THE HISS CASE
491
domestic reforms of Roosevelt's first term, especially the new government
attitude toward labor, further marked out the path of progress which
this country was now to follow-suddenly American liberals could feel a
real congruity of purpose with the administration. And
if
the price
of this resurgent energy was the hatred of the reactionaries of the
country, it was a price the liberal gladly accepted. Let the backward
forces in American political and economic life call him R ed, he could
meet the charge head on, with the firm conviction of his Americanism.
The word "patriotism" was not yet invoked on the side of progress;
this was to wait a few years more. But to the concept of Americanism
there were now assimilated all the good values which fascism attacked
-freedom of speech and thought, freedom of religion, the right of
labor to organize for collective bargaining. And expectably enough,
whoever questioned a single attitude on thc anti-fascist side himself fell
under the fascist imputation.
Thus, not very slowly but very surely, the ranks of American
liberalism were broken into two profoundly antagonistic groups-those
whose only enemy was fascism; and those who had two enemies, both
fascism and Communism. And if this division was clearly drawn even
before the war, if the anti-Communist liberal found it hard to make
himself heard even in peacetime, how much more difficult was his
role after 1941, when Russia and America became military allies.
The blow which the dominant liberalism of this country had suffered
in the short period of the Soviet-Nazi pact would have appeared to be
staggering. It has resulted in the disaffection of many intellectuals
who had been able to overlook all the other threats to their faith in
the Soviet Union. But the termination of the pact with Hitler's at–
tack upon the Soviet Union brought most of them back into camp. For
it gave American liberals just the excuse they had been seeking for
Russia's unseemly alliance-it was clear Russia had just been temporiz–
ing to prepare for the fight. This, we must understand, was thc
reality
of
politics: even an ideal government had often to use un-ideal methods
to achieve her goals. Means were justified by their ends, and only
political dreamers measured an end by the methods used to attain it.
It was the same argument that had been put forward to explain away so
many contradictions between socialist theory and Communist practice,
or to defend Roosevelt against the criticism that he had never broken
with the Democratic Party bosses.
And the appeal to practicality became even more urgent once we
were in the war.
It
was not practical to question the conduct of an ally,
particularly of an ally who had so much reason in the past-intervention,
