Informal Informers

With all the talk of the "black silence of fear" descending upon the country, and with suppression of unorthodoxy becoming the order of the day, the final outcome of the Big Norwalk Red-hunt is a triumph of good sense. When the press announced that the Norwalk branch of the Veterans of Foreign Wars was reporting people under suspicion of "subversive" action to the FBI, it seemed for a while that telling tattle on one's neighbor would become the new national rage--despite J. Edgar Hoover's warning that the worst way to fight domestic Communism is for uninformed people to attempt investigations.

But no sooner was the VFW action publicized than it was viciously attacked, as so blatant a denial of individual freedom should be. First the ADA denounced it, in advertisements in local newspapers. Soon, officials and groups who would not ordinarily back any ADA policy were denouncing the Norwalk VFW. Now the plan has been dropped entirely.

This is an illustration of the fact that despite the pressures of an undeclared war with Russia, the fundamental sense of justice of the American people can still make itself felt to prevent wholesale informing. The Norwalk fiasco should be a lesson to well-meaning groups that there are limits to subversive hunting. It should also prove to the people who fear America is moving toward Fascism that they are overstating the case. 1984 is still a long way off.