DEVIL'S ADVOCATE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

May I thank the CRIMSON for its coverage of my talk to the Conservative Club on "A Foreign Policy for America." But, may I also state that before, during and after the late world war, I was never a fascist; that I never said I was a fascist; that I never was a member or even a fellow traveler of any party, movement or group calling itself fascist; and that I never "supported the Fascist cause," whatever that phrase may mean.

What I did and what, no doubt, got me branded or smeared as a "fascist" was (1) I tried to explain and rationalize fascism, which one could not do satisfactorily while denouncing it; (2) I said that fascism, Nazism, Communism and the Roosevelt New Deal in America were all different--in some respects and similar in many others--sectors of a world wide movement or secular trend towards collectivism, a planned economy and some sort of national socialism; (3) I opposed the drive to get America into a war, allegedly against Fascism and Nazism, and on the side of Communism; (4) I failed, along with many others who tried to keep America out of World War II, but I have not changed my fundamental views or theses about Fascism, Communism and the wave of the future. I was never a convert to Fascism, Communism or anything else of a political ideology nature. I am still not a convert.

By way of brief and easy confirmation of my present statement that I was never a Fascist, you may refer to the New York Times of February 26, 1941, page 13, Column 1. Therein was reported a speech by then Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, calling me a fascist. The Times asked me for a reply, which I gave and which they published. In it, I said that President Roosevelt, and not I, was then America's Number 1 fascist.

I have in my files numerous newspaper clippings reporting that in public addresses I made over the period 1935-1941, I repeatedly said that I was not a fascist or, even, a defender of fascism. A lawyer defending a person on trial under a criminal indictment can defend his client without being smeared as a defender or an advocate of crime--even after the client has been found guilty. There could be no due process of law in criminal trials if it were otherwise.

A political theorist or a thinker, trying to analyze and interpret a new movement, "ism" or secular trend like Communism, Fascism, Nazism, National Socialism or the New Deal, cannot do a satisfactory job if he has to denounce all the time what he is trying to explain, in order to protect himself against the charge of being a champion of all the evils of what he is writing or talking about. If, in the light of hindsight, I had to do it all over again, I probably would decide not to write and speak about Fascism as I did. I would so decide, not because I now see error in my thesis, but because I now realize that the price is too high which a political theorist must pay for trying to analyze and rationalize, objectively, a political movement or trend which happens to be the object of hysterical attacks. But, if political thinkers or theorists must now, for self-protection, take such protective precautions, it will be a great loss to the community. The devil's advocate renders a real public service in any great debate.

The western world and the American people, however, have paid a far higher price than I have paid. I have been smeared as a fascist. The American people have fought and won a world war to make Communism the chief, if not the only, winner. I foresaw and predicted this in my book, The Dynamics of War and Revolution, written just after the beginning of World War II and published privately by me in early 1940 after Harpers had printed the book and then decided it was too hot for them to publish under their name.

America must now fight a third world war, this time against the Communist world and the colored world sectors on the warpath against white colonialism. I am against World War III being fought by the U.S., as I was against our fighting World War II. Does this justify calling me a Communist or a supporter of the Communist cause against dear old Chiang on Formosa, or of the native cause of the Moslem terrorists in North Africa against our British and French allies, without whom we are not supposed to be able to stand alone, or of the Greek cause of the Christian terrorists on Cyprus against the British or of the Arab cause of the Moslem Semites against the Judaic Semites in Israel? I think not. Lawrence Dennis