Un-American Week

The House Committee on Un-American Activities headed by ham-handed Representative Martin Dies of Texas, after hearings in Washington which revealed it as nothing but an ill-planned, amateurish Red-hunt, last week heard some news of fascist propaganda but soon got back to its Red theme. From the testimony of Joseph B. Matthews, onetime head of the League Against War & Fascism (now League for Peace & Democracy), the Committee learned that "the Communist Party relies heavily upon the carelessness or indifference of thousands of prominent citizens in lending their names for its propaganda purposes. For example, the French newspaper Ce Soir, which is owned outright by the Communist Party, recently featured hearty greetings from Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, James Cagney and even Shirley Temple."

Soon afterward the Committee, having finished its work in Washington, announced that it would use up what remains of its $25,000 appropriation traveling, and one stop, announced Chairman Dies, would be Hollywood.

P: Arriving in Tacoma full of beans after junketing in Alaska, PW Administrator Harold Ickes last week jumped into the intra-Democratic dogfight with an unexpected assault upon tart old Senator Carter Glass of Virginia. "The reactionary press," said Mr. Ickes, "hails this 'rugged individual' as another Horatius-at-the-Bridge because of his bitter attacks on economic policies of the Government. Yet no Senator comes oftener and with more insistence for PWA grants than this same Senator Glass." From his home in Lynchburg, back cracked Senator Glass, overflowing with indignation and invective: "Secretary Ickes has become a confirmed blackguard, saturated with hate for every member of Congress who voted against spendthrift practices of the New Deal authorities and against projecting the Government into every conceivable species of business. His statement concerning me is simply a wanton falsehood. I doubt if there is a member of Congress who has had less than I to do with so-called Government grants. . . . Horatius-at-the-Bridge stood and fought; he did not go 3,000 miles across the continent to lie about his adversaries."

P: John Coolidge, 32, son of the 30th President, traveling passenger agent for the New York, New Haven & Hartford R. R., returned to his home in Orange, Conn. one day last week to find that his colleagues on the Grange Town Committee had delegated him to attend the Republican State Convention. Said John Coolidge: "I'll be glad to do whatever I can--locally--to keep the Republican party alive."

P:In Cambridge, Mass. Democrat Thomas H. Leary, also without his knowledge or consent, was made a candidate for his party's State Convention. Democrat Leary promptly made a campaign speech, "I'm against me." Announced his slogan, "Be wary of Leary."

P:Matthew S. Holt Jr., 40, brother of West Virginia's anti-New Deal Senator Rush D. Holt, 33, was discharged as a WPA engineer in Parkersburg, W. Va., within a week after Brother Rush accused the State Administrator of "using the WPA to elect himself Governor." Last week Brother Matthew was indicted by a Federal grand jury for forging endorsements to two WPA checks issued to another WPA worker in 1936. Said Brother Rush: "One high official said, 'we will shut Holt up.' They are mistaken."

P: California's Democrats were startled when onetime U. S. Attorney Peirson Hall, campaigning for Candidate Sheridan Downey against 74-year-old Senator William Gibbs McAdoo, produced a stained, dog-eared document. The document, said Mr. Hall, was a "passport" of membership in the Ku Klux Klan issued to Mr. McAdoo just before he campaigned for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1924, signed by the Klan's Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans. Retorted Senator McAdoo: "A clumsy and obvious forgery." In Atlanta, Ga., Imperial Wizard Evans agreed: "It's false."

P: Franklin Roosevelt's trip through Texas in July was to help his friends rather than purge his enemies. Defeated last month was his "good friend," ebullient Representative Maury Maverick of San Antonio. In a primary runoff last week, Attorney Ed Gossett of Wichita Falls defeated the President's "very old friend," Representative William D. McFarlane. The Gossett issue: "No rubber stamp."

P: The cartoonists of the U. S., as during several weeks past, last week found their chief theme in Roosevelt's Purge. It provided them with nearly two out of three of their subjects, yet failed to inspire any real brilliance. As a device for expounding it, Charlie McCarthy Senators were a favorite but many artists fell back on even older stunts, showing the President as a waiter, a pants-kicker, club-wielder, finger-pointer, donkey-rider, big-game-hunter, express man, commanding general. In Newark, Washington and Philadelphia newspapers, the Holmesburg Prison atrocities were a cartoon subject, Hugh Hutton of the Philadelphia Inquirer crashing through with one of the best.

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