“If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!”: Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties in the United States
On the evening of March 31, 1948, fighting words rang out from the podium at New York's Hotel Astor. Some 900 guests had assembled to hear various speakers hold forth on what one called the “tyrannous and murderous regime” of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, the victor in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).1 All present knew that many thousands of Spaniards once allied with the Second Spanish Republic (the left-leaning government Franco had toppled) were still reduced to refugee status. Helping these refugees, who sought only basic material comforts, simply reflected the “true American spirit,” this speaker observed. Further, roiling debate in the United States over Spain and a host of other conflicts proved that civil liberties were fast deteriorating at home. Summing up his resistance to the status quo, the speaker ended by quoting what was then believed to be Patrick Henry's “second-most famous utterance”: “If that be treason, let them make the most of it!”2 The crowd at the Hotel Astor applauded enthusiastically.The individual at the podium was none other than Olin Downes, the senior music critic for the New York Times. This influential figure, often quoted but little studied, began his career as a music critic in 1906, writing for the Boston Post.3 In 1924, he went to the Times, where he remained the rest of his career. Committed to bringing classical music to a broad public, he supervised the concerts at the 1939–40 World's Fair in New York City and oversaw the quiz program on Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. Downes was also popular on the lecture circuit and wrote several books. His musical opinions ultimately placed him in the conservative camp, particularly his defense of the traditionally oriented Jean Sibelius.4 Yet Downes's politics were anything but conservative. Among the causes he championed was that of democracy in Spain. The Spanish Civil War and its aftermath in the United States were but one piece of a bigger problem, however. The fate of the refugees—tagged as “Reds” by the political right—was intertwined with the suppression of civil liberties in the United States thanks to the machinations of the powerful HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), itself abetted by political stagnation and public apathy.Various scholars have analyzed the experiences of Aaron Copland, Marc Blitzstein, Paul Robeson, and Leonard Bernstein in this environment.5 Downes, however, has been largely overlooked.6 This essay draws on previously untapped primary sources to weigh his activism vis-à-vis Spain alongside its subsequent repercussions and historical import. I detail Downes's support for Republican Spain during the Civil War and then explore his work on behalf of Spanish refugees through the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC), the first organization to be subpoenaed by the HUAC.7 I also survey his speech-making by interpreting his rhetorical strategies and the traditions they represent. By analyzing Downes in this light—along with the reactions of his superiors at the New York Times—I hope to enrich our understanding of musical life in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s while highlighting the impact of the Spanish Civil War in classical music circles, a topic few musicologists have explored.8 My analysis thus sheds light on McCarthyism, an era of unrelenting media-generated chicanery, anti-democratic impulses, and howling tribalism that parallels our own day.From mid-July 1936, when Franco's military rebellion began, Downes followed the news from Spain. Franco was attacking the legally elected Second Spanish Republic, established five years earlier.9 Despite claims to the contrary, the Republic was not communist. Nor did it ban religion, even if rhetoric from some of its leaders, coupled with anticlerical violence by vigilantes, clouded its intent merely to separate church and state. All the Western democracies except Mexico declared neutrality while the hastily assembled International Brigades (including the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the United States) defended Republican Spain, fighting alongside the Soviet Union.10 Italy and Germany aided Franco, a grim dress rehearsal for World War II. Seen as a beacon for human rights and democracy, the Republican cause beckoned artists and intellectuals worldwide.11 Pro-Republican sentiment was particularly fervent in New York's artistic circles, where dancers, musicians, actors, and writers organized fund drives, gave benefit performances, and created works of art inspired by the conflict.12Downes's initial involvement was modest. He had little prior connection to Spain, having once lectured at Madrid's Residencia de Estudiantes and written favorably of the music of Manuel de Falla.13 Nonetheless he became a sponsor of the Musicians Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, an affiliate of the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy (NACASD), formed in September 1936.14 (Another affiliate was the American Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy, founded by Dr. Edward Barsky, a communist Jew from Brooklyn and one of Downes's future associates.) The cellist Pablo Casals, vehemently anti-Franco, served as honorary chair of the Musicians’ Committee.15 Mainly, it undertook fundraising and released various statements to the media, including the declaration that the civil war was “one of the decisive conflicts of world history.”16 Musicians elsewhere in the United States followed the Committee's lead: as late as January 1939, when the Republic's defeat was all but certain, a headline in the New York Times proclaimed “160 Musicians Denounce Aid to Forces of Aggression” and petitioned the Roosevelt administration to end the embargo against Republican Spain. Among the signatories was Downes.17As the war ground to an end, some 500,000 refugees trudged across the Pyrenees to suffer in overcrowded camps.18 On April 1, 1939, when Franco declared victory, the United States, along with Great Britain and France, recognized his regime, in hopes of dissuading Franco from joining up with Germany. Despite the basis for this move, Downes and other supporters of the Republic condemned it, shocked at the idea of conferring legitimacy on a leader who had earlier cozied up to Hitler and Mussolini.19 In the ensuing years, Downes became involved with several organizations. One was the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign, on whose Executive Board he sat.20 Another was the Musicians’ Committee to Aid Spanish Refugees, which he sponsored along with many of the individuals shown in figure 1 and also included Robeson, Howard Hanson, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and the violinist and conductor Albert Stoessel.21 At the invitation of the colorful and outspoken Milton Wolff, a Civil War veteran from New York, Downes also became involved with the Action Committee to Free Spain.22 Its sponsors included Marian Anderson, Claudio Arrau, Alexander Brailowsky, Alexander Kipnis, Fritz Mahler, Nathan Milstein, Grigor Piatigorsky, Artur Schnabel, Copland, and Bernstein.23Although Downes agreed to serve on the organization's Artists and Scientists Committee, he warned Wolff of certain realities. “The most unfortunate thing about my job,” Downes explained, “is that as music reviewer I have constantly to attend evening performances and then write and work while other people sleep.”24 He once complained to another activist for Republican Spain, the author Dorothy Parker, with whom he evidently enjoyed some familiarity. “Why in hell do you always put your important meetings on Thursday evening?” Downes demanded, noting that Thursdays were “the one evening” on which he was never available because the Philharmonic Symphony, “virtually a must,” performed on that night.25 He also lent his name to Citizens to Safeguard the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, chaired by the journalist Vincent Sheean, and the (Provisional) American Committee for Spanish Freedom. The latter (its name appears as such on letterhead), sought to end diplomatic relations with the “Axis government of Spain.” Its secretary asked Downes to sign a statement that opened with the defiant words “World War Two began in Spain in 1936.”26 Given his predilection for strong language, Downes likely did so.Mainly, however, Downes concentrated on JAFRC, established in 1942 with tax-exempt status. Barsky, the communist doctor he so admired, was at the helm.27 When Roosevelt died in April 1945, JAFRC found hope in his successor, Harry S. Truman, who equated Franco with Hitler and Mussolini and withdrew the U.S. ambassador from Spain.28 Months later, JAFRC sponsored a rally in Madison Square Garden at which several Broadway stars protested the Franco dictatorship, among them Sono Osato of Bernstein's On the Town.29 Downes may well have been present, since he later acknowledged attending “some public rallies” of JAFRC.30 One speaker was the British political theorist and Labour Party chair Harold Laski, broadcast from London via the radio station WJZ. Because Laski criticized the Vatican's policy toward Franco, the Bergen County (New Jersey) prosecutor charged WJZ with broadcasting attacks on religion, a misdemeanor.31 This was all the provocation the HUAC needed to begin its multi-year investigation of JAFRC. On December 10, 1945, Barsky and Helen R. Bryan, JAFRC's Executive Secretary, were ordered to appear in Congress bearing all the organization's financial records and “communications by any means whatsoever with persons in foreign countries.”32 JAFRC's Executive Board voted to defy the subpoena, whereupon the HUAC voted to hold all in contempt.33Although not directly involved, Downes kept up on these events, often dashing off hasty missives of support to Barsky and Bryan. He also organized “Music Salute,” a benefit concert for Spanish refugees that took place in May 1947 at New York's Ziegfeld Theater. To attract a broad public, Downes solicited classical and popular artists.He also took care to avoid any hint of communism. When the folk singer John Jacob Niles expressed concern about political risk, Downes informed him that the project was strictly humanitarian, writing, “Not being a communist myself I could not possibly tell you if there will be communists present in the audience or on the stage on this occasion. The purpose of the meeting is entirely nonpolitical . . . But if you have any doubt as to the company in which you find yourself then you certainly ought not to participate. This is a question that every man must decide for himself.”34 Also seeking reassurance was the Hungarian-born opera singer Miklos Gafni, a concentration camp survivor.35 In a series of letters, Downes had explain to Gafni's booking agency, Fadiman Associates, that the funds from “Music Salute” would be distributed through the Unitarian Service Committee in Paris.36 He also told Edwin Fadiman (brother of the well-known author and media personality Clifton Fadiman) that the “absolutely non-political” event would seek only to aid those “starving outside Spain's borders.” To be sure, Downes allowed that he might “refer to the evil results of the tyranny of Francoism in Spain” in his introductory speech.37 Fadiman also managed the First Piano Quartet, a four-piano act—later featured alongside television hosts Ed Sullivan and Lawrence Welk—whom Downes invited to participate as well; the Quartet expressed similar concerns.Both Gafni and the Quartet were persuaded, the latter appearing onstage with their four Steinways in tow. Also featured on the “novelty program” were two dance numbers, one by the team Mata and Hari (Meta Krahn and Otto Ulbricht), who combined acrobatics with Isadora Duncan's techniques. Other performers included the composer Marc Blitzstein, the pianist Gaby Cassedesus, and the violinist Albert Spalding. Among the singers were Gafni, Kipnis, and two African Americans: Muriel Smith, of Carmen Jones fame, and Carol Brice, who had recently recorded Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo with Fritz Reiner and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. A light-hearted skit performed by the cast members of Call Me Mister (music and lyrics by Harold J. Rome) capped the evening's entertainment.38 Downes introduced each act and, in a brief speech, a copy of which he sent Casals, explained the dire circumstances in Spain.39 Meanwhile, JAFRC's list of sponsors was growing, now including more musicians: Grigor Piatigorsky, Yehudi Menuhin, and Hazel Scott.40Besides “Music Salute,” Downes helped organize fundraising dinners and, as noted above, was sometimes a featured speaker. These events did not always go according to plan. In March 1946, he coordinated a dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which he would co-chair with the actor and director Margaret Webster.41 Over 900 people responded to the invitation, on which words from Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union speech of February 27, 1860, figured prominently: “let us have faith that right makes might.” Among the guests were Serge Koussevitzky and the choreographer Agnes de Mille.42 The conductor Walter Damrosch would sit beside Downes and Webster on the dais, both of whom were scheduled to speak.43By any standard, Downes's organizing proved successful: the event brought in $60,000 (approximately $735,000 today).44 Yet for reasons of time, he was unable to deliver his prepared comments. He confided his displeasure to Bryan. Praising her “tremendous work” and “fighting like a tiger” on behalf of JAFRC, he allowed that alongside her Herculean efforts his exclusion from the podium was but a petty concern.45 Nonetheless, Downes lamented the time spent working on his speech, adding that as “a considerably overworked man” he had sacrificed many hours to “formulate something decent to say for the Spanish dinner.” As he put it, “I regretted having no chance to stand up and be counted myself in the proceedings of the evening and say what I have long wished to say—or part of it—on phases of the subject that did not overlap what other speakers of the evening treated so ably . . . I wanted to speak for the plain American . . . ”46In fact, this was to be Downes's political persona. Despite his status in the “highbrow” world of classical music, as an activist he sought to represent the worker, the housewife, the teacher—any ordinary citizen entitled to justice via the legal channels of U.S. democracy. In so presenting himself, Downes drew on a well-tested strategy. Not only was it central to the rhetoric of the Popular Front in the 1930s but the figure of the “plain American” or “average citizen” surfaced later, in more mainstream political circles.47 In May 1942, Roosevelt's vice president Henry Wallace extolled a people's movement that, in the postwar period, would construct an “economic peace that is just, charitable, and enduring.”48 He set forth these aspirations in the widely circulated speech “The Century of the Common Man,” from which Copland derived the title of his celebrated fanfare. With that potent phrase, moreover, Wallace challenged the media magnate Henry R. Luce, whose jingoistic paean to “the American century” had appeared in Life magazine a few for the of Also was who that if such an were earlier for world like both believed in the man and for Wallace when the latter for president as the of the Party in In Downes on behalf in where he informed that “one of the reasons the people must Henry Wallace to put an end to this so in our a to the In Downes to about the as was so the in for noted is a strong because itself has the of that no a than with the as In May 1948, Downes took up these at on to Wallace than of the in what has been as a noted above, Downes also called forth from U.S. In Patrick Henry at he was he the that the for justice in the United States was no from any prior of Further, as Wallace and the Party had such was A the American Party of the United States had a similar when its leader for president in the is of the not a communist himself, Downes the of and civil both in U.S. democracy and the so in our public proved more for as JAFRC was On March 31, a an against for her to over JAFRC Parker, Barsky, and the Executive that JAFRC's could well end up at the and the were asked Downes if he would Downes's was “I with you not only one but one In the was in the one of the all Board members of with most Board members to except Barsky, who and was Downes to Barsky, “I doubt if five years would have believed that such a of justice could have place our American and of He also to during the the however, To that end, JAFRC more fundraising Downes would no be In his of March (the speech quoted at the of this he the and of the as her to from her also a Musicians Robeson, Kipnis, Anderson, and were on the as were the and journalist and the and Helen to her was at when at presenting at the Downes on his the public of “the of was when some of the strategies Downes as to “the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee been out in the two years for such attacks by he that the in Spain, such as and of were the liberties the HUAC sought most to in the United The speech Barsky called Downes a and and a told him that his speech was to those of . . . and of his powerful rhetoric and various invited Downes to Among them was the of JAFRC in which he on May the Executive Secretary, asked him to on and the Downes, however, was more to present as a “plain citizen” than as a for the In his to he to his speech on behalf of “I if and the is the subject for he it is so in your on the ground of my in the artistic But as I told the . . . I was not present as a music or as a political or as a or of and but . . . as one plain citizen to other plain about our and our . . . in most in our his Downes a in where he the stage with who performed the title in the a at the Republican and HUAC of On 1948, Downes a similar public in Great joining up with and the both later By the had to hear JAFRC's only up Downes, who scheduled another speech in this time in As he told Bryan, he would speak on “the of justice . . . brought about through the efforts of that . . . The a her to events, including a dinner for the Boston of to place on The composer was among the and would Downes be to He her in the now her as and adding the I this to your to the folk a it by it to at at the musical Downes that her was still in the Downes on civil But he was about his with the Times. that he was in the program as critic of the New York he told Executive for the Boston politics my own and entirely separate from my with the adding “I on this Downes had to be more than the media had on his The Times a on a dinner sponsored by the Citizens Committee of the and at which Downes was of and at which several speakers (including the . . . in the of In Downes the in a about four members of the about to serve for of whereupon Downes a statement of He appeared on the in connection with the Committee for the First of the formed a on communists in his name also figured in an for the on and Civil on Also the news was a rally for Henry at which “the was by Olin Downes, music critic for the New York to Downes's more for his music the Times in By the composer had been on of communist On February the Times an defense by several by the composer not a critic for the Times. that 1948, the world may the United States, and the Soviet with since their artists to a certain no one say what that Downes, no for Soviet took up similar in his own by which appeared the He the that would have for as a composer if politics and had him Downes was about his own this time in human when including our do to democracy while that they do not in democracy at but only in politics and no at of in the . . . it to that this art and as the on Downes was for the of the Times, who Downes to his Downes, is the one to I have to you to yourself to that piece Downes would have had to “If had been for would you have to it in this of the To be sure, Downes as a him music But he Downes's own words at say that he have for as a composer if politics and had him that a and then it to for the of the music and your that had to speech, financial and the of the Downes to a however, a Olin February that opened with the Downes my Some with ultimately Downes the music critic of the Times and not the of the political I like it that you to to music in what you write for the New York Times and I would a to that Downes and no took a Downes managed to a even while over a fundraising dinner for the Spanish refugees, this time at the Astor on March He invited several to including Carol Brice, whom he could from El amor the “Music Salute” of two years however, Downes but a of Downes was also scheduled to participate in a to Barsky but had to out at the His were in by the one of the to in March when Downes over the and for World at the Waldorf Astoria He both served on the program and the which he introduced with a The featured Copland, the and Jacob the and the Helen Soviet the among them Downes On March the first of the the New York on claims that various intellectuals had been to their to the all part of of As the “the of what these and music could do . . . is by at a and Yet no individual is quoted and only Downes, who not be for is He no time in writing to Helen the president of the of these Downes that not one or was in the thus whatsoever of the quoted Downes also out that the for the to to the however, of Olin A wrote that Downes was with the . . . to Downes the is not in this to the but as a political for the Soviet that Downes had no working at the Times, to supporters in “a to a to Downes, out that since their of February 1948, Downes had up to their that he to
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