ABSTRACT
Troubled by racial warfare, burning cities, crime and domestic contention over the most unpopular war in the nation’s history, Americans were tempted to recall the Fifties as a “placid” era, a period of great tranquillity presided over by a Dwight D. Eisenhower who, above everything else, ended a war and kept the peace. The Communist party in America was at a low point in its fortunes, with its total membership at about thirty thousand, little more than one-third of its top strength of pre-Nazi-Soviet pact days in 1939. Vincent had served as the American Counselor of Embassy at Chungking from 1941 until 1943 and had then become director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs. Truman’s appointment of a commission to deal with employee loyalty was the fulfillment of recommendations of the House Civil Service Committee that had been established during the final days of Roosevelt’s Presidency, in January of 1945.
