Men of Good Will

Writing in a sunnier era, Woodrow Wilson once declared that the most important function of a Congressional committee is to influence public opinion. Wilson, of course, was making the dangerous assumption that men act in good faith. The past decade has shown how easy it is to turn an investigating committee into a vigilante squad, and a very recent case in point is the persecution of Linus Pauling by Senators Eastland and Dodd.

These two men head a Senate Sub-committee on Internal Security, currently investigating communism in the peace movement. They have demanded of Pauling the names of those scientists whom he had asked to help circulate a petition calling for an end to nuclear testing and a general agreement on disarmament. The biochemist has refused to release the names and Eastland and Dodd are now threatening to cite Pauling for contempt of Congress.

Citing Pauling for contempt would have dangerous consequences. Not only is he--as a Nobel Prize winner--a man of considerable stature in a world academic community, but he is seriously engaged in finding answers to the problem of survival. Through the actions of both his opponents and his supporters, Pauling has become closely identified with the disarmament movement. To speak topically, he is the public's "image" of this movement.

Even those who disagree with Pauling's views will concede the urgency of some settlement to the arms race. And everyone must agree that it does harm to muddy this most crucial of debates by confusing its terms. For confusion will result if the public listens to Eastland and Dodd equating communists with those who favor disarmament.

There are many people in this country genuinely concerned over internal security. And there are some--whose number should be greater--who are at the very least equally concerned with the prevention of war. Internal security and disarmament are two issues, they are distinct, and they must remain so.

Few of those worried about war would take issue with the legal right of the Eastland-Dodd sub-committee to investigate the doings of those in the movement for peace. A legal right, hoever, does not constitute a mandate to blacken the eye of this movement; Senate investigating committees, after all, do not operate in vacuums.

Both Senators are unlikely to be swayed by these considerations. The manner in which their investigations have been conducted suggests that the men are more interested in establishing a case against Pauling--and by extension, the peace movement--than in finding facts.

Red scares in the past did not start by themselves. And a peace scare started by Eastland and Dodd at this stage in the disarmament debate might well be an overture to tragedy. Our world, unlike Woodrow Wilson's, depends for its existence on the dangerous assumption that men will act in good faith.