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AMERICA'S search for a solution to the problem of loyalty and security has turned of late to Chief Justice John Marshall, whose interpretation of privileges protected by the Fifth Amendment may help us to know what to do about uncooperative witnesses. Under Marshall's interpretation in the trial of Aaron Burr, it is clear that a witness may refuse to disclose any information which might aid in convicting him of crime, but that the Government has a right to demand from its citizens all other pertinent information in a legitimate inquiry. Embarrassment, or even disgrace, therefore, will not excuse a witness from responding.
To say that government has a right to demand cooperation from its citizens presumes that the citizens have a moral obligation to cooperate with legitimate government. This was something generally presumed in Marshall's time, but today it is something that Communists deny and others have lost sight of. Witnesses, then, who refuse to answer legitimate questions are challenging the foundations of political society itself.
The basic protection of rights is the moral law based on man's dignity. This same moral law, however, imposes on the citizen an obligation to obey legitimate authority. We cannot have it one way and not the other. If we believe that we have rights antecedent to government—freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly—which may not be curtailed by any government so long as their expression does not endanger the common good, then we must also conclude to men's moral obligation toward political society. Each generation has its own contribution to make to improve human living. Our generation is being asked to discover an equitable solution for subversive political activity and to reaffirm the basic tenets of democratic society.
THOSE OLD SCHOOLS WERE NOT SO GOOD
SLOAN WILSON, author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and executive of the White House Conference on Education, in HARPER'S Magazine:
THE idea that we once had marvelous public schools in this nation, and that modern philosophies of education have ruined them, is the most obvious kind of nonsense. What kind of public schools existed 50 years ago? City schools were dull and dingy buildings, with classes of 40 or more pupils common. Country schools were usually one-room affairs, with children of widely varying age and ability taught at the same time. Few of the teachers 50 years ago had anywhere near as much education of any kind as most teachers today. The elementary school curriculum was pretty much limited to the Three Rs, and the high schools confined themselves to a college-preparatory program.