THIRD PARTIES: Iowa Hybrid

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The Progressive Party is thus a hybrid party—its ranks manned by the generous, the idealistic, the disaffected, the independent; its real bosses, who quietly, adroitly lead it by the nose, a small group of Communists and Communist-liners. And as the hybrid figurehead of this aggregation, adored by the majority, steered by the minority, walks helpless Henry Wallace.

He sees no essential inconsistency in his position. He does not see any incongruity in the grandson of Uncle Henry reading with an air of furious sincerity a speech ghostwritten for him by Lewis Frank Jr., the debonair son of a Detroit Christmas tinsel manufacturer. The Frank speeches, so different from Wallace's own rambling style, bristle with Communist clichés, un-deviatingly follow the Communist line.

Sullen Vacancy. Wallace has persuaded himself that only Wallace is honest; that all his enemies are wrong and full of deceit. Perhaps only a dishonest man could think himself so completely honest.

Confronted by proof of his own inaccuracies, as he was in a humiliating press conference at Philadelphia (TIME, Aug. 2), Wallace sags and retreats behind a suddenly sullen vacancy. His carefully manufactured misconception of foreign affairs has led him into statements both dangerous and ludicrous. On a trip to Europe before a British audience he assailed his own nation in these words: "America's main objective was a quick victory followed by a quick return to normalcy. It was the normalcy of selfishness, nationalism and power politics." He blamed U.S. Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt and U.S. policy for the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. He said of Jan Masaryk's suicide: "Maybe he had cancer." In all of his speeches, the U.S. is always wrong. He never attacks Russia; Russia, by implication, is always right. His way of solving the Berlin crisis is to give Berlin to the Russians.

Confronted with the charge that the Progressive Party platform is a faithful reflection of the Communists' proposed platform, Wallace says: "Then I'd say that they have a good platform."

Many a political reporter saw and reported the Red seizure of the Progressive Convention at Philadelphia. Wallace did not notice it. Afterwards he said blandly: "I would say that the Communists are the closest things to the early Christian martyrs. But I can truthfully say that the Communists have not come to me, as such. I saw one hurriedly in a railroad station not long ago. I don't recall his name. I told him I believed in progressive capitalism. That stopped him and I haven't heard from the Communists since."

Twofold Tragedy. Until now, many of the faithful members of the Progressive Party have rationalized Wallace's position on Communism and their own embarrassing fellowship with the Communists in the same way that Wallace has rationalized it. There have been signs of restlessness, however. Sooner or later the look of the Third Party's real bosses may repel the sincere non-Communists who are the backbone of the party's voting strength. The bosses may become so obvious that even the blindest Wallaceite will recognize them. Then Wallace will appear to them in the most ignoble role of all: the man who betrayed his friends.