Questions Answered

Many a midnight, since last September, the lights have burned in a big, high-ceiled room in Harvard's Langdell Hall. Hard at work there was Dean James M. Landis of Harvard Law School, mulling 7,724 pages and 1,540,000 words of testimony by and about C. I. O. Longshoreman Harry Bridges.

At the behest of Madam Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Dean Landis had been over all the ground in the Bridges case once before. For eleven weeks in San Francisco last summer he presided at a hearing to determine whether alien, unnaturalized Mr. Bridges: 1) was a Red; 2) as such, belonged to a party which preached violent overthrow of the U. S. Government; 3) could therefore be deported from California to Australia, where he was born in 1900.

Last week, in a 75,000-word report and a covering note to Secretary Perkins, Dean Landis answered the first question thus: "The evidence does not permit the finding that Harry R. Bridges is either a member of the Communist Party or affiliated with that party. ..." Dean Landis added: "I have not deemed it necessary to find whether or not [the Communist Party] advocates, advises or teaches the overthrow of the Government of the U. S. by force or violence. . . ." He thus left the status of many a Communist alien as uncertain as ever, left Frances Perkins no practical choice but to rule against the deportation of Bridges.

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