Something Burning

Since he appeared on the national scene, five weeks ago, as an advocate of appeasement, Verne Marshall has been sizzling like grease in a hot skillet. While objectors to Mr. Marshall and the press were frying him on all sides, last week someone flipped him from the frying pan into the fire. The flipper: doughty Dr. Leon Milton Birkhead. Dr. Birkhead, who is head of the Friends of Democracy, Inc., flipped Mr. Marshall with a long-handled telegram.

As Mr. Marshall resigned last week as editor of the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette to devote his time to the No Foreign War Committee, the doctor wired: "We now have your organization properly placed." Its place, the doctor said, was alongside "the salesmen of Social Justice, Christian Mobilizers, Bundists. . . . Your organization is no such bona fide keep-us-out-of-war movement as are the Quakers and similar high-minded and loyal American groups." Concluded the doctor, brushing his hands off: "It is fortunate for our country that your No Foreign War Committee has been exposed before it gathered too much strength."

Dr. Birkhead, who believes that the No Foreign War Committee has the odors of "a very dangerous movement," has a trained nose for such dangerous odors. Five years ago he returned from a trip to Germany with a list of Nazi sympathizers in the U. S., supplied him by a boastful Nazi. Dr. Birkhead called on some of the men on the list (which included Gerald Winrod, the Kansas messiah; William Dudley Pelley, head of the Fascist Silver Shirts; Harry Jung of Chicago; Colonel E. N. Sanctuary of New York), heard their arguments, and made up his mind that something nasty was brewing for democracy. He gave up his Unitarian church in Kansas City and started the Friends of Democracy.

The warpath is no new path for the fighting doctor. During his 27 years of midwestern ministry he had trodden it often. He fought anti-evolution laws, was present at the Scopes trial. Once he asserted that Kansas City's syphilitic prostitutes, instead of being locked up in institutions, were being taken to the edge of town and turned loose. When the mayor challenged the charge, the police commissioners backed up Dr. Birkhead in public. The mayor, infuriated, brought his fist down on the table with a crash, exploded "By God!" and fell dead. Since then Dr. Birkhead has had to go easier on his opponents. But last week, claiming that there were 15 to 20 million pro-Nazis in the U. S., and not enough people "howling" for democracy, the good doctor got ready to do some lusty howling.

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