at the same time they were teaching, and looking back now these 14 years, I just don't recall the details in most of the instances.

Mr. TAVENNER. Was he a member of the party?

Mr. HICKS. Yes.

Mr. TAVENNER. Of the Communist Party with you?

Mr. HICKS. Yes, he was.

Mr. TAVENNER. Do you recall George Mayberry?

Mr. HICKS. Yes.

Mr. TAVENNER. Was he a member of the Communist Party with you?

Mr. HICKS. Yes, he was.

Mr. TAVENNER. Do you recall at this time any special activity of Dr. Wendell Furry in that Communist Party group while you were there?

Mr. HICKS. No, no; I just remember him as one of the members doing what other people were doing.

Mr. TAVENNER. What was the chief concern and activity of that group of the Communist Party during the year you were there?

Mr. HICKS. Well, I think Mr. Davis stated it very well yesterday. Mr. TAVENNER. Well, rather than to repeat matters that he testified to in particular, do you have any facts to add in addition to what he said?

Mr. HICKS. No, I think not. I think his account was adequate and accurate.

Mr. TAVENNER. Is there anything that he said about the activity of the Communist Party with which you disagreed?

Mr. HICKS. Not that I can recall.

Mr. TAVENNER. Did you personally take part in caucuses of the Teachers' Union?

Mr. HICKS. In the sense that almost every meeting of the party unit was a caucus, as I think has already been pointed out. That is, we did not hold separate caucuses because there was no need of it; we discussed Teachers' Union affairs at meeting of the party branch. Mr. TAVENNER. Do you recall an individual by name of Louis Harap-H-a-r-a-p?

Mr. HICKS. Yes.

Mr. TAVENNER. What connection, if any, did he have with this Communist Party group?

Mr. HICKS. He was a member of the group.

Mr. TAVENNER. Will you tell how the directives or instructions from the Communist Party were transmitted to your group?

Mr. HICKS. My recollection is that they came in various ways. As a matter fact, I have often carried them myself, since I had—I was carrying on a rather wide range of Communist propaganda activities, and therefore, was likely to go into Phil Frankfeld's office, and he would tell me things he wished our group would discuss or would do.

I think Harap also acted as a kind of go-between, and there may have been others. It was pretty informal in that particular year. Mr. TAVENNER. Were all the members of this group fairly active in the work of the party?

Mr. HICKS. I would say there was a good deal of variation. Some were much more active than others.

Mr. TAVENNER. You referred to the wide range of Communist Party activities that you were engaged in at that time. Will you explain that, please?

Mr. HICKS. Well, most of it was simply speaking at various meetings of many kinds. The fact that so much publicity had been given my appointment at Harvard led to many invitations from highly respectable organizations as well as party organizations, and during that entire year I think I spoke on an average of 2 or 3 times a week. Mr. TAVENNER. Were those speeches made with the purpose of advancing the cause of communism generally?

Mr. HICKS. Generally, yes.

These speeches, or especially those that were given to our large non-Communist groups, were devoted chiefly to expounding the anti-Fascist position which was at the time the official position of the party and was very much my own position.

Mr. TAVENNER. Did you have occasion in carrying out that function to speak before groups of students of the college?

Mr. HICKS. Yes, at Harvard and other colleges as well.

Mr. TAVENNER. What type of groups did you speak before at Harvard—or let me change the question: Was there a Young Communist League organization at Harvard at that time?

Mr. HICKS. I believe there was.

Mr. TAVENNER. Did you appear as a speaker before it?

Mr. HICKS. Not that I can recall.

Mr. TAVENNER. Did you attend one of their meetings at any time? Mr. HICKS. Not that I can recall.

Mr. TAVENNER. Do you know to what extent higher functionaries. of the party visited that Young Communist League organization among the students at Harvard?

Mr. HICKS. Well, I have no idea.

Mr. TAVENNER. Did you discuss that with Phil Frankfeld on any occasion?

Mr. HICKS. Not that I can recall. I think the feeling was, my being an open Communist, I had better not have much to do with the YCL, at least that's the way I can recall now. Certainly I didn't have much to do with it.

Mr. TAVENNER. Now, what was the general purpose of the Communist Party in endeavoring to organize a cell or unit among the teaching profession at Harvard, or at any other university, as far as that is concerned?

Mr. HICKS. Well, I think that's a question that has to be answered on two levels, really: First, what I thought then, and second, what I think now.

May I answer it that way?

Mr. TAVENNER. Yes, sir.

Mr. HICKS. What I thought then was that the Communist Party, having had a genuine change of heart in 1934 and 1935, when the new line was adopted, was interested in carrying on the fight against fascism and in protecting democracy against fascism and had postponed into some rather indefinite future the whole idea of world revolution. I believed that in the light of that the Communist Party was interested in reaching all people who can mold public opinion, and among these, of course, would be the teachers.

Mr. TAVENNER. And, incidentally, at that point, wouldn't the teachers be in a better position to mold public opinion among people generally both within and without the schools than almost any other class of people?

Mr. HICKS. They certainly were a very influential group, and the party was well aware of that.

Mr. TAVENNER. Pardon my interruption.

Mr. HICKS. Yes, certainly. Of course, I feel now that the party was—well, it is very obvious to me that the popular front was simply a dodge that happened in those particular years to serve the foreign policy of the Soviet Union; so it seems to me that the party, in organizing branches in the colleges, had two purposes. One was to carry out the existing line which they wanted to make a show of advancing, and then, of course, the other was to try to have a corps of disciplined revolutionaries whom they could use for other purposes when the time

came.

Mr. WALTER. Did you ever come in contact with the corps of trained revolutionaries?

Mr. HICKS. In the sense that the party organizers, like Phil Frankfeld, for example, are.

Mr. WALTER. I think he would faint if anybody showed him a gun, and I am sure that is true of a great many of the revolutionaries that testified before this committee. I am just wondering, in view of these rather jacketed, hard-boiled revolutionaries, who they were.

Mr. HICKS. They were the party functionaries as a rule, the professional party members, the members who give the whole of their lives to it.

Mr. KEARNEY. In that category would you designate the group of Communists who were convicted in New York City?

Mr. HICKS. Certainly.

Mr. TAVENNER. Now, will you elaborate further upon those two methods or purposes, rather, of the Communist Party, as you understand it now?

Mr. HICKS. Well, I think the only way I can elaborate is to say that most, and perhaps all, of the men who belonged to the unit at Harvard were people who felt as I did, who were thinking of party activity in terms of the situation that then existed in the late thirties, a situation in which, to many people in this country, the great enemy was certainly Fascist Germany, and our potential ally was Soviet Russia.

I think that these people, almost without exception, felt that. Mr. TAVENNER. Now, that was the situation as you have described it prior to, I assume you mean, the pact between the Soviet Russia and Germany, which was August 23, 1939.

Mr. HICKS. Exactly.

Mr. TAVENNER. What change occurred at that time?

Mr. HICKS. Well, after a very brief period of confusion, the party, of course, adopted its position. The fight against fascism was a secondary matter, a matter of taste, as Molotov said, and that the war as now going on was an imperialist war and that the chief aim of all Communists should be to prevent the United States from aiding England and France in their fight against Nazi Germany.

Mr. TAVENNER. Did you have any difficulty in accepting that sudden change in Communist Party line?

Mr. HICKS. I found it perfectly impossible to accept it and got out of the party within a very short time after the pact was signed.

Mr. TAVENNER. Were you concerned about it to the extent that you sought further information or advice from functionaries on a higher level?

Mr. HICKS. Yes; I went to New York, had a talk with Earl Browder, to see if he had anything to say; I mean, I didn't want to break with the party. I had given 4 years of my life to it. I didn't want to break. It was a very hard step to take. I was convinced I had to take it, but I went to talk with Browder and to see if he had anything to say that I hadn't already read in the Daily Worker.

He simply paralleled the Daily Worker line, and I came home and wrote a public letter of resignation.

Mr. TAVENNER. What he had said confirmed your opinions and judgment about the change in the party policy, in the party line?

Mr. HICKS. It made perfectly clear to me what should have been clear to me earlier, and that is that the Communist Party in the United States was wholly under the domination of the Soviet Union.

Mr. DOYLE. What year was that?

Mr. HICKS. That was September 1939, or August and September. Mr. SCHERER. You believe that to be true today, too?

Mr. HICKS. I do.

Mr. SCHERER. Do you know whether that's true or not today?

Mr. HICKS. How do you know? I think the evidence is overwhelming.

Mr. SCHERER. I just want that as a part of the record.

Mr. KEARNEY. May I suggest that the gentlemen of the committee let counsel pursue the examination and then if the members have any questions to ask, they can ask them at the end of counsel's interrogation. It will expedite matters.

Mr. TAVENNER. Well, now, at the time you left the party for the reasons that you mentioned, there were others who had entered it with the same beliefs you had, but continued to remain in the Communist Party; isn't that true?

Mr. HICKS. I think that is true.

Mr. TAVENNER. It took some courage and determination to break bonds after once being entered into; did it not?

Mr. HICKS. I think so. It was a difficult thing to do, as I said a moment ago. There were people who were in positions which perhaps made it even more difficult; that is, where the party itself might be able to exert pressure.

In my own case it was very fortunate that I had been an open member of the party, because I had to make my decision openly. I had been saying all this about fascism being the real enemy, and now I would have had to turn right around and say the exact opposite, and of course I couldn't bring myself to do that, and there was nothing to do but break with the party. If I had been a secret member, I could have temporized for some months, worried and fretted, and then eventually come around and reconciled myself to the new party line. Mr. TAVENNER. Well, I would like for you to give the committee the benefit of such opinion as you have, based upon your knowledge of the Communist Party and its principles, and particularly its purposes, as you have described them at this time.

Mr. HICKS. Well, I feel, as I said a moment ago, that the evidence is overwhelming; that the Communist Party in this country is and always has been dominated by the Soviet Union. I think that every member of the Communist Party is an actual or a potential agent of the Soviet Union.

I would like to stress that word "potential."

Any given individual at any given moment may not be an agent, even though he is a member of the Communist Party; that is, when a test comes, that would make him an agent, in effect, of the Soviet Union. He may break with the party, as I believe many people have done. That happens not only in moments when the party line changes. I think that has happened to individuals who were given assignments that they suddenly saw were in effect treasonous, and they would not carry such assignments out, and they quit then and there. So, as I say, you cannot at any moment, at any given moment, say a particular member of the Communist Party is an agent of the Soviet Union, but I think you can say he is potentially an agent, and that that is exactly how the Communist Party would like to use him if it could. Mr. TAVENNER. But do you not agree that these potential agents have nevertheless a very important part to play in the development of the whole Communist scheme of things in the promulgation of the Communist Party line, among people generally, and the influencing of the public, and the public's views, upon contributions to Communist-front organizations, in which the Communist Party is interested and is using?

Mr. HICKS. Oh, I do agree, that's absolutely true. I just did not want my statement about a party member being a Soviet agent to stand unqualified. That would be unfair.

Mr. TAVENNER. Yes, I agree.

Mr. HICKS. To certain individuals.

Mr. TAVENNER. Now, knowing students at college, as you are bound to know them, and understanding the motives of the Communist Party, what is your judgment about the advisability of maintaining in a responsible position in a college a teacher who is under the directives and under the discipline of the Communist Party as you have described it?

Mr. HICKS. Well, I think there are-in most situations that is probably a very undesirable thing. I must say I would go along with Senator Taft in feeling that I would not want to make an absolute rule about that. I think there are situations in which it would be better to let a Communist keep his job than to disrupt the whole fabric of academic freedom; that is, I won't make an absolute statement to the effect that every Communist in an educational institution ought to be removed as quickly as possible.

I think each case ought to be looked into on its own merits, and the question of the damage, the kind and amount of damage the particular individual is doing should be determined, and all that should be taken into account.

Mr. WALTER. Don't you distinguish unorthodox teachings from teachings advocating the overthrow of the Government?

Mr. HICKS. Well, there is no-I'm assuming there is no evidence that this particular hypothetical Communist has been teaching the

30172-53--8