THE CONGRESS: No Witches

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John Edgar Hoover last week called upon U. S. patriots to join his G-Men in a holy war: on spies, murderers, foreignisms, burglars, alien-minded mongrels, Utopian praters, saboteurs, subversive lawbreakers of every sort. "Here," cried the chief of FBI, "is a battle between priceless God-fearing principles on the one hand and pagan ideals and godlessness on the other. ... In these troubled days, when you strengthen the hand of law enforcement, you add power to the muscles of liberty. . . ." He added piously, "Our efforts must not develop into a witch hunt."

U. S. Attorney General Frank Murphy last week praised Mr. Hoover (for his measures to prevent industrial espionage), said the Department of Justice would be right behind him in the hunt on condemners of U. S. laws. Mr. Murphy also thanked the Dies Committee for its exposures, assured its Chairman Martin Dies that un-American wrongdoers will be remorselessly punished. But, said the Attorney General, his Department will act only on good evidence, will punish no citizen for his opinions—in short, will hunt no witches.

Congressman Jerry Voorhis of San Dimas, Calif., a little Leftist, was placed on the Dies committee last February to counterbalance its Red-hunting chairman. Jerry Voorhis soon was more appalled by his new view of U. S. Communists and Nazis than by the antics of Martin Dies. Having come to check and scoff, the new member remained to respect the work if not the chairman of the committee. But last week Mr. Voorhis suddenly drew back, cried: "I can't vote for that!"

It was too late. Unhappy Mr. Voorhis, knowing not what he had done, had already voted to publish the names, addresses, titles and salaries of 528 Federal employes, 30 District of Columbia schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, etc., four teachers at Howard (Negro) University, all of whom supposedly were or had been members of the American League for Peace and Democracy. Martin Dies did not pretend that they were Communists. He flatly announced that they were being punished for staying in a League which his committee had exposed as organized and controlled by the Communist Party.

"A most damnable thing!" cried Democrat John Dempsey of New Mexico, who was absent (as usual) when the committee first voted to publish the list. Three minutes late at a meeting called to hear his belated objections, Committeeman Dempsey vainly stormed, with Mr. Voorhis vainly carried his protests to the House floor. Least excited were those immediately concerned. The League's publicized members ranged all the way from a Capitol charwoman, who makes 50¢ an hour, to NLRB's Edwin Seymour Smith, who makes $10,000 a year, and Assistant Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman ($9,000), who "joined" last year by contributing $2 to a fund for Loyalist Spain. A few did not even know that they were members of the League.