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The Informer. To some of his colleagues, his fear of Communism seemed a morbid preoccupation, a kind of King Charles's head. He was valued, nevertheless, not only for his firsthand knowledge of Communism but for his outstanding skill in writing and his wide cultural background. He had also become a genuinely religious man: a Quaker.
In 1939, a little while after he came to TIME, he went to Adolph Berle, then Assistant Secretary of State, and disclosed to him the names of certain men who he said were Communists working in the government. He gave the same information, in two interviews, to the FBI. Last summer, he made his dramatic tale public before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
But on none of these occasions did he say anything about the packet of stolen State Department papers which he had stashed away after he broke with the party. When he brought forward his dusty bomb from Brooklyn, he raised a whole new clamor.
In the midst of that clamor last week, Chambers resigned as a senior editor of TIME. "When TIME hired me in 1939," he wrote in his statement, "its editors knew that I was an ex-Communist; they did not know that espionage was involved . . . After nine years of work done in good conscience, I have been called upon to expose the darkest and most dangerous side of Communism—espionage. This can be done only if a man who knows the facts will stand up and tell them without regard to the cost or consequences to himself. I cannot share this indispensable ordeal with anyone."
TIME accepted the resignation, neither judging nor prejudging his recent disclosures. "Against the admitted disservice to his country of a decade ago," said TIME, "must be set the service we are convinced he is trying to perform for his country now."
The Final Lines. This week Alger Hiss resigned his $20,000-a-year Carnegie post. Legal proceedings, he said, "will occupy almost all of my time for some weeks to come." The trustees tabled the resignation and gave him a leave of absence with pay for three months.
Meanwhile Hiss clung staunchly to his impeccable role. If Chambers had lied, then Hiss had been incredibly maligned and made the victim of a monstrous slander. If Chambers spoke the truth, then Alger Hiss had led an almost incredibly clever double life. The two of them could do little more now than stand to one side, speaking their final lines, spectators more than actors in their own drama.
*All through the 19303 the majority of Americans thought of American Communists as being critical of the U.S. but not actively hostile to it. The U.S. had recognized Russia, had not yet recognized that all Communists' allegiance is to Moscow, that they are therefore disloyal citizens of every non-Communist country. No major U.S. political leader, from F.D.R. to any of his political opponents, ever suggested that the Communist Party be outlawed. It was a legal party then — and still is today (although some states bar it from the ballot).