Editorial: We have to laugh (6-28-41)

The Pittsburgh Press (June 28, 1941)

WE HAVE TO LAUGH

If there is anybody who looks more ridiculous today than the so-called Communist Party of the United States, we have missed something.

For a long time, the fuzzy-wuzzies in the Communist Party in this country were busy denouncing Hitler along with everybody else. The torrent of abuse they heaped on poor Adolf was terrific. It was the only decent thing we could find about Hitler – the enmity he incurred from the communists.

But then the Moscow bosses of the communists over here double-crossed them and signed up non-aggression and economic pacts with the Nazi overlords.

It took a lot of speedy wriggling and hair-splitting and conscience-busting for the U.S. communists to get out of that one. But, being communists, they did it. It was a fine treaty and Schicklgruber wasn’t such a bad fellow after all.

Nowe this Schicklgruber has turned loose hsi barbarous war machine on the Soviet Union, the communists are in a bad way once more. They’ve had to go back to what they said about Hitler in the first place.

They say Hitler is now out to exterminate the democracies of Europe. The communists are a little tardy. Thanks to Stalin’s help and encouragement, Hitler virtually has accomplished this already.

It must be tough being a communist and having to figure out new ways to look silly.

And, incidentally, don’t be kidded by the communists and fellow-travelers who have been doing their best to impede America’s defense production, but who will now suddenly become enthusiastic about aid to Britain – and Russia.

The situation reminds us of a story that in the Kremlin they kept a sort of box score on war losses. If dispatches came in saying that the British had lost nine planes and the Germans seven planes, it was chalked up 16 for us.

It’s about the same in this new struggle. Every casualty – German or Russian – is “one for us.”

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