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The
following was extracted from War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence
from American Wars. This highly popular book contains wonderful letters
written by and to America military personnel and was the focus of a recent
PBS television special. This selection was chosen specifically for America
In Uniform by the editor, Andrew Carroll. All the letters in this book
reveal the Heart of our military. Find out more about the book and the
Legacy Project by visiting www.warletters.com. |
Julia Child Admonishes Aloise B. Heath for Questioning the Patriotism of
Smith College Professors with Alleged Communist Connections
"I
am avidly following all the international goings on," Julia McWilliams
reported to her beau Paul Child on March 2, 1946. "I am particularly interested
in the Russian game of imperialism....To me the Russian business is the
historical and crucial happening - in that, on its outcome depends the
future of Europe, Asia, and us." McWilliams's comments were not those of
an idle observer casually interested in geopolitical dynamics; during World
War II she served, with high security clearance, in the Office of Strategic
Services, precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Over six feet tall,
she was rejected by the WAVES, the women's branch of the navy, but was
accepted by the OSS in December 1942 to do clerical work in Washington,
D.C. A year and a half later McWilliams was assigned to Ceylon (now Sri
Lanka), where she collected and processed highly classified information.
After the war she returned to the United States but maintained a strong
interest in world affairs. On March 5, 1946, former British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill warned that the Soviet Union, once allied with the United
States and England during World War II, was lowering an "iron curtain"
over Eastern Europe to suppress democracy and dominate the region. Joseph
Stalin angrily denounced Churchill and insisted the Soviet Union had every
right to "ensure its security" by encouraging pro-Soviet governments in
neighboring countries. Writing to Paul Child on March 19, McWilliams was
not, at least initially, entirely dismissive of this view.
Two
very interesting letters from you - which I can at least answer in my leisure
and beautific mood. I have recently and successfully made a most satisfactory,
light, delectable bernaise sauce (awfully easy when the tricks are known),
and have laboriously practiced on my piano....I felt Stalin had quite a
few points on his side in his speech. (I wonder how accurate or how "shaded"
the translation was - is the meaning of "lie" retranslated into the original
Russian that Stalin used, as rude a word in Russian as it is in English
- etc., etc.) For one thing, I am inclined to forget that Russia was almost
beaten to the knees by the German advances into Stalingrad, and that they
lost an innumerable amount of people - far more than we did. Why, also,
is it not quite rational for them to want pro-Russian governments in their
adjoining territories? His point seems well taken, indeed about our toleration
and support of former fascists in government posts rather than Communists.
Our position seems to have been so often "anything but the Communists"
- which is such a negative and disastrous position = viz: Spain from 1933
on.
I
notice so much of your "obfuscation" in people's thinking - or rather their
un-thinking mind-patterns which have been conditioned and channelled by
bewilderment, fear, and the loud-blabbing propaganda pressure groups. RUSSIA,
as a word, is a symbol for FEAR. Ain't it?...
McWilliams
later condemned the Soviets after the brutality of Stalin's regime was
exposed, but she remained troubled by anti-Communist hysteria in the United
States in the years after World War II. The "loud-blabbing propaganda"
she alluded to in 1946 found, in her belief, its mouthpiece in a little-known
senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy. "I have here in my hand a
list of 205 [names]," McCarthy declared on February 9, 1950, "a list of
names that were made known to the secretary of state as being members of
the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping
policy in the State Department." Challenged to substantiate the charges,
McCarthy refused. He later said he had only eighty-one names. Or possibly
fifty-seven; he wasn't certain. Living with her now-husband Paul in France,
where she was studying cooking, Julia Child followed McCarthy's rise to
power from international newspapers and through letters from friends and
family in the United States. In March 1954 Child learned that an ad hoc
committee established by Smith College alumnae had succumbed to McCarthyism
as well. Child, who graduated from Smith in 1934, was livid. On March 12
she fired off the following:
Mrs.
Aloise B. Heath, Secretary
Committee
for Discrimination in Giving
My
dear Mrs. Heath:
Another fellow alumna of Smith College has forwarded to me a copy of an
undated form letter containing your printed signature as secretary of a
committee whose members are unidentified. This letter names five members
of the Smith College faculty as having been or as now being associated
with organizations cited as Communist dominated or as Communist fronts,
etc. I have also a memorandum, dated February 26, 1954, signed by the President
of Smith College and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Smith College,
stating that your committee never presented its letter either to the President
or to the Board of Trustees for comment or investigation.
I know you feel you are doing your patriotic duty towards Smith College
and towards the United States, or you would not have allowed your name
to be used at the end of your committee's letter. But I respectfully suggest
that you are doing both your college and your country a disservice.
We, as alumnae, have voted, in the correct parliamentary fashion, for each
member of the Board of Trustees to act in our behalf. Our trustees, who
are answerable to us, have duly selected President Wright to administer
the college. It is an extremely serious matter to accuse by implication
five faculty members of being traitors to the United States; and furthermore
to accuse the college of knowingly harboring these "traitors". According
to proper democratic methods, charges of this grave nature should first
be brought to the attention of the President and the Trustees. You have
assumed a responsibility for which you were not appointed. It is clear
that you do not trust your own elected officers, and that you do not have
confidence in democratic procedures.
David Lawrence, the newspaper columnist, has an article in today's Herald
Tribune in which he states again a principle he has stated before in regard
to fighting Communism: "The followers of Senator McCarthy believe in fighting
fire with fire, and they are not too concerned with the methods, etc."
This is the theory of the "end justifying the means." This is the method
of the totalitarian governments. It makes no difference how you do it:
lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, but use any method fair or foul
as long as you reach your goal. I am sure Lawrence has not thought through
his thesis to this length, but carried to its logical conclusion, it is
the nullification of all that the United States stands for. In Russia today,
as a method for getting rid of opposition, an unsubstantiated implication
of treason, such as yours, is often used. But it should never be used in
the United States.
In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what
we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and our freedom;
for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right
to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your
zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are
fighting for. Certainly democratic procedures are often slow. But their
very slowness gives full opportunity for free debate, free investigation,
the right of the accuser to present his case, and the right of the defendant
to hear the charges and be faced with the evidence. None of these rights
are available in the totalitarian countries; nor have you made them available
to the persons you have accused.
One of the purposes of Smith College, and the main reason why its alumnae
support it, is that it is a free, democratic institution, privately endowed,
and subject to no political pressures from any government or any party.
It can operate freely as long as its Trustees and its President have the
courage to act as they see fit, with the support of the alumnae. In this
very dangerous period of our history where, through fear and confusion,
we are assailed continually by conflicting opinions and strong appeals
to the emotions, it is imperative that our young people learn to sift truth
from half-truth; demagoguery from democracy; totalitarianism in any form,
from liberty. The duty of Smith College is, as I see it, to give her daughters
the kind of education which will ensure that they will use their minds
clearly and wisely, so that they will be able to conduct themselves as
courageous and informed citizens of the United States.
I am sending to Smith College in this same mail, along with a copy of this
letter, a check to duplicate my annual contribution to the Alumnae Fund.
I am confident that our Trustees and our President know what they are doing.
They are only too well aware of the dangers of totalitarianism, as it is
always the great institutions of learning that are attacked first in any
police state. For the colleges harbor the "dangerous" people, the people
who know how to think, whose minds are free.
Very sincerely yours,
Julia McWilliams Child
That
same March the esteemed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow broadcast a withering
profile on McCarthy, and senators from McCarthy's own party began to criticize
him publicly. The backlash had begun. When McCarthy assailed the U.S. Army
for harboring spies and Communists, the military refused to be bullied.
"Have you no sense of decency, sir?" the army's chief counsel Joseph Welch
reproached McCarthy on June 9, 1954, before a televised audience of millions.
On December 2 the Senate voted by a three-to-one margin to condemn McCarthy
for his behavior. He died two and a half years later of acute alcoholism.
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