THE PRESIDENT'S CHANCE
The President's Chance PRESIDENT TRUMAN has kicked away a timely opportunity to lift the whole loyalty investigation from the cellar depths of partisan politics and the mud-stained hands of...
...Still, we're not entirely lacking in interest in mysterious phenomena...
...Our captors went out of their way to give us as much as they could of all that they had...
...Navy Reports Red Submarines Operating Off U. S. Coast," screamed the headline in the New York Herald-Tribune...
...The idea is to rush to your typewriter, What Congress Is Turning Out or your nearest Western Union office, and demand that Congress Do Something, preferably double the appropriation for the Navy...
...It was President Truman's move at that moment, and indeed there were officially inspired rumors that he was prepared to act decisively by appointing a board of inquiry whose members would be beyond reproach of any kind...
...The Progressive has nothing but contempt for McCarthy's motives and methods, and the broadside technique of smear he employs, but we do share the country's concern that there may have been laxness in high quarters, that too much dirt may have been swept under the rug, that in the Amerasia case especially, many of the facts about stolen documents and Communist espionage have been kept from the public...
...Those of us," said Sen...
...F-L-A-S-H —Russian Sub Seeking Contact with U.S...
...Sen...
...Our hobby is underwater, rather than overhead...
...Wisconsin's intrepid Sen...
...The papers get a story...
...And yet, speaking frankly and perhaps guilelessly out of their own experiences and observations during 18 months, they were pronouncing judgments about China which bring savage attacks and cries of disloyalty when expressed by officials of the State Department, university experts on the Far East, and publicists, who are as free from any taint of Communism as are Marine Master Sergeant Bender and Navy Chief Electrician's Mate Smith...
...Twenty-four hours later the AP, with the Navy's gallant cooperation, passed the word again: "Ships, Planes Watch for Mystery U-Boat...
...The Navy gets its appropriation...
...Our hobby has just had its third anniversary...
...The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed...
...For just about 51 weeks no Mystery Subs were sighted off our shores...
...The struggle between the brutal regimentation of Communism and the free way of life has become the great showdown of our time...
...The country is entitled to the whole story, whatever may be the political repercussions...
...But nothing happened...
...Time gave the story of the freed fliers a whole page, but suppressed all mention of what they had said of public opinion in China and the relative popularity of Chiang and the Communists...
...The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as 'Communists' or 'Fascists' by their opponents...
...Everybody Wins Except-WE BELONG to the vanishing minority of Americans who have neither seen a flying saucer nor developed a theory about them...
...The President's Chance PRESIDENT TRUMAN has kicked away a timely opportunity to lift the whole loyalty investigation from the cellar depths of partisan politics and the mud-stained hands of McCarthy & Co...
...But it is still not too late for action...
...That struggle will never be won for the freedom we cherish if we persist in closing our eyes to the social and economic misery which prepare the soil for Communism...
...The press sprang to battle-stations...
...if we insist on throwing in with the feudal, corrupt regimes against which the people are rebelling, and if we fail to recognize that wherever oppressed peoples are limited to a choice between the old feudalism and the New Communism, they will choose the newer slavery because in their desperation they must hope that any change is a change for the better...
...It was a few days later that Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, chief of naval operations, tish-toshed this one with the comment that the Navy had no concrete evidence that foreign submarines were operating off our coasts, but, of course, there wasn't much room in the papers for this hum-drum disavowal...
...There had been reports that they were the victims of sinister torture...
...But nothing— nothing at all—was actually sighted or heard anywhere...
...Smith's speech was followed by issuance of a "Declaration of Conscience" which she and six other Republicans signed in protest against the use of "totalitarian techniques which, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life...
...As a matter of fact, they hadn't been "treated badly at all...
...But sure enough they began to turn up this year in late spring, when the thoughts of Navy officials turn to appropriations...
...Sure enough, three days later the F-L-A-S-H came, this time from Miami: "Navy Hunts For Sub Near Rocket Range...
...It was just about a year later, appropriation time, that is, that the Associated Press sent the password: "Armed Services Bill Faces Senate Slashes...
...It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others...
...Elmer Bender and Bill Smith had been captives of the Communists in North China since being forced down 18 months before...
...The password may seem innocuous enough to those without romance in their souls, but when we see the four words in the paper, "Navy Appropriation before Congress," we know the big moment has come...
...Margaret Chase Smith, the Maine Republican, provided the President the perfect setting for so statesmanlike a step when she took the floor of the Senate with a magnificent indictment of the tactics being used by Republicans and Democrats alike in the dirty game of smear and counter-smear...
...They had encountered, they said, "an intense dislike of Chiang Kai-Shek" among "everybody we saw...
...Typical treatment was that in Time, whose devotion to Chiang is notorious...
...It all started in 1948 when the Navy appropriation was before Congress...
...The American airmen were fortunate that they escaped being smeared as Communists, or fellow-travelers, or pro-Communist, or security risks, or loyalty risks, or possessors of a point of view which parallels the Communist line...
...John L. Sullivan (no relation), then Secretary of the Navy, solemly told the Senate Armed Forces Committee (while arguing for a larger appropriation) that the Navy had just sighted a sub...
...Later, the Navy allowed as how its "disclosure" was based on "doubtful information...
...F-L-A-S-H —"Navy Patrol 'Plane Spots Unidentified U-Boat Periscope...
...F-L-A-S-H—Mysterious U-Boat in Florida waters...
...Everybody wins, every-body, that is, except the 149,999,900 Americans who are supposed to be making up their minds about policies and appropriations on the basis of what their officials tell them and the papers print...
...F-L-A-S-H—Red Sub Sighted off Seattle...
...Smith had set the stage for him was another recurrence of the Administration's strangely erratic handling of the whole problem...
...Then, to the horror of some of the interviewers, Bender and Smith talked frankly of what they had seen in China...
...Moreover, they added, the Chinese people they saw "are getting a better deal under the Communists than they were under the Nationalist Government...
...No, they said, they hadn't been tortured...
...Smith, "who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism—the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right to independent thought...
...Congress gets the jitters...
...Sen...
...Truman's failure to act when Sen...
...Meanwhile, the country is more confused than ever, and desperately needs an accounting it can understand and trust...
...There would be no call to go rushing out on the beach—or away from the beach—when you read about the Mysterious U-Boat...
...The silence in large parts of the press, and in the halls of Congress, was deafening...
...into the more rewarding realm of honest inquiry by a board of distinguished Americans enjoying the complete confidence of the country...
...The story the fliers told explained this sudden boredom...
...The President could take no cleaner, more decisive and more satisfying step for the country than the immediate appointment of a board of inquiry of prominent Americans, to whom would be assigned the best counsel and the finest investigating talent that the Government of the United States can command...
...We ate as well as the Chinese did...
...The date isn't exactly the same every year, but that doesn't mean we aren't alerted in time to spring to our listening posts...
...It's all good, clean fun...
...Together the speech and declaration opened a window in a reeking room, but they could not go beyond that in cleaning up the origins of the poisonous Washington atmosphere...
...But when Bender and Smith were released and told their stories, McCarthy and many an American newspaper lost all interest in the case...
...Their roles as heroes spared them, for the moment anyway...
...Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America...
...Joseph McCarthy virtually proclaimed a one-man declaration of war against China for brutal mistreatment of the American fliers...
...F-L-A-S-H—"Navy Destroyer Contacts One or More Mystery Subs...
...But there have been enough proved cases to cause nation-wide distrust and strong suspicion that there may be something to unproved, sensational accusations...
...Slavery Old and New FOR DAYS before the two U. S. airmen were available for interviews, parts of the American press and some of our politicians were atwitter with expectancy...
...Now, if you were a member of the club, you would know at once what the F-L-A-S-H meant in cipher...
...Reds...
Vol. 14 • July 1950 • No. 7
