Loyalty Revisited

Last week the Navy deleted 15 words from its standard loyalty certificate, after just under four months of protest by Harvard organizations and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences itself. These words added up to what the organizations had called an "informer clause," requiring people signing the certificate to report other men associated with groups listed as "subversive" by the Attorney General. It was a bad clause and a dangerous one; it is good to see it go.

But the Navy certificate, even without its stool-pigeon phrase, is still an unfortunate document. The purpose of the certificate is to wood out "persons whose conduct or associations ... cast doubt upon their loyalty." It requires signers to detail their association with any of the Attorney General's 173 organizations, and says that this association "may be considered as establishing reasonable grounds for separation of personnel."

This is a poor and inaccurate standard for deciding on someone's loyalty. Presumably the Navy considers a man loyal if he acts in the best interests of the Navy and the nation. The Navy's oath, and the government's entire loyalty program, is based on the idea that association with a "subversive" group works against these interests. But it is ridiculous to condemn a man who may be trying to find out first-hand what "subversive" groups are doing, to rule him out as disloyal, for example, because he is interested in sizing up the opposition.

That is exactly what the present certificate can do. Any, NROTC man who went to hear Gerhardt Eisler speak for the John Reed Club last year could perfectly well be discharged. The midshipman could equally well be cashiered for attending an AYD folk dance. The Navy has decided that anyone who wants to hear the "subversive" side of things for himself can be classed as disloyal.

There are a lot of other things wrong with the Navy certificate and its counterparts. They were drawn up without adequate public hearing, they can be expanded at will, they are not subject to review in the courts. As security measures, they are cheerfully optimistic; it would take a remarkably incompetent spy to fill one out truthfully. And underlying the certificates is the idea that the best way to make sure a man is loyal to his country is to make sure he has not associated with his country's critics. It is a strange idea for a democracy.