REPORT ON LIBERTY

...3. Repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act...

...6. The conviction in Jersey City of John Longo, an opponent of Boss Hague, on "a framed-up charge of falsifying his registration for voting...

...7. The failure of Congress to abolish the poll tax in Federal elections and to provide "an adequate system of absentee voting by men and women in the armed services...

...2. The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court holding that a conscientious objector cannot be inducted into the Army save by voluntarily taking the oath of induction...

...5. The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court voiding a conviction under the Espionage Act for preparing an anti-war circular, on the ground that no specific intent was shown to create military disaffection...

...The ACLU calls instead for reliance on the "spirit and power of pro-democratic forces in the United States, the quick resistance to every threat of our liberties, and the expanding international concept of civil liberties...

...The campaign for Federal and state legislation either penalizing speech and publications held to incite racial and religious hatred, or making criminal the deposit of such matter in the mails...

...The American Civil Liberties Union is on unassailable ground when it warns the country against the attempt to outlaw propaganda calculated to arouse racial and religious hatred...

...ON the debit side of the ledger the ACLU listed these developments: 1. "The most catastrophic" event of all—the continued exclusion of the entire population of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast and their detention in relocation centers...

...The ACLU conceeds that its survey "may be regarded as overly optimistic," but, it hastens to add by way of defense, the "plain factual record" justifies its conclusion...

...2. The Supreme Court's refusal to review the conviction of 18 members of the Socialist Workers' Party convicted under the 1940 peacetime Sedition Act in Minneapolis in 1941...

...Report On Liberty THE American Civil Liberties Union, long the alert watchdog over the basic American freedoms, has just issued its annual review—a fact-packed document of 80 pages analyzing in the Union's traditionally calm, crisp manner the home-front fight for the preservation of civil liberties in wartime...

...4. The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court overruling the South Carolina Supreme Court by holding that a Jehovah's Witness earning his living by selling religious literature is not subject to a local licensing ordinance...

...This latter report of mounting race tensions confirms the observations of most thoughtful and observant Americans who agree that these tensions, which spill over into bigotry and intolerance, will increase rather than diminish if the nation moves into a period of peacetime insecurity, unemployment, and frustration...

...This new one is an exception, for it has a good chuckle, whether planned or not...

...THE Union correctly notes that "more issues of civil liberty have arisen from the conflict in our democracy than from the war itself...

...9. The prosecutions by the Department of Justice under the Espionage Act for wartime speeches and publications by members of obscure religious sects, in the absence of any showing of clear and present danger to the conduct of the war...

...In a balance sheet of favorable and unfavorable developments during the year, the report found 30 events to commend, 22 to deplore, and adds in an aside which hardly seems justified that those commended are more "substantial...

...5. The decision of the U. S. Supreme Court denying conscientious objectors an opportunity to challenge draft board errors and bias defense in criminal prosecutions...

...3. The resort to the 1940 peacetime Sedition Law to bring to trial in the District of Columbia 30 persons accused of seditious conspiracy, and the "drag-net character of the conspiracy indictment.'' 4. The refusal of the U. S. Supreme Court to review the decision of the I ederal Circuit Court of Appeals at New York affirming the denial of a writ of habeas corpus to Winfred Lynn, testing the validity of racially segregated draft quotas...

...8. The administration of the Selective Service Act affecting conscientious objectors so as to result in the imprisonment of more than 3,000 imen, and the failure of the parole system to effect the release of a substantial number of them for useful woi*k...

...8. The activities of Federal officials and agencies in invoking the civil rights statute against lynchers for the first time in 40 years, in upholding the rights of Japanese Americans, in supporting *the Fair Employment Practice Committee, and in condemning the removal by Congress of Federal employes held to have had "disloyal associations...

...Its statement, however, that in the field of democratic struggle "marked advances have been made under the impact of the professed aims of the war, particularly in meeting the claims of racial minorities," hardly squares with a later statement that there is an "alarming" increase in race tensions affecting Negroes, Jews, and Japanese Americans...

...Among the developments commended by the ACLU was the fact that no proceedings were brought against Communists, "who now conform to all leading majority dogmas...

...The Union rightly points out that this short-sighted proposal for fighting racial and religious intolerance actually jeopardizes all freedom of speech and press on race and religion...

...6. The veto by the governor of Rhode Island of a bill penalizing utterances or publications held to incite racial or religious hatred...

...Its general conclusion—that "three years of war have not essentially impaired the guarantees of the Bill of Rights and that stronger foundations have been put under the extension of those rights" —strikes us as a bit more sanguine than the facts justify...

...Among the major developments praised by the Union were these: 1. The decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing white primaries in the South...

...7. State court decisions declaring segregated Negro auxiliaries in unions illegal, voiding statutes aimed at the rights of Japanese Americans, and reversing a 1940 conviction of Communists in Oklahoma for possessing party literature...

...Conformist Communists THE reports of the American Civil Liberties Union (see above) are rarely relieved by humorous asides...