Red Hunt

THE TROJAN HORSE IN AMERICA--Martin Dies--Dodd, Mead ($2.50).

In 1938 Congress said "Oh, all right" to importunate Martin Dies, granted him $25,000 to investigate un-American activities. This meant Communists, Nazis, Italian Fascists. Dies knew next to nothing about such people, was getting nowhere when he enlisted former Lecturer Joseph B. Matthews, an ex-fellow traveler of the Communists who knew too much about them. Soon Congressman Dies was in the middle of a Red hunt. But it was Dies who was being hunted. Seldom has a normally constituted committee of Congress been so ridiculed, defamed, lied about and to.

Martin Dies was an easy mark. As his higher political education kept pace with the discoveries of his investigators, he was apt to vent his amazement in admonitory yawps, often before he had documentation or complete details.

Congressman Dies this week published The Trojan Horse in America, a restrained, informative primer about U. S. Communists and Fascists, what they are, how they work. Dies describes as Trojan Horses :

>> The American Youth Congress, the National Negro Congress, the International Workers Order.

>> Several C. I. O. unions which harbor alleged Communist chiefs, some 300 Communist organizers. Dies spotlights the case of Harry Bridges, Australian head of the West Coast longshoremen, notes in this connection well-known Communist plans to tie up and sabotage U. S. shipping during wartime. He also declares that C. I. O.'s Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians, of which "avowed Communist" Marcel Scherer is head, has cells in seven U. S. Navy yards.

After two years of investigating Reds, puzzled Congressman Dies still wonders why they do it. Economic hardship, he says, cannot be the answer. U. S. farmers have suffered economic hardships for years. Paraphrasing Marx, he declares: "Communism is the opiate of the people."

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