RED CHIEF OFF THE WAR PATH

Between the fury of Earl Browder's cohorts claiming "martyrdom," and the sounds of rejoicing at his conviction, the American public has little chance of deciding sanely whether reaction or justice prevailed. The Goddess of emotion, not law, holds the scales. Too many liberal minds can be swayed by nightmares of a coming purge. Too many conservatives can ease their conscience in the pure and American conduct of the trial. But the error is not in the conviction but in the charge. The real question is whether passport violation should have been pressed in the first place.

If at any point Browder was treated not as an ordinary American but as the Communist leader, the government's case loses its foundation. To the future he may be a hero or a bum who belongs behind the bars. The latter judgement seems more reasonable. But neither belief should have entered into the charges against him. They did--and for this reason U. S. Attorney Cahill has no right to look the American public in the eye. By the very nature of its charge, the government has proved that it wanted Browder out of the way.

If the government considered Browder a criminal, why did they dig up a charge of passport violation--a charge which is almost a stranger to the courts of law? The question, though a moral one, stands out like a sore thumb. To prove that Browder was treated like any other American citizen, the government will now have to convict all the evaders of passport laws--and there are plenty. It cannot let other offenders pass unnoticed, and still claim that Browder was not a marked man.

Although it is too late to worry about the type of charge against Browder, the public should be concerned with the chance of such weak accusations against other radicals. To accuse Fritz Kuhn of embezzlement is one thing: thousands of other men have received the same sentence. But to pull a rarely known charge of passport evasion out of the hat is a far more serious matter. It proves that Browder was not treated like any other citizen, that the government was using every trick and cunning to scalp the big Red Chief.