Court Opinion

ID: 9419393
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:13.998986+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.834035
License: Public Domain

MR. Chief Justice Stone,
dissenting:
The two courts below have found that petitioner, at the time he was naturalized, belonged to Communist Party organizations which were opposed to the principles of the Constitution, and which advised, advocated and taught the overthrow of the Government by force and violence. They have found that petitioner believed in and supported the principles of those organizations. They have found also that petitioner “was not, at the time of his naturalization . . ., and during the period of five years immediately preceding the filing of his petition for naturalization had not behaved as, a person attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.”
I think these findings are abundantly supported by the evidence, and hence that it is not within our judicial competence to set them aside — even though, sitting as trial judges, we might have made some other finding. The judgment below, cancelling petitioner’s citizenship on the ground that it was illegally obtained, should therefore be affirmed. The finality which attaches to the trial court’s determinations of fact from evidence heard in open court, and which ordinarily saves them from an appellate court’s intermeddling, should not be remembered in every case save this one alone.
It is important to emphasize that the question for decision is much simpler than it has been made to appear. It is whether petitioner, in securing his citizenship by naturalization, has fulfilled a condition which Congress *171has imposed on every applicant for naturalization — that during the five years preceding his application “he has behaved as a man . . . attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.”1 Decision whether he was lawfully entitled to the citizenship which he procured, and consequently whether he is now entitled to retain it, must turn on the existence of his attachment to the principles of the Constitution when he applied for citizenship, and that must be inferred by the trier of fact from his conduct during the five-year period. We must decide not whether the district court was compelled to find want of attachment, but whether the record warrants such a finding.
The question then is not of petitioner’s opinions or beliefs — save as they may have influenced or may explain his conduct showing attachment, or want of it, to the principles of the Constitution. It is not a question of freedom of thought, of speech or of opinion, or of present imminent danger to the United States from our acceptance as citizens of those who are not attached to the principles of our form of government. The case obviously has nothing to do with our relations with Russia, where petitioner *172was born, or with our past or present views of the Russian political or social system. The United States has the same interest as other nations in demanding of those who seek its citizenship some measure of attachment to its institutions. Our concern is only that the declared will of Congress shall prevail — that no man shall become a citizen or retain his citizenship whose behavior for five years before his application does not show attachment to the principles of the Constitution.
The Constitution has conferred on Congress the exclusive authority to prescribe uniform rules governing naturalization. Article I, § 8, cl. 4. Congress has exercised that power by prescribing the conditions, in conformity to which aliens may obtain the privilege of citizenship. Under the laws and Constitution of the United States, no person is given any right to demand citizenship, save upon compliance with those conditions. “An alien who seeks political rights as a member of this Nation can rightfully obtain them only upon terms and conditions specified by Congress. Courts are without authority to sanction changes or modifications; their duty is rigidly to enforce the legislative will in respect of a matter so vital to the public welfare.” United States v. Ginsberg, 243 U. S. 472, 474. And whenever a person’s right to citizenship is drawn in question, it is the judge’s duty loyally to see to it that those conditions have not been disregarded.
The present suit by the United States, to cancel petitioner’s previously granted certificate of citizenship, was brought pursuant to an Act of Congress (§ 15 of the Act of June 29, 1906, 34 Stat. 601), enacted long prior to petitioner’s naturalization. Section 15 authorizes any court by a suit instituted by the United States Attorney to set aside a certificate of naturalization “on the ground of fraud or on the ground that such certificate of citizenship was illegally procured.” Until now this Court, with*173out a dissenting voice, has many times held that in a suit under this statute it is the duty of the court to render a judgment cancelling the certificate of naturalization if the court finds upon evidence that the applicant did not satisfy the conditions which Congress had made prerequisite to the award of citizenship. Johannessen v. United States, 225 U. S. 227; Luria v. United States, 231 U. S. 9; Maibaum v. United States, 232 U. S. 714; United States v. Ginsberg, 243 U. S. 472; United States v. Ness, 245 U. S. 319; Maney v. United States, 278 U. S. 17, 23; Schwinn v. United States, 311 U. S. 616.
Provision for such a review of the judgment awarding citizenship is within the legislative power of Congress and plainly is subject to no constitutional infirmity, Johannessen v. United States, supra, 236-40, especially where, as here, the statute antedated petitioner’s citizenship and the review was thus a condition of its award. Luria v. United States, supra, 24. Our decisions have uniformly recognized that Congress, which has power to deny citizenship to aliens altogether, may safeguard the grant of this privilege, precious to the individual and vital to the country’s welfare, by such procedure for determining the existence of indispensable requisites to citizenship as has been established in § 15. “No alien has the slightest right to naturalization unless all statutory requirements are complied with; and every certificate of citizenship must be treated as granted upon condition that the Government may challenge it as provided in § 15 and demand its cancellation unless issued in accordance with such requirements. If procured when prescribed qualifications have no existence in fact it is illegally procured; a manifest mistake by the judge cannot supply these nor render their existence non-essential.” United States v. Ginsberg, supra, 475. Speaking for a unanimous Court, Mr. Justice Brandéis thus stated what was, until today, the settled law: “If a certificate is procured when the pre*174scribed qualifications have no existence in fact, it may be cancelled by suit.” Tutun v. United States, 270 U. S. 568, 578. Congress has not seen fit to interpose any statute of limitations. And there is no suggestion that the Government was derelict, in not bringing the suit earlier or that petitioner has been prejudiced by delay. Hence the issue before us is whether petitioner, when naturalized, satisfied the statutory requirements. It is the same issue as would be presented by an appeal from a judgment granting or denying naturalization upon the evidence here presented, although it may be assumed that in this proceeding the burden of proof rests on the Government, which has brought the suit, to establish petitioner’s want of qualifications.
We need not stop to consider whether petitioner’s failure, in his naturalization proceeding, to disclose facts which could have resulted in a denial of his application, constituted fraud within the meaning of the statute. For present purposes it is enough that the evidence supports the conclusion of the courts below as to petitioner’s want of attachment to the principles of the Constitution, and, that § 15 has, ever since its enactment in 1906, been construed by this Court as requiring certificates of citizenship to be cancelled as illegally procured whenever the court finds on evidence that at the time of naturalization the applicant did not in fact satisfy the statutory prerequisites.
To meet the exigencies of this case, it is now for the first time proposed by the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas that a new construction be given to the statute which would preclude any inquiry concerning the fact of petitioner’s attachment to the Constitution. It is said that in a § 15 proceeding the only inquiry permitted, apart from fraud, is as to the regularity of the naturalization proceedings on their face: that — however *175much petitioner fell short of meeting the statutory requirements for citizenship — -if he filed, as he did, pro forma affidavits of two persons, barely stating that he met the statutory requirements of residence, moral character and attachment to the Constitution, and if the court on the basis of the affidavits made the requisite findings and order, then all further inquiry is foreclosed.
To this easy proposal for the emasculation of the statute there are several plain and obvious answers.
Section 15 authorizes and directs the Government to institute the suit to cancel the certificate of naturalization on the ground of fraud or on the ground that the certificate was illegally procured. Until now it has never been thought that a certificate of citizenship procured by one who has not satisfied the statutory conditions for citizenship, is nevertheless lawfully procured. But the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas suggests that, for purposes of § 15, “attachment to the principles' of the Constitution” is not a condition of becoming a citizen. It suggests that the statute is satisfied, even though the applicant was never in fact attached to the principles of the Constitution, so long as such attachment was made to appear, from pro forma affidavits, to the satisfaction of the naturalization court. This is said to be the case regardless of whether in fact the affidavits, and the certificate of citizenship based on them, are wholly mistaken-/ and despite the fact that the naturalization proceeding, as apparently it was here, is an ex parte proceeding in which the Government is not represented.
It would seem passing strange that Congress — which authorized cancellation of citizenship under § 15 for failure to hold the naturalization hearing in open court instead of in the judge’s chambers (United States v. Ginsberg, supra), or for failure to present the requisite certificate of arrival in this country (Maney v. United States, *176supra) — should be thought less concerned with the applicant's attachment to the principles of the Constitution and that he be well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States. For what could be more important in the selection of citizens of the United States than that the prospective citizen be attached to the principles of the Constitution?
Moreover, if in the absence of fraud the finding of the naturalization court in this case is final and hence beyond the reach of a § 15 proceeding, it would be equally final in the case of a finding, contrary to the actual fact, that the applicant had been for five years a continuous resident in the United States, since that requirement too is set forth in the sentence of § 4 which provides that “it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the court.” Yet it is settled that a certificate of citizenship based on a mistaken finding of five years residence is subject to revocation. United States v. Ginsberg, supra. And in Schwinn v. United States, supra, it appeared, from extrinsic evidence first offered in a § 15 proceeding, that the witnesses at the naturalization hearing had been mistaken as to the length of time they had known the applicant, and that for a part of the five-year period no witness had been produced with actual knowledge of the applicant’s residence or qualifications. We held, without dissent, 311 U. S. 616, “that the certificate of citizenship was illegally procured,” and for that reason we affirmed a judgment cancelling it.2 If we are to give effect to the language and purpose of Congress, it would seem that we must reach the same result in the case of the naturalization court's mistaken or unwarranted finding of attachment to the principles of the Constitution, even though *177the conduct of the applicant and his witnesses at the naturalization hearing fell short of perjury.
The purpose of § 15 — like that of § 11, which authorizes the Government to appear in a naturalization proceeding to contest the application — is not merely to insure the formal regularity of the proceeding, but to protect the United States from the injury which would result from the acceptance as citizens of any who are not lawfully entitled to become citizens. Congress left the naturalization proceeding simple and inexpensive, by permitting it ordinarily to be conducted ex parte. Thus approximately 200,000 certificates of naturalization were issued during the year in which petitioner became a citizen. Annual Report of the Secretary of Labor, 1940, p. 115. But by § 15 Congress afforded the Government an independent opportunity to inquire into any naturalization if upon later scrutiny it appeared that the certificate of citizenship had not been lawfully procured. As the Court declared in United States v. Ness, supra, 327, “§ 11 and § 15 were designed to afford cumulative protection against fraudulent or illegal naturalization.” All this was made abundantly clear by decisions of this Court more than twenty-five years ago. See Johannessen v. United States, supra; Luria v. United States, supra; United States v. Ginsberg, supra; United States v. Ness, supra, 325-27. In the intervening years Congress has often revised the naturalization laws, but it has not thought it appropriate to modify this Court’s interpretation of the function of § 15 in the naturalization procedure.
This is persuasive that the interpretation of § 15 now proposed defies the purpose and will of Congress. It is inconceivable that Congress should have intended that a naturalized citizen’s attachment to the principles of the Constitution — the most fundamental requirement for citizenship — should be the one issue which, in the absence *178of fraud, the Government is foreclosed from examining. To limit the Government to proof of fraud in such cases is to read “illegality” out of the statute in every instance where an alien demonstrably not attached to the principles of the Constitution has procured a certificate of citizenship. Even if we were to recast an Act of Congress in accordance with our own notions of policy, it would be difficult to discover any considerations warranting the adoption of a device whose only effect would be to make certain that persons never entitled to the benefits of citizenship could secure and retain them. That could not have been the object of Congress in enacting § 15.
As we are not here considering whether petitioner’s certificate of naturalization was procured by fraud, there is no occasion, and indeed no justification, for importing into this case the rule, derived from land fraud cases, that 'fraud, which involves personal moral obliquity, must be proved by clear and convincing evidence. The issue is not whether petitioner committed a crime but whether he should be permitted to enjoy citizenship when he has never satisfied the basic conditions which Congress required for the grant of that privilege. We are concerned only with the question whether petitioner’s qualifications were so lacking that he was not lawfully entitled to the privilege of citizenship which he has procured. There is nothing in § 15, nor in any of our numerous decisions under it, to suggest that such an issue is to be tried as fraud is tried, or that it is not. to be resolved, as are other cases, by the weight of evidence. No plausible reason has been advanced why it should not be. But the point need not be labored, for no matter how it is determined it can give no aid or comfort to petitioner. The evidence in this case to which I shall refer and on which the courts below were entitled to rely is clear, not speculative; and since petitioner himself has not challenged it, the trial court was *179entitled to accept it as convincing, which it evidently did.
The statute does not, as seems to be suggested, require as a condition of citizenship that a man merely be capable of attachment to the principles of the Constitution — a requirement which presumably all mankind could satisfy. It requires instead that the applicant be in fact attached to those principles when he seeks naturalization, and § 15 makes provision for the Government to institute an independent suit, subsequent to naturalization, to inquire whether that condition was then in fact fulfilled. Congress has exhibited no interest in petitioner’s capabilities. Nor did Congress require only that it be not impossible for petitioner to have an attachment to the principles of the Constitution. The Act specifies the fact of attachment as the test, requiring this to be affirmatively shown by the applicant; and by § 15 Congress provided a means for the United States to ascertain that fact by a judicial determination.
The prescribed conditions for the award of citizenship by naturalization are few and readily understood, and we must accept them as the expression of the Congressional judgment that aliens not satisfying those requirements are not worthy to be admitted to the privilege of citizenship. Congress has declared that before one is entitled to that privilege he must take the oath of allegiance “that he will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” Act of June 29, 1906, § 4 (Third), 34 Stat. 597. And as I have said, the applicant must make it appear to the court admitting him to citizenship that for the five years preceding the date of his application he has resided continuously within the United States and “that during that time he has behaved as a man of good *180moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.”
Moreover, at the time of petitioner’s naturalization, the statutes of the United States excluded from admission into this country “aliens who believe in, advise, advocate, or teach, or who are members of or affiliated with any organization, association, society, or group, that believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches: (1) the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States . . .” Act of October 16, 1918, § 1, 40 Stat. 1012, as amended by subsection (c) of the Act of June 5, 1920, 41 Stat. 1008, 1009. The statutes also barred admission to the United States of “aliens who . . . knowingly circulate, distribute, print, or display, or knowingly cause to be circulated, distributed, printed, published, or displayed . . . any written or printed matter . . . advising, advocating, or teaching: (1) the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States . . .” Ibid., subsection (d). And by § 2 of the Act of October 16, 1918, it was provided that any alien who, after entering the United States, “is found ... to have become thereafter, a member of any one of the classes of aliens” just enumerated, shall be taken into custody and deported. See Kessler v. Strecker, 307 U. S. 22. Quite apart from the want of attachment to the Constitution and the consequent disqualification of such aliens for citizenship, their belonging to any of these classes would disqualify them for citizenship since their presence in the United States, without which they cannot apply for citizenship, would be unlawful. And in the light of the evidence — presently to be discussed— even the Court’s opinion concedes (p. 153) “We do not say that a reasonable man could not possibly have found, as the district court did, that the Communist Party in 1927 actively urged the overthrow of the Government by *181force and violence.” In addition, the evidence makes it clear beyond all reasonable doubt that petitioner, up to the time of his naturalization, was an alien who knowingly circulated or distributed, or caused to be circulated or distributed, printed matter advocating the overthrow of the Government by force or violence.
Wholly apart from the deportation statute, the judgment should be affirmed because the trial court was justified in finding that petitioner, in 1927, was not and had not been attached to the principles of the Constitution. My brethren of the majority do not deny that there are principles of the Constitution. The Congress of 1795, which passed the statute requiring an applicant for naturalization to establish that he has “behaved as a man . . . attached to the principles of the Constitution” (1 Stat. 414), evidently did not doubt that there were. For some of its members had sat in the Constitutional Convention. In the absence of any disclaimer I shall assume that there are such principles and that among them are at least the principle of constitutional protection of civil rights and of life, liberty and property, the principle of representative government, and the principle that constitutional laws are not to be broken down by planned disobedience. I assume also that all the principles of the Constitution are hostile to dictatorship and minority rule; and that it is a principle of our Constitution that change in the organization of our government is to be effected by the orderly procedures ordained by the Constitution and not by force or fraud. With these in mind, we may examine petitioner’s behavior as disclosed by the record, during the five years which preceded his naturalization, in order to ascertain whether there was basis in the evidence for the trial judge’s findings. In determining whether there was evidence supporting the finding of petitioner’s want of attachment to constitutional principles, courts must look, as the statute admonishes, to see whether in the five-*182year period petitioner behaved as a man attached to the principles of the Constitution. And we must recognize that such attachment or want of it is a personal attribute to be inferred from all the relevant facts and circumstances which tend to reveal petitioner’s attitude toward those principles.
. Petitioner, who is an educated and intelligent man, took out his first papers in 1924, when he was eighteen years of age, and was admitted to citizenship on June 10, 1927, when nearly twenty-two. Since his sixteenth year he has been continuously and actively engaged in promoting in one way or another the interests of various Communist Party organizations affiliated with and controlled as to their policy and action by the Third International, the parent Communist organization, which had its headquarters and its Executive Committee in Moscow.3 *183The evidence shows petitioner’s loyalty to the Communist Party organizations; that as a member of the Party he was subject to and accepted its political control, and that as a Party member his adherence to its political principles and tactics was required by its constitution.
Petitioner was born in Russia on August 1, 1905, and came to the United States in 1907 or 1908. In 1922, when a 16-year old student at a night high school in Los Angeles, he became one of the organizers and charter members of the Young Workers League of California. Por two or three years — and during the five-year period which we are examining — he was educational director of the League; it was his duty “to organize forums and studies for classes.” “My job was to register students in the classes and send out notices for meetings; in other words, to organize the educational activities of the League for which instructors were supplied.” The outlines of the curriculum of this educational program were established by the League’s national committee. The League (whose name was later changed to the Young Communist League) was affiliated with the Communist International.4 In 1928, just after he was naturalized, petitioner became “organizer” or “director” of the League — “I was the official spokesman for the League and directed its administrative and political affairs and educational affairs.” Petitioner was a delegate to the League’s National Con*184vention in 1922, and again in 1925. Meanwhile, on February 8, 1924, he had filed a declaration of intention to become a citizen of the United States.
At the end of 1924, petitioner joined the Workers Party (which later changed its name to the Workers Communist Party and still later to the Communist Party of the United States of America). The Party was a section of the Third International. The Party constitution, at the time petitioner became a member, provided (Article III, § 1) that “every person who accepts the principles and tactics of the Workers Party of America and agrees to submit to its discipline and engage actively in its work shall be eligible to membership.” Applicants for membership were required (Article III, § 2) to sign an application card reading as follows: “The undersigned declares his adherence to the principles and tactics of the Workers Party of America as expressed in its program and constitution and agrees to submit to the discipline of the party and to engage actively in its work.” It was likewise provided (Article X, §§ 1, 2) that “all decisions of the governing bodies of the Party shall be binding upon the membership and subordinate units of the organization,” and that “any member or organization violating the decisions of the Party shall be subject to suspension or expulsion.”5 During 1925 and 1926 petitioner was “cor*185responding secretary” of the Workers Party in Los Angeles. As such, he wrote down the minutes and sent out communications for meetings; and a letter which he signed in his capacity as “city central secretary” indicates that he was in charge of outgoing correspondence with affiliates of the Party. In 1925 he attended the Party convention.
After his naturalization, petitioner attended the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International, at Moscow, in 1928; and from 1929 to 1930 he was district organizational secretary of the Party for a district which included Arizona, Nevada and California. At various subsequent times he was district organizer in Connecticut, in Minnesota, and in California. He ran twice as the Party’s candidate for governor of Minnesota. He held other official positions in the Party, and at the time of the hearing in the district court was California State Secretary of the Party and a member of the State Central Committee. These facts, while not directly probative of his behavior during the five-year period 1922-1927, at least establish that his early devotion to the Party organizations was not transitory, nor inconsistent with his genuine and settled convictions.
The evidence shows and it is not denied that the Communist Party organization at the time in question was a revolutionary party having as its ultimate aim generally, and particularly in England and the United States, the overthrow of capitalistic government, and the substitution for it of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It sought to accomplish this through persistent indoctrination of the people in capitalistic countries with Party principles, by the organization in those countries of sections of the *186Third International, by systematic teaching of Party principles at meetings and classes held under Party auspices, and by the publication and distribution of Communist literature which constituted one of the basic principles of Party action.
In accordance with the policy established at its Second World Congress in 1920, the Party press was brought under Party control through ownership of the various publication agencies. Strict adherence to Party principles was demanded of all publications, which were required to be edited by Party members of proved loyalty to the proletarian revolution. Propaganda was required to conform to the program and decisions of the Third International. Editors were removed and Party members expelled for noncompliance. Publications not conforming to Party principles were barred from Party classes.
Many such Communist Party publications were introduced at the trial and constitute a large part of the evidence in this case. Perusal of the record can leave no doubt of petitioner’s unqualified loyalty to the Communist Party. His continuous services to the Party for twenty years in a great variety of capacities, and his familiarity with Party programs and literature, are convincing proof of his complete devotion to Communist Party principles, and his desire to advance them. Throughout he has been a diligent student of Party publications. Many of them were used in the Communist classes of which he was educational director in the years immediately preceding his naturalization. All were particularly brought to his attention as they were introduced in evidence and excerpts relative to the issues were discussed in open court. Except as may be later noted, he did not deny familiarity with them or disavow their teachings. They were the official exposition of the doctrines of the Party to which he had formally pledged his alie-*187giance, diligently disseminated by him for the indoctrination of his fellow countrymen, especially the members of the Youth organizations of the Party. In the circumstances, and especially in the absence of any disavowal by petitioner or the assertion by him of ignorance of the principles which they proclaimed, they are persuasive evidence of the nature and extent of his want of attachment to the principles of the Constitution. In appraising them in this aspect it will be most useful to state in somewhat summary form some of the teachings of these publications, classified with reference to principles of the Constitution to which they relate, and to give a few typical examples, of which many more could be given from the evidence.
Unless otherwise noted, I shall refer only to those with which petitioner was familiar and which were published under the auspices of the Party and by its official publication agencies.
As I have said, it is not questioned that the ultimate aim of the Communist Party in 1927 and the years preceding was the triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the consequent overthrow of capitalistic or bourgeois government and society. Attachment to such dictatorship can hardly be thought to indicate attachment to the principles of an instrument of government which forbids dictatorship and precludes the rule of the minority or the suppression of minority rights by dictatorial government. But the Government points especially to the methods by which that end was to be achieved to show that those who pursue or advocate such methods exhibit their want of attachment to the principles of the Constitution. Methods repeatedly and systematically advocated, in the Communist Party literature to which I have referred, include first a softening up process by which the breakdown and disintegration of capitalistic governments was to be achieved by systematic *188and general resort to violation of the laws, and second, the overthrow of capitalistic governments by force and violence.
It was proclaimed that “For all countries, even for most free ‘legal’ and ‘peaceful’ ones in the sense of a lesser acuteness in the class struggle, the period has arrived, when it has become absolutely necessary for every Communist party to join systematically lawful and unlawful work, lawful and unlawful organization. . . . The class struggle in almost every country of Europe and America is entering the phase of civil war. Under such conditions the Communists can have no confidence in bourgeois laws. They should create everywhere a parallel illegal apparatus, which at the decisive moment should do its duty by the party, and in every way possible assist the revolution. In every country where, in consequence of martial law or of other exceptional laws, the Communists are unable to carry on their work lawfully, a combination of lawful and unlawful work is absolutely necessary.” 6 “Opposition *189in principle to underground (illegal) work and an unwillingness to understand the absolute necessity for a Communist Party of combining legal with illegal work” was in fact one ground for expulsion from the Party of a minority faction.7 Advocacy of illegal conduct generally was accompanied by advocacy of particular types of illegality. The Party was instructed to arouse workers to “mass violation” of an injunction “whenever and wherever an injunction is issued by courts against strikers.” 8 In the literature of the period now in question unlawful tactics were particularly to be directed toward government armed forces. In addition to “systematic unlawful work,” “it is especially necessary to carry on unlawful work in the army, navy, and police.”9 Refusal to participate in “persistent and systematic propaganda and agitation” in the army was “equal to treason to the revo*190lutionary cause, and incompatible with affiliation with the Third International,” 10 and this because “it is necessary, above all things, to undermine and destroy the army in order to overcome the bourgeoisie.”11
There is abundant documentary evidence of the character already described to support the court’s finding that the Communist Party organizations, of which petitioner was a member, diligently circulated printed matter which advocated the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force and violence, and that petitioner aided in that circulation and advocacy. From the beginning, and during all times relevant to this inquiry, there is evidence that the Communist Party organizations advocated the overthrow of capitalistic governments by revolution to be accomplished, if need be, by force of arms. We need not stop to consider the much discussed question whether this meant more than that force was to be used if established governments should be so misguided as to refuse to make themselves over into proletarian dictatorships by amendment of their governmental structures, or should have the effrontery to defend themselves from lawless or subversive attacks. For in any case the end contemplated was the overthrow of government, and the measures advocated were force and violence.
*191The fountainhead of Communist principles, the Communist Manifesto, published by Marx and Engels in 1848, had openly proclaimed that Communist ends could be attained “only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” After 1920 these teachings were revived and restated in Party publications which, in the period we are now considering, were used in the Communist educational program that petitioner was directing. They recognized that “the proletarian revolution is impossible without the violent destruction of the bourgeois governmental machine and the putting of a new one in its place”; that “the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be the result of the peaceful development of bourgeois society and democracy; it can be the result only of the destruction of the bourgeois army and State machine, the bourgeois administrative apparatus and the whole bourgeois political system”; that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is born not of the bourgeois state of things, but of its destruction after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, of the expropriation of landed proprietors and capitalists, of the socialization of the essential instruments and means of production, of the development of the proletarian revolution through violence. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the revolutionary power resting on violence against the bourgeoisie.”12
Petitioner testified that at the time of his naturalization he subscribed to the philosophy and principles of socialism as manifested in the writings of Lenin. The State *192and Revolution, by Lenin, with which petitioner was familiar, and which was circulated by the Literature Department of the Communist Party in 1924 and 1925 and used by Communist Party classes, declared: “The necessity of systematically fostering among the masses this and only this point of view about violent revolution lies at the root of the whole of Marx’s and Engels’ teaching, and it is just the neglect of such propaganda and agitation both by the present predominant Social-Chauvinists and the Kautskian schools that brings their betrayal of it into prominent relief.” 13 And in order that there might be no misunderstanding of the term “revolution,” Engels’ definition of revolution was revived and restated as follows: “Revolution is an act in which part of the population forces its will on the other parts by means of rifles, bayonets, cannon, i. e., by most authoritative means. And the conquering party is inevitably forced to maintain its supremacy by means of that fear which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.” 14 “That which before the victory of the proletariat seems but a theoretical difference of opinion on the question of ‘democracy,’ becomes inevitably on the morrow of the victory, a question which can only be decided by force of arms.” 15 “The working class cannot achieve victory over the bourgeois by means of the general strike alone, and by the policy of folded arms. The proletariat must resort to an armed uprising.” 16 “To say that the revolution can be achieved without civil war is to say that a ‘peaceful’ revolution is possible. . . . Marx was a believer in civil war — that is, the armed struggle of *193the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. . . . The teachers of Socialism took the revolution very seriously. It was clear to them that the proletariat could not convert the bourgeoisie, and that the workers would have to impose their will upon their enemies through a war carried on by guns and bayonets.” 17
The Party teachings in this and other publications were that revolution by force of arms was a universal principle and consequently one which embraced the United States, and obviously was intended to do so when taught in Communist classes in the United States. Communist publications in evidence were at pains to point out that “Marx’s limitation with regard to the ‘continent’ has furnished the opportunists and mensheviks of every country with a pretext for asserting that Marx admitted the possibility of a peaceful transformation of bourgeois democracy into proletariat democracy, at least [in] some countries (England and America). . . . But now the situation in these countries is radically different. Imperialism has reached its apogee there, and there militarism and bureaucracy are sovereign. In consequence Marx’s restriction no longer applies.”18
In order to determine whether petitioner’s behavior established his attachment to the principles of the Constitution, we are entitled to consider the political system which his Party proposed to establish and toward which his own efforts in promoting the Communist cause were directed. About this there is and can be no serious dispute. Under the new system existing constitutional principles were to be abandoned. In the new government to be established by the Communists, the freedoms guaran*194teed by the Bill of Rights were to be ended. “. . . There can be no talk of ‘freedom’ for everybody. The dictatorship of the proletariat is incompatible with the freedom of the bourgeoisie. The dictatorship is, in fact, necessary to deprive the bourgeoisie of their freedom, to chain them hand and foot in order to make it absolutely impossible for them to fight the revolutionary proletariat.” 19 There was to be “immediate and unconditional confiscation of the estates of the landowners and big landlords” and “no propaganda can be admitted in the ranks of the Communist parties in favor of an indemnity to be paid to the owners of large estates for their expropriation.” 20 The new state was not to include “representatives of the former ruling classes.”21 “The dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be a ‘complete democracy, a democracy for all, for rich and poor alike; it has to be a State that is democratic, but only for the proletariat and the property-less, a State that is dictatorial, but only against the bourgeoisie.’ . . . Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, democracy is proletarian: it is democracy for the exploited majority, based on the limitation of the rights of the exploiting minority and directed against this minority.” 22
The aims of the Communists could be achieved only by “the annihilation of the entire bourgeois governmental apparatus, parliamentary, judicial, military, bureaucratic, administrative, municipal,” and it was necessary for the Communists “to break and destroy” the “apparatus.”23 The annihilation of the existing political structure was *195deemed as necessary in the United States as elsewhere.24 If elected to public office the Communist was directed to “facilitate this task of destruction” of the existing “apparatus,” since the “bourgeois State organizations” were to be utilized only “with the object of destroying them.” 25
It is unnecessary to give further examples of the teachings of Communist Party organizations with which the documentary evidence is shot through and through. Appended to this opinion are excerpts from two exhibits. These have been chosen, not because they prove more than others but only because they express in short form ideas which permeate all. The evidence, as a whole, and the exhibits which we have especially mentioned, show a basis for finding in the Party teachings, during the period in question, an unqualified hostility to the most fundamental and universally recognized principles of the Constitution. On the argument we were admonished that petitioner favored change in our form of government, which is itself a principle of the Constitution, since the Constitution provides for its own amendment, and that in any case the Communist Party had greatly modified its aims in more recent years. It is true that the Constitution provides for its own amendment by an orderly procedure but not through the breakdown of our governmental system by lawless conduct and by force. It can / hardly satisfy the requirement of “attachment to the 1 principles of the Constitution” that one is attached to the_/ means for its destruction. And whether at some tune after 1927 the Party may have abandoned these doctrines is immaterial. —
It would be little short of preposterous to assert thaT) vigorous aid knowingly given by a pledged Party member/ *196in disseminating the Party teachings, to which reference has been made, is compatible with attachment to the principles of the Constitution. On the record before us it would be difficult for a trial judge to conclude that petitioner was not well aware that he was a member of and aiding a party which taught and advocated the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force vand violence. It would be difficult also to find as a fact that petitioner behaved as a man attached to the principles of the Constitution. The trial judge found that he did not. And the same evidence would seem to furnish plain enough support for the trial judge’s further finding that petitioner did not behave as a man attached “to the good order and happiness” of the United States.
Petitioner’s pledge of adherence to Communist Party principles and tactics, and his membership in the Communist organizations, were neither passive nor indolent. His testimony shows clearly that during the crucial years he was a young man of vigorous intellect and strong convictions. He spent his time actively arranging for the dissemination of a gospel of which he never has asserted either ignorance or disbelief. His wide acquaintance with Party literature, and his zealous promotion of Party interests for many years, preclude the supposition that he did not know the character of its teachings and did not aid in their advocacy. They are persuasive that he was without attachment to the constitutional principles which those teachings aimed to destroy. Yet the Court’s opinion seems to tell us that the trier of fact must not examine petitioner’s gospel to find out what kind of man he was, or even what his gospel was; that the trier of fact could not “impute” to petitioner any genuine attachment to the doctrines of these organizations whose teachings he so assiduously spread. It might as well be said that it is impossible to infer that a man is attached to the principles of a religious movement from the fact that he conducts *197its prayer meetings, or, to take a more sinister example, that it could not be inferred that a man is a Nazi and consequently not attached to constitutional principles who, for more than five years, had diligently circulated the doctrines of Mein Kampf.
In neither case of course is the inference inevitable. It is possible, though not probable or normal, for one to be attached to principles diametrically opposed to those, to the dissemination of which he has given his life’s best effort. But it is a normal and sensible inference which the trier of fact is free to make that his attachment is to those principles rather than to- constitutional principles with which they are at war. A man can be known by the ideas he spreads as well as by the company he keeps. And when one does not challenge the proof that he has given his life to spreading a particular class of well-defined ideas, it is convincing evidence that his attachment is to them rather than their opposites. In this case it is convincing evidence that petitioner, at the time of his naturalization, was not entitled to the citizenship he procured because he was not attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States and because he was not well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.
Mb. Justice Roberts and Mb. Justice Frankfurter join in this dissent.
APPENDIX.
Excerpts from Exhibit 26 — Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International (see note 6, supra):
“The Communist International makes its aim to put up an armed struggle for the overthrow of the International bourgeoisie and to create an International Soviet Republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State. The Communist International considers the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only means for the liberation of humanity from the horrors of capitalism. *198The Communist International considers the Soviet form of government as the historically evolved form of this dictatorship of the proletariat.” p. 4.
“Under the circumstances which have been created in the whole world, and especially in the most advanced, most powerful, most enlightened and freest capitalist countries by militarist imperialism — oppression of colonies and weaker nations, the universal imperialist slaughter, the ‘peace’ of Versailles — to admit the idea of a voluntary submission of the capitalists to the will of the majority of the exploited, of a peaceful, reformist passage to Socialism, is not only to give proof of an extreme petty bourgeois stupidity, but it is a direct deception of the workmen, a disguisal of capitalist wage-slavery, a concealment of the truth. This truth is that the bourgeoisie, the most enlightened and democratic portion of the bourgeoisie, is even now not stopping at deceit and crime, at the slaughter of millions of workmen and peasants, in order to retain the right of private ownership over the means of production. Only a violent defeat of the bourgeoisie, the confiscation of its property, the annihilation of the entire bourgeois governmental apparatus, parliamentary, judicial, military, bureaucratic, administrative, municipal, etc., even the individual exile or internment of the most stubborn and dangerous exploiters, the establishment of a strict control over them for the repression of all inevitable attempts at resistance and restoration of capitalist slavery — only such measures will be able to guarantee the complete submission of the whole class of exploiters.” p. 11.
“That which before the victory of the proletariat seems but a theoretical difference of opinion on the question of ‘democracy,’ becomes inevitably on the morrow of the victory, a question which can only be decided by force of arms.” p. 15.
“For all countries, even for most free ‘legal’ and ‘peaceful’ ones in the sense of a lesser acuteness in the class struggle, the period has arrived, when it has become absolutely necessary for every Communist party to join systematically lawful and unlawful work, lawful and unlawful organization.” p. 18.
*199“It is especially necessary to carry on unlawful work in the army, navy, and police, as, after the imperialist slaughter, all the governments in the world are becoming afraid of the national armies, open to all peasants and workingmen, and they are setting up in secret all kinds of select military organizations recruited from the bourgeoisie and especially provided with improved technical equipment.” p. 19.
“The class struggle in almost every country of Europe and America is entering the phase of civil war. Under such conditions the Communists can have no confidence in bourgeois laws. They should create everywhere a parallel illegal apparatus, which at the decisive moment should do its duty by the party, and in every way possible assist the revolution. In every country where, in consequence of martial law or of other exceptional laws, the Communists are unable to carry on their work lawfully, a combination of lawful and unlawful work is absolutely necessary.” p. 28.
“A persistent and systematic propaganda and agitation is necessary in the army, where Communist groups should be formed in every military organization. Wherever, owing to repressive legislation, agitation becomes impossible, it is necessary to carry on such agitation illegally. But refusal to carry on or participate in such work should be considered equal to treason to the revolutionary cause, and incompatible with affiliation with the Third International.” p. 28.
“Each party desirous of affiliating with the Communist International should be obliged to render every possible assistance to the Soviet Republics in their struggle against all counter-revolutionary forces. The Communist parties should carry on a precise and definite propaganda to induce the workers to refuse to transport any kind of military equipment intended for fighting against the Soviet Republics, and should also by legal or illegal means carry on a propaganda amongst the troops sent against the workers’ republics, etc.” p. 30.
“The world proletariat is confronted with decisive battles. We are living in an epoch of civil war. The critical hour has struck. In almost all countries where there *200is a labor movement of any importance the working class, arms in hand, stands in the midst of fierce and decisive battles. Now more than ever is the working class in need of a strong organization. Without losing an hour of invaluable time, the working class must keep on indefatigably preparing for the impending decisive struggle.” p. 33.
“Until the time when the power of government will have been finally conquered by the proletariat, until the time when the proletarian rule will have been firmly established beyond the possibility of a bourgeois restoration, the Communist Party will have in its organized ranks only a minority of the workers. Up to the time when the power will have been seized by it, and during the transition period, the Communist Party may, under favorable conditions, exercise undisputed moral and political influence on all the proletarian and semi-proletarian classes of the population; but it will not be able to unite them within its ranks. Only when the dictatorship of the workers has deprived the bourgeoisie of such powerful weapons as the press, the school, parliament, the church, the government apparatus, etc.; only when the final overthrow of the capitalist order will have become an evident fact — only then will all or almost all the workers enter the ranks of the Communist Party.” pp. 33-34.
“The working class cannot achieve the victory over the bourgeoisie by means of the general strike alone, and by the policy of folded arms. The proletariat must resort to an armed uprising.” p. 36.
“As soon as Communism comes to light, it must begin to elucidate the character of the present epoch (the culminations of capitalism, imperialistic self-negation and self-destruction, uninterrupted growth of civil war, etc.). Political relationships and political groupings may be different in different countries, but the essence of the matter is everywhere the same: we must start with the direct preparation for a proletarian uprising, politically and technically, for the destruction of the bourgeoisie and for the creation of the new poletarian state.
“Parliament at present can in no way serve as the arena of a struggle for reform, for improving the lot of the work*201ing people, as it has at certain periods of the preceding epoch. The centre of gravity of political life at present has been completely and finally transferred beyond the limits of parliament. On the other hand, owing not only to its relationship to the working masses, but also to the complicated mutual relations within the various groups of the bourgeois itself, the bourgeoisie is forced to have some of its policies in one way or another passed through parliament, where the various cliques haggle for power, exhibit their strong sides and betray their weak ones, get themselves unmasked, etc., etc. Therefore it is the immediate historical task of the working class to tear this apparatus out of the hands of the ruling classes, to break and destroy it, and to create in its place a new proletarian apparatus. At the same time, however, the revolutionary general staff of the working class is vitally concerned in having its scouting parties in the parliamentary institutions of the bourgeoisie, in order to facilitate this task of destruction.” pp. 44-45.
“Parliamentarism cannot be a form of proletarian government during the transition period between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat. At the moment when the accentuated class struggle turns into civil war, the proletariat must inevitably form its State organization as a fighting organization, which cannot contain any of the representatives of the former ruling classes; all fictions of a ‘national will’ are harmful to the proletariat at that time, and a parliamentary division of authority is needless and injurious to it; the only form of proletarian dictatorship is a Republic of Soviets.
“The bourgeois parliaments, which constitute one of the most important apparatus of the State machinery of the bourgeoisie, cannot be won over by the proletariat any more than can the bourgeois order in general. The task of the proletariat consists in blowing up the whole machinery of the bourgeoisie, in destroying it, and all the parliamentary institutions with it, whether they be republican or constitutional-monarchical.” pp. 45-46.
“Consequently, Communism repudiates parliamentarism as the form of the future; it renounces the same as a form of the class dictatorship of the proletariat; it repudiates the possibility of winning over the parliaments; *202its aim is to destroy parliamentarism. Therefore it is only possible to speak of utilizing the bourgeois State organizations with the object of destroying them. The question can only and exclusively be discussed on such a plane.
“All class struggle is a political struggle, because it is finally a struggle for power. Any strike, when it spreads through the whole country, is a menace to the bourgeois State, and thus acquires a political character. To strive to overthrow the bourgeoisie, and to destroy its State, means to carry on political warfare. To create one’s own class apparatus — for the bridling and suppression of the resisting bourgeoisie, whatever such an apparatus may be — means to gain political power.” p. 46.
“The mass struggle means a whole system of developing demonstrations growing ever more acute in form, and logically leading to an uprising against the capitalist order of government. In this warfare of the masses developing into a civil war, the guiding party of the proletariat must, as a general rule, secure every and all lawful positions, making them its auxiliaries in the revolutionary work, and subordinating such positions to the plans of the general campaign, that of the mass struggle.” p. 47.
“On the other hand, an acknowledgement of the value of parliamentary work in no wise leads to an absolute, in-all-and-any-case acknowledgement of the necessity of concrete elections and a concrete participation in parliamentary sessions. The matter depends upon a series of specific conditions. Under certain circumstances it may become necessary to leave the parliament. The Bolsheviks did so when they left the pre-parliament in order to break it up, to weaken it, and to set up against it the Petrograd Soviet, which was then prepared to head the uprising; they acted in the same way in the Constituent Assembly on the day of its dissolution, converting the Third Congress of Soviets into the centre of political events. In other circumstances a boycotting of the elections may be necessary, and a direct, violent storming of .both, the great bourgeois State apparatus and the parliamentary bourgeois clique, or a participation in the elections with a boycott of the parliament itself, etc.
*203“In this way, while recognizing as a general rule the necessity of participating in the election to the central parliament, and the institutions of local self-government, as well as in the work in such institutions, the Communist Party must decide the question concretely, according to the specific conditions of the given moment. Boycotting the elections or the parliament, or leaving the parliament, is permissible, chiefly when there is a possibility of an immediate transition to an armed fight for power.” p. 49.
“A Communist delegate, by decision of the Central Committee, is bound to combine lawful work with unlawful work. In countries where the Communist delegate enjoys a certain inviolability, this must be utilized by way of rendering assistance to illegal organizations and for the propaganda of the party.” p. 51.
“Each Communist member [of the legislature] must remember that he is not a legislator’ who is bound to seek agreements with the other legislators, but an agitator of the Party, detailed into the enemy’s camp in order to carry out the orders of the Party there. The Communist member is answerable not to the wide mass of his constituents, but to his own Communist Party — whether lawful or unlawful.” p. 52.
“The propaganda of the right leaders of the Independents (Hilferding, Kautsky, and others), proving the compatibility of the Soviet 'system’ with the bourgeois Constituent Assembly, is either a complete misunderstanding of the laws of development of a proletarian revolution, or a conscious deceiving of the working class. The Soviets are the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Constituent Assembly is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. To unite and reconcile the dictatorship of the working class with that of the bourgeoisie is impossible.” p. 64.
“After the victory of the proletariat in the towns, this class [the landed peasants or farmers] will inevitably oppose it by all means, from sabotage to open armed counter-revolutionary resistance. The revolutionary proletariat must, therefore, immediately begin to prepare the necessary force for the disarmament of every single man of this class, and together with the overthrow of the capi*204talists in industry, the proletariat must deal a relentless, crushing blow to this class. To that end it must arm the rural proletariat and organize Soviets in the country, with no room for exploiters, and a preponderant place must be reserved to the proletarians and the semi-proletarians.” p. 80.
“The revolutionary proletariat must proceed to an immediate and unconditional confiscation of the estates of the landowners and big landlords ... No propaganda can be admitted in the ranks of the Communist parties in favor of an indemnity to be paid to the owners of large estates for their expropriation.” p. 82.
Excerpts from Exhibit 8 — The State and Revolution, by Lenin (see note 13, supra):
“We have already said above and shall show more fully at a later stage that the teaching of Marx and Engels regarding the inevitability of a violent revolution refers to the capitalist State. It cannot be replaced by the proletarian State (the dictatorship of the proletariat) through mere ‘withering away/ but, in accordance with the general rule, can only be brought about by a violent revolution. The hymn sung in its honor by Engels and fully corresponding to the repeated declarations of Marx (see the concluding passages of the Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto, with its proud and open declaration of the inevitability of a violent revolution; also Marx’s Criticism of the Gotha Program of 1875, in which, thirty years after, he mercilessly castigates its opportunist character) — this praise is by no means a mere ‘impulse/ a mere declamation, or a mere polemical sally. The necessity of systematically fostering among the masses this and only this point of view about violent revolution lies at the root of the whole of Marx’s and Engels’ teaching, and it is just the neglect of such propaganda and agitation both by the present predominant Social-Chauvinists and the Kautskian schools that brings their betrayal of it into prominent relief.
“The substitution of a proletarian for the capitalist State is impossible without violent revolution, while the abolition of the proletarian State, that is, of all States, is only possible through ‘withering away.’ ” pp. 15-16.
*205“The State is a particular form of organization of force; it is the organization of violence for the purpose of holding down some class. What is the class which the proletariat must hold down? It can only; be, naturally, the exploiting class, i. e., the bourgeoisie. The toilers need the State only to overcome the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can guide this suppression and bring it to fulfilment — the proletariat, the only class revolutionary to the finish, the only class which can unite all the toilers and the exploited in the struggle against the capitalist class for its complete displacement from power.” pp. 17-18.
“The doctrine of the class-war, as applied by Marx to the question of the State and of the Socialist revolution, leads inevitably to the recognition of the political supremacy of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, i. e., of an authority shared with none else and relying directly upon the armed force of the masses. The overthrow of the capitalist class is feasible only by the transformation of the proletariat into the ruling class, able to crush the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and to organize, for the new settlement of economic order, all the toiling and exploited masses.
“The proletariat needs the State, the centralized organization of force and violence, both for the purpose of guiding the great mass of the population — the peasantry, the lower middle-class, the semi-proletariat — in the work of economic Socialist reconstruction.” pp. 18-19.
“But, if the proletariat needs the State, as a particular form of organization of force against the capitalist class, the question almost spontaneously forces itself upon us: Is it thinkable that such an organization can be created without a preliminary breaking up and destruction of the machinery of government created for its own use by the capitalist class? The Communist Manifesto leads us straight to this conclusion, and it is of this conclusion that Marx wrote summing up the practical results of the revolutionary experience gained between 1849 and 1851.” p. 19.
“Hence Marx excluded England, where a revolution, even a people’s revolution, could be imagined and was then possible, without the preliminary condition of the *206destruction 'of the available ready machinery of the State.’
“Today, in 1917, in the epoch of the first great imperialist war, this distinction of Marx’s becomes unreal, and England and America, the greatest and last representatives of Anglo-Saxon 'liberty,’ in the sense of the absence of militarism and bureaucracy, have today completely rolled down into the dirty, bloody morass of military-bureaucratic institutions common to all Europe, subordinating all else to themselves. Today, both in England and in America, the 'preliminary condition of any real people’s revolution’ is the break-up, the shattering of the 'available ready machinery of the State’ (perfected in those countries between 1914 and 1917, up to the ‘European’ general imperialist standard).” p. 26.
“But from this capitalist democracy — inevitably narrow, stealthily thrusting aside the poor, and therefore to its core, hypocritical and treacherous^-progress does not march along a simple, smooth and direct path to 'greater and greater democracy,’ as the Liberal professors and the lower middle class Opportunists would have us believe. No, progressive development — that is, towards Communism — marches through the dictatorship of the proletariat; and cannot do otherwise, for there is no one else who can break the resistance of the exploiting capitalists, and no other way of doing it.
“And the dictatorship of the proletariat — that is, the organization of the advance-guard of the oppressed as the ruling class, for the purpose of crushing the oppressors — cannot produce merely an expansion of democracy. Together with an immense expansion of democracy — for the first time becoming democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich folk — the dictatorship of the proletariat will produce a series of restrictions of liberty in the case of the oppressors, exploiters, and capitalists. We must crush them in order to free humanity from wage-slavery; their resistance must be broken by force. It is clear that where there is suppression there must also be violence, and there cannot be liberty or democracy.
“Engels expressed this splendidly in his letter to Bebel when he said, as the reader will remember, that ‘the pro*207letariat needs the State, not in the interests of liberty, but for the purpose of crushing its opponents; and, when one will be able to speak of freedom, the State will have ceased to exist.’
“Democracy for the vast majority of the nation, and the suppression by force — that is, the exclusion from democracy — of the exploiters and oppressors of the nation: this is the modification of democracy which we shall see during the transition from Capitalism to Communism.” pp. 63-64.
“Again, during the transition from Capitalism to Communism, suppression is still necessary; but in this case it is the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of exploited. A special instrument, a special machine for suppression — that is, the ‘State’ — is necessary, but this is now a transitional State, no longer a State in the ordinary sense of the term. For the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of those who were but yesterday wage slaves, is a matter comparatively so easy, simple and natural that it will cost far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of the slaves, serfs or wage laborers, and will cost the human race far less.” pp. 64-65.
Mr. Justice Jackson:
I do not participate in this decision. This case was instituted in June of 1939 and tried in December of that year. In January 1940, I became Attorney General of the United States and succeeded to official responsibility for it. 309 U. S. iii. This I have considered a cause for disqualification, and I desire the reason to be a matter of record.

 By § 4 of the Act of June 29,1906, 34 Stat. 598, it is provided:
“Fourth. It shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the court admitting any alien to citizenship that immediately preceding the date of his application he has resided continuously within the United States five years at least, and within the State or Territory where such court is at the time held one year at least, and that during that time he has behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same. In addition to the oath of the applicant, the testimony of at least two witnesses, citizens of the United States, as to the facts of residence, moral character, and attachment to the principles of the Constitution shall be required, and the name, place of residence, and occupation of each witness shall be set forth in the record.”

 The district court’s decision was based on both fraud and illegality. The circuit court of appeals relied upon fraud alone, 112 F. 2d 74, but our affirmance was rested “on the sole ground” of illegality.

 During the whole period relevant to this litigation, the Communist Party was a world organization, known as the Third Communist International (or Comintern), created in 1919, of which the Communist Parties in each country were sections. The supreme governing body of the Third Communist International — which exercised control of the Party program, tactics and organization — was the World Congress of the Communist International. Between meetings of the Congress its authority was vested in the Executive Committee of the Communist International. The resolutions of the Congress, and between meetings those of the Executive Committee, were binding on all sections. In the United States the Workers Party of America, a Communist organization, was established in 1921. It was affiliated with the Communist International, and had sent delegates to the Third World Congress of the International earlier in that year. The Workers Party of America has been since continued, and successively known as the Workers (Communist) Party and as the Communist Party of the United States of. America. The Party sent accredited representatives to the Communist International and recognized the leadership of the International. It was affiliated with the Third International, of which it constituted a section. All the events with which this litigation is concerned occurred long prior to the dissolution of the Comintern in May 1943.

 The Young Workers League was affiliated with the Young Communist International and the Communist International. It sent delegates to the Congress of the Young Communist International. It was also closely related to the Workers Party, and sent delegates to the Party Conventions. At its Third National Convention, the Party adopted the following resolution:
“The task of reaching the youth with the message of Communism, of interesting them in our cause and organizing them for the militant struggle against the existing social order and its oppression and exploitation is of major importance for the whole Communist movement. In carrying on this work the Young Workers League is pre*184paring the fighters for Communism who will soon stand in the ranks of the Party as part of its best fighters.”
The Second Year of the Workers Party of America. Report of The Central Executive Committee to the Third National Convention. Held in- Chicago, Illinois, Dec. 30, 31, 1923 and Jan. 1, 2, 1924. Theses, Program, Resolutions. Published by the Literature Department, Workers Party of America, 1009 N. State St., Chicago, Ill. (p. 122.)

 Program and Constitution, Workers Party of America. Adopted at National Convention, New York City, December 24-25-26-27, 1921. Amended at National Convention, Chicago, Ill., December 30-*18531, 1923, and January 1,1924. Published by Literature Department, Workers Party of America, 1113 W. Washington Boulevard, Chicago, HI.

 See pp. 18, 28, of Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International. Adopted by the Second Congress of the Communist International, July 17 to August 7,1920. The edition of this document in evidence in the present case was published in March, 1923, under the auspices of the Workers Party of America, and contained the following statement on the inside front cover:
“The Workers Party declares its sympathy with the principles of the Communist International and enters the struggle against American capitalism, the most powerful of the capitalist groups, under the inspiration and leadership of the Communist International.
“It rallies to the call ‘Workers of the World Unite/ ”
Petitioner testified that he had no recollection of “this particular edition” but that “I have no doubt that possibly a pamphlet” like it was sold in Party bookstores. This document was marked for identification and the court later denied a motion to exclude it and other exhibits from the evidence. During the trial petitioner’s counsel twice referred to the document as having been put in evidence. Petitioner’s counsel included it, with all other exhibits in evidence or offered for identification, in his designation of the record to be made *189up in the circuit court of appeals. It was so included by order of the court. Despite the Government’s oversight in failing formally to say that the exhibit was being introduced in evidence, it obviously was deemed to be in evidence by both the parties and the trial court. The exhibit is unquestionably relevant and competent evidence, and it became a part of the record before the courts below.

 See p. 94 of The 4th National Convention of the Workers (Communist) Party of America. Held in Chicago, Ill., August 21-30,1925. Published by the Daily Worker Publishing Co., 1113 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, Ill. The publisher’s notice inside the back cover stated that this pamphlet was “absolutely indispensable to any member of the party.” The pamphlet, which was the official report of the convention, was sold and circulated by the Party in Los Angeles in 1925. Petitioner disclaimed familiarity with the literature of this convention, but testified that he had attended the convention. He also testified he was in agreement with the general program and principles of the Workers (Communist) Party.

 Ibid. p. 107. This was part of a resolution, adopted unanimously by the Party Convention, relating to “Party Policies for Trade Union Work.”

 Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International (see note 6, supra), p. 19.

 Ibid. p. 28.

 A B C of Communism, p. 69. This was written by N. Bueliarin & E. Preobraschensky, in 1919, translated into English in June, 1921, and published between 1920 and 1924 by the Lyceum-Literature Department, Workers Party of America, 799 Broadway, New York City. There was evidence that this pamphlet was a basic work of Party study classes in 1924 and 1925; that it was expressly designed for such purposes, was officially circulated by the Party, and was still advertised by the Workers Library Publishers in 1928. Petitioner testified that he had read the work and was familiar with it, although he said that the authors had later been expelled from the Russian Communist Party.

 The Theory and Practice of Leninism, by Stalin, pp. 33, 32, 30-31. Published for the Workers Party of America by the Daily Worker Publishing Co., Chicago, Ill. This pamphlet was used in Communist Party classes in 1924 and 1925, and was circulated by the Literature Department of the Communist Party and sold in Party bookshops. Five thousand copies were published between January 15 and August 1, 1925.

 P. 16, new edition, April, 1924. Published for the Workers Party of America by The Daily Worker Publishing Co., Chicago, III.

 Ibid., p. 44.

 Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International (see note 6, supra), p. 15.

 Ibid., p. 36.

 A B C of Communism (see note 12, supra), pp. 109-10.

 The Theory and Practice of Leninism, by Stalin (see note 12, supra), p. 32. To the same effect see The State and Revolution, by Lenin (note 13, supra), p. 26.

 A B C of Communism (see note 11, supra), pp. 65-66.

 Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International (see note 6, supra), p. 82.

 Ibid., p. 46.

 The Theory and Practice of Leninism, by Stalin (see note 12, supra), pp. 31-32.

 Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International (see note 6, supra), pp. 11,44.

 See note 18, supra.

 Statutes, Theses and Conditions of Admission to the Communist International (see note 6, supra), pp. 44, 45,46.