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Victor Reuther, C.I.O. representative in Europe since early 1951, argues that the Marshall Plan benefited only the employers; Brown insists that without Marshall Plan aid, all Europe would be Communist today. Reuther hammers on his "pork chops are all that count" line; Brown says "the idea that poverty breeds Communism is a dangerous oversimplification." With his far greater experience, Brown finds Reuther "naive." Reuther retorts that "Europeans are tired of little men who run around with little black bags."
Brown's favorite story concerns a Paris cabbie who gave him a long Communist harangue, climaxed by the cry: "And the most dangerous man in all France is the American spy, Irving Brown!" Brown grabbed the cabbie by his lapels and hissed: "Moi, mon enfant, moi, je suis Irving Brown." The cabbie went dead white, as if he had seen the devil, and was so weak he could not put out his hand for the taxi fare. Last week in Washington, Irving Brown was filling his little black bag with plans for a lot more anti-Communist deviltry.
* Westbrook Pegler's line against Brown parallels the Communists'. Says Pegler: "L'Humanité [the French Communist daily] is right in saying that Brown is an agent of the American Government. He certainly is ... [Brown] is strictly an independent, irresponsible conspirator fomenting more trouble in the internal politics of nations already troubled by disunity." Pegler's Dec. 31, 1951 column approvingly carried seven paragraphs of quotations from a L'Humanité attack on Brown.