The Bookshelf

For the past couple of years, O. John Rogge has been spending most of his time defending people before loyalty boards, House committees, and also before juries. "Defending" is Rogge's word for it, for he spends the greater part of 'Our Vanishing Civil Liberties' "attacking the fiction that the House Committee (or other government bodies) 'investigates' when its only function is to smear, condemn, and sabotage the legal activities of progressive Americans."

The story of Rogge's defense is not pleasant. In 287 abundantly documented pages, there is scarcely a smile, unless it be a smile of derision, aimed, for instance, at the loyalty board man who asked a 'Mr. X,' "Did you ever attend any social affairs with your wife--organizations or associations where . . . liberal views were discussed?" But a question like this one is difficult to smile at for long, when you consider that it was asked by representatives of the U.S. government (which apparently has found that "liberal views" work well at the polls) of a ship-yard worker as a test of his loyalty to the nation. Rogge's book is filled with such examples of indiscriminate and ignorant persecution of the minds and earning capacities of American men and women.

Rogge is an eminent lawyer and a former U. S. Assistant Attorney General. However, his book will not be taken too seriously by many people who consider that he is now less respectable because he ran for New York County Surrogate on the American Labor Party ticket and because he has defended unpopular people in generally unpopular causes.

This is beside the point. The book, and not its author, must be examined. Unfortunately, the book makes two mistakes--one small one and one big one--which injure its effectiveness and validity

First, Rogge assumes that merely because certain "investigated" individuals are outstanding in their professions, they are of necessity loyal Americans. This does not mean that these people are not loyal Americans. But--in the case of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, for instance--it is an assumption which Rogge logically does not have to make to prove his point about House Committee improprieties.

Second, in two chapters called "The Under-ground Government" and "Loyalty by the Dollar," Rogge attempts to link the entire Red Scare to the growth of American monopolies and the alleged domination of the government by monopolists. It may be that monopolists don't give a damn for civil liberties, but Rogge dwells too much on the economic motivations for persecution. Even among the poorer citizens who do not hold "conglomerate acquisitions," there has been a decline in interest in civil rights. It is as much a question of political unsophistication and international queasiness as it is of mergers and monopolies.

But skip these chapters, if you will, and, if you will, read only the excerpts from actual testimony. This is the meat of the matter, and the point must not be missed. The point is that a private enterprise system is making the fatal mistake of impinging on the one really sacred piece of private property: private opinion. If nothing else, Rogge's book is a reminder of a truth we must not forget; that in America, freedom is, among other things, a state of mind.