The Big Red Scare: II

Suppose the slanted coverage of the press does not push or national attitude off the springboard to war; suppose this organized drive to discount liberals does not destroy civil liberties. What then is there to worry about? Why not let the Boston Heralds and the Luces blow their horns until their breath is all gone?

Aside from the fact that there's enough money on the table to keep the hot air coming for quite a while, the implications raised by the "crusade" are serious already. These are both formal--as they affect the legislative bodies--and informal, as they have warped non-legislative opinion and action.

The administration has been trying to get its program through Congress since February. Most of it hasn't even reached the floor yet. There is no doubt that our national legislature moves slowly even under optimum conditions, but a glance at the Congressional Record will prove that tremendous amounts of time have been consumed by committees and individual members talking about the "Red menace." In state legislatures, the diversion of energies is worse. Here the hysteria has resulted in definite action: the New York legislature now has a bill which would prevent anyone who backs "theories contrary to the Constitution" from voting or holding office.

Below the legislative level, much of the furor has been concentrated on colleges. Certain powerful Williams College alumni did their best last year to get Professor Frederick Schuman fired. Schuman was rated one of the college's top lecturers by the students; certainly no one can call the Williams student body radical.

The maintenance of a hands-off, let's-look-at-anything policy in the University is a cause for minor self-congratulation--at least compared with the blasts from outside. But when the City of Cambridge denies Harold Laski the use of a hall because Mayour Neville considers him "pro-Communist, anti-Catholic, and anti-religious," it is a sign that all is not so health elsewhere.

The attack on Laski was certainly helped along by the general fusillade against "Harvard, the hotbed of Communism." Under the scattered blasts of the Chicago Tribune and Messrs. Matthews and Philbrick, the Administration has done nothing to hinder the John Reed Club. It has done the right thing; and although University Hallhas done nothing to discourage the group, there has been no postelection political action whatsoever by the group. It's a little hard to see where all those "Reds" are --the ones that are warping the minds of Harvard students, that is.

This vagueness, of course, is one of the strongest weapons the "crusaders" can muster. Bill Cunningham's Sunday denunciation of an M.I.T. professor is a good example: . . ."It appears he did do a little speaking around in parlors and such to quiet, if not secret, gatherings got up by dimly defined females, identified, like queens and red light denizens, by only first names. Officially, this man's profession is teaching young Americans." Apparently if you can't accuse a man of anything definite, he is considered guilty on the spot.

The attacks on Laski and on "Harvard Reds" aren't even quarter-truths; they are mere offhand slander, liberally applied with a brush which has been carefully constructed by Thomas, Mundt, and Co. Unless people start thinking about the manufacturers before swinging such paintbrushes, what now looks like ridiculous name calling may gain the stature of truth in the public mind. And that would put us right back on the end of that springboard, teetering.