Full text of "The Blue Book"

The Blue Book 

The Blue Book is the entire two-day presentation given by Robert Welch at the founding 
meeting of The John Birch Society in Indianapolis, December 9, 1958. The background, 
methods, and purposes of The John Birch Society are set forth. 



Foreword To Fourth Printing 

Foreword To Second Printing 

Foreword to the 24th Printing 

INTRODUCTION 

NOTICE 

SECTION ONE 

SECTION TWO 

SECTION THREE 

SECTION FOUR 

SECTION FIVE 

SECTION SIX 

SECTION SEVEN 

SECTION EIGHT 

POSTSCRIPT - MARCH 15, 1961 

POSTSCRIPT - DECEMBER 9, 1959 

About the Author 

THE COUNCIL of THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 



Foreword To Fourth Printing 

February 22, 1961 

Dear Reader: 

The first few working chapters of The John Birch Society were formed in February, 
1959, exactly two years ago. They have been a long two years. 

During that period the whole world has moved, by what should be the measure of a 
century, further into an era of darkness, slavery, and terror. Our own country has suffered 
from as much turpitude and treason as would ordinarily require a generation to put 
together. And those of us trying to build up the strength and effectiveness of The John 
Birch Society, under the pressures that have prevailed, feel that we have lived through a 
decade on the brink of a breaking point. 

Naturally we have faced extensive and malicious attacks from both the open and the 
disguised Left. Nothing more is required today to bring down on any man's head a torrent 
of smears from the Liberal Establishment than: (a) to deny the beauties of the welfare 
state; or (b), to seek to preserve the opportunities and responsibilities of the individual; or 
(c), to suspect the venality of any of the Establishments painstakingly manufactured but 
clay-footed gods, with their synthetic haloes. And we have done all three. 

Also we have suffered from open opposition, "objective condemnation, " and undercover 
punches by our allies of the Right. These too were to be expected — although we confess 
to surprise at the quarters from which a few of the attacks have come. Unquestionably 
some of the criticism has been due to sincere differences of opinion, as to ideology or as 
to methods. But our growing in just two years to a size and strength that many of these 
groups have been unable to attain in a decade, or in a lifetime, has produced inevitable 
resentment. So we have been able unhesitatingly to ascribe most of the "confidential 
reports" and whispering campaigns against us, on the part of other Conservatives, to 
nothing more serious than the normal jealousies and petty hypocrisies of mankind. 

We have taken them all in stride as well as we knew how. Certainly we have gone on 
supporting, to the best of our ability, every individual and every group that we have 
believed to be honestly opposing the collectivist advance, regardless of the obstacles that 
individual or group might be deliberately putting in the way of our own organizational 
efforts and our substantive activities. And we intend to continue to do so. Tackling one's 
own backfield does not seem to us to be a sensible way to win a ball game — or a war. 



For our enemy is the Communists, and we do not intend to lose sight of that fact for a 
minute. We are fighting the Communists — nobody else. Being fully aware of the 
imminence and horror of the danger we face from that source, we have no intention of 
being distracted by the carping of our friends, or of those who should be our friends and 
we hope will be our friends in time. For if we do there is entirely too much likelihood — 
as we have already said elsewhere and many times — that in a few short years we shall all 
be hanging from the same lamp posts, while Communist terror reigns around us. 

Our greatest problem, however, has been neither the lies of the Left nor the 
recriminations of the Right. It has been the difficulty of getting the ordinary patriotic 
American citizen to sit up and take an honest look at what is really happening. 
Contributing most to that difficulty are three factors which we have also identified and 
discussed on many earlier occasions. First is the apathy of the American people, induced 
by the incessant cackling of the Communist chorus: "There ain't nobody here but just us 
Liberals. " Second is the vested interest in error, now held by so many millions of 
Americans. They have accepted and believed so much Communist propaganda in the past 
that they must now defend it as their own. Third is a circumstance which, unlike the other 
two, has not been created by the Communists themselves. But it has long been depended 
on by the Communists, and is still depended on by them, as one of the greatest forces 
working in their favor. This is the fact that the fundamentally decent American mind 
simply refuses to grasp the kind of enemy with which it now has to deal. 

As you will see, The John Birch Society gets into this fight against the Communists 
through incidental necessity. Visibly, we must halt and rout these organized forces of evil 
— or help mightily to do so -before we can get on with our positive and constructive 
program. And it is difficult to discuss the future improvement of the landscape and 
gardens around a beautiful home while a vicious enemy is throwing incendiary bombs at 
the house. 

But it is our total program, with all of its dreams and ideals and aspirations, for which we 
here seek your consideration, and ultimately your support. We are fully aware that this 
presentation in print of the background, methods, and purposes of The John Birch Society 
is not nearly so effective as when I can give it personally to a selected small group of 
leaders, in a full two-day meeting — as I have now done some twenty-eight times since 
the Society was founded. This Blue Book, however, will still serve to give any really 
interested person a clear understanding of what we are trying to do and how and why, in 
this huge undertaking for which we are now receiving so much help and encouragement. 

Sincerely, 

Robert Welch 



Foreword To Second Printing 

December 9, 1959 

Dear Reader: 

The John Birch Society was founded at a meeting in Indianapolis, on December 9, 1958. 
Of the eleven men who had met me there on Monday morning, December 8, for the two- 
day session, one had come from Oregon, one from Kansas, one from Missouri, two from 
Wisconsin, one from Illinois, one from Indiana, one from Tennessee, one from Virginia, 
and two from Massachusetts. 

These were all influential and very busy men. But they were also patriotic and public- 
spirited enough to have come to Indianapolis for the two full days, at my invitation, 
without knowing the reason for the meeting. For there was simply no way I could explain 
this reason in advance. With short breaks for coffee, for luncheons, and for brief 
discussions in between sections of the presentation, it required the two whole days to set 
forth the background, methods, and purposes of The John Birch Society. The pages that 
follow are simply a transcript, practically verbatim, of that presentation. 

Quite a few of the details of the international situation, as outlined during the first hour 
and a half of that Monday, and hence as presented here, have changed — and grown far 
more disturbing — since then. Many of the specific plans which were projected during 
that Monday afternoon have already been put into operation. The Society so hopefully 
described on Tuesday morning, and so vigorously discussed throughout that Tuesday 
afternoon, has since taken solid form and begun to grow. As of this first anniversary date, 
it already has working chapters in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New 
York, Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, 
Louisiana, Texas, California and Washington. It also has Home Chapter members in 
about forty states. 

There would be advantages, of course, in making the minor changes at some points in 
this copy which would bring it strictly up to date. And obviously a repetition of the mere 
amenities of the occasion are by no means necessary to this report. But some details of 
the domestic and international picture, as caught by today's most careful pen, would again 
be out of date before these pages ever come from the printer. There is no instant at which 
the shutter may be snapped so that the print will remain true. And there may be some 
sentimental value, for many of us, in recording the original presentation exactly as it was 
given. So, with this much explanation, but without apology, we offer here the exact story 
listened to so patiently by the eleven men who — with this writer — brought The John 
Birch Society into existence. 

Sincerely, 

Robert Welch 



Foreword to the 24th Printing 

October 6, 1992 

Dear Reader: 

On March 12, 1983, Robert Welch accepted appointment as chairman emeritus of the 
John Birch Society, thus stepping aside as the leader of the organization he launched in 
December 1958. Then, after an incapacitating stroke felled him late in 1983, he passed 
away on January 6,1985. 

For many reasons, the key one of which, is that it can hardly be improved upon, it is our 
intention to keep The Blue Book of The John Birch Society in print exactly as he wrote it 
when it was first published early in 1959. We believe that countless future readers will 
derive great profit from the wisdom and the warning It contains. And we are also certain 
that many historians, philosophers, and students of matters political will want to study an 
unabridged version of this Immensely important book. 

The reader is asked to keep in mind that the thoughts contained here were assembled in 
1958-more man a generation ago. The picture Robert Welch painted of the communist 
penetration of America's institutions is sound history, and the degree of its soundness can 
in part be measured by the tactic of smear chosen by those who attempted to keep the 
American people from it. Had The Blue Book been a compilation of spurious history and 
absurd conclusions, enemies of Robert Welch would have delighted in pointing to his 
errors while encouraging everyone to read them. But they did not, and one can only 
conclude that the absence of errors and their own self-interest dictated that they dare not. 

The Blue Book's historical portions provide solid evidence pointing to the existence of a 
conspiracy operating both in and out of government The plot Robert Welch described 
involves a treachery to which many contemporary leaders remain committed. Then, as 
now, the actions of numerous national and world leaders confirm their unyielding 
determination to gain complete control over the planet. 

Upgrading Understanding 

Had Robert Welch written The Blue Book in 1969, ten years later than it first appeared, 
he would have included his con victions about the existence of a conspiracy above 
communism. He would also have made a pointed distinction between the term 
"Communist" (which he earlier equated with AConspirator") and the conspirators who sit 
above the communists in the hierarchy of the enormous plot. For, by the middle of the 
1960s, he had gathered enough evidence about the many layers of this organized evil 
force to state his conclusions about it publicly. 



He believed that this conspiratorial force had, among its many destructive 
accomplishments, suppressed evidence about the treasonous deeds of numerous 
individuals in government and in practically all of America's institutions. These were 
men and women whose determination to create a Sovietized world and whose detestation 
of a free and independent United States had become obvious to those who took the time 
to examine the record. 

He showed, during a period when our nation was supposed to be the Soviet Union's chief 
adversary, that numerous highly placed individuals-many of whom were not communists- 
had transformed our nation into the Soviet Union's major supplier of equipment, 
technology, and credits. Instead of combating communism, our nation was keeping it 
alive, even assisting the communists in their drive to subvert and conquer more nations 
and enslave more peoples. 

Also, as he continued to outline with great clarity, many of those who labored within this 
conspiratorial apparatus were working diligently to change America and drive her into 
the grip of totalitarian socialism. They still are. Their tactics include bribing the people 
with their own money, employing the use of force, deception and fear, and using every 
other trick they can think of to acquire total government power over the lives and well- 
being of the American people. 

Totalitarian government was to be established in this nation, claimed Robert Welch, not 
as a result of lightning quick leaps, but through a campaign of patient gradualism 
designed to persuade a once-free people to vote themselves into tyranny and their nation 
into an all-powerful world government. The goal of the conspirators has always called for 
the eventual merger of all peoples and all nations into a diabolically conceived "new 
world order." 

Conspiratorial Continuity for More Than 200 Years 

As early as 1964, Robert Welch began delivering his historical analysis of the Bavarian 
Illuminati in a brilliant speech entitled AMore Stately Mansions." The reader might 
wonder what relevance this 18th century conspiratorial body could possibly have to 
America In the 1960s, or to this nation today. Robert Welch would answer, and 
frequently did answer, "Plenty!" And he spent a great deal of energy explaining to anyone 
who would listen exactly what that relevance was. 

In 1966, he traced me trades left by conspirators over the past 200 years in his seminal 
essay, The Truth In Time. He delivered the essay as a speech on numerous occasions, one 
of which was captured on film and immediately reproduced and shown to audiences 
throughout the nation. So important do we still consider this explanation of past and 
current history that it will henceforth be published as an appendix to all editions of The 
Blue Book beginning with this printing. We urge all who examine these pages to avail 
themselves of the opportunity to read and study The Truth in Time. 



In this remarkable assemblage of documented facts and well-reasoned conclusions, 
Robert Welch explained what to many had remained unexplainable. He concluded that 
"the Communist movement is only a tool of the total conspiracy." Yes, communism is a 
monumental blot on the history of the human race, he maintained, but its rise to power 
could not be understood without the realization that non-communists have-from 
communism's very beginnings-financed, guided, and controlled it from above. 

It was in The Truth in Time that the founder of the John Birch Society first adopted the 
term "INSIDERS" to refer to those who hold places in "an inner core of conspiratorial 
power." It was these individuals, claimed Robert Welch, who, just as the Illuminatists in 
their day had used other groups and individuals, Awere using the Communists, the 
anarchists, the socialists of various hues and kinds, and dozens of other groups, to 
promote their purposes." 

"Some of them may never have been Communists, while others were," said Robert 
Welch. "To avoid as much dispute as possible, therefore, let's call this ruling clique 
simply the INSIDERS." Like their predecessors for more than two centuries, the 
INSIDERS who lead the master Conspiracy today are not necessarily communists; they 
are megalomaniacal zealots whose goal remains the establishment for themselves of raw 
power over the human race. 

Opposing Totalitarianism In Any of Its Forms The John Birch Society has rightly been 
characterized as an anti-Communist organization. But, as is made abundantly dear in the 
Blue Book, the organization has always been equally opposed to totalitarian control in 
any of its forms. Its economic form, known as socialism, has in fact always been the goal 
of every communist and it was certainly the goal of those who created the Union of 
Soviet Socialist Republics. 

Over the years, Robert Welch made dear that a communist was a socialist who employs 
terror and brutality to gain and maintain totalitarian control. A socialist, such as the 
followers of the Fabian Society in the English-speaking world, can be expected to resort 
to terror and brutality in order to maintain control. Socialists or communists, he 
contended, were each deadly enemies of freedom and were each worthy of total 
opposition. With the benefit of his wisdom, many were able to understand that, when 
much of the communist world was restructured and given a new face under the leadership 
of "former" communists-which is essentially what occurred in 1989-1990-there was little 
or no reason for anyone who advocates freedom to raise the victory flag. 

The John Birch Society maintains that the goal of today's INSIDERS remains the same: 
world domination. Or, to use the term that has been popularized over recent years, the 
goal of this self-perpetuating clique is a new world order. Two of the new world order's 
main pillars have always been economic control (socialism) and political control (world 
government). 



The more timeless portions of the Blue Book, also the more important for students of 
political science and economics, are those where Robert Welch discusses the "cancer of 
collectivism" (Section Two), and then details his ten Ageneral conclusions" about the 
nature of government (Section Six). 

Early in this remarkable treatise, he also listed ten destructive aims of those who would 
radically alter the United States so as to make it "domestically a communized nation." 
The chilling accuracy of those predictions (pages 25-26) led the surprised editor of a 
West Coast daily newspaper to say of Robert Welch in 1971, "Whatever Else, Call Him 
'Correct.' " As he proved on so many occasions, Robert Welch's knowledge of history and 
his awareness of the destructive designs of those who were shaping national and world 
events enabled him, as he frequently termed it, "to project the lines" and thereby issue 
amazingly accurate predictions. It was never his intention, however, only to forecast the 
moves of the Conspiracy. His never-ending goal was to create sufficient understanding 
about its plans to keep its goals from being realized. 

As was obvious then, and is still obvious today, the INSIDERS have never abandoned 
their desire to make this land Adomes tically a communized nation." With only minor 
alterations, that destructive goal is still being relentlessly pursued. 

The Society Remains on Course 

The detailed strategy and tactics employed by the Society to combat the Conspiracy 
appear in Section Four. These have remained the guidelines under which the organization 
has operated during the more than three decades it has been in existence. 

During the past 30-plus years, the Society has published more than 100 books; issued 
many hundreds of editions of its monthly Bulletin; produced scores of films, filmstrips 
and videotapes; and successfully brought to tens of millions both the message of freedom 
and the warning about freedom's internal enemies. 

This all-important work continues. And the danger posed by the Conspiracy's drive for 
totalitarian power has surely not decreased. As government here in America grows ever 
more oppressive, and as the plan to compromise national sovereignty in favor of an 
INSIDER-controlled world government moves ever closer to realization, all Americans 
ought to realize that a sinister grip on their lives, their freedoms, their nation, and their 
future is steadily being tightened. 

All who read these pages are cordially invited to contact the Society for more information 
about our current concerns, our enduring long-range goals, and our plans to reverse the 
frightening trends surrounding all Americans. If you are among the many who worry 
about the future for yourself or for those who will inherit the world being shaped for 
them, you owe it to them as well as to yourself to examine our program. 



Through the efforts of tens of thousands of dedicated "Birchers," and with the added help 
of many thousands more who are waiting to join our ranks as soon as they learn the truth 
about our efforts, the Society has every intention of carrying on the noble crusade begun 
by our Founder. With education as our strategy and truth as our weapon, we mean to 
break the Conspiracy's already powerful grip on mankind, and then to move on toward 
the higher goal described in the slogan Robert Welch penned for the John Birch Society: 
"Less government, more responsibility, and-with God's help- a better world." 

- JOHN F. McManus President of The John Birch Society 



INTRODUCTION 

Gentlemen: Let me welcome you to Indianapolis. All of you, I believe, are already aware 
of my appreciation for your being here. I know the job it is to squeeze two whole days, 
plus travel time, out of your crowded schedules. For that reason I am all the more grateful 
to you for doing so. It was not a favor that was asked easily or is lightly appreciated. But 
each of you also felt that you would not have been asked to give up everything else and 
come to this meeting, and then to listen to my voice off and on for so much of the two 
days, unless I had some very se rious matters to put before you and proposals to discuss. 
Frankly, the matters are serious and the proposals far-reaching. So much so that just their 
presentation makes me feel solemnly humble at the size of the task envisioned. For 
increasingly, before tomorrow is over, I hope to have all of you feeling that you are 
taking part, here and now, in the beginning of a movement of historical importance. But 
long journeys start with easy steps, and our first step should be to identify our fellow 
travelers (no pun intended). Many of you are known to each other, but some are not. So 
let me, as informally as possible, introduce each one to the group. This was then done. 
Now I think that just a word is in order, concerning the sheer physical arrangements and 
prospects for the next two days. The possibility of just sitting in those chairs, listening to 
my monotonous voice go on and on until tomorrow evening, would frighten anybody. 
And while, with so much ground to cover, you are going to have to listen to me far more 
than I wish were the case, tiring you out or putting you to sleep is what I least want to do. 
So our hostess has arranged for coffee breaks in the mid-morning and in the mid- 
afternoon. We shall recess at least an hour for luncheon, which will be set up for us at one 
o'clock in the breakfast room. You will find that, while I shall be doing most of the 
talking, and doing it pretty continuously, in the beginning, there will be shifts in the 
subject matter and in our approaches to it which I hope will help some; and that 
increasingly, as I get the background covered and the general purport of the meeting 
begins to shape up, we'll interrupt my monologue for questions and open discussions. 
Until, by tomorrow afternoon, I hope and believe I'll be doing less talking than anybody 
else in the room. Even that schedule, even with the breaks, is, I know, a rather severe 
prospect. But — nobody in this group was selected because he would be coming to the 
meeting for personal pleasure, and I am sure nobody has done so. The ultimate reason 
that brought each man here was a sense of patriotic duty, and deep concern for the future 
of his family and his country. So we do not offer pleasure, but we shall try to keep the 
carrying out of that duty, during these two days, from being any more painful than we can 
help. II Now, if I may coin a new word, I think that the perfunctions are over, and we can 
start getting down to the real business of the meeting. And the first business, it seems to 
me, is to take a sharper and somewhat longer look at why we are here. Our im mediate 
and most urgent anxiety, of course, is the threat of the Communist conspiracy. And well 
it should be. For both internationally, and within the United States, the Communists are 
much further advanced and more deeply entrenched than is real ized by even most of the 
serious students of the danger among the anti-Communists. I personally have been 
studying the problem increasingly for about nine years, and practically full time for the 
past three years. And entirely without pride, but in simple thankfulness, let me point out 



that a lifetime of business experience should have made it easier for me to see the falsity 
of the economic theories on which Communism is supposedly based, more readily, than 
might some scholar coming into that study from the academic cloisters; while a lifetime 
of interest in things academic, especially world history, should have given me an 
advantage over many business men, in more readily seeing the sophistries in dialectic 
materialism. So I have felt, rightly or wrongly, that my grasp of Communist purposes, 
and even of their methods, should have been more rapid than that of some of my patriotic 
friends who have gradually become staunch anti-Communists. Yet almost every day I run 
into some whole new area, where the Communists have been penetrating and working 
quietly for years, until now they are in virtual control of everything that is done in that 
slice or corner of our national life. One illustration came to light through the publication 
of The Pentagon Case, by Col. Victor J. Fox, and through my getting to know its author, 
a retired Navy officer whose real name is Bob Winston, fairly well since it was written. 
The charges of treason within the Pentagon did not surprise me, nor enlighten me, at all. 
To anybody who had watched the way the Administration moved heaven and earth to 
keep McCarthy from getting at the Army Loyalty Board, or from getting at the protectors 
within the Pentagon of the whole nest of traitors at Ft. Monmouth, it was clear that 
treason — and a willingness to close one's eyes to treason, which is itself treasonous — 
were widespread and rampant in our high army circles. But what the book did reveal, of 
which I had had no knowledge before, was the huge and highly organized effort to wear 
down the morale of both our officers and our men in uniform, through the contents of the 
magazines which are made most readily available for them to read. I was recently in a 
small audience where Bob Winston showed and went through the contents of some ten or 
twelve magazines, all purchased in routine manner right in the Pentagon itself — and 
available, of course, in our post exchanges all over the world. When you saw the pattern, 
it was astounding. Through this medium the Communists have been doing and are doing 
an incredible job of making service in our armed forces, especially if war should come, 
appear as a nightmare of cheapness and horror, instead of as an opportunity to fight 
honorably and victoriously for one's country. And it's no wonder that Ridgway and 
several other officers of the highest rank, who have not gone opportunistically blind over 
the situation, have been complaining about the extremely low morale in our armed forces 
today against that of a few years ago. Other instances in every division or sub-division of 
our society, where the Communist achievement and activity is utterly unsuspected by the 
American people as a whole, could be compiled so that it would take hours just to list 
them. We are not going to undertake any such survey here. BUT as background for our 
further discussion I am going to ask for your patience while I make a much more general 
review with you of how far the international conspiracy as a whole has now gone, and 
where we stand today. This part of my presentation is actually a speech, under the title of 
Look At The Score, which in recent months I have been making to many different 
audiences. And I realize that for men as well informed as we have in this group, there 
will be much repetition of what you already know, and comparatively little that you do 
not know, in this survey. And yet, such a look at the score seems to me so important and 
so necessary, as a point of departure for our whole two-day program, that I hope you will 
all bear with me, and even give careful attention, while I cover the ground once more and 
try to draw the present battle lines on the world's ideological and political map. 



NOTICE 

Permit us to ask the reader once again to keep in mind, through all the pages which 
follow, that this presentation was prepared during October and November of 1958, and 
delivered in early December, 1958. And while we have not had any occasion to change a 
word of the copy, some of the references and statements are more readily understood if 
the date when they were made is remembered. 



SECTION ONE 

Look At The Score 

Throughout all history the bearer of bad news has been a most unpopular person. So I 
certainly am not seeking any garlands of popularity at present. For I am now spending my 
whole life spreading bad news, every day, everywhere I can. 

But the man who is to me the most profound of all Americans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
once said that every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It could not 
have both. Today you have left your choice somewhat in my hands. And I am not only 
bringing you truth instead of comfort, but truth which may shatter a lot of the comfort 
you already feel. 

For the truth I bring you is simple, incontrovertible, and deadly. It is that, unless we can 
reverse forces which now seem inexorable in their movement, you have only a few more 
years before the country in which you live will become four separate provinces in a 
world-wide Communist dominion ruled by police-state methods from the Kremlin. The 
map for their division and administration is already drawn. We are living, in America 
today, in such a fool's paradise as the people of China lived in twenty years ago, as the 
people of Czechoslovakia lived in a dozen years ago, as the people of North Vietnam 
lived in five years ago, and as the people of Iraq lived in only yesterday. 

To illustrate and support this statement I am going to ask you to look for a little while 
with me at some tedious and perhaps even painful history. For as George Santayana so 
brilliantly pointed out, those who will learn nothing from history are condemned to repeat 
it. 

The Cold War in which we are engaged is certainly no game. It is a fatal struggle for 
freedom against slavery, for existence against destruction. But we can use the analogy of 
a game nevertheless. And I want to show you, right on the clear record about which there 
can be no reasonable argument, how far that game has progressed and what the score is 
today. 

To do that, we must go back to 1917, when the contest started. In that year Lenin was 
able, with Trotsky and only a few hundred followers, to take the Russian revolution out 
of the hands of its earlier leaders, and to convert it into a Communist strike for power. In 
1918 they established some degree of stability and recognition for their rule by the treaty 
of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. And by 1922 they had extended their infiltration, terror, 
and control enough to establish the Union of Soviet Socialist Re publics. They were able 
to bring into this U.S.S.R., besides the greatly reduced Russia proper left them at the time 
of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the further areas of Russian Armenia, Azerbaidzhan, 
Georgia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia. And this combination was the base from which Lenin 
and his successors set out, deliberately and determinedly, to conquer the world. 



Lenin died in 1924. But before he died he had laid down for his followers the strategy for 
this conquest. It was, we should readily admit, brilliant, farseeing, realistic, and 
majestically simple. It has been paraphrased and summarized as follows, "First, we will 
take Eastern Europe. Next, the masses of Asia. Then we shall encircle that last bastion of 
capitalism, the United States of America. We shall not have to attack; it will fall like 
overripe fruit into our hands. " To make doubly clear what he meant and how firmly he 
meant it, with regard to taking Asia ahead of Western Europe, and then using Asia as a 
stepping stone and base from which to conquer Western Europe and the rest of the world, 
the strategy was also stated that, for the Communists, the road to Paris led through Peking 
and Calcutta. Today you can easily see how that road to Paris is leading back from 
Peking through Calcutta, Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Algiers. 

Now, gentlemen, there are many remarkable things about that three-step strategy. But the 
most remarkable is that the Communists have never wavered from it one iota in the 
thirty-five years since it was promulgated. Through famines which they deliberately 
caused in order to collectivize agriculture, through whatever industrialization they have 
achieved, through wars which they have cleverly and cold-bloodedly brought on and 
prolonged for the help of such wars in their plans, through periods of peace and 
prosperity elsewhere in the world, through power struggles within the Kremlin itself, 
through apparent changes and reversals in the party line that make non-Communist heads 
swim in confusion, through every upheaval and opportunity, the Communists have 
always kept their eyes unwaveringly on this strategy and on plans to carry it out. 

They have let nothing stand in their way, and nothing divert them. They have used the 
philosophy of socialism as an ideological weapon, in this struggle, whenever they could 
and for whatever it was worth. But it was only one of their many weapons. They have 
also used bribery, lies, bluff, brutality, the countless tentacles of treason, murder on a 
scale never before dreamed of in the world, and every possible means to advance them on 
this road, without the slightest concern for any moral difference in those various means. 
And above all, they have used patience. A patient gradualism has been the most 
important key to the Communists' overwhelming success. 

II 

The first great break for the Communist conspiracy came in 1933, with our formal 
recognition of Stalin's regime. At that time the Russian government was staying alive 
financially from week to week by methods which, in the case of individuals, would be 
called check-kiting. Our recognition tremendously increased their prestige and credit, at 
home and with other nations. It saved them from financial collapse; and it enabled them 
greatly to increase their nests of spies and propaganda agents in this country and 
elsewhere in the world. 

Their second break came with the beginning of World War II, which was largely brought 
on through the world-wide diplomatic conniving of Stalin's agents, for the advantage of 



making Russia a wartime ally of the Western nations, and for the sake of the chaos and 
resulting opportunities the war would provide. And anybody who doubts that statement 
hardly needs to study anything more than the incredible ramifications and 
accomplishments of just the Sorge spy ring to discover its truth. 

With the war once under way, Stalin was able, through the influence of his agents in 
foreign countries — including our own — to keep the eyes and the anger of the civilized 
world focused on the crimes of Hitler, while he himself was perpetrating conquest and 
crime, continuously and success fully, that far outdid even Hitler's dreams. But in this 
progress Stalin always kept his aim exactly on the goals set forth by Lenin. And the 
tallies of his advance now begin to flash on the scoreboard thick and fast. 

In August, 1939, as a result of his temporary compact with Hitler, Stalin seized all of 
eastern Poland. During that same year and in 1940, through brutal conquest by force of 
arms — which his agents in Western countries were able to get the Western nations 
completely to ignore -- he took over the Karelian Isthmus of Finland, and swallowed up 
all of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. 

It is true that most of these conquests were temporarily taken out of his hands by the 
Germans, during the World War that immediately followed; but they reverted to him as 
the Germans were driven back in 1944. And although the war had supposedly been 
fought — in the beginning, anyway — over the territorial integrity of Poland and other 
small nations, the Communist influence among the Western allies was so great that as 
early as the Teheran Conference in 1943 it was made clear that, when the fighting was 
over, Stalin was going to be allowed to keep everything he had stolen. 

He was. And a new series of conquests started immediately. The formal flaunting to the 
world of these conquests occurred as follows. In January, 1940, Stalin's henchmen 
proclaimed their "People's Republic" in Albania. During the course of 1946 they 
established themselves as the government of Hungary, with brutal execution of 
Hungarian patriots who had resisted the Germans and now resisted the Russians. In July, 
1946 Stalin's hatchet man, Tito, completed his crushing grasp of Yugoslavia by the public 
shooting of Mihailovich. In November, 1946, Stalin's agents took over Romania and 
Bulgaria. In January, 1947, the mock elections in Poland formally completed the two 
years of incredibly cruel subjugation of that nation to Stalin's "Lublin Gang. " In 
February, 1948, Stalin's lieutenants in Czechoslovakia pulled their coup d'etat and 
formally placed that country behind the Iron Curtain. And in October, 1950, Stalin's 
lackeys formalized their puppet state of East Germany. 

By this time, of course, there were other takeovers going on in other parts of the world, as 
we shall see. But we are dealing here only with Europe. And East Germany finished the 
job there, as it had been planned by Lenin, twenty-six years before. The Communists now 
had Eastern Europe entire , and the first step of their three-step program was complete. 

Ill 



Next was Asia. And there is one thing, among many, for which you have to give the 
Communists credit. While they are working on a particular task, and no matter how 
difficult it may be, they never cease looking ahead or preparing for the tasks that are to 
follow. Although they were fully adjusted to the importance of taking Eastern Europe 
first, nevertheless they began their infiltration and work in Asia, especially in China, 
almost before the blood of the 1917 revolution had grown cold in the streets of Moscow. 

Of course we cannot take time here to go into the ruses, plans, deceptions, betrayals, and 
epic cruelties by which the Communists eventually were able to make their power 
increasingly felt in Asia. It took them a long time. Not until they had the full help of our 
government, completely misled by Com munist influence, both during World War II and 
immediately after that war, were the Communists successful in Asia, on any sizable scale 
or in any formal manifestations. But these successes then came thick and fast. Here is 
their sequence. 

V-J Day was August 15, 1945. Before even that month of August was over, Stalin's 
troops occupied all of Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands -- thus pointing two guns 
permanently at Japan — by our specific permission. In October, 1945, Stalin's henchmen 
set up their "People's Republic" in Mongolia. In 1948, they set up their government in 
North Korea. In October, 1948 Stalin's troops took over Manchuria. All of this time, with 
Moscow's help to Mao Tse-tung exerted primarily through its influence over our 
government, Mao and the Chinese Communists were crushing their opposition in more 
and more of China. For while Mao's hordes had been given by Moscow all of the 
tremendous stockpiles of Japanese arms in Manchuria, our government prevented Chiang 
Kai-shek's troops from getting even ammunition for the guns they did have, by an 
embargo declared by General George Marshall. Marshall even boasted that he had 
disarmed thirty-nine of Chiang's divisions with a stroke of his pen — which he had. And 
so, by 1950, Stalin's agents had completed their conquest of the whole mainland of 
China. 

In May, 1951, Moscow's invaders seized Tibet. In the summer of 1953 Moscow's agents 
imposed on us, in Korea, a truce so shameful, in both the procedures of the negotiations 
as well as the substance of the truce, as to be incredible in the light of past American 
history. One result was to strengthen the Kremlin's grasp and use of North Korea. In the 
summer of 1954 Ho Chi Minh and Chou En-lai and other tools of the Kremlin took over 
the better half of Indochina. That completes the coverage of all those parts of Asia which 
are formal satellites today. How much further the blackout would have extended by now, 
but for a change in the Kremlin's method of establishing its control, there is no way of 
telling. But that brings us to another part of the story. 

For by this time Stalin was dead, Malenkov and his associates or subordinates had made 
clear that the Kremlin was in just as firm control of worldwide Communism as ever 
Stalin had been; and the whole conspiratorial apparatus was rapidly marching forward 
towards ultimate total victory. So rapidly, in fact, and so visibly, that a different kind of 
problem now loomed ever larger before them. That was the problem of keeping the 



remaining free world - and especially the American people — from becoming aware of 
how fast and how surely the Communists were taking over the rest of the planet. 

For this, and other highly advantageous reasons, the new regime in the Kremlin called a 
halt to the establishment of formal satellites, and began to extend its power through so- 
called "neutralist" countries. These neutralist nations pose as independent, but the 
governments are, in one way or another, largely controlled by Moscow. The difference 
between these dependencies, and true satellites such as Czechoslovakia or East Germany 
— or Yugoslavia — is more one of form, for the sake of expediency, than it is one of 
degree. For in either case the people may be bitterly opposed to Communism. 

Friends sometimes ask me how on earth I can speak of Indonesia now being within the 
Communist block, when eighty percent of the Indonesians are devout Moslems, who hate 
Communism with every fiber of their being. But eighty percent of the people of Poland 
are devout Catholics, who also hate Communism with every beat of their hearts. And 
nobody will deny the Communist status of Poland. Of course the people in Indonesia hate 
Communism, but so do those in East Germany. And those in Indonesia are being held in 
line in support of Communist plans, and gradually brought under a Communist police 
state rule, despite their futile and sometimes suicidal opposition, just as surely as were the 
people of Poland or of Hungary before them. 

Now I know that plenty of writers, commentators, and officials will tell you that Nehru is 
not a Communist but a "dynamic neutralist, " and that Nasser is not a Communist but an 
"Arab nationalist. " But the bellwethers of all such opinion molders are, by and large, the 
same people who insisted twenty years ago that Mao Tse-tung was not a Communist but 
an "agrarian reformer, " and five years ago that Achmed Sukarno was not a Communist 
but was the George Washington of Indonesia. The widespread acceptance of any of these 
views is, in my opinion, merely more proof of the success of Communist propaganda. For 
if you will study the life and actions of each man, carefully and objectively, you will find 
that the evidence in support of his being a tool of the Kremlin becomes quite 
overwhelming. 

And those dependencies in Asia where the rulership already belongs de facto , in whole or 
in large part, to Moscow, are Indonesia, Burma, India, Ceylon, Afghanistan, Syria, 
probably South Vietnam , and now Iraq and Lebanon. Actually, the anti-Communist 
position is crumbling rapidly, everywhere in Asia.l But let's consider just those countries 
we have named. When these are added to the actual satellites — China, North Korea, 
North Vietnam, and all of Russia in Asia — and if you will look at a map of Asia with all 
of these countries properly shaded, I think you will agree with me in my estimate of the 
Communists' progress. It is that they have already gone three-fourths of the way towards 
the completion of the second step in their three-part program. 

IV 

Now, let's consider the rest of the world. And again we find that the Communists, while 
working hard at the immediate task of getting control of the masses of Asia, and of 



making Fortress Asia the stepping stone for conquering the rest of the world, have also 
been looking ahead and doing everything possible — everything that was also 
strategically wise — to make their final undertaking both easier and more certain of 
success. 

It is interesting, for instance, and also frightening, to note how far the Communists have 
already gone in their encirclement of Western Europe — although their movement back 
across Asia, from Peking towards Paris, has only recently reached the Medi terranean. 
Their treatment of northern Africa as geographically and ethnically an extension, for their 
purposes, of the Asian mass and masses, is only a part of the story. 

As you will see, again by marking up a map, this encirclement of Western Europe begins 
with Russia itself and its immediate satellites on the north and east. Then, as you move 
around the Asiatic side of the Mediterranean you have Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, 
Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, in all of which the Communists either already have control, 
however disguised, or are rapidly acquiring control. Jumping across Spain and the British 
Isles, to the northwest there is Iceland. Then, completing the circle, Norway, and now 
Finland. And gentlemen, any idea that Norway is not, for all practical purposes, now in 
Communist hands, or that Iceland and Finland are not completely so, is in my opinion as 
unrealistic as the thought that Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana is a Democrat. 

This doesn't mean that the Communists intend to have troops march in from this 
periphery and take Western Europe by force. They don't have to. It does mean that the 
pressures and threats they can exert on the chancelleries of Western Europe from this 
encirclement; the aid they can give to their agents in the governments and national 
activities of every kind in Western Europe; and the weakening of the remaining anti- 
Communist strength in Western Europe through this encirclement without, added to 
infiltration within — that this overall Communist progress has made the position of 
Western Europe very precarious indeed. It certainly makes plausible the contention of 
one of our best-informed writers for our magazine, himself a European, that the 
Communists will be able to take Western Europe by tel ephone within the next two or 
three more years if they consider it strategically wise to do so. 2 

Coming to the Western Hemisphere, you now have Dr. Jagan, an avowed Communist, 
ruling British Guiana. If any real anti-Communist were elected President of Panama, he 
would undoubtedly be assassinated, as Ramon was some four years ago. Incidentally, 
assassination of heads of state is now be coming quite a normal and regular part of the 
technique of Communist advance in Latin America. Within the past few years there have 
been assassinations of Ramon of Panama, President Somoza of Nicaragua, President 
Castillo Armas of Guatemala - and before that of Colonel Aranda of Guatemala, 
presidential candidate who had been murdered in Mexico to enable Arbenz Guzman to 
take over. 

The Communists are now in complete control of Bolivia and Venezuela. They expect to 
have Guatemala back in the Communist camp in short order. And Romulo Betancourt of 
Venezuela, who says he is not a Communist but has admitted he was a Marxist, and who 



has spent his whole career in helping the Communists, seems to be taking the lead in 
plots and plans to overthrow the very few remaining really anti-Communist governments 
in Latin America.3 They are Cuba, Paraguay, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.4 
Right now he is giving powerful help -probably the most powerful, next to that of our 
gov ernment — towards the overthrow of Batista in Cuba by the Communist, Fidel Castro, 
and the establishment of a Communist beachhead ninety miles from our shores. And 
gentlemen, if you have any slightest doubt that Castro is a Communist, don't. If he is 
successful, time will clearly reveal that he is an agent of the Kremlin. 

On the other side of the hemisphere we have Hawaii. And for the truth about the present 
Communist control of the Hawaiian Islands, just ask any member, Republican or 
Democrat, of the Senate Subcommittee which spent considerable time on the Islands, 
investigating the situation, in the fall of 1956. Or ask any member of the leading families 
there — the Cookes, Bishops, Judds, Castles, or others whom you may happen to know. 

Five years ago these people were all for Hawaiian statehood. For the last two years many 
of them have been vigorously opposing Hawaiian statehood, for the near future, by every 
means at their disposal. For they have feared that Hawaii, as a state, would send two 
Communists or pro-Communists, picked by Harry Bridges, to the United States Senate, 
and that the whole state government would be Communist controlled. As any of the 
leading citizens will tell you, and as the Senate Subcommittee stated in plain language, 
the Communist stranglehold on the economic life of Hawaii is now so great that it 
constitutes virtual political control as well. 

When you then finally come to the extent of Communist infiltration and influence right 
inside our own continental borders, the subject is entirely too large for us to do more than 
indicate a few pointers. But, for a first danger sign, the unions which control our shipping 
and many vital parts of our economy are Communist-ruled or Communist-dominated. 
Just for one instance, seventy-five vital links in the most secret communications of our 
government itself, including those of the Pentagon to Air Force bases in New York, 
Maine, England, Canada, and Newfoundland, are all available to the members of one 
union, the American Communications Association, which was kicked out of the CIO in 
1950 as being too Communist even for that outfit. In May, 1957, the president of this 
union and five other officials and members invoked the Fifth Amendment when 
questioned about Communist Party membership. Yet the members of this union are still 
in position to put their hands on any and all messages over these seventy-five links in our 
government's own communications system. 

Now the real significance of what I have just said lies in the fact that this door of betrayal 
is known to be wide open, and nobody — in Congress, in the executive branch, in the 
Pentagon itself — nobody even dares to try to close it. That is one indication of how 
powerful the Communist influence has now become in almost all of our federal agencies. 
A twenty-five-year career man in our State Department resigned three years ago, to tell 
the American people in his book, Inside The State Department , of the treasonous 
falsification of information concerning our foreign affairs which is going on there all of 



the time. And the Communist influence over our mass media of communication — press, 
radio, television — is so great that you probably never even heard of his book. 

Friends sometimes say to me: "Look. Even in easy-going America there must still be a 
few Arnold von Winkelrieds left; men who are willing to gather all of the enemy's spears 
they can reach into their own bodies, so that their compatriots can break through the 
hostile phalanx. If things are as bad in our government as you say they are, you'd think 
there would be some patriot inside who would be willing to give up his career, sacrifice 
everything if need be, and tell the American people the truth. " 

The answer is, of course, that there are many men who do this, one after another. Arthur 
Bliss Lane, one of our greatest, most experienced, and most honored diplomats, resigned 
from the service in order to write I Saw Poland Betrayed. This was no secondhand story, 
told by some hack journalist dealing in sensationalism. This was the factual recital by an 
American ambassador, giving out of his own personal knowledge the names, dates, 
places, and events of the deliberate and treasonous betrayal of Poland, by our 
government, into Soviet hands. These were things he had seen with his own eyes, and 
events in which he had been forced to acquiesce, while actually serving as our 
ambassador to the very country being betrayed. His book, for which he gave up so much, 
should have shocked the American people into a fury of resentment against the Acheson- 
infested State Department and the whole Truman administration. But it didn't create even 
a ripple. It sold a few thousand copies. Then no more were available. For reasons never 
made entirely clear, the publishers declined to bring out a new edition. Most of the copies 
which had gone to libraries were gradually removed by Communists or Communist 
sympathizers and became "lost. " If you want an interesting exercise today, just see how 
long it will take any of the best secondhand book dealers in America to find you a copy, 
and at what cost. 

Dr. Medford Evans was the Chief of Security Training for our whole Atomic Energy 
Commission and all of its plants. It was by far the best job he had ever had. In due course 
he discovered how blatant and widespread were the treasonous activities throughout the 
whole operation. In another while he discovered how easily and successfully all efforts 
on his part to improve security measures were ignored or circumvented by the traitors. 
With a family to support, and no money, Dr. Evans gave up his job, in order to tell the 
American people the truth in his book, The Secret War for the A-Bomb. He made clear 
that, despite the A-bombs which the Soviets had been exploding for show-off purposes, 
and to increase their prestige and diplomatic pres sures, they had not yet built one. Their 
agents had simply walked off from our plants with the necessary separate parts, which 
had then been assembled in Russia, and exploded whenever it best suited the Soviets' 
pretenses. 

Here again we had an able and respected American writing, at great cost to himself, of 
things he knew from his own personal observation, contacts, and experience. The book 
dealt with a matter of literally vital importance to the safety of our country. It told of 
treason at work beyond any conception of the American people. It should have rocked the 
nation from one end to the other. Instead, it sold twenty-six hundred copies ! There is no 



clearer proof of the effectiveness of the blanket of obfuscation, with which Communist 
influences have been able to keep the truth about their activities from being known. 

But to go on with other pointers ! The best informed authorities say that there are at least 
thirty huge Communist espionage rings operating in this country today against the only 
two or three that have been only partly exposed. Not only has all really effective exposure 
of these espionage rings and agents now been stopped, but scores of known Communist- 
sympathizers have been restored, by Supreme Court rulings, to their former jobs within 
our Federal Government. Communist sympathies and even actual Communist subversion 
are daily made more respectable by the actions of our government, our great universities, 
much of our press, and by the complacency of our people. And I could go on with 
specific factual illustrations and instances of this spreading, deepening Communist 
influence for hours — as I do in other speeches — if this were the occasion. It is not. So let 
me come to the point, which is an appraisal of the Communists' progress towards the 
completion of their third step. Before doing so, however, I should like to make clear in 
my own defense that my credentials for the task are not based simply on my association 
with other anti-Communists. It's true that I have been to Formosa, and talked with Chiang 
Kai-shek and to practically every high official in the Chinese Nationalist Government — 
with some of them at considerable length. I have been to West Germany, and talked with 
Chancellor Adenauer. I have been in personal association or voluminous correspondence 
with many if not most of the leading anti-Communists in this country and throughout the 
world. And I have diligently studied the anti-Communist books and objective histories 
which reveal piece meal the horrifying truth of the past two decades. 

None of that, however, constitutes the best support of my right to express the opinion I 
am going to give you. That right comes primarily from a study of the Communists' own 
periodicals and current literature. I read The Daily Worker faithfully until they suspended 
its publication. I now read their best known weekly in America, the National Guardian , 
far more regularly than I ever read the Saturday Evening Post . I subscribe to, and keep up 
fairly well with, their monthlies, Political Affairs and the New World Review . I take 
three or four Communist publications from other countries, and friends are constantly 
sending me tearsheets and articles out of others, from all over the world. And it is in the 
Communists' own publications that you not only read their lies, and find the full measure 
of their malice and their nastiness. That is where you also learn what they consider 
important, in all they have done in the past or expect to do in the future. They lay out the 
line for their own people, confident of sufficient control over all mass media of 
communication in America to ensure that that line reaches the American people — 
including the great mass of newspaper readers — only in such parts, in such ways, and at 
such times, as the Communist Party desires. And it is to this presentation by the 
Communists themselves, especially in their periodicals, that the serious student of the 
conspiracy goes to learn of their progress and their plans. 

It is with the benefit of this realistic background, therefore, that I venture to offer the 
following opinion. It is certainly an honest opinion, concurred in by all of the well 
informed anti-Communists I know. It is that the Communists, through long and careful 
and insidious preparation, have already gone at least one-fourth5 of the way towards the 



accomplishment of their third and final step — which is taking over this country. And 
with it, of course, the rest of the world. 

The simple arithmetic of the situation, therefore, is as follows. Call each of the three steps 
one, and their total three. The Communists have accomplished all of the first step (eastern 
Europe), plus three-fourths of the second (the masses of Asia), plus one-fourth of the 
third. One plus three-fourths plus one- fourth adds up to 2 out of that total of 3; and not to 
believe that the Communists are already two-thirds of the way towards carrying out their 
total program, or that they are not now moving at an accelerated pace and with increased 
momentum to finish the job, is to close your eyes to the plain facts as surely as did the 
good people of Czechoslovakia in 1948 — and with the same ultimately fatal results. 



Now let's just look very briefly at a different kind of scoreboard measuring the same 
Communist advance. At the last get-together of International Communism, before World 
War II, the Communist Parties represented had a total membership figure of slightly more 
than four million members. But in November, 1957, at the triumphant meeting in 
Moscow to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the success of the Bolshevik Revolution, 
seventy-five Communist Parties could be officially counted, with a total membership of 
thirty-three million. This is approximately an eight hundred percent i ncrease in the 
twenty years; and that is just about the rate of growth of Communist Power throughout 
the world in that time, no matter how you look at it. 

Or let's study quickly still one more and final scoreboard, perhaps the most revealing and 
frightening of them all. Here it is. 

Since August, 1945, the Communists have averaged taking over seven thousand newly 
enslaved subjects every hour. And please remember that these people, whether in 
Indonesia or Iraq or Korea, have the same love for their families, think of concentration 
camps with the same despairing horror, and feel the same pain under torture, as do you 
and I. 

So let me repeat that. Seven thousand more human beings, just like you and me, have 
been brought under the incredibly brutal rule of a Communist police state, every h r, 
twenty-four hours of every day, 365 days of every year, for the past thirteen years. And 
not only is that process not being interrupted in any way. Today the rate of conquest and 
enslavement is actually increasing — as the eighty million people of Indonesia would 
gladly testify. For the darkness of police -state rule is closing over them very fast. 

Now please note, gentlemen, that the Communists have never made any of this immense 
progress by the direct use of force. They have beguiled Chinese into fighting Chinese, 
Koreans into fighting Koreans, Vietnamese into fighting the French and each other, the 
Israelis, British, and French into fighting Egyptians, and the Algerians into fighting the 
French. They have even maneuvered Americans into fighting Chinese Communists in 
Korea, with the Americans' hands tied behind their backs. But not one Russian regiment 



has ever taken part in any of this imperialistic advance, except in the suppression of 
rebellion in already conquered territory, as in Hungary. The Communists have put over 
these tremendous gains by bluff and bluster, lies and deception, murder, and -above all — 
by treason within other governments; and by diplomatic pressures based on all of these 
other means. And that lamp of experience certainly should guide us as to what they are 
up to today. 

There are three possible methods by which the Communists might take us over. One 
would be, through a sufficient amount of infiltration and propaganda, to disguise 
Communism as just another political party; and thus to get enough Communist agents 
and sympathizers into positions of power in our government to enable them to seize 
formal power by a peaceful coup d'etat, as they did in Czechoslovakia in February, 1948. 
We do not anticipate that development. 

The second method would be by fomenting internal civil war in this country, and aiding 
the Communist side in that war with all necessary military might. This is, of course, the 
method they used in China. But in the long struggle in China the Kremlin was 
handicapped by the need for keeping its own intervention from being accurately 
understood and appraised by other nations. By the time the Soviet rulers ever came to 
apply this plan to our country, there obviously would be no compelling reason for them to 
hold back in any way. 

And it seems clear, from all of their past history, as well as from the nature of the beast, 
that — despite their vaunted missiles and bombs -- the Soviets would not attempt military 
conquest of so powerful and so extensive a country as the United States without availing 
themselves of a sufficiently strong fifth column in our midst; a fifth column which could 
provide the sabotage, the false leadership, and the sudden seizures of power and of means 
of communication, needed to convert the struggle, from the very beginning, into a civil 
war rather than clear-cut war with an external enemy. The horror and cruelty which 
would be made possible by such planned confusion is something to contemplate. And, as 
we said in the first issue of our magazine, AMERICAN OPINION, we can foresee a 
possibility of the Kremlin taking this gamble in time. 

In fact, it is clear that the Communists long ago made plans to have this method available, 
in whole or in part, to whatever extent it might be useful. The trouble in our southern 
states has been fomented almost entirely by the Communists for this purpose. It has been 
their plan, gradually carried out over a long period with meticulous cunning, to stir up 
such bitterness between whites and blacks in the South that small flames of civil disorder 
would inevitably result. They could then fan and coalesce these little flames into one 
great conflagration of civil war, in time, if the need arose. The whole slogan of "civil 
rights, " as used to make trouble in the South today, is an exact parallel to the slogan of 
"agrarian reform" which they used in China. And the Communists, who are pulling 
innocent and idealistic Americans into promoting this agitation for them, have no more 
real interest in the welfare of the Negroes and no more concern about the damage they 
actually do to our colored population, than the Chinese Communists had with regard to 
the welfare of the Chinese peasants. 



But there is a third method which is far more in accordance with Lenin's long-range 
strategy. It is one which they are clearly relying on most heavily. And this is taking us 
over by a process so gradual and insidious that Soviet rule is slipped over so far on the 
American people, before they ever realize it is happening, that they can no longer resist 
the Communist conspiracy as free citizens, but can resist the Communist tyranny only by 
themselves becoming conspirators against established government. The process in that 
direction is going on right now, gradually but surely and with ever-increasing spread and 
speed. 

A part of that plan, of course, is to induce the gradual surrender of American sovereignty, 
piece by piece and step by step, to various international organizations — of which the 
United Nations is the outstanding but far from the only example — while the Communists 
are simultaneously and equally gradually getting complete working control of such 
organizations. Both sets of steps, which were short and insidious at first, are now being 
steadily increased in both length and brazenness. Until one day we shall gradually realize 
that we are already just a part of a world-wide government ruled by the Kremlin, with the 
police-state features of that government rapidly closing in on ourselves. 

But another part of that plan is the conversion of the United States into a socialist nation, 
quite similar to Russia itself in its economy and political outlook, before police-state 
enforcement is ever introduced. The best way to explain the aim here is simply to quote 
the directive under which some of the very largest American foundations have been 
secretly but visibly working for years. This directive is "so to change the economic and 
political structure of the United States that it can be comfortably merged with Soviet 
Russia." 

These foundations, influential as they are, nevertheless are comparatively just a very 
small part of the tremendous forces at work in America today to accomplish this aim. 
And these total forces, marvelously organized and brilliantly directed, use a hundred to a 
thousand completely misguided Americans who are not Communists, for every actual 
Communist who is pulling strings behind the scenes, to help them to put over their 
innocent- and even "progressive" sounding plans. 

For the West, gentlemen, is suffering under many delusions. One is that our enemy is an 
ideology. It is not. Communism is not a political party, nor a military organization, nor an 
ideological crusade, nor a rebirth of Russian imperialist ambition, though it comprises 
and uses all of these parts and pretenses. Communism, in its unmistakable present reality, 
is wholly a conspiracy, a gigantic conspiracy to enslave mankind; an increasingly 
successful conspiracy, controlled by determined, cunning, and utterly ruthless gangsters, 
willing to use any means to achieve its end. 

One means, of course, is to make socialism sound appealing; and above all to make it 
seem inevitable . This operation, of giving an appearance of spontaneity to a movement to 
the left which is conspiratorially plotted and promoted, is so large that we could not 
possibly outline it here. Let's merely look at one of the more spectacular means the 



Communists designed for this promotion -- namely Sputnik -- and let you project the 
whole wheel from that one spoke. 

VI 

I can't tell you how large a part of their military budget the Russians put into a crash 
program to get a Sputnik into the sky — after goodness knows how many failures — by 
October, 1957. 1 cants tell you how Communist influences succeeded in arranging for 
reports of the Gaither Committee and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Study Group — both 
made up mostly of entirely loyal Americans — to come out with such beautiful timing and 
terrifying hints to reinforce the impact of Sputnik on the American con sciousness. But I 
can tell you exactly what the Kremlin has expected to accomplish by all of this concerted 
ballyhoo. 

For years we have been taken steadily down the road to Communism by steps supposedly 
designed, and presented to the American people, as ways of fighting Communism. The 
whole foreign aid program is an excellent example. Our foreign aid has done some good, 
of course. The Communists do not believe in using solid-black instrumentalities, but dark 
gray ones. They are always willing to be hurt, or to take a loss, for the sake of an ultimate 
net gain in any transaction. And American foreign aid, from the time it began as a 
contribution of some seventy-two percent of UNRRA funds, until it has reached the 
mammoth proportions of today, has been a tremendous help to the advance of 
Communism. It was planned by the Communists for that purpose. This pouring of 
American billions into foreign countries, to make things easier for the Communists and 
their socialist allies or agents, is exactly what the Communists wanted the American 
government to do. But they have not taken over so much of the world, so largely by 
cunning, without that cunning being brilliant, and professional. The one surest way in 
which foreign aid could be ballyhooed successfully, and made permanently acceptable to 
the American taxpayer, was to present it as a means of opposing Communism. 

Now we see exactly the same principle at work on the whole front of our domestic 
economy. Although our danger remains almost entirely internal, from Communist 
influences right in our midst and treason right in our government, the American people 
are being persuaded that our danger is from the outside, is from Russian military 
superiority.6 And under the excuse of preparing to match that military might, of 
defending ourselves from this threat of outside force; in other words, under the guise of 
fighting Communism, we are being stampeded into the biggest jump ever towards, and 
perhaps the final jump right into, socialism and then the Communist camp. 

Of course Sputnik did many things for the Soviets. It gave them, no matter how 
undeserved, a whole new level of prestige in the scientific world. It put very valuable 
ammunition into the hands of the world-wide Communist-sponsored groups, which in the 
United States were called Committees For A Sane Nuclear Policy, and into the hands of 
all of the Cyrus Eatons and Bertrand Russells and other 'let's surrender" boys. And it 
indirectly enabled the pro-Communists in the chancelleries of Western Europe to increase 
their pressures on Adenauer in many ways. 



But we are talking at this point about the usefulness of Sputnik to the Communists and 
their socialist allies, through its impact on the psychology of the American people with 
regard to their domestic affairs. This, in my opinion, was the most important ultimate 
effect of Sputnik, as planned by the Soviets, and as now gradually being realized by 
them. Here are the Communists' aims for the United States — to be achieved, they hope, 
through the leftward momentum of the attitude induced by Sputnik and all of its auxiliary 
propaganda. (1) Greatly expanded government spending, for missiles, for so-called 
defense generally, for foreign aid, for every conceivable means of getting rid of ever 
larger sums of American money -as wastefully as possible. (2) Higher and then much 
higher taxes. (3) An increasingly unbalanced budget, despite the higher taxes. When 
these notes were first put together many months ago, I expected a deficit of ten billion 
dollars at least, in the fiscal year of 1958 — 1959, despite all of the talk at that time about 
a balanced budget. Today well informed people, even within our government, are talking 
about a deficit of fifteen billion. (4) Wild inflation of our currency, leading rapidly 
towards its ultimate repudiation. (5) Government controls of prices, wages, and materials, 
supposedly to combat inflation. (6) Greatly increased socialistic controls over every 
operation of our economy and every activity of our daily lives. This is to be 
accompanied, naturally and automatically, by a correspondingly huge increase in the size 
of our bureaucracy, and in both the cost and reach of our domestic government. (7) Far 
more centralization of power in Washington, and the practical elimination of our state 
lines. There is a many-faceted drive at work to have our state lines eventually mean no 
more within the nation than our county lines do now within the states. (8) The steady 
advance of Federal aid to and control over our educational system, leading to complete 
federalization of our public education. (9) A constant hammering into the American 
consciousness of the horror of "modern warfare, " the beauties and the absolute necessity 
of "peace" — peace always on Communist terms, of course. And (10) the consequent 
willingness of the American people to allow the steps of appeasement by our government 
which amount to a piecemeal surrender of the rest of the free world and of the United 
States itself to the Kremlin-ruled tyranny. 

There is what Sputnik and all of its side decorations are really about. If the Communists 
can succeed in making us domestically a communized nation, it will not be too difficult a 
final move for them to pull us right into the world-wide Communist organization, ruled 
by the Kremlin. And unless we can have enough of an awakening in this country, and 
enough of a rebellion against the appeasement policies of our government outside and its 
communizing policies inside America, the Communists are going to succeed in 
accomplishing every one of these means to their final end, and that final goal as well. 

VII 

In summary, gentlemen, we are losing, rapidly losing, a cold war in which our freedom, 
our country, and our very existence are at stake. And while we don't seem to know we are 
losing this war, you can be sure the Communists do. There is just one thing — only one 
thing in the whole world — which the Communists fear today. It is that, despite their 
tremendous influence in our government and over all of our means of mass 
communication, the American people will wake up too soon to what has really been 



happening, and what is now happening right under their very noses. The only thing which 
can possibly stop the Communists is for the American people to learn the truth in time. It 
is to contribute my small bit to such an awakening that I have given up most of my 
business responsibilities and most of my income, in order through my magazine and 
speeches to bring some inkling of the truth to as many people as I can reach. I do not 
expect nor deserve any slightest applause or sympathy for this sacrifice. I mention it at all 
for just one reason only — which is to show how deadly serious the situation appears to 
me. 

You may think I am an alarmist. Frankly I am. For in my opinion, based on many years 
of intensive study of the methods, the progress, and the menace of the Communist 
conspiracy, there is ample reason for extreme alarm) and I hope to make you alarmists 
too. It seems to me that all you need, to cause you to share my alarm, my fears, and my 
determination, is simply to get a map of the world and Look At The Score! And the first 
thing for you to do, as a newly awakened alarmist, is to become better in formed about 
many things that we cannot cover here. 

One matter on which most Americans need to become better informed is what being 
subjugated by the Communists, or "arriving at an accommodation with Communism" as 
they want it called, would really mean. For their cruelty and terrorism is almost beyond 
imagination; and the domination of our press, television and radio by Communist 
influences is now so great that you simply are not allowed to learn or be reminded of the 
real nature of the beasts to whom we are losing. 

General Mark Clark, for instance, officially reported from Korea: "We obtained solid 
evidence that the Communists slaughtered 1 1,622 members of my U. N. Command while 
they were defenseless prisoners of war. These men were tied to their fellow prisoners and 
transported to previously selected sites. They were dumped al e into trenches dug for the 
purpose and summarily shot. " About five thousand of those boys were from your home 
towns and mine. But how many of you ever saw that report in your headlines, or 
anywhere else ? 

During the so-called Spanish Civil War, the London Times (which then as now certainly 
was not slanted in favor of the anti-Communists) reported that in one twelve-months 
period the Communists had murdered over four thousand priests in cold blood; and had 
driven more than that many nuns out into the streets of various Spanish cities, inflicted 
horrible obscenities on them, and then murdered the nuns. In some places the 
Communists herded priests and their congregations into churches, set the churches on 
fire, and burned the Christians and their buildings together. These and similar epic 
cruelties of the period are facts documented beyond all question, but how many of you 
have ever heard them. 

The man right now, today, holding the highest theoretical honor and office in the Soviet 
Union is Klimenti Voroshilov, Chairman of the Presidium and generally accorded the 
exalted if non-existent title of "President" of the Soviet Union. When eleven thousand 
Czarist officers, with their wives and children, surrendered the city of Kiev on the solemn 



promise -a promise advanced to them by Voroshilov to induce this surrender — that they 
would be allowed to disperse and go to their homes, Voroshilov had all of the men and 
boys shot at once, and put the women and girls into brothels for his army. Far from ever 
repenting of this supreme piece of barbarism, fifteen years later Voroshilov boasted of it 
to American Ambassador William C. Bullitt, as one of the glorious highlights of his 
career; and he explained that, with regard to using the women for his "army's health, " 
instead of shooting them, it didn't really matter because they were all dead within three 
months anyway. 

The record of Nikita Khrushchev is infinitely worse. Mass murders totaling some twelve 
million victims can be charged directly to his orders. Bulganin, Menshikov, and the 
others are exactly the same. I could go on with specific and horrible illus trations, literally 
for hours. Nor has there been any slightest change in Communist methods or terrorism. 
Right now the Algerian Communist rebels, called the FLN, are perpetrating massive and 
incredible cruelties on their fellow Moslems in Algeria, in order to terrorize those natives 
into appearing to support this Communist-led guerrilla insurrection and making it look 
like a civil war — exactly as the Chinese Communists were performing mass tortures on 
the Chinese peasants for the same purpose a quarter of a century ago. Right now 
Sukarno's Communist goons, known as the SOBSI, are murdering in cold blood the 
Christianized natives of the Moluccan Islands just as ruthlessly as Stalin's troops 
murdered native Spaniards in 1935. Right now a Communist named Fidel Castro is trying 
to frighten off all opposition to himself in Cuba, by murders, burnings, and brutalities as 
cruel as any that the Russian Communists imposed on eastern Poland in 1940 — or on 
East Germany in 1945. And exactly the same thing is going on in many other parts of the 
world. 

All of this vicious and purposeful savagery I have been trying so inadequately even to 
indicate is not something happening on some other and far-off planet, or perpetrated by 
the Assyrians twenty-five hundred years ago, or dreamed up as the imaginative nightmare 
of an Edgar Allan Poe. These, gentlemen, are the very real acts and deliberate policies, of 
the recent past and the very present, of people whom we treat as human beings, and with 
whom we sit around conference tables and arrive at truce terms and concessions to 
appease them. 

There are some seven hundred million non-Russian non-Communists now living daily 
lives of virtual slavery behind the Iron Curtain, some forty million of them in the actual 
slave labor camps of Russia and Red China, who only a dozen years ago, or much less, 
enjoyed practically the same personal freedoms as do you and I today. These people now 
say to each other, but above all to themselves: "If I had only known! If I had only 
believed! There is no amount of work and sacrifice and suffering I would not have given, 
if I had only realized the necessity, the danger, in time. Now it is too late, and any amount 
of struggle and of sacrifice, even of life itself, is all in vain. " 

The number of people subject to these cruelties is now increasing by tens of millions 
every year, and we are directly in the path of the conqueror. Are we really so hopelessly 
blind, so stupefied by "prosperity" on one side and insidious propaganda on the other, 



that we cannot even see the wolves devouring the carcasses of our brothers or drawing 
ever nearer to ourselves ? Are we going to let our country and our whole civilization go 
under, and new "Dark Ages" of serfdom be ushered in, while we happily play at our little 
games ? May God forbid; but may we speedily become more worthy that He should. 

In fact I wish to end this grim argument today on quite a religious note. For whether you 
believe it or not, we are far along in a gathering crisis that is going to make us all search 
deeply into our beliefs, and into the values and loyalties that motivate our actions. This is 
a world-wide battle, the first in history, between light and darkness; between freedom and 
slavery; between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of anti-Christ for the souls and 
bodies of men. Let's win that battle by alertness, by determination, by courage, by an 
energizing realization of the danger, if we can; but let's win it even with our lives, if the 
time comes when we must. Let's even keep in mind, against that time, an inspiration 
which we hope we shall not need. It comes from the end of a great and stirring hymn, 
written to inspire men to fight against a far less extensive slavery of their fellow men. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that 
transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, 
While God is marching on. 

Footnotes For The Fourth Printing 

1 . In the two and one-half years since this paragraph was written, the situation in Asia has 
deteriorated immensely further. As wit ness what has happened and is now happening in 
South Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia; and note also the 
rapidly rising Communist influence in Japan and the Philippines. 

2. In the same period Communist agents and influence have made tremendous gains in 
many other parts of Africa besides the northern ledge above the Sahara. 

3. At the time this edition is going to press, Romulo Betancourt is still sweating through 
one of those periods (of such strategic im portance in the career of every ambitious 
Communist who aspires to be the Kremlin's No. 1 Boy in his part of the world) of 
pretending not to be a Communist. And of course our State Department and the whole 
Liberal press are treating this pretense with great seriousness, and helping to get it 
accepted by the American people. In Betancourt's case the claim is as completely and as 
nauseatingly phony as were similar claims — at the suitable stages of their careers — for 
Mao Tse-tung, Achmed Sukarno, and Fidel Castro. As the years ahead will make amply 
clear, Romulo Betancourt, despite his present deceptive maneuvers and propaganda, has 
been all of his adult life and still is one of the most trusted agents the Kremlin has ever 
had. 

4. Since this paragraph was originally written Cuba has already fallen completely into 
Communist hands. And the combined pres sures of Moscow, Washington, Fidel Castro, 
and Romulo Betancourt, constantly increase to overthrow Trujillo and make another 
Cuba of the Dominican Republic. 



5. As of July 1, 1960, when the third annual scoreboard issue of American Opinion was 
published, our experts placed the total Communist influence over our national activities 
as now up to a minimum of forty percent of total control. 

6. In spoken versions of this presentation we have many times interpolated here a 
recurrent theme from American Opinion . It is that the Soviet threat of all-out war is one 
hundred percent bluff and bluster. There are several important reasons why no marching 
of our troops in Europe, no insult to Khrushchev, no hostile step we might take no matter 
how drastic, could possibly provoke the Soviets into an all-out "hot war" between East 
and West today. And one of these many reasons is worth looking at closely, and 
remembering at all times. 

For while everybody recognizes the intensive and continuous use by the Soviets of the 
strategy of "divide and conquer, " entirely too few of even the serious students of the 
conspiracy seem to be aware of its sequitur . But this next step becomes even more 
important to them as they subjugate an ever larger percentage of the world's population. It 
is the principle of "divide and keep conquered. " This principle is vital to their survival. 

A very large part of the total effort of the Kremlin tyrants is spent in building up their 
bluff of unassailable power — as in con stantly demonstrating and re-advertising to the 
world how completely the United States Government is on the friendliest of terms with 
them, or is afraid of them, or is really on their side. This is because they have only one 
great fear as to physical or military danger. But it is something they live with all their 
lives. And that is the fear of a simultaneous uprising of the subjugated peoples. 

For if the East Germans should rise with the fervor they showed in 1953, and the Poles 
and Hungarians with the bravery they proved in 1956, and the Chinese with the suicidal 
determination so frequently demonstrated by millions of their compatriots ever since 
1950, and the Indonesians with the courage of the "Colonels" in Sumatra only two or 
three years ago, and the Russians themselves with the daring that was exemplified at 
Vorkuta; if these and all of the other enslaved subjects of the Communist hierarchy 
should revolt and begin to fight all at the same time, and even if they had in the beginning 
only sticks and stones for weapons, the lords of the Kremlin could not last three months 
against such an uprising - - and they know it! So they arrange to precipitate uprisings, one 
by one and here and there, in accordance with their own time table, to entice each 
separate underground opposition out into the open and destroy it. 

But a clear-cut shooting war, between the Soviets and the United States would be an 
automatic signal for simultaneous revolt. For war on any such scale simply could not be 
kept from the knowledge of even the most isolated and oppressed people. And hundreds 
of millions of desperate human slaves all over the world would immediately realize that it 
was now or never . It would produce that very coordination of resistance which the 
Kremlin seeks above all else to avoid. 



From a military point of view the Soviets proceed against the United States on the 
soundest of strategy. It calls for paralyzing their enemy and their enemy's will to resist, 
by internal subversion, before ever striking a blow. Not until the Soviets have complete 
victory already assured by such subversion and paralysis is there the slightest danger of 
any military attack on the United States itself from the outside. If and when it does come 
it will be merely part of a "mopping up" operation, to destroy potential resistance 
movements within America by mass murder and limitless terror. To the hopeless slaves 
of the Communist tyranny elsewhere in the world it will then be obvious that the Soviets 
are merely suppressing revolt, or preventing future revolt, by their usual methods, in 
another territory that has already been conquered. 

It is, however, precisely because no earthly power could drag the Soviets into a real war 
or an honest war with the United States today that they beat their breasts so much and 
threaten war so loudly and so often. This writer believes that, just as a matter of sound 
common sense and of permanent national policy, we should keep our powder dry -- and 
keep plenty of it. But we should also remain constantly and acutely aware of the 
incredible waste of billions of dollars, the socialization of our economy, the centralization 
of government power, and all of the other Soviet-serving measures being so skillfully 
promoted by Communist influences within our government, with this completely phony 
threat of outside war as the excuse. 



SECTION TWO 

But Let's Look Deeper 

Now if the danger from the Communist conspiracy were all we had to worry about, it 
would be enough. But every thinking and informed man senses that, even as cunning, as 
ruthless, and as determined as are the activists whom we call Communists with a capital 
"C", the conspiracy could never have reached its present extensiveness, and the gangsters 
at the head of it could never have reached their present power, unless there were 
tremendous weaknesses in the whole body of our civilization — weaknesses to make the 
advance of such a disease so rapid and its ravages so disastrous. And this feeling is easily 
confirmed by observation. But to analyze and understand these weaknesses we have to go 
deeply into both the political history and the philosophical history of the human race. By 
your leave — or perhaps I should say without it — I am going to attempt that analysis. For 
we definitely need this understanding also, as background to the suggestions of program 
and of action which will eventually follow. I shall keep this exploration from being dry 
and boring, to the best of my ability. And I shall keep it as short as I well can. 

In my opinion, the first great basic weakness of the United States, and hence its 
susceptibility to the disease of collectivism, is simply the age of the Western European 
civilization. And I am not being cryptic, clever, nor facetious, as I hope soon to make 
clear. Some of you will already have recognized, in fact, that I am drawing a corollary to 
the conclusions usually connected with the name of Oswald Spengler. In actual fact there 
were many other scholars who, during the first decades of this century, supplied what 
were probably sounder studies and interpretations of the cyclic theory of cultures than did 
Spengler. But the concept has become so associated with his name that we might as well 
accept that identification. So let me put "Spengler's theory" in simple language, as 
concisely as I can. 

Oswald Spengler was a very learned but very conceited German who wrote a book, first 
published in 1918, 1 believe, of which the title in the English translation was The Decline 
Of The West . A lot of its direct effectiveness was spoiled by the almost nauseating 
displays of erudition in which the book abounds. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes 
once called it "a marvelous humbug of a book, " which description actually reveals more 
about that eternal sophomore, Holmes, than it does about the ostentatious scholar, 
Spengler. 

And despite the way that Spengler overplayed his hand and overproved his point, a rather 
strange thing has happened. The so-called liberal scholars of the world completely 
demolished Spengler's arguments at once. And then they have kept right on returning to 
the task, and demolishing Spengler's thesis finally and for good, every year or two for the 
past forty years. For the convincing way in which Spengler's explanation fits the known 
facts of human history just would not let his conclusion be downed and forgotten — any 



more than the convincing way in which Darwin's general theory fitted the known facts of 
animal life would let Darwin's theory be suppressed and ignored two generations earlier. 

Until at last the international socialists, with the Fabians and Labor Party bosses in 
England taking the lead, made one grand and lasting effort to have Spengler discredited 
by being overshadowed. They took a meretricious hack named Arnold J. Toynbee, who 
just by the intrinsic evidence of his own pages is one of the worst charlatans that ever 
lived; they had Toynbee interpret and rewrite history in such fashion as specifically to 
supplant Spengler's cyclic theory of cultures with Toynbee's half-baked nonsense; and 
then they — the whole liberal establish ment, especially of England and America -- gave 
Toynbee such favorable publicity and such a terrific build-up as no other historian, not 
even the socialist H. G. Wells, has ever enjoyed before. The result has been that today at 
least one thousand people are familiar with Toynbee's history, and have even read a few 
pages of it, to each one who has read Spengler and knows what he tried to say. 

Those who are familiar with the way in which Stalin won out in his contest with Trotsky, 
in the years 1924 to 1929, will recognize the similarity of the technique used. Stalin, who 
was in complete charge of all media of communication in Russia during those years, 
never actually suppressed, nor even refused to allow to be published, any pamphlets by, 
or favorable to, Trotsky. He merely held the press run and distribution of all such 
pamphlets down to a few thousand, on the ground that the demand didn't justify any 
more; while pamphlets by himself or others, condemning Trotsky, were printed and 
distributed in huge quantities all over Russia. Incidentally, it is the same typically 
Communist technique which was used by the Fund For The Republic, when they printed 
and distributed thirty-five thousand copies of Erwin Griswold's straining pedantry in 
defense of the Fifth Amendment pleaders; and then printed and distributed one thousand 
copies of Dickerman Williams' answer to Griswold's nonsense, in order to show how fair- 
minded they were. 

But I am getting off the track. Which is that, due to all this huge buildup of Arnold 
Toynbee as a philosopher-historian, almost any American or Englishman who happened 
to take a notion, for some reason, to go digging into world history from a philosophical 
viewpoint — or just from sheer curiosity — would certainly turn to Toynbee, would never 
have heard of Spengler, and hence would have no chance to learn Spengler's ideas. And 
all of this introduction to those ideas has not been wasted, I hope. For it does emphasize 
this fact. Spengler's theory is absolutely fatal to the acceptance of socialism or any form 
of collectivism as a forward step, or as a form of progress, in man's sociological 
arrangements. For in Spengler's view collectivism is a disease of society, concomitant 
with decay, and remarkably similar to cancer in the individual. 

Basically, when you dig through the chaff and the dressing in Spengler enough to get at 
his thought, he held that a societal development which we ordinarily classify as a 
civilization is an organic culture, which goes through a life cycle just the same as any of 
the individual organisms which we see whole and with which we are more familiar. It has 
been many years since I have read Spengler, so I do not know how far I am wandering 
from his own specific or exact thinking, in trying to present his central theme. There is 



certainly more Welch than there is Spengler in what follows. But the easiest way to make 
the theme clear is to illustrate the life of a civilization as a parallel to the life of an 
individual man. 

You then find, that of the some twenty-one or twenty-two civilizations which we know 
enough about to discuss intelligently, some were struck down while in middle age and 
reasonable health, by an enemy, as was the Neo-Babylonian Civilization by Cyrus, for 
instance; just the same as an individual man might be shot by an enemy, or run over by a 
street car. Another, like the Carthaginian, never was able to attain its full normal growth 
and strength, because of the overwhelming competition, for sus tenance and lebensraum, 
of a too close, too powerful, and too greedy a rival, namely Rome — which must have 
been the case for many a man, in the barbarian settings of our evolution. And another, 
like the Assyrian, could almost be said to have died of a heart attack, it went to pieces so 
suddenly and so completely in the middle stage of an apparently successful and healthy 
existence. There were factors of weakness inside the body which caused it to drop almost 
exactly like a man whose heart suddenly kicks up and then quits altogether twenty 
minutes later. 

The real point, however, is this. An individual human being may die of any number of 
causes. But if he escapes the fortuitous diseases, does not meet with any fatal accident, 
does not starve to death, does not have his heart give out, but lives in normal health to his 
three score years and ten and then keeps on living — if he escapes or survives everything 
else and keeps on doing so, he will eventually succumb to the degenerative disease of 
cancer. For death must come, and cancer is merely death coming by stages, instead of all 
at once. And exactly the same thing seems to be true of those organic aggregations of 
human beings, which we called cultures or civilizations. 

The individual cells in a human body die and are replaced by new ones constantly. Only 
when and where cancer attacks a part of the body are the dead ones not replaced by new 
cells which contribute their share of strength to the body as a whole. The individual 
human beings in an organic culture die and are replaced constantly by new ones. But 
even if the culture escapes enemy conquest and accidents of nature and starvation and all 
the fortuitous diseases — such as the internal bleeding which almost destroyed Europe at 
the time of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War — death will still come eventually, 
and usually a lingering death, through the degenerative disease of collectivism. For 
collectivism destroys the value to the organism of the individual cells — that is, the 
individual human beings — without replacing them with new ones with new strength. The 
Roman Empire of the West, for instance, started dying from the cancer of collectivism 
from the time Diocletian imposed on it his New Deal. And while it was given the coup de 
grace by the barbarians a hundred and seventy-five years later, it had already been so 
weakened by this cancer that the city of Rome itself had been an easy prey to Alaric more 
than sixty years before its final fall. 

Now how really exact or how valid this parallel between the lives of human individuals 
and the lives of their well integrated aggregations may be, I don't know. I certainly do not 
have either the knowledge or the inclination to support whatever belief Spengler may 



have had that there was actually a biological compulsion for a social organism to follow a 
life cycle similar to that of the individual. But no such rigid crystallization of the thought 
is at all necessary. For whether fatalistically determined by biological principles or not, 
there is an analogy between the two which is inescapable. And even if it is nothing more 
than a useful analogy, subject to all of the flaws and possible exceptions which may mar 
any analogy, it leads automatically to conclusions which are devastating to socialist 
theory. For it is perfectly evident, right in the cases of the very civilizations that we know 
most about, that both the Greek and the Roman civilizations did perish of the cancer of 
collectivism, and that the civilization of Western Europe is doing so today. 

Now it is even possible to establish a fairly accurate time ratio for this analogy or 
parallel. It runs about twenty to one. In other words a civilization fourteen hundred years 
old would be at the physical stage in its life cycle, roughly, of a man of seventy. And with 
that yardstick in mind we can now come at last to take the look at Western Europe which 
I have been trying to make worth while; and after that the look at America which is the 
real goal of all this preparation. 

The civilization of Western Europe arose out of the ashes of the Roman Empire of the 
West. If we try to establish any approximation to a birthdate, the analogy becomes 
sloppy. For actually the parallel is much closer to that of an oak tree which has been 
felled, but which still scatters acorns that sprout long afterwards. But if we still stick to 
the analogy of a man nevertheless, we might consider that, after a long gestation period, 
an entity which could eventually become Western European Civilization was born in the 
time of Charlemagne. The boy had reached the strutting, stick-throwing stage at the time 
of the Crusades; the stage of growing intellectual curiosity in the Renaissance; the stage 
of youthful adventure in the ocean explorations of the fifteenth century; and then three 
centuries, or the equivalent of fifteen years for a man, of the most solid accomplishments 
of a hard-working, hard-thinking middle age. 

None of these comparisons will quite hold water, and I don't know whether Spengler 
could have postulated some that would or not. But after all shortcomings of the allegory 
are recognized, the fact remains that Western Europe of the last half of the nineteenth 
century was remarkably similar to a man of some sixty-five years of age who had led an 
extremely busy life of great stresses and strains, but an extremely successful life, 
nevertheless, of mental growth, physical accomplishments, and material acquisitions. The 
old man had weathered every danger, had stood all the bludgeonings of fate, and had 
come out, at that age, with a tremendous accumulation of knowledge, experience, 
material possessions, and prestige among his neighbors — the other civilizations or 
societal organizations of the rest of the planet. 

In fact, in my amateurish opinion, the last half of the nineteenth century A. D., like the 
first half of the sixth century B.C. before it, was the high-water mark up to its time of 
human civilization, accomplishment, and hope for the future. And it was Western Europe 
which made that last half of the nineteenth century the period of the highest level to 
which man has yet climbed in his struggle to reach an enlightened and humane life. 



But, as so often happens for the individual, by the time Western Europe had the 
knowledge, the wealth, and the ability to get the most out of life, it was ready to die. The 
truth is that, by a cycle which seems inevitable whether it is a biological reality or only an 
analogy, Western Europe was worn out. And under those circumstances the degenerative 
disease of collectivism, the cancer of social organizations, began its peripheral 
infiltration. 

Not only the early beginnings of the disease, but the certainty of its slowly increasing 
ravages, and the eventual fatal effect of its ultimately advanced stages, were clearly 
visible to the genius of Herbert Spencer as early as the middle of the century. And by the 
time Bismarck, forming that alliance of the autocratic top of society with the greedy 
masses at the bottom, which is so commonplace in history, began to crystallize the 
nebulous theories of the Marxists and other modern socialists into the welfare legislation 
of Germany of the 1880's; by that time the disease was starting to eat its way further into 
the body in disastrous fashion. Its ravages continued, increased, and spread, until today 
Western Europe is so sick and weakened from the collectivism in its body and veins that 
it can never recover. 

This doesn't mean that, in the normal course of events, Europe will soon become a 
desolate waste, while the monuments of its former kings lie toppled and forgotten where 
the lone and level sands stretch far away. Even when an individual is dying of cancer, 
there are periods of apparent recovery or improvement, and even times when some 
organs of the body seem as strong, healthy, and invulnerable to the disease as ever. Also, 
I must emphasize again that there are many points -- such as the doubtful transmissibility 
of cancer itself to individuals, through either contagion or environment -- at which there 
are apparent flaws in the analogy which would take more time than we can spare here to 
put in their proper light. And sticking to the historical parallels for the minute, rather than 
the biological one, it is clear that even hundreds of years after the fall of the Assyrian, 
Neo-Babylonian, and Persian civilizations in the Tigris-Euphrates stretches of Western 
Asia, the subjects of the Sassanid dynasty and other lesser offsprings of those once great 
civilizations led lives that were perhaps happy, and that certainly were important to 
themselves. I am sure that, likewise, it will be a long time before the lizards run 
undisturbed over the toppled ruins of the Arc de Triomphe, or London Bridge is allowed 
to fall, unreconstructed, into the waters of the Thames. 

But our analysis does mean that the entity which was Western Europe; the social 
organism which was so closely knit and so well integrated despite its national boundaries, 
languages, and jealousies; the Western Europe whose parts were so intertwined that 
Napoleon of France could marry the daughter of the Emperor of Austria to help one of 
his brothers to rule Spain and another brother to rule Holland; the Western Europe which 
could spare the strength to spread its pioneers to colonize the uninhabited lands, and its 
pukka sahibs to bring civilized rule to the settled natives, on all the continents of earth — 
that Western Europe of the nineteenth century can never come back. It is either dying 
before our eyes, or is already dead. For the vigor of its muscles and the strength of its 
whole body have been sapped beyond recovery by the cancer of collectivism. 



Now, lest I seem to be putting too much dependence in an analogy which is full of holes, 
let me just very briefly make a more matter-of-fact approach towards the same 
conclusion. For regard less of any organic cycle which may be involved, it is perfectly 
visible and incontrovertible that the rugged pioneer settlers of a new land want as little 
government as possible; that as the new society becomes more settled, as population 
grows, as commerce and/ or industry increase, as the society grows older, more and more 
government creeps in. And then, because demagogues find it to their personal advantage, 
they use trickery, persuasion, and bribery of the people with their own money, to make 
the rate of in crease in the quantity and reach of government far greater than the rate of 
increase in either the population or the justifiable need for government. So that by the 
time any society which has been so originated and fashioned has reached a thick 
population, comparative wealth, and considerable age, enough government has already 
been imposed on the people to constitute the beginnings of collectivism. 

This happened to the people who settled the islands and founded the city states of Greece. 
It happened to their descendants who settled the Italian peninsula and founded the Roman 
Empire. It happened to their spiritual descendants who built the Western European 
civilization. And it is certainly happening to their descendants who founded and have 
built the American Republic . 

With the next inevitable stage, after advanced collectivism has destroyed the vigor of any 
such society — which is its break-up into feudal units and the accompanying serfdom — 
we are not concerned here. But what we are concerned with is the time usually involved- 
in these successive developments. It is this question of the speed of the movement around 
the arc, from pioneer to serf, or of the various stages of the movement, to which this 
whole present discussion has been leading. And purely for the sake of simplicity and 
clarity, I hope you will let me go back to my analogy, even if you now regard it only as a 
figure of speech. 

For the whole point is that the Greek civilization was at least many centuries old — that is, 
many centuries removed from its pioneer days — before Pericles started it on the road to 
death, at the very height of its glory, through making the government increasingly 
responsible for its citizens, instead of its citizens being responsible for, and watchdogs 
over, their government. Rome was already over a thousand years from the days of 
Romulus and Remus when Diocletian's reign signalized the advance of collectivism 
beyond the point of any possible re covery. Western Europe was, by a most conservative 
method of figuring its age, at least eleven to twelve hundred years old before the disease 
of collectivism began to bring it to its deathbed. Or we even know enough today to go 
back in the other direction, where we find that the first Babylonian civilization also was 
at least a thousand years old before collectivism had become sufficiently prevalent for 
Hammurabi to formalize it as the New Deal of his era. 

Now — in view of all of that, take a look at what has happened to America. It's true that 
the same thing has also happened to most of the other former British colonies, such as 
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but that is not our concern here; and there was a 
little more justification for it anyway, because they remained more closely tied to 



England. But the United States was not only a new and completely independent country. 
It was, by any measure of appraisal, the seat of a whole new civilization. 

There are few parallels in history more striking than the way Italy was settled by Greek 
pioneers, who simply took over from the aborigines already there, and developed the new 
nation and new civilization of Rome, and the way America was settled by pioneers from 
Western Europe who developed a new nation and a new civilization here. In its earlier 
centuries America not only did not regard itself as a part of the European organism at all, 
but became fiercely proud of its differences from Europe, and of its indigenously 
vigorous customs, culture, and destiny of its own. The American civilization was every 
bit as much of an entirely new and different civilization from the old and ancestral one of 
Western Europe, as was Rome a new civilization distinct from Greece. 

And this American civilization, at the turn of the present century, was only three hundred 
years old. It had the strength and vigor and promise of a healthy young man in his late 
teens. There was no reason on earth for any such organism to be attacked by, and start 
succumbing to, the cancerous disease of collectivism at that stage of its young manhood, 
with its whole lifespan of accomplishment before it. And any of the natural or fortuitous 
attempts of the disease to get a foothold in the American social body — such as the virus 
implanted by Edward Bellamy with his Looking Backward , or by Upton Sinclair with his 
Jungle, or even the more pretentious concoctions of Thorstein Veblen — would have been 
so easily repulsed by the strong and growing organism that none of them would have left 
even a scar. 

But we have the cancerous disease of collectivism firmly implanted now, nevertheless. 
We have people feeling that nothing should be done by them, but everything for them, by 
the government. Its disastrous ravages are quite far advanced. And we have it, basically, 
because of too long and too close an as sociation with a parent that was dying of the 
disease; that was old enough and weakened enough for the virus to be rampantly active 
throughout this parent's whole environment. 

When Woodrow Wilson, cajoled and guided even then by the collectivists of Europe, 
took us into the first World War, while solemnly swearing that he would never do so, he 
did much more than end America's great period of happy and wholesome in dependence 
of Europe. He put his healthy young country in the same house, and for a while in the 
same bed, with this parent who was already yielding to the collectivist cancer. We never 
got out of that house again. We were once more put back even in the same bed by 
Franklin D. Roosevelt, also while lying in his teeth about his intentions, and we have 
never been able to get out of that bed since. 

In the meantime, the closer our relationship with this parent civilization has become, and 
the more exposed to the unhealthy air and the raging virus of the sick room we have been, 
the sicker and more morbidly diseased has the patient become. Until now, there is a 
tremendous question whether, even if we did not have the Communist conspirators 
deliberately helping to spread the virus for their own purposes, we could recover from 
just the natural demagogue-fed spread of that virus when it is already so far advanced. 



With the Communists skillfully using and encouraging the disease as a means of 
weakening us, the outlook leads ever more irresistibly to despondency and despair. And 
we simply cannot overlook or underrate the prevalence of this disease in our vitals — 
entirely aside from the way the Communists agitate the affected parts and make the 
disease worse — in any sound thinking or constructive plans for the future of America. 

But — if I thought all hope were gone I wouldn't be here, and neither would you. Let's 
leave the Communist disease-carriers out of the picture for a minute. I knew a man who, 
when he was around fifty, and still otherwise a very healthy fifty, was found by the 
doctors to have cancer already far advanced in one side of his jaw. They took that side of 
his jaw, and practically half his face, right away from him at once. And when I first got to 
know him, at least ten years later, he had a very peculiar looking face, it is true; but 
otherwise he was a grand example of both mental and physical health for a man of sixty- 
five; and he was very happily teaching his lifetime subject as a professor at one of our 
most famous universities. Probably all of you have known some what similar cases. And 
it is certain that in those very rare cases where a healthy young man of twenty-five does, 
in some way, contract cancer, a sufficiently accurate diagnosis and sufficiently drastic 
surgery can restore him to health and enable him to go on and live out a normal, active, 
successful and happy life. But it can't be done by half measures. 

Now what I have been trying so long and so hard to say comes to this. We have got to 
stop the Communists, for many reasons. One reason is to keep them from agitating our 
cancerous tissues, reimplanting the virus, and working to spread it, so that we never have 
any chance of recovery. And stopping the Communists is the most urgently important 
task before us, which we are going to talk about plenty at this meeting. But even in 
stopping them, or in our efforts to do so, we cannot forget for a minute the disease which 
has enabled them to go so far, weaken us so much, and become so dangerous to us. Nor 
can we forget for a minute the imperative need of excising and stopping the disease itself, 
while we are stopping and after we have stopped the Communists, or we shall merely die 
a somewhat slower and more lingering national death than if we let the Communists 
destroy us in the first place. 

Push the Communists back, get out of the bed of a Europe that is dying with this cancer 
of collectivism, and breathe our own healthy air of opportunity, enterprise, and freedom; 
then the cancer we already have, even though it is of considerable growth, can be cut out. 
And despite the bad scars and the loss of some muscles, this young, strong, great new 
nation, restored to vigor, courage, ambition, and self-confidence, can still go ahead to 
fulfill its great destiny, end to become an even more glorious example for all the earth 
than it ever was before. It should be centuries from now before the natural time comes for 
the decline of America, and for the highest torch of civilization to be taken over by the 
rising newer nations to the West. But we do have to achieve the sufficiently drastic 
surgery; and that of course is a Herculean task. We shall return to a study of it when we 
come to the more positive part of this program. 



SECTION THREE 

And Deeper Still 

Now, gentlemen, in looking thoroughly and realistically at the danger to everything we 
have inherited, spiritual as well as material, and at the cause of that danger, we come to 
the second of the fundamental reasons for deep and basic anxiety. And putting that matter 
bluntly at once, the reason is simply loss of faith. Not just loss of faith in God and all His 
works but loss of faith in man and his works too, in his reasons for existence, in his 
purposes, and in his hopes. 

Now I know that there are still millions of devout Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants, 
and faithful Jews in this country who still believe unquestioningly in the divine truths and 
powers which their Bibles reveal to them, and whose conduct and relations with their 
fellow men are guided strictly by the precepts of their religious faith — or who at least 
feel that they have sinned whenever they have transgressed such precepts as understood 
by their consciences. I have hundreds of good friends in those categories, including some 
in this room. 

Let all of us thank whatever God we severally worship that there is so large a remnant of 
the really true believers still left. We honor them. We need their steadying adherence to 
the rock of reverence, and their aspiration of unwavering obedience to ancient and divine 
commandments. We desperately need their unshakable confidence in absolutes, in eternal 
principles and truths, in a world of increasing relativity and transitoriness in all things. 
We admire them. In fact, as will become more clear tomor row, the young man I admire 
most of all of those America has produced was a fundamentalist Baptist missionary 
named John Birch. My own obsession with this fight against the increasing forces of evil 
in the world, which — as already explained — has caused me to give up business career 
and income and any prospect of ever having any peace or leisure again during my 
lifetime, is due in large part to my admiration for John Birch; to my feeling that I simply 
had to pick up and carry, to the utmost of my ability and energy, the torch of a humane 
righteousness which he was carrying so well and so faithfully when the Communists 
struck him down. 

The true fundamentalists in our midst, whether Catholics, Protestants or Jews, are the 
moral salt of the earth — of an increasingly savorless earth where such salt is like a stream 
of clear water in a desert. And nothing I say now, nor any of the plans I outline 
tomorrow, is intended to question, weaken, or disturb any fundamentalist faith in the 
slightest; or to discount one iota its tremendous worth as a core of strength for all that we 
might hope to do. 



But — we must not let our admiration for, dependence on, and feeling of spiritual kinship 
with, the fundamentalists, blind us to the visible fact that their number grows smaller 
every year. Among the people literate enough and ambitious enough to tee activists in 
Europe and America; that is, among the leaders of all levels and in all segments of 
society, from a factory foreman to the chairman of a political party, whose total influence 
determines what gets done, what the masses think, and which way community, state, or 
nation moves on the ideological parade ground; among this ten percent or thirty percent 
of the population, or whatever the percentage may be, those who are honestly true 
believers, in a faith which most of them still profess, is an ever smaller minority. It 
becomes increasingly smaller with every senior class our colleges now turn out, with 
every novel of the Peyton Place or By Love Possessed type which the hundreds of 
thousands read, and with the impact of many of the television programs which millions of 
viewers see. 

What is far worse, fully one-third of the services in at least the Protestant churches of 
America are helping that trend. For the ministers themselves are not true believers in the 
Divine Names or the Divine History and Divine Teachings to which they give lip service, 
as they go through their conventional motions on Sunday mornings. Some have merely 
watered down the faith of our fathers, and of theirs, into an innocuous philosophy instead 
of an evangelistic religion. Some have converted Christianity into a so-called "social 
gospel, " that bypasses all questions of dogma with an indifference which is comfortable 
to both themselves and their parishioners; and which "social gospel" becomes in fact 
indistinguishable from advocacy of the welfare state by socialist politicians. And some 
actually use their pulpits to preach outright Communism, often in very thin disguise if 
any, while having the hypocrisy as atheists to thank God in public for their progressive 
apostasy. 

It may shock the Protestants among you to have all of these things said out loud, but you 
know in your hearts that they are true. It is also true that while later, perhaps slower, and 
not yet so far advanced in some of these cases, the same trend of worldly disillusionment 
and loss of true faith is visible among Catholics, among Jews, among Moslems, among 
Buddhists, and among the formerly devout believers of every great religion of the world. 

We must not only know the truth, but face the truth, if it is to set us free or to keep us so. 
And the fundamental truth of our times, gentlemen, as distinguished from the 
fundamentalist truth, is just this. Except for the diminishing number of fundamentalists of 
all religions, and the increasing but still comparatively small percentage of the human 
race which has fervently accepted Communism as a religion, all faith has been replaced, 
or is rapidly being replaced, by a pragmatic opportunism with hedonistic aims. And what 
a fall that is for a race which can boast of once having listened to a St. Augustine, a St. 
Francis of Assisi, a John Milton, or an Alfred Tennyson. The further and more specific 
manifestation of that fundamental truth is that in Western Europe and America today we 
are living in a spiritual vacuum , exactly as were the Romans after they had lost any real 
faith in their pagan gods and before the rise of Christianity. 



In the middle of the nineteenth century Lord Tennyson, with one of the greatest and most 
rational minds, at the very apex of the enlightenment achieved by the Western European 
Civilization, could still write with complete conviction: 

"Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day and cease to be: 
They are but broken lights of Thee, 
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. " 

Compare that with the acutely cynical flippancy of a current gem, which goes something 
as follows: 

"A life force afflicted with doubt, 

As to what its own being was about, 

Said: "The truth I can't find, 

But I'm creating a mind, 

Which may be able to figure it out. " 

And in that comparison you can see the magnitude of our loss, as to a base for our 
morals, our purposes, and our aspirations. 

For the next part of the truth we must face is that for the past several hundred years our 
morality, in Europe and America, was tied to a belief in the rewards and punishments 
delineated by Christian dogma; to the accepted commandments of a very real and very 
majestic deity; and to the desire of the true believer to become worthy of the love of an 
omniscient living God. The reality and earnestness of Christian faith was the foundation 
of our ethics, and the substance of our consciences. When Voltaire said that if God did 
not exist we should have to invent him, it was a very blasphemous remark but a very 
penetrating one, as to the dependence at that time of morals, humanitarianism, and 
purposes on what has since come to be called the anthropomorphic conception -that is, a 
God in whose image man himself was created. 

Now the trouble is that, in the minds of a vast majority of worshippers, their God had 
become too close, too concretely defined, and all the details of heaven and hell and of 
their God's creation and rule of the earth itself had become too vividly and too rigidly put 
in place. This whole framework of belief could not withstand the sheer facts and 
convincing rationalizations of the scientific revolution. When Herbert Spencer relegated 
his own Divine Being to the infinitely remote and impersonal classification of a First 
Cause, those increasing thousands of intelligent human beings who followed his 
convincing analyses found that the celestial palace they had built in their minds began to 
look empty, unnecessary, and perhaps ridiculous. And by the time Ernest Haeckel came 
to write his Riddle Of The Universe, that palace and all the foundations of dogma and 
doctrine which supported it were crumbling into tragic ruins. 

For our fathers and their religious preceptors had become too specific and too finite in 
their beliefs about the Infinite; too egocentric and almost patronizing in their adoption of 



a Deity as Himself somehow created primarily to be a Father to man. When I went to 
Sunday School in a country Baptist Church fifty years ago I was taught, with a huge chart 
on the wall to reinforce the teaching and emphasize its accuracy, that the world was 
created in 40C4 B.C. And I am sure that chart had been drawn, and those Sunday School 
lessons written, by good Christians who devoutly believed their own teachings. 

A religious faith had somehow come to rest its case in the minds of men on these and 
similar minute and unjustified projections of its more important certainties. As increasing 
knowledge of history and science made it more and more impossible for the intelligent 
mind to accept the projections, the more general and deeper articles of faith began to lose 
their hold as well. But these deeper articles of faith were, for most men, the straw with 
which were built the bricks of their consciences. Without this straw the bricks either did 
not get built at all, or were shoddy and insecure against the erosion of opportunism or the 
onslaughts of temptation. 

Through many centuries Christianity, despite all of its splits and schisms, supplied the 
fabric of morality for the whole Western World -- through its threats of punishments, 
promises of rewards, and the humanizing effect of its proffered love by and for a Divine 
Father. But despite all the billions of words that have been written to the contrary, that 
fabric is now pierced and torn and weakened beyond needed dependability. For a vast 
majority of those who proclaim themselves Christians today, and attend church services, 
do not really and literally believe in either the punish ments, the rewards, or even in the 
physical and biological existence of a Divine Father with any interest in their personal 
lives and actions. The momentum of a former belief, and the customs which grew out of 
it, still have great value. But the fabric is worn too thin to have its old effectiveness. 

Now please do not jump to any conclusions that I want to see Christianity denied, 
discarded, or even further weakened, in the slightest. Exactly the opposite is true, as I 
hope to make clear when we come back to this subject from the constructive side 
tomorrow. But I am not in favor of trying to reimpose all or any of the strands of a 
fundamentalist faith on those whose reason, whether right or wrong, has honestly told 
them that we cannot know such positive things about the Unknowable. For that would be 
like trying to tie the waves of the ocean together with ropes, or to confine them with 
fishing nets. 

But I believe there is a broader and more encompassing faith to which we can all 
subscribe, without any of us doing the slightest violation to the more specific doctrines of 
his own creed or altars of his own devotion. And I believe it is an ennobling conception, 
equally acceptable to the most fundamentalist Christian or the most rationalistic idealist, 
because its whole purport is to strengthen and synthesize the ennobling characteristics of 
each man and the ennobling impulses of his own personal religion. It is a conception 
which the Baptist John Birch, the Catholic Hilaire Belloc, and the agnostic Thomas 
Jefferson would alike have welcomed. And in the short time we can give to so mighty a 
subject, in this particular program, I shall return to it tomorrow to the extent necessary for 
its place in my immediate proposals. What I am trying to do now is merely to make a 
realistic appraisal of our weaknesses, because without doing so we can only dissipate our 



remaining strength in trying to build fortifications and temples on sinking mud or shifting 
s and. 

For not only is this loss of reinforcing faith in the cement of our morals a weakness in 
itself of immense significance, but like all of our weaknesses it has been pounced upon 
by the Communists, and used and made worse by them with great skill and determination 
for their own purposes. When an individual American, or any other human being, sees 
himself as no longer responsible to a Divine Being, but as merely a living accident, not 
connected in any way with cosmological purpose, it becomes far easier for him to make 
his decisions about his own life and actions entirely on the basis of his temporal comforts 
and the earthly desires of his own personality. If he is the kind of man that wants 
financial success for the ease, or leisure and travel, or the prestige which it supposedly 
brings (and sometimes does), he is not going to buck Communist pressures in any way 
that will endanger that success or handicap his progress. If he is imbued with ambition for 
power, he is more readily incline- 1 to get on the Communist bandwagon, if that seems to 
be the surest road to power (as it certainly does to a great many Americans today). The 
Communists are able to use this lack of moral stamina among their enemies in a thousand 
ways to make their own progress easier and the conquest of those enemies more rapid. 

The most terrible result of this collapse of the rock of faith on which our morality was 
built is the rise of the amoral man — of which the usual Communist himself is the most 
illustrative example. For an amoral man, like Stalin, is infinitely worse, from the point of 
view of a humanitarian civilization, than an immoral one like Hitler. An immoral man 
may lie, steal, and murder; the worst of them even without any seeming limit or 
hesitation. But it hurts his conscience. He is, at least potentially, susceptible to 
humanitarian or moral considerations, to some extent, and if they are present cogently 
enough to him. There is even the possibility always that he may sometime, or in some 
ways, repent and make what amends he can for his crimes. An amoral man, however, has 
simply wiped out his conscience, along with any reason for its existence He is not 
immoral, even when performing cold-blooded mass murders, because to him there is no 
such thing as either morality or immorality. There is only the pragmatic consideration of 
the advantages or disad vantages to himself, for his own personal desires or plans, in any 
action — whether it be the building of a monument or the murder of his wife. And these 
amoral men, the products of a materialistic and sophomoric disillusionment, who have 
not yet gone on in their thinking to deeper and more permanent truths, now stalk in our 
midst in greater numbers than ever before in history. Such men, among the Communists, 
and they are plentiful and highly placed, have no real dedication even to Communism. 
They regard it merely as an expedient means to satisfy their personal ambitions more 
nearly than would an other star to which they might hitch their wagons. 

But on our own side of the fence, among the millions who either are, or pretend to be, 
non-Communists, the amoral man, who has no slightest inner concern with right or 
wrong, is one of the greatest causes of our constant retreat, and one of the greatest 
dangers to our survival. And he doesn't wear any label. He usually lives up to the 
appearance of excellent morals, because it is expedient for his purposes, and you will 
usually find him in church on Sunday morning, maybe even a Catholic church. But as a 



member of the United States Senate, running for the presidency, and smart enough to 
know the strong Communist support behind-the-scenes which he will have to get in order 
to have any chance of being nominated in 1960, such an amoral man can do a tremendous 
amount of ball-carrying on behalf of the Communist aims here in the United States; and 
he can do an almost equal amount of damage to anti-Communist morale in other parts of 
the world, by his well-publicized speeches against Chiang Kai-shek or in favor of the 
Algerian rebels. Or an amoral man, as the head of a great so-called Republic, may have 
no slightest scruples or concern about its fate or the fate of other nations, in the face of 
Communist conquest and of the cruel tyranny of their rule. And any similarity of 
characters in this story to any living persons is not coincidental. 

As to the more normal run of men, whose consciences have been weakened but not 
abolished by their loss of faith, I tried to cover the various ways many of them are 
converted into Communists, or are made to do Communist bidding, by many different 
kinds of appeals, pressures, and proselytizing, in an article entitled Why People Become 
Communists . There are reprints of it in the little packets for each of you that I brought 
with me, and I hope that those who have not already read the article may be willing to do 
so. For the answers given there, although put together by such an amateur as myself, have 
been passed on by experts like J. B. Matthews as being authentic. And these reasons why 
apparently sane and normal Americans join up with the Communists give a part of the 
present picture which it is important for us to keep in mind in connection with all that we 
plan and do. But we couldn't take time to go into that complex field here, even if I had 
not already covered it to the best of my ability in the article which is available. 

For the chief point of this whole present section of our discussion is a more general one. 
It runs parallel to the main point in connection with the extent to which the cancer of 
collectivism has weakened and endangered us. It is that, as important and absolutely vital 
as our stopping the Communists has become, and as much as our loss of moral fiber is 
now deliberately made more rapid and more damaging by the Communists for their 
present and future purposes, even throwing the Communists completely out of the picture 
would not stop the fatal deterioration in our sense of values which is now in process. 
Besides the short-term job of eliminating the Communist danger — and Herculean as that 
job may be, it has to be done in a short term or it can't be done at all — we have the 
equally important longer-range job of ending this mass psychological flight towards 
amorality; and of restoring convincing reasons for men once again to strive to live up to 
moral and humanitarian ideals. Otherwise, there is no chance of saving our Christian- 
style civilization from self-destruction; and it will merely go down to chaos, and the 
ultimate serfdom of the weak under the strong, more lingeringly than if it is destroyed 
and its once free members are enslaved by the Communists. 

But whereas stopping the disease of collectivism is a matter of honest diagnosis and 
drastic surgery, this equally gigantic problem is one of restoration rather than of removal. 
We have to find something to live for, gentlemen, that is greater than ourselves, or we 
surely fall back from the semi-civilized level of existence, which man has laboriously 
achieved, into a moral jungle and its inevitably concomitant intellectual darkness. I tried 
to put the picture of where we are heading in a sonnet to my good friend Alfred Noyes 



about a year ago — and fortunately a few months before he died. Because it summarizes, 
as concisely and as expressively as I know how, the outlook I have been trying to define, 
I am asking your leave to read it at this point. 

TO ALFRED NOYES 

As after Rome, now once again the drapes 
Of ignorance and bigotry and lust 
May close upon the scene. Insentient dust 
Will bury the forgotten stage. And apes 
Who know not man, his glory and his dreams, 
His wish to be more worthy of his God, 
Will stalk the earth and wield the brutal rod, 
And stamp upon each tiny light that gleams. 
Amid the dull collective monotone 
Of universal serfdom will be lost 
The memory of song and singer. Prone 
And helpless, soon, upon the rubbish tossed, 
Will die the Muse. Let us rejoice to own 
This one great poet more before the holocaust. 

And it is not only the muse of poetry that will die of abuse and neglect, if man's loss of 
faith in there being anything in the universe worth while except his appetites is permitted 
to continue. But we do not have to let it continue. Before our very eyes lie all the 
incentives man needs to set him back on the road of striving towards moral perfection, 
true intellectual greatness, civilized relationships, and eternal hope for a still better and 
greater future, which seemed to him to be such natural goals a hundred years ago. 
Making those incentives understood, and giving contemporary man a renewed faith in 
himself, in his destiny, and in a still greater God than was recognized and worshipped by 
his ancestors, is a task for myriads of dedicated individuals over generations of time. We 
can only contribute all we are able to its proper beginning. But without such a goal and 
purpose all of our efforts simply to stop Communism, or to destroy an ephemeral 
conspiracy of gangsters, are not only doomed to failure. Even if successful they would 
but postpone the days of darkness for our children, for their children, and for a race of 
men that once knew the light. 

We shall return to the constructive side of this need and this undertaking in the morning. 



SECTION FOUR 

An So, Let's Act 

Now, gentlemen, let's start retracing our steps. We began by looking at the actual 
scoreboard of the Communist advance; and by seeing clearly, I hope, how very far that 
advance has already gone and how imminent and horrible is the danger of the physical 
enslavement of the whole world, including ourselves. We then went on to the two basic — 
and related -underlying problems and dangers which threaten us more slowly, but with 
results which would be just as fatal. 

We come now to the question of what is to be done about these problems. Because we 
should take first things first, and the Communist threat certainly has priority as a danger 
to be faced, we are going to discuss, probably for the rest of this afternoon, a proposed 
action program against the Communist conspiracy. And so that you will not think I am 
entirely crazy, let me point out my awareness of the fact that some parts of this program 
would require resources and organization utterly beyond anything now available to us. 
Raising such resources and building such organization is not only a necessary part of the 
program itself, but certainly one of the most difficult. Do not think, on the one hand, that 
I have some magic wand for bringing such resources and organization into existence; nor, 
on the other, that the job has simply been ignored. We have to be realists in this war, or 
we are wasting our time. And a realist does not run away from parts of a problem or close 
his eyes to them because they are the most difficult parts. 

So we'll come to that subject in due course, with the results of at least a lot of thought that 
has been given to it. But we can't cover everything at once. I hope, therefore, that you 
will be willing simply to put to one side, temporarily, this question of where resources 
and organization would come from, while we consider strategy and tactics for the fight 
itself. 

Now the very first thing we must realize is that there is no easy formula possible, nor 
brilliant scheme devisable, for beating the Communists. Communism is not like a poison 
to which you simply find the antidote. Its present power and extensiveness has not been 
created by some grand formula that swept the world, but by the sum total -- by 
integration, in the mathematical sense -- of an almost infinite number of details done well 
from the Communist point of view. There has been brilliant control and coordination, by 
central authority, of the efforts of millions of men who have been brought, by one means 
or another, to dedicate themselves, body and soul, to separate tiny pieces of the job. 

As a result of this forty years of cumulative effort, the conspiracy is now incredibly well 
organized. It is so well financed that it has billions of dollars annually just to spend on 
propaganda. It has the benefit of decades of successful experience. It has one set goal, of 
world rule by any means, to which every act and all of the lives of some forty million 
Party members are now wholly subservient. And it is guided by men who had to have 



supreme cunning and ruthlessness to have achieved their present positions within the 
conspiracy itself. 

This octopus is so large that its tentacles now reach into all of the legislative halls, all of 
the union labor meetings, a majority of the religious gatherings, and most of the schools 
of the whole world . It has a central nervous system which can make its tentacles in the 
labor unions of Bolivia, in the farmers co-operatives of Saskatchewan, in the caucuses of 
the Social Democrats of West Germany, and in the class rooms of the Yale Law School, 
all retract or reach forward simultaneously. It can make all of these creeping tentacles 
turn either right or left, or a given percentage turn right while the others turn left, at the 
same time, in accordance with the intentions of a central brain in Moscow or Ust' 
Kamenogorsk. The human race has never before faced any such monster of power which 
was determined to enslave it. There is certainly no reason for underrating its size, its 
efficiency, its determination, its power, or its menace. 

But — there is one basic consideration of tremendous importance which we must keep 
always in mind. This is that Communism has been imposed, and must always be 
imposed, from the top down, by trickery and terror; and that it must then be maintained 
by terror. In other words, at least ninety-five percent of all the human beings, on both 
sides of the Iron Curtain, do not want Communism. The job is not to unsell a majority 
from something they want or think is good for them, but to enable a preponderant 
majority to resist and refuse something they do not want. Truth, reality, human instinct, 
and the overwhelming weight of human desire are on our side. We have these points in 
our favor, against a conspiracy which must depend on falsehood, cunning, and terror, 
utilized by less than five percent of the total population. To feel that we cannot win that 
struggle is a form of pessimism to which I, for one, shall never yield. 

In fact I know , from compulsions of human behavior which history makes clear, that the 
human race will throw off this tyranny just as surely as the Greek world, led by Athens, 
threw off a very similar tyranny imposed by fascist Sparta; or as the French people, in a 
much more minute parallel, put an end to the reign of terror which was the climax of the 
French Revolution. The question is when ? How far and how long will the Communist 
conspiracy keep moving forward successfully, before it is over thrown and scattered to 
the winds of history? How deeply and irrevocably will we have been infected and 
ravaged by the disease of collectivism, in the poisoned air of which Communism thrives, 
before the ghouls have been routed ? How much of the free world can still be saved from 
the horror of the Communist seizures ? Or — and this is entirely likely, gentlemen — even 
if the Conspirators reach a precarious moment when they seem to have the whole world 
in their grip, how soon thereafter can the thin shell of terroristic power be blown to bits, 
and how much of our civilization saved from damage beyond repair ? 

These questions do not lead to defeatism. Nor do they lead to optimism, except of a long- 
range, patient, and most resolute variety. But they do lead to a realization that this war 
against the Communist tyranny not only must go on, but will go on, with us or without 
us, until that tyranny is finally overthrown. The socialist ideology may eventually destroy 
our whole civilization, through erosion and stagnation — though I think even that can and 



will be prevented. But the criminal activists headed by the gangsters in the Kremlin will 
not survive to survey the damage they have done. Of all the examples of the "big lie" 
which the Communists have told to forward their purposes, the biggest is the lie by 
Khrush chev that history is on their side. Exactly the opposite is true. 

We have here a so-far highly successful attempt of cunning power-seeking murderers, 
using a fraudulent ideology as a cover and excuse for their crimes, to impose a most 
brutal form of slavery on the whole world. And this development is so contrary to the 
recurrent trends of sociology, is such a rare exception to the halting but general 
movement from savagery towards civilization, that only twice in all recorded history has 
there been anything like it. One was the drive of the Lycurgean fascists, headed by 
Sparta. The second is the drive of the Marxian Communists, headed by Soviet Russia. 
Neither is anything more, when viewed in long perspective, than a dirty boil on the 
surface of history. But a bad boil is not only extremely painful while it lasts. It can 
become dangerous and damaging if not lanced in time. The question is how soon the 
strength and the determination can be gathered to pierce this festering boil . 

What I have chiefly intended the questions above and this brief introduction to lead to, 
therefore, is the realization that we are not tossing a coin which either comes down "win" 
or "lose"; that every effort we undertake, every battle we fight — even if we lose it — and 
every sacrifice we make is cumulative. Every bit of dedication to the cause is worthwhile. 
The most important consideration is to get the most possible effectiveness out of all 
efforts, all sacrifice, and all dedication, so as to speed the day when the cumulative total 
of anti-Communist resistance finally overcomes their always overextended framework of 
their control. 

Obviously the place for us to begin is in the United States, for two reasons. First, because 
it must be our more earnest hope and goal to break out of this straightjacket, woven of 
pretense, deception, audacity, and terror, before it completely encompasses ourselves. 
And second because the American sup port of the international Communist conspiracy is 
now the backbone of its strength, and has been for many years. If and when we can reach 
the point of turning just the American government from actively helping the Communist 
conspiracy everywhere in the world, we shall have won a most important battle in the war 
ahead. 

For this purpose we need to do everything we can which will directly affect the actions 
and decisions of the men in government; to enlighten and slow down those on the other 
side. But the one ultimately sure way of achieving this reversal is to awaken enough local 
leaders among an apathetic American people, before the continuous brainwashing by the 
Left makes it impossible, to the point of generating public pressures that will force the 
slowdown and reversal. The amount of work required to do that, in the face of the way 
the cards have been so painstakingly stacked against us, is something to contemplate. 
And yet there is nothing but work and more work, thinking and more thinking, dedication 
and more dedication, which will do the job. So now let's look at the job itself. If I were 
the "man on the white horse" on our side in this war, which is still political and 
educational rather than military ; if I had sufficient resources available and sufficiently 



accepted authority over one million ded icated supporters — out of at least five times that 
many militant anti-Communists who are already enrolled in, or contributing to, hundreds 
of ineffectual "freedom" groups -- so that I could coordinate the activities of those million 
men and women with some degree of positiveness and efficiency approaching the 
coordination by the Communists of their members and fellow travelers; if, though 
recognized as the leader for the sake of positiveness of direction and coordination of 
effort and resources, I still had the dedicated advice, council, help, organizing ability, and 
executive know-how offered by the ablest men in America among the staunch anti- 
Communists whom I could gather around me; if I had this kind of realistic force with 
which to fight the Communists, here are some of the things I would do. 

1. First we would establish reading rooms, somewhat similar to the Christian Science 
reading rooms, but small and inexpensive, in just as many of the cities, towns, and 
villages of this country as we could, just as rapidly as we could. They would be manned, 
utilized, and promoted in every feasible way by volunteers who were local members of 
our organization. The space would either be contributed, or would be obtained at a very 
low rental. And there are men and women, including young men and young women, in 
every community in America today, who are just looking for some way like this, within 
their circumstances, to help our cause. Some of them do not really mean the question, 
"What can I do ? ", but many of them mean it with all their hearts. And they are the very 
ones we would have in our fold. 

These reading rooms would serve as rental libraries also, but with very strict rules and 
limitations on the taking out of books, so as to avoid too much loss through Communist 
sabotage. They would be extremely selective instead of exhaustive as to the books 
available. And in this connection let me point out that the January, 1959 issue of 
American Opinion will be given over entirely to a listing, under the heading of Old Books 
And New Reviews , of one hundred books, with just one or two review paragraphs about 
each. Our introduction will state that for any good American who really wants to know 
the true history of events and developments of the past two decades, these books alone or 
even a majority of them will constitute a complete education in that field — which they 
will. I can name for you today, out of people whom I had never heard of in 1952, convert 
after convert to the anti-Communist crusade, and now among the most indefatigable 
workers in that crusade, who were aroused and be came converts, after first reading May 
God Forgive Us, by then determinedly obtaining and reading all or most of some fifty 
books which I listed in the back of that one. So I know there is a need for such a 
pamphlet as the January issue of American Opinion and that it can do some good. 

But the reason I brought that matter up here is that those hundred books, so far as they are 
available, will be the nucleus of the stock of these reading rooms. And, since Communist 
pressures have caused the original publishers to allow so many of these valuable books of 
true history to go out of print, after first small editions, I am delighted to be able to tell 
you that a good friend of mine, Lyle Munson of The Bookmailer, already has the little 
company founded and the physical arrangements made for bringing any and all of these 
books, for which there is any reasonable demand, back into print in inexpensive editions. 
He has, in fact, already put out Major Jordan's Diaries , which had been out of print and 



almost impossible to obtain, in a two-dollar edition. He can and will do the same for 
Arthur Bliss Lane's I Saw Poland Betrayed , for George Creel's Russia's Race For Asia , 
and many others if and when we or anybody else need them in any reasonable quantity. 

We would have these hundred books or most of them, and others, in these reading rooms. 
We would, of course, have all of the best anti-Communist periodicals there. And we 
would see that plenty of proselytizing fervor was shown in getting people to read both the 
books and the periodicals. There are countless enthusiasts in our cause today, deeply 
patriotic and deeply disturbed but frustrated by not knowing what to do, who would 
welcome such ammunition and direction. 

How many books each of these reading rooms would have, especially which books, and 
under what arrangements, would of course have to be tightly controlled from 
headquarters. 7 

2. Second, since getting the truth about both recent history and current events into as 
many hands and heads as possible is so important, we would see that the circulation of 
the conservative periodicals was expanded as rapidly as it could be done without too 
much waste. 

Now this is not an effort to promote the magazine, American Opinion , except as such 
concern is purely incidental and necessary to the whole presentation. We do think we 
have an increasingly professional magazine, which will gradually appeal to a much larger 
audience. In American Opinion we try to avoid eggheadism, and lay it out straight, as to 
both news and opinions, so that he who runs may both read and understand. We believe it 
can do an increasingly effective job for the anti-Communist cause, because of the 
tremendous amount of work put into having its pages present a true picture of what is 
happening, and because American Opinion is designed to reach and appeal to the 
ordinary American instead of any special group. 

But what we are talking about here is the importance of obtaining a much wider 
readership for all of the worthwhile conservative publications, of which A merican 
Opinion is only one. All of them should be in those reading rooms mentioned above. I 
believe that in most cases the subscriptions could be handled by, and the money for the 
purpose obtained by, the local volunteer groups running those reading rooms. But there 
are many other fertile fields which should be sowed. 

For instance, I think that National Review especially, because it is aimed so 
professionally at the academic mind, should be in every college library in the United 
States, and if possible in every fraternity house. I think that the Dan Smoot Report , 
because it is fairly short and is quite suitable to pick up for reading during fifteen minutes 
of waiting time, should be in just as many physicians" and dentists' offices as possible. 
And while the American Medical Association has now been "took, " to the extent that we 
could not count on any direct help there, the American Association of Physicians and 
Surgeons8 still under aggressively anti-socialist leadership, has fifteen thousand 
members, most of whom are not only highly respected leaders in their profession, but are 



also actively concerned as individuals in stopping the socialist advance. I believe that this 
association's headquarters might furnish us the names of members who would faithfully 
keep the Dan Smoot Report displayed in their waiting rooms, just as fast as we could find 
the money for the subscriptions. I think that with the proper organizational follow-up we 
might soon have a lot of these physicians and surgeons paying for subscriptions 
themselves. And I think that a great deal could be done through this association and its 
fifteen thousand members, once they found out we had strength and meant business. 

For a further illustration, I think that both Human Events and American Opinion, which 
complement each other very well, should be put in barbershops, from which we obtained 
firm written promises to welcome these publications and keep them on the reading tables, 
just as fast and extensively as we could find the money. Incidentally, Human Events not 
only feels also that we complement each other well, but for this reason is willing to join 
us in offering bulk subscriptions to the two periodicals together at a reduced price; and 
American Opinion is, to the best of my knowledge, the first and only magazine with 
which they have been willing to join in such a combination offer. We should have such 
bulk combination subscriptions taken by business firms for their executives and some or 
all of their salaried employees as widely as possible — and again as rapidly as possible. 

With the metropolitan press and big circulation general periodicals not only largely 
denied to us, but in many cases either consciously or blindly promoting the Communist 
line, we need to use every feasible channel to get more of the truth over to more of the 
American people. And expanding the reach of the publications I have mentioned is just 
one of many ways of doing it. Also, there is another major and entirely different way of 
expanding this reach which I have not even touched on here, because I feel we have 
given enough time to this subject. 9 

3. We would do everything we could to support, maintain, increase the number of 
stations used, and widen the audiences of, such radio programs as those of Fulton Lewis, 
Clarence Manion, and dozens of more localized broadcasters throughout the country. 
This would take the form of encouraging sponsors by both patronage of their products 
and letters of approval; of praising stations and networks for carrying such programs, to 
offset the constant barrage of complaints and pressures they get from the Left Wing; of 
getting together groups to hear such broadcasts and inviting to those groups the 
uninformed or mildly interested who might be made active workers in the cause; by 
helping to raise money when absolutely necessary to keep such programs on present 
stations or get them on more; and in many other ways . 

In Springfield, Massachusetts, there is a radio commentator named Hubert Kregeloh, who 
also teaches at one of the local junior colleges — and also, incidentally, is one of the 
associate editors of American Opinion . A few years ago he was probably the most 
popular news commentator in Western Massachusetts on television as well as radio. He is 
a solidly conservative strongly anti-Communist analyst of the news. The Left Wing 
succeeded in running him off the TV screens for good, by organized and detailed 
pressure on his sponsors of almost un believable rottenness. They then went to work to 
get him off radio, by pressure on both his sponsors and the radio station, WSPR. It 



worked to the point that he has not had a sponsor for three years, and the radio station 
management has made it clear that they wish they could get rid of him. But three years 
ago a group of patriotic citizens in the Springfield area organized what they call the 
Committee For American Treatment Of The News. Without any tax exemption to help 
them they have raised the money every year, to pay him the necessary minimum for his 
services and to pay outright for his radio time -fifteen minutes every weekday. So Hubert 
Kregeloh is not only still on WSPR, and not only has an excellent following, but I believe 
the influence of his program and his following may have been a main factor in causing 
that mealy-mouthed "modern Republican, " Congressman John Heselton, to decide not to 
run again after several terms in Congress. Now what was done in Springfield can be done 
by local groups in a great many other places in the United States, if they are given 
examples of success elsewhere, encouragement, inspiration, and guidance. What is even 
better is that in some of these cases, at least, we should be able to help to find commercial 
sponsors for such broadcasters, and to make the sponsorship a paying proposition so that 
they would not think of dropping the program. We would thus permit that same anti- 
Communist money to be used for other purposes. To this end, direction and coordination 
would be extremely important. 

Of course we should also get commentators and programs favorable to our cause on 
television, as soon as and to whatever extent we could. But despite the grandiose plans I 
am outlining here, gentlemen, I am still trying to be as practical and realistic, with regard 
to what I think is actually possible of achievement, as I can. I know the fantastic cost of 
television programs. So let me point out that I do not think any early extensive use of 
television by us would be either a wise utilization of resources against other possibilities, 
nor even necessary. 10 

For television is a quick and powerful medium. But its separate impacts are glancing 
blows of little depth, compared, let us say, to that of a great book which can be read again 
and again and which leaves an indelible impression and resolution in the mind. Also, 
television is tuned to, and aimed at, the masses. Now up to this point anyway, the masses 
of America, as distinguished from the opinion-molders, and despite all of the 
brainwashing that has been attempted so far — the masses are still instinctively with us in 
opposition to Communism. 

How much longer this will be so, in the continued current course of events, it is hard to 
say. But at the present time it is far more important for us to try to reverse the direction of 
the molding of the opinions of men who read and think and study and are themselves 
opinion-molders, and for us to try to make going along with the Communists less 
opportunistically attractive to leaders of little conscience, than it is for us to beat our 
brains out in too hurried and too ambitious a direct attack on a mass wall we cannot 
budge. 

We have to reach and rebuild this wall of mass opinion in time, of course, because it has 
already been eroded by, and yielded too much to, the philosophy of collectivism and 
welfarism. But it is still a bulwark on our side of the front, in the more immediate war 
against the Communist conspiracy. And our best bet is simply to try to keep it from being 



eroded further. Which leads us naturally into another step of this concerted program. It is 
still a prosaic step, against one or two that are somewhat more dramatic, to be suggested 
presently. But the Communists miss absolutely no bets or channels; and neither should 
we miss any that are in our practicable reach. So: 

4. We would institute the organized planning and control to make full and effectively 
coordinated use of the powerful letter-writing weapon that lies so ready at hand. 

The Communists boast that they can now land fifty thousand individually written letters 
in Washington, on either side of any subject, within seventy-two hours. Actually that is 
not too startling an accomplishment. We could make it look like peanuts, with the million 
truly dedicated and controlled supporters who constitute the hypothesis — though merely 
an hypothesis — of this part of this discussion. There should be a continuous 
overwhelming flood of letters, not just to legislators or the executive departments in 
Washington, but to newspaper editors, television and radio sponsors, educators, lecturers, 
state legislators and politicians, foundation heads and everybody else whose opinions, 
actions, and decisions count for anything in the ultimate total actions and decisions. Such 
an outpouring of mail would give more courage to a lot of people who would prefer to be 
more clearly on our side, and would at least slow down the brazen advance of some of 
those on the other side. Let me give you an illustration. 

A few months ago United Airlines started a movement, which could have had 
tremendous psychological and propaganda value for the internationalist Left-wingers, by 
putting the insignia of the United Nations on their planes, with the words "We believe" 
under the insignia. And in this case a spontaneous letterwriting campaign, with the only 
organization or inspiration of the campaign coming without any coordination whatsoever 
from a few small right-wing groups and individuals, was able to force United Airlines to 
back down completely and publicly admit that they had made a mistake. This in itself 
would have been significant enough, but there was one angle to it, completely 
unpublicized, which made the results more striking. This was that United Air lines 
backed down, and took the UN insignia off their planes, despite the fact that Paul 
Hoffman, Gardiner Cowles, and Eric Johnston are all members of United Airlines board 
of directors. This shows what letterwriting can do, even against determined and 
entrenched opposition. 

Also, there would be an advantage in continuous, organized letter-writing campaigns of 
an entirely different nature. It would give the members of our local chapters and 
volunteer groups just one more activity, one more thing to do, by which they knew they 
were accomplishing something and being effective for the cause. For this very reason, 
among others, the letter-writing of sub-groups should not be left to the haphazard or half- 
hearted following by the members of hopeful pleas or suggestions. It should be definitely 
planned, directed, and the amount and promptness of participation constantly checked 
and evaluated by a central headquarters or director. The biggest of all organizational 
mistakes is to set up a local group for some continuing purpose, exhort them to do a good 
job, and then leave them alone to do it. It is the leadership that is most demanding, most 
exacting of its followers, not the one which asks the least and is afraid to ask more, that 



achieves really dedicated support. We are presupposing here an initial faith and 
dedication which should be constantly strengthened by a man's straining efforts to live up 
to what is expected of him and to live up to the promise he has made to himself. Letter- 
writing, of a different order of planned continuity and volume than anything attempted 
before -except on a somewhat more sporadic scale by the Communists themselves — 
letter-writing of the kind that builds opinion exactly the way single grains of sand build a 
whole barricade; this is only ' one, but a still important one, of the disciplined activities 
by which we would keep a million men working every day, adding small increments of 
strength to the anti-Communist side, for every bit of the time and energy they could 
devote to the cause. 1 1 

5. We would organize fronts — little fronts, big fronts, temporary fronts, permanent 
fronts, all kinds of fronts. One of the greatest weaknesses and mistakes on the 
conservative side has been that almost all of the organizations, real ones or just letterhead 
outfits, have been put together for general purposes. The Communists have been far 
smarter. They would never think of setting up publicly, for instance, a Committee To 
Promote Communism. 

It is too general. Yet we have several leagues against Communism, and others just as 
vague in the fronts they present. 

The most effective fronts, on either side, are ad hoc committees, aimed to accomplish, or 
at least publicize, one particular purpose. The Communists have some long-range fronts, 
large, permanent, adequately staffed, of which the Committee For Aid To Foreign Born is 
probably the oldest, largest, and strongest. But they have or have had hundreds of such 
fronts as the Committee For Clemency For The Rosenbergs, or the Committee To 
Publicize The Report Of The Seven Ministers, which had no permanence, no staff, and 
frequently no organization except on the letterhead. Some one or more Communists had 
simply been assigned the job of getting the necessary names and putting on that particular 
show — or of getting some gullible non-Communist to do so. 

Now on our side probably the most effective of all the organizations has been the 
Committee Of One Million, devoted specifically to the job of keeping Red China out of 
the United Nations. It has helped a great deal in keeping Red China out so far. And, as is 
true in the case of all good fronts, well run, its influence has spilled over helpfully in 
many ways. We have some smaller fronts, such as ORFIT — an organization for repeal of 
the income tax — which have probably accomplished more, in proportion to the money 
and effort spent, than many of the larger organizations of conservatives. For it had and 
has a specific named purpose. 

But on our side we are surfeited with organizations which have the general purpose of 
fighting Communism, or the general purpose of promoting free enterprise or of 
preserving constitutional government. Some of them have done a lot of good. They will 
never stop the Communists, however, and they are not examples of the use of the front 
technique. Of course fronts alone aren't going to stop the Communists either. But enough 
of them being constantly organized — for this purpose, that purpose, and every kind of 



purpose — some fading out and new ones coming in all of the time, can bother the 
Communists, can occasionally put them on the defensive, can bring more of the 
uninformed and previously indifferent but patriotic Americans into the fight, and can help 
our cause in many ways. Again, let me try to make my point clearer, and to make it more 
easily, by suggesting a few examples. 

A. C ommittee For Withdrawal Of Recognition . 12 This is one we would set up as soon as 
possible; a permanent, adequately staffed, front, actively engaged in mobilizing, 
publicizing, and guiding so as to make effective, all possible sentiment for with drawal of 
diplomatic recognition from Russia and the satellite governments. This committee would 
keep up a constant expounding and repetition about the reasons for withdrawal. And it 
would be able to find enough supporters, both individuals and organizations, which the 
press could not entirely ignore, to get at least some worthwhile free publicity from papers 
which would prefer to ignore it. 

B. An example of fronts at the other extreme, as to size and permanence, which we would 
set up, might be a Committee To Protest The Firing Of Medford Evans . And gentlemen, 
don't be afraid of long names for these fronts. Such names, showing ex actly what the 
committee is for, help to bring onto the letterheads and into the roll of active supporters a 
great many people who would take no interest whatsoever in an activity of a more 
general nature and with a more vague description, even as ably directed a one as the 
Campaign For The Forty-eight State s. Now the Communists and their allies and dupes 
are always shouting about academic freedom. They have arranged several nationally 
publicized tantrums in educational circles when college professors with Communist 
records have been dismissed. But they have been quietly causing professors who oppose 
the Communist line to be eased out of jobs wherever they can. They have made it hard 
for such conservatives to get jobs. And they have used this pressure and threat 
unhesitatingly to make anti-Communist professors, who are still on faculties, tone down 
their anti-Communism or abandon the fight altogether. 

Now Medford Evans is being fired — officially he has been told that his contract will not 
be renewed next June — from Northwestern State College in Louisiana for no other 
reason than his uncompromising stand against Communism. This can be shown 
conclusively to the satisfaction of any reasonable man, even a college professor. (A bow 
to Dr. Oliver. ) In fact, as of now the Leftists behind this deal, apparently making a 
puppet out of the weak-kneed college president, seem to want it known that Dr. Evans is 
losing his job because of his anti-Communism — again as a warning and threat to others 
like him. 

It is a long story, in which some of the left-wing forces at Harvard seem to be definitely 
involved, and I'll not go into the details. But Medford Evans' scholarship is unquestioned. 
He is an excellent and popular teacher, as shown by the enrollment in his classes. And he 
is a fairly well-known writer for conservative publications. Also, he has friends, both 
inside and outside of academic circles, all over the United States. The president of the 
college has shown by both actions and words that he feels him self on very unsure and 
awkward grounds, in carrying out orders or yielding to pressures which come from others 



than himself. I believe that, if Medford were willing, and especially if we had the 
letterwriting strength available as referred to above to support such a front, a Committee 
To Protest The Firing Of Medford Evans could attract enough support to make quite a 
cause celebre out of the affair, to make this small college and its smaller president look 
sick, and to throw quite a scare into some others contemplating doing the same thing. A 
few similar actions would slow down some of the brazen squeezing out of conservatives 
from teaching jobs, and give new courage to those that remain. 13 

The front business, like a lot of techniques the Communists use, can be made to cut both 
ways. And we would not have to be worried about their greater numbers smothering us, 
either. We are talking about a million men, by which of course I mean men, women, and 
girls and boys of college age or old enough to be in the fight. And while nobody realizes 
better than I do the tremendous work and strain and dedication on the part of increasing 
numbers that will be required to recruit such an army, they are there just waiting to be 
recruited if we can get the story to them. And I hope to convince you tomorrow that my 
plans and thinking on this score are at least just as realistic as is any other conceivable 
undertaking by which we might save ourselves from Communist enslavement. We 
already know that the whole job is of Herculean proportions, but so must be our efforts. 
So please let me proceed on my hypothesis for the time being. 

And the Communists do not have a million men to work with in this country, even 
including their fellow travelers and active dupes. For some non-Communist-sounding 
united-front efforts, in which Communist participation is not easily recognizable, it is 
estimated that they can muster just about one million useful workers. But for fronts with a 
visible Communist slant, the reservoir they have to draw from is far less than that. It isn't 
numbers we have to worry about in this connection, but the courage on the part of our 
followers to stick their necks out and play rough -- the same as the Communists do all of 
the time -- and that courage will come too with gathering strength. 

With such fronts as A Petition To Impeach Earl Warren , (and I think we could get the 
names of a hundred outstanding leaders from the South and many from the North on the 
letterhead right now); a Committee To Investigate Communist Influences At Vassar 
College (headed by Vassar graduates, of course); and Women Against Labor Union 
Hoodlumism (which would pick up the individual stories of husbands injured, cars 
wrecked, houses damaged, families terrified, in the strike at Kohler and others like it, tell 
those stories from the women's point of view and show the suffering they caused wives 
and mothers); with these and dozens of new fronts popping up to attack the Communists - 
- or persons, institutions, and movements giving aid and comfort to the Com munists — 
we can certainly keep this whole front operation from being so one-sided, as it has been. 
We can stop letting the Communists have the whole effective use of this weapon 
practically by default, and what's more, we can use the noise and turmoil to help to wake 
up a lot of people to the fact that there is a deadly fight going on of which they had been 
blissfully unaware. 14 

C. A part of this same operation is the gathering of petitions; local petitions, national 
petitions, dealing with political matters, economic matters, educational matters and 



everything under the sun. This is something else for local workers to do which, in its 
cumulative effect, is of considerable importance, and which would utilize the available 
time and energy of such local workers in a way which not only would be worth while, but 
which they could sense was worth while if the planning and use of these petitions were 
thought out and carried through with sufficient care. 

Right now, for instance, a Petition To The Air- line Pilots Association To Grow Up might 
find a very responsive reception. I am sure it would with you gentlemen, with both major 
airlines which serve Indianapolis now on strike. 

As the preamble to this petition would point out, in the friendliest possible language in 
which such a charge could be stated, here is a group of men all professionally trained, all 
well paid, and all in responsible jobs of a level to make them admired by the public, who 
by the union tactics of their Association are bringing themselves down, in the eyes of the 
public, to the level of one of John L. Lewis' Mineworkers Locals. These men must have 
the professional competence of, and considerably more knowledge than, the ship captains 
of older days. They should have the same respect for themselves and retain and enjoy the 
same respect from the public; not deliberately put themselves in the same category as 
chauffeurs and truckdrivers, no matter how admirable, and how necessary to our 
economy, chauffeurs and truckdrivers may be. 

It is obvious that some strong leftwing influences have seen a good strategic opening, and 
have crept into the Airline Pilots Association in considerable strength. And it is unlikely 
that any such petition would cause them to be dislodged. Also, the petition would 
undoubtedly be resented by most of the members, even those opposed to the strikes in 
which they participate — or the strikes of other airline employees which they support. 

But the petition, with perhaps a hundred thousand signatures, even while they resented it, 
would make these members sit up and take stock of themselves, of their Association, and 
of the way it is being run. It would start a lot of people to thinking about the proper place 
of unionism in our lives, and about the important part our present commercial airline 
pilots would play in any future war and the significance of leftwing influences so busily 
at work in that area. It also well might, as a more direct result, force those leftwing 
influences to be considerably more circumspect and cautious for quite a while . 

Or let's take one more example from the opposite end of the drawer. The time will almost 
certainly come when that postponed next summit conference will again be brought to the 
fore. At such a conference in 1959 or 1960, when Eisenhower will have the noisy 
backing, from a far more leftish Congress than we have ever had before, for even more 
drastic appeasement of and surrenders to the Communists, the blow to any remaining 
free-world morale might well be final and fatal. Just as soon as the wind of such a 
forthcoming summit conference started to blow, we would launch the gathering of one of 
the most gigantic petitions of all times. My present feeling is that we should pick up 
Alfred Kohlberg's brilliant line and head this petition simply as fol lows: Please, Mr. 
President, Don't Go! It is just possible that we could get ten million signatures and stop 



him from going no matter how strong had been the original intentions of his advisers . 
And what a blow to the continued Communist parade of success that would be! 

But the possible use of petitions is fairly obvious. Goodness knows the Communists have 
proved their subtle value and effectiveness. We ought to outdo the Communists at least 
two to one at that game, until we finally make petitions so overabundant and 
commonplace that they cease, for a while at least, to be a useful technique for either them 
or ourselves. So let's go on to another step. 

6. Another thing we should do, and one badly needed, would be to start shocking the 
American People — or an increasing percentage of the more literate and more intelligent 
who have not yet been completely brainwashed — into a realization of what is happening; 
into a dawning realization of how far and how completely Communists and Communist 
influences have crept right into communities, institutions, and activities where the general 
public does not have the slightest suspicion of such infiltration. The best way to do this is 
by exposure, which is why the Communists just had to get rid of McCarthy, and went to 
such extreme lengths to do so. 

No committee we might set up, of course, would have the subpoena privileges or other 
Congressional powers of McCarthy, which makes our job far more difficult. And it 
would, for a while anyway, be vain to count on either of the remaining investigating 
committees of the House or the Senate. Their files are already bulging with important 
evidence about individual Communists which has not been used and is unlikely to be 
used. The Communist political pressures have become so strong and so devastating, and 
the Supreme Court's decisions have so hamstrung the actions of these committees, that 
they hardly dare even LE through the motions of hearings of this kind any more. 

But, admitting the difficulties, some really dramatic exposures would be worth a lot. And 
it is b cause we must have a medium of publication, for a lot of things which the regular 
press would at pre sent be unwilling to touch, that I have put so much work into 
American Opinion , have seen the magazine as such a necessity, and cannot help coming 
back to it just briefly here. 

We could count on some help from the other reputable right- wing publications, of 
course, because goodness knows we should be and would be helping them enough. But a 
medium which is not subject to the editorial ideas or the financial and personal con 
siderations of anybody else is a necessity. And getting its readership and reach large 
enough for it to pack a noticeable wallop is also a necessity. 

For an article exposing some public figure as a Communist, in a magazine reaching five 
thousand subscribers, even though many of them were quite influential, could and 
probably would be ignored by the Communists, and the effect of the article would be 
smothered by this energetic looking-the-other-way. But if the same thing were in a 
magazine reaching two hundred thousand subscribers, ignoring the charges would be out 
of the question. So please allow me to make a circulation of one to two hundred thousand 
for American Opinion a part of my hypothesis for the minute, and go on with this 



question of administering some shocks to the public. Let's make what we are talking 
about clearer by an illustration. There is the head of one of the great educational 
institutions in the East (not Harvard, incidentally) whom at least some of us be lieve to be 
a Communist. Even with a hundred thousand dollars to hire sleuths to keep him and his 
present contacts under constant surveillance for a while, and to retrace every detail of his 
past history, I doubt if we could prove it on him. But — with just five thousand dollars to 
pay for the proper amount of careful research, which could be an entirely logical 
expenditure and undertaking of the magazine, I believe we could get all the material 
needed for quite a shock. Of course we would have to satisfy ourselves completely as to 
whether our guess had been correct, from the preliminary research, before going ahead 
with the project and spending that much money. 

But if we are right, and with the research job done and the material assembled which I 
think would be available, we would run in the magazine an article consisting entirely of 
questions to this man, which would be devastating in their implications. The question 
technique, when skillfully used in this way, is mean and dirty. But the Communists we 
are after are meaner and dirtier, and too slippery for you to put your fingers on them in 
the ordinary way — no matter how much they look and act like pros perous members of 
the local Rotary Club. 

Now such an article might still be pretty much ignored by the general press, no matter 
how large our circulation. And of course we would be smeared by the liberals in every 
way they could contrive. For next to a woman scorned, hell hath no fury like that of a 
liberal about whom — or whose heroes -somebody has told the truth. But the smearing we 
would have to expect in due course, anyway, no matter what we did. And the article, even 
if by de rayed action, would have a powerful impact. A lot of the very people who joined 
in the smears would begin to wonder. Some of them would go back and read the article a 
second time. Others, never having read it, but hearing about it, would get a copy and do 
so. The softening process of wonder and doubt at work on the resistant minds of these 
liberals, and on the simply uninformed minds of some of the general public, would be 
getting those minds in condition for the next shock and then the next one to penetrate 
further. 

For what would make this particular initial and sample shock such a bombshell is, first, 
the extreme importance of this man in other fields besides education; and second, that 
almost nobody — except some of those on the same side with him, of course - suspects 
the guy. It was only a very minor but a very strange incident that happened to turn my 
surprised eyes, a few years ago, to watching what he said and did against this possibility. 
But once you do just that, long enough, there is less and less room left for doubt about his 
real purposes and accomplishments. Yet this man has on his board and administrative 
committees some of the ablest and most patriotic of Americans. Even a suggestion that he 
was a Communist, if that suggestion were backed up by enough details and facts to make 
it obviously worthy of consideration by any fair-minded man, would come as an absolute 
blockbuster, in a lot of circles besides the world of education. 



Incidentally, as I indicated just now in passing, one of the hardest things for the ordinary 
decent American to realize is that a secret Communist looks and acts just like anybody 
else, only more so; or that anybody he, the ordinary decent American, happens to know 
personally, could possibly be a Communist. Due to the fact that I was for two years 
chairman of the Educational Advisory Committee of the NAM, and came in contact with 
leading educators all over the United States, I have known the man under discussion for 
years and he is — for all outward purposes — one of the nicest men you ever met. Most of 
them are . 

Now what I have in mind, naturally, is following up one such bombshell with others. We 
might use this technique of complete articles in the form of questions, addressed to 
important figures in various divisions of our national life, whom almost nobody now 
suspects, in one issue of the magazine after another. We might call it our question series, 
and get a lot of people looking for the question article each time. It should go without 
saying that we would have to be sure enough of our own ground in each case to satisfy 
the most exacting sense of fairness. But I believe the whole series could have the desired 
effect of shocking a lot of people into a reluctant awareness of what goes on — even many 
of those who would resent and smear the articles most severely at first. McCarthy had in 
his camp, before he got through, a lot of the people who had smeared him most bitterly in 
the beginning -- in eluding that newspaper in Syracuse. 

As for the number of deserving and sufficiently important targets for the arrows of our 
series, gentlemen, don't let that problem cause you a second thought. Highly placed secret 
Communists, or at least workers for the Communist cause, is something with which we 
are absolutely loaded. And while proving that any one of them is or ever has been an 
actual Communist might be too difficult, or even impossible, proving that the same man 
is a worker for the Communist cause is a matter of the painstaking accumulation of a 
tremendous number of details, and then of selecting, merging, and compressing until you 
have the proper amount of material that yields the greatest explosive power per page. 

And there is another important reason for embarking on these exposures besides those 
that might first occur to you. Let's creep up on it by analogy for a clearer view. 

At the time of Pearl Harbor, and in the early years thereafter, it would have been 
absolutely fatal to Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Catlett Marshall for the part they 
had played in bringing on that catastrophe to have become known to the American 
people. By coercion on the one hand and rewards on the other, Roosevelt contrived to 
have perjury, postponements, decisions against the evidence, and every necessary means 
used, before or in connection with one hearing after another, to keep the truth from 
getting into the record. He refused to allow the courts martial demanded by General Short 
and Admiral Kimmel, to which they were clearly entitled, and he wrecked other service 
careers brutally and without hesitation, to keep the real facts covered up. For the real 
facts not only constituted plain unadulterated treason on the part of both Marshall and 
himself, but they would unquestionably have been so regarded at that t ime by a horrified 
American public Exposure at t hat tim e might have brought Roose velt's impeachment, 



despite the war, and would certainly have been disastrous to the reputations and future 
careers of both Marshall and himself. 

But now notice that less than ten years later, through publication of the books by 
Morgenstern, Kimmel, Admiral Theobald, and others, the true facts concerning Pearl 
Harbor were definitely established and made available for anybody who wanted to read 
them. And by this time, so far had effective public opinion in America been gradually 
eased towards the internationalist left, the Roosevelt-worshippers didn't challenge the 
facts at all. They took the position, instead, of practically admitting the facts, and of 
openly praising Roosevelt for having been so farsighted and such a courageous statesman 
as to have used this means of getting a united America wholeheartedly into the war; a war 
which was then prosecuted to such a glorious success, on behalf of the future happiness 
of the world under Soviet socialist leadership, as to make the loss of lives and ships at 
Pearl Harbor appear now as a picayune loss and a brilliant gambit. 

Well, gentlemen, I can assure you that the Communists and pro-Communists in 
Washington today, including those most highly placed, fully expect the same 
whitewashing of their deeds by the history resulting from those deeds. Right under our 
noses the Communists are gradually carrying out their plan of grand strategy, as already 
described, which is so to change the economic and political structure of the United States 
that it can be comfortably merged with Soviet Russia in a one-world socialist 
government. 

In this patient process they never expect you to be able to find the line, or for there ever 
even to be a line, on one side of which you can say clearly that the United States is an 
independent nation, and on the other side of which you would know that the United 
States was already just another Soviet People's Republic in the world-wide Communist 
empire — with the police-state features already closing in on us. But somewhere we reach 
the point — if the Communists are successful, as they now certainly expect to be — where 
all newspapers, all magazines, all radio and television commentators, all lecturers, and all 
historians will be constantly proclaiming the glories of this great one-world socialist 
government which has now brought peace (meaning subjection and slavery) to all 
mankind. 

Already, through their stooges like Milovan Djilas, who is supposed to be in disgrace in 
Yugoslavia, and Boris Pasternak, who is supposed to be suffering bitter enmity of the 
dictators in Russia, but whose books have thus been publicized — and, please note, helped 
by the Left Wing — to become best sellers in America; already through such books, 
which gullible Americans more readily swallow as true because of the supposed hatred of 
the authors for their respective governments, tens of thousands of opinion-molding 
Americans are more and more accepting, or finding less unbelievable, the thesis of these 
books that Communism itself is all right -in fact is a glorious system — and that all that's 
wrong with it is the character of the people now run ning the system. 

Already, in hundreds of other ways, the Communists are rubbing out or making more and 
more shadowy the lines of disagreement and the once sharp differences between our 



ways and theirs. The movement is smooth, widespread, continuous, insidious, and 
powerful. Already Communism and Communists — even with a record like 
Oppenheimer's -- become more and more respectable in this country; and outspoken or 
firmly uncompromising anti-Communists become more and more disparaged as fanatics. 
And so, already, it becomes less and less reprehensible for an American to be working for 
Communism, especially if he labors it international socialism, even though he commits 
treason to the United States in doing so. 

The top American secret Communists in this country, therefore, fully expect that by the 
time it is ever possible for anybody to bring out the fact that they have been working as 
secret Communists, instead of that action then being considered as hav ing been 
reprehensible, they will be praised for having, in courageous, farsighted, and 
statesmanlike manner, helped to speed progress and the wave of the future. Instead of 
having committed treason to the United States, they will have been carrying out a deeper 
and superior loyalty to an all-encompassing one-world ideal which included the United 
States. They know that the moral judgments of the future belong to the victors; and they 
are confident that the agreed-upon legend which becomes history will be written by 
themselves and their supporters. They are well aware of the thought which Sir John 
Harrington expressed: "For if it prosper, none dare call it treason! " 

Increasingly as we near that stage, therefore, exposure of secret American Communists 
will mean less and less. Again we see why destruction of McCarthy took precedence over 
everything else on the Communists' American agenda. For he was exposing treason while 
it was still treason, and when it really hurt their cause; whereas if they could only hold off 
such exposures for a few more years, bringing out the same facts and exposing the same 
men would not amount to anything serious anyway. 

Which brings us back to the step we are supposed to be discussing, of our own exposure, 
through publication, of present secret Communists, while it will still shock the American 
people and can have some real effectiveness. It would at the present time. For the 
important consideration would be to do these things, and bring out these facts, before the 
Communists were ready for them. If we do not start beating them to the punch on a lot of 
things we are gone anyway. 

Of course we would have to be prepared from the beginning for a lot of smearing, as I 
have already said; and possibly also, no matter how carefully our job was done, for a lot 
of nuisance libel suits. And we must face the fact that our courts have by no means been 
immune to Communist infiltration either. So that if the supposedly aggrieved parties 
could get their cases into certain courts, the libel suits might easily prove to have more 
than nuisance value. But it is to be remembered that libel suits also necessarily give 
added publicity to the charges, which is one thing we would be seeking and which the 
Left would be most anxious to avoid. 

Also, admittedly, the step proposed here is drastic. But this is no cream-puff war we are 
in, and the stakes involved are not those of a pillow fight. We have to face squarely up to 
the solid truth — that unless we are willing to take drastic steps, a lot of them, and very 



drastic indeed, we haven't a chance in the world of saving our lives, our country, or our 
civilization. And we might as well start reconciling ourselves to having our children — 
not just our grandchildren — live under the Kremlin's rule, as Mr. Khrushchev indirectly 
prophesied. 15 

7. The sequence of these steps means nothing except just the way I happen to be listing 
them. But this one is closely connected in purport to the one above. To keep from 
wearing you out completely, however, I'll cover it far more briefly. 

There are now dozens of slimy characters at loose in our midst, whom I'll call to your 
attention by describing one who is more or less typical. His usual name is Gordon Hall, 
though he also uses and has used many aliases. He and his fellow toilers for the 
Communist cause all follow the pattern more elaborately established by their more 
spectacularly successful archetype, Avedis Boghis Derounian, otherwise known as John 
Roy Carlson, author of the libelous book Undercove r which viciously smeared many 
good American patriots and sold several hundred thousand copies. 

In fact Gordon Hall worked for a few months for the same outfit that financed John Roy 
Carlson into fame. This was the so-called Friends of Democracy , run by Rex Stout, 
former editor of the Communist publication New Masses , and by the so-called "Rev 
erend" L. M. Birkhead. Gordon Hall was employed by them for the same purpose as had 
been Carlson: namely, to pose as a violent anti-Semitic, and pass out anti-Semitic 
literature to outspoken patriots; then, wherever he could find one nibbling at his bait, to 
follow it up, encourage the man's incipient anti-Semitism, or his susceptibility to the 
virus; and eventually to work the victim into a position where, under the prodding of his 
friend, Carlson or Hall, he said something or did something which could be exhibited as 
evidence of his anti-Semitism. From then on he was sure to be smeared sooner or later, 
by the outfit for whom Carlson or Hall were gathering this information, as fascist, anti- 
Semitic, and generally a rotten character in every way. 

Now it is true that any man who ever listened to these whisperings of hatred from Carlson 
or Hall was foolish, or worse. But a dislike for other races or creeds is a kind of 
unfortunate weakness to which human nature has a sad and too general vulnerability. It 
has been used by the Communists with tremendous energy, skill, and determination in 
America to stir up hatred and distrust among innocent people; between Gentiles and 
Jews; of Protestants for Catholics and vice- versa; of white people for colored and of our 
colored citizens for their white neighbors; and in a dozen lesser ways and opportunities. 
It's a rotten game. But the man who falls for it is not half as rotten as the man who 
promotes it. And most rotten of all is the agent provocateur, who stirs up this hatred 
specifically for the purpose of being able to accuse others of having yielded to it. 

Now this Gordon Hall I am supposed to be talking about — if I can keep from being 
carried away by my subject — has plenty of other unsavory stretches in his record. But he 
is very much at large, puts on a very respectable front, and is quietly but busily moving 
around making speeches somewhere almost every night — to Church Clubs, P.T.A. 
Groups, and similar small local audiences. And what he spews is subtle but deadly 



poison, carefully flavored to appeal to each different group in each different locality. He 
has recently been working New England, which is why I am using him for a sample. 

He begins, of course, by announcing that he is vigorously opposed to Communism and 
Communists, but --: We mustn't allow our fear of Communism, which has little practical 
basis anyway, to cause us to listen to people who, in fighting Communism, will do more 
damage to our ideals and our "democracy" and our wonderful American feeling of 
"brotherhood" than would the Communists themselves. And he then proceeds to make 
clear that these dangerous detestable people include practically everybody who has ever 
opened his mouth against Communism. 

In Western Massachusetts, for instance, we have several hundred subscribers to 
American Opinion, due to the fact that Hubert Kregeloh, the radio commentator on 
Station WSPR, of whom I told you earlier, is a regular contributor to our magazine and 
frequently mentions it on his broadcasts. So, to a P.T.A. audience of some two hundred in 
Springfield, Gordon Hall, after taking only a careful crack or two at Kregeloh himself — 
because Kregeloh was likely to have friends in the audience — then went on "regretfully" 
to make clear that his strongest real criticism of Kregeloh was that Kregeloh 
unfortunately had now got himself tied up with and was working for a real "hate" group 
in Boston, headed by Robert Welch. And he left no doubt that this Robert Welch in 
Boston was promoting hatred for all minority groups, and especially for those who 
believed in "democracy" and "brotherhood" and social progress; or that anybody who 
read my magazine ought to be ashamed of having such hatred-promoting trash in his 
possession. 

Gordon Hall then came to Boston and made several speeches, in which he never 
mentioned my name or let on that he had ever heard of me. For if he had even implied to 
one of these audiences that I was anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic or anti-Negro or anything 
else except Communists, or even in general terms that I was running a hate group, the 
chances are somebody would have got up and called him a liar — as he well knew. But he 
sawed plenty of wood just the same. And he is plenty smooth. 

One result of one of Gordon Hall's appearances in Boston would have been amusing but 
for its confirmation of the widespread impression he was creating so successfully. By the 
time he got through with this particular audience of good church members he had them 
believing exactly what I told you in my first paragraph about him above; namely, that the 
real danger was not Communism, but the bigotry and intolerance of the anti-Communists. 
I know, because a close friend of our family who heard him -and she is as fine a woman 
and as patriotic an A merican as you will ever meet — took it on herself shortly thereafter 
to give me something of a lecture on my attitude towards the Communists. She said this 
attitude was perhaps too harsh, and probably unfair to some people who were merely 
progressive. And her lecture was based, as she proudly informed me, on what she had 
recently learned from a wonderful speaker, named Gordon Hall — who was himself 
strongly anti-Communist, however, because he had said so several times in his speech. 



Now, as I pointed out in the beginning of this section, there are many of these birds 
racing around over the country, actually promoting Communism, by making the task of 
the anti-Communist more difficult, every night. And we could silence them with 
comparative ease. All it would take in Gordon Hall's case would be to send about three 
people to his "lectures" (but a different three each night), have them sit apart and show no 
connection with each other, and let each of them ask a question during his question-and- 
answer period. 

"Mr. Hall. According to this printed record, you once spent several months passing out 
anti-Semitic literature. Is that true ?" 

As soon as he finishes squirming out of this one, another questioner arises. 

"Mr. Hall. According to this announcement of your speech, obviously based on 
information you yourself gave the program chairman, you worked for a while for the 
XYZ Agency. But I have here a published statement I happened to run across, in which 
Mr. X says that you never worked for the XYZ Agency at all or in any capacity. Is Mr. X 
mistaken ? " 

For a speaker like Gordon Hall, before the kind of audiences which employ him, it is 
quite difficult to refuse to allow a question-and-answer period. Let the barrage indicated 
above go on for a few nights, during that period, and Gordon Hall may still be finding 
some other way to serve Communist purposes, but it will not be as a speaker, and 
probably not half as effective in its results. Stopping the damage done by speakers like 
Gordon Hall is not really too hard, if anybody cares. But there, as in so many other ways 
and activities, we are simply letting the Communists win by default. 16 

8. We would line up a large list of speakers ourselves, all over the country — and there are 
plenty available — who would be willing to speak to these comparatively small audiences, 
for small fees or no fees, not on Communism or anti-Communism in general, but on 
specific subjects; who could make speeches which thus would be informative and well 
received, but which could still carry a strong anti-Communist message. This, like 
everything else we are talking about, is a matter of planning, supervision, and control. 

Then we would go to work putting together the huge lists of church clubs, P.T.A. groups, 
and others who use such speakers, and start making known to them who was available on 
what subjects. Most of the speaker's bureaus and lecture agencies are not utilized by such 
groups to any great extent, because neither side can afford it. Which leaves the doors 
wide open for the Communists to send in their men or their friends. It's another game at 
which we ought to beat them hands down. 17 

9. Now this is certainly not intended to be a comprehensive list. If so, it would last for 
days; Not only have we barely started on the measures that need to be taken, energetically 
and promptly. When it comes to the number and variety of activities through which the 
Communists are ceaselessly working, we have hardly scratched the surface by the 
countermeasures suggested. But we have to be practical. And so, regretfully, I am going 



to skip any discussion of other actions, classifiable and nonclassifiable, defensive and 
offensive, which leap to mind, except for the two major categories of effort which 
complete this series. And those two I'll merely outline or indicate, because anything 
approaching proper coverage of either would take entirely too long. 

Ninth and current in this listing, therefore, would be our undertakings on the international 
front. For many reasons we would start extending our body into other countries, as soon 
as there were energy and resources which could properly be spared for that purpose. 

And please note that I said body, not organization. There is a huge difference, as I hope to 
make clear in the morning. An organization is a collection of individuals or groups held 
together more or less loosely and more or less temporarily by a common interest or 
common objective. A body, in the sense I am using it because it is the closest I can find 
to a word to express my concept, is an organic entity. 

The Americans for Democratic Action is an organization. The Catholic Church is a body. 
The Republican Party is an organization. The Communist Party is a body, which can 
move and work and make itself effective as an entity. We shall return to this whole 
thought and its importance in the morning. Let's leave it now that we would have our 
body grow across national boundaries as soon as we properly could. 

In the meantime other worthwhile goals would be the setting up, or helping to set up, one 
by one and very carefully, governments-in-exile out of the most respected and solidly 
anti-Communist refugees from the satellite nations. Or, if in some instances there were no 
refugee leader available in this country, with sufficient prestige and acceptability among 
his own people back home to justify his being made the head of a government in exile, 
we could serve the same purpose in those cases by establishing "revolutionary 
committees." 

If these leaders could be given, or helped to obtain, the core of an organization — and 
please note that, in connection with anything political, organization is the right word — 
then those governments-in-exile or revolutionary committees could put new courage into 
the hearts of millions behind the Iron Curtain. They are millions whose despair, largely 
brought about by the actions of our government over the past several years, is today one 
of the greatest assets of the Communist conspiracy. Such governments-in-exile would 
also be rallying points for a far more energetic opposition to Communist maneuvers and 
propaganda in this country, on the part of refugees who have become almost fatally 
frightened and discouraged since 1953.18 

10. Finally, and probably most important of all these courses of action, we would put our 
weight into the political scales in this country just as fast and far as we could. For unless 
we can eventually, and in time, reverse by political action the gradual surrender of the 
United States to Communism, the ultimate alternative of reversal by military uprising is 
fearful to contemplate. 



Now there is one thing to which any intelligent patriotic American might as well make up 
his mind at once. This is that the thorough and painstaking organization and work at the 
precinct levels, which wins elections, is not going to be done and can't be done by the 
Republican Party. It can be done in one state, under the personal leadership and 
management of a Barry Goldwater for his own campaign. It might have been done in 
California by Bill Knowland, if he could have got himself disconnected from his 
"modern-Republican" duties as minority leader of the Senate in time, and if he had known 
what he was up against. But it cannot be done nationally by the present Republican Party, 
nor by anything that can come out of the present shattered Republican Party in the 
foreseeable future. And it cannot be accomplished through the leadership, drive, and 
loyalty-inspiring qualities of any candidate for the presidency, because there simply isn't 
time between the conventions and the elections. 

This doesn't mean that the Republican Party cannot win elections, including possibly the 
next presidential election, please understand. It does mean that, especially if the 
Republican Party then stands nationally for any Americanist principles whatsoever, it 
cannot win unless it has strong help and backing from forces outside of the straight 
political organization — such as the Democratic Party has on the other side in Walter 
Reuther's Committee on Political Education. 

In my opinion, not even the Democratic Party, which, for all of its bitter internal splits, 
remains a far more disciplined and unified organization for campaign purposes than the 
Republican Party, can carry out any such precinct activities precisely directed at a 
national aim. There are too many local candidates and local issues for its precinct leaders 
and their bosses to think about. Which is why the most effective work towards one 
clearly defined national goal and policy is now being done by Reuther's COPE; and the 
Democrats are winning elections because he picks so many of their candidates, and they 
are the beneficiaries of his tremendous organizational reach and resources. 

We are at a stage, gentlemen, where the only sure political victories are achieved by non- 
political organization; by organization which has a surer, more positive, and more 
permanent purpose than the immediate political goals that are only means to an end; by 
organization which has a backbone, and cohesiveness, and strength, and definiteness of 
direction, which are impossible for the old-style political party organization. It is to be 
noted, and is extremely important, that the AFL-CIO under Walter Reuther's increasing 
domination is gradually being converted from an organization to a body , in the senses I 
have distinguished above. 

We would have to move into this field, gentlemen, with a body of our own. What's more, 
we would have to move ahead of Reuther in strength that can be applied to this purpose, 
as rapidly as possible. Nobody knows, and there is no way of finding out, how many 
millions of dollars Reuther spent in the last election, nor how many tens of thousands of 
precinct workers he was able to put on the job. But with a million men and the resources 
consistent with the dedication of those men which we are presupposing, we could move 
in on the elections thereafter with both more man power and more resources than Reuther 
will be able to marshal by that time. 19 



Fantastic? Of course it's fantastic. But everything I am talking is fantastic. We are living 
in fantastic times and a fantastic situation. The alternative to sufficiently fantastic 
measures and ef forts is a fate of fantastic suffering for our children, and the equally 
fantastic loss of a whole humane civilization that has cost countless sacrifices, 
immeasurable labor, and an infinite number of noble dreams across centuries in the 
building. We are in circumstances where it is realistic to be fantastic . I was careful to 
bring into this group only men of sufficient intelligence and imagination to understand 
that paradox. And tomorrow morning I hope to make the realism of this afternoon's 
hypothesis and these proposals at least as believable as is the almost unbelievable present 
power of the forces of evil arrayed against us. 

May you have a good dinner, a little surcease from such serious thoughts, and a good 
night's sleep in the meantime. 20 

Footnotes For The Fourth Printing 

7. We were not able to get this category of effort under way as early as we had hoped. 
But we do now have several of these reading rooms already functioning, with others 
being established in many areas. And we believe that after this slow start their number 
and usefulness will rapidly increase. 

8. The correct name of this excellent organization is Association of American Physicians 
and Surgeons. Since the paragraph identified by this note was written I have had the 
pleasure of speaking at an annual convention of the AAPS. There I learned that the 
figures as to its total membership are never given out; and that the number I have quoted 
is unauthorized and probably incorrect. I do not now remember just who gave me this 
information, but I do apologize to both the AAPS and our readers for the error as to both 
name and total membership. It is the only factual error, large or small, that anybody has 
yet been able to point out, anywhere in the Blue Book. But even one mistake is too many. 

9. We have not yet made as much progress in this category as we should have liked, but 
we have made some and are now steadily making more. The recent rapid growth in 
circulation and influence of our own magazine, American Opinion, is the most 
encouraging development in this field of activity. 

10. Of course where television programs "on our side" can be profitably supported by 
commercial sponsorship, as in the case of Dan Smoot's broadcasts, they are immensely 
helpful. What we are talking about in the indicated paragraphs are television programs 
which would have to be supported by voluntary contributions. And it is still our opinion 
that, as a general rule, such programs are too expensive against other beneficial uses of 
the same money — as for instance, in the radio broadcasts of Dean Manion, or Billy 
James Hargis, or Carl Mclntire, or several other great Americanists with a huge radio 
following. 

11. Naturally, this was the easiest category of effort in which to get started. And our 
members have done a tremendous job, in proportion to their numbers at any given time, 



in some fifty letter writing campaigns to date. Our most visibly successful effort, al 
though of relatively minor importance, was in making Newsweek Magazine back down 
and admit they had been completely wrong in a distorted article which they had run on 
the French Red Hand. Our most important impact has been in getting over six hundred 
thousand postcards and letters into the mails, opposing the second Summit Conference. 
(We believe our making obvious such extensive and articulate opposition to the proposed 
surrender of American interests, which had visibly been planned for this Summit 
Conference, had at least something to do with the abortion of the Conference that took 
place in Paris). Our most complete failure to date was in our campaign to get the airlines 
to put Human Events, or any truly Americanist periodical in the reading racks of their 
planes. But we have merely lost one round in that fight, and there is another one coming 
up. 

For a number of reasons which we believe to be sound, and al though we do sometimes 
undertake a barrage of letters to Congressmen or to a wider grouping which may include 
Congressmen, we devote only a quite small percentage of our letter-writing efforts to 
communications to legislators. We feel that usually, with our present size and at this stage 
of the fight, we can actually accomplish a great deal more by firing our letters as bullets 
at other targets on the total front. And maybe even that figure of speech is not too good, 
for about one-third of all our letters are laudatory of some leader or some action "on our 
side. " They are designed to give courage, and a feeling of being appreciated, to those 
who already are bearing the brunt of the battle against our collectivist enemies. 

12. This is a committee which we still very much want to set up. as soon as we can spare 
the time, energy, and resources to do so. 

13. This front was an excellent idea. Some of our friends put a lot of work into 
preparations to give it a great deal of impact. And we still do not know whether the chain 
of circumstances which caused our work to be abortive was accidental or smoothly 
planned by the enemy. But the story is too long to retell here. 

14. Our members have been the moving spirits in forming a considerable number of 
small "fronts, " some national but most of them local, which have been quite effective in 
connection with specific objectives. Our one large national front to date, however, and by 
far our most successful effort in this category, has been the Committee Against Summit 
Entanglements . 

This Committee was originally organized for the purpose of getting petitions signed and 
forwarded to the President, urging him not to go to the Summit Conference when it was 
originally scheduled for July, 1959. The Society had just got its first few chapters formed 
when the forthcoming conference was first announced in April, 1959. Nevertheless, we 
took up the plan out lined a page or two beyond this footnote marker, got all of the 
outside help we could, and went to work. By the end of July we had seventy thousand 
petitions being circulated (or already turned in with signatures), each one designed for 
twenty names. And we probably had about a million signatures available with which to 
bombard the White House with Please, Mr. President , Don't Go ! At that point it was 



announced that the Summit Conference had been postponed until November, after Mr. 
Khrushchev and President Eisenhower would have exchanged visits to each other in their 
respective countries. It was further announced that Mr. Khrushchev, visiting us first, 
would arrive in the United States around the middle of September. 

This seemed to us worse than the proposed Summit Conference itself. We immediately 
enlarged the Committee, and went to work to prepare copy, obtain the approval of the 
signatories, and raise the money for full-page advertisements in newspapers across the 
country, protesting and trying to stop the Khrushchev visit. Both a copy of that 
advertisement and a partial list of the papers in which it appeared are submitted in these 
notes. 

At that time we were still very small, and we had to work very fast. We believe that if, at 
the beginning of the campaign, we had been our present size, or if we had only two more 
weeks in which to build up the mushrooming protest, we would have been able to get the 
invitation to Khrushchev withdrawn. The time pressure in our then quite small office was 
terrific. At one point we had on hand what later proved to be about twenty thousand 
dollars which we were unable to use for three full days, because nobody could get to the 
job of processing the hundreds of small checks that were involved, so that they could be 
deposited. (We later sent an accounting, certified by a nationally known firm of public 
accountants, to every contributor for every dollar received). 

We were not able to stop Khrushchev from coming. But both our contributors and we 
ourselves felt that the effort had been very much worth while. For one thing, we brought 
home to millions of Americans, in a manner and at a time to get their attention, the real 
nature of this man Khrushchev and the significance of his visit. Our protest certainly had 
a great deal to do with the fact that his tour of our country, instead of being the triumphal 
procession which had been planned and expected, was so dismal a failure up until he 
reached San Francisco as to have caused him to threaten in Los Angeles to call off the 
whole thing and go home. (In his speech in Moscow, reporting on his trip immediately 
after his return, he paid his respects to our Committee by saying that he had been in the 
United States with mixed emotions because people had been putting large ad 
vertisements in the newspapers objecting to his visit. ) And our protest certainly had 
something to do with the fact that President Eisenhower called off his return visit, and the 
Summit Conference itself was postponed again, this time until May. 

Our next undertaking in this category, of equal size and im portance, is the recently 
begun movement to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren. While this movement has been 
started as a direct activity of the Society, with other patriotic groups asked to support the 
movement in all ways and to whatever extent they are willing, it will probably become a 
national front movement in due course, with members of The John Birch Society simply 
participating — to whatever extent they, as individuals, may wish — on exactly the same 
term s as anybody else. 

Also, here again, we have many purposes in mind. One, and most important, is actually to 
get Earl Warren arraigned by the House of Representatives. And since to say this is 



impossible is, in actuality, to say Communist influences are now already so powerful and 
so entrenched that we have no chance of turning them back, such defeatism is no part of 
the thinking or attitude of The John Birch Society. We merely recognize how big the job 
is, go right ahead working on it, and expect other good citizens to keep falling in line 
behind us. But at the same time we have expected the MOVEMENT TO IMPEACH 
EARL WARREN to serve as an extremely effective medium through which to educate or 
awaken huge numbers of our fellow citizens to the differences between a democracy and 
a republic, to the unceasing efforts to break our republic down into that footstool of 
tyrants known as a democracy, to the part this whole process plays in the plans of the 
Communists, and to the unceasing help Chief Justice Warren has given the Communists 
in those plans. And another purpose is to show Congress, in an impressive fashion, 
something of the feeling that exists against the Court's unchecked seizure of power at the 
expense of our legislative bodies. 

15. For the first eighteen months after the Society was founded we were entirely too busy 
to give any attention to American Opinion beyond what was needed to turn out a good 
magazine every month. And although our total paid subscription list has now doubled 
within the past six months, and our additional sale of special numbers and reprints has 
increased even more, we are still a long way from having the medium required for the 
kind of impact discussed in this chapter. 

Nevertheless we have made a start in the direction indicated, in our articles devoted to 
Cyrus Eaton, Harry Overstreet, and others. We haven't charged that any of these people 
are Communists, but we have laid it out straight as to how much their actions have helped 
the Communist cause. And we intend to continue turning our searchlight on similar hazy 
characters and their even hazier activities. 

16. We are still defaulting. And nothing shows more clearly how incredibly crowded we 
have been during the past two years. 

17. In some parts of the country our Coordinators and/or our members have made a lot of 
progress in this category of effort. And our Home Office has also been able to help 
materially in supplying speakers, tape recordings, film showings, and similar 
presentations for audiences .of all kinds. We are a long way from having the organized 
national service available as contemplated in this section. But we are making appreciable 
progress toward it, and helping out all we can in the meantime. 

18. We have already been under considerable pressure to start chapters of the Society in 
several foreign countries. We have authorized some people in some of those countries to 
use our material simply as a guide, in setting up some similar but entirely separate local 
organization. And we might, at some future date, absorb such organizations, if 
satisfactory in every way, right into The John Birch Society. But so far the sparing of 
time, energy, or resources, for international organizing efforts or even for a minimum of 
supervision of such efforts by others, has been out of the question. 



With regard to refugee groups in this country we have been able in some cases to be of 
some help and encouragement. And we hope to do a great deal more, along the lines 
projected in this section, as we acquire the necessary size and organization. 

19. In the 1960 campaigns The John Birch Society, as an organization, took no part. Our 
official job was to supply our members more information about, and a better 
understanding of, both men and issues, to the best of our ability. Each member then 
worked and voted entirely according to his own judgment and conscience. 

Unofficially and as individuals our members were quite active in the campaigns. I 
personally supported Goldwater for the Republican nomination. About two-thirds of our 
Republican and Independent members did the same, while about one-third supported 
Nixon. (We supplied a list of the Convention delegates, impartially of course, to them all. 
) After the Republican Convention neither the Society nor I personally took any position 
in the campaign. We merely pointed out in our bulletins, as objectively as we possibly 
could, what seemed to us to be the significance and the probable effect of various 
possible ways of voting in November — from simply staying home, all the way through 
the protest combinations, to voting either straight ticket. Most of us were not happy about 
the results, but there has been very little to make us happy, on the political scene in this 
country, for twenty-seven years. That's one reason why there is a John Birch Society, and 
why we hope to increase our impact tremendously on the political scene, through 
education of others and dedication of ourselves, in 1962 and especially by 1964. 

20. Near the beginning of this whole section we said: "Here are some of the things we 
would do. " In actual practice, as the Society and its work grew, we have found any 
number of specific jobs, and even whole categories of effort, not listed here, in which we 
could immediately be of some help, and perhaps eventually a lot of help, to the 
Americanist cause. It would take too much space to describe these efforts here, and at this 
point we certainly do not like to put ourselves in the position of book salesmen for our 
own wares. But for anybody who does have both enough money and enough interest 
simultaneously. The White Book of The John Birch Society for 1960 is available for five 
dollars. It is a bound compilation of all of our monthly bulletins issued during the year, 
and hence will give any reader a comprehensive view of what we were trying to do, and 
how, and why, during 1960. 



SECTION FIVE 

Under Positive Leadership . 



Yesterday morning we began with the scoreboard, showing the present level of 
Communist advance. Then we looked at the two underlying trends, the progress of the 
disease of collectivism and the loss of real faith, which in the long run could be more 
fatal than the onslaught of the Communist conspiracy. In the afternoon we began another 
look at the same things, with remedial action in mind rather than diagnosis. We outlined 
some needed steps for facing up to the Communist threat. 

This morning, in continuing that retracing of our footsteps, we come first to the cancer of 
collectivism; to the question of how to stop its further ravages, and how to restore the 
American body politic to good health, renewed strength, and as much promise for the 
future as is possible in view of the damage already done. And that, gentlemen, brings me 
to one of the basic purposes for which this meeting was called. It is one which I approach 
with great humility, but with no misgivings as to its necessity. 

For we simply are not going to be able to save our country from either the immediate 
threat of Communism, or the long-range threat of socialism, by organizational leadership. 
Our only possible chance is dynamic personal leadership. Let me begin with an 
illustration of the difference which also supports the argument. 

In 1952 I disagreed with Bob Taft on at least three of his ten most important political 
principles. Especially with regard to federal housing and United States Government aid to 
Israel I was diametrically opposed to policies he advocated. Yet I made twenty-five radio 
speeches for Taft, in the primary campaign, on my own time and my own money. Nor 
was this done at all on the let's-take-the-lesser-of-two-evils theory. I was wholeheartedly 
and enthusiastically for Taft, for the nomination and the presidency, because I trusted him 
and he was going generally in my direction. The fact that he didn't see two or three issues 
out of ten the way I saw them didn't dampen the energy of my personal support for him in 
the slightest. 

But, if and when I am a member of any organization, political or otherwise, and there is 
disagreement on the part of any sizable percentage of the membership as to three out of 
ten of the organization's policies or planks, a splintering of the organization into two 
groups is almost inevitable. In eastern Massachusetts there was quite a live and energetic 
outfit of some seven hundred members, called The Friends of Senator McCarthy. I have 
seen another organization called American Patriots splinter off from the original one, and 
then resplinter into a larger and smaller group, while the remnant of the first organization 
went to pieces. But if McCarthy were still alive, and if all the members of the 
organization had to agree on was support of a personal leader, there would probably be a 
thousand working members of that organization today - despite exactly the same basic 
disagreements over various principles between them. 



When Frank Lausche, running as a Democrat, was elected Governor of Ohio the last 
time, there must have been hundreds of thousands of Ohio Democrats who voted for him 
despite their vigorous disagreement with him over his support of Taft and of the Taft- 
Hartley Act. But if the Democratic Party of Ohio, an organization, had tried to take a 
position in support of the Taft-Hartley Act, it would have split the Party wide open and 
have made it practically useless in the campaign. Personal leadership holds together a 
following in the way that organizational leadership never can. 

Now we are surfeited in this country today with organizations opposing Communism or 
socialism. Leave out of consideration for the minute the extent to which they are 
handicapped by being almost entirely defensive. For while Napoleon was quite correct 
when he said that the purely defensive is doomed to defeat, that is another part of our 
story which we are coming to later. The point here is that none of these organizations 
alone, nor all of them together, nor all of them even if they were combined into one 
organization without initial loss of total strength, has any possibility of stopping the 
enemy. 

Most of them, frankly, do not have any possibility of even enough piecemeal 
accomplishment in the total fight to justify the money and energy expended on them. For 
usually there is no sufficiently inspired personal leadership of the organization itself to 
obtain the greatest unanimity of purpose, efficiency, and enthusiasm which are necessary 
in connection with the expenditure of resources. And of course the one central direction 
and coordination of all of these groups, which is so vital to avoid waste, is entirely 
lacking. What is more, even if all of the seven hundred known groups could be and were 
combined into one organization, for the very-purpose of obtaining centralized 
coordination, this central direction and coordination would still be lacking, or grossly 
inefficient and insufficient, so long as the combine was run as an organization. 

Only if the members of these groups declared allegiance to, came to feel an unshakable 
loyalty for, and thus accepted direction from, a dynamic personal leader; only under these 
conditions would there be any possibility of the members of these groups, and of all other 
Americans who feel basically as they do, supplying what is needed. That is, the strength 
and dedication which can turn back the Communists in front; and which, with the benefit 
of the momentum thus gained, can turn back the socialists behind the Communists. At 
present we are in the position of trying to defeat a disciplined well-armed expertly 
commanded army with a collection of debating societies. And it can't be done. Before we 
leave this point, let's use an illustration. And you pick it. You simply take in your own 
mind some patriotic organization you know about or perhaps in which you participate. 
Let's call it the XYZ Association. And no matter which one of the anti-Communist or 
anti-socialist groups you select, the chances are that the good citizens who put it together 
are friends of mine. They almost certainly are dedicated patriots who deserve our 
gratitude, and our praise. And I not only wish for them and their organization all possible 
success, bat will help in any way I can towards increasing their effectiveness. 

But let's be realistic. Ask yourself honestly about whatever organization you have in 
mind: Where is it going? Even if there were any clear consensus of opinion within the 



organization itself as to where it wanted to go, how much continued drive and con certed 
effort to that end do you think could be maintained. Who's going to die for XYZ 
Association, or the Blank Committee? We are fast coming to a point, gentlemen, where 
we've get to offer something that people are willing to die for. And only over long 
periods of time, and then in rare instances, do you generate and maintain loyalty for an 
organization that is even in the same league with loyalty for an individual. 

"But, " -you may say, "look at the success, at the terrific influence that has been 
exercised, by some of the organizations on the other side. Such as the ADA for instance - 
- the Americans For Democratic Action. " But the ADA, whether a lot of its members 
know it or not is the same as an arm of the Communist Party. Its weight can be thrown, 
and is thrown, time after time, with never an exception, in support of Communist 
objectives. It has the benefit of the direction of a nerve system of that body which runs all 
the way to the top. 

But what is the XYZ Association an arm of, or the Blank Committee? It's a lonesome boy 
standing on the beach with a big broom, trying to brush back the waves that are about to 
flood the whole shoreline of beautiful houses. There are other boys with brooms and 
shovels and buckets all up and down the beach, doing the same thing. What is not only 
needed, but is absolutely imperative, is for some hard-boiled, dictatorial, and dynamic 
boss to come along and deliver himself approximately as follows: 

"Hey, you guys, all of you, drop those pretty brooms. You fellows down there on the end, 
start running for empty bags, and keep bringing more empty bags as fast as you can find 
them; make 'em out of sheets and tablecloths if you have to, or, get 'em any other way. 
Just get 'em! You fellows in those next two groups, start filling those bags with sand. You 
men here, all of you, start lugging those bags of sand to put on this wall the Communists 
have busted up so badly. And don't spare your backs. Build it high and build it quick, 
even if it is only with sandbags for the present. 

"You fellows, over there, all of you, get the heaviest clubs you can find, spread 
yourselves out no more thinly than you have to along the whole length of this wall, and 
don't hesitate to break the heads of any saboteurs you find monkeying with it. Don't even 
hesitate to break the heads of those you find creeping towards the wall, if you are sure of 
their evil intentions, just as a warning to the rest of the dirty gang. If everybody puts 
everything he's got into the job without stopping to argue, we'll be able to save these 
beautiful houses from this incoming flood. We '11 not have just ruins left, no longer 
worth saving, when it recedes. 

"But the minute we have the sandbags high enough, all of you fellows get to work at once 
bringing rocks and cement, and rebuilding this whole wall both higher and solider than it 
ever was before. Then, the next time a combination of tide, storm, and saboteurs comes 
in, we'll be ready for them. And once all of this is done, you can again start enjoying 
those beautiful homes you will have saved. " 



Human nature being what it is, there is no question about how much more energetically, 
determinedly, or confidently the men on the beach would work under such leadership; 
nor about how many more men would immediately be attracted to rebuilding the wall, 
and breaking the heads of the saboteurs, under such direction. But gentlemen, if you are 
going to wait for those boys and men with the brooms to form an association for 
rebuilding the wall, and for it then to be repaired and guarded under organizational and 
committee control, you might as well start telling the Communists to stake out their 
claims on the ruins of the former beautiful houses right now. 

But that figure of speech has outlived its usefulness, so let's get down to plain language 
again. Let's look briefly at the possibility, the advantages, and the disadvantages, of 
finding this desperately needed leader in the political field. And the easiest way to do this 
is to conduct the discussion around some individual from the very start. 

Now the one man who comes nearest to measuring up to all the needs and qualifications, 
whom we see on the political horizon at the present time, is Barry Goldwater. I know 
Barry fairly well. He is a great American. As I foresaw a year ago how the Reutherite 
Left would concentrate national strength and resources on the Arizona campaign, and 
how important money from outside Arizona would be towards enabling Goldwater to 
meet that attack adequately, I took it on myself to become a one-man finance committee 
for him in Massachusetts. I raised around two thousand dollars in my state and sent it on 
to him early in 1958. 

Now two thousand dollars isn't much, but Massachusetts is a long way from Arizona, and 
the so-called uppercrust of eastern Massachusetts are probably the most provincially and 
smugly ignorant of what is really happening today of any similar group in the United 
States. At any rate, through the efforts of a lot of other people in other states, who either 
had or were given the same idea, Barry had enough money, and had it early enough, to 
put on a bang-up, professional campaign; one that was successful — for a Republican in a 
strongly Democratic state — against everything Walter Reuther could throw at him. 

Barry Goldwater has political know-how and the painstaking genius to use that know- 
how with regard to infinite details. He is a superb political organizer and inspires deep 
and lasting loyalty. He is absolutely sound in his Americanism, has the political and 
moral courage to stand b: his Americanist principles, and in my opinion can be trusted to 
stand by them until hell freezes over. I'd love to see him President of the United States, 
and maybe some day we shall. 

But - does anybody in this room think there is any slightest chance of Barry Goldwater 
supplying the dynamic-overall leadership needed to save this country for anybody to be 
president of ? If so, I think he is still not fully aware of the nature and totality of the 
forces at work. For Goldwater, by the very circumstances of his political success, present 
prestige, and the expectations of his supporters, will inevitably think and move in terms 
of political warfare. 21 Even if he personally should reach the point and the understanding 
of wanting to consider political action as just a part, no matter how important, of much 
broader overall action, how much chance do you think there is that his friends and 



supporters would let him step out of the strictly political role in which he has been so 
successful? How much chance is there that they would let him build and utilize forceful 
leadership on all of the other fronts where we must fight the Communists? How many of 
the steps which we discussed yesterday afternoon, and which I am sure must be taken if 
we are to have any chance at all, do you think you could count on Barry Goldwater's 
leadership to bring about, no matter how much he was beseeched, and no matter how 
much he himself came to feel inclined, to do so? 

Or let's go at it another way. Suppose you feel that the political factor in the equation is 
so important that it overweighs all of the others. And that if we could get a man like 
Barry Goldwater nominated and elected President -- or Bill Knowland or Bill Jenner or 
any one of a dozen others for that matter — by 1960 or even maybe by 1964 — the power 
of the presidency in the hands of such a man would be enough to save our country. Do 
you think that by strictly political means and without the help of all of the other efforts on 
all of the other fronts, there would be the slightest chance of bringing this about? That 
with the present shattered condition of the Republican party, and the grip of the Leftists 
inside both parties on various pieces of those parties, there is going to be any slightest 
chance of getting a solid, courageous, uncompromising Americanist nominated by either 
party — unless there are huge compelling forces at work outside of the parties which are 
not affected by the ubiquitous opportunism inside the parties? If anybody in this room 
believes, that with the slowing down of the rapidly rising Communist influence left to the 
organizations in the field and with the restoring of Republicanism in the Republican 
Party left to the politicians, there is the slightest chance of our having anything but a left- 
wing president in 1961, then I would be greatly surprised. We've been counting on that 
kind of salvation, and hence going steadily down the drain, for twenty years. 22 

Or, more for the other illustrative points that will arise than for any hopes offered by the 
prospect, let's look at Richard Nixon in this connection. He is an extremely smart man. 
He is one of the ablest, shrewdest, most disingenuous, and slipperiest politicians that ever 
showed up on the American scene. He can sit in Washington one night and convince 
some of the most "-modern" Republicans that he is the best ball-carrier they have, and 
spend four hours in the Waldorf Towers the next day convincing MacArthur and Herbert 
Hoover that he is their man. He can use the tremendously overrated and over-publicized 
but actually highly cautious part he played in the Alger Hiss exposure, to hang onto the 
hopeful loyalty of the vigorous anti-Communists, at the very time when he is insinuating 
himself into the good graces of the Left by quietly knifing McCarthy. 

Nixon could pose as a conservative Republican congressman, and yet be one of the 
original founders, in 1950, of Republican Advance. This was intended to be, not the 
Republican opposition to, but the Republican teammate of, Americans For Democratic 
Action; and it even had some interlocking left-wingers who were members of both 
groups. 

Nixon can claim still to be vigorously anti-Communist. Yet when he has a chance, as 
Vice-president, to break the tie and cast the decisive vote for HR3, to reestablish some 
chance of prosecution of subversives actually advocating violent overthrow of our 



government, what happens? He moves heaven and earth to have Wallace Bennett found 
and pressured into voting against HR3, defeating the measure, so that the Vice-President 
will not have to vote. 

What good would such a man be to us, even as President, unless outside forces and 
accomplishments made it opportunistic and expedient for him to ride an anti-Communist 
wave which those outside forces had created? As for being a leader, the sad truth, hard 
for many hopeful and wishful conservative Republicans to realize, is that Richard Nixon, 
a most engaging personality and clever politician, has never been a leader in connection 
with any event or development, or at any stage in his career. He has been a rider of 
waves, so far as public support was concerned, without caring whether the particular 
wave at any given time was moving left or right; and a manipulator, of uncanny skill, 
behind the scenes. 

Nixon always brings to my mind the old gag that a wife is a person who helps you to get 
over all the troubles you wouldn't have had if you had never married; or the somewhat 
more elegant version that diplomats help us to solve our problems that never would have 
arisen if there were no diplomats. But for the dirtiest deal in American political history, 
participated in if not actually engineered by Richard Nixon in order to make himself 
Vice-President (and to put Warren on the Supreme Court as part of that deal), Taft would 
have been nominated at Chicago in 1952. It is almost certain that Taft would then have 
been elected President by a far greater plurality than was Eisenhower, that a grand rout of 
the Communists in our government and in our midst would have been started, that 
McCarthy would be alive today, and that we wouldn't even be in this mess that we are 
supposed to look to Nixon to lead us out of. And in appraising Richard Nixon s character, 
nobody should overlook the vicious undercover knifing of Bill Knowland by Nixon's 
men in California in the campaign just finished. And this is not surmise, gentlemen, but 
definite fact, observed at first hand, b)r stalwart Republicans in California, some of whom 
were personal friends of Nixon and at first just could not believe what they were seeing. 
They came to believe it all right, for Nixon was determined to get rid of Knowland once 
and for all, and at any cost, as a possible contender for control of the California 
delegation and for the nomination in 1960. This, despite the fact that from the day Nixon 
landed in Washington as a freshman Congressman, nobody had been nicer to him or 
helped him in more ways than the well-loved Senator from his own state, Bill Knowland. 

Now please do not project my remarks about Nixon beyond their intended purpose. He 
may be the best bet we have for the Republican standard bearer in 1960, who has any 
chance of getting the nomination. He would be far better than Nelson Rockefeller. For 
while I think Nixon would ride any wave to the right or left that seemed likely to carry 
him farthest, I don't think he would be committed to personally helping to make the wave 
go left — as I think Nelson Rockefeller would be. I think Nixon could, become a very 
patriotic anti-Communist if we could create circumstances in which it would be smart 
politics to be one; whereas I think Nelson Rockefeller would fight for further movement 
towards the internationalist left under any and all circumstances. 



I think Nelson Rockefeller is definitely committed to trying to make the United States a 
part of a one world socialist government, while I don't think Nixon is committed to 
anything other than the career of Richard Nixon. In that, he is neither better nor worse 
than most other politicians, merely smarter. I can foresee possibilities where every one of 
us would work for him a- d vote for him in 1960, despite what I have said -- as if, for 
instance, he were the Republican candidate against Walter Reuther or even Reuther's 
stooge, Jack Kennedy, on the Democratic ticket. , For this reason I do not intend to put 
those remarks about Nixon on any tape recording I might make from these notes. But I 
have made them here in this really inner-circle group in order to emphasize the wisdom 
of the old advice: "Put not your faith in politicians. " We shall have to use politicians, 
support politicians, create politicians, and help the best ones we can find to get elected. I 
am thoroughly convinced, however, that we cannot count on politicians, political 
leadership, or even political action except as a part of something much deeper and 
broader, to save us. 

Now I didn't always feel that way. And I think that, up to the time the nomination was 
stolen from Bob Taft in 1952, it was still possible to have saved our country, from the 
immediate Communist danger, anyway, primarily by political action. And up until a few 
months ago I was still giving some thought to starting some quiet but strong non-political 
organizing for political purposes right in Massachusetts, with a view to either capturing 
the Republican nomination for the Senate from Saltonstall in 1960 or running as an 
Independent as circumstances then indicated. The further idea was to try to go to the 
United States Senate, by supreme effort to that end, and there make such con tribution as 
one outspoken Senator could towards stemming the tide. But my study of the whole 
picture convinced me more and more that: (1) No one outspoken Senator, nor a dozen 
outspoken Senators, and no amount of the ephemeral political support they might muster, 
could possibly save our country unless there was, encompassing them and their efforts 
and support, this far larger and broader movement to which I keep referring; (2) that there 
was not going to be any such movement without the dynamic overall personal leadership 
to which I have also been referring; and (3) that, with all of my own shortcomings, there 
wasn't anybody else on the horizon willing to give their whole lives to the job, with the 
determination and dedication I would put into it, if I didn't. 

What really moved me to cross this Rubicon, however, the consideration which more 
than any other gradually brought me the necessary measure of courage and determination 
for so staggering an undertaking, was another result of many years of study, of not only 
the present but the past. This is the conviction that even warding off Communist slavery 
and reversing the socialist trend is only half the battle. We can never win even that half 
unless both leadership and following have a positive dream which is more important as a 
hope than the negative nightmare is as a fear; unless the promise of what we can build 
supplies more motivation than the terror of what we must destroy; and unless this faith in 
the future is based on a deeper faith in eternal truths. 



The nature of these truths and the tenets of this faith, which I hope and believe every man 
in this room can accept and approve, I shall come to later this morning. What I am trying 
to do here, as an introduction to, and part of, our thinking about how to rid America of 
the collectivist cancer, is simply this. I want to convince you, as I am convinced, that only 
dynamic personal leadership offers any chance for us to save either our material or our 
spiritual inheritance. I want to convince you, as I am convinced, that even under such 
leadership we have no chance unless the specific battles are fought as part of a larger and 
more lasting movement to restore once again an upward reach to the heart of man. And I 
have wished to make clear, what you were bound to be assuming already, that with 
whatever I have in me, of faith, dedication, and energy, I intend to offer that leadership to 
all who are willing to help me.23 

Footnotes For The Fifth Printing 

21. The prophetic precision of this paragraph and of the following one, both written in 
1958, was proved in 1960. We are sorry to say. 

22. At this point we have, for the fifth printing of the Blue Book, omitted about three 
pages. This has been done on the recommendation of the COUNCIL of the Society, 
because the material in those pages was concerned with a political campaign which was 
then still in the future, and the material has now lost its timeliness. 

Our only regret about the omission grows out of the fact that in this discussion, prepared 
in October, 1958 and delivered in December, 1958, we made clear our firm expectation at 
that time that the rival candidates in 1960 would be Nixon and Kennedy. We think it is 
worth noting how accurately we had already sized up the 1960 campaign two years in 
advance, not for any slightest glory that might accrue for political prophecy (or good 
guessing), but simply to indicate that we are not exactly babes in the wood in the world of 
politics — as we fear some of our members sometimes fear for us. 

As a consequence of this omission, and of our "closing up" the remaining copy, there are 
no pages No. 125 and No. 126 in this edition of the Blue Book. It was simpler (and far 
less expensive) to omit two pages here than to change the folios throughout all the rest of 
the book. Please note, too, that Footnotes 21 and 23 are identical as for the fourth 
printing, and only this Footnote 22 has been changed. 

23. This plea for personal loyalty is always embarrassing for me to make before any 
group — or in print or film or tape -- as it would be for any other man of conscience and 
common sense. Yet it is as necessary and as important as had been foreseen when plans 
for the Society were first being formed. For this personal loyalty is the cement that holds 
The John Birch Society together, while other groups crumble around us. Without it The 
John Birch Society would already have broken up on any one of a half dozen rocks in our 
course, or already have been blown to pieces by torpedoes fired at us by the enemy. It is 
the cohesive force that reaches across passing doubts and disagreements, welding 



temporary doubters and enthusiasts alike into one permanent body of men and women 
unshakably dedicated to the Society and its basic purposes. 

PLEASE NOTE THAT, AS EXPLAINED FN FOOTNOTE 22 ABOVE, THERE ARE 
NO PAGES 125 and 126 IN THIS EDITION. 



SECTION SIX 

To Restore Responsibility . 



With that much explanation as background, let's see what basic principle we can establish 
and what specific objective we can define, with regard to the particular battle against 
collectivism, which would be sure to fit into and be encompassed by our general overall 
permanent purpose — although that total spiritual aspiration is as yet only foreshadowed. 
For thus making sharp and clear one part of our philosophy and program, where a 
concrete area of action is involved, will itself help to build a better understanding of the 
whole. 

And it seems to me, gentlemen, that the whole essence of our purpose, and the guiding 
principle for our action, covering not only our fight against collectivism but our fight for 
our constructive replacement, can be summarized in the objective expressed by just five 
words: Less government and more responsibility . The principle is simple enough for all 
to understand. The direction signs leading to the goal expressed are clear enough for 
nobody to misjudge them. An honest adherence to that principle and those directions, 
against which to test either candidates or issues, will settle in the minds of our followers 
and ourselves almost all questions which may arise, concerning either candidates or 
issues, in the field of political effort. And yet it is broad enough, I believe, to be 
comprehensive with regard to all that we really desire to attain through political action. 

Less government and more responsibility. I mean less government of every kind, federal, 
state, or municipal; and more true responsibility, not only on the part of individuals but 
on the part of such reduced governmental units as are necessarily permitted to exist. But 
of course I mean, primarily, less federal government, because that is where our greatest 
danger lies; and more individual responsibility, because that is our greatest need. 

And now I want to give you some of the arguments and the reasoning by which we must 
try to inculcate this fundamental principle of less government and more responsibility 
into the minds of our contemporaries and successors. For we must try to make it a 
convincing political standard and an accepted goal on the part of not only our own 
dedicated followers, who go all the way with our principles and our ideals, of which this 
is only a segment. We must try to rally behind this concept thousands or possibly millions 
of anxious citizens who show a vital interest in their politically determined future, but are 
yet to be won to a dedication to ideals of more spiritual breadth. 

So, again without your leave, I am going to utilize a few extracts from a talk I made a 
couple of years ago at a convocation of students and faculty of Dickinson College. I do so 
simply because, having put a lot of work into the preparation of that speech, I can cover 
the present ground more succinctly and quickly by quoting from it than in any other way. 
And this part is not long. 



What we must start asking our fellow citizens everywhere to consider, as of 
overwhelming importance to the future of themselves and their families, is this: On the 
basis of all known past human experience, are there any general conclusions, with regard 
to the organization of society, which can be set forth with confidence ? It seems to me 
clear that there certainly are. 

1. First, government is necessary — some degree of government — in any civilized 
society. There are believers in the possibility and desirability of a governmentless 
anarchy, as a practicable form of human association. But the number of these advocates is 
comparatively very small, there is no evidence within human historical experience to 
support their thesis, and there is considerable evidence indicating otherwise. 

2. Second, while government is necessary, it is basically a non-productive expense, an 
overhead cost supported by the productive economy. And like all overhead items, it 
always has a tendency to expand faster than the productive base which supports it. 

3. Third, government is frequently evil. And we do not mean by this that they 
(governments) are merely dishonest. For all governments, with very rare exceptions 
indeed, are thoroughly dishonest. We made the statement in print, about two years ago, 
that there has never in the history of the world been a government (and this generalization 
includes our present one) that maintained honesty in the handling of a "managed" 
irredeemable currency. A few weeks later one of America's ablest and best-known 
economists quoted that statement with full approval. 

But what we are talking about here is something far worse than dishonesty. In December, 
1956, Professor Sorokin of Harvard — after quoting Lord Acton that great men, in the 
political arena, are almost always bad men — went on to reveal the results of his own 
survey of the criminality of rulers. This survey of the monarchs of various countries and 
the heads of various republics and democracies, in a selection large enough to constitute a 
very fair sample, revealed that there was an average of one murderer to every four of 
these rulers. "In other words, " said Professor Sorokin, "the rulers of the states are the 
most criminal group in a respective population. With a limitation of their power their 
criminality tends to decrease; but it still remains exceptionally high in all nations. " 

An obvious reason for this is the greater temptation to criminality on the part of those 
who control or influence the police power of a nation, of which they would otherwise 
stand in more fear. Another is that ambitious men with criminal tendencies naturally 
gravitate into government because of this very prospect of doing, or helping to do, the 
policing over themselves. A third reason is that so many apologists can always be found, 
for criminal acts of governments, on the grounds that such acts ultimately contribute to 
the public good and that therefore the criminal means are justified by the righteous ends. 
Kautilya wrote his Arthashastra in about 300 B. C. Machiavelli wrote his II Principe in 
about 1500 A.D. And the arguments of both, that it is a virtue in a ruler to be 
unscrupulous for the good of his state, are heard in every age. 



4. Fourth, government is always and inevitably an enemy of individual freedom. It seems 
rather strange that it was Woodrow Wilson, who more than any other one man started this 
nation on its present road towards totalitarianism, who also said that the history of human 
liberty is a history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. But 
Wilson could have boasted, as did Charles II of England, that he said only wise things 
even though he did only foolish ones. It is self-evident that government, by its very 
nature, must be an enemy of freedom, edging always towards a restriction of the 
individual's rights and responsibilities . 

5. Whatever must be done by government will always cost more than if it could be done 
by individuals or smaller groups. And the larger the government, the more 
disproportionate will be the cost. Letting a government do anything, therefore, which 
such individuals or smaller groups could properly do, is serious economic wastefulness. It 
is also contrary to the philosophy of the proper function of government that is derived 
from the whole body of past experiments. 

6. Government, by its size, its momentum, and its authority, will not only perpetuate 
errors of doctrine or of policy, longer than they would otherwise retain acceptance, but it 
will multiply their effect on a geometric scale, as against the arithmetically cumulative 
effect of those errors if confined to individuals or smaller groups. The errors of tens of 
thousands of individuals, all thinking and probing in different directions and moved by 
different impulses, tend to cancel themselves out or to be softened by the attrition of 
doubt and disagreement. But let any one error become sanctified by government, and thus 
crystallized as truth, and little short of a revolution can discredit it or cause it to be 
discarded. 

An easy illustration of this principle is the witchcraft terror in the early days of the 
colonial government of Massachusetts. If there had been no governmental power to give 
phantasmagoria the semblance of reality by official decree, the common sense of a 
majority of the citizens would have kept this manifestation of fanaticism from ever 
having such widespread support and cruel results. But once government had 
authoritatively said "This is truth, " then the hitherto doubting citizen was willing to join 
others like himself in accepting it as truth. And we have at least a dozen idiocies, equally 
repugnant to man's common sense and sound experience, being perpetuated by our 
government in Washington today. 

7. As any society becomes reasonably settled, and shakes down into a semi-permanent 
pattern of economic and political life, and as some degree of leisure on the part of its 
citizens becomes both possible and visible, the drive always begins to have government 
become the management of the social enterprise rather than merely its agent for certain 
clear purposes. Government is then increasingly allowed, invited, and even urged to do 
planning for, and exercise control over, the total economy of the nation. Next, it is 
pushed, and pushes itself, more and more into planning and control of the separate 
activities of the citizens and groups of citizens that make up the economic life of the 
nation. And in doing such planning and exercising such controls the government must 



assume more and more of the responsibility for the success of the economy and the 
welfare of its citizens. 

Of course no government, short of being omniscient, can ever plan the specialized 
division of labor and the beneficial interchange of the various products of human effort, 
or can ever appraise the impact of changing circumstances and changing desires on the 
infinite ramifications of interrelated human activity, one half as well as the planning, 
appraisal, and resulting corrections will be accomplished by a completely free market if 
given the opportunity. For the free market automatically weighs, measures, and integrates 
into its decisions increments of need, of difficulty, and of motivation, that are too small, 
too numerous, and too hidden for the planners ever to discover them. And the equations 
to be dealt with are too infinite to be resolved by any human brain or committee of 
human brains, even if all the variables and constants could be accurately set forth in such 
equations. 

A government trying to step in and improve the workings of a free market is exactly like 
a man who takes a lighted lantern outdoors at noon of a bright June day to show you the 
sun. But a government's answer to any criticism as to the inadequacy of the lantern is 
always to bring more lanterns and then more lanterns — until eventually the smoke and 
glare of the lanterns so seriously interfere with and shut off the light of the sun that 
everybody actually has to work mainly by lanternlight. 

It is interesting to note, too, that in any society the government, and its allies who want to 
use the lanterns, always claim the justification that the society's economy is more 
complex than those which have preceded it. They insist that therefore the lanterns of 
planning and control are necessary and helpful now, no matter how futile and harmful 
they have been shown to be in the past. Of course exactly the opposite is true. The more 
complex the economic life of a nation becomes; the more nearly infinite the shades and 
grades of impulse which determine the proper interchanges and relationships between its 
components become; then the more impossible and ridiculous is any undertaking to plan 
and control those relationships, and the more the automatic working of a completely free 
market is needed. 

8. As a government increases in power, and as a means of increasing its power, it always 
has a tendency to squeeze out the middle class; to destroy or weaken the middle for the 
benefit of the top and the bottom. Even where there is no conscious al liance for this 
purpose, such as formed the basis for Bismarck's beginning of the socialization of 
Germany or Franklin Roosevelt's beginning of the socialization of America, the forces to 
that end are always at work — as they have been in England for fifty years. In the nations 
that the gods would destroy they first make the middle class helpless, through insidious 
but irresistible government pressures . 

9. The form of government is not nearly so important as its quality. Justice and a lack of 
arbitrariness, for instance, are two characteristics of a government that are most important 
to the welfare and happiness of a people. They are as likely to be found — or more 
accurately, as little likely to be found — under any one form of government as another. 



Rampant interference with personal lives is the most obnoxious characteristic of any 
government, and that is found just as readily under elected officials as under hereditary 
monarchs. In fact, as the Greeks pointed out, as has been well known to careful students 
of history ever since, and as the founding fathers of our own republic were well aware, 
when an elected government succeeds in attracting and maintaining an overwhelming 
majority behind it for any length of time, its mob instincts make it the most tyrannical of 
all forms of social organization. 

Incidentally, a tragic result of the emphasis placed by historians and statesmen on the 
form of the American government has been the emulation by newly independent Asiatic 
nations of the wrong thing in our American system. Admiring the tremendous success of 
the United States, observing the unprecedented prosperity, freedom, and opportunities for 
happiness or the part of the people, looking up to the United States as the example to be 
followed, nation after nation in other parts of the world, but especially in Asia, has copied 
the American government for itself. Its bedding political scientists have felt that this must 
be the key to national success and greatness — as it clearly would have been if they had 
copied the right thing, the very thing that made America great. 

But what these new nations have taken for themselves are carbon copies of the American 
government at the time their own governments were being established. In far too many 
cases this has been since the New Deal had completely stultified the original virtues of 
the American Government. The Philippines, for instance, in 1948, took over every form 
of welfarism and every stifling regulation and suppression of private enterprise, and 
substitute therefor, which Roosevelt's newdealers had been able to impose on us even 
with a war to help them. The results were and still are pathetic, simply because they had 
been led to believe that it was the form of the American government which counted. But 
actually it had been the small amount of government in America throughout its centuries 
of mushrooming productivity, not the form of that government, which had been the vital 
factor of success. The Filipinos and others like them took over, instead, the excesses of 
government which were already in a fair way to start the decline of America itself.24 

10. Which brings us to the last, the most overlooked, and in my opinion the most 
important, of these basic generalizations concerning government. Thomas Jefferson 
expressed part of it in his famous dictum that that government is best which governs 
least. But Jefferson was thinking of the extent of a government's power more than of the 
extensiveness of the government itself. And our tenth point is that neither the form of 
government nor its quality is as important as its quantity. A thoroughly foul government, 
like that of Nero, which still did not reach its tentacles too far into the daily lives and 
doings of its subjects, was far better for the Roman Empire in the long run than the 
intentionally benevolent government of Diocletian or of Constantine, whose bureaucratic 
agents were everywhere. 

Let's dramatize this fact — or opinion — by bringing it closer home. And your speaker 
would like to have it understood that he does not condone dishonesty in the slightest 
degree. Yet I had rather have for America, and I am convinced America would be better 
off with, a government of three hundred thousand officials and agents, every single one 



of them a thief, than a government of three million agents with every single one of them 
an honest, honorable, public servant. For the first group would only steal from the 
American economic and political system; the second group would be bound in time to 
destroy it. The increasing quantity of government, in all nations, has constituted the 
greatest tragedy of the Twentieth Century . 

Let's spotlight just one particular result of this tragic development, which has occurred in 
connection with man's age-old worry — war. That result is the frequency, the length, the 
extensiveness, the horrible destructiveness, and the totality of impact on the population, 
of the wars of the Twentieth Century. 

In the physical sciences we are accustomed to using combined measurements, such as 
foot-pounds, kilowatt-hours or man-days. Let's invent such a phrase for the measurement 
of war, and call it the day-number-horror unit. In the use of that three way calculation we 
multiply the days of suffering by the number of people who suffer, by the depth of the 
suffering, to arrive at an appraisal. Then I believe you will find that pretty generally 
throughout history — despite other factors causing occasional exceptions — and very 
definitely throughout recent centuries, the day-number-horrors measure of any war has 
been proportional to the contemporary extensiveness of government. In fact and 
specifically, it has been directly proportional to the product of the quantities of 
government in the nations involved at the time a war was fought. 

Also, you will find that it is the huge quantity of government which, more than anything 
else, makes these tremendously destructive wars not only possible, but unavoidable. One 
illustration should make this statement too clear for argument. Do you want to fight the 
Russian people ? Do you think the Russian people have the least desire to fight us ? Do 
you think there would be the slightest chance of the American people and the Russian 
people fighting each other, with millions to be killed on both sides and great parts of both 
countries probably to be utterly destroyed, if there were only one-tenth as much 
government in each country as now exists ? Stop and think about it for a minute. 

It is not only that governments carry their peoples into horrible and utterly unnecessary 
wars, but it takes a very huge quantity of government to carry its people into the 
totalitarian struggle which war has now been made by this same quantity of government. 
Reduce all the governments of all the nations of the world to one-third of their present 
size -not one-third of their power, note, nor are we referring to their quality, but just to 
one-third of their bureaucratic numbers, their extensiveness, their meddling in the lives of 
their subjects — and you would immediately accomplish two things. You would reduce 
the likelihood of war between hostile nations to at most one-ninth of its present 
probability, and the destructiveness of any wars that did take place in the same 
proportion. 

The greatest enemy of man is, and always has been, government. And the larger, the 
more extensive that government, the greater the enemy. 



Now clearly the United States which, throughout its early centuries, was the greatest 
beneficiary from the scarcity of government that the world has ever known, should not 
only return to the right course for its own further growth in prosperity, freedom, and 
happiness, but should set an example again for the whole world. In fact, the word 
americanist , with a small a, should be made, and become understood, as the very 
antithesis of socialism, and communism with a little c. For the communist - using the 
word now with a little c to denote a theoretician rather than a member of the conspiracy - 
the communist believes that a collectivist society should swallow up all individuals, make 
their lives and their energies completely subservient to the needs and the purposes of the 
collectivist state; and that any means are permissible to achieve this end. The true 
americanis t believes that the individual should retain the freedom to make his own 
bargain with life, and the responsibility for the results of that bargain; and that means are 
as important as ends in the civilized social order which he desires. The same two words, 
with initial capitals, Communists and Americanists, should merely denote the aggressive 
fighters for these two mutually exclusive philosophies. 

But Americanism, as either a phrase or a force on the contemporary world scene, has 
been eroded into something negative and defeatist. It has come to represent merely a 
delaying action against the victorious march of its enemy, collectivism. The air is full of 
clarion calls to Americans to organize, in order better to fight against socialism, 
communism, or some vanguard of their forces. 

Twice each day the mail brings to my desk pleas for me to contribute money, or effort, or 
moral support, or all three, to some group which is battling to hold back some particular 
advance of collectivist storm troops. Even those organizations or activities which bear a 
positive label are motivated by negative thinking. An association for the Bricker 
Amendment is, in reality, an association against the intervention of international socialist 
forces in the control of our domestic lives. 

Americanism has become primarily a denial of something else, rather than an assertion of 
itself. And there are many of us who think that this should be true no longer. We think 
that Americanism should again come to mean, and to be, a positive, forward-looking 
philosophy; a design and example of social organization which boldly and confidently 
offers leadership along the one hard but sure road to a better world. 

It is not just in the United States, of course, that all the aggressiveness is on the side of 
the socialist-communist allies. In the world-wide ideological struggle which divides 
mankind today, we conservatives fight always on the defensive. The very name by which 
we identify ourselves defines our objective. It is to conserve as much as we can, out of all 
we have inherited that is worth while, from the encroachments and destructiveness of this 
advancing collectivism. We build no more icons to freedom; we merely try to fend off the 
iconoclast. 

Such has been the pattern during the whole first half of the twentieth century. From the 
bright plateau of individual freedom and individual responsibility, which man had 
precariously attained, there has been a steady falling back towards the dark valleys of 



dependence and serfdom. But this ignominious retreat has been just as true of Americans, 
the heirs of a strong new society, as of the tired residual legatees of an old and enfeebled 
European civilization. During this long and forced retreat we have fought only a 
rearguard and sometimes delaying action. We have never been rallied to counterattack, to 
break through the enemy or rout him, and to climb again beyond our highest previous 
gains. And in the unending skirmishes, to hold as much as possible of the ground 
currently occupied, we have lost all sight of the higher tablelands of freedom which once 
were our recognized goals. I for one, and many others like me, are no longer willing to 
consider only when to retreat and how far. There is a braver and a wiser course. 

If we heirs of all the ages are to find a turning point in this rapid and sometimes 
stampeding descent, in which we are abandoning instead of improving our inheritance; if 
the last half of the twentieth century is to see the curve that measures individual dignity 
turn upward; if the men who really wish to be free and self-reliant are to begin climbing 
back up the mountainside; then the goal must be known, and the purpose of aggressive 
offense must replace defensive defeatism as the banner under which we march. It is fatal 
to be merely against losing ground, for then there is no way to go but back. We have to 
be for something; we must know what that something is; and we must believe it is worth 
a fight to obtain. Reduced to its simplest and broadest terms, that something is less 
government and more responsibility. For both less government and more responsibility 
bring increasing opportunities for human happiness. 

Due to the tremendous momentum given us by our hardworking, ambitious, and 
individualistic forefathers, our nation is still by far the most dynamic in the world in its 
productive processes, and in its influences on the whole world's standard of living. We 
must again become equally dynamic in our spiritual influence; in our positive leadership 
and example to provide a governmental environment in which individual man can make 
the most of his life in whatever way he — and not his government - wishes to use it. 

There are many stages of welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general, but 
communism is the ultimate state of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction. 
In this final stage, communism, you have a society in which class distinctions are greater 
than in any other, but where position in these classes is determined solely by demagogic 
political skill and ruthless cunning. You have a society in which all those traits which 
have helped to make man civilized, and which our multiple faiths have classified as 
virtues, are now discarded as vices — while exactly their opposites are glorified. And you 
have a society in which every fault of government that we have discussed above is held to 
be a benefit and a desirable part of the framework of life. 

But there is an exactly opposite direction. It leads towards a society in which brotherhood 
and kindliness and tolerance and honesty and self-reliance and the integrity of the human 
personality are considered virtues; a society which venerates those traits exactly because 
they have helped the human animal to achieve some degree of humanitarian civilization, 
and are the common denominators of all our great religions. This direction leads toward a 
governmental environment for human life founded on the basis of long experience with 
government; on experience which shows government to be a necessary evil, but a 



continuous brake on all progress and the ultimate enemy of all freedom. It is the forward 
direction, the upward direction -- and americanism, I hope, shall become its name. 

There, gentlemen, is our argument, or that part of it which applies, as I think it should be 
used in the political field primarily for political purposes. To make it heard by, and really 
understood by, enough millions of Americans, is a colossal undertaking. But who says it 
cannot be done ? For who has really tried ? We have all been fiddling around with half 
way measures, with compromise measures, with delaying actions, instead of getting 
down to fundamental principles, standing on them with firmness, and remembering that 
future history is always determined by minorities who really know what they want. The 
whole newdeal march toward state socialism has been carried through and advanced to its 
present stage by a determined minority. We can bring about the necessary reversal of this 
trend if we, as a mi nority for what is right, stand as firm, work as hard, and give to the 
principles in which we believe the same dedication, as has the sophomoric minority of 
so-called liberals which brought us to our present crisis. 

The question is not really whether we can expunge this disease of collectivism, and make 
America strong and healthy and a true example for all the world again, but whether we 
think it is worth the Herculean effort, the sacrifice and dedication, that would be required. 
I think it would, and I am hoping you think so too. 

Footnotes For The Fourth Printing 

24. In Manila, in 1949, 1 had to spend a whole day getting a certificate from some 
government bureau, showing that I did not owe the Republic of the Philippines any 
income taxes, before I would be allowed to board my plane for departure. When I got 
back to the Manila Hotel I was mad, and went up to the Pan American Airlines Counter 
to have somebody on whom to let off steam. 

"It just doesn't make sense, " I said, to the very clean-cut, well-groomed, friendly — and 
smart — young Filipino behind the counter. I have been in the Philippines only a few 
days, strictly as a tourist, personally paying all of my own expenses. I haven't en gaged in 
any business, and there is no way I could possibly owe the government of the Philippines 
any income tax, if I had tried. The regulation is idiotic " 

"Yes, sir, " he said, with a smile. "I thoroughly agree with you, sir. That's one regulation 
of the United States Government which I don't think we should have copied last year 
when we went into the government business for ourselves!" I have told this story 
elsewhere in print, but it seemed worth retelling here. For not only was it the "perfect 
squelch" of myself, at which I laughed delightedly then, and at which I still laugh every 
time I think of it; but it contained a whole oak tree of truth compressed into the acorn of 
one wisecrack. There were thousands of other regulations, tremendously more damaging 
in the long run, which the Filipinos should have failed to copy from our example when 
they "went into the government business for themselves. " 



SECTION SEVEN 

And Help to Build a Better World. 



Gentlemen, this is the last of these formal divisions of my presentation. And I want to 
begin it by reading to you the first three stanzas of O'Shaughnessy's great ode, The Music 
Makers . 

We are the music-makers, 
And we are the dreamers of dreams, 
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, 
And sitting by desolate streams; 
World-losers and world-forsakers, 
On whom the pale moon gleams: 
Yet we are the movers and shakers 
Of the world forever it seems. 

With wonderful deathless ditties 
We build up the world's great cities, 
And out of a fabulous story 
We fashion an empire's glory: 
One man with a dream, at pleasure, 
Shall go forth and conquer a crown; 
And three with a new song's measure 
Can trample an empire down. 

We, in the ages lying 
In the buried past of the earth, 
Built Nineveh -with our sighing, 
And Babel itself with our mirth; 
And o'erthrew them with prophesying 
To the old of the new world's worth; 
For each age is a dream that is dying 
Or one that is coming to birth." 

Now the whole poem, including the many stanzas I did not read, seems to me an 
impressive tribute to the power of imagination to design and direct the course of history. 
But I really read that much of it simply to put in their proper setting just these two lines: 

"For each age is a dream that is dying, 
Or one that is coming to birth. " 

For the last fifty years our age has been a dream that was dying. To this very group, at 
this very moment, I am proposing that we turn our faces forward instead of backward, 



begin to make even our defensive actions fit into a constructive design, and do our part to 
usher in a new age that is coming to birth. 

I don't expect the New York Times to begin announcing excitedly in January that 
obviously the world started on a new era in Indianapolis in December, 1958. Of course it 
is only the work we do afterwards, the work we persuade and inspire others to do, and the 
long results and widening reach of both, that can make of this meeting anything but a 
two-day seminar in philosophy and current affairs. But if every man here should leave 
tonight feeling in his own mind that he had been at the beginning of a new chapter in 
history, it would be true . It would be true no matter how long the historians might take to 
find it out. 

The basic reason why the old age is dying, as I tried to make clear yesterday, is that the 
faith which was the core of its strength no longer commands the unquestioning loyalty of 
enough of its devotees. For the dream of any nation or any people must depend on faith. 
The foundation of our new dream must be faith, or it will never come to pass. Where is 
this faith, and what is this faith, so true that neither our hearts nor our reasons can deny it, 
so broad that it takes in without violation the faith of our fathers, and so deep that it can 
inspire martyrdom at need. As to where, it is right in front of us; and as to what, it is 
exactly what we in this room already and actually believe. To try to make this clear, in 
the only convincing way I know, I'm going to do what no man likes to do. I'm going to 
try to tell you what I really believe, in the areas that are considered parts of a man's 
religion. For Emerson said it is the outlook of genius to feel that what is true of yourself 
is also true of all mankind. Making no claim to genius, I'll still try to imitate one for this 
occasion. 

Now first let me repeat here, for the devout Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants who 
are among my best friends and strongest supporters, that it is no part of my purpose to 
disturb their beliefs in the slightest -- or the beliefs of any man or woman who really does 
have a religious faith instead of just the shell of one. What I am concerned about, what 
we must all be vitally concerned about today, as the very essence of our problem, is 
morality, integrity, and purpose. 

That morality must be based on a bedrock of faith. For those who already have such a 
bedrock of faith, and stand on it and abide by it, I can offer nothing, and I would certainly 
take away nothing. But for those who are no longer sure exactly where they do stand, on 
what rocks or how firmly, I want to try to show them that all of these bedrocks together 
constitute a foundation with room and strength for us all. For unless we willingly anchor 
our moral judgments to eternal truths, we become just chaff, blown all ways before the 
winds of confusion. So let me, however reluctantly, point to the rocks of my own faith — 
not for the devout and the fundamentalists who do not need it — but for others whom 
possibly I may help. 

The keystone to my own religious belief, I think, was best delineated by Tennyson in just 
one great line: 



"For I doubt not through the ages 
one increasing purpose runs. " 

Neither Tennyson nor any other sane man could doubt this fact, as we shall emphasize 
presently. But first, let us ask, whose purpose? God's ? Or man's? But if man has had one 
increasing purpose through the ages, from what source did it come, and who decided 
what the direction of that purpose was to be ? 

The fundamentalist Christian says immediately that a Divine Being created man, with 
this purpose predetermined. And I agree. Nor do I wish to disturb his understanding of 
how God created man. I personally think that, at the present level of our knowledge, we 
must conceive of this Divine Being having done so by creating Milky Ways and 
astronomical universes, with laws and purposes which caused planets like our Earth to 
develop; and by creating evolutionary forces which both produced man and endowed him 
with purpose greater than his individual self. 

I think that if this Creator allows man to continue to grow, and his purpose to continue to 
increase, our knowledge will reach a level in another few thousand years where even this 
concept will seem far too detailed, against the broader and larger forces we can then 
glimpse; that even this present concept will seem to have viewed the Creator as far too 
close, too understandable, and too provincial a Power, against the remoteness, majesty, 
and omnipotence then conceivable. Just as the details of man's crea tion, as our 
forefathers understood the book of Genesis, seem to some of us now to have obscured a 
concept of incredible grandeur by man's egocentric insistence on bringing God down 
almost to his own size. _ — our fundamentalist ancestors believed that God created man, 
and God is great. We must agree, completely. We merely feel today that God is infinitely 
greater than those ancestors were yet allowed to see. 

When we first start to study mathematics the childish mind finally grasps that such large 
numbers as one thousand times one thousand do not make any dent on the measure of 
infinity. But it is hard for the child to realize that neither does a billion to the billionth 
power put him one whit nearer to the edges of infinity than before he started. And adult 
man finds the same difficulty with his religious concepts. 

It is hard for man to realize that the Infinite still remains infinite, untouched in Its 
remoteness and unreduced in Its infinity by man's most ambitious approaches; or that all 
of man's increasing knowledge leaves the Unknowable just as completely unknow able as 
before. But I think that, being allowed now to grasp this truth, we should cease to quarrel 
and disagree over how close we are to God. For we are using a term which, in a literal 
context, or objectively, has no meaning. We can then each put the God we worship as 
close to ourselves, subjectively , as our own faith and understanding dictate. And agreeing 
that a Creator greater than ourselves has visibly endowed us with purpose, we can give 
far more of our energy and dedication to serving that purpose better. 

That there is a purpose in man beyond anything called for by his individual needs, and far 
greater than his personal desires, can be denied only by the most depraved maniac or the 



most ignorant fool. One of the best summarizations of the force and beauty and eternal 
quality of that purpose is contained in William Herbert Carruth's Each In His Own 
Tongue , which I should like to recall to your minds. 

And gentlemen, lest some of you think there is anything blasphemous or even too secular 
in my repeated reference to the poets in this discussion, let me point out to you that the 
men who wrote many of the books of the Old Testament, and those who wrote most of 
the books of the New Testament, were the poetic spirits of their respective ages. Theirs 
were the minds on which their contemporaries and successors depended to interpret and 
phrase man's most profound thoughts, most permanent beliefs, and deepest faith. Those 
same interpretations and recordings and expressions of man's developing experiences, 
beliefs, and faith do not come to us today as further books added to our Bible; but they 
are being given to us, with greater and easier understanding than we might otherwise 
achieve, by the same kind of reverent and poetic minds. So here is Carruth's justly 
famous poem: 

A fire-mist and a planet, - 

A crystal and a cell, - 

A jellyfish and a saurian, 

And caves where the cave-men dwell 

Then a sense of law and beauty, 

And a face turned from the clod, - 

Some call it Evolution, 

And others call it God. 

A haze on the far horizon, 
The infinite, tender sky, 
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, 
And the wild geese sailing high, - 
And all over upland and lowland 
The charm of the goldenrod, - 
Some of us call it Autumn, 
And others call it God. 

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, 
When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in, 
Come from the mystic ocean, 
Whose rim no foot has trod, - 
Some of us call it Longing, 
And others call it God. 

A picket frozen on duty, - 

A mother starved for her brood, 

Socrates drinking the hemlock, 



And Jesus on the rood; 

And millions who, humble and nameless, 

The straight, hard pathway plod, - 

Some call it Consecration, 

And others call it God. 

Who can read that, realize the incontrovertible and wonderful truth of the story of man's 
purpose at work which the poet tells, and fail to feel reverently bound to serve that same 
purpose faithfully and well ? 

This brings me to the second keystone, if any such contradictory figure of speech is 
allowed, in my own personal belief. It is the answer to the question: What is that purpose 
? And this too has been summarized by yet another poet, Harry Kemp, in just one 
brilliant line: "Thou hast put an upward reach in the heart of man. " In fact it seems to me 
that, to make us truly religious, we do not need to know anything more about God, man, 
and man's relationship to God than is given by a reverent understanding of that line: 
"Thou has put an upward reach in the heart of man. " And again it makes no difference to 
me, and it is a subjective matter which should cause no disagreement between us, how 
each one feels that this upward reach has been inculcated into the heart of man. But the 
thoroughness with which it has been done is a majestic revelation. 

For look with me first at the common denominators of all of our great religions. That man 
shall not steal, which further means that man shall recognize and respect property rights, 
is common to them all. So is the injunction that man shall not murder nor harm his fellow 
man. So are the concepts of kindness, and charity, and restraint of appetites, and 
industriousness, and respect for age and experience, and gratitude for favors received, 
and an individual's responsibility for his trespasses, and the expectation of justice, and 
faith in a happier future, and obeisance to the laws and morals and temporal government 
of the time and age, and a reverence for a Power or Powers greater than man himself. 
And of course a dozen others, both general and specific, that I have not named. 

But, gentlemen, please note, these are also exactly the characteristics with which 
evolutionary selection has gradually endowed man, to enable him to rise out of an animal 
existence, haltingly but surely towards a more humane civilization and a promise of a 
tremendously more wonderful future. In fact the very word "upward, " as we use it here, 
can be taken to describe and define those traits which, found in some species and not 
found in others, caused those favored species to outstrip their rivals, and to come upward 
through the evolutionary competition, until one such species became civilized man. One 
philosopher will tell you that the possession of these upward traits in some species was 
purely an accident of nature; another that it was due to the plan of a Divine Being. To me 
they are both saying the same thing. 

Let's take one or two very simple illustrations. Today man finds a rose garden beautiful, 
and the view of clear running water so pleasurable that he builds countless fountains to 
make his landscapes charming. Originally , of course, the presence of flowers like the 
rose meant fertile soil, the kind of sunny climate in which birds and bees and man all 



thrived, and the absence of noxious jungle; while clear running water originally meant 
that man had escaped from desert or jungle to an area to which he was far better adjusted 
for sustaining life and making it more pleasant. But do these facts from man's biological 
history make the rose or running water, or man's love for both, any less wonderful? 

The same thing is true with regard to those gradually acquired characteristics of his own 
animal nature and later human personality, which converted him from monkey to 
primate, to barbarian, then to a man so far civilized that the male proposes deferentially 
to the weaker female before he will even touch her, in satisfaction of the second strongest 
impulse of his being. Does the fact that these characteristics, which together constitute 
the "upward reach, " were acquired by man, or given to him, through the mechanics of 
evolutionary competition -if they were — does this make them any less wonderful, or 
reduce in the slightest our gratitude to a Creator who provided that upward reach? Why 
do we have to feel that the best qualities of man were given to us full-blown by some 
more direct magic ? Or how could any magic be greater than that so inadequately 
described here ? More important than either question, what difference does it make, so far 
as our clear duty to use and strengthen all impulses of the "upward reach" is concerned ? 

Not only are we a part of some mighty purpose beyond our understanding, and not only 
do we have a clear duty to be true to that purpose to the fullest extent that we are allowed 
to grasp its workings and its direction; but all human experience shows that the total 
happiness of any generation and of its posterity is directly tied to the respect of that 
generation for the "upward reach" in man's nature. We have all the reason here that man 
can ask, divine or human or pragmatic, for keeping our consciences attuned to the 
emotions and impulses which increase man's "upward reach, " and for then obeying those 
consciences — obeying by commission as well as omission — to the utmost of our 
respective will powers and abilities. 

Now let me assure you that, in my opinion, all of this brief adventure into theological 
philosophy does have direct bearing on even the most practical problems we are here to 
consider. And since I am hereby participating in the first confessional of my life, and 
wearing my heart more openly on my sleeve than I have ever done before, let me go all 
of the way and translate these basic motivations into the specific form in which their 
impact hammers away with a comforting persistence on my particular conscience. 

I first broke through the intellectually restricting bonds of the unusually narrow Southern 
Baptist fundamentalism, in which I was raised, more than forty years ago. I loved 
everything about it except the specific details of its dogma. As a result of its teachings I 
saw myself as the inheritor of all the labor and sacrifice that had gone before me, by men 
who had used this God-given "upward reach. " They had used it to provide the moral 
codes, the humane traditions, the accumulation of knowledge, and the material comforts, 
to make me so fortunate an heir of so many ages — to whatever extent I was equal to my 
inheritance. I felt myself bound by a gentleman's code, which is just another way of 
expressing continuing human brotherhood or loyalty, to live up to the standards and carry 
on the ideals of men who had died hundreds and even thousands of years before I was 
born. 



The substance of my conscience, as I believe it is really the substance of the conscience 
of every man in this room, was gratitude and a corresponding sense of responsibility. 
Gratitude, if you will let me paraphrase Henley's line without the slightest implication of 
blasphemy — gratitude to whatever God there was, and gratitude to all of the noble men 
of the past, for the life and the environment for that life which was given me; and 
responsibility, to God and man, to be worthy, so far as I was able, of the human race at its 
best. And gentlemen, what firmer foundation can we possibly need for the faith on which 
to build our new age and with which to inaugurate the dream that is coming to birth? 

Wherever we turn, in looking at whatever blessings we have for the present and hopes for 
the future, we find a need for gratitude that makes the acceptance of responsibility a duty 
and a source of inward happiness. Consider, for instance and for an instant, the blessing 
of freedom. Kipling once wrote truly: 

"All we know of freedom, all we need to know, 
This our fathers won for us, long and long ago. " 

Are we, as Lowell put it, going to be "traitors to our sires, " and lose that freedom for our 
children and their children? Macaulay had Horatius say: 

"And how can man die better 
Than facing fearful odds 
For the ashes of his fathers 
And the temples of his gods?" 

And so we ask ourselves in simple sincerity, as I did in the article, A Letter To 
Khrushchev — if it becomes necessary, just how can man die better, especially if in doing 
so he appreciably reduces the odds faced by his compatriots, in their fight against the 
overwhelming forces of evil threatening us today ? 

But our reason for gratitude and corresponding responsibility extends to every field and 
corner of the civilization we now enjoy — perhaps for so short a time longer. It is 
worthwhile remembering, now and then, men like Hugh Latimer. In 1555, when he and 
his friend Ridley were being burned at the stake for heresy, and all he had to do to save 
his life was to say the proper words of recantation, his veneration for spiritual freedom 
and truth caused him to say instead: "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the 
man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall 
never be put out. " There are thousands of men like him, to whose veneration for the 
upward reach in - the heart of man we owe the very fact that we can sit in this room today 
and discuss religious matters without fear. 

But it is not even to the martyrs, perhaps, that we owe the most. There have been 
missionaries and scholars, the Catholic monks of the Middle Ages, poets and 
philosophers, builders and explorers, statesmen and scientists, throughout centuries re 
ceding into the unknown past, who have toiled and dreamed and sacrificed and died that 



you and I might have the comforts and freedoms and hopes that we enjoy now in so fair 
and happy a land. 

One of the worst and most sadly disturbing traits of many of our young people today is 
that they take their inheritance for granted, and have no thought of its cost. This is a vital 
part of the moral breakdown that is endangering our civilization. It shows how basic and 
necessary a component of faith is man's feeling of continuity and gratitude. Let us, with a 
faith for the future based on this very principle of gratitude to God and man, lived up to 
by ourselves, and made a living and articulate faith for others by both example and 
teaching — let us try to bring many of these young people, who are now at loose ends 
because of their lack of any faith, back into the conscious current of man's increasing pur 
pose. For a code of honor and an ennobling sense of responsibility are themselves gifts to 
the human soul which have been won by its upward reach. 

And so, gentlemen, I have tried to give you, freely and frankly, the substance of my own 
religious beliefs. And without any claim to goodness, wisdom, or originality, I have tried, 
in far too short a time for so huge a subject, to indicate to you the elements of a faith 
which, I still hope and believe, is shared by all of you, no matter how differently you 
might have explained or expressed it. It is a faith for which I have earnestly hoped that it 
might encom pass the individual beliefs of most men of good will; that it might refill our 
ancient founts of inspiration; and that it would become a basis and a beginning of 
renewed dedication to a dream of man's future. 



SECTION EIGHT 

Through The John Birch Society 



Now, how do we go about asking men, in the words of Santayana, to "trust the soul's 
invincible surmise ? " How do we go about all of the immediately more urgent tasks and 
undertakings which I have been foreshadowing — of which this moral and ethical base is 
the bedrock, to be chiseled into a more recognizable foundation as we go along? We 
come at long last to the question of ways and means and methods — to what our 
bureaucratic friends would call implementation -- in connection with all of these plans 
and aims and hopes. 

In the earlier sections of this long and fragmented discourse I used the word 
"organization" several times in connection with suggested future plans. It was a very 
broad and inaccurate term, employed because no other was available to convey the 
thought there being expressed without too much interruption of that thought. But the 
"organization" of which I am thinking is of an entirely different nature from anything that 
word might at first bring to your minds, just as the raising of resources is of a far more 
drastic and more realistic nature than anything attempted in this fight before. 

I am proposing, as the most immediately tangible outcome of this meeting, the formation 
of The John Birch Society. And I ask you not to give undue thought, at present, to the 
name. In the small packet for each of you there are copies of my little book, THE LIFE 
OF JOHN BIRCH. I hope you will read it when you have the opportunity, if you have not 
already done so — or even if you have. 

You will find that John Birch, a young fundamentalist Baptist preacher from Macon, 
Georgia, who did as much as any other one man, high or low, to win our war and the 
Chinese war against the Japanese in China, was murdered by the Chinese Communists at 
the first opportunity after the war because of the powerful resistance he would have been 
able to inspire against them. You will find, and I believe agree, that John Birch possessed 
in his own character _1 of those noble traits and ideals which we should like to see 
become symbolized by The John Birch Society. And the kind of life, of peaceful 
opportunity and responsibility, which John Birch wanted for his fellow Americans, and 
for his Chinese friends, and for all men of good will, is exactly the kind of life we should 
like to see possible everywhere. We could use other names than that of John Birch, of 
course. But I think you will gradually see, as time and meditation do their work, that the 
name is fitting, significant, and helpful, in many ways and for many reasons. 

It is important that it should be, for I am not suggesting any ephemeral organization of 
loose ties and uncertain loyalties. It is my fervent hope that The John Birch Society will 
last for hundreds of years, and exert an increasing influence for the temporal good and the 
spiritual ennoblement of mankind throughout those centuries. For I am staking my whole 
aspiration to play my part, in forwarding man's one increasing purpose, on whatever can 



be accomplished through The John Birch Society. I want no other title than that of its 
Founder, and have no other ambition for anything resembling fame or historical 
remembrance. 

The John Birch Society is to be a monolithic body. A republican form of government or 
of organization has many attractions and advantages, under certain favorable conditions. 
But under less happy circumstances it lends itself too readily to infiltration, distortion and 
disruption. And democracy, of course, in government or organization, as the Greeks and 
Romans both found out, and as I believe every man in this room clearly recognizes — 
democracy is merely a deceptive phrase, a weapon of demagoguery, and a perennial 
fraud.25 ' 

For withstanding the stresses and strains of internal differences and external animosities, 
throughout changing political climates over long periods of time; for the building of 
morale and loyalty and a feeling of unified purpose and closely knit strength; for effective 
functioning in periods of crisis and a permanence of high dedication throughout more 
peaceful decades; for these and many other reasons The John Birch Society will operate 
under completely authoritative control at all levels. The fear of tyrannical oppression of 
individuals, and other arguments against the authoritative structure in the form of 
governments, have little bearing on the case of a voluntary association, where the authori 
tative power can be exercised and enforced only by persuasion. And what little validity 
they do have is outweighed by the advantages of firm and positive direction of the 
Society's energies. Especially for the near future, and for the fight against Communism 
which is the first great task of the Society, it is imperative that all the strength we can 
muster be subject to smoothly functioning direction from the top. As I have said before, 
no collection of debating societies is ever going to stop the Communist conspiracy from 
taking us over, and I have no in tention of adding another frustrated group to their 
number. We mean business every step of the way. There are many reasons why, in the 
fight immediately ahead, we cannot stop for parliamentary procedures or a lot of 
arguments among ourselves. One is the increasing confusion, cleverly planned by the 
Communists, as to what persons, books, activities and organizations really are anti- 
Communist. In other words we are now being more and more divided and deceived, by 
accepting within our walls more and more Trojan horses, large and small, made out of all 
kinds of timbers, and with all kinds of enemy agents inside. Some of them have no more 
harmful purpose than merely to drain off, into innocuous wastefulness, money and effort 
which might otherwise find its way into really patriotic and anti- Communist activities. 
Others are primarily designed to offer protective coloration to Communists who can thus 
get themselves publicized as active in anti-Communist organizations. Others, like the 
very pretentious AMERICAN FRIENDS OF VIETNAM, in my opinion form major parts 
of a whole plan and drive for gradually turning some country over to the Communists, 
while pretending to be leading the opposition. But most of them are intended, as much as 
anything else, to add to and create the increasing confusion which makes even the most 
patriotic American feel utterly frustrated in trying to figure out who is friend and who is 
enemy — and hence more willing to give up the whole struggle. 



Now there are ways of sizing up both individuals and organizations in this battle, which 
come only with experience, a knowledge of the interlocking pieces and personalities, and 
a feel for the way the Communists work. And while of course I can make mistakes too, I 
know from the way my opinion of various characters, formed entirely independently, has 
then proved to coincide with the opinion of J. B. Matthews, time after time when I have 
had a chance to check with him, that I have a fairly sensitive and accurate nose in this 
area. And of course I also have the benefit of J. B. 's files, almost incredible memory, and 
judgment built out of long experience, to lean on whenever I wish. So we do not intend to 
be frustrated by indecisions of this nature nor to let our members be. But the confusion 
and the problem will get steadily worse; and the need for somebody who can simply say 
'help this guy, or let him help you, but stay away from that one" is also going to increase. 

Actually, we are going to cut through the red tape and parliamentary briar patches and 
road blocks of confused purpose with direct authority at every turn. The men who join 
The John Birch Society during the next few months or few years are going to be doing so 
primarily because they believe in me and what I am doing and are willing to accept my 
leadership anyway. And we are going to use that loyalty, like every other resource, to the 
fullest possible advantage that we can. Whenever and wherever, either through 
infiltration by the enemy or honest differences of opinion, that loyalty ceases to be 
sufficient to keep some fragment in line, we are not going to be in the position of having 
the Society's work weakened by raging debates. We are not going to have factions 
developing on the two-sides-to- every-question theme. 26 

Those members who cease to feel the necessary degree of loyalty can either resign or will 
be put out before they build up any splintering following of their own inside the Society. 
As I have said, we mean business every step of the way. We can allow for differences of 
opinion. We shall need and welcome advice. And we expect to use the normal measure of 
diplomacy always called for in dealing with human beings. But whenever differences of 
opinion become translated into a lack of loyal support, we shall have short cuts for 
eliminating both without going through any congress of so-called democratic processes. 
Otherwise, Communist infiltrators could bog us down in interminable disagreements, 
schisms , and feuds before we ever became seriously effective .27 

The purpose of The John Birch Society, as officially stated, will be to promote less 
government, more responsibility, and a better world. The purpose, as unofficially 
described and discussed among ourselves will be exactly the same thing. Our short-range 
purpose, our long-range purpose, and our lasting purpose, is to promote less government, 
more responsibility, and a better world. That says it all. It is, I think, simple, 
understandable, and all-inclusive as to the goals for which we should strive. 

In seeking the first two of those broad objectives, less government and more 
responsibility, we shall make all the use we can of educational action on the political 
front. In always seeking more slowly, but with an inner unswerving resolution, to make 
this a better world, we shall use all means and depend on all efforts that are consistent 
with the faith which supplies our motivation. 



In the political arena we shall try to make the word Americanism useful as a constructive 
opposite of Communism, and attract to our support many americanists who may not be 
members of our Society. But the words americanism and americanist are simply semantic 
weapons, and have no direct connection with The John Birch Society. 

Members of The John Birch Society, not only in the United States, but anywhere in the 
world, not only can be good patriots in their respective countries, but necessarily will be. 
For internationalism, as it is conceived and promoted today, is an attempt to impose more 
government and a more centralized one-world government on all of us everywhere. For 
that reason it is automatically contrary to everything we stand for, and one of the 
movements we shall oppose with all the strength we can. 

An honestly intended federation of nations, in some later years or decades, for the 
legitimate purpose of increasing the freedom of individuals, goods, and cultures to cross 
national boundaries, and hence for the very purpose of decreasing governmental 
restrictions on individuals, is something we would support with all our hearts. But until- 
the intended Communist Internationale now called the United Nations has been wiped out 
or made over from the bottom up, our attitude towards so-called internationalism is made 
clear and uncompromising by the stated purpose of the Society. As Richard Cobden said, 
"peace will come to this earth when her peoples have as much as possible to do with each 
other; their governments the least possible. " It is axiomatic that we shall strive to hasten 
the world's approach to those conditions in every way we can. 

* * * 

*We come now to the question which I know has been in the forefront of the thoughts of 
some of you for quite a while. What are the organizational mechanics of The John Birch 
Society, and how do we go about building up its membership so that it is anything but 
paper and conversation ? 

The John Birch Society will function almost entirely through small local chapters, usually 
of from ten to twenty dedicated patriots, although some chapters may occasionally, and 
for a while, be larger. Each will have a Chapter Leader, appointed by headquarters, which 
is in Belmont, Massachusetts; or appointed through officers of the Society, in the field, 
who have themselves been duly appointed by headquarters. The dues are whatever the 
member wants to make them, with a minimum of $24. 00 per year for men and $12. 00 
per year for women. But we shall prefer to have these dues paid by each member of a 
local chapter monthly, at $2. 00 per month for men and $1. 00 per month for women, to 
his or her Chapter Leader. This is for many reasons, some of which are obvious; and it 
will be the responsibility of each Chapter Leader to collect such dues regularly and 
forward them to headquarters. 

Because we shall have people who want to join The John Birch Society, however, in 
parts of the country where we do not yet have any chance of establishing chapters, and 
because for a while their number will increase, we also have a Home Chapter which they 
can join. The differences are that we cannot afford to have dues paid to the Home 



Chapter except annually in one lump sum of $24. 00 for more) for men and $12. 00 (or 
more) for women, because otherwise we should dissipate too much of the dues money in 
bookkeeping costs; and that our contact with Home Chapter members will be largely 
through printed bulletins — even as to the work we ask them to do -rather than through 
personal contact. 

In the case of local chapters we shall expect the Chapter Leader to get all of his or her 
members together at least once a month, and in many cases oftener, as well as on any 
special occasions which may make such a meeting advisable. And we expect the Chapter 
Leader to be in practically continuous contact with his or her members to whatever extent 
may be necessary in order to pass on or receive information and to carry out various 
concerted efforts as requested from headquarters. For handling the organizational 
mechanics of the Society, and for helping to form new chapters, we shall have a paid staff 
man, with the title of Coordinator, for each area of the proper size. Above these 
Coordinators, in time, we shall have supervisors with the rank or title of Major 
Coordinators; and we shall further build the organizational framework from the bottom 
up, as made necessary by sufficient membership, in order to keep strict and careful 
control on what every chapter is doing, and even every member of every chapter so far as 
the effective work of The John Birch Society is concerned. 

Let me point out here, too, that while such Coordinators and eventually Major 
Coordinators will receive salaries and expenses according to their work and their 
abilities, neither the chapter members nor even the Chapter Leaders who form the base of 
our Society, and who cumulatively do most of the work that counts, nor I myself and 
other top officers, will receive any pay whatsoever. It is only those in the middle who will 
receive any remuneration, because there is where we simply must utilize paid staff for 
organizational needs. 

We are out to get a million members truly dedicated to the things in which we believe. 
This, we are well aware, will take time, and tremendous effort, and dedication on our 
own part greater than that we ask of anybody else. But there are a million good patriots, 
who are also men and women of good will and good character and humane conscience, in 
America, who are just waiting to join The John Birch Society as fast as we can carry the 
story to them. There are a million such men and women in America who would join The 
John Birch Society tonight if they knew as much about it as you men in this room do 
right now. And I think that a million members is all we would want, at least in the United 
States. For we need disciplined pullers at the oars, and not passengers in the boat. 

Now that last statement may put you in mind of the Communist principle of "the 
dedicated few, " as enunciated by Lenin. And we are, in fact, willing to draw on all 
successful human experience in organizational matters, so long as it does not involve any 
sacrifice of morality in the means used to achieve an end. But the Communists have 
asked their followers to devote to the cause "the whole of their lives. " We assuredly do 
not. For if you were required to make everything else subordinate, and give to The John 
Birch Society the whole of your lives, we might as well let the Communists take over in 
the first place. That is exactly the kind of collectivism, of submerging the individual in 



the whole, against which we are fighting. And while there will be some of us, an 
increasing number, but still a small minority, who will actually be giving practically the 
whole of our lives to this cause, we neither ask nor expect so much from the vast majority 
of our members. Our very goal is to save an americanist system and a civilization in 
which a person's individual purposes, needs, and desires, and those of his family, are 
given first consideration. 

But on the other hand, let me point out and emphasize that we are expecting far more 
work and dedication, and far more sacrifice of other interests, on the part of those who do 
become members of The John Birch Society, than you ever thought of giving to any other 
organization which you joined or even considered joining. For unless we have the 
cumulative weight and effect of such solid effort and sacrifice on the part of our 
members, as a weapon to be wielded against the Communists, we are certainly not going 
to be able to hold onto even the increasingly confused, dark, and immoral world we now 
have, much less help to build a better one. 

And of course, from this particular group, we are looking for real money as well as 
earnest effort. We hope to have thirty thousand dedicated members by the end of 1959- It 
will be a major accomplishment if we do. But it will certainly take all of the dues money 
as a general rule, from those members, just for the organizational expense of recruiting 
them, supervising their activities, and making them effective. For money with which to 
work on most of the projects I outlined yesterday afternoon we have to look for larger 
sums from other sources than dues. 

For that purpose we want to raise a million dollars of such "outside" funds during the 
year.28 It will not be easy, and even that amount is an awfully small drop in the bucket, 
against what either the direct Communist propagandists or the Reutherite labor bosses are 
spending against us. But I believe we can get it; and I believe we can make even that 
much do wonders in adding new courage and new confidence to the anti-Communist 
fight. There are bound to be some mistakes and some waste in something so much like a 
crash program, but we shall do our utmost by clear thinking and careful planning to keep 
those mistakes and that waste to an absolute minimum, and to make every dollar count. 

I expect to be conducting, in person, one top-level two-day meeting like this per month. 
We shall soon have tape recordings of this whole presentation, which our Coordinators 
can play for small groups wherever they may be assembled for that purpose. We shall 
encourage proselytizing at all levels, for new members of both our local chapters and our 
Home Chapter. And we must gain both moral and financial support steadily, or we shall 
not be in position to do the things that have to be done, as fast as we need to do them. 
For, as I have said, we are not kidding, or just talking, and we do mean business every 
step of the way. 

As I see it, I am afraid you have just two alternatives. Either you, and tens of thousands 
like you, come into The John Birch Society and, without giving it the whole of your lives, 
still devote to its purposes the best and most you can offer, with money and head and 
heart as well as hands; or in a very few years you will, by force, be devoting all to the 



maintenance of a Communist slave state. So we are asking for a lot, and we want you to 
know it, if and when you sign an application blank for membership in The John Birch 
Society. 

That brings us next to a consideration as to the very nature of our undertaking which 
needs to be made clear. For all revolutions, as Metternich once pointed out, begin in the 
best minds and work downward. While most religions begin at the bot torn, with the 
masses, and gradually acquire both respectability and acceptance at the top. We are 
neither, and both. 

Far from founding a religion, we are merely urging Protestants, Catholics, Jews or 
Moslems to be better Christians, better Jews, or better Moslems, in accordance with the 
deepest and most hu manitarian promptings of their own religious beliefs. And we are 
simply trying to draw a circle of faith in God's power and purpose, and of man's 
relationship to both, which is broad and inclusive enough to take each man's specific faith 
into that circle without violation. Yet the evangelical fervor, with which we expect our 
members to fight the forces of evil and work for a better world, makes certain principles 
with regard to religious groups apply to ourselves . 

We are not beginning any revolution, nor even a counter-revolution, in any technical 
sense; because, while we are opposing a conspiracy, we are not ourselves making use of 
conspiratorial methods. Yet our determination to overthrow an entrenched tyranny is the 
very stuff out of which revolutions are made. 

The net result of these reflections is that we are not a copy of any movement of the past. 
We are unique. We are ourselves. We are something new, as befits a moving force for a 
new age. We believe in profiting by all human experience, but we shall make our own 
amalgam of the organizational metals forged by that experience with the mercury of our 
own purpose. Without donning sackcloth and ashes we shall try to inspire saintly men to 
join our efforts to make this a better world; and without building barricades in the streets 
we shall still try to rally rational men to our efforts to preserve the best of the world we 
already have. 

And now, gentlemen, I am nearing the end of the semi-formal part of this long 
undertaking. I have tried to establish fundamental and permanent objectives, much 
broader than the fight against the Communist conspiracy, because I am convinced that 
these ultimate long-range objectives are more important than the defeat of the Communist 
conspiracy. But also because I am utterly convinced that we cannot stop the Communists 
unless our efforts are a part of such a broader and more constructive purpose. 

Yet, it is the threat of the Communist conspiracy that brought us here. Stopping the 
Communists, and destroying their conspiracy, or at least breaking its grip on our 
government and shattering its power within the United States, not only must occupy the 
front spot and most important spot in all of our thinking. It is the driving danger which 
should determine our thinking about almost everything else, and most of our actions too, 
for the foreseeable future. For unless we can win that battle, the war for a better world 



will again be carried on through long and feudal Dark Ages, after we have been killed, 
our children have been enslaved, and all that we value has been destroyed. That is not 
rhetoric, and it is not exaggeration. It is a plain statement of the stark danger that is 
rapidly closing in on us right now. 

It is the imminence and horror of this danger which drives me to so desperate a course as 
to offer myself as a personal leader in this fight, and to ask you to follow that leadership. 
It is not because I want so frightening a responsibility. And it is certainly not because I 
think that you gentlemen, as good friends of mine as most of you are, recognize any such 
qualities of leadership in me as would make me a happy choice for the role. It's just that I 
don't know where you, or all of us, are going to find anybody else to undertake the job. 
And because I know in my own mind, beyond all doubt or question, that without dynamic 
personal leadership around which the split and frustrated and confused forces on our side 
can be rallied, rapidly and firmly, we do not have a chance of stopping the Communists 
before they have taken over our country. It is not that you would choose me, or that I 
would even choose me, against other possibilities. It is simply that, under the pressure of 
time and the exigencies of our need, you have no other choice, and neither do I. 

As to what is expected of you, in either effort or money, if you are thinking of half-way 
measures we might as well quit now. But I might as well also reveal my fanaticism by 
telling you that there is no force and no discouragement which could make me quit or 
even put less of my life and energy into the struggle. If every man in this room should 
decide, for whatever reason, that he wants no part of my proposals, I would simply go 
back to small groups of plain citizens in Massachusetts, and myself start organizing local 
chapters of The John Birch Society at the working levels. I would be greatly saddened, 
because of my feeling that, without all of the most powerful help that can possibly be 
mustered on our side, in short order and effectively, our chances would be so small. But 
my determination would not even be affected. The last resort of my own mind has been 
expressed by Louise Imogene Guiney: 

To fear not sensible failure 
Nor covet the game at all, 
But fighting, fighting, fighting 
Die, driven against the wall. 

I repeat, however, that we do not have to die driven against any wall, nor do we have to 
lose this struggle at all. As I have said elsewhere, there is enough strength, enough 
money, enough intelligence, and enough patriotism in the vast business community of 
America, to form the nucleus that will stop, and destroy, the Communist conspiracy — if 
we can stir it to action in time. What I am proposing here is the mechanics, and the 
leadership through men like yourselves, by which it can be stirred to action and that 
action made effective. 

In 1927 some of the Communists, after years of work and infiltration by Borodin, Galen, 
Earl Browder, and other agents, thought they were ready to take over China. Taking 
advantage of all the splits and confusion in the Kuomintang which they had caused, and 



of Chiang Kai-shek's problems with his Northern Expedition for the unification of China, 
the Communists caused a massacre of foreigners by troops he had left behind him, set up 
their version of a central government in Hankow, and were ready to seize control. 

Among other measures which Chiang took was to go to the merchants of Shanghai for 
help. And remember, Chiang Kai-shek was, in their minds, associated with Canton and 
the government in the South, with which they were not yet even in sympathy. But he was 
able to convince the merchants of Shanghai of exactly what the Communists intended, 
and that this was a matter of life and death against a ruthless enemy who stopped at 
nothing. The merchants of Shanghai raised the equivalent of three million dollars of 
American money, and turned it over to Chiang with no strings attached. 

With that money, with the ability it gave him to feed his soldiers and send his civilian 
agents into other provinces of China to explain his aims, and with other steps it enabled 
him to take, Chiang was able to throw the Communists out of Hankow, send rats like 
Borodin, Galen, and Browder scurrying back to their homelands, and save China from the 
Communists for twenty more years. But for the overwhelming forces from the outside 
which our government then helped to turn loose on him, Chiang would have been able to 
keep China free from the Communists to this day. But he gained twenty years respite as it 
was. 

Now gentlemen, just stop and think how much money three million American dollars was 
to the merchants of one Chinese city in 1927. Then tell me that, if the American business 
community or the American people had that kind of determination and were willing to 
make that kind of sacrifice, to preserve their freedom and their inheritance, they couldn't 
stop the Communists. It would be nonsense. A part of our job is not only to have that 
kind of determination and make that kind of sacrifice ourselves, but to convince others of 
the necessity of doing so. 

As one man in this room said to me a few months ago, it is better to spend a quarter or 
even half of all we own, and save our lives and the remainder of our possessions, than to 
lose lives and total possessions by fighting with too little and too late. I not only agree. I 
have acted on that principle in my small way. Not only has it seemed to me better to 
spend the money I had saved, in waking up a few more of my fellow citizens to the 
danger; but I am far more comfortable working sixteen hours a day, seven days per week, 
on the same problem and without pay, than I would be in a concentration camp behind an 
electrified barbed-wire fence. And while I am not actually suggesting quite so drastic a 
level of work or sacrifice for anybody else at this time, I do want to repeat that we are not 
going to be saved from concentration camps by those who plan to do the saving every 
Saturday morning before lunch, or by financial backing of the same order to the anti- 
Communist forces. And I also want to repeat, as we simply must convince more of our 
complacent friends, that the result of our failure in this fight most positively will be 
concentration camps, or worse, and soon. 

Let me repeat just one thing that I said to you yesterday morning. There are in the 
satellite countries today thousands of men, just like you and me, who only ten years ago 



could regularly meet in such groups as I propose. Not only that, but they could go out 
openly, with and before larger groups, to try to spread the alarm and to stop the 
Communists from taking over their countries. These men now say to each other, but 
largely to themselves: "If I had only known. If I had only recognized and be lieved the 
danger, and the horror of Communist rule, in time. There is nothing I would not have 
given, to save my freedom, my family, my country, if I had only recognized the urgency 
and the desperate need. Now it is all too late, and any sacrifice, even of life itself, would 
be entirely in vain. " 

We do not have to be too late, and we do not have to lose the fight. Communism has its 
weaknesses, and the Communist conspiracy has its vulnerable points. We have many 
layers of strength not yet rotted by all of the infiltration and political sabotage to which 
we have been subjected. Our danger is both immense and imminent; but it is not beyond 
the possibility of being overcome by the resistance that is still available. All we must find 
and build and use, to win, is sufficient understanding. Let's create that understanding and 
build that resistance, with everything mortal men can put into the effort — while there still 
is time. 

Then, while we are destroying and after we have destroyed the Communist tyranny, let's 
drive on towards our higher goals of more permanent accomplishment; towards an era of 
less government and more responsibility, in which we can create a better world. 

25. Our Liberal critics would have you believe that this statement, for an American, is 
practically heresy. This is because these same Liberals have been working so long and so 
hard to convert our republic into a democracy, and to make the American people believe 
that it is supposed to be a democracy, Nothing could be further from the truth than that 
insidiously planted premise. Our founding fathers knew a great deal about history and 
government, and they had very nearly a clean slate on which to write the blueprint for our 
own. They gave us a republic because they considered it the best of all forms of 
government. They visibly spurned a democracy as probably the worst of all forms of 
government. But our past history and our present danger indicate that they were right in 
both particulars. 

26. The folly of the two-sides-to-every-question argument is em phasized in a brief story 
we have told elsewhere and often. The minister had preached a superb sermon. It had 
moved his whole congregation to a determination to lead nobler and more righteous lives. 
Then he said: "And that, of course, is the Lord's side. Now for the next half hour, and to 
be fair, I'll present the devil's side. You can then take your choice. " 

27. The whole theme of these several paragraphs, and the mono lithic structure of the 
Society, have of course been seized on by the Liberals (and worse) as the basis of vicious 
and persistent attacks against the Society and myself. Their criticism is about as slippery 
and phony as everything else the Liberals turn out today under the label of argument. 

Our members are told specifically and emphatically in our bul letins, about once every 
three months, never to carry out any of our requests or to do anything for the Society that 



is against their individual consciences or even contrary to their best judgment. If they find 
themselves too constantly and continuously in disagreement with our activities, then 
probably they do not belong in the Society and may wish to resign. But it is only a real 
troublemaker that we put out of the Society ourselves. 

So far, with many thousands of members and two years of experience, we have dropped 
less than a dozen. (We have had a total of about one hundred resignations in the two 
years). One of the two dropped directly by the Home Office was a lonesome widow who 
did not have the slightest interest in, or idea of, what The John Birch Society was all 
about. She simply wanted companionship and a place to go, and she constantly bogged 
down her chapter meeting with her personal affairs. The other turned out not even to be a 
member. But he had been going regularly to the meetings of one of our chapters, posing 
as an important member of our Home Chapter, and turning the meetings more and more - 
- before we knew about it — into sessions in advanced anti-Semitism. We simply asked 
this man to stay away from our meetings, straightened out the chapter, and have had no 
further trouble from that source. 

We have refused to accept just one chapter since the Society was founded, and this was 
because of the extreme racist views of some of its prospective members. How little we go 
along with such views is shown by the fact that we have two all-Negro chapters, of which 
we are very proud, and several chapters in northern states with good citizens of both 
white and colored races who meet together. We are bitterly opposed to forced integration, 
in schools or anywhere else , but on far sounder grounds than the "racial superiority" 
arguments. It is because, according to the Constitution, the Federal Government has 
absolutely nothing to do, legally, with public education; because every American, white 
or black, should have the right to select his own associates for every enterprise and 
occasion; and because all of the trouble over integration — which is doing inestimable 
damage to both the black and white races — is Communist inspired, encouraged, and 
implemented for Communist purposes. And while these remarks may appear to be of a 
rambling nature, it seems well worth while to get them down on paper at this point to 
avoid misunder standings in the future. 

When we were viciously attacked in one of the Midwestern papers a few months ago, on 
the basis of the monolithic structure of the Society, our members came to our support 
with a veritable flood of letters to that paper, quoting passage after passage from the Blue 
Book to show how unfounded were the charges advanced. Our members themselves are 
fully aware, from actual experience as well as from study of our materials, that the 
monolithic structure is purely for the sake of efficiency, effectiveness and steadfastness 
of purpose within the Society itself — from which anybody can resign, with our good will 
and good wishes, at the drop of a hat. Our members themselves soon find that there is 
absolutely no reason to object to this protection of the Society internally against 
infiltration, splintering, and inside fights. 



And yet our critics frequently and vehemently charge that we are a fascist organization, 
far more dangerous and tyrannical than the Communists themselves. We don't know how 
they attempt to justify any such charges, but in any event we should like to call to their 
attention one difference between the Communists and ourselves. You join the Communist 
Party, and you are told what to do. You refuse to do it enough times, and you are shot in 
some dark alley or pushed off a subway platform in front of a moving train. You join The 
John Birch Society, and you are asked to do certain things, if you agree . You refuse to do 
them enough times — and we give you your money back! Somehow it does seem to us 
that there is a difference. 

28. Of course as most of our members know, we did not get anywhere near either of these 
goals by the end of 1959. Our growth in numbers , with the dedication we require, has 
been far slower than we originally expected. Our growth in strength, especially in 
proportion to our numbers, has been far above our most hopeful anticipations. Our 
growth in resources has been in between the two extremes. And in all three categories, of 
course, our growth has just begun. 



POSTSCRIPT - MARCH 15, 1961 

For The Fifth Printing. .. 

This edition of the Blue Book differs from the fourth only in the minor particulars 
discussed in Footnote 22. And by the addition of this postscript, as a substitute for the 
postscript dated September 1, 1959 which has been carried in all previous editions. 

It is perhaps in order for us to point out that we now have a staff of twenty-eight people 
in the Home Office; about thirty Coordinators (or Major Coordinators) in the field, who 
are fully paid as to salary and expenses; and about one hundred Coordinators (or Section 
Leaders as they are called in some areas), who work on a volunteer basis as to all or a 
part of their salary, or expenses, or both. Neither our organization, nor the membership 
which it serves, is anywhere near the size we hoped to have by now, when the Society 
was founded twenty-eight months ago. But starting absolutely from scratch, in the 
building of a union of human beings and a unified force of human effort that are, in many 
respects, different from all previous organizational patterns, we have made progress that 
is still remarkable and encouraging. And we are very grateful for all of the help and 
support which have made that progress possible. 

At the present time we are under heavy fire from many sources. This was to have been 
expected, and we believe it to have been inevitable, regardless of whatever excuses we 
may have given the total Liberal Establishment for its attacks. The inevitability not only 
derives from the simple fact of our growth, and the obvious potential danger to the 
Communists from that growth, but also from the visibly increasing effectiveness of some 
of our specific activities. Over the past few months, for instance, members of The John 
Birch Society have been responsible for thousands of showings of the film of the San 
Francisco student riots, called Operation Abolition. That film, put together by the House 
Committee On Un-American Activities, is a deadly revelation of the Communists openly 
at work, right here in America, with the same ruthless tactics through which they have 
paralyzed their opposition in other countries they have taken over. 

During the past few months members of The John Birch Society have also been 
responsible for probably tens of thousands of showings of Communism On The Map . 
This is a film strip depicting the steady geographical advance of Communism over the 
earth during the past four decades, and especially during the last fifteen years. It was 
created by an ardent member of The John Birch Society, drawing upon at least some of 
our materials. And during the past two months the Communists have found that our 
MOVEMENT TO IMPEACH EARL WARREN, begun in Jan uary, is by no means to be 
laughed off as their Liberal allies and dupes at first expected, but is gathering strength 
and significance every month. It is the combination of these impacts, plus the basic threat 
from our very existence and our continued growth, which have caused somebody to push 
the button unleashing all of these extensive and vicious campaigns against us, almost 
simultaneously, in many different parts of the country. 



Possibly to the amazement of the Communists, and perhaps of the whole Liberal 
Establishment, our growth has continued right through all of these attacks and visibly will 
continue. The John Birch Society has the indestructible strength and the gathering 
momentum of an idea whose hour has come. But while this may disturb or even frighten 
the Communists, it does not give us any corresponding satisfaction from an assurance of 
inevitable victory. For we must be vitally concerned with the question of how soon the 
Communist conspiracy can be destroyed. How long will it be -- how many more 
hundreds of millions must be enslaved and how much of our civilization must be 
destroyed — before we can emerge triumphant, and see our world again turning to a 
restoration and improvement of our whole material, political, and spiritual inheritance ? It 
is the time that will be required, the suffering that can be avoided, and the destruction that 
can be prevented, which will measure the success of our great undertaking. 

All we have really done so far is demonstrate rather convincingly that we have the 
formula for ultimate success. And it is a very simple formula indeed, as must be the basic 
plan of every movement that changes the course of history. We must grow into an army 
of sufficient size, fighting with facts and truth as our weapons, until the enemy with all 
his ruthless cunning, gigantic organization, limitless resources, and entrenched power, 
still cannot withstand the total impact of our unified strength and dedicated labors. For 
absolutely certain and early victory we need one hundred times the number of 
Coordinators, the members, and the total organization we now have. It is not necessary to 
change one iota the formula which has brought us this far, but simply to project its 
operation and its results into a scale to match our needs. This achievement, especially if 
within the time still left us before destruction and darkness would make a whole new start 
necessary, will require colossal amounts of money and of labor. But both are cheaper 
than blood, and far smaller sacrifices than freedom. We ask for your help — in realistic 
proportion to the size of the job ahead. 



POSTSCRIPT - DECEMBER 9, 1959 

For The Second Printing ... 

During the four years that AMERICAN OPINION has been published there has never 
appeared a picture of, nor even a personal word about, myself. Nor has there been any 
such word in any material issued by or for The John Birch Society. This is simply 
because of my distaste for anything in the nature of personal publicity. 

The pressure from Chapter Leaders, members, and prospective members of the Society, 
however, has increased to the point of convincing me that the demand for more 
information about the Founder of the Society is well justified, and even that it is unfair 
for me not to give at least a skeletonized biography to those who are willing to follow my 
leadership. Still reluctantly, therefore, but because these considerations must prevail, I am 
inserting in this second printing of the Blue Book a copy of the page of biographical 
notes which my secretary is currently sending to program chairmen of organizations 
before which I am able to appear as a speaker. 

Even though this sketch is, at some points, slightly on the flippant side — to avoid any 
appearance of pomposity or stuffed-shirtism, which I detest — it is my hope that these few 
paragraphs will seem adequate in substance and sufficiently dignified in treatment to 
serve entirely satisfactorily the purpose for which they are offered. 



About the Author 

ROBERT WELCH 

Born December 1, 1899, on a farm in Chowan County, North Carolina. Ancestry, full of 
farmers and Baptist preachers, traceable to one Miles Welch who came to this country 
from Wales in 1720. Educated at University of North Carolina (four years), United States 
Naval Academy (two years), Harvard Law School (two years), and school of hard knocks 
(about forty years). Came to Boston from North Carolina in 1919. Has lived in Belmont 
for the past twenty years. Has one wife, two sons, a Golden Retriever dog, and fourteen 
golf clubs-none of which he understands, but all of which he loves. 

Has spent a great part of his life getting from where he was to where he wasn't, for 
reasons which seemed worthwhile at the time. This includes two trips to England 
specifically to study the effects of the Socialist government; one trip around the world; 
and fairly extensive additional traveling in North America, South America, Europe, and 
Asia. 

Author of THE ROAD TO SALESMANSHIP, published in 1941 by the Ronald Press 
Company; of MAY GOD FORGIVE US, pub lished in 1952 by Henry Regnery 
Company; and of THE LIFE OF JOHN BIRCH, published in 1954 by Henry Regnery 
Company. Is editor and publisher of AMERICAN OPINION, a monthly magazine which 
reviews current events and appraises contemporary leaders on the world-wide stage. Has 
done much public speaking, and will climb on a soapbox to argue against the evils of 
socialism whenever anybody will listen. 

Has been in the candy manufacturing business all of his adult life. Was for many years 
Vice President, in charge of sales and advertising, of one of the larger candy 
manufacturing companies, with factories on both coasts, and of its subsidiary sales 
corporations in various cities throughout the country. Is a director of one bank, and has 
served as a director of several other business corporations. 

Was a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Manufacturers for 
seven years. Also served three years as a Regional Vice President of NAM, and two years 
as chairman of its Educational Advisory Committee. Has been active in many other 
business associations and committees, and in many community and educational activities 
- including service on the Belmont School Committee. 



As of January 1, 1957, Mr. Welch gave up most of his business responsibilities-and most 
of his income-in order to devote practically all of his time and energy to the anti- 
Communist cause. Believes that the only thing the Communists now fear is having the 
truth become widely known, to the American people, about the methods and the progress 
of the whole international Communist conspiracy. For his readers or his listeners, Mr. 
Welch simply puts together clear but separate facts about the Communist advance, so that 
their significance becomes more apparent. Through this method he is trying to wake up 
as many of his fellow citizens as he can, to the horror and the imminence of the dangers 
which they face. 

THE COUNCIL of THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY 

Each of the men listed below, who make up our COUNCIL, came into the Society solely 
as an individual, representing in no way any other group or organization. But simply for 
identification, we have given against each name the briefest line or two concerning other 
connections, or past accomplishments. 

Dr. N. E. Adamson, Jr. A Boston surgeon. Associate Medical Director of New England 
Mutual Life Insurance Company. Fellow, American College of Surgeons. Youngest 
member of the COUNCIL. 

Mr. Thomas J. Anderson. Editor and publisher of numerous agricultural magazines. 
Nationally known as a speaker and author of "Straight Talk" editorials. 

Hon. T. Coleman Andrews. Former Commissioner of Internal Revenue of the United 
States. Now Chairman of the Board of two large (and affiliated) insurance companies. 

Mr. Frank Cullen Brophy. President, Libbey Fruit Packing Co., and other business 
enterprises. Director, official, and board chairman of several Arizona banks. One of 
original founders of COMMONWEAL magazine. 

Mr. John T. Brown. Vice President of the Falk Corporation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 
Former President, the J. I. Case Corporation. Many years on Board of Directors, National 
Association of Manufacturers. Leading American exponent of orthodox economics. 

Col. Laurence E. Bunker. Former Personal Aide to General Douglas MacArthur for 6 1/2 
years-during the Japanese occupation, the Korean War, and MacArthur's early months in 
this country after his return: 

Mr. F. Gano Chance. President, A. B. Chance Company, Centralia, Missouri. Former 
President of Missouri Chamber of Commerce and of Associated Industries o/Missouri. 

Mr. S. J. Conner. President, Modern Sleep Products Company, Marshfield, Wisconsin. 



Mr. Ralph E. Davis. President of General Plant Protection Corporation and affiliated 
companies, Los Angeles. 

Dr. S. M. Draskovich. Author of Tito, Moscow's Trojan Horse. Editor-in-chief of 
SRPSKA BORBA (The Serbian Struggle), a weekly newspaper, published in Chicago, 
with sizable circulation in thirty-six countries. 

Rev. Francis E. Fenton. Pastor of the Blessed Sacrament Church, Bridgeport, 
Connecticut. Father Fenton received his Master's degree in philosophy, and also his S. T. 
L. degree in theology, from the Catholic University of America. 

Mr. Wm. J. Grede. President of Grede Foundries, Inc. Milwaukee, Former President of 
the National Association of Manufacturers and former head of the International YMCA. 

Mr. A. G. Heinsohn, Jr. President, Cherokee Textile Mills, Sevierville, Tennessee. 
Author of One Man's Fight For Freedom. A very successful manufacturer and a very 
dedicated patriot. 

Mr. Fred C. Koch. President, Rock Island Oil and Refining Company, Wichita, Kansas. 
Strong supporter of many patriotic movements, and especially of right-to-work 
legislation. 

Mr. Robert D. Love. President, Love Box Company, Wichita, Kansas. Director of 
National Association of Manufacturers. Past director of Kansas State Chamber of 
Commerce. Past president of South Central Economic Development Council. 

Dean Clarence Manion. Former Dean of Notre Dame Law School. In 1954 resigned from 
important government appointment rather than stop crusading for the Bricker 
Amendment. Founded the Manion Forum, which now reaches a huge nationwide radio 
audience every week. 

Mr. N. Floyd McGowin. President, W. T. Smith Lumber Company, Chapman, Alabama. 
Active on many important boards of national organizations and enterprises. 

Mr. W. B. McMillan. President of the Hussmann Refrigerator Company, St. Louis, 
Missouri. An outstanding business leader. Was, next to your Founder, the first member of 
The John Birch Society. 

Mr. Robert H. Montgomery. Noted constitutional authority. Senior partner of law firm of 
Powers, Hall, Montgomery and Weston of Boston, Massachusetts. Director and general 
counsel to many philanthropic and industrial organizations. Author of Sacco-Vanzetti: 
The Murder and the Myth, a history of the famous Massachusetts trial of two Italian 
anarchists. 



Dr. Revilo P. Oliver. Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures at the University 
of Illinois. Recognized as one of the very top scholars in America in his field. One of the 
ablest speakers on the Americanist side. 

Mr. Louis Ruthenburg. Formerly President, then Chairman of the Board of Servel, Inc., 
Evansville, Indiana. Former President, Indiana State Chamber of Commerce. Now retired 
except as an industrial consultant. Has received several honorary degrees and three 
Freedom Foundation awards. 

Mr. J. Nelson Shepherd. President, Midwest-Beach Company, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. 
An outstanding citizen and strong supporter of many patriotic causes. 

Mr. Robert W. Stoddard. President of Wyman-Gordon Company, Worcester, 
Massachusetts. On board of directors of several of New England's largest businesses, 
including First National Bank of Boston. Has just served two terms as President of 
Associated Industries of Massachusetts. Active on the boards of many educational and 
philanthropic institutions. 

Lt. General Charles B. Stone, III, U.S.A. F. (Retired). Succeeded General Claire 
Chennault as Commander of our 14th Airforce, in China, and is lifetime Honorary 
Chairman of the 14th Airforce Association. 

The basic function of the COUNCIL is threefold: ( 1 ) To show the stature and standing 
of the leadership of the Society; (2 ) to give your Founder the benefit of the COUNCIL'S 
advice and guidance, both in procedural or organizational matters, and in substantive 
matters of policy; and (3) to select, with absolute and final authority, a Successor to 
myself as head of The John Birch Society, if and when an accident, "suicide," or anything 
sufficiently fatal is arranged for me by the Communists-or I simply die in bed of old age 
and a cantankerous disposition. And we believe that both the growth and the 
effectiveness of the Society will be greatly helped by the experience, ability, and resolute 
purpose of so strong a governing body.-RW 

"Actually we must choose between the civilization, the form of society, and the expression 
of human life, as represented by John Birch, and their parallels as envisioned by Karl 
Marx and his spiritual successors. There is no middle ground, at least for the foreseeable 
future; not because no middle ground is philosophically possible, nor because intelligent 
and humane beings could not prefer some middle around, but because the Communists 
will not permit it. " 

* * 

*"With his death and in his death the battle lines were drawn, in a struggle from which 
either Communism or Christian-style civilization must emerge with one completely 
triumphant and the other completely destroyed." The Life Of John Birch