To Build a Better Broomstick

Touched off by the Canadian Red spy eases, a mounting suspicion of anything left of center has finally shifted into hysterical overdrive with the recent presidential proclamation of a loyalty test for all government employees. The order is couched in stark terms of treason and sedition and proposes to weed out the disloyal elements in the Civil Service. Hopefully flavored with the axiom that all the men serving a government must be faithful, the current tests seem to be the product of a bitter witch hunt rather than the outgrowth of natural security measures.

Osensibly gunning for members of communist, fascist, and totalitarian groups only, the order encompasses a disproportionately wide field and gives alarming powers of accusation to the Attorney General. By allowing federal inquisitors to arraign any man remotely sympathetic to a foreign ideology, the President has opened the way for subversion of democratic rights to the dictates of public opinion and the fears of hyper-sensitive officials. Under the new plan, the Attorney-General has the power to decide which groups constitute a menace to the security of the nation. This widespread discrimination in the hands of an over-zealous or personally ambitious officer could easily result in the practical exclusion of free thought in government circles. A program advocating the investigation of every employee's soul as well as his affiliations transcends the obvious limits of national security by its susceptibility to vicious abuse and weakens an important safeguard to democratic rights.

If security forces are permitted to pound off on a popular mass manhunt, the high level of government service cannot be maintained. Traditionally underpaid Civil Service employees will not be able to suffer their static promotion system when the F.B.I. also tells them what they must think. With every position in jeopardy, the Civil Service is faced with the possibility of an extensive Kultur purge that will substitute political wheelhorses for expert, but supposedly unfit officials.

Although the necessity of securing a loyal administration is of unquestionable importance, the current plan draws the bit too tight by offering a system that begins and ends at the discretion of the Attorney-General and his advisers. Unless the government exercises the utmost moderation in the execution of the loyalty tests, the abuses inherent in the plan will go far to destroy an ideology while trying to protect it. Before the Attorney-General unwittingly sets off a modern version of the Salem witch hunts, he would do well to consider the fiasco that culminated in the Sacco-Vanzetti case after the first World War.