Fear of Communism and a determination to act against it seems to be steadily mounting in the United States. The situation is parallel in many ways to that after the first World War, when numerous restrictive laws were adopted by the Federal and State Governments.
Hearings are now in progress before the Committee of the House of Representatives on un-American activities regarding a proposal to make the Communist party illegal. President Truman has already issued an executive order requiring all employees of the Federal Government to be tested for possible radicalism and dismissed if found to be disloyal to American principles. His order is bitterly contested, not only by the Communists but by many Liberals, who assert that the effects of a ╥witch hunt╙ will extend far beyond the limits of the actual Communists, who are presumed to be few in number.
The Communist issue is affecting strongly both the labour movement and independent political liberalism. The Congress of Industrial Organisations has several powerful unions in which the Communist influence is strong or dominant. Efforts are now being made to remove Communists from the leadership in these unions. The battles are being fought in public and are receiving much attention from the press. Among liberals there is a strong division of opinion between those who reject all relations with the Communists and others who give their suspected fellow travellers a very wide benefit of the doubt.
It is, perhaps, a sign of the times that a report on the Communists in the United States, prepared by the staff of the Congressional library, sold more than 500,000 copies. A similar report prepared by the same group on the activities of the American Fascists, who number millions in such organisations as the Ku-Klux-Klan, is available in manuscript form only. Congress refuses to authorise even the modest initial expenditure necessary to permit the second pamphlet to be printed.
