The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Tragedy of Remington and Hiss I FIND it difficult to get either William Remington or Alger Hiss out of my mind. Remington was brutally murdered in the...
...Remington was brutally murdered in the Lewisburg penitentiary by three young gangsters...
...And yet, no matter how deep my feeling goes, I know that both were guilty as charged...
...When they were questioned by Congressional committees or the FBI, they made a fatal blunder: They denied the whole thing...
...These men had both been Communists, and both had turned over to outsiders papers belonging to the Government of the United States...
...If they had told the truth, they might have been forgiven and could have gone on to useful and honorable careers...
...The evidence in both cases was completely convincing...
...I approached young Remington one day after court had adjourned and the lawyers, witnesses and jurymen were rushing about in their haste to escape to a less harrowing environment...
...But at this point Communism came in...
...In fact, both were guilty of more than was charged...
...I had essentially the same conversation with both of them...
...At Dartmouth and Harvard, they had superior educational advantages...
...Its promise of rapid improvement of a world which in those days was so very obviously askew was too much of a lure...
...Hiss was released last week and came sadly back to New York to pick up the shreds of his life...
...No one could foresee the seriousness which such connections would take on in later years...
...If their minds had been prepared by any influence at all ??church or home or school??for the strains to which they were exposed, they would have gone on to live happy and productive lives...
...I approached Alger Hiss one day as he was pacing nervously up and down the courthouse corridor during a recess in his second trial...
...These two are on my mind for a very simple reason...
...I cannot blame the courts, the juries, the Government for doing what has been done...
...Both, in denying that they had done this, had committed perjury...
...At one point in his career, he was offered a position as instructor in a well-known college...
...This picture of the man and the thought of these words came back to me when I saw the newspaper photographs the day after he was released from prison...
...In time, they were surrounded by the subtle influences exerted by such persons as Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers...
...no one would have asked him about his youthful connections...
...These two young men were far above the average in talents and ambitions...
...The indictments had been pared down to the points which could be most indubitably proved...
...I sympathize with both of these men, and I cannot help thinking over and over how easy it would have been for either of them, Communists though they had been, to make better choices and to come out at different termini...
...Had it not been for his entanglement with Communism, he would have gone on to make a success of life as a Government official, a business economist or a college professor...
...We chatted for a while about the trial, and, as I was turning away, he fervently grasped my hand, looked me unblinkingly in the eyes and said, "I swear that I am innocent, and I know that in the end my innocence will be established...
...When Alger Hiss now says that he intends to spend the rest of his life proving his innocence, I cannot imagine what he has in mind...
...The first man's life has ended in tragedy...
...Had he accepted it, the tragedy would have been headed off...
...He had not been punished with a half-brick, but his life had been blasted...
...He was no longer a Communist...
...After listening carefully and sympathetically through the two trials, I am forced to say that, had I been on either jury, I would have voted precisely as those twelve men and women did...
...By a curious quirk of fate, these two unfortunates were highlighted in the news during the same week...
...The second is so deep down in misfortune that it looks as if he could never work his way out and up...
...Apparently, both had given up their Communist connections...
...He answered my questions in a low, tense voice...
...But they told lies??and now one of them is dead and the other faces a dead-end existence...
...But there is something deeply wrong with a society in which such things happen...
...But I do blame the citizens of this country for not giving their young people a realistic education which will fit them to stand up against the strains and tricks and traps of life in this complicated age...
...Both were idealists...
...When the Great Depression struck, Hiss was 25 and Remington was still in high school...
...As I left, he grasped my hand and said, looking me straight in the eyes, "I swear to you that I am innocent...
...But he didn't take the job??and he ended with his head bashed in with a piece of brick...
...He looked gaunt and worn...
...As time passed, both men occupied Government positions...
...It had to be done...
...He was a handsome and intelligent boy...
...There was no one at Dartmouth or at Harvard to give these innocents the right sort of warning...
Vol. 37 • December 1954 • No. 50
