MY CONFESSION TO MCCARTHY

...it was Cryptocommunism that I feared, sex offending, and doubts about American business leadership and managerial know-how...

...When I shaved in the morning, I stared at myself and wondered what might lie behind that impassive face and all those innocent-looking soapsuds...

...I had been tolerant too long...

...I knew in a flash that I was determined to imitate those men and those women, that I would join the Communist Party, work for it hard and sincerely, then recant its hideous errors, and come out on the other side to first-class citizenship and even a reasonable degree of public respect if not of newsreel fame...

...It was my conscience I wanted to bare...

...It started when poor Parnell Thomas was still out of jail and head of the House Committee on Un-American Activities...

...I saw the smile in the shaving mirror, and the blood from the Cut of Discovery...

...It was the same with pyorrhea, which four out of five really did have...

...Had not both Hoover and Dewey follawed the Party Line in foreign policy in 1941, during the Hitler-Stalin Pact...

...I confess now to Sen...

...and who recognize that, even so, nothing will bring the Kremlin to reason and that World War III is inevitable just as soon as we have persuaded the French to put up the infantry...

...If questioned, I shall of course deny everything—until my big day comes, until I recant, and assume the position of authority in American life which I am confident awaits me...

...I am not afraid to speak of this here...

...Pyorrhea was nothing...

...Reporting my neighbors would help, and I resolved to do it...

...It was Roosevelt that the Reds backed...

...Why had I subconsciously leaned towards Dewey...

...On that day I shall hold my head high...

...or things like that...

...If my loyalty had been above reproach, I would surely have demonstrated it by reporting my neighbors months ago when the Communist Menace first developed...

...These are the men and women who must be followed if we would save our great country for liberty and freedom and dignity, and if we would face up to the world responsibilities which the American Century has placed on our shoulders through no choice of ours, responsibilities to save the free world and end human slavery and five-year-plans and all the cruel hypocrisies of the Russian tyrants...

...that the immediate objectives of the Kremlin are the Atlantic ports of Europe...

...Tydings were fellow-travelers...

...Apparently, repentance is not too simple, not when Communism is in the air, everywhere, infiltrating every thought...

...Later on, of course, Mr...

...Thomas had trouble meeting his payroll...

...And so did you, my friend...

...who have recognized their error and returned to Christian, business principles represent today a kind of elite of First-class Citizens, men and women who have read Marx, who have dealt in codes and pumpkins and secret meetings, and who have foresworn all these things, have switched sides again, and have joined the forces of political righteousness...

...I had said, in the presence of two friends, that I didn't believe the A&P could be as minuscule as all that...

...I hope the reader has not already lost patience with me, on the grounds that I have an over-scrupulous conscience or that I just want an excuse to talk about myself...

...I now remember that for a fleeting moment I wondered whether I was a Cryptocommunist and merely hadn't diagnosed myself—whether, so to speak, I was what you might call a Crypto-cryptocommunist...

...And my own gums were receding...

...Maybe I had criticized Roosevelt before Chicago...

...I used more shaving lotion than usual, assumed an impassive expression, bade my wife a slightly detached goodbye, and headed for the office of the Daily Worker to find out where to report for duty...

...Again, in that mirror, there loomed the lathered, hangdog face of a suspect...

...So far as I could remember, I was not a sex offender...

...Unconsciously I bared my teeth and examined my gums: they were still receding...

...Supposing my sex life had been regular, what comfort could I derive from that...

...I tried to remember...

...And I had said it bitterly...

...Was I mixed up with such people, I asked myself, as I went on shaving...

...McCarthy that I have been a Creeping Socialist...

...Then, just as I entered my dark night of the soul, light, real light, came to me from my shaving mirror...

...The fact that the question could be raised at all made me want to cut my throat, but I was using a safety razor...

...I had been running a low-grade fever, and there was no hope of a cure until the fever ran high, until the boils appeared, and were lanced, and the boils went away again, leaving me a little pockmarked but serenely immune...

...How could I hope to be saved before I had decisively sinned...

...At this fateful point in history, the issue is neither parking nor radio...

...I smiled...

...I had heard the term more and more frequently, and at first I wondered what Creeping Socialism was...

...It is a short step from there to cracks about "du Pont and Wall Street," which is pure Party Line...

...Precisely because I felt I was innocent, I knew I should have to be subtle to catch myself off guard...

...Oughtn't I to report my neighbors...

...And Dulles, too...

...He is the author of "Pilgrimage of Western Man," published last year, and "Let's Join the Human Race," the pamphlet version of his article, "Let's Call in the Neighbors," which appeared in the December issue of The Progressive...

...If so, let 'em read Freud, and then ask themselves candidly how they know they are innocent...

...Who would have believed a few short months ago that Secretary Acheson and former Sen...

...Besides, why take the coward's way out...

...Had it ever occurred to me to report my neighbors for that...

...I admit to being sensitive, maybe too sensitive...

...Why did I give that sudden guilty start...

...I know that during the twenties, when our national press contained a good many articles about halitosis, I used to wonder about myself...

...Every time he gave you a chance...

...There is only one group of citizens in America whose loyalty is beyond reproach: the ex-Communists...

...I wanted to write a letter to the New York Times, urging a repeal of the anti-trust laws as an unwarrantable attack on free enterprise and healthy competition and the profit incentive, an assault on the dignity of the human individual, and the worst example of statism...

...but there was still the possibility that the face staring distraughtly from my shaving mirror was the face of a man who badly needed reporting, himself...

...But I did remember having thoughts about Hoover, and Parnell Thomas' hearings had made it pretty clear to me that this sort of thing begins with thoughts, not words...

...Those pockmarks will be my badges of honor and security, my pledges to my neighbors that I am not only not a Communist but that I am literally incapable of becoming one—because I have been one...

...It was Creeping Socialism—and in me, too...

...As a matter of fact, the dodge of voting Republican was not worth a damn, as a means of proving to myself or my neighbors that I was not a Creeping Socialist...

...A few more dirty cracks like that and the sex offenses would begin, and multiply, and ultimately throw me into Cryptocommunism...

...who realize that only a policy of tight containment, with air bases ringing the very frontiers of Russia and atom bombs poised in their bays, can possibly bring the Kremlin to reason...

...Why had I regretted Hoover...

...Although I am not a manufacturer, I speculated on the possibility that I could secure some sort of associate membership in the National Association of Manufacturers...

...and should stand up and confess, as I am doing now...

...What was it that Hoover had ever done...

...Or even later...

...It was a slightly self-conscious, smug smile, a little masochistic perhaps...

...Because, quite simply, the ugly question had suddenly leapt into my mind: Why have you never voted Republican before...

...But every time he tried to get out of a witness the facts about his political beliefs, I had this queer creeping sensation which I have only just identified...

...I shall have other, and more interesting, disclosures to make to him later...

...II These ex-Communists are the men and women who know there can be no appeasement...

...But perhaps I had said something against Hoover...

...The thing is, not to start thinking...

...It is certain that Hoover was never accused of Communism...

...What was it I might have objected to, in some casual conversation...

...The state, it seemed to me that day, ought to stop all intervention in business except perhaps raising our tariffs to more normal levels, thereby defending labor and the poor in general...

...The issue was drawn now, between free enterprise and Communist atheism, and I had to choose sides...

...was a Communist with nothing cryptic about it...

...For I know now that I was a Creeping Socialist, destined to become a Communist, but capable of passing beyond Communism to the glory of anti-Communism...

...Sure, I had often wanted to report my neighbors, but only for parking in my driveway or running their radio full blast at 1 a.m...

...McCarthy or Mr...

...The words come later, then the acts, and then you have Red Revolution...

...What was that innuendo if not a sneak attack on free enterprise and the American way of life and the dignity of the human individual...

...the issue is no less than treason...

...And things are moving fast...

...My threat to do so now, after men like Whittaker Chambers had taken all the risks, was bandwagon stuff and proved nothing about my subconscious, and it was my subconscious that I was after...

...I started reading Dos-toevsky again, even though I knew he was a Russian...

...Then one of my friends came to me one night for advice: his wife had a friend, another man, who in his judgment was a Cryptocom-munist...

...Until this week, I would have sworn that I was just as loyal as Sen...

...So maybe criticizing Roosevelt didn't count...

...cause Roosevelt may have been a Crypto-cryptocommunist himself— that is, a Cryptocommunist without knowing it...

...but, then, probably the sex offenders whom Sen...

...With a flush that almost showed through my shaving lather, I remembered something I had said about the ASP when I read their full-page advertisements, explaining how small their business was and how much their customers depended on them for the relatively few articles they did have to sell...

...Had they not both derided aid to Britain...

...Or that our State Department, and possibly our whole national life, were ultimately domi-nated by sex offenders...

...I had always wanted to report them for something or other: now was my chance to do it in a way that would serve the interests of my country, of free enterprise, of the American Way of Life...

...Now I realized that I was myself a Creeping Socialist and that this ugly truth about myself had in fact been creeping over me for some months...

...That might not matter, beSTRINGFELLOW BARR is president of St...

...So much has been disclosed during the past weeks that I think every citizen should examine his conscience, as I have been trying to do...

...Former members of the CP...

...I could not remember...

...Budenz...

...But I had felt so wretchedly guilty, and now felt so suddenly purged and purified, that I gladly settled for even that smile...

...Some of our business leaders, I thought I remembered (but it is all so long ago now), stated openly that F.D.R...

...And I know that the only sure anti-Communism is ex-Communism...

...John's College and president of the Foundation of World Government He has served as vice-president of Federal Union, Inc., and was a member of the Dublin Conference on World Government in 1945...

...If not, the fact that I had not even dreamed of doing it—not even in the last 24 hours, since my conviction of sin and my resolution to do penance—left me in a pretty dubious position...

...And he gave you one regularly, every four years until, to the dismay of every pro-Russian, he died...

...There must be droves of sex offenders, I decided, all in contact, all linked with Moscow, or at least with Tito...

...It would get a load off my conscience...

...McCarthy found teeming in the State Department thought they were innocent too...

...But I would rather have my gums recede than overthrow my own government or not believe in free enterprise or in the American way of life...

...But before that date can come, I have work to do...

...I tried to remember whether I had ever said anything against the Government...

...I determined to vote Republican, but at that thought I suddenly started, so violently that I cut myself, even with a safety razor...

...But I ask him now to give me time...

...My determination to vote Republican in 1952, even if Dewey ran again, buoyed my spirits all that day against the suspicion that I was indeed a Creeping Socialist, slowly creeping my way towards Communist Party membership...

...But next morning, the moment I stood in front of that cursed shaving mirror, all my old doubts assailed me...

...Some of my neighbors had made cracks about the A&P too, and even about U. S. Steel...

...What of it...

...But the Senator has uncovered so much disloyalty in apparently loyal persons that I grew unsure of myself...