1

as the membership in a subversive
organization the Court holds that
it's not right to penalize a person
unless he knew the organization
was subversive at the time he join-
ed it. Joining the organization was
legal then and still is. The person
might have joined not knowing
the organization was subversive
or it might have become subver-
sive after he joined it.

Justices Black and Douglas, of
course, have been the almost con-
sistent dissenters on these cases
involving loyalty oaths, the Smith
Act, and others. But today, Black
and Douglas had the rest of the
Court with them. In his concurring
opinion, Justice Black recalled the
alien and sedition laws enacted

early in the history of this country
by what he called, "zealous patriots
who feared ideas and made it high-
ly dangerous for people to think,
speak or write critically about
government, its agents, or its poli-
cies, either foreign or domestic."

Justice Black went on today to
say that constitutional liberties
survived the alien and sedition
laws because "there were influen-
tial men and powerful organized
groups bold enough to challenge
the undiluted right of individuals
to publish and argue for their be-
liefs however unorthodox or loath-
some."

And Justice Black continued, "Few people and organizations of power and influence argue (today)

that unpopular advocacy has the same fully unqualified immunity from interference. For this, and other reasons, the present period of fear seems more ominously dangerous to speech and press than was that of the alien and sedition laws. Suppressive laws and practices are the fashion. The Oklahoma oath statute is but one manifestation of a national network aimed at coercing and controlling the minds of men. Test oaths are notorious tools of tyranny. When used to shakle the mind they are, or at least should be, unspeakably odious to a free people."

Justice Frankfurter called the Oklahoma loyalty oath an "unwarranted inhibition upon the free spirit of teachers." He said, “It has an unmistakable tendency to chill that free play of spirit which all teachers ought especially to cultivate and practice, it makes for caution and timidity in their association by potential teachers."

Justice Clark said, "To thus inhibit individual freedom of movement is to stifle the flow of democratic expression and controversy at one of its chief sources."

Thus, it is obvious that Justice Black went beyond the consideration of intent in voting to strike down the Oklahoma statute. Justice Black has indicated before this his intense hatred of loyalty oaths.

On March 3rd, last year, when the Supreme Court upheld New

62

as

York's Feinberg Law, which calls for a loyalty oath by all teachers in the state, Justices Black, Douglas, and Frankfurter dissented. Justice Douglas charged that the law turns the school system into a spying project and he said that there can be no real academic freedom in that environment. Justice Black called the law "another of those rapidly multiplying legislative enactments which make it dangerous... to think or say anything except what a transient majority happen to approve at the moment."

In upholding the loyalty oath of Los Angeles City Justices Black, Douglas, Frankfurter, and Burton dissented.

refrained from overt act and has confined itself to the realm of ideas. Our government has demonstrated that it can deal quickly and effectively with the overt act, but in trying to deal with ideas, we possible to pry into men's minds run into trouble. It's almost iming dangerous thoughts. to determine whether they're think

There's certainly nothing in the Communist record of behavior in other countries to make us think for a moment that if it had its way here it would be any different. Logic and the writings of Lenin and Stalin tell us that. Stalin has said very clearly that free speech and free press cannot be permitted in the Soviet Union, nor has it been permitted in any other Communist country. Communism would really saddle us with orthodoxy of thought and speech and

behavior.

But the trouble is that Communism, in this country, has, for the most part, played its hand very carefully. With the exception of the few cases of espionage it has

Some hold that that is what we're trying to do with loyalty oaths. Others reply that while the loyalty oath is certainly no great bulwark against Communists, yet it permits us to set out a possible perjury charges if they should take snare for them by trying them on

the oath. So the argument goes on and it seems to threaten to tear us apart.

Roscoe Drummond, chief of the Washington staff of the Christian Science Monitor, says that President-elect Eisenhower has accepted and adopted a proposal for the formation of a high-level commission to be made up of eminent Americans with power to examine the full range of the subversive threat and to recommend how the danger can be met effectively without corroding our traditional freedoms. Drummond says such a commission could draw its members from Congress, from the Supreme Court, from the executive branch of the government.

Incidently, Drummond indicates that while Gen. Eisenhower has

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adopted this proposal for such a commission as an objective, it would be a good idea to let the President-elect know if you should favor it.

One thing that such a commission might well do is determine once and for all whether it's possible to outlaw activities of Communists and Communist sympathizers.

In the trials of Communist leaders under the Smith Act we have come very close to identifying Communism with subversive activity . . . but not quite. Legally, it just so happens that all of those tried and found guilty of conspiring to teach or advocate overthrow of the government by force or violence are Communists. The government attorneys did not argue that the defendants were Communists and that therefore they had to be part of such a conspiracy. However, extra-legal logic tells us that the government could undoubtedly make a successful case out of a charge that Communism is part of an international plot plot or conspiracy. There's some doubt about the government's ability to prove that Communism. always and without exception . . seeks to overthrow the government by force or violence. Thus it is held that it would do no good to outlaw the Communist Party, because the members could change the name in

five minutes and be back in busi

ness again.

But the question remains: is it possible to outlaw the activity in which Communists usually indulge. Some Senators and Congressmen appear to think it is possible. Certainly it is worth a try.

But if we depend upon loyalty oaths to separate the loyal from the disloyal, how far shall we be forced to go in order to be consistent? The loyalty oaths are applying to more and more people in responsible positions or positions. where they might be able to influence others. We have loyalty oaths for schools and colleges, employees of all levels of government, for labor unions, business and industrial firms. In some places the loyalty oath has been required of journalists, it is now required of most motion picture personnel.

Now, as Dr. Robert Hutchins asked the other night, how long is it going to take us to discover that the mother has great contact and influence with the young citizen, and will we require loyalty oaths of mothers? The question is by no means entirely facetious.

Yet, common sense tells us that the fellow who belongs to a whole string of questionable front organizations and who demonstrates that he intends to stay in them, is not going to remain very long on a faculty or in government or possibly anywhere else. Common sense again tells us that it is very late

(Continued on page 94)

Survival and Value

Arthur E. Morgan

Author, former President of Antioch College, former Chairman of T. V. A.

"THE SURVIVAL OF the fittest" is not necessarily the survival of value. An oriental despot might conquer his neighbors, extend his domain, and breed a hundred sons; yet all by destroying human values. In America organized crime and other malign activities, which yet accumulate power and wealth, are of a similar nature.

Opportunism seeks to survive by aligning itself with prevailing power, regardless of the nature of that power. It is the true aim of society to insure that survival and success are in proportion to human and social value.

"NATURAL SELECTION" IS BLIND

For every surviving species of plant or animal there are probably hundreds of species, perhaps thousands, that have become extinct in the course of evolution. Natural selection seems to further immediate survival of the species regardless of the long-time results. Numberless species in making present adjustments have been led into blind alleys and to extinction. Long-time survival has been of those lines that have fortunately been least penalized by this process.

Each year the bull moose grows enormous antlers, which are used almost solely for fighting other bull moose in the breeding season. Then the antlers drop off, and another pair begin to grow. For months, while growing, the new dangerously if injured. They are ones are soft, tender, and bleed a hazard to survival. The mother moose, which has no antlers, must protect the young while the bulls are growing their new antlers. Superior antlers help one bull moose defeat another, but antlers are a menace to the species, putting it into a blind alley from which there seems no escape.

In this tendency of natural selection to favor immediate personal survival and increase, without regard to the long-range effects on the species, organic evolution is blind and exceedingly slow and wasteful. Man, when following his undisciplined animal nature, takes the same course. He tends to do those things which seem to count for his own success and family survival, regardless of their whole effect on society.

Leaders have emerged who, seeing how the unmodified pursuit of personal satisfaction and sur

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