In the closing days of the campaign, the long-simmering "softness to Communists" issue finally came to full boil. Two weeks before, the Republicans had opened an all-out attack with a nationwide TV broadcast in which Richard Nixon detailed Adlai Stevenson's part as a character witness in the first Alger Hiss trial, and concluded: "His actions, his statements, his record disqualify him from leading . . . the fight against Communism at home and abroad . . ." Last week the Democrats launched a defense and counterattack.
At Cleveland, Adlai Stevenson set out to explain his testimony again and more fully than before. Said he: "I had known Alger Hiss briefly in 1933 ... I did not meet him again until twelve years later . . . He never entered my house and I never entered his. I saw him twice in the fall of 1947.1 have not seen him since.
"In the spring of 1949, I was requested by the lawyers for Alger Hiss to appear at his first trial and testify as to his reputation. I refused to do so because of the burden of my official duties. I was then requested to give a sworn statement, taken under order of the court . . ."
"I said his reputation was 'good'—and it was . . . That was the simple, exact, whole truth, and all I could say on the basis of what little I knew of him . . . I am a lawyer. I think that one of the fundamental responsibilities not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, and to give it honestly and willingly ... I would point out that 22 of the most distinguished members of the American bar declared last week that in giving this deposition I had 'done what any good citizen should have done under the circumstances.' " Among the 22 members of the bar were ex-Ambassador to Russia Joseph Davies, World War II OSS Chief Major General William Donovan, a Republican, and John W. Davis, 1924 Democratic presidential candidate who is now supporting Eisenhower.
"Inaccurate & Unsound." On the same day that Stevenson was making his explanation, however, a dissenting opinion was registered by 16 prominent New York lawyers—among them Harold Gallagher, ex-president of the American Bar Association, and J. Edward Lumbard, one of General Donovan's partners. The statement issued by Stevenson's defenders, said the 16, was "inaccurate and unsound" because it gave the impression that Stevenson was required by court order to testify in the Hiss trial. "That was not the fact," declared the 16. "Governor Stevenson was not under subpoena or otherwise required to testify ... The only reason that a court order of any kind was obtained was to permit Governor Stevenson to testify without attending the Hiss trial in person. In passing judgment on Governor Stevenson's action, therefore, it is to be borne in mind that he was an entirely voluntary witness for Hiss."