The First Loyalty

Back in 1883, President Chester A. Arthur approved a civil service rule, prohibiting any inquiry into the political beliefs of an applicant for a federal job. It was a wise and liberal provision in days when the radical fringe consisted of nothing more horrendous than the Greenback National and Prohibition parties. It remained valid during the rise & fall of the Populist, Progressive, Bull Moose and Socialist-Labor movements. Their adherents were loyal to the U.S. first, to their party second--and never to a foreign government. Not until 1939 was the rule amended, to bar those who seek to overthrow the U.S. Government.

Last week, President Truman issued an executive order making mandatory a full inquiry into the political loyalties of all federal jobholders and job applicants. This abandonment of igth Century liberalism had been forced upon the U.S. by 20th Century revolutionary tactics. As the President's Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty put it: the U.S. is now "dealing with organizations which . . . are committed to a policy of deception and falsification, which advocate a disregard for the sacredness of an oath, and which while seeking to destroy all the traditional safeguards erected for the protection of individual rights are determined to take unfair advantage of those selfsame safeguards." The Commission had to admit that "because of the secretive manner and method of their operation," it did not know how many subversives are in the federal employ today.

Twin Purposes. The Commission had worked for three months under Assistant Attorney General A. Devitt Vanech, a billiard-bald lawyer from Connecticut with 14 years' service in the Justice Department. Other members represented the State, Treasury, War & Navy Departments and the Civil Service Commission.

Both the Commission's report and the President's order were carefully drawn. Still, it was by no means certain that they would achieve their purpose: "Protection . . . against infiltration of disloyal persons into the ranks of [U.S.] employees, and equal protection from unfounded accusations of disloyalty [for] loyal employees."

The standards to be applied for disloyalty tests include such obvious items as sabotage, espionage, treason, or advocacy of revolution. The gimmick is in the specification designed to catch the Communists: "Membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association with any foreign or domestic organization . . . designated by the Attorney General as totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive."

That was good enough to catch the promoters (and their dupes) of such notorious Communist fronts as the National Committee to Win the Peace.* Probably it would also catch the pink-tea groups, like the Congress of American Women and the Council for Pan-American Democracy. In the last analysis, if the U.S. was to have real security and no witch hunts, everything would depend upon the men running the machinery, and how they interpreted their instructions.

*Fourth generation in a name-changing line which has produced the American Congress Against War and Fascism, the American League for Peace and Democracy and the American Peace Mobilization.

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