The lure of easy women almost made
me a spy and traitor to my country
"Sex Lead Me To Communism"
from
Man to Man
Vol. 2, No. 2, 1951
SEX,
woman's most resistless weapon through the ages for the domination of the
male, has proven one of the most successful and insidious devices in the
secret arsenal of the Communists to recruit their unsavory army of spies,
saboteurs and disruptionists in the grimly declared war on the United States
and all decent mankind.
In the relentless effort of
the Kremlin to turn the whole world into faceless slaves in order that
"The International Soviet shall be the human race," as their official song,
The Internationale, declares, there is no honor or conscience, and
promiscuity is the rule, not the exception. The only vice the Reds frown,
upon is drinking!
I know, because I was one
of those witless persons who fell into the mantrap set by the modern Delilabs
who follow the Party line. They stopped at nothing--absolutely nothing--in
order to enlist their fellow Americans into the great conspiracy to subjugate,
and later to liquidate, every human being who does not deify the unholy
trinity of Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
First came Sonia, with her
full, cherry lips and her brown, limpid eyes. She was a secretary, a graduate
of a woman's college and as unscrupulous a little witch as ever shook her
clenched fist at a passing flag of her country or stuck a pin into a patrolman's
horse.
Next came Margie, a full-bosomed
redhead, a new comer from England and an expert dress designer. She had
made it her life work to lure men into Communism.
Then Mildred, a honey blonde
with a Vassar degree. She was the gay and sophisticated type on the surface,
but underneath she was deadly serious about her radical beliefs. She had
a cozy apartment and seemingly plenty of money. She liked to discuss the
social significance of Shakespeare over cocktails and make converts to
the "cause."
Then Terry, Betty and several
others whose names I have forgotten. And lastly, Gladys, a banker's daughter
who had run away from home, landed in New York's Greenwich Village and
become the most radical of all the Communist girls I met.
Talk about free love! This
was really something. You tired of one, and there was always another at
your beck and call. No Turk could boast a more variegated harem.
MY first experience
with the Communist conspiracy work for the "triumph of Soviet power in
the
United States," began simply enough. It was during
the days of Hitler, and the come-on had been a mammoth rally for "peace
and democracy." No right-thinking citizen could have any objection to that.
The build-up for the meeting
had been terrific. Madison Square Garden in New York was packed to the
rafters with a throng attracted there by a star-studded cast of Broadway
and Hollywood celebrities, high churchmen, civic leaders, scientists, musicians,
doctors, educators, authors, musicians and sports celebrities. Each was
to get up and do his stuff and then speak a little piece about how Hitler
was plan- rung to enslave the world.
Oh, yes, there were one or
two Communist leaders among the various political shades on the platform,
looking quite insignificant and meek and greatly im pressed by all their
betters. Of course no one could resent them being there, because they were
for peace and democracy and militantly against Hitler, too.
What few suspected, however,
was that these few grubby-looking little men were actually pulling the
strings, and all the rest on the platform were merely their puppets.
It was while we were all filing
out of the huge auditorium, that I first saw Sonia. The girl with the come-hither
eyes was giving me a keen once-over. Perhaps it was because I looked too
well dressed, with a fresh shirt and my suit pressed, that made her surmise
that I was not a Comrade.
But the fact that I had attended
the rally, drawn there by curiosity through pamphlets liberally scattered
all over the campus and plastered on every bulletin board, evidently marked
me as good raw material to be worked over.
As I elbowed my way through
the crowd and started up Eighth Avenue, I glanced over my shoulder and
saw her following me. In my time I'd followed girls, but I'd never had
one follow me before. The idea gave me a chuckle as I stepped into the
nearest beer joint. A few minutes later, Miss Thither-eyes stalked in,
looked the crowd over and then stood up to the bar at my elbow.
"Like the rally?" she blurted,
with no inhibitions. "Wasn't it wonderful?"
"Yeah, it was pretty good,"
I said nonchalantly. She didn't look like a tramp, but I aimed to play
cagey. "Too many speeches and not enough vaudeville, though, like they
advertised. Have a beer?"
"No thanks. Too bourgeois.
I'll take a Pepsi."
WITH the ice broken,
the going from there on was easy. Frankly, the girl amused me. I wanted
to see if I could find out what made her tick.
As she sipped her soft drink,
she kept pumping me about myself. When I told her I was a senior at Queens
College, on Long Island, she waxed enthusiastic. Seems she had some friends
there, especially a guy named Joe ---. I knew the name. He had a rep as
being a leader of the radical fringe. He was a wild-eyed, unsavory fellow.
I'd marked him as a nut.
"You really must look up Joe,"
she gushed. "Tell him Sonia sent you."
When she'd finished her drink
she said, "Let's get out of this dump. It's early yet, so why not come
down to my place in the Village? I think you and I have a lot in common."
That was OK by me. We took
a subway to the Village and repaired to Sonia's fourth floor walk-up in
a remodeled tenement building on Thompson Street. They were nice diggings,
not too arty. It was plain to see that Sonia was the intellectual type.
Book cases lined two walls,
and the volumes were deep ones--philosophy, history, social science, travel.
As I made myself at home, she brewed tea in a samovar and served it in
glasses, with lemon, Russian style.
We talked and drank tea and
drew each other out. I learned that her father was a retired business man;
Sonia was ashamed that he was so rich.
"He lives on blood money,"
she remarked bitterly. "He bled the proletariat--sweated them to death
in a knit goods factory." That led her into a tirade on "bosses" and from
there she went on to the "comes the revolution" theme I be came fascinated
as she tipped her mitt more and more, telling me how the Comrades were
planning to turn the United States into a perfect Utopia.
This paradise, following a
workers' revolt, was going to afford riches to all. Key men were ready,
she said, to take over the government, religion would be obliterated, the
school system would be changed to teach only the "truth."
"It sounds wonderful," I said,
half convinced by her earnestness. I didn't realize then that she was talking
treason, that she placed herself and her comrades in a category of actual,
open war against life as the majority of Americans want it. I did not sense
that the girl was power-hungry and was grabbing at all the opportunities
that Communism offers the unscrupulous.
"But it seems to me that you
are promising more than you can deliver," I argued. "More money for less
work, security against poverty all sounds fine, but can you deliver?"
"Can we deliver! Certainly!
Remember, for every Party member there are ten others ready, willing and
able to do the Party's work. By our ability to infiltrate government agencies,
civil affairs, churches, schools and women's clubs, we are molding a new
way of life.
"The real center of our power
is within the professional classes. Our strength depends on the support
of teachers, preachers, actors, writers, editors, business men, union officials,
doctors, lawyers and even millionaires...
"Oh, we're going a long way
and--and I want you to help us. You're respectable, American-born and will
give us the front we need. Just don't think poor people join the Party
because it's a 'working class movement--it isn't at all! Promise me you'll
see Joe and let him convince you that you mustn't remain a reactionary
all your life!"
"Sure, I'll look him up,"
I promised, getting up to go. "It was an interesting evening, and I'll
be seeing you, I guess."
"Don't go--" Sonia said winsomely.
She came across the room and twined her arms around my neck, pulling my
lips down to hers for a kiss that actually made me giddy. "I think we can
make the evening more interesting--if you like," she said.
I LOOKED up Joe--on
Monday morning, and he was effusive. "I'd sure like to have you working
with us," he said, pumping my hand. "Sonia had me on the phone and told
me all about you. We have a pretty active little cell here on the campus,
and you'd fit right in. You don't have to carry a card if you don't want
to. You can be a fellow traveler if you like."
"A what?"
"I mean, you can sympathize
with the Party and serve the Party's purpose without actually becoming
a member. In many respects you'd be more vital to us. You can serve as
a hook with which the party reaches out for funds and respectability, and
the wedge we can drive between people who oppose us. You can join front
groups devoted to idealistic activities. We've captured a lot of them by
using just such people as you to put across resolutions and vote right."
"Let me think it over," I
said. "But if I join you, I want to be honest about it and carry a card."
"Fine! Fine!" gushed Joe.
"When you make up your mind, contact me and I'll arrange to get you into
an indoctrination group."
Sonia phoned that night, and
I went down to the Village where she used all her wiles to coax me to take
the fatal step. I succumbed to her allures, and before I knew it, I was
entangled not only by her wantonness but by her persuasiveness.
The next day I told Joe that
I was completely sold on the Party and all it stood for, little realizing
that I was to have the baseness of Benedict Arnold, that I was going to
traitorously serve Soviet Russia in a criminal conspiracy to wreck and
ruin the United States, and act as a tool for spies and saboteurs in the
defense industries of the nation.
The indoctrination course
was held in a room in a shabby building off Union Square, close to Communist
Party headquarters at 35 East 12th Street. There were seven of us in the
class, including three women. Our instructor was a newspaperman, or so
he said, who worked on a trade journal.
Of Russian origin, he stressed
all the struggles--which he pronounced "stwuggles" the people all over
the world were having in order to gain social and economic justice. He
preached pie in the sky, and it was easy to see how the Red brand of "idealism"
would ap peal to the underdog.
AFTER six weekly indoctrination
meetings, I was officially admitted to the Party and assigned to a specific
unit. My job was to agitate on the campus, bringing up all sorts of controversial
issues In classes, attending student meetings and offering resolutions
for adoption that fitted Into the Party line.
Reading the Daily Worker and
the magazine New Masses gave me my "leads." The Worker was my Bible. I
had to accept every word in it as gospel truth, no matter if the New York
Times had an entirely different version of the same thing.
The Times and all other capitalist
newspapers I was told to regard as "fascist, warmongering" sheets. The
truth came only from Moscow, and the "line" came down to us through Party
agents returning from frequent trips to Europe.
I didn't realize it then,
but I had become an obedient instrument of the Party--a robot. I had to
obey the Party in all things, or disappear into silence, oblivion and perhaps
death.
But the fact that I suddenly
had no honor or conscience didn't seem to bother me. I was convinced I
was working on every conceivable battlefront of the human mind. I had no
time for frivolities--only Party work. Even any relaxation with the girls
was in the category of improving my mind with dialectical discussions.
Came graduation, and the long
Summer. It had all been arranged that I was to get a job with the New York
City Department of Welfare--a rich field in which to plant my insidious
seeds of treason. Before going to work, however, it was suggested that
I spend a month at Camp, in the Berkshires.
This was a beautiful spot,
on a small lake, with boating, hiking, riding and all the other pastimes
of a swank resort. It cost the Coimmies $100,000, but it must have been
well worth it, as the camp was always filled with labor leaders, Federal
and State jobholders, teachers, ministers, students, writers and others
who came to mingle with the party big shots.
ON arrival at the camp
late one afternoon I was assigned to a small cabin. When I lugged my suitcase
over from the office I was not at all surprised to see that the place already
had another occupant. Dresses were neatly hung in the closet, and other
feminine accessories were scattered about.
I was curious to see who had
been assigned me as a "Party wife." I had not long to wait before a buxom
redhead casually sauntered In, sat on the edge of her cot and regarded
me with a strange expression which plainly said, "Well, look at what Uncle
Joe sent me!"
At last she said, in a clipped
British accent, "I'm Margie." I introduced myself and she said, "I know--I
expected you on an earlier train. You're all that they told me you were--plus.
I hope your dancing is as good as your looks. We're having quite a party
tonight down in the recreation hall."
Thereupon, she unashamedly
took off her playsuit, stood primping in her undies before the mirror,
and donned a cotton dress for dinner and the dance. She was a looker, and
I could not help but stare at her in frank admiration. This, I told myself,
was a dish. And she was!
There must have been at least
500 people in the big mess hall that night. Considering that the cost of
room and board was only $17 a week, the food was better than average. But
even at that price, the poorer comrades could not afford the luxury of
a camp vacation. Certainly there were none of the Great Unwashed there.
After dinner, there were various
games of chance on the front porch. The prizes were Communist books. Even
during times of fun, they never let you forget there were serious things
that had to be studied, digested and preached to the unbelievers.
There was a great air, too,
of expectancy before the dance. William Z. Foster, head of the Communist
Party of the United States was expected in the course of one of his ceaseless
tours of the State. When his motorcade of three cars ar rived, bedlam broke
loose. Even though he was a minor cog in the international conspiracy,
he was hailed as almost a demi-god.
The dance that night was a
gay affair. There were some visiting Russian dignitaries with Foster's
party, and the glee club first staged a concert of revolutionary songs.
My dancing must have been
pretty fair, because that night Margie complimented me on it, and even
showed slight traces of jealousy over the way some of the other girls snatched
me away for a whirl around the floor. From the way Margie ragged me, you'd
think we'd been married a dozen years instead of just starting a brief
Bolshevik honeymoon!
SHORTLY after the camp
idyll, a strange thing happened. Humankind's then arch enemy, Hitler suddenly
signed a pact of friendship with the man the Reds regarded as mankind's
only savior. The Hitler-Stalin pact had its stunning effect. Suddenly all
our propaganda against Hitler had to be destroyed, and we were left waiting
for a full three days before we could get the new Party line. While heretofore
we had all been hell-bent trying to get the world to fight Hitler, and
thus speed the revolution, we now had orders to beat the drums for the
dictator, who now was Stalin's bosom buddy. The pact, of course, gave Hitler
the green light to start the war.
But he was also our ally!
We had to help him. Like turning on and off a faucet, we now gushed admiration
instead of bitter hate against the man. And here is where the close associations
the Comrades had formed at the camp be came profitable. Union leaders,
especially those in the maritime and aviation industries, were perfectly
geared to coordinate strikes. The seaman coined the expression "The Yanks
are not Coming!" and refused to transport war material to Britain. Badly
needed planes, guns and tanks were sabotaged.
Sonia, Margie and I were ordered
to Washington to picket the White House. We delighted in branding President
Roosevelt a war monger. We were determined that this country should not
enter the war under any circumstances.
Our propaganda mills were
running full blast, labor was disrupted all across the nation, when suddenly
Hitler turned against Stalin in history's most famous double-cross. All
at once the Party line changed again, and it was now our bounded duty to
hurry the country into war as quickly as possible to save poor Russia!
At the same time, the Party
was pushing reliable comrades into the Government where they could influence
foreign policy. In the Army and Navy, the Comrades preached revolution,
proselytizing the nation's fighting men. In Government, we preached peace
and democracy as the aim of victory. After the war, all we needed was a
bang-up depression then--wham!--comes the revolution. We were all ecstatic
over the prospects for a Soviet America, ruled by our Party.
THINGS didn't work out
the way we had them blue-printed, though. While the Communist International
had managed to shape pretty much of the post-war world to their liking,
with easy pickings everywhere among the ruins and desolation of Europe
and Asia, the bang of the Iron Curtain slamming down did more than anything
to disillusion the West concerning the Soviet Utopias set up in Poland,
Western Germany, Yugoslavia. Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Manchuria,
China and North Korea.
Now the tide began to turn,
and we found ourselves extremely unpopular. There were too many stories
about spies in and out of the Government, about thefts of highly secret
documents from under the very noses of the people in the hush-hush departments
of State, Army, Navy and Commerce. Like a thousand others, I, too, began
to search my own soul at these revelations of duplicity. I knew I was just
a cog in a machine, not an in dependent thinker of my own. I received orders
and followed them out to the letter, never questioning.
IT was not long ago,
when I was wrestling with the very soul the Soviets say I haven't got,
when a call came in from Gladys, a titian--haired cookie who was the real
fire-brand of my special unit.
"I'm lonesome," she said.
"Come over."
When I arrived at her address
I found her alone, dressed in a revealing negligee and moodily listening
to the news of the latest crisis in Asia.
"Darling Comrade!" she greeted
me. "You're just what the doctor ordered. I'm so depressed over this Korean
mess. Why--why did Washington have to step in like that?''
"It'll blow over in a month,''
I tried to assure her, casting about for a seat. "The Korean Communists
are well-trained, well-equipped and wilt have the South Korean fascists
swimming in the sea before anyone can stop them!"
"Perhaps...but don't you see
this intervention by the Wall Street war mongers is liable to upset the
whole timetable--?"
"I don't know about the time
table," I said.
"Why, Formosa, Japan, the
Philippines, the Indies..what we were talking about the other night. Or
weren't you at the meeting?"
"No; I was out on some Party
work--"
"Come over and sit with me
on the settee and I'll tell you about it then."
She reached up and doused
one of the table lamps beside the sofa and made a place for me beside her.
The room was in a dim glow, the war news had given way to soft Viennese
music. The setting and the girl were all one could desire.
In a matter-of-fact tone,
Gladys gave me a fill-in on the Soviet schemes for Asia. All the while
she was wriggling closer. I could feel her tautness. Suddenly she relaxed,
and pulled my face toward hers. "I have plans for you," she whispered,
her breath coming hot. "Real secret, too."
While we were in each other's
arms, Gladys whispered, "The Party has a job for you. You're going to go
to work in the Navy Yard. It's urgent that we have certain information."
"But I know nothing about
ships, or ship building," I protested.
"The job has been specially
created. You'll be in the drafting office. We will need copies of all the
plans."
"You mean I'm to--to--be a
spy?"
"Of course! There's no danger
you'll be caught and--remember, Russia must win this struggle. It's now
or never!"
I thought it over for a long
moment as Gladys snuggled closer and playfully began to nibble at my ear.
All at once I was on my feet.
"I won't do it!" I said. "To hell with the Party!"
"But Comrade, darling--!"
"I said No! There s been too
much spying. too much double-crossing. I won't betray my country and my
people. Despite all its faults, the United States is my country. Why should
I want to destroy it? I've been a fool! It's time I woke up--and you, too.
Gladys."
Her face was vivid with rage.
"They'll get you for this, you rat!" she snarled.
Maybe they will. Come the
revolution--God forbid!--I'll be among the first to be taken into the cellar
with a tommy gun at my back. As it is, I am in hiding, far from my old
haunts. I dare not take a decent job because the Comrades will blackmail
me, smear me, get me tossed out. But a better day is coming. and it won't
be thanks to the Reds, either.
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