The Press: A Few Fungoes

When nightstick-wielding cops broke up the Communist "peace" rally in Manhattan's Union Square three weeks ago, New York Post Editor James Wechsler sounded off. Onetime Communist Wechsler, now a member in good standing of the anti-Communist left, criticized the other New York newspapers for their news stories and editorials on the riot, accused them of condoning "the savagery exhibited by some police officers." Wrote Wechsler: "The claim that the initial [police] ban—and the ensuing violence—were justified because the Communists support Russian aggression in Korea is dangerous doctrine . . . Communist talk is less menacing than curtailment of the freedom for which we stand in the world."

Last week, one of Editor Wechsler's staffers read the boss an angry lesson on the relationship between Communists in Korea and Communists in Union Square, and Editor Wechsler ran the staffer's blast. Korea Post War Correspondent Jimmy Cannon, sometime sports-page columnist and a G.I. in World War II, wrote: "It seemed . . . that the rioters of Union Square had gone far beyond the rights granted them in the Constitution. They were giving aid and comfort to the enemy and they should have been thrown in jail and tried for treason. Don't give me that guff about civil liberties . . . The Daily Worker going on the boost for Russia in this war is just as mixed up with the enemy as Seoul City Sue who broadcasts to our troops in Korea . . . I'm sure that if most Americans should walk through the crowded wards [of wounded] they would grab baseball bats and hit a few fungoes the next time the Communists assemble in Union Square. If this doesn't make sense to you, the hell with it. It does to me."