Stirred by the bombing of the Basques at Guernica. Idaho's eloquent old William Edgar Borah rose in the Senate one day last fortnight to denounce fascism, warn of increasing fascist activity in the U. S. His alarm, it soon appeared, was shared by Ambassador to Germany William Edward Dodd. In an extraordinary letter sent to Senators Bulkley, Glass and others last March, and given to the press by Senator Glass last week, the Ambassador passed along rumors that several Senators and a man "who owns nearly a billion dollars" were favorably disposed toward a U. S. dictatorship (TIME. May 17). Instead of being pleased by this buttressing of his opinion, the Senator from Idaho exploded: "I haven't read Professor Dodd's statement. ... I do not propose to descend to the level of reading such irresponsible scandalmongers. I regard him as a disgrace to his country. I have an idea his supposed dictatorship is the figment of a disturbed mind."
There were at least two reasons for the grizzled Senator's violence. Ambassador Dodd, a North Carolina-born history professor whose particular heroes are Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson, had inserted his dictator gossip in a long historical screed reviewing instances in which minorities, working through the Supreme Court and otherwise, had frustrated the people's will. First instance he mentioned was the fight of 1919 by which Senator Borah and other Irreconcilables blocked U. S. entry into the League of Nations. Condemning Jefferson's old enemy, Chief Justice John Marshall, as a tool of the interests, Historian Dodd argued that most of the great People's Presidents—Jefferson, Lincoln. Cleveland. Roosevelt I and Wilson—had been frustrated by selfish minorities operating through Court decisions, Senate filibusters and Party splits. If the same thing should now happen to Franklin Roosevelt, he feared for U. S. democracy. Unmentioned but obvious point of Historian Dodd's epistolary essay was that the Senators should stand by the President on his plan of Supreme Court reform.
William E. Dodd is an able, courageous scholar, but his penchant for drawing lessons from the past has more than once carried him out of diplomatic bounds. Last week Idaho's Borah and other Senate foes of the President's Plan were as furious at his ambassadorial intrusion into 1937's hottest political fight as were Nazis when Ambassador Dodd. in one of his first Berlin speeches, used the careers of the Caesars as his springboard for a two-footed jump on dictatorships.
"His letter was ill-timed, illadvised, unsolicited and out of keeping with his function as Ambassador." barked Indiana's Van Nuys, proposing that the Ambassador be called home to tell who his fascist billionaire is.
"Mr. Dodd should be recalled," cried Utah's King.
"This is just another phase of Administration propaganda," protested Montana's Wheeler.