IN LOYALTY'S NAME
Nikoloric, L. A.
In Loyalty's Name WITCH HUNT. The Revival o[ Heresy, by Carey McWilliams. Little, Brown. 340 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by L. A. Nikoloric THIS book should be read by everyone—liberal or...
...We' are afraid of it, and justly so...
...The book describes the loyalty process in various fields: the shameful attack on academic freedom by the University of Washington in firing professors who were allegedly Communists, the humiliation heaped on the "Hollywood Ten" by the Thomas Committee and the cowardly reaction of the motion picture industry, the degeneration of the civil service under the Federal loyalty program, and the damage done to scientific progress by the preoccupation with loyalty which denies free interchange of information...
...the honest critic is promptly denounced as a Communist or Communist sympathizer...
...During the Great Depression, conformity to the status quo was not a requirement for social respectability...
...McWilliams has correctly placed the onus of the witch hunt where it belongs—on President Truman's loyalty order of March 1947...
...A free society and its fundamental institutions are humiliated and weakened...
...This order opened the season on Communists, fellow-travelers, Socialists, liberals, and all other varieties of non-conformists...
...On the contrary, it undermines our greatest strength—freedom of inquiry...
...it proves that the loyalty process accomplishes nothing in the name of security...
...Instead of relying on the laws of the land which are calculated to protect us against any overt activities which endanger our security, we have become hysterical because of our fear...
...The threat of world-wide communism is not met by obstinate adherence to the status quo and throwing the dissenters into the witches' cauldron...
...Reviewed by L. A. Nikoloric THIS book should be read by everyone—liberal or conservative—who believes that the loyalty process serves any practical purpose...
...The merit of Witch Hunt lies in its analysis of why loyalty paranoias come about and what they accomplish...
...The country was generally tolerant of a free interchange of diverse opinion in a common effort to end perennial boom and bust...
...On this puny, poverty-stricken, powerless, and despised group we have heaped all of our frustrations...
...Recently, when a smog (caused by large forest fires in Canada) covered the Eastern Coast, it was widely rumored that the Communists were to blame...
...The creation of scapegoats is not the way to solve difficult problems...
...Today this group is the Communist Party...
...Too many people believe that domestic communism presents such a clear threat to our security that we are justified in suspending free insti-t u t i o n s . Witch Hunt is an effective answer to such people...
...Because our foreign policy does not fare well, ipso facto there are Communists in the State Department...
...It can be met only by sound and constructive programs evolved after free interchange of ideas...
...There is an apparent tendency to find a scapegoat in a well-defined minority on which all of the troubles incurred by the society may be blamed...
...The Communists have been correctly blamed for a normal incidence of spying...
...it does not protect us...
...That the small number of Communists is not the only victim is demonstrated by Witch Hunt...
...The liberal, the Socialist, the free thinker, the pacifist—all are suspect...
...Fear replaces dignity...
...He does not discuss the disastrous effects of the witch hunt on policy, domestic and foreign...
...It explodes the myth that a witch hunt accomplishes anything constructive...
...Let the hunters read Witch Hunt...
...It is powerful and threatens us with physical extinction...
...the secret police and the informer replace due process of law...
...McWilliams attempts to prove that a witch hunt of some nature arises whenever a society finds itself in economic or ideological difficulties...
...Any form of non-conformity is attacked...
...It documents the damage they do to our institutions, our dignity, and to our strength and our future...
...We have found a scapegoat in a small group of domestic Communists...
...A pall hangs over all creative thought and enterprise...
...Secretary of State Ach-eson is called a Red...
...McWilliams says that it was written not for the witches but for the hunters...
...The function of this book is best described in the preface...
...Today America is enjoying a tremendous prosperity...
...There must be a religious war of some kind going on in order to create an extensive witch hunt...
...The witch hunt psychology appears in its most repulsive forms when existing institutions are under attack by a powerful new ideology— whether of an economic or theological nature...
...In spite of great economic and social dislocations, there was no extensive witch hunt...
...Our standard of living has never been higher, yet we are undergoing the most terrible witch hunt in our history...
...At the turn of the 19th Century McWilliams points out that the Alien & Sedition Acts were aimed at the Jacobins...
...I do not believe that economic or social dislocations of themselves necessarily produce witch hunts...
...Acceptable policy has degenerated to a course of action which emphasizes exclusive reliance on making the nastiest face possible at Russia and the Communists...
...I would quarrel with only one part of this thesis—and this is largely a matter of semantics...
...In the middle of the 19th Century the Know-Nothings thought that the Catholics were at the root of our ills...
...When we cannot find Communists in the State Department, the case is proven because, as everyone knows, Communists are adept at hiding their identity...
...These losses have been exposed before, though perhaps not so well...
...It lent sanctity and respectability to other manifestations of the loyalty paranoia—the firing of teachers, purges by labor unions, private industries, veterans organizations, the American bar, local governments, and even social clubs (McWilliams cites the example of a duck-hunting club in Los Angeles that requires a loyalty oath...
...This ideology is a compelling one which has attracted in one way or another more than 700 million people to its banner...
...It makes no difference whether the society affected is prosperous or not...
...Free discussion of any alternatives is impossible...
...I would criticize McWilliams' book in only one respect...
...We are fighting a religious war against it...
...But they have also been blamed for each and all of our other misfortunes...
...The free way of life is now faced with an ideology we despise...
Vol. 15 • February 1951 • No. 2
