cism of any aspect of Soviet
Communism, including the
public adoration of Stalin, was
to "play into the hands of the
class enemy."
Because of the dominance of
the slogan "Defend the Soviet
.Union" during the years that I
was in the Party, I was not sur–
prised at the readiness of Ameri–
can Communists, like those in
the Washington Ware groups, to
transmit secret information to
Russia, or at the fact that Noel
Field, having fled to Hungary
from the investigations here
only to be imprisoned there for
several years by the hard-line
Stalinist regime, should stoutly
defend the use of Russian tanks
to
rescue that regime from popu–
lar anger.
Robert Gorham Davis
Mr. Schlatter Replies:
Bob Davis is confusing his
past with mine. He app'arently
belonged to a Cambridge Com–
munist group which included
townspeople and MIT faculty. I
did not, and I never heard of
such a group. I belonged to a
group composed exclusively of
Harvard Faculty and we were
323
rarely hammered by "func–
tionaries" -Granville Hicks was
our link with the C.P. outside.
Bob Davis says that some–
one whom he does not name
gave classified information to
the Russians. I never heard of
that before and find it hard to
believe that it wa anyone I knew
in the Harvard group. He also
sees something sinister in the
fact that a physicist member of
our group worked during the
war at Los Alamos. The only
physicist in our group I knew
was Wendell Furry. I do not
know what he did during the
war, but after the war he contin–
ued as a distinguished professor
of physics at Harvard, surviving
the onslaughts of the Un–
American Activities Committee.
If
he did work at Los Alamos
during the war, that proves, not
that our secrecy was well–
preserved but that no one cared
much in those days about past
political activity. When I was
hired by the OSS-in the end I
did not take the job-there was
no security investigation that I
was aware of.
Finally, unlike Bob Davis, I
would have been very surprised
to learn that he, or anyone else I
knew at Harvard, had been se–
duced into becoming a spy.
