PicoZ

TIME

February 2, 1942 12:00 AM GMT-5

Mrs. Roosevelt had ambitious plans for her bouncing friend Joseph P. Lash. She thought that Joe, a gradually aging youth leader, should get a commission and make his wartime career in the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Joe, no doubt, had plenty of intelligence. His latest job was General Secretary of the International Student Service, which is also under Mrs. Roosevelt’s widespreading wings. But the Navy did not cotton to Joe. It looked into his past, found that in 1937, as leader of a Communist-cuddled youth movement which staged a students’ anti-war demonstration, Joe had written passionately: “The strike against war is a dress rehearsal of what we intend to do in a war crisis.”

Although he has since turned right and always did deny that he was a Communist Party member, ex-pinko Mr. Lash did not look like quite the fellow the Navy wanted in its very hush-hush intelligence office. It turned him down.

Mrs. Roosevelt pleaded with the Dies Committee, which had had Joe on the mat once before, to re-examine his history, see whether he could not be given a clean bill of health. On reexamination, the Dies Committee flunked him again. Then the Army stepped in. A Manhattan draft board obligingly reclassified Joe, who had been 1-H (over 28, with no dependents), gave him a top rating of 1-A. In a few weeks Joe is to start his wartime career as a private in the Army.

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