Patriotic Chore

On Seattle newsstands, in store windows, barroom mirrors, tobacco stalls, garage doors last week appeared posters announcing a memorial meeting in the Senator Auditorium for Thane Summers, 25, killed in May fighting with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade for the Leftist Army in Spain. The posters were signed by "Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade." Admission to the meeting was 25-c-.

Father of Seattle's late Thane Summers is Lane Summers, well-to-do, publicity-shunning maritime lawyer, whose prime clients include such companies as the Grace and Matson steamship lines, Union Pacific R.R. Co. Instead of pleasing him, the posters stirred him to anger. He publicly announced:

"Since no legal statute prohibits and no moral sense prevents the exploitation of the death of my son in the Spanish war for the publicity purposes of subversive politics, my patriotic chore prompts me to proclaim this 'memorial meeting' for what it is--more Moscow! . .

"In vague memory of my son and in vivid hopes of their sons, if parents, while preserving freedom of speech, compel the integrity of public education, then my son may not have died wholly in vain. But should parents fail in this perpetual vigil of peace, then in war will come slaughter between Communist sons and loyal sons --not abroad but at home."

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