No Greater Challenge'
The Progressive 'Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free' Volume 17 July, 1953 Number 7 No Greater Challenge' WASHINGTON, capital of "the land of the free and the home of the...
...Information Service have felt it necessary to remove from their shelves some of the most effective anti-Communist propaganda ever to appear in Italy...
...1, 1952 that he said that "Communist Party leaders 'just love McCarthy's name-calling' for three reasons—it creates confusion, it makes the [Communist] Party's strength appear greater than it really is, and it harms men whom 'the comrades call those stupid liberals.' " In the face of mounting evidence of this character President Eisenhower's fainthearted reluctance to force a showdown with McCarthy and his mob can only continue to increase the apprehension of our friends abroad and multiply the seeds of suspicion, disunity, and fear at home—all in the name of a fraudulent anti-Communism which actually plays into Communist hands...
...Perhaps as dismaying as the antics of the McCarthys in Congress is the recurring capitulation of Administration officials, including the President, to these trigger-men of intolerance...
...Mrs...
...McCarthy is the best ally that Communists have in the United States...
...Republican dominance of the government has brought no respite, but rather a resurgence of the hate and mistrust first generated by McCarthy and his gang when they were part of the Republican minority...
...Ill In Indiana, home of Jenner but the seat of a deep Hoosier spirit of liberty, state officials refused to be intimidated into getting rid of three huge murals painted in the senate chamber by Ken Kroll, outstanding American artist...
...It is here in the growing misuse of the investigative process that the rights of the individual are being most grievously assaulted...
...In Tennessee, a state legislative commission investigated charges that textbooks had been contaminated with subversive doctrines...
...And in this country, Father Leon Sullivan, Catholic missionary who was imprisoned by the Communists in China, wrote in Commonweal after his release: "I would rather return to my Chinese Communist prison cell than avail myself of Sen...
...As a result of McCarthy committee hearings in Washington, the Italian branches of the U.S...
...A few random reports on the news tell the sad story: • From Rome, Edmund Stevens cabled the Christian Science Monitor that "the Italian Communists owe a vote of thanks to Sen...
...Horton's crimes are that she dared criticize the House Committee on Un-American Activities and was associated with organizations which years later were thought in some quarters to be of dubious ideological purity...
...They quit without a murmur before a fight could start, buying off the McCarthys of Congress by withdrawing the appointments...
...McCarthy has become a hated symbol of the worst in America...
...It is what America's friends in the whole world most deeply regret...
...The belief that McCarthy is actually helping the Communists is not a new one...
...Several recent developments out in the grass-roots of America could conceivably help stiffen the President's backbone...
...You've belonged to too many organizations...
...It's unfortunate that this particular artist was selected, but we're not going to burn great literature, music, and art...
...It would be difficult to find two Americans of more impeccable character and patriotism, and yet so lethal is the power of the Know-Nothings in Congress that the two names were not even submitted to the Senate for confirmation...
...The legitimate search for spies, saboteurs, and subversives has long since been perverted into a hunt for headlines by a few ruthless politicians bent on power for themselves no matter what the cost to their country...
...Joseph McCarthy...
...McCarthy's 'protection.' He is as great, if not greater threat to American freedom than the military might of the Kremlin, and, believe me, I do not underestimate either the Kremlin's might or its cleverness...
...He is a native-born Hoosier, a Republican, a business man, a Legionaire, a Presbyterian, an Elk, and a Lion...
...Certainly, in this instance, Tennessee and Indiana have shown a far greater dedication than has the national government to the underlying principles of a nation that sings its right to be known as "the land of the free and the home of the brave...
...President Eisenhower has repeatedly expressed enthusiasm for "going back to the states" for richer democratic expression of American ideals...
...That's the favorite trick of the Communists, and we're not going to fall for it...
...So automatic has the act of surrender become that the Administration now throws in the towel before the fight starts—all in the name of a spurious "harmony" with Congress...
...Sen...
...It is an ironic commentary on our time that while two distinguished Americans are rejected for national service on security grounds, the bullying Senator who sets the standards continues to weaken American security by playing squarely into Communist hands...
...H. W. Handley concluded: "We are not going to return to witchcraft...
...The State Department is riddled with fear, and it moves, when it moves at all, as though it expected any moment to be clubbed from behind by the muscle men of Congress...
...Real art has no connection with political affiliation...
...The commission dared to find the charges untrue, and went on to assert that the study of controversial issues in the public ^ schools "is essential to the proper education of children for citizenship...
...Horton, the fearful men of the Administration got a woman in the Republican National Committee to write the former commander of the Waves: "We are saving you and the State Department embarrassment...
...It was no fellow traveler but William T. Gossett, vice president and general counsel of the Ford Motor Company, who recently sounded the alarm in these words: "There is today no challenge to the latent greatness of the American people that so demands action than the problem of legislative investigating committees which conduct political guerrilla warfare . . and in the process besmirch private citizens, public officials, and each other...
...The New York Herald-Tribune, the Republican paper by which Philbrick is now employed, reported Feb...
...Government employes have been cowed into stuporous silence and robot-like conduct of their offices...
...The Progressive 'Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free' Volume 17 July, 1953 Number 7 No Greater Challenge' WASHINGTON, capital of "the land of the free and the home of the brave," is fast becoming a city of fear and the home of hysteria...
...From Paris, Walter Kerr wrote the New York Herald-Tribune that "in Western Europe McCarthy . . . is criticized as much from the extreme Right as the extreme Left, and the Center [predominantly Catholic] regards him as a threat to the world it is trying to create...
...Handley, the record should show, is no fellow-traveler...
...Due precaution should be taken to protect the democratic right of people to disagree...
...II Shillinglaw's loyalty is suspect, despite his banking, Republican, Legion background, because he has been a member, as have many conservative business men, of the Institute of Pacific Relations, a research organization on Far Eastern affairs which several committees of Congress have concluded was tainted with communism...
...In the case of Mrs...
...Neither the White House nor the State Department had the fortitude to defend their appointments...
...In Vienna, Dr...
...The latter, by the way, is the state's official bird...
...Everett M. Dirksen, the Illinois Republican who had sponsored Shillinglaw, took the cowardly course of having his office withdraw sponsorship while he was off on a junket to Japan...
...There have been many developments to document this melancholy appraisal, but none more revealing in recent weeks than the Eisenhower Administration's spineless retreat after appointing two distinguished Americans to represent us at the United Nations Economic and Social Council...
...From Germany, Sylvia Porter told readers of the New York Posr that "even among the most violent anti-Communists, Sen...
...Oskar Pollak, chief editor of the militantly anti-Commiinist Arbiter TLeitung, wrote: "McCarthy is the worst possible propaganda for America...
...As the result of a legislative investigation, Lieut...
...Jenner claimed Kroll had belonged to subversive organizations, and the little Jenners of Indiana soon thought they detected Slavic features on a farm woman in the mural and complained about the presence of a hammer and a redbird...
...The two appointees were: David Lee Shillinglaw, Chicago, investment banker, regular Republican, and former commander of the Illinois Department of the American Legion, and Mildred McAfee Hor-ton, president of Wellesley College for 15 years and wartime commander of the Waves...
...It was stated authoritatively more than a year ago by Herbert Philbrick, who risked his life as an FBI counterspy within the Communist Party...
...America is still America...
Vol. 17 • July 1953 • No. 7
