811.00B/6–149
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs ( Allen ) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Administration ( Peurifoy )
While I would refuse visas to any person who is likely to engage in subversive activities or sabotage, I would not use the visa power to prevent discussion, regardless of the political views of the applicant. I consider it in the national interests of the United States to encourage discussion. I am confident that by this means we shall strengthen democracy rather than weaken it. We grow strong by the fullest competition of ideas in the open.
The Soviet Union is growing weak by forbidding any discussion. We should follow the exactly opposite policy from the USSR and other totalitarian regimes. Tom Dewey1 made a remarkably good case for keeping the Communist Party out in the open, where we can look at it. The more people see of it, the less they will like it, in my opinion.
The more Henry Wallace talked during the last campaign, the more votes he lost because his ideas were not sound. When he expressed them, their hollowness became apparent. If he had not been permitted to speak, he might have got 5,000,000 votes, due to ignorance of his real views and emotional sympathy both for him and his spurious “peace” policy.
I am confident that Shostakovich et al are losing more friends for Communism than they are gaining by their present performance in New York and that it would have been a serious mistake to have forbidden their entry.
I consider it in our national interests to let foreign communists and fellow travelers have their say here because: (1) it is better to depend on reason rather than police power to defend ourselves against non-democratic argumentation; (2) every communist who comes here learns something about the United States and is to some extent less susceptible to the falsehoods Radio Moscow tells about the United States; and (3) we carry out unswerving devotion to freedom of speech.
[Page 822]As regards Nenni, Cot and Zilliacus,2 I do not believe they will be able to engage in subversive activity or sabotage while here. Consequently I recommend that the Department inform the Attorney General that in our view their admission is in the national interests. We should inform Mr. Dubinsky of our actions.3
- Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York and unsuccessful Republican Party candidate in the presidential elections of 1944 and 1948.↩
- The reference here is to Pietro Nenni, Secretary General of the Italian Socialist Party; Pierre Cot, Deputy in the French National Assembly regarded as a Communist fellow-traveller; and Konni Zilliacus of the British Communist Party, who had applied for visas to visit the United States in order to accompany Henry A. Wallace in a speaking tour to oppose the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In late April the Department of State and the Department of Justice concurred in denying the applications for visas on the grounds that their activity would not be in the national interest of the United States.↩
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In a memorandum of June 1 to then Deputy Under Secretary of State Rusk, not printed. Assistant Secretary Allen stated that his views on visas set forth in the document printed here applied in principle to the issuance of passports to American Communists and sympathizers. Allen’s memorandum concluded as follows:
“I am opposed to totalitarianism and police-state methods with every fibre of my being. I am convinced that the Soviet Union, the chief exponent of totalitarianism today, is out to dominate the world and must either change or be defeated. I am equally convinced that we shall accomplish this result best by avoiding any semblance of the police state in our own country. When we use police power to prevent the propagation of ideas, however repugnant those ideas may be, we are heading in the dangerous direction of ‘thought police’. We must rely, as Justice Holmes so well said, on the ability of our democratic ideals to stand up in the competition of the market” (811.00B/6–149)
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