The Wilmington morning star., 1943-08-23
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER

is drafting fathers, when American men and
maritime service is short of merchant sailors
to man the ships the National Maritime I'm
ion, communist party-line organization of
the CIO Thursday was able to spare more
than a thousand men, ostenSibly sailors, to
picket the New York World-Telegram. The
picket-line was an attempt to intimidate the
paper into suppressing these dispatches which
have factually revealed misconduct at sea by
communist unioneers including drunkenness,
insubordination and persistent harassment and
derision of patriotic bluejackets and young Of
ficers of the Navy detailed to serve the guns
on these vessels.
Invariably when the communistic penetra-
ton of the merchant service is held up to pub
lie notice and the conspiracy to establish the
alien communist, Harry Bridges, on the East
ern Seaboard is dwelt upon, the Maritime Un-
ion cries up the sacrifices of men who have
lost their lives or suffered terrible hardships
and dangers at sea- as though this record
somehow were to the credit of Joseph Curran,
president of the union, who has taken no part
in the war at sea but on the contrary, obtain
ed deferment in the draft for the sole reason
that he is unioneer faithful to the commun-
ist party line. These sacrifices by men who
may have been unwilling members of the
union, driven into its ranks by the labor policy
of the national government, were accentuated
again during the picketing of the World-Tele-
gram. The demonstration made no attempt,
however, to refute the truth but had for its
purpose only the suppression of public knoWl-
edge of the conspiracy to establish commun1s
tic control of both shipping and the loading of
ships on all our coasts.
The answer to the emphasis on bravery and
sacrifice by party-line shore-sde boss-union-
GERS was stated in salty language a few
months ago by publication called the West
Coast Sailor official organ of the Sailors I'm
ion of the Pacific an anti-cOmmunlst organl-
zation whose president is Harry Lundeberg
who hates and fights Curran and Bridges be-
cause he has their number.
There are those who use the plight OF the
seamen to obtain cheap benefits and cheap
glory for themselves, such as Joe Curran and
the NMU offcialdom who are breaking their
necks to get in the public eye, by trading on
the misery of the seamen," said Mr.. Lunde-
berg's editorial '"They care nothing about
the welfare of the men themselves but only
concerned with advancing their phony front
organizations and themselves. They DO their
fighting on soapboxes in 'second-front rallies
staged by the communist party.
eve see the sweater boys of the NMU occu-
pying the limelight, performing like bunch
of yellow college punks. Lots OF these babies
have never seen ship but are used by Curran
and company to advertise their contribution
to the war effort Fortunately, the sailors
union and the seafarers' international have no
need for this type of clowning to survive as an
organization. Probably no union has lost as
many men through activities as has the
STU. The record will bear out this fact and
we have the names of the various vessels tor
pedoed, and the majority of the ships sunk on
both coasts have been SUP and STU shlps'
manned by AFI. seamen.
''We are of the opinion that it is more than
a little ghoulish to use the killing and manning
of our members in order to gain little cheap
publicity for the organization or for any lndl-
vdual"
There was no reason to believe that all or
even a majority of the thousand-odd plckets
who had no more pressing business thursday
had ever been to at all, except perhaps on
the ships which brought some OF them over
from Europe to attempt to substitute commun-
ism and dictatorship for the American form
of government. They were the IaHllliar' Union
Square type of demonstrators.
Curran's record in this war was one Of faith
FIJI collaboration with Hitler and NaZlsm While
Britain stood alone in Europe and AFRICA and
Germany and Russia were allies. During that
time this party-line union loyal to communist
policy and hostile to this nations efforts to
re-arm, picketed the White House under the
slogan .fThe Yanks Aren't Coming After
tIitler attacked Russia Curran demanded i'm
mediate intervention by the United States
And in an open letter to me last May he
said: "In my opinion, this war did not be-
come peoples war until the Soviet Union
was attacked"
It's about time to get out the seed catalog
again so yo ucan see how those vegetables
should have looked.
It's lota better to be given a nasty look
than have one.