MORE BITE, LESS BARK

For popularizing the phrase, "fifth column," Martin Dies has earned himself an unenviable paragraph in H. L. Mencken, and a good many inches in the newspapers. His plea yesterday for an appropriation to continue his carte blanche investigations will irk neither the rouges nor the noirs so much as it will upset the sincere democrats in this country. If there is any one man today who symptomizes the tendency in a crisis period towards the rise of a vigilante spirit of hysteria, it is the Honorable Gentleman from Texas.

There can be little doubt that the exigencies of the present armament program and the current emphasis upon unity in the common effort have strengthened the hand of Mr. Dies in his bid for a renewed subscription. No one questions the threat or even the actual existence, of a certain degree of attempted sabotage directed at the defense program. The country needs a watchdog to guard against such criminal activity. But everyone knows that a good watchdog is not an inexperienced loud-mouthed puppy that scents a burglar in every bush and snaps at every stranger. The Dies Committee has proved itself a willing sounding board for what Max Lerner has called "kiss and tell" disgruntled fascists and communists of perjured word and shady background. It has seized at every opportunity to hit the headlines with some, new "expose," often upon the basis of the flimsiest kind of evidence. Distinguished educators, outstanding liberals and practically every New Dealer in Washington have been subjected to entirely unjustified attacks. More humorous, but equally indicative, was the classic query made during an investigation of the authors of plays produced by the Federal Theatre: "Who is this Communist, Christopher Marlowe?"

Of course it may be that such a committee is not needed at all, that Congress should drop the whole idea of a separate investigation and leave the job to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Attorney-General Jackson has proclaimed the superiority of this agency in combatting sabotage. But J. Edgar Hoover, the idol of all American boys from sixteen to sixty, has a healthy thirst for publicity in his own right; and his record in the "Red-scare" of the last war plus more recent incidents like the "Detroit recruiting case" afford little comfort. On the other hand, his position in an-executive department necessarily subjects him to a daily check from above, and his staff is undeniably better equipped than that of the Congressional committee.

Clearly, now is the time for Congress to exercise its power over the purse and collar the dog. If antics like these could be afforded and laughed off in the past, they cannot be tolerated in the strained atmosphere of the present emergency. A Congressional committee for the investigation of subversive activities does not have to be the Dies Committee as it stands today. The LaFollette Committee, which has laid bare reactionary forces of the strike-breaking breed in the country, has demonstrated how investigations can be handled by an intelligent, competent and hard-working group more interested in facts than in headlines. Its well-documented reports, filed with the proper authorities, contrast strikingly with the ill-founded alarums filling Dies' daily dish to the press boys. If Congress could find a man closer to the calibre of LaFollette to run the committee tracking down saboteurs, and if it would at the same time limit that committee's work to points of genuine danger, something more satisfactory than truths everyone knows and half-truths no one wants should result.

Whichever course is considered the better, it is clear that there is no room for Mr. Dies in a sane and secure defense within. And we hear there's lots of room in Texas.