After The Turmoil

The spectacle of well-known figures sitting amid a clump of microphones and ripping at one another's loyalty has become so common that few people stop to ask why. All that is necessary to justify plunging the nation into turmoil seems to be a ritualistic "the-people-have-a-right-to-know." This means, presumably, that the revelation about to be brought forth is such that the people could not decide issues intelligently without it.

That is the theory at any rate. No matter how cheapened by political cynicism, it remains the only standard against which the case of Harry Dexter White can be tested. If that case helps the people rationally decide whether Democrats deserve office in the near-future and if it aids in devising means, consistent with civil liberties, to bar communist infiltration, then it is worth the pandemonium. We suggest, however, that it fails on both counts.

To decide, one must look to the evidence. It is clear that White was something of a spy and that Truman was aware at least that he might be a spy. The controversy turns on whether Truman ought to have permitted his appointment to the International Monetary Fund. Truman's first assertion, that he retained White to allow the FBI to collect information enough to convict him is at best dubious, witness Hoover's testimony. Truman's further assertion, however, that he retained White to protect the FBI's extensive investigation then in progress seems much stronger.

Hoover's warning to members of the cabinet not to endanger his agency's sources must have influenced the President's decision. It is very rare that the FBI gives advice, and consequently any advice it does give carries great weight. This being so, when the chief of the FBI warns against rashness on the one hand and refrains from warning against the appointment of White on the other, surely the President could reasonably feel that the interests of national security lay with keeping White on.

Far-fetched Argument

The argument suggested by another portion of Hoover's testimony, that protecting the investigation could not have been Truman's reason since several employees were dismissed on security grounds, seems far-fetched. At best, dismissing a bureaucrat or two alerts the espionage system to a danger to a few suckers on the tip-ends of its tendrils; dismissing White, with or without explanation, would alert the entire apparatus. The Government does not ordinarily dismiss high officers for no apparent reason, and, had Truman followed such a course, no espionage ring worthy of the name could have failed to realize what was afoot. At the worst, then, the ex-President is free from any charge save laxity with regard to White personally.

All this, moreover, must be viewed in context, the context of a country just emerging from four years of devastation, full of gratitude for its staunch if irascible ally, full of optimism for peace, and full of the ideals for which its soldiers had just fought, among them the proposition that no man is guilty until so proven. Few people remember today that Truman had all he could do to ward off those who would appease Russia at every turn. They do not remember that such obvious moves as the Greek-Turkish Aid program and opposition to Tito's thrust for Trieste aroused the bitterest condemnation. Few remember the Henry Wallace speech attacking Truman for war-mongering. Indeed, in the light of the rampant leftism of the times, Truman deserves congratulations, and not abuse, for adopting the course he did.

Pied Pipe Theory

Certain lords of the canned comment have demurred to this: they accept the explanation but' hold Truman and his predecessor responsible for the climate of opinion. They have developed a Pied Piper theory of presidential leadership, with a main thesis that a pair of malicious individuals single-handedly bent all of society to their purposes. This is surely fatuous. Roosevelt and Truman may well have been at fault, when viewed with the aid of hindsight, for not restraining the high vintage liberalism of their twenty years in office more efficiently, but no one man can create such a spirit out of nothing.

What guidance can be drawn from all this? Certainly neither of the Republican conclusions have much to do with the facts. The Democratic party faced the issues as well as one could expect, and, in any case, its subsequent record of opposition to domestic and foreign Communism is enough to erase any error it made with regard to Harry Dexter White. Nor is there anything in the outcome to help formulate future policy. The atmosphere today is completely different from what it was in 1946, and the Democrats had already taken vigorous steps to rid the government of security risks. To base repressive measures of today on the events of seven years ago is the reduction ad absurdum of politics-by-hobgoblin.

"Better Element"

The White case seems to us to warrant but one relevant conclusion: that the GOP is trying to save the mid-term elections by screening off material issues and substituting warmed-over reds-in-government. It is all too reminiscent of the 1950 primary in North Carolina where Senator Frank Graham, having won the first primary by 53,000 votes, lost the runoff by 18,000 votes after the countryside had been flooded with handbills and whispers charging Graham with favoring "mingling of the races."

As Samuel Lubell said in The Future of American Politics, "The same 'better element' in the community who kept the racial lid on during the first primary let it blow in the runoff." The fact that the GOP "better element" has never been too effective in keeping the lid on hardly destroys the parallel; especially when the files of the Justice Department and even certain Canadian documents have been invoked to make the explosion more devastating than ever. No move or series of moves could do more to divert attention from the tasks at hand, to preclude a reasoned approach to the problems of world leadership, to increase Americans' capacity to hate and suspect one another. A policy of divide the nation and conquer Congress is short-sighted strategy. It is probably short-sighted tactics too, for such incidents make us wonder whether Eisenhower or the junior Senator from Wisconsin will be the general of the conquering army.