Throughout the U.S. last week, volunteer workers circulated petitions designed to influence the U.S. Senate against the censure of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Their efforts were directed by a newly founded organization called Ten Million Americans Mobilizing for Justice. Its goal: 10 million signatures in ten days.
The Ten Million's top echelon is studded with big, even distinguished, names. Lieut. General (ret.) George Stratemeyer, Korean war Air Force commander, is chairman of the national organization. Among the vice chairmen are General (ret.) James A. Van Fleet; Admiral (ret.) William H. Standley, former Chief of Naval Operations and Ambassador to Russia; Lieut. General (ret.) Pedro A. del Valle, commander of the 1st Marine Division at Okinawa; and Charles Edison, former governor of New Jersey.
Last week business was thriving in the Ten Million's Manhattan headquarters—four small rooms just off the lobby of the Roosevelt hotel. A big American flag spanned the wall of the reception room. Five telephones jangled constantly. Mail poured in. Greeting visitors to the headquarters offices was Rear Admiral John G. Crommelin, who retired from the Navy in 1950 after being officially reprimanded for his part in the "admirals' revolt" against the B-36. After talking in Washington to Joe McCarthy, Crommelin went to Florida and, in consultation with General Stratemeyer, conceived the idea of the Ten Million movement. Now Crommelin bears the title of "chief of staff."
A factotum of the New York office is ex-Major G. Racey Jordan, who, in 1949, told a strange story of how Harry Hopkins gave atomic information and uranium to Soviet Russia (a House subcommittee later called Jordan's tale "inherently incredible"). More recently, Jordan has been warning citizens that fluoridation of public water supplies is a Russian plot. The petition being circulated by the Ten Million in effect echoes McCarthy's Communist-handmaiden charge against the Watkins committee. It says: "We point out that the Communists and their un-American cohorts, by vicious propaganda, and through willing stooges and blind but innocent dupes, already have victimized certain members of the U.S. Senate. The insidious influence of these enemies of our way of life was mainly responsible for the creation of the Watkins committee, and for its incredible findings and conclusions."