Sunday Times Signal, Sept. 12, 1943


Walter Winchell On Broadway

Notes on a Deserving Best Seller . . There was a squib in the paper the other day reporting that the USA had brought 5,000 copies of John Roy Carlson's exciting book, "Under Cover." These were to be sent to spots where a reading of them could do the most good—and it can do plenty . . .Carlson's book is a diary of his hobnobbings with the gov't wreckers. The names he names aren't especially new, since many of them have made the papers and the police blotters lots of times. But his general picture of the plotters, planting their hates and their subversive stink bombs around the country, makes a whale of a piece of reading. It is a pleasure to report that it is a best seller in all the key cities. It is a sell-out in spite of— or maybe because of— some efforts to crack down on it. ..The antis talked tough to the publisher, who kept his upper lip stiff, and to some merchants, who crawled. But the good old public kept shelling out its moola and now the author and publisher can chortle: "Thanks for the "adv."'

It might be worth mentioning that the forces that tried to muzzle the book never had raised their voices to get the band of men and women charged with sedition to trial. Those accused all figure in the book, and would in the evidence... It is a good bet that whatever charges anybody brought against Carlson would fit the cases against the alleged seditionists. Why not holler for their trial and clean up both matters at once? ... Carlson is just another guy who has found out that you can get unpopular with some quote Americans unquote faster by working for the gov't than by working against it. That's why they're spouting the gag around Washington about a burglar whose lawyer promised him he'd have the charge reduced to treason.

Carlson. Armenian born, now a citizen, got jolted into his under- covering. He saw Archbishop Leon Tourain murdered in the Armenian cathedral uptown by what later turned out to be members of the Dashnag, Armenian fascist outfit...-Then he picked up an anti-Semitic pamphlet in the subway...."This is getting too much like Hitler's world." he thought, and decided to find out who and what were turning the Fascist wheels....He passed himself off as an Italian, a Duce worshipper, and took the name of George Pagnanelli. He won the confidence of plotters by editing a stink sheet, guessing correctly that anybody who played that dirty was a cinch to get himself loved by them.... What they didn't know, but sadly found out, was that he was delivering all his data to Mr. Whiskers. They all talked like gabby drunks once they felt they were safe. They were born braggats and the only way they to say so.

The thing they were trying to sell was hate. Hate Roosevelt. hate Jews, hate Catholics, hate— above everything else—democracy ....The ones among them who could spell kept bleating about a democracy. They couldn't tell you the difference. They just yelled what they were told to and that was one of the "musts" from Berlin.... Carlson argues that lots of them were smart--but his book makes a liar oat of the claim. They were incredibly dumb on occasion. A punchy package thief displays more cunning that some of them-- meaning the leaders. It goes without saying that the rank and file were dopes--just a couple of jumps ahead of the straight-jacket squads.

The funniest of all the outfits Carlson describes is the Phalanx.... This was one of the armed units, making with the rifles and bragging about taking over. They drilled in basements and military'd all over the Joint like small fry playing cops and robbers...Their leaders had been educated at the B movies and got so blood-thirsty in their threats that they began to scare themselves.... They referred to themselves as the "iron guard" and told chumps that they recruited nobody except men with iron guts. They were at the toughest dreaming of marching on Washington, when the FBI hauled stember •& and remains valid the Brooklyn branch off to the cooler. From that moment on the iron guard wouldn't be caught with a cap pistol.

Never blessed with much courage, as you might guess from the fact that it took a dozen of them to beat up an aged Jewish storekeeper, the boys really got a bad case of the butterflies after Pearl Harbor. . . They hated America just as much and loved Hitler more, but they had to be careful whom they mentioned it to. They began to wear their heads on turn-tables, and they walked down the street looking in all directions at once, like three-time losers trying to watch the Baumes law.. . Instead of hooting at America, they began to put a patriotic ribbon on all their mouthings.. Another proof that they are a dumb lot of clucks is seen in the fact that they kept convicting themselves on paper — on paper that Carlson took care to get to places where it would snap back and bite them... Everything they did showed it isn't a good idea to think Pearl Harbor cured isolationism. Plenty — a good, big plenty — of isolationists never got to be ex-isolationists. That's not news. They're saying so themselves in all the things they do and stand for.

Pelley, who was rated one of the canniest of the termites, was a pitiful small-timer. He played up to silly old dolls for funds... Call that" brainy? Goodness me, this burg is full of lazy gigolos who-can smile more coin out of giddy gals that Pelley could demogogue out of them In a life-time... The gigolos have another edge on his racket. too. They don't have to stay sober while they're enjoying the takings.... Follow Carlson's reportage from cover to cover, and you will learn that the scrubby underground didn't have a single idea of its own. All were strictly from "Mein Kampf"— never tell the truth, not even to the membership.

After disagreeing with Carlson, they blundered themselves right into the hands of the law. It's true they reached some powerful people -—with votes as bribes—-but their stink was too bad for ihc majority. They smelled up everything had some well-meaning members, but when the Bundists and the Pelley. Hudson. Broenstrupp Spiridovich fingers got on it, it was covered with dirty marks. In the end that was good-—the best way to discredit a movement. The howlers could never get a first-rate man to head their miserable; parade. All their leaders looked foolish. Some crossed the gullibles and others made the public laugh...Every time one of them would get upped he'd get that dictator glint in his eye and start ranting like a Bowery smokie. Even those at the crossroads, with two or three followers, had superman hallucinations. Some were mean, some looney, and some saps. Read "Under Cover" and enjoy the way they are stripped naked.