The Troubled Air Part 33

"But there's another side to me," Burke said, reveling in this opportunity for self-expression after the long silence that had been imposed upon him since he lost his program. "I hate the other side even worse than the Communists. I hate the n.a.z.is and the Fascists and the concentration-camp boys and the crematorium-builders, and I suspect that if we scratched around a little we'd find out that those're exactly the people who have been making all this fuss in the radio business and getting people kicked out of their jobs in the name of one hundred percent Americanism. So what I propose is that we do a little investigating on our own hook. Let's raise some money and get our Guilds to chip in and hire a couple of detectives ourselves. Instead of screaming about how pure we are, let's get in and slug it out with the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on their own terms. Let's see some of the skeletons in their closet, for a change. We're in a fight and we're getting our eyes gouged out. Let's stop calling for the referee and do a little eye-gouging ourselves."

Archer sighed. Woodie, he thought, I have left you long ago. Burke was a victim of his vocabulary. Everything was an ambush, a landing, a prizefight, and he never could appeal to a man who thought in less primitive terms.

"I'll tell you what we'll find," Burke was shouting. "And I'll bet my last dollar on it. Let's look and see where the money comes from and we'll find it's been handed in by ex-Christian Fronters, by patriots who were chummy with Goering in 1940, by money-boys who had a nice deal on with Mussolini when that looked like the winning side. If they come out with the news that we sent our old fur coats to the Russians in 1941 let's tell the world that they had dinner with the German consul the same year."

Burke's law, Archer thought. Everybody is as evil as everybody else. All parties are totally guilty. Pragmatic morality for the last half of the century. Archer began to feel sorry that he had come this evening.

"Attack," Burke said belligerently, echoing dozens of press conferences with divisional commanders. "Attack them where they live. Stop defending yourselves, because that way you always give them choice of weapons and choice of ground, and you'll be licked every time. Seize the initiative," he growled, once more the man who had jumped from burning planes and entered cities with the first patrols. "Club them so hard and so often they'll be too busy to club you. Thank you."

Burke sat down, full of loathing and malice toward all. There was a half-hearted attempt at applause, which died down almost immediately. Two more speeches like that, Archer thought, and you won't be able to get a majority of this meeting to agree that this is Friday night.

Burke stood up, remembering that he was the master of ceremonies.

"Now," he said mildly, "in case there's anybody here who still doesn't believe what's happening in the radio industry, anybody who thinks that it's just a couple of cranks and crackpots who couldn't get jobs anyway who are cooking this up, we're going to hear from a man who's on the inside and who's seen it happening and who's brave enough to tell about it. You all know Joe Kramer. He's sold some of the biggest shows on the air and he's been peddling actors and writers since Maude Adams hung up her cleats, and he's in and out of everybody's office ten times a day and he can tell you from the other side of the fence just what we're all facing today. Joe Kramer."

There was a surprisingly strong burst of applause, because the audience wanted to applaud someone and it was impossible to applaud Burke. Kramer got up, his forehead moist, his jacket rippling richly. He looked fl.u.s.tered because this was the first time in his life that anybody had ever applauded him.

"Boys and girls," Kramer said, his voice high and shrill and professionally friendly, "I'm very happy to be here tonight."

Why? Archer thought. Why should anyone be happy to be here tonight? Kramer, whose profession it was to please everyone at all times, would undoubtedly say he was happy to be here tonight at an execution.

"I'm not going to say that I approve of everything I've heard here on this platform," Kramer said cautiously, keeping his lines open in all directions, "although I have the deepest admiration for Woodie Burke, whose work we all know and respect and who was. one of the most popular commentators on the air until recently. I don't approve, as I said, and I don't disapprove. That's not my line. What I know about politics you could put in a chorus girl's g-string and it wouldn't raise a lump. As far as I know, Warren G. Harding was the greatest President we ever had and Russia is the place we get borscht from and plays that haven't made a nickel for anyone since 1910. All I'm interested in, boys and girls, is stealing actors from other agents and trying to keep other agents from stealing actors from me." He grinned, to show that this was a joke, and he was rewarded by a laugh from his audience. "Also," he said, "I'm interested in getting a couple of more bucks a week for my clients and getting my ten percent and keeping everybody happy. But Woodie here is a client of mine. ..." Kramer turned toward Burke and made a small bow of grat.i.tude and deference, "and he asked me to come and talk to you boys and girls and here I am."

Kramer took out an enormous handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his brow delicately. "First of all," he said, "I want to tell you boys and girls something you ought to know. There is a blacklist. ..."

There was a burst of ironic laughter from the audience and Kramer looked fl.u.s.tered for a moment and confused, as though he hadn't realized that he had told a joke. Then he grinned, a little uneasily. "What I mean," he said, "is that you hear a lot of denials all over the industry. You can't pin down any agency head or network official and get him to come right out and admit it. In Woodie's case, for example ..." Again his voice slurred affectionately as it pa.s.sed over his client's name, "Woodie's rating was 10 point 5, when option time came up, and you all know what that means. Woodie was ahead of every other commentator in the country, and, to tell you the truth, I was contemplating going in and asking for more money from the agency. But then the option was dropped. Just like that. Just a note from the agency, which will be nameless, because there is no sense in dragging in the names of people who have been good friends for a long time. I couldn't believe my eyes," Kramer said dramatically. "Then, when I started to try to find out what was happening, I got the brush. Just the brush. First the program director was in conference, then the vice-president was leaving for California, then finally, two weeks later, when I insisted on getting in, they told me go see the network man. Then, at the network, they gave me the shuffle. n.o.body would take responsibility and I spent six weeks going from office to office and finally they admitted they wouldn't sell the time for Woodie, they didn't think he was important enough for that time. A man with a Hooper of 10 point 5!" Kramer said wonderingly. "Not important enough for a fifteen-minute spot at six o'clock weekdays! Then, at last I got it from somebody at the agency whose name I am not at liberty to divulge. He told me they'd been receiving protests, twenty or thirty calls a day. They checked with the phone company once and they found out that all the calls on one particular day came from the same phone booth in Long Island City. And all the calls said the same thing. They said Woodie, who you have just heard say he is opposed to the Communists and who has a personal letter of commendation for patriotic service from the War Department, they said that Woodie was a Red and that unless he was put off the air, they would boycott the sponsor's product. And the network was getting the same calls, too. The man at the agency who told me all this also told me that if I ever repeated this he would say I was lying and that he had never said anything of the kind. And since that time, boys and girls, I have met resistance on a lot of people that I used to be able to sell for the biggest programs in the country just by lifting the telephone and making a two-minute call. I never get the real reason. Just the same runaround. Just that the agency is looking for another type of show or another type of character. But I know and you know what the answer is, when big personalities who have been at the top for ten years, drawing top money, suddenly don't fit specifications any more. And there doesn't seem to be just one set list. Some agencies're a little more lenient than others. They'll hire people that can't get jobs with the firm down the hall. But there's a certain group of people, and I won't mince words, who might just as well move to Nebraska and start raising corn, because the only way they can get into any radio or television program is by writing in for tickets."

The room was very quiet. Kramer mopped his forehead and went on earnestly. "Boys and girls," he said, "I'm going to tell you frankly right here in this public meeting just what I tell to my clients in the privacy of my own office. Something practical. What I tell them is simple, 'Son,' I tell them, 'you go through your books and you find out what organizations you ever belonged to, all the way back to the Pontiac Athletic and Social Club when you were ten years old, and you sit down and write a letter and keep a copy and have it registered and send in your resignation. And if the organization folded up twenty years ago, that makes no difference. Write that letter. And if anybody asks you to join any new organization, run like a thief. And that goes for the YMCA or Young Republicans for Taft or anything that has the word Freedom in the t.i.tle and I don't care who's the president or on the board of directors, Eisenhower or Winston Churchill or anybody. A lot of people aren't working today because they sent twenty bucks somewhere because Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, that great American, wrote them a letter ten years ago and asked them for a contribution. It doesn't make any difference to that feller in Long Island City with a pocketful of nickels whether a five-star general or an amba.s.sador to England sat next to you on the platform that night. He's out to get your job and he knows how to do it and he's doing it. Face the facts. You're an artist. Leave politics to the politicians or you'll fry. And if they put a piece of paper in front of your nose and you have to swear you're not a Communist and you hate the Communists worse, than polio, you sign it, and sign it ten times a day, if that's what they want."

Kramer was sweating profusely now and his face was an alarming high-blood-pressure scarlet. "That's what I tell my clients," he said, "in the privacy of my own office because I want to keep them alive and I want to keep myself alive. And I'm going to tell you something else. If they don't agree to do what I say, no matter how big they are, and how much I like them personally, I shake their hands and I say, 'Get yourself another boy from now on, son. I don't handle you any more.' " He nodded soberly at the gathering. "Boys and girls," he said earnestly, pleading for purity and ten percent, "I know the public pulse and I love you all, even the ones who make fun of me and call me a bloodsucker and a parasite. I love everyone who gets up on a stage or in front of a mike and reads a line or sings a song and makes people laugh or cry. I know it sounds corny, but it's the truth, and I don't want to see you murdered. So remember what I said. Resign, disaffiliate, quit. Entertain. Let the Supreme Court worry about the Bill of Rights. Thank you." Kramer bowed stiffly and walked briskly, in short, nervous steps, on his shoes with the built-up heels, over to his chair, and sat down.

After a while, there was a slow, dispirited scattering of applause. Most of the audience merely sat pensively, staring down at their hands.

Even if you agreed with him, Archer thought, Kramer had hardly voiced a doctrine that could be greeted with wild enthusiasm. Resign, Disaffiliate, Quit, Entertain. Archer remembered photographs taken outside Tripoli during the war. Pictures of sh.e.l.l-torn buildings of Italian colonists on whose walls Mussolini had painted another slogan. Credere, Ubbidire, Combattere. Believe, Obey, Fight. The Italian had said nothing about entertaining. He had missed out on an interesting modern imperative, probably because he was new at the game and hadn't had time to work his philosophy out fully.

Burke was walking thoughtfully up to the lectern as the applause died down.

"Clem ..." Kramer leaned across an empty chair toward Archer, the color in his face slowly receding. "Clem," he asked anxiously, "how did you like it?"

Archer thought for a moment. "Joe," he said gently, "I feel like crying."

"Didn't you like it?" Kramer asked, hurt.

"I didn't say I didn't like it. I just said I feel like crying."

"Thank you, Joe Kramer," his client was saying over the lectern, "for being good enough to come here and give us your views."

The audience sat sullenly, not thankful for Joe Kramer's tweedy views. They moved uneasily, thinking, no doubt, of all of the organizations they had ever belonged to and the difficulty of resigning from them.

"Now," Burke said, "we are going to hear from a man who has spent a good many years directing radio shows and who is most active in the Radio Directors' Guild, on whose board of directors he has served for some time. Mr. Marvin Lewis."

Lewis stood up portentously, ignoring the applause. He had a surly, handsome, aggrieved face, and was known to use a heavy, sarcastic tongue on actors who displeased him. He was bulky and healthy and careless about his clothes, as befitted an artist. He walked slowly over to the lectern, staring pugnaciously down at the notes in his hand. He put the cards down on the lectern and took a heavy pair of gla.s.ses out of his pocket and held them in his hand like a weapon, while the room settled uneasily into silence. The door opened at the back and a woman came in hesitantly. Silently accusing her for her tardiness, Lewis waited until she had seated herself in the last row. Archer blinked his eyes as he realized that it was Kitty, slow-moving and clumsy, looking very large in front in the coat. Now, he wondered, why did she have to come here tonight?

"I'm going to warn you people," Lewis said, without preliminary, his voice loud and threatening, "that I am not going to be polite. The time is past for politeness." He jammed his gla.s.ses on his head, as though he were pulling down the visor of a helmet before battle. "I'm not interested in good manners and if anybody here is touchy, I advise him to leave now."

He glared around the room, waiting for the touchy members of the audience to file out. Everyone sat very still.

"We're here to accomplish something tonight," Lewis said loudly, "and the only way we'll do it is by coming out with the truth. The truth is, I don't like what I've heard on this platform tonight and I don't like the people who are sitting up here with me."

The room was absolutely still and Archer could feel the embarra.s.sment coming up from the audience toward the platform. An ingenious opening, he thought professionally, calculated to hold the audience and create suspense.

"We are all in this together," Lewis said, whipping off his gla.s.ses and shaking them threateningly, "and our only chance is if we all pull together and what I've heard up here is divisive and inflammatory propaganda and weak-kneed invitations to surrender completely to the enemy. If the other side had selected the speakers themselves, they couldn't have picked more useful specimens." He slammed on his gla.s.ses again, glaring disdainfully out across the room. "First you've heard a gentleman declare that he was not a Communist and that he opposed the Communists. And this from a man who by his own admission was the first sufferer for his so-called liberal activities. Who asked him for this indecent incantation? What purpose does he think he is serving by it? Does he think that he is defending the right of free speech this way, or the right of holding private political beliefs, or the right of artists to express opposing points of view to the public? Or does he think he can save his skin by sacrificing others and forcing others to join the diseased scramble to announce a timid and frightened loyalty? And loyalty to what? To the Const.i.tution of the United States, to the concepts of individual conscience and the right to disagree or to the narrow and intolerant doctrine of hatred and fear which is sweeping the country today and which will lead us all into war and total silence? And does he really think he can save his skin by this shameful abnegation? Does he think that because of his confession on the rack tonight, his ill.u.s.trious agent will be received with open arms tomorrow and told that his client will be taken back, at an increase in price, as a high priest of the true faith? You know and I know, even if he and his agent don't, that he hasn't got a chance. He has been disposed of because he dared to offend by dis.h.i.+ng out a little mild pablum about individual liberty a year ago, and he will remain disposed of until there is such a sweeping, furious movement of revulsion against the reactionary masters of the industry that they have to take him back along with all the others. And if there is not this ma.s.s, sweeping revulsion, I say that the time will come, and d.a.m.n soon at that, when Woodrow Burke will find himself in a concentration camp side by side with just the people he is so ready to sacrifice tonight. And he can say he is opposed to the Communists seven nights a week, and no one will listen to him and no one will care and he won't get out one minute sooner."

Archer glanced over at Burke. The commentator was sitting on the edge of his chair, hunched over, his mouth open as though he were on the point of shouting, his fists opening and closing slowly.

"And if anyone is thinking that this prophecy is the result of my disordered imagination," Lewis was saying, "with no basis in fact, let him remember the fate of people like Woodrow Burke, the fine, self-serving, liberal gentlemen, just a few years ago in a country called Germany. Let Mr. Burke reflect for a moment on what happened to the gentlemen of his stripe there who made professions like his, who fought the n.a.z.is' battles for them on the pages of newspapers and on the air, who destroyed the unity of the forces opposing Hitler in 1931 and 32."

Germany, Germany, Archer thought, everybody uses Germany to prove everything.

"We have all been put in this boat together by our enemies," Lewis said with grim triumph, "whether we like it or not. Now we either row together or we go on the rocks. It is as simple as that. As for our commercial friend here ..." Lewis bowed ironically in the direction of Kramer, who was sweating and looking unpopular. "I don't think in a gathering like this it is necessary to spend too much time examining his arguments. Mr. Kramer, by his own proud admission, is interested only in the dollar ..."

"Now, Marvin, honey," Kramer whispered faintly, using his handkerchief on his forehead.

"Mr. Kramer," Lewis went on, ignoring the agent, "will do anything for the dollar and in the privacy of his office advises his clients to do anything for the dollar-resign from everything, maintain total silence, shout the war cries obediently when they are called for, give up all the rights and opinions of American citizens. For his ten percent, Mr. Kramer would have all artists, whom he professes to love so dearly, eagerly enlist in a new disenfranchised slave cla.s.s. If anyone here shares these feudal views on the function of the artist, I advise him to go home now. Nothing I have to say here will be of any interest to him."

n.o.body in the audience moved, presumably because they were not concerned with money at all.

"As for the other speaker on this platform," Lewis went on, taking his gla.s.ses off again, "Mr. Clement Archer ..."

He speaks my name, Archer noted, almost amused, as if I were a newly discovered minor disease.

"I asked to be allowed to address you," Lewis said, without looking at Archer, "after he had spoken, but for reasons best known to the chairman of this meeting Mr. Archer was scheduled as the last speaker. Without mincing words, I have to say that I regard it as unfortunate, to put it politely, that Mr. Archer is here tonight and I invite him publicly, right now, to put on his hat and coat and leave this meeting, which he has clearly demonstrated he has not earned the right to address."

That man, Archer thought calmly, has by now invited a great number of people to leave in the interests of unity. Then he blinked. After a moment of hesitation, applause was breaking out in various portions of the room, heavy, disciplined, ominous-sounding. They decided, Archer realized painfully, they decided in advance to do this to me. He stared out across the room stubbornly, trying to distinguish and remember the people who were applauding. Why did Kitty come? he thought, why did she have to be here for this?

Lewis put up his hand and the applause stopped dead. Archer rubbed the top of his head and made himself keep his eyes up.

"No doubt," Lewis was saying, "you have all read the excellent series of articles by that brilliant columnist, Mr. J. F. Roberts, on the subject of Mr. Clement Archer and I shall not go into the propriety of having as a speaker at a meeting like this a gentleman who, using the power of his position, has picked on Negro and Jewish artists as the first objects of his discrimination and who has been largely responsible for the suicide of a man of talent who was a friend of many in this room."

What I should do, Archer thought, making himself sit completely immobile, is get up and try to kill him with my bare hands.

"I regret that these things had to be said tonight," Lewis said severely and righteously, "but the ground had to be cleared and the issues had to be exposed before we could begin to do anything constructive. Now," he said, lapsing gratefully into the jargon of political oratory, "we have to decide what must be done to defend ourselves, to defend the traditions of our crafts, and the traditions of our country. Whatever his private reasons for advancing it, Woodrow Burke's plan, as far as it goes, has some solid merit to it."

Archer tried to recall what Burke's plan had been and couldn't remember. He felt fuzzy and was sorry he had drunk so much that day.

"I think," Lewis said, self-confidently, "that the idea of getting the various guilds to contribute to a war chest and hire investigators to find out just what sinister influences are behind the editors of Blueprint is an excellent one."

What happens, Archer thought stubbornly, if the investigators find nothing? Or find that all the influences behind the magazine are innocent, patriotic, above suspicion? Do we get our money back?

"But that's only part of what must be done," Lewis went on. "And only a small part. We must conduct a triple campaign. By all means let us expose the forces lined up against us for what they are. But at the same time, let us present our case to the public, the case of free citizens and free artists who are fighting for everyone's freedom. Let us take out full-page advertis.e.m.e.nts in the newspapers, let us turn out millions of pamphlets, let us buy radio time ourselves showing what the danger is, who the real enemies are, what the opposition against us consists of. And, practically, let us all call emergency meetings of our guilds and get the members.h.i.+p to announce that so long as any agency or network is guilty of using a blacklist, no writer or actor or director or musician or engineer will take the job of any person who has been dropped because of his political beliefs."

This time the applause was spontaneous and full. Lewis looked over the meeting, somberly gratified, allowing the applause to run itself out.

"They need us," he declared loudly, as if he were shouting to comrades on a barricade. "They won't be able to stay on the air half an hour without us. Let's give them a taste of how powerful we can be, united and unafraid, when we're challenged, and I guarantee you that one month from today there will not be a single murmur about political blacklists. And to show you that I am in earnest and not just making a gesture, I hereby pledge five hundred dollars to a strike fund, if it comes to that, or any other fund that is necessary. And I also pledge that I will not take any offer, no matter how promising, from any agency or network against which there is any suspicion of blacklisting."

There was a great deal of applause at this, and from various portions of the room, voices called out, "I pledge a hundred," and, "I pledge fifty." Archer watched curiously, recognizing rehearsal, and wondered what Burke, as chairman of the meeting, was going to do to handle the cleverly stage-managed stampede.

Lewis turned and sat down, putting his gla.s.ses in his pocket and tapping his little white cards neatly against the palm of his hand, for use, perhaps at other meetings.

Burke walked slowly to the lectern. His face was white and angry and he was making an obvious effort to control himself with parliamentary dignity.

"Thank you, Mr. Lewis," he said coldly, when the commotion had subsided, "for your views. If you don't mind, I'd like to reserve motions like that for the end of the meeting, when all the speakers have been heard from and there has been a chance for discussion from the floor."

Lewis shrugged, suggesting wearily that he had been prepared for just such cowardly hedging, but he didn't protest.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Burke said to the audience, "I am not going to try to defend the next speaker, as he is known to most of you, and should need no defense." He waited, but there was no demonstration of any kind from the audience. "Mr. Clement Archer."

Burke's eyes were glittering as he shook Archer's hand ostentatiously.

Archer looked out over the room. The faces seemed blurred by hostility. Is it possible, he thought dully, that all these years, while I have worked with these people and traveled among them, they have been secretly hating me? Far off at the back of the room, Kitty's face was a pale, withdrawn triangle.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Archer said. His throat was dry and his lips were twitching and it was difficult to speak. "I had a speech prepared for tonight, but ..."

There was a noise from the back of the room and Archer stopped, puzzled, until he realized that people were calling, "Louder. Louder. We can't hear you."

"I said that I had a speech prepared," Archer said, more clearly, "but I'm not going to make it. Everybody here seems to have a definite plan about what to do. I don't. I'm groping. I'm not certain about how to proceed. I'm not certain even that anything we decide on here tonight," he said, speaking more strongly now, "and anything we do after tonight will be of any value. I'm in doubt and maybe you don't want to hear at this time from doubters. But I'm sure about one or two things and I'll tell you what they are first. First of all, I want to tell you what I know about the people on my program who are under attack. Manfred Pokorny, Alice Weller, Stanley Atlas, Frances Motherwell, and Victor Herres." As he spoke the names it seemed to Archer that he had been involved with them all his life, as though he were the prisoner of those names and he would never escape them. "Since they are all artists-" (Was a past tense necessary for Pokorny and would anyone check him on this?) "-the most important information about them concerns the quality of their work. And here I am on firm ground. I have worked with all of them over a period of years and I can say, unhesitatingly, that their work was good, and in some cases brilliant." (Alice. Was he being absolutely candid about Alice and could he be challenged on that?) "As a man who is responsible for putting on a show every week, I naturally prefer to be able to choose performers, if only on the grounds of convenience, without having to inquire into anything but their talent. Until now, in this country at least, that has been the only basis on which artists have been judged and I am sure we are the better for it. Some of the greatest works of art have been produced by some of the greatest scoundrels of history. Artists in general are not the most stable citizens of any society and their behavior often does not conform to the accepted legal and moral codes of their times. Still, I hear no one campaigning to have the Sistine Chapel whitewashed because of the rumors about Michelangelo's s.e.xual behavior and there is no movement on foot to have Francois Villon's poems burned because he wound up on the scaffold as a common thief. Nor are Dostoyevsky's novels attacked because he confessed to raping a ten-year-old girl." Archer closed his eyes momentarily and remembered the yellow pages on which he had written that afternoon, and remembered Kitty tearing them clumsily, with her bandaged hand, and shouting, "Artists! G.o.d, you make me laugh with your artists!" He wondered what Kitty was thinking now, listening to him in the back of the room. "Are we to be stricter with our contemporaries," he asked, "merely because they are alive? Will it be a good bargain to shut down on future Dostoyevskys and Villons in exchange for political conformity? I know it must sound grandiose to use names like that in addressing a meeting of people who write and act in soap operas and televised vaudeville performances. But the principle is the same and I'm afraid it's indivisible. By accident, or by clever design, the dwarfs in the company of art are being forced to do the fighting to save the giants."

Archer was aware of hurt, angry, vain faces staring up at him at this unpleasant description, but he went on stubbornly, feeling himself grow less and less nervous. "It doesn't make it any easier," he said, "that among the people we have to defend are those who would mercilessly shut down any voice of which they did not approve, and who have, in a large measure, provoked this action against us and who have supplied ammunition and techniques to the censors and book-burners and who have done as much as anyone else to create the atmosphere in this country which tolerates repression. Many of you, I know, do not believe this and despise me for saying it. I myself did not believe it for a long time and I have to force myself to believe it now, because it makes me face up to a despairing, quarrelsome and perhaps violent future. Many of you think of yourselves as innocent and persecuted. Persecuted you may be, but you are not innocent."

Ostentatiously, a woman in a large-brimmed black hat stood up in the middle of the room, put on her fur coat and walked down the middle aisle toward the door, her heels making a loud tapping in the still room. Archer waited until she went out. Then he went on. "It may seem strange to you," he said, "that a man like me, who is himself under attack, chooses to speak like this. From the material that has been published about me I see that a fairly good case could be made out for those gentlemen who prefer to call me a fellow-traveler. In the 1930s and during the war years, I joined several organizations and supported several causes which were also supported by the Communists. At the risk of damaging myself even more than I have up till now, I am going to confess that I knew perfectly well that I was allying myself at that time with them. But naively, or accurately, I believed that it was not I who was traveling with them, but they who were traveling with me. Today that does not seem terribly intelligent, but try to remember the different climate of that time, when n.a.z.ism was on the march, when there was no talk of world revolution or Russian aggression, when our Government not only tolerated but encouraged collaboration with Communism all over the world. What's more, I make no apologies for what I did and thought in those days, and I suspect the rect.i.tude of the men who would punish me now for those long-ago thoughts and actions. No matter how many lists are published, I refuse to believe that attempting to save the republican Government of Spain, for example, from Franco and Mussolini and Hitler was a subversive act or contrary to the best interests of the American people. And no matter what happens in the future I will never be convinced that sending old clothes or penicillin to Russia at the time of Stalingrad was anything but necessary and sensible behavior."

There was applause somewhere in the room, the first overt reaction since he had started speaking. The applause caught on and spread over the room. Archer stared soberly at the audience, wondering how much of the applause was ironic or window-dressing or relief.

"Now things have changed," Archer said. "Mr. Lewis will undoubtedly say that it is I who have changed, out of cowardice or a desire to be comfortable, or because I read the wrong newspapers. Others will say that the Communists have not really changed, they have only been more completely revealed. I suspect that all of these things are partially true. Still, we won't solve the problem by imposing silence on all who oppose us or allowing ourselves to be silenced because our opinions happen to be unpopular. As matters are going now, I could not be surprised to see everyone in this room, myself included, clapped into jail within the next few years. I hope you will believe me," Archer said, smiling for the first time, "when I tell you I do not think this country will be better off on that day. This would seem to put me in agreement with Mr. Lewis, who said that now we are all in the same boat and that we had better row together to save ourselves. Actually, we are not in a position to think of rowing at the moment. The best we can do is bail together and hope to keep afloat. When the time comes to row I have a notion Mr. Lewis and I will insist upon rowing in different directions. In talking of Mr. Burke, Mr. Lewis said that he will find himself in a concentration camp even if he says he is opposed to the Communists seven nights a week. Mr. Lewis obviously implied by that that Mr. Burke was wasting his breath and would be more useful if he kept his opinions to himself. I happen to disagree. If, along with Mr. Burke and Mr. Lewis, and whatever Communists, non-Communists, radicals, liberals and cranks are inaccurately collected in that doleful time, I am put behind wire, I will feel much better if I know I am there for my own reasons and not for anyone else's. We are not in the same situation, regardless of how hard the Communists and their opponents try to include us. The sheriff who is caught in the same jail with a suspected murderer and who fights to defend him against a lynch mob is not of the suspect's party. And even if the mob kills him on its way to the cell, or swings him up on the same tree they use for the alleged criminal, he must insist with his last breath on his separateness and on his difference in function ... There is a reverse side to this proposition, too. At the risk of incurring Mr. Lewis's further displeasure, I must say that I am opposed to the Communists, here and abroad. The great majority of Americans join with me in this opposition. Most of these people are, I am convinced, decent and honorable. There are some, though, the shrillest of all, who use their anti-Communism to cloak bigotry, a l.u.s.t for war, an approval of dictators.h.i.+p, a hatred of all liberalism, all progress, all freedom of expression. They are the lynch mob and it is as necessary for me to denounce them and disa.s.sociate myself from their principles as it is for me to disa.s.sociate myself from the principles of the accused man they are out to hang. As a law-abiding citizen, I am committed to defending the rights of the accused to a proper trial and a proper hanging if he is guilty and a proper exoneration if he is innocent. But I insist on believing that accusation is not evidence, criticism is not heresy, an advocacy of change is not treason, a search for peaceful settlement is not subversive. The courts are slowly making firm ground for us all to stand on in these matters and I will be content to abide by their decisions, even if I feel they are too strict or influenced unduly by the fearful temper of the times. We have a history in this country of righting wrongs and reversing immoral legal decisions and I refuse to be stampeded into premature punishment by cynical and disingenuous attacks on the reputations of people who may have campaigned at one time or another for the forty-hour week or the policy of flying the UN flag over public-school buildings or even for the outlawing of the atom bomb. It was just such attacks on people who worked on my program that have led me to appear here tonight. Partly out of curiosity and partly from a desire to keep a program that I had worked on for more than four years from disintegrating, I spent some time in investigating the politics of accused actors and musicians. Some spoke candidly, others properly told me to mind my own business. And regardless of my agreement or disagreement with any of them or my approval or disapproval of their politics, I came to the conclusion that none of them in their positions on University Town represented a threat to what we call the American system or had committed acts which merited punishment, especially the severe and vindictive punishment of being deprived forever of their means of livelihood." Archer looked out over the blur of faces uncertainly. There were other things he wanted to say, but they were elusive, complicated, contradictory, and he couldn't find words for them. He wanted to say that loyalty-loyalty to anyone or any cause should not be pushed to the extreme limits of its logical end. He wanted to say that he was baffled and that he mistrusted anyone who was not baffled. He wanted to say, Be merciful-merciful toward past malice and future errors. He wanted to warn against Lewis and his plan for a counter blacklist, first of all because it wouldn't work, since people were not fanatics and trimmed to survive and also because there were many actors who certainly would not sacrifice themselves to salvage a known Communist's job, even if it meant destroying their guilds in the process. And he wanted to warn against Lewis' happy a.s.sumption of the opposition's ugliest tactic, because regardless of their motives, they would all come out the uglier for it.

But he didn't say any of these things. He looked out wearily at the divided faces, the faces that were set against him, the faces that seemed to approve, the waiting, balancing faces, and said, "I told you in the beginning I didn't have a plan, that I'm groping. I'm afraid I haven't been very helpful and many of you probably feel that I've been wasting your time. I think I'm clear by now about the way I feel, but I know I'm uncertain about what to do about it. I'm afraid I have to join with Mr. Lewis in saying that I don't like any of the speeches I heard up here tonight, including his and probably including mine. I hope there will be better speeches and better plans brought forth from the floor and I shall sit down now and listen expectantly. Thank you."

He sat down, feeling tired and disappointed with his performance, although the applause was surprisingly warm. It was all so inconclusive, Archer thought. I'm too reasonable for oratory and my energy is too low. Fifteen years ago I might have conceivably made a fiery speech, full of emotion and stirring calls for action, on this subject. But, then, n.o.body asked me to debate this subject fifteen years ago.

Frances Motherwell was standing at her seat in the front row, holding up her hand. At other points in the room, people were raising heir hands, too, asking for the floor.

"Mr. Chairman," Frances said loudly and clearly, "Mr. Chairman."

"Miss Frances Motherwell," Burke said, motioning to her to come up to the dais. She walked swiftly toward the lectern, in her provocative, energetic way, her skirt swinging lightly around her legs. She stepped up gracefully, youthful, desirable, beautifully dressed, the lipstick bright on her mouth, her large eyes cleverly shadowed with a line of mascara on the lids. She carefully avoided looking at Archer as she stood a little to one side of the lectern, resting one hand on it, her other hand on her hip, her body athletic and full under the expensive dress, her legs long and s.h.i.+ning rising from high-heeled black suede shoes. The room was very still, the women watching her warily and with despair, the men with obscure, unpolitical uneasiness. She stood silently for a moment, staring out, making her impression. She was hatless and her hair was very smooth, caught in back by a narrow black bow and she looked as girls in small towns hope they can one day look when they come to the city and conquer it.

The comrades had chosen their opening speaker shrewdly, Archer guessed, getting s.e.x, respectability, talent, wealth, and a gown from a French collection in one glittering and dangerous package. The monolithic approach toward life-in which all aspects, qualities, abilities were always turned into weapons for the cause. Archer stirred uncomfortably, looking at the tense, perfect profile.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Frances said finally, in her husky, disturbing voice, which carried easily to the back of the room without any effort on her part. "I have listened with great interest to what's been said here tonight. Especially to the opinions of Mr. Archer, who was kind enough to vouch for my abilities as an actress, and who was also kind enough not to mention anything about my politics. Mr. Archer happens to know a great deal about my politics, because a little more than a month ago he asked me and I told him."

Archer watched her intently, feeling himself grow tense, conscious of the effort that was necessary to sit there quietly and without moving. This is going to be bad, he thought, staring at the handsome, wild face, this is going to be very bad.

"What I told him was simple and explicit," Frances went on evenly, her diction clear and professional, her voice vibrating with the curious overtone of excitement that had contributed so much to her success. "And I will repeat it here and now."

Suddenly Archer felt himself grow calm, because it was going to be much worse than he had ever imagined and there was nothing to be done about it any more.

"What I said," Frances continued, her long, fine hand dropping off her hip and slowly and lightly caressing her silk flank, "was that I joined the Communist Party in 1945."

She paused and Archer was conscious of the heavy, unnatural silence of two hundred people sitting in one room without movement, without a sigh, a whisper, a cough.

"For your benefit," Frances said huskily and quietly, staring out over the meeting, "I will say that I am still a member tonight, although when this is over, I am going home and writing in my resignation." She threw back her head, and her hair, in its little bow, flicked on the back of her neck in a pretty, girlish movement. Her chin was up and her eyes were s.h.i.+ning and she looked defiant and exalted. G.o.d, Archer thought, she must have turned religious. That was bound to be next on the list. And of course, she would pick an occasion like this, public, emotional and tense, for her announcement. Her hunger for drama and attention, her stage-center nerves, could never be satisfied by private renunciation. Archer remembered stories about Frances suddenly and without warning turning on the lover-of-the-moment at parties and breaking off with him for a real or fancied misdemeanor, humiliating him with savage intimacies and witty and vicious truths and half-truths while the other guests fell painfully silent around her and her stricken gallant. Now, in giving up a political party, she was keeping to the old compulsive pattern of the public tirade she had until now reserved only for the gentlemen who had rashly visited her bed.

Curiously, Archer turned to look at the rows of people in front of him. Many of them, he realized, must be feeling their hearts sink within them as they waited for the revelations in the husky, quivering voice. But the faces were grave and thoughtful and there was no telling, at this distance, who expected to be cut down next.

"The reason for my resigning is a simple one," Frances was saying, "and Mr. Clement Archer is connected to it. After I told Mr. Archer that I was a member of the Party, I was called before the leader of my group and harangued. I was told that if I ever admitted members.h.i.+p again I would be dropped in the interests of Party discipline. If I was asked about what I had told Mr. Archer by any committee or any court of law, I was to deny everything, even if it meant being indicted for perjury. I was told point-blank that I was engaged in a conspiracy and that conspirators did not expose themselves and if I had ever thought anything else, it was now time for me to rid myself of such romantic, girlish notions. I was told that I had been under suspicion for a long time in the Party, that I was considered unstable, and that was why no work of any real importance had ever been entrusted to me." Her voice was bitter and Archer could see that she was still suffering from the blows to her vanity that these revelations had dealt her. If she had been treated more tactfully, Archer thought idly, she'd never be up here tonight.

"I walked away from that meeting," Frances said, "thinking hard. I had never believed that I was a member of a conspiracy and I thought that the writers and politicians who said that were pimps and prost.i.tutes of reaction ..."

Whatever else she has broken away from, Archer thought, she still carries the vocabulary with her.

"Suddenly the blinders fell off," Frances said. "The people whom I had admired, the men who I thought were working for freedom, justice, peace ... Those words." For the first time she turned and looked at Archer, and she smiled. He remembered her saying the same words about her dead young man in England. "That was all hogwash." She turned back to her audience. "I saw what they were really like. I remembered how pleased they were when people got hurt on a picket line, when companies closed down and threw men out of work. They're interested in trouble, in bloodshed, in unhappiness, that's the only climate they can work in and they know it and if they don't find it, they make it. They have to conspire, because they're misfits, neurotics, lunatics, and if they had to work in the light of day, everyone would be able to tell in ten minutes how ridiculous and incompetent and dangerous they are."

We have now reached the point, Archer thought calmly, at which the mad call each other mad.

"I'm a lot of things, I suppose," Frances went on, her voice challenging and high and filled with the delight of talking about herself, "and many of you here probably have told each other some pretty sharp things about me. But there's one thing I'm not and never could be. And that's a conspirator. And certainly not a conspirator against my own country. I don't do anything in secret." She grinned, as though a vulgar joke about herself had fleetingly crossed her mind. Then her face grew grave and she spoke seriously, using her talent to sound sincere and repentant. "After I decided that," she said, "I had to go on to the next step. Was I to keep quiet about what I had seen and heard, what I had learned? Was I going to stand off and watch the machinations, watch people being deluded and used and disillusioned, watch the country being weakened and divided, and never open my mouth? Or was I going to make up for my error and my stubbornness and do my share in repairing the damage to which I had contributed?" Swiftly, with the merest flicker of her eyes and re-arrangement of her position, she changed to a woman who had accepted martyrdom for a n.o.ble cause. "It would have been much more pleasant to keep quiet. And it would have been easy. No one demanded anything of me. Only my conscience ..."

Archer closed his eyes momentarily, embarra.s.sed. Frances, darling, he thought, you should have gotten someone else to write your lines tonight...

"I've stayed up night after night, wrestling with myself," Frances said, looking like a woman who slept ten hours a night and who had her face ma.s.saged five times a week. "And finally, I knew what I had to do. I had to come here tonight and tell what I knew. As a warning, as an example. Now," she said briskly, cleverly switching from the almost religious level on which she had been working to a conversational and friendly, almost gossipy tone, "now we can go on to more specific things. Mr. Archer, for example. I don't know why Mr. Archer has chosen to be so discreet about my affiliations," Frances said, "but I have my suspicions. Mr. Archer is quite a mysterious figure and it's a little difficult to make a coherent pattern out of what he says and what he does. I used to think he was quite a simple-minded and rather b.u.mbling fellow. But things I have learned about him in the last few weeks, plus the speech tonight in which he successfully said one thing while proposing another, have given me new respect for him. Respect for his cleverness if not for his candor. My politics were not the only thing Mr. Archer has taken pains to hide. He has also hidden the fact that the program for which he was responsible was written for four years by a man who is an avowed and militant atheist. A man whom he approved of so much that he permitted him to be seen in every night club in town with his eighteen-year-old daughter."

"Now, Frances." Archer stood up, trying to keep his voice from being thick. "I think that's enough of that."

"Mr. Chairman," Frances said to Burke, "I understood the floor was mine."

"Sit down, Clem," Burke whispered, pulling at his sleeve. "You'll only make it worse if you argue with her."

Slowly Archer sat down. He hated Frances, mostly because she was so plainly enjoying herself.

"Among other things that Mr. Archer conveniently neglected to mention," Frances went on, the melodious nervous voice dominating the room, "was his curious generosity. Mr. Archer, because of certain activities, has for some time been under surveillance and investigation and several interesting items have come to light. For example, Mr. Archer not long ago gave as a loan or a disguised gift, a check for three hundred dollars to the chairman of this meeting, Mr. Woodrow Burke, and I have seen a photostat of that check. He also gave a check to Mrs. Alice Weller, who was a princ.i.p.al speaker at a congress which our own State Department condemned as subversive and opposed to the interests of our country. Whether he donated this money out of sympathy for the lady's political views or out of gentlemanly tenderness, I have no way of judging."

Poor Alice, Archer thought, sitting out there in the middle of the room, dowdy, inefficient, remembering that it was Frances herself who had trapped her into sponsoring the congress, knowing that in the spate of accusations no one would take the time to ask her for the accurate history of the affair or even listen to her explanations. Probably, Archer thought, staring fascinated at the slender fas.h.i.+onable figure five feet away from him, probably by now Frances doesn't even remember it or has come to believe she was in no way involved with it.

"I have also seen the photostat copy of that particular check," Frances was saying. She laughed, a high, jumpy giggle. Somehow, that short, almost-deranged burst of disconnected laughter made Frances seem more dangerous than ever. A woman who laughs like that, at a time like this, Archer thought, is beyond reach.

"And on the day before Mr. Pokorny, who did the music for Mr. Archer's show, was scheduled to go down to answer charges that he had perjured himself to enter this country from Mexico," Frances said, "Mr. Archer took Mr. Pokorny to his bank and withdrew two hundred dollars from his account and handed it over to Mr. Pokorny. And I have seen a sworn affidavit from the teller in the bank to this effect."

Archer closed his eyes. He couldn't bear to look at the pretty, triumphant, expensive figure on the platform any more. And I thought they were only tapping my phone, he thought, only my phone.

"Mr. Pokorny," Frances said, "in case anyone here is in doubt, was an admitted member of the Austrian Communist Party and was married to a high-ranking official of the American Communist Party and was due to be deported by this Government as an undesirable alien and if anyone wishes proof of any of these things I am prepared to furnish it."