different ideals. At a time like this we ought to be exceedingly careful that we do not do the very things and lose the very securities and sacrifice the very liberties and make possible the very crimes which we are seeking to punish or to overthrow in those governments to which we object, and then the possibility of holding, as you can hold them under this bill on the interpretation of Mr. Holtzoff himself, you can hold people for life if necessary.

Mr. CRAVENS. If their own country won't take them back.

Reverend KNOX. Yes; if their own countries won't take them back. Mr. CRAVENS. We ought to let them run at large here when their country won't have anything to do with them?

Reverend KNOX. You know the answer to that.

Mr. CRAVENS. No; I do not know the answer, and I would like to know it.

Reverend KNOX. All right. Many men do not have countries today. There are many men whose countries have been wiped out, or at least temporarily wiped out. Perhaps they will be restored again, but at the present time there are certainly in this number undoubtedly a large number who have no country to which they might return. Their countries have changed their systems of government.

Mr. CRAVENS. That is taken care of in this bill. If those men under those circumstances behave themselves in this country, they are not incarcerated.

Reverend KNOx. What do you mean by behave?

Mr. CRAVENS. As long as he does not commit murder or robbery or any of those things, he is not molested.

Reverend KNOX. No; I am not defending at all the man who commits murder or the man that commits robbery or the man who commits rape or the man who does those things for which men normally are imprisoned. I am not here to defend an alien or a citizen who has violated the laws of his nation, but the thing that we are specifically saying is that these men are not criminals in the ordinary sense of the term. We are setting up a standard of criminality. We are setting up an idea of what a criminal is that is undemocratic, and we say that it is not liberal, that it is not true to the democratic traditions. That is the thing we are fighting against, that it is not criminal in the sense of the word to which you now refer, not a man who behaves himself in the sense that he does not go out and rob and kill someone. We do not want people at large who are committing murder, arson, rape, or robbery.

Mr. CRAVENS. You approve, then, of the deportation of aliens who have committed murder or robbery?

Reverend KNOX. They are certainly in a different class. I see no reason why we should care if they suffer.

Mr. CRAVENS. We should deport them.

The CHAIRMAN. May I ask a question, Mr. Weaver?

Mr. WEAVER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me see if I get this straight: Your position is, as I understand it, that whatever person in this group commits a definite offense against the laws of this country should be punished. after conviction as the law provides he should be punished?

Reverend KNOX. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. And that as to these persons who are aliens you do not believe that they ought to be sent to a concentration camp when

a judgment of deporation or whatever proceeding is issued against them if they cannot be returned to the countries from which they came? Do I state your position correctly, Mr. Knox?

Reverend KNOX. What was it? Will you say that last sentence again?

The CHAIRMAN. I am trying to get your view. I know your opinion with reference to the first proposition. Now, my second question is this: You feel that aliens who have been ordered to be deported, but who cannot be sent back to the country from whence they came, because the country will not receive them, or for some other reason, and who have not been convicted of any definite offense by an ordinary proceeding in court, should not be sent to a concentration camp?

Reverend KNOX. That is quite true; I do not believe they should be sent to a concentration camp.

The CHAIRMAN. I am not familiar with the details of this bill like a great many of the other members of the committee are. Here is the argument that I hear made, or the statements that I hear made, that for reasons which are deemed good by the responsible agents of the Government to justify deportation, an order of deportation is issued, but that the person cannot be deported, that this concentration camp is a sort of a temporary deportation, sort of temporarily getting him away from the body of the country and the body of the citizenship until such time as his removal from the country can be made possible. What is there to that? Here is the Government now, according to its policy, functioning through its particular agency that handles those matters, that says that a given person is no longer entitled to receive the hospitality of this country or residence in this country, but they cannot get him back to the country where he came from, and it has to decide between making judgment of deportation a nullity for the time being or doing the next best thing and provide a place where he can be removed from the body of the country. What objection is there to that?

Reverend KNOX. To place him in a concentration camp?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Reverend KNOX. It is depriving him of his liberty for no crime. I think it is absolutely against the ideals for which the country stands. The CHAIRMAN. I am trying to get your attention to the situation of the Government that has ordered a man to be deported and they cannot get him back to the country to which the judgment of deportation is sending him, and then whether or not there would be any justification, as is argued here, of doing the next best thing to getting him out of the country which is to remove him from his opportunity to go about as a guest of the country, into this concentration camp, when the Government is confronted with making a choice of whether they shall make a nullity of their judgment of deportation or of deporting him as nearly as they can into a place which is provided for the purpose.

Reverend KNOX. And in that place to be held an indeterminate length of time. The bill provides that he may be held for a year and then for 3 months longer, and in some particular cases the bill provides, so far as I can see, that a man may be held there for a lifetime. Therefore, you are imprisoning him.

The CHAIRMAN. This is meant to separate them from the body of the country. There is a definite purpose to separate them, and that

is why they ought to be deported, to be separated from the body of the citizenship. It is their aim to separate them.

Reverend KNOX. I object to separating them on certain specifie grounds and not real facts. I notice the whole bill is separation of people from a group because of certain beliefs which they hold. That in itself is not a true bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Would not that go primarily to the justification for the judgment of deportation as distinguished from the governmental arrangement to effectuate, as far as it can, the judgment of deportation which it has rendered? I am trying to get your views about it.

Reverend KNOX. I think that the establishment of a concentration camp in itself fixes the idea of a rather large and wholesale so-called separation of groups or of people from the social groups whose ideas are different than the ideas of those, for instance, who believe that we have to aid Great Britain and the ideas of those who believe that we ought not to go in there.

The CHAIRMAN. You are getting at the reasons; you are now discussing the justification. My question is not controversial, but what I am trying to get at is your opinion as to the power of the Government that has declared a public policy to effectuate it in any sort of way at all. Now, they cannot send him back. That is clear.

Reverend KNOX. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. They cannot send him back to the country from which he came.

Reverend KNOX. No.

The CHAIRMAN. The public policy of the Government is to separate him from his citizenship, and to cease to be his host, as far as going around the country is concerned. That is public policy. Now, the next question is: Would you entirely strike down the exercise of that public policy, or would you guard it in any way that it is now being proposed to be guarded in this bill? Do I make myself clear?

Reverend KNOx. I am not sure that the distinction is possible in that particular, but there may be a distinction. However, I am not sure that it is, but from the viewpoint of the purely analytical and the abstract, we might conceive it to be possible.

The CHAIRMAN. No; I am talking about it from the practical opertion of the Government, the governmental machinery and the effectuation of the governmental policy. That is what I am discussing.

Reverend KNOX. I live in the kind of world where I see a great deal of injustice; I live in the kind of a world where I see a greal of struggle. I live in a city of diverse opinions.

The CHAIRMAN. Your particular response on that does not help much in the consideration of this bill. We all live in the same world. Reverend KNOX. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. What I am trying to get at is what the governmental agencies are to do with regard to the concrete situation that confronts them. I told you awhile ago that these other gentlemen know much more about this than I do. Here is a concrete situation. Here are these orders of deportation which have been made under governmental authority. Now, then, they come down here and report to this committee that they cannot get the people back to the countries from which they came because they won't take them. Then we refer the matter

to the Attorney General down here and he says he needs some more law to deal with the situation.

Reverend KNOX. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, then, the question, it seems to me, further that we have to consider, or the further question is: Is there any way in which to effectuate this governmental policy, or is the governmental policy wrong? If it is, we ought to get rid of all notion of deporting anybody if it is wrong.

Reverend KNOX. I would not say the Government of the United States should not deport anybody. I would say, however, that every government that has centered its power in a few hands has found increasing necessity to pass laws to make possible the centering of more power in them and to overcome the mistakes which the government has made in the application of democracy through the years.

The CHAIRMAN. You will not get any argument out of me about that.

Reverend KNOx. I think that is what is happening here. The Government has found itself in a critical situation. They have some people that need to be deported for crimes. That is no problem, as we have jails and penitentiaries, and we have the supervision it takes to deal with and take care of criminals in the United States. Perhaps if we dealt with them more intelligently, we would have less, but that is purely aside from the question.

Now, we seem to have found a group of people who ought not to be put in jail. We at least do not feel that they are justified in being incarcerated in the ordinary jail as an ordinary criminal is incarcerated, whether our conscience bothers us or not, I do not know what it is.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not want to lead you too far away from this bill.

Reverend KNOX. No; and I am on the bill, Mr. Chairman. We have a group or class which we do not know what to do with. This class has committed no crimes, apparently, that are sufficient to send them to jail over an extended period of time. The Government has created a problem by a policy which, perhaps, is not an intelligent policy. The thing that this committee ought to do is to limit

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). I think I will turn you back to these other gentlemen. You are making too long a speech.

Reverend KNOx. I think you get the point that I am driving at.
The CHAIRMAN. Oh, yes; I got it before you started.
Reverend KNOX. All right.

The CHAIRMAN. I was just interposing to get some information.
Mr. WEAVER. I think you have, Mr. Chairman.

Reverend KNOx. I think it is quite clear that we not only have a group of people that we not know what to do with. but we are proposing under this bill to create a much larger group of people that we are agreeing there that we cannot handle and save face at the present time. Therefore we are seeking to increase the powers of the Government, not to handle them criminally, as we would handle a man who destroys property, but the thing that we are trying to create through this bill is the power to suppress, to take away a man's liberties, because his political, economic, or social theories are in contravention of or in contrast to the particular philosophy, economic, or social theories, which the major political parties hold. That is the thing that I see in the particular bill. I say also that on the economic side the bill is designed

primarily at labor, and certainly if nine-tenths of the Congressmen are interested in one case, I think Mr. Hobbs is probably mistaken about it-I would hate to think that nine-tenths of the Congressmen were spending their time considering bills that had to do with one man in one particular case. It seems to me that they could find something— I may be critical of Congress-that they could find something better to do with their time than to have nine-tenths of them interested in one particular problem of a labor leader who is standing, as he feels, and a large number of people feel, for the best interests of those who are working with him. There is the problem that you are trying to solve. You are not trying to solve the problem of criminals; you are trying to solve the problem of an economic condition.

The CHAIRMAN. With regard to these Congressmen wasting their time, you know we do not have so much to do; we have so many smart people to tell us what to do.

Reverend KNOx. That is correct. After all, it is your job to listen to the people. That is what you are here for. We may not be

smart

Mr. GUYER (interposing). Mr. Sumners asked you what to do with these people we are talking about. What do you want done with them? Reverend KNOx. They have committed no crimes that would, under ordinary law, subject them to imprisonment; free them, by all means. Mr. GUYER. Turn them loose?

Reverend KNOX. Yes; turn them loose; certainly.

Mr. GUYER. They are not convicted of any crime; it is just merely a decree of deportation.

Reverend KNOx. The Government ought to be intelligent enough to solve these problems.

Mr. GUYER. We have your advice about it.

Reverend KNOX. I think the problem involved is something much greater than a difference of opinion between personalities. I want to make it quite clear that the problem involved is one of procedure in the punishment of people for political and economic and social theories rather than a question of personalities involved in the case. It is dangerous to get into the position where either a witness tries to discredit the intelligence of the Congress or Congress tries to discredit the intelligence of a witness. There is a real problem involved to which we ought to put our common minds, and in which we could see a solution where a man may not be imprisoned for political ideas. Certainly, the solution is not to keep a man in prison for life; not to keep men in prison for life because their country has been wiped out or because of things over which they have no control.

Mr. CRAVENS. You overlooked the fact that they have done something which has resulted in a quasi-judicial determination that they are no longer rightfully in this country. In other words, at the basis of this whole thing there has been a basic determination that they should be deported.

Reverend KNOX. Even the Attorney General, however, gives recog nition to the fact that a great many of these people ought not to suffer because of the inability of the Government to deport them.

Mr. CRAVENS. That is taken care of in the bill; but the basis of the whole thing is that each one of these particular aliens affected by this bill has done something that has resulted in the determination that they ought to be sent out of this country.