'AFTERTHOUGHT
Shadow of a Doubt
By ALAN BRIEN
Few injustices are ever pure and simple, a noble saintly hero trapped in a web spun by evil and corrupt villains. If they were, even in this im- perfect world, it would be easier to right wrongs by open investigations publicly convened. The trouble is that the victim sometimes turns out to be badly cast for the role-he may be feeble- minded, or an incorrigible old lag, or a Fascist Of a Communist, or some kind of pervert, or a mono- maniac, or a perjurer, or just personally unattrac- tive and tedious. Even if he were none of these to begin with, when the lightning bolt struck, in the long years of endlessly rehearsing the facts of his case to apathetic audiences he tends to develop an Ancient Mariner complex and we begin to shrink, guiltily, from the sight of his glittering eye and his button-holing forefinger. We ration- alise our fear of boredom by convincing ourselves that such things just do not happen.
For years I used to glimpse from my taxi window, as the cab sped round the Aldwych, a tireless old soul carrying a sandwich board which proclaimed his name to be 'Jas. Tynan' and his grievance the theft of a million pounds by a forged birth certificate in Somerset House. Each time I was always in too much of a hurry to stop but I promised myself some day I would take him for a drink and hear his side of the story. I never did and now he seems to have vanished.
Another drawback to rallying behind the man who has been victimised by his fellows is the like- lihood that he, and you, may turn out to be puppets manipulated by secret interests and parti- san plotters. He often tends to become a straw- filled guy, carried into action by those who would rather see him spectacularly martyred than quietly rehabilitated. The most unlucky sufferer is the one who falls foul of his enemies only in some rela- tively minor skirmish-who loses his job but not his freedom or his life, who represents some small breach of equity but not some large betrayal of justice.
It is difficult not to feel that his resentment has grown out of all proportion to his injury and that he is punishing himself far more effectively than he is revenging himself. Because the injustice to him seems like a pin prick beside the great wounds of war and famine and hydrogen bombs and con- centration camps, it is not necessarily less compli- cated. The born crusaders amongst us-fortun- ately a still healthy breed-have no shortage of causes to choose among. But the sheer time- consuming, energy-draining effort of mastering all the ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in all evidence leads them to prefer to hoist their stan- dard over an Oswald, a Hiss, a Dreyfus or an Oscar Slater rather than dissipate their idealism and passion over a naval officer court-martialled for misbehaviour or a college professor dismissed for political agitation.
I shall never forget the groans we used to utter in the boardroom of the SPECTATOR, at the weekly editorial conference, when it became clear that Bernard Levin was about to insist on writing yet another long, factual, repetitive article about the Three Bahreini Prisoners of St Helena. It was not that we doubted that they were illegally imprisoned with the connivance of the British Government-no one could have remained in the 'same office with Levin, and lived, who did not know the case by heart. It was a question of whether the readers would remain with us as the indictment was mounted across the pages again and again and again. But a couple more `agains' did it-the readers hung on, the staff gritted their teeth, the enemy caved in and the prisoners were freed. It was a famous victory which deserves an honourable footnote in the history of journalism.
Personally, I am made of spongier stuff. I prefer large issues where I can take a stand on the feelings in my guts and to hell with the small print. But I feel that it is worth bringing to the notice of the readers an apparent injustice which, lacking sen- sational or dramatic trimmings, has dragged on for more than thirty years. I cannot pretend that my championship of the petition to President Johnson for a public bearing of the allegations against Dr Arthur J. Kraus, Professor of Philosqphy at the City College of New York, which led to his professional ruin in 1932, is likely to tip the balance. I have never seen an open letter With such a variety and eminence of international sig- natories-including one queen. In Britain, the appeal carries the backing of Lord Chorley, Bertrand Russell and Sir. Julian Huxley, and the actual petition to President Johnson is signed, among others, by 48 university heads, 12 Nobel prize-winners, 13 high ecclesiastics, and the Dowager Queen Elizabeth of Belgium.
Briefly the story (naturally disputed to some extent by his opponents) is this : In his early thirties, Dr Kraus had the noble misfortune to be one of the first of the premature anti-Fascists. In the year before Hitler came to power, he planned a demonstration march with students in New York protesting against the rise of totalitarianism in Germany and Poland and the isolationist policy of the US government. The college presi- dent originally supported the plan but later backed down under political opposition. Dr Kraus began a hunger strike, which received world-wide publicity, and 2,000 students carried out the demonstration.
He was asked to resign and, when he refused, was instructed to appear for a medical examina- tion. This took place in a locked room and, in the course of it, Dr Kraus was physically assaulted and collapsed. He was then reported as being of 'mentally unsound make-up.' For seven years, until 1939, the Board of Higher Education resisted demands for a hearing of the case. It was then held in private and in 1940 issued its verdict which claimed to clear the college authorities. Dr Kraus was ruined academically and prevented from carrying on his work. Since then he has cam- paigned all over the world to bring to public attention the full facts-of his case. In the words of the open letter-`After these years, during which he has endured hardships, penury and humiliation, nursing his health with his hope, by incredible exertions, sustained by idealism and faith, he comes now at the age 67 to the point when all is lost and his talents and sacrifice, wasted' unless the President will order an inquir.
Because Dr Kraus, and many religious and legal and academic figures, feel that he has been horribly wronged does not mean that he has been. or not in the way he thinks. I have been able to se,: only part of the evidence at several removes from first hand. But an official public inquiry seems a small price to pay for removing a nasty and poisonous doubt about a squabble of long ago. A man of more than ordinary gifts has wasted his entire life. Surely President Johnson's investiga- tors can waste a few more weeks or months.
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