"Who Are You Kidding?"

One U.S. labor leader who knows the Communists like the back of his hand is San Francisco's Harry Lundeberg, a far-left-winger now boss of the A.F.L. Sailors Union of the Pacific. Not long ago, Lundeberg got a letter from William Z. Foster, chairman of the Communist Party, appealing for help in fighting the Mundt-Nixon bill (see The Capital). Tough, tattooed Harry Lundeberg last week punched out this reply:

"You have a hell of a nerve appealing to a bona-fide American trade union for help in view of the scabby disruptive tactics employed by your so-called political party against the American trade-union movement and against the United States as a whole.

"All through your letter you refer to fascism, stating that your party is antifascist. Who are you kidding? There are no bigger fascists than the Communists. The only difference between Stalin and Hitler is that Stalin went Hitler one better . . . It was the Communist Party that joined hands with the Nazis to break up the Socialist Party and the trade union movement in Germany . . . Don't try to propagandize people who know the score.

"As a matter of fact our organization classes the Communist Party as an enemy of the working class. As far as we are concerned, they can take the whole scabby, stinking Communist Party and kick it in the middle of Siberia and let it have a taste of Uncle Joe Stalin's slave camps ... It is our considerate opinion that this is a fit place for the American Communist Party, its stooges, its fellow travelers--long-haired ones, short-haired ones--and what have you . . .

"And P.S.: Do not send any of your phony propaganda to our union because it will go the same way as all of it has gone before: filed and flushed out!"

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