JAY MARTIN
527
words-a "put-up job"
to
rehabilitate Trotsky. Dewey was not just a
dupe but a willing tool of the reactionaries .
So the battle raged on, all over the world. Dewey held the hearings
together and, by his own evident moral integrity and personal intellec–
tual sincerity and studiousness, kept the tribunal going in the midst of
this fury of invective. Bertram Wolfe, who was
to
become famous for his
work,
Three Who Made a Revolution,
as well as for his biography of
Diego Rivera and other books, was a young, excited spectator at the
hearings. He wrote to another young man, who would eventually be
F.
Scott Fitzgerald's first biographer, Arthur Mizener: "Here is fine old
Dewey, an honest liberal worth all the ultra-revolutionary intellectuals
put together, going to school again at the age of seventy-eight, and
learning all about the worker's movement, reading everything, [and]
asking [all of us] for bibliography, etc."
Dewey, of course, was merely following his usual habits, spending all
day in sessions, as he had done at all his teaching jobs, reading vora–
ciously at night, and then preparing long lists of questions for the next
day before he went to bed. This doesn't mean, of course, that he had
forgotten about, or neglected, Roberta . Here is the beginning of a typi–
cal letter in the swirling midst of the hearings: "Dearest darling dear. I
feel a big hole in my heart. You can't believe what a constant stay you
are to me. . . .It's incredible and beautiful. My own, I fold you in my
arms and keep you in my heart. ..you are everything to me." Such
romantic openings were often followed by objective accounts of the
day's inquiry. Sometimes a bit of gossip wou ld come up-such as
Dewey's report of the revelation made by Carlo Tresca, who was in a
position to know, that despite the noble defense put up for the inno–
cence of Sacco and Vanzetti ten years earlier, the truth was, Sacco was
actually guilty of the crimes he was charged with. Dewey was
astounded-but it did not make him swerve from his desire
to
see jus–
tice done to Trotsky. Even though he knew that Trotsky was a ruthless
and merciless revolutionary, who perhaps deserved the most severe
penalties for his crimes against humanity, the question on the table was
more narrow, and concerned only with whether Trotsky was guilty of
the crimes charged against him by Stalin. Unlike others, Dewey never
wavered in his focus on this one question.
The sessions continued, one after another, comprehensively covering
Trotsky's life, his revolutionary and terrorist activities, his associations
with Zinoviev, Radek, and the others accused of conspiracy with him,
and his activities in France and Norway, when he was charged with
plotting against Stalin. Much documentary evidence was introduced.
