RICHARD SCHLATTER
611
Teachers' Union, and usually voted as a unit at Union meetings. The
only really important vote which I remember-one which split the
Union and eventually brought about its demise-was on the issue of
supponing the reelection of Roosevelt and taking sides in the war in
Europe. The Communist Party had abandoned the Popular Front and
was opposed to Roosevelt and the war, and we went along, stupidly, as
I think now . But the feeling was strong that the war at that time was
not an ant ifascist war any more than the First World War had been a
war "to make the world safe for democracy," and it fitted the tradi–
tional view of my generation that America's involvement in World War
I had been a tragic mistake. Yet
to
abandon Britain, which I loved, and
to
stop opposing Hitlerism, which I hated, was a bitter experience. The
fall of France was traumatic for me but I still clung, miserably and in
violation of my deepest feelings, to the principle of neutrality. It was an
enormous relief when Hitler attacked Russia. That attack may not have
changed the nature of the war, but it seemed to me a sufficient reason to
abandon my painful refusal
to
take sides.
Granville Hicks left the Communist Party with a big splash when
the Russian pact with Hitler was signed in August, 1939. Some of the
Harvard group drove over to his house in Grafton, N.Y. to talk it over
and agreed that he was right and that we would probably follow suit. I
lingered on for a few months, feeling more and more uncomfortable.
But I was not convinced then, and am not now, that the azi-Soviet
pact was wicked. The Western powers had made a pact with Hitler at
Munich and were apparently hoping that Germany would attack
Russia . Why should the Russians not try
to
turn the tables? But the
intolerable part was the sudden switch in the propaganda of the
Communist Party: from one day
to
the next Roosevelt and Churchill
were transformed from the saviors of peace and civilization to devilish
warmongers, and Hitler suddenly became the friend of peace. Pearl
Harbor made us all glad to have the Russians as allies, but the Popular
Front died. The Harvard communist group. quietly faded away, as did
the Teachers' Union, and my own political activity came to an end. I
got married.
I have two regrets about the communist episode at Harvard. The
first, a personal one, is that it involved secrecy and meant concealing an
imponant part of my life from some of my best friends. F.O. Mat–
thiessen knew that I was a Communist because he asked me and I told
him. Perry Miller never asked, did not know, and was deeply offended
years later when he found out by reading, in
The New York Times,
Boorstin's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Com-
