What We Think

            The Hearst newspapers adopted the slogan last Sunday, of "Crime–America's Danger and Disgrace."

            "We want recovery from criminal conditions as well as economic conditions," says Mr. Hearst. "The fight to save the country must be backed by formidable power and purpose."

            In order to facilitate matters, Mr. Hearst, we submit our nomination for Public Enemy Number 1. He is that millionaire exploiter of labor, red baiter and father of yellow journalism, William Randolph Hearst. For your edification here are the latest additions to his colorful record.

            He has been conducting a vicious attack on the Soviet Union. Saturday, January 5, he delivered a radio address on "Government by the Proletariat." He stressed the fact, that during the 1933 harvest, from five to ten million Russian peasants were starving. Walter Duranty, Moscow correspondent, for the New York Times, in a dispatch dated August 23, 1933 said, "The excellent harvest about to be gathered shows that any report of famine in Russia today is an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."

            Mr. Hearst spoke of suffering, starvation and death in 1934. Harold Denny, another Times correspondent on October 15, 1934 reported, "Nowhere was famine found. Nowhere even the fear of it . .. In short, there is no air of trouble or impending trouble."

            The "Friends of the Soviet Union," a non-partisan organization whose aim is to spread the truth about Russia, has challenged Hearst to a debate on the subject; "Is Hearst lying about the Soviet Union?" To date, Mr. Hearst has not responded.

            Recently Mr. Hearst has concentrated his attacks on the student youth and its teachers. Professors George S. Counts and William A. Kilpatrick of Columbia University, reported that Journal reporters interviewed them, twisted and misinterpreted their remarks to present the professors as "dangerous reds."

      The New York American is clamoring for an investigation of the charges that Brooklyn College and Long Island University instructors are "disseminating communist propaganda in the classrooms." The Evening Journal ran a series of articles last November which posed as a grand expose of' communism in Brooklyn College.

            While students all over the country protest against compulsory military training in the colleges, Hearst is sponsoring, first, an army ROTC match, second, a National Guard competition, and third, the innovation of a national naval ROTC rifle match for the universities.

      The Ives loyalty oath for teachers has Mr. Hearst's hearty endorsement. Senator Joseph D. Nunan has introduced a bill requiring a similar oath for students. He, also, has the editorial support of Mr. Hearst.

      The National Education Association, a group of college editors in the east and middle west, the National Student League, the Student League for Industrial Democracy, the Progressive Education Association, the National Conference of Students in Politics, the Student Board of Columbia University, the Teachers' Anti-Fascist Association of City College, are all taking part in a nation-wide anti-William Randolph Hearst campaign.

            They say, "The Hearst program would reduce colleges to the ignominious condition of schools and universities of Hitler's Germany and Fascist Italy. Is this the beginning of a nation-wide Fascist campaign to destroy our basic American freedom? American people have a right to know!"

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May 20,