-elect on the spot, such that anything he did, short of having the U.N. forces drive into North Korea to the banks of the Yalu River, would be disappointing, causing a serious morale problem.

President Rhee had spent seven years in prison, seven months of which had been under constant torture, 41 years in exile and suffered under a $300,000 bounty on his head. He had probably fought longer to bring self-government to his country than any other person living. Mr. Pearson had known him when he was in exile in Washington, when Korea was under the rule of Japan and no one thought it could ever be free again. But Dr. Rhee had not given up hope. He was received warmly by President Theodore Roosevelt, but the 1906 Russo-Japanese Treaty turned over Korea to Japan, at a time when the U.S. did not consider the rights of small nations important. Nevertheless, Dr. Rhee continued his fight for Korean independence. He had become a Christian and authored The Spirit of Independence while in jail, and studied at Harvard during his time in the U.S., getting to know future President Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton. He attended the Versailles Conference, pleading with the powers to recognize Korea, but again was disappointed by President Wilson. During the early days of FDR's Administration, he attempted to get the State Department to issue a passport to an Austrian woman he had met at Geneva, but the State Department gave him the usual runaround, prompting Mr. Pearson to call his plight to the attention of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who cut through the red tape and allowed the woman to enter the country. Eventually she and Dr. Rhee were married, and she had remained with him since, no matter how discouraging the news had been in Korea. They always sent Mr. Pearson greetings at Christmas.

When Dr. Rhee had returned to Korea after the Japanese surrender in 1945, he was received as a modern-day savior, with every political party welcoming him and offering him support, including the Communists. All of those interests asked him to become the new President.

His first conflict came with U.S. General John Hodge, the American commander in Korea, who wanted compromise between the Communists and the right-wing parties, which Dr. Rhee refused to do, starting a battle against the Communists at that point. More recently, he had conflicted with the U.S. ground commander in Korea, General James Van Fleet, regarding the President's imposition of martial law and the closing of the Voice of America, as well as his removal of South Korean troops from the front lines to stabilize Korea during the previous summer's elections. The President had even arrested and thrown in jail some of his political opponents who opposed him in the Constituent Assembly. He was re-elected by a substantial majority. He had been criticized for having graft and inefficiency around him, but, unlike Chiang Kai-shek in Nationalist China, he had made moves to clean up the corruption, firing a total of 30 Cabinet officers in an effort to establish a more efficient government.

He had been poor all of his life and remained poor.

Mr. Pearson urges that the thing to remember about Dr. Rhee was that, though willful and stubborn, he had never ceased fighting for the best interests of his country. In his upcoming talks with President-elect Eisenhower, he would undoubtedly demand a complete purge of Communism from Korea before he would agree to stop fighting.

James Marlow tells of John L. Lewis oddly having been in South America when the announcement had come the previous night that the President had overruled the Wage Stabilization Board to provide the UMW its previously negotiated $1.90 per day pay raise. Economic Stabilizer Roger Putnam had announced the decision the previous evening, telling reporters that the President had reached the decision a week earlier, a couple of days before Mr. Lewis had departed, making it possible that he had been aware of the decision before he left. But how he might have known of it was not disclosed. "Maybe," conjectures Mr. Marlow, "a birdie told him." (Or, maybe it was one of the plumbers.) In any event, it was not typical for the UMW leader to be out of the country with such an important decision pending, the results of which, had it been otherwise, would have resulted in a strike.

The UMW had fared well under wage controls. In January, 1951, Mr. Lewis and the mine owners had agreed on a wage increase of $1.60 per day, eight days before the Government froze all wages and prices. The Government did not contest that raise.

Just before the WSB had cut the negotiated wage increase this time by 40 cents, Mr. Lewis, for the first time since 1936, had decided to support the Democrats in the presidential election, despite having had uneasy relations with President Truman. Following the WSB decision, the UMW struck for a week, until late October, when, after a meeting with the President, Mr. Lewis called off the strike, just prior to the election. Both Mr. Lewis and Harry Moses, representing the mine owners, appealed to Mr. Putnam to overrule the WSB, but Mr. Putnam had refused, as had Henry Fowler, the head of Defense Mobilization. At that point, the President stepped in and overruled the WSB.

Thus, since January, 1951, the coal miners had received a total of $3.50 per day in wage increases during less than two years of wage stabilization. The President agreed that the coal matter affected stabilization, but said that his primary concern was preventing a coal strike, as he did not want to leave such a problem for the new President at the inception of his term.

Mr. Marlow concludes that the effect on stabilization could not be foretold at this point, with the President leaving it to the Republicans to determine whether they would maintain price and wage controls, which would expire the following April through June.

Robert C. Ruark discusses the recent denial of parole to Alger Hiss, after having served one third of his five-year sentence for his 1950 perjury conviction, arising from his testimony before the grand jury in December, 1948, investigating the allegations by Whittaker Chambers that Mr. Hiss had known Mr. Chambers as fellow members of the Communist Party during the 1930's and that Mr. Hiss had provided to Mr. Chambers secret State Department documents in 1938 for passage by Mr. Chambers to the Soviets.

Mr. Ruark says that if he were the state, he could forgive an ignorant person, a "hasty sinner", or even a murderer who killed "in a hurry". And if any of those offenders had behaved themselves in jail after a crime performed in the heat of passion, he would allow them to be paroled. But he saw no point in forgiveness for an "intellectual crime, performed by a man of superior intellect, of mature years, and in full, cold possession of his reasoning faculties." He regards rehabilitation as impossible for someone whose brain was far superior to the warden and his fellow convicts. The purpose of jail in such an instance therefore was to punish and not reform the person.

He indicates that Stalin, Trotsky and Hitler had all served time in jail, during which they had placed their political theories into print. He presumes that Mr. Hiss was writing a book on how he had been wronged. Moreover, Lewisburg penitentiary, where he was serving his term, was regarded as a "country club". He observes that, usually, when such intellectuals emerged from prison, they did not suffer socially. He expects Mr. Hiss, after serving his time, to come out more distinguished looking, with a manuscript, and more bitter against his country, which he had sworn he did not attempt to betray. He would be a hero in the eyes of many who regarded him as a martyr. He thinks that at that point, he should be closely observed, to determine his influence on the country.

In the meantime, he would make sure Mr. Hiss remained in prison for as long as possible. He imputes to him the crime of treason, even though he was convicted of perjury, the statute of limitations on treason or espionage having passed by the time Mr. Chambers made his accusations in the fall of 1948—having not originally made the accusations of passing documents when he had testified in August, 1948 before HUAC, those accusations having only surfaced after Mr. Hiss sued Mr. Chambers for defamation after he dared Mr. Chambers to make his accusations of Communist affiliation publicly outside HUAC, which Mr. Chambers had then done on a radio program. Mr. Ruark concludes by asking whatever happened to Judith Coplon—who had been imprisoned after conviction of attempting to provide secret Justice Department documents to a Russian spy who worked for the U.N. Secretariat, whom she claimed was her lover, and who was only deported before starting his prison sentence after conviction.

Mr. Ruark, as he usually is when he ventures outside of lighter topics such as sports and safaris, is off the beam, never bothering to consider how inherently unfair it was to impute treason to someone without a trial on such a notorious charge, obscuring the forgotten facts that, first, the documents which Mr. Hiss was accused of passing to Mr. Chambers were innocuous, an assessment which even Mr. Nixon later acknowledged, containing information which would not have been helpful to the Soviets and at a time when the Soviets were not a declared enemy of the United States, thus not amounting to treason in any event. Whether he could have been convicted, as were Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, sentenced to die for passing atomic secrets to the Russians, under the Espionage Act of 1917, (or as the law read before June, 1948, as theoretically would have applied to any conduct occurring in 1938), for communicating information to a foreign government against the national interest, is doubtful, as that would have made relevant the substantive nature of the documents. Thus, the lack of availability of such a charge enabled such persons as Mr. Ruark to make loose accusations of "treason" without having to bother to marshal facts to back up those claims.

Indeed, Mr. Hiss was convicted for perjury for stating that he had never seen Mr. Chambers after the start of 1937 and that he did not provide to him any State Department documents. Those claims did not therefore relate to the substance of any charge of espionage, as the alleged false statements did not involve his knowledge, for instance, that Mr. Chambers was a Communist, that Mr. Hiss was a Communist, or that Mr. Hiss intended for Mr. Chambers to provide the documents to the Soviets or that he had any knowledge of Mr. Chambers's intent to do so. All of the conduct ascribed to Mr. Hiss rested on the claims of Mr. Chambers, an admitted Communist and spy for the Soviets, plus some circumstantial evidence regarding the typewriter on which the documents were allegedly transcribed by Priscilla Hiss, the wife of Mr. Hiss, which she denied doing, a typewriter to which Mr. Chambers had access. Moreover, the chain of possession and access to the documents purportedly delivered to Mr. Chambers by Mr. Hiss suggested that they could have as easily been passed by another State Department employee, Harry Dexter White, who died shortly after his HUAC testimony, in August, 1948.

And the Venona file, Army intelligence intercepts from the Soviets during the war, supposedly the "gotcha" as to Mr. Hiss's complicity in spying for the Soviets, involves nothing more than after-the-fact conjecture by authors out to sell books as to the identity of the Soviet's code-named "Ales" as matching, in ascribed attributes and employment, Mr. Hiss, not taking into account the possibility that the Soviets deliberately provided misinformation to throw Army G-2 intelligence off the track, not particularly renowned at the time for their intelligence work, which failed, along with the Office of Naval Intelligence, to detect the attack in advance on Pearl Harbor despite intercepts in the days and weeks prior to the attack, which, if properly interpreted after skilled decoding, that at which they were proficient, could have pointed the way to the time and place of the attack. Whenever one reads a statement that the Venona files conclusively established the identity of any U.S. citizen as a spy, one immediately knows that the author is uninformed or attempting to sell something with some new "bombshell" revelation, for placement alongside the sorcery and self-help books regarding ten easy steps to fame and fortune at the grocery store checkouts, as no such conclusive establishment of identity has ever been made.

Overarching all of the ascription of "espionage" for and on behalf of the Soviets to Mr. Hiss was the notion that the Soviets were not the enemy of the U.S., in fact became an ally in the war after the attack by the Nazis on Russia on June 22, 1941.

And, of course, the admitted spy for the Soviets, Mr. Chambers, got off scot-free, because he was the convenient political tool of Messrs. Nixon and Karl Mundt, enabling both to become Senators, among others then on HUAC, in need of reviving the Committee's prominence before the public, after it had waned to the point of near extinction during the war, nearly eliminated by the House in early 1946, after its reputation prior to the war had been thoroughly debunked as Red-chasing idiots, seeking after such notorious "Communists" as Kit Marlowe, who had only been dead at the time for 350 years, almost wholly ignoring the while all manner of actual threats to U.S. domestic security by such groups as the Klan, the American Bund, America First, the Silver Shirts and other right-wing groups before the war, the Committee remaining largely dormant during the war.

It is best, when one is not a lawyer and lacks training in the law, to refrain from hurling reckless charges publicly regarding such heinous crimes as treason, when one obviously does not know the first thing about it, and probably knew even less about the actual facts of the case, itself, and the questionable character of Mr. Chambers, as well as that of his political handlers, notably Congressman Nixon and the HUAC lead investigator at the time, Robert Stripling, who had helped Mr. Chambers dig up the "pumpkin" microfilm of some of the obtained documents from his pumpkin patch on his Maryland farm, originally having placed the microfilm in a squash after transferring it from his nephew's apartment dumb-waiter shaft where he claimed to have placed the documents in 1938, leaving them undisturbed thereafter until called upon by Mr. Hiss's attorney in the defamation suit to turn them over in discovery—providing thereby a convenient MacGuffin on which the more sensationalistic parts of the press, and the more facile of their readers, could easily latch, especially just before Thanksgiving, 1948, with the frost being on it, right after the Republicans again lost the House and Senate to the Democrats and President Thomas Dewey had something strange occur on his way to the inauguration.

If Mr. Ruark, and others of his ilk, wanted to make of Mr. Hiss a "martyr", they were certainly going about it in the right way.

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