Fully Earned

J. Edgar Hoover has grandly announced that the Royal Nobel Committee is about to confer its Peace Prize on the "world's most notorious liar." Fortunately no one listens to Mr. Hoover any more. He is old, almost 70, and his intemperate language now sounds more pathetic than frightening. It is sobering, however, to remember how often people have listened, how often this man has been anything but pathetic. Out of either fear or trust, ten administrations have felt obliged to retain him.

In 1919 Martin Luther King was not yet born, but even then there were enough outspoken Negroes to keep Mr. Hoover busy. That year he assumed directorship of the General Intelligence Division of the Justice Department and promptly reported that "the reds have done a vast amount of evil damage by carrying the doctrine of race revolt and the poison of Bolshevism to the Negroes." To illustrate his case to Congress, Hoover brandished these damming quotes from the contemporary Negro press:

* "The ranks of the unemployed grow daily."

* "The colored people must arouse themselves to the fullness of their powers and inherent rights."

* "Negroes are disenfranchised. . .lynched. . .in peonage and on convict farms in the South. . .Jim Crowed."

* "In France there are Negro representatives in the Chamber of Deputies."

Having proved his point, Hoover concluded by condemning the Negro press generally for "its lack of verse structure and grammar and its insolently offensive and defiant manner." To remedy the situation, he urged immediate passage of a national anti-sedition law. In 1919 people took him seriously, and Congress nearly complied. We have come a long way since then. This January President Johnson can commemorate our progress by "granting" Mr. Hoover a retirement long overdue and fully earned.