National Affairs: The Outer Darkness

When Kansas-born Earl Browder, No. 1 open Communist in the U.S., was freed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 after serving 14 months of a four-year term for passport fraud, the comrades and New Dealers cheered F.D.R.'s magnanimity.

A fortnight ago, when Browder and his Russian-born wife were indicted for making false statements about Mrs. Browder's Communist affiliations during a 1949 naturalization hearing, there were no big friends to help. Browder, who still calls himself a Communist although he was expelled from the party in 1946, was locked up, and Mrs. Browder with him.

Last week, after they had spent nine days in jail, the Browders managed to raise the $5,000 bail, and were freed to await trial. The lawyer who showed up to represent them: O. John Rogge, an Assistant Attorney General (1939-40) in the Roosevelt Administration and special assistant to the Attorney General for the Nazi sedition trial of 1944. Rogge, once a darling of the Communists, is now the U.S. lawyer representing Marshal Tito's anti-Stalinist Communist government of Yugoslavia.