Vermont Senator's Speech Heralded McCarthy's End

by Barney Crozier 8/29/79 Times-Argus

Springfield--A forum in the First Congregational Church in Springfield 25 years ago has been tagged as a turning point in the nation's post-World War II torment over "McCarthyism." For it was that forum that spurred the late U.S. Senator Ralph E. Flanders of Springfield into action..the one that ended with the censure of the senator responsible for the sickness dividing the nation. It was a meeting of the "First Friday Forum"---gathering on the first Friday of every month--and at least 100 people were out to hear Flanders, home from Washington for the weekend, speak about the nation's problems. "I don't recall that he mentioned McCarthy(the late U.S. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R.-Wis.) during his speech," said Springfield podiatrist Dr. Walter G. Wetherhead recently.

But people at the meeting hit Flanders with a barrage of criticism about McCarthy's activities as chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee. It was a national and international issue--McCarthy's bulldozing tactics in his drive to ferret Communists out of every nook and cranny of American governmental and civilian institutions.

He had, as Flanders remarked later, divided the nation in a time when unity was of paramount importance. Said Flanders in June, "Race is set against race, party against party, religion against religion, neighbor against neighbor, and child against parent." That statement was made three months after the forum in the Congregational Church and almost as long after Flanders delivered his first speech against McCarthy March 9, 1954. It was a Tuesday. That first speech shook the nation back to reality and gave moderate people a chance to reflect on just what the Wisconsin Senator was doing.

Ralph E. Flanders and Vt. Governor Joseph Johnson

It brought accolades from people across the political spectrum, including the comment by then President Dwight Eisenhower that Flanders had performed "a real service" in the speech that was heard by no more than a dozen senators.

Flanders appeared at the church forum March 5, and Elizabeth French of Springfield, his secretary at the time, believes it was the crowd's criticism of McCarthy that led to the Vermont senator's decision that the hour was at hand for a public statement on the matter.

She said Flanders handed her his hand-written draft of the speech Monday morning, March 8, in Washington. She had it typewritten for his delivery the next day. French said she didn't know the exact details of his decision-making as far as the speech was concerned, but feels there is no doubt about the impact of the church forum. "They tackled him, and he went home and wrote the speech on yellow foolscap. He handed it to me for typing Monday morning." Ruefully, she added, "I typed it and destroyed the original. I've always regretted it."

Neither French or Wetherhead believes that the First Friday Forum changed Flanders' thinking on the subject of McCarthy and his tactics in the search for communists in and out of government. "I just have a feeling," said French, "that this group stimulated his action. Wetherhead noted, "The whole McCarthy attitude was completely foreign to Senator Flanders' thinking." The Springfield podiatrist, who had attended the Friday forums since returning home from World War II, added, "I don't think our comments did any more than galvanize his thinking into action." The Vermont senator might also have been "galvanized into action" by other signs of the times--letters to editors, the avalanche of critical questions by Australians when he and Mrs. Flanders visited that nation in 1953, and comments by students at Antioch College where the Senator and his wife spent a week in residence in October of 1953. (Helen H. Brown, a Salisbury woman, wrote a letter to the editor of the Rutland Herald on March 3, 1954, calling on Flanders and his colleague, U.S. Sen. George Aiken, R-Vt., to challenge McCarthy. The letter said the country's atmosphere reminded her of the mood in Germany that allowed Hitler to gain control of the government.)

In his autobiography, Senator from Vermont, published by Little, Brown & Co. in 1961, Flanders wrote of the image McCarthy was creating for the nation. He told of his "valued contacts with individual students? at Antioch when he was working on his book Letter to a Generation. While there is no doubt the "contacts" gave him an insight into the younger generation's worry about McCarthy, he mentioned the division of the nation more specifically in his comments about the visit to Australia. Flanders said he was subjected to "persistent" questioning by the press in Melbourne where "the same question appeared and reappeared at luncheons, dinners and informal meetings." The senator continued in his memoirs, "At last it became clear that the impression was gaining ground that an American brand of Naziism was in the process of formation. "Of course this was absurd, as I tried to explain, but there were some things I couldn't explain--even to myself."

The McCarthy Image

He went on to mention a vitriolic attack by McCarthy on another senator, some years previous, the fascination and fear in which the Wisconsin senator was held" and the tactics used in probing for subversive elements in the American society. Flanders reported in his book that the Australian trip made him realize that "in the outside world, McCarthy was the United States and the United States was McCarthy." His next statement shows that Flanders had decided, while visiting Australia, that something had to be done. "The conviction grew," he stated, "that something had to be done about this, even if I had to do it myself."

Thus his mind was made up, but it apparently took the First Friday Forum in Springfield to tell him that action couldn't be delayed. Interesting to note are the feelings of the late senator's family about his leading role in what proved to be a historic turning point for the nation. In the Flanders' autobiography, there is a reference to a hurried call made by his son, James F. Flanders, to the senator following a speech at Middlebury College where, it seemed to some anti-McCarthy people, the senator was too tolerant of the Wisconsin lawmaker. The younger Flanders recalled that episode and the call to his father, who assured him that he wasn't getting "soft" on McCarthy, but had only acknowledged a possible changing of McCarthy's attitude. James Flanders said his father drafted his speeches in his own handwriting on yellow legal paper: "The speech about McCarthy donning his warpaint--I know he wrote that by hand in the book room at Smiley Manse." Smiley Manse was the Flanders' big brick house on Cherry Hill in Springfield. "He would set himself up in the book corner with his dictionary and book of quotations," said the son, who at the time was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology doing advanced work on guidance control of military aircraft and missiles.

Hawkish in Retrospect

While most people--especially when looking back 25 years--think of Flanders as a "progressive" or even "liberal" senator, his son pointed out that he would have been considered a "hawk" by current standards. He was exceptionally worried about communist encroachment on undeveloped nations around the world. But he was, historically, a man necessary to the time in which he lived--a time described in Congress and the Nation, 1945-1964, published by Congressional Quarterly Inc., as torn by a single question: "Is communism in the United States a political movement, or is it a treasonable conspiracy?" It continued, "To advocates of the conspiracy viewpoint, restrictions on communistic activities and inquiries into communistic beliefs and associations were a necessary adjunct to stiffer sabotage and espionage laws. "To those who looked on communism as a political movement, such restrictions and inquiries were seen as unconstitutional.

Passions ran high on both sides of the issue." Those passionate feelings were best exemplified in the public statements of McCarthy himself, and that is why he was a hero to so many, even though frightening, or sickening to others. "Joe McCarthy really censured himself," recalled former U.S. Senator George D. Aiken at his home in Putney recently. Aiken noted that the Wisconsin senator had one of the best lawyers available, Everett Bennett Williams, to help him prepare "a good speech" that was delivered by McCarthy from the floor during the debate on his censure. "He finished it and then went into a diatribe," Aiken added. "No, I didn't talk with Ralph(Flanders) about it. He went ahead fully on his own, and there was nothing left for the rest of us to do but censure him." Aiken said McCarthy was a "nice guy to meet, but I think he had troubles he couldn't help. "Joe made it impossible for the rest of us to support him," Aiken concluded. The Putney octagenarian noted during the discussion that he read and signed the "Declaration of Conscience" by then-Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, R-Maine. It was a fair-play document originated by Smith at the height of the McCarthy uproar.

The fact that Flanders played the leading role in censuring McCarthy is a source of pride for his daughter, Elisabeth Ballard of Norwich, and she believes her husband, William Ballard, might have had some influence on the senator two days after the First Friday Forum in Springfield. Flanders went to visit his daughter and her husband in Norwich Saturday night and stayed through Sunday. There was some talk Sunday about the McCarthy matter. "My husband was needling him about why he didn't do something about it," said Mrs. Ballard. Two days later the Vermont senator was in the limelight after delivering his initial speech in his challenge to the Wisconsin lawmaker. The Hearing Room But Mrs. Ballard remembers more clearly the day of her father's censure speech. It was prior to that speech that Flanders went into McCarthy's hearing room and handed the Wisconsin senator a written notice of what he(Flanders) intended to do. McCarthy was angered by Flanders' appearance at the hearing and had officers escort the Vermonter-with a smile-from the room. Flanders then went to the Senate floor to deliver the speech that proved to be the turning point for McCarthy and McCarthyism.

The senator's daughter had friends in for coffee that day. They were Australians who she had invited to meet her sister, Nancy Balivet, who was just back from a year in Australia. While the guests were there, Dillys Laing of Norwich telephoned Ballard to tell her of the big television news concerning Flanders appearance at the McCarthy hearing and then offering the censure motion. "My Australian friend said, "You must be awfully proud of your father," Mrs. Ballard recalled. The Norwich woman is still proud of the role he played in what turned out to be only the fourth censure of a senator since the nation was founded.

What did the senator say March 9, 1954, that gave so many Americans new hope? To keep the moment in perspective, it should be remembered that McCarthy's tactics in the hearings before his investigative committee were of a nature that amazed his Senate colleagues, alarmed moderate people and frightened anybody called before the committee. It was a time when he was digging "communists" out of the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Army, Harvard University, labor unions, the press and, during the hot summer of 1954, out of the White House itself. Better Silent Than Pink There were few who dared challenge him because to do so would gain the challenger a "pink" label. He could immediately be branded a "fellow traveler"--sympathetic with the Communist Party if not a member.

Ralph, Donald and Ernest Flanders in the 1940's

Though some Democrats had jabbed away at McCarthy, few Republicans had said a word in opposition. An exception is a speech March 2, 1954, in which Republican National Chairman Leonard W. Hall criticized the McCarthy tactics. By that date, 2,427 "security risks" had been removed from the federal government's payroll and McCarthy said 90 percent of them were "subversive." The day following Hall's statement, Eisenhower objected during a press conference to " a disregard for the standards of fair play" in congressional probes. It was March 5 when McCarthy called off the $2 million slander suit he had brought against then-Sen. William Benton, D-Conn. The Connecticut senator, in 1951, accused McCarthy of perjury, fraud and deceit in his campaign against people he called "subversive."

On March 7, two days after the church forum, Flanders told the Rutland Herald in an interview that McCarthy "has gone past his usefulness" and that something should be done to curb the Wisconsin senator's activities. That same day, Democratic National Chairman Stephen Mitchell was charging Eisenhower with responsibility for McCarthy's actions, and Adlai Stevenson, who had lost to Eishenhower in the presidential election of 1952, branded the Republican Party "half-McCarthy and half-Ike."

Flanders Speaks

Into the breach, unheralded, stepped Vermont's junior senator. Speaking to a handful of senators Tuesday morning, Flanders deplored the fact that McCarthy was in New York and couldn't hear the speech. He then offered the thought that the Wisconsin man "puzzles some of us," and wondered with which party McCarthy was affiliated. Flanders charged the Red-hunting senator with splitting the Republican Party and the nation, taking attention away from the important business of the day--containing communism around the world. The Springfield man--a high school graduate who had become president of two machine tool firms, a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt's War Production Board--compared McCarthy to a woman who takes over someone else's home and starts looking for dirt. Flanders admitted there is usually a lot of noise on such occasions, but said he has "never seen nor heard anything to match the dust and racket of this particular job of housecleaning." He added, "Is the necessary housecleaning the great task before the United States, or do we face far more dangerous problems....?

Flanders said McCarthy's headline-grabbing ventures were diverting the nation's attention from Korea, Indochina, Italy, France and England--lands that were in need of this country's attention and help as they fought to maintain their governments in the face of communist challenges. He said the attack was coming from outside the country, not from within, and he warned his colleagues, "Look out, Senators, and see what is creeping upon us."

It was time when containment of the communist ideology was this country's popular cry, and Flanders chastised McCarthy for not paying heed to what the Vermonter felt was the real danger. "He dons his warpaint. He goes into his war dance. He emits his war whoops. He goes forth to battle and proudly returns with the scalp of a pink army dentist."(Maj. Irving Peress, a Camp Kilmer, N.J., Army dentist investigated by McCarthy's committee).... "If he cannot view the larger scene and the real danger, let him return to his housecleaning....but let him not so work as to conceal mortal danger in which our country finds itself from the external enemies of mankind."

The Reaction

The speech was a sensation, and the next day Vonda Bergman reported to the Herald that Flanders was unable to appear on the Senate floor because of the flood of telephone calls and telegrams, said to run 6-1 in his support. One message called his speech "a fine example of Vermont courage, humour and decency," while another told him, "Your remarks brought a breath of fresh clean air from the Green Mountains."

Two Senate colleagues, John Sherman Cooper, R-Ky, and Herbert Lehman, D-N.Y., were among those who heaped praise on the Vermont senator. The editor of a national publication said: "It was one of the few recent indications that the Republican Party on Capitol Hill is not wholly devoid of courageous moral leadership." And the Rutland Herald allowed editorially that "the effect of the speech was to hearten that vast majority of Americans who hate communism but who also revere the Constitution."

But Flanders hadn't finished the task. It was June 1, 1954, when he addressed the Senate on "the colossal innocence of the junior Senator from Wisconsin." Comparing McCarthy to "Dennis the Menace" of cartoon fame, the Vermonter delivered a scathing address in which he lambasted the Wisconsin man for dividing the nation. "In every country in which communism has taken over, " he reminded the Senate, "the beginning has been a successful campaign of division and confusion." He marveled at the way the Soviet Union was winning military successes in Asia without risking its own resources or men, and said this nation was witnessing "another example of economy of effort...in the conquest of this country for communism. He added, "One of the characteristic elements of communist and fascist tyranny is at hand as citizens are set to spy upon each other." "Were the junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the communists, he could not have done a better job for them." "This is a colossal innocence, indeed."

During his speech, Flanders noted McCarthy's attacks upon some American Jews, and the Wisconsin man called the speech "a vicious and dishonest thing." Move To Censure It was 10 days later that Flanders launched his move through which the Senate eventually--on Dec., 2, 1954--condemned McCarthy. The Vermonter's grounds for he proposed censure were based primarily on McCarthy's refusal to cooperate with the elections subcommittee investigating Sen. Benton's charges of fraud and deceit. Flanders maintained "it is surely clear" that McCarthy treated the members of the subcommittee "with contempt." The Vermonter said "it is no defense to call the charges a smear"--which McCarthy had done--because a smear is easily handled. "There is this about a smear," he intoned. "It can be removed by a dry-cleaning process which involves a vigorous application of the truth. That process the Senator was unwilling to apply."

Getting at the truth apparently meant a lot to Flanders. His monument bears the inscription, "Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free." The dictum dominates the spot where he was buried the spring after his death on Feb 19, 1970, at the age of 89. His widow, Helen Hartness Flanders, died May 23, 1972, and is buried beside him.

In that censure speech of June 11, 1954, Flanders asked specifically that McCarthy be stripped of his chairmanship of the Committee on Government Operations and of any of its subcommittees. Showing that he would give McCarthy one last chance, Flanders told the Senate he wanted his motion to "lie upon the table until sufficient time has been given for the Senator from Wisconsin to purge himself of contempt."

Speaking at the commencement ceremony at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta three days later, Flanders explained his actions succinctly with the charge that the Wisconsin senator was following " a course that leads to fascism." A Bitter Summer It was a long bitter summer that followed, with campaigns for the mid-term Congressional elections in full swing and McCarthy charging the Democrats with "20 years of treason." The so called "Communist Control Act of 1954" was passed that year as the Democratic Party's answer to McCarthy's charges.

The Wisconsin anti-communist crusader had attacked Dr. Nathan Pusey, president of Harvard University, for refusing to fire a professor who had used the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to back his refusal to testify at one of McCarthy's hearings. He had also had a run-in with Brig. Gen. Ralph W. Zwicker over the general's refusal to reveal the names of officers who had ordered the honorable discharge of Peress, for whom McCarthy wanted a court martial. The subcommittee chairman told Zwicker he was "not fit to wear the uniform." The Army-McCarthy hearings earlier had consumed 35 days during which as many as 20 million viewers, a huge audience for that day, watched the drama.

McCarthy referred to his own censure hearing in 1954 as "a lynch party." He called the select committee the "unwilling handmaiden" and "involuntary agent" of the Communist Party. The hearings--not as spectacular as McCarthy's productions on communist infiltration of the Army or Department of State--ended with a committee recommendation for censure. The report was made public Sept.27, the day before Flanders' 74th birthday. The Senate was called into special session after the Nov. 2 elections (Republicans Joseph B. Johnson was elected governor of Vermont, but Democrats took control of both Houses in Washington) and spent two weeks debating the McCarthy censure motion.

McCarthy Condemned

When it was finally approved on a 67-22 vote, it used the word "condemn" rather than "censure," However, old hands in the Senate pointed out that the historical word for a censure was "condemn," and the Rutland Herald reported it as both a censure and a condemnation. The body condemned McCarthy for obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate by refusing to cooperate with the committee investigating Sen. Benton's allegations of fraud and deceit. It also condemned him for referring to the select committee as a "handmaiden of communism."

Republicans in the Senate were split 22-22 on the issue, but the Democrats stood solidly in favor of taking the Wisconsin lawmaker off his lofty perch. The day of the big decision, McCarthy told news reporters he would go back to his task of "digging out communists," but he never again held the power that had catapulted him to fame, or infamy, in the years after World War II.

Generally, the period of McCarthyism, described by the Herald editorially as "a reign of terror," ended when the Senate approved Flanders censure move. In the years that followed, many of the hastily drawn and approved anti-communism laws were repealed or allowed to die quiet deaths without enforcement. McCarthy himself died in 1957, a victim of the effects of alcoholism.

The Vermont senator concluded, "Joe McCarthy was indeed a man to be pitied. "The burden he bore was that of a deep inferiority complex. For this he found relief in bullying witnesses, slurring associates and garnering headlines. "In the pursuit of headlines he had a masterly success, and the bullying and slurring provided acceptable journalistic material. "The press of our country must share in the blame for this unfortunate period in our history."

Whatever blame the press might bear for highlighting the McCarthy antics, it also gave a big play to Flanders' move to cut the Wisconsin man down to size. And however dull some forums may be, the First Friday Forum can take at least some of the credit for inspiring the Vermonter to do what he had long known he had to do under the moral law he so often extolled.

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