Washington

THE interim report of the Committee on Un-American Activities provides much ammunition for the critics of its procedure. It is said that the committee is indulging in precisely the same dialectic that the Communists themselves use. That is to say, it makes accusations and repeats them in the hope that they will be believed without evidence.

The Thomas Committee hearings have given the impression that the government of the United States is riddled with Communists. This is absurd. It is also an indictment of what is, in general, as patriotic and hard-working a body of men and women as any in the country. The committee, to he sure, has dug up evidence of two Communist espionage rings. But “two" is not “numerous.”Nor does the evidence come from sources that merit much respect.

The story about the rings rests chiefly on the testimony of three renegade Communists, though only one of them, Elizabeth Bentley, spoke about a “ring.” Whittaker Chambers did not deal with espionage activities, only with charges that a number of former government employees were part of what he called a “Communist apparatus.” The third witness, Louis Budenz, gave the committee a lot of gossip, and did not even pretend to know the persons implicated by Miss Bentley and Mr. Chambers.

On the basis of the evidence, most unprejudiced onlookers are inclined to echo General Eisenhower when he said this country has “done pretty well at keeping its major secrets to itself. Of course, we can get hysterical about a spy scare, but our Government is aware of these things, and I don’t believe the dangers are great.”

This does not mean that the spy hunt is what Mr. Truman calls a “red herring.” It was an unfortunate ascription, though nobody in the Capital can escape the political overtones. Clearly one aim was to blanket the special session, and a committeeman had the frankness to tell Paul Porter, “We will drive you off the front page.” Another aim was to generate an issue sufficiently big to offset the issue of high prices. Here the GOP has been successful. The Committee on Un-American Activities, judging from the polls of public opinion, stands high in popular favor.

It is, however, the Ferguson Committee that deserves the accolade. This is a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Expenditures charged with looking into the functioning of government. It has been investigating the loyalty boards and, in an interim report appearing about the same time as that of the Committee on Un-American Activities, makes some useful suggestions. Under Senator Ferguson, and the counsel, William P. Rogers, it also has been a model of sobriety in the treatment of witnesses as well as of fact-finding.

The Ferguson Committee made a lot of headlines in its tilt with Attorney General Clark. Mr. Clark, taking refuge behind the “red herring” charge, refused to part with confidential files on government employees. Many constitutionalists felt that the Attorney General was justified. But opinion turned against him when he likewise refused to hand over employment records; and he consented, when criticism became general, to go into consultation with Senator Ferguson. The reason the Michigander wanted the data was to find out whether the record of a suspected employee is circulated among the agencies with which he became connected.

The Ferguson Committee recommends

The Ferguson Committee is properly disturbed over the fact that appointments to sensitive positions are still being made without any previous loyally check. If a spy is hired, the committee says, he may have access to confidential material for 120 days before the loyalty investigators catch up with him.

The committee urges that at least a preliminary investigation be made of all applicants before appointment and that no applicant be appointed to a sensitive job without a thorough investigation. It also calls for the disclosure of derogatory information concerning employees to agency heads so as to enable them to take protective administrative measures. This may be going too far, but in general the report is constructive, and should be considered by the Administration even if it has to swallow its “red herring.”

The “show” at successive UnAmerican Committee hearings reveals a strong partiality for renegade Communists. They tire treated with the utmost consideration, even deference. When they are not in the committee room, they are lionized socially and professionally. One wonders whether former Reds will constitute the new aristocracy.

They are, at any rate, pets of the drawing room, just as they were in the callow when they were Irue

to Moscow. In those days the libertarian felt the same ostracism in the Capital that the man without a stake in the slock market felt in New York in the gaudy 20’s. Now, when he should be coming into his own with the swing of the pendulum, he is elbowed aside to make way for the same fry, garbed in their turned coats.

Soviet run-around

On June 27 the air lift to Berlin started, and soon thereafter the Allies began to negotiate under the duress imposed by the Soviet’s surface blockade. There were those who thought that this concession was wrong, but the British and French insisted upon it, and Secretary Marshall found their arguments plausible.

It was felt that the Allies had furnished some pretext for the Soviet blockade by their agreement in London on a separate government at Frankfurt and then their reform of the German currency.

The Allies agreed among themselves to limit negotiations for ending the blockade to the currency question in Berlin. If we abandoned the West mark, and accepted the East mark under four-power management, then we considered we had paid a sufficient price for the ending of the blockade.

At one time Stalin himself agreed, and gave orders to Marshal Sokolovsky to negotiate the execution of such an agreement with the other military governors in Berlin. Sokolovsky, however, acted as if he had never heard of Stalin, and it was at this point the Allies realized they were being given the run-around.

Berlin vigil

The experience of the State Department in the negotiations over Berlin has been tough and grueling. The object has been to keep the Allies in line.

This in itself has been arduous, for three French governments have collapsed during the negotiations, and the British have been blowing hot and cold. Only the high resolve of Secretary Marshall has kept them together, though the work done by his aides has been powerfully persuasive.

Secretary Marshall long ago decided for himself the point which would mark appeasement. It was to allow the Soviet to discuss the Allied decision to set up a Western (Jerman government. This, he contended, had nothing to do with the blockade, as currency reform had. However, Mr. Marshall has agreed, in the event of a lifting of the blockade, to a Foreign Ministers’ talk on any problem connected with (iermany.

Our policy is not to think of the problem merely’ as the problem of Berlin, but as the problem of a challenge to American rights.

Too much military influence

Sumner Welles charges that foreign policy is being fixed by the military. He is referring to the National Security Council as set up under the so-called unification act. Under this instrument military and civilian sit around the same table and talk over problems in our foreign relations. Secretary Marshall is on the Council, and so is Secretary Forrestal.

In the old days the connection was informal, but, as Mr. Hull’s memoirs show, the Secretary of State was in close touch with the heads of the armed services all through the negotiations with Japan preparatory to Pearl Harbor. The only difference now is that the link between civilian and military has been formalized.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that military influence is pronounced in foreign policy. The military had a lot to do with the nation’s pro-Arab policy, and the arms standardization policy for Latin America is military. The Army through General Wedemeyer undermined Marshall’s hands-off China policy. In Germany General Clay used to be his own State Department, and this applies more or less to General MacArthur in Japan.

In some cases military influence hns been by default, as, for instance, in Germany. In part it arises out of the personnel upon whom the President relies for his most important tasks. But there are other reasons, such as the American position on what Mr. Churchill calls the “summit” of the world, a state of things that is neither war nor peace, the hang-over from the military predominance of wartime.

A link is manifestly necessary, because power and responsibility ought to know each other intimately. However, since civilian control is the cornerstone of American institutions, it should be safeguarded like a jewel.

Mood of the Capital

The mood of the Capital is that the Soviet still does not want war, but is banking on American pacifism to gain the fruits of war without fighting, particularly in Germany. How to get it into the Soviet cranium that the American people are capable of reacting violently against people who push them around?

Nobody knows the answer, for Soviet Russia, besides being a hermit as well as a police state, is run by men with fixed ideas and preconceptions. And nothing seems to be more firmly established in their minds than that America is decadent.

The alternative lies in a firming of American nerves “to live dangerously.” Even if the present Berlin crisis is surmounted, crisis-living, say the experts in the State Department, will be the American portion from now on.

But these experts have some comfort for anxious Americans. It is that time is on the American side, at least for two years — perhaps longer.

The famous “X” of the State Department, indeed, says that if he were writing a prognosis today, in the manner of his article of last year, he would put greater emphasis on the disintegration behind the iron curtain — a disintegration which might be as significant as that which took place when Luther broke with the Roman Catholic Church. The trouble is that this weakness might make for Soviet desperation in the tussle for the stakes in Germany.