Sidney Hook
THE COMMUNIST PEACE OFFENSIVE
Another episode in which I was involved was of major
significance compared to previous experiences in which I discovered
systematic efforts by the Communists to control, and failing that, to
undermine democratic movements and organizations. I no longer
recall the exact date early in 1949 that I saw the announcement of
the convening of the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World
Peace at the swank Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, under
the auspices of the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Pro–
fessions, on March 25 to 27. I was vaguely aware that the predecessor
of the National Council was the Independent Citizens Committee of
the Arts, Sciences, and Professions which had endorsed and actively
campaigned for Henry Wallace in the presidential election of the
previous year. But I was definitely unaware at the time of the ramifi–
cations of the conference, the details of which came to light in the
exciting weeks before its convocation.
The full text of the call for the conference was not available to
me but, according to the news story, after detailing some considera–
tions critical of current American foreign policy, it invited American
artists, scientists, and professionals to come together "to discuss and
seek a basis for common action on the central question of peace." It
concluded with the following sentence: "We call upon those of no one
party but of all parties, on all men of good will, to join with us."
Although naturally suspicious that this was just window dressing
for another ambitious propaganda event to further the Soviet cause,
I resolved to take the organizers of the conference at their word.
Since I was a devotee of peace and considered myself a man of good
will, I wrote to three members of the Program Committee among
those listed who, I had reason to believe, were not Communist sym–
pathizers, offering to read a paper on "Science, Culture and Peace,"
a topic that had an obvious bearing on the central theme of the Con–
ference. I proposed to establish three theses which I spelled out in
brief detail in the summary that I submitted:
1. There are no 'national truths' in science, and that it is only
by its deficiencies that a science can ever become the science of
Editor's Note: This is a chapter excerpted from a forthcoming autobiography tenta–
tively titled,
Out
of
Step: A Life in the Twentieth Century.
