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But with this Committee, which the President appointed, there came before the Committee a lot of information that there were in the Federal Government a number of people, a considerable number of people, who were less than loyal to the Government of the United States.

Now, the degree of disloyalty was never completely stated or clearly known, and I remember that Mr. Mitchell was greatly disturbed over the idea that just being a Communist or having been a member of the Communist party was sufficient to make out a case that the person was not suitable for Federal employment. “He might have given up Communism,” said Mr. Mitchell very intelligently. He was very distressed about this business of a political opinion, because he still was holding that the Communist movement was a political movement, that it was a political idea, and that adherence to a political idea ought not, in the United States of America, to have anything to do with a man's earnings his living.

I remember I had to point out to him on one occasion that that certainly didn't have anything to do with a man's earnings his living, but that in the words of Mr. Justice Holmes, he had a constitutional right to believe anything he wanted to believe but he had no constitutional right to be a policeman in the city of Boston, or an employee of the