The truth about the Commies –
Fifth column trying to swing election for first time in history
Washington’s warning against foreign influence now more timely than ever
By William Henry Chamberlin, written for the Scripps-Howard Service
EDITOR’S NOTE: William Henry Chamberlin was assistant managing editor of The Philadelphia Press and, later, assistant book editor of The New York Tribune. From 1922 to 1934, he served as Moscow correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and subsequently as its Far Eastern correspondent.
One of this country’s foremost authorities on the Soviet system and totalitarianism in general, Mr. Chamberlin wrote the outstanding history of the Russian Revolution. His book, Soviet Russia, published in 1930, was a sympathetic account of the Russian system; after the government-induced famine in Russia, he became highly critical of the Stalin regime and wrote Russia’s Iron Age and, more recently, Collectivism – A False Utopia.
Cambridge, Massachusetts –
“History and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.” – George Washington, in his farewell address.
These words of the father of our country are especially worth remembering today. Because a foreign fifth column, for the first time in our history, is trying to swing a presidential election. The all-out Communist support for the fourth term admits of no other interpretation. There has never been anything like this before because no American party or group has been willing to serve as the obedient instrument of the policies of a foreign power.
The great and sinister significance of this development has been obscured for many Americans because there has been a good deal of confusion and misunderstanding about the true nature of the Communist threat to American institutions and the American way of life.
Roosevelt not a Communist
Only a crackpot or an ignoramus would assert that Mr. Roosevelt is personally a Communist or that the New Deal, with all its defects, could fairly be likened to the dictatorial regime in the Soviet Union.
There would be no need for concern about Communists if they were only a group of American citizens interested in promoting radical political and economic change. Under our Constitution they and any other group have a right to do this, so long as they employ legal and peaceful means.
What makes the Communists dangerous, what makes their intervention as the allies of one of the major parties in a close presidential race objectionable, is their unmistakable status as a Soviet fifth column in this country. No amount of glib sophistry can alter the factual evidence on this point.
Moscow’s policies followed
The Communists keep time by the Kremlin clock. They change their “party line” in precise rhythm with the shifts and exigencies of Stalin’s foreign policy. Before the Stalin-Hitler pact of August 1939, the American Communists were vehement advocates of militant American intervention to “stop Hitler.” Immediately after the conclusion of the pact they became extreme isolationists and did everything in their power to obstruct aid to the Allies and national defense preparations.
Then, after Russia was attacked by Hitler on June 22, 1941, not after America was attacked at Pearl Harbor, they were transformed again into all-out interventionists. Early this year, toeing the line with other Communist parties, in response to a signal from Moscow after the Tehran Conference, they abruptly repudiated all the basic political and economic ideas they had been preaching for the last quarter-century.
After posing as radical revolutionists, they professed overnight enthusiasm for “free enterprise” and the “two-party system.” Instead of putting up their führer, Earl Browder, as presidential candidate they became cheerleaders for the fourth term.
Browder gives himself away
Browder himself recently let the cat out of the bag in an indiscreet speech in New York. In contrast to his usual conventional claim that Communists are 100 percent Americans, without a trace of foreign affiliation, the Communist boss threatened this country with dire consequences if an outspoken anti-Communist, Thomas E. Dewey, should be elected. Browder’s precise words are worth quoting and filing for reference:
It [Dewey’s election] would be a message to our great ally, the Soviet Union, which is predominantly led by Communists, that America disapproves in principle of cooperation between the two countries, accepted it only as an unfortunate necessity of war and was determined to bring it to an end as soon as possible… it would be a call from America to France, Italy, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland to break up their existing national unity formations, to drive out the Communists from their public life and to drive out all those who want to cooperate with the Communists.
Amazing implications
Consider the amazing implications of this extravagant statement. It attributes to the Soviet government a “love me, love my Communists” attitude which would make international relations on a basis of dignity and equality impossible. It suggests that opposition to Communism should be a permanent disqualification for an American President.
Browder threw off a rather transparent mask in this speech. He revealed himself not as an American citizen voting according to American considerations, but as a partner in a vast international movement that is a formidable instrument of Russian power politics. Should the American people accept this reasoning, “Clear everything with Sidney” would have to be enlarged and supplemented by “Clear everything with Browder” and “Clear everything with Stalin.”
The Communist record in electing avowed Communist candidates to public office has been such a fiasco as to be funny. But the Communist record in penetrating into the leadership of trade unions, in obtaining well-known names for “innocents’ organizations,” in pushing members and sympathizers into government departments and agencies, is not funny at all. It has been ominously successful.
Would suppress criticism
Communists have already been trying to exploit our wartime association with Russia in order to suppress in this country any objective discussion of Soviet foreign policies and internal conditions. They act on the assumption that America is already one of the Soviet Republics, where there can be no discussion of Stalin and his regime except in terms of worshipful praise.
This psychology has become sufficiently prevalent to cause the summary firing of Alexander Barmine, former Soviet diplomat, naturalized American citizen and employee of the Office of Strategic Services, immediately after he had published an expose of the new Communist tactics in the Readers’ Digest. One can imagine how the arrogance of the Communists and their behind-the-scenes influence in government agencies will swell if, after Nov. 7, they can preen themselves as having been the decisive element in a close election.
Skilled in infiltration
Nov. 7, the date of the election, is also the 27th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. On the eve of that revolution, there were only about 200,000 Communists in Russia. By shrewd appraisal of mass moods, relentless discipline, ruthless crushing of all opposition they built up the most powerful totalitarian state in the world, a state with international tentacles. in the form of fifth-column Communist parties, in every large country.
One of the leading candidates in this election has attracted the cheers, the other the jeers of the Communists. It is for the voters to decide which is better qualified to carry out foreign and domestic policies inspired by purely American considerations, without benefit of foreign political influences and ideologies.