Science of Treason

George Britt is a softspoken, grey-haired Kentuckian who has been a newspaperman for 24 of his 44 years. A liberal with no nonsense about him, he collaborated with the late Heywood Broun in an expose of antiSemitism, has been a New York World-Telegram expert at unearthing municipal corruption for ten years. Last June George Britt wrote a series of articles on fifth-column activities in the U. S. that pulled together a good many facts on the size and tactics of subversive organizations, painted a picture that was scary but not altogether clear. Last week he turned out a book, The Fifth Column Is Here (Wilfred Funk; $1), that had all his old facts and a lot of new ones, made the picture just as scary but much clearer, and that outlined a U. S. defense against fifth-column hamstringing.

Some points:

> Fifth-column activities have little in common with old-fashioned espionage or sabotage such as the Germans used in World War I to destroy $150,000,000 of U. S. property. Adolf Hitler has perfected "the science of treason'' -- which now includes not only the theft or purchase of military and naval secrets, the damaging or destruction of defense equipment, but the demoralizing of public opinion, the conscious exploitation of class and racial differences, the systematic irritation of disputes, the vigorous organization of hatred and suspicion.

> The German-American Bund,* with 71 units strategically located in industrial centres or near munitions works, with 25,000 drilled and disciplined members, is only the most widely publicized of Hitler's U. S. supporters. There are in addition 10,000 other Hitler-heiling Germans in the U. S.; 400,000 Germans who support Hitler but keep quiet about it. There are lecturers, writers, organizers, technical experts, economists, historians. A German professor of history at the University of Hawaii has contributed articles on the U. S. Navy to the Nazi magazine Zeitschrift fuer Geopolitik, to which professors of the University of California and of Miami University in Ohio also contributed.

> There are some 200,000 Italian fascists in the U. S.

> Not counting fellow travelers, there are 100,000 U. S. Communists who are now actively collaborating with Nazis and Italian fascists, and who are more strategically placed than either in U. S. industry and trade unions.

> With native-born fascists included, the fifth column numbers more than a million. The main task of cleaning it out is a job for the FBI; laymen can take little direct action beyond reporting suspicious behavior to the Government. But every citizen can contribute to a change in the national atmosphere--"not of lethargy, not of fear, not of defeat, but invigorated by the defiant faith which we have known in the past as typically American."

*Bundsters and new friends, white-sheeted members of the Ku Klux Klan, this week held a joint rally at Camp Nordland, Andover, N.J.--cheered "Americanism," jeered newsmen, shouted "Heil Hitler," burned a fiery cross.

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