Wednesday, January 4, 1939

EDITORIAL

Site Ed. Note: Martin Dies was Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, later to become even more notorious in the late forties and early fifties era of Joe McCarthy. Dies ran a poor fourth as a candidate for the Senate from Texas in June, 1941, an election which was narrowly, and probably due to fraud, won by Governor "Pass the Biscuits" Pappy O'Daniel over a young congressman, Lyndon Johnson.

And in light of the events of September 11, 2001, this editorial gains stark timeliness. Unchecked emotions fueled by headlines can lead a society to chaos, that which the miniscule few who do the thing to disrupt most hope to happen. The Beer Hall Putsch is exemplar number one--so few who ultimately affected so many. Give them force and they have force.

Instead, we suggest the Farah Rud… That's not far from the Hari Rud in the Kara Kum. First day, first grade--listen.

The Dies Committee's indictment of the Labor Department,

would be more convincing if the country did not have before it proof that the Dies Committee can smell subversion from 600 kilometers and see Red at the slightest provocation. The whole problem of immigration and aliens illegally in the United States needs to be examined, but it must be plain to everyone that the Dies Committee is not the agency for the assignment.

For the Dies Committee, first of all, is out to make headlines, and the way to make headlines out of aliens is to put as bad a face as possible on their presence and activities here. Any telegraph editor on a newspaper could tell you as much. If the story came over the wires saying that the aliens were plotting the overthrow of democratic government, he would get out his scare-head type. If, on the other hand, the story was that aliens, on the whole, were a pretty respectable lot, not much worse than full-fledged citizens of an equal class, he would lay it aside to be used only in case something more exciting didn't turn up.

Hon. Dies & Co. have made their headlines, but the subject of aliens and the Labor Department's laxity in enforcing the deportation laws is still calling for factual investigation by unprejudiced persons.