Before a Fall

Last week a dark-haired man with crooked mouth and sombre eyes slouched glumly into a Manhattan courtroom. He was Earl Russell Browder, the nominal leader* of U. S. Communists, and he was in a fix.

A trio of reformed Comrades (including an oldtime Soviet gumshoe artist, Nicholas Dozenberg) testified that Comrade Browder had forged names to three U. S. passports since 1921. Each of these offenses (as Comrade Browder admitted) occurred more than seven years ago, hence could not be directly prosecuted. So the Government got at Earl Browder indirectly, showing that, when he applied for a later passport in his own name, he denied ever having had a passport before.

Defendant Browder's lawyer was famed, white-haired George Gordon Battle. To call Earl Browder's evasion criminal fraud, roared Mr. Battle, was "flimsy, uncertain, vague, clumsy, meaningless interpretation of words." To this roar, Attorney Battle added no defense testimony whatsoever, did not even offer a defense summation. Defendant Browder instead chose to plead his own case, ably belabored the technical charge on which he was spitted. Said he in conclusion:

"I am a Communist. I am general secretary of the Communist Party. There is no secret about my trips to Europe. I am a Communist and I am proud of it."

Ahead of proud Mr. Browder if this plea failed was his second prison term (his first: three years for conscientious objections to World War I). After pondering the evidence for 45 minutes, the jury found him guilty, and the judge promptly sentenced him to two years in prison on each of two counts, a $2,000 fine. Pending appeal, Comrade Browder remained free on bail, left the courtroom to attend a Communist commemoration of the 16th anniversary of Lenin's death.

* Department of Justice investigators believe that Earl Browder is a mere frontman, are not sure whom to call Joseph Stalin's chief deputy in the U. S. Nominated for this honor last week (by ex-Communist Benjamin Gitlow, in a book called I Confess) was comrade Jack Stachel, who recently skedaddled from Manhattan to parts unknown.

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