Dorchester's Woodrow Wilson High School was full of surprises last Wednesday night. A capacity crowd of five hundred people jammed the school auditorium to hear a lecture sponsored by the St. Gregory's Church Holy Name Society. This lecture received almost no advance publicity, but the speaker was to be ex-Communist, ex-managing editor of the Daily Worker, ex-McCarran Committee witness, Louis F. Budenz.

First surprise of the evening was the presence of Mayor John B. Hynes, his first appearance since the Boston election. Attorney General Francis Kelly followed Hynes onto the stage and was cheered as what the master of ceremonies called "a militant worker." Then came Budenz himself, a balding little man in a neat blue suit. Mayor Hynes, as he stepped up to the mike to say hello, suddenly whipped out an envelope and presented Budenz with the keys to the city--"in the name of the citizens of Boston." The entire audience stood up to cheer and Louis Budenz started his speech.

Budenz was scheduled to speak on Communism, but he led with a strange introduction by dedicating the speech to the Ark of the Covenant and the Virgin Mary. He hoped that his speech would increase the audience's fervency in worshipping the Virgin. These words were spoken in hushed tones, but then Louis Budenz opened up.

"Stalin's greatest victories have been won in the United States" he cried while waving his forefinger like a baton. "Poland was lost in Washington, D.C. by Alger Hiss. China was lost in our nation's capitol." These charges are familiar, but Budenz supported them in a unique way. He grabbed a thin red volume from somewhere and read off a eulogy to Stalin by the Chinese Delegation to the Seventh International. "Strange words aren't they," said Budenz, "coming from Asia-for-the-Asiatics like Owen J. Lattimore!"

Charge followed charge with machine-gun rapidity, but Budenz often paused to regret that he was "unable to give the facts" on specific "subversives." He claimed that twelve American millionaires were Party members, but he added that he couldn't give their names because it would be libelous.

It was impossible not to laugh at this. When we inadvertently laughed at this remark, a well-dressed neighbor shot a hostile glance at my notes and threatened to kick me "in the teeth." This stalwart shuffled his feet like a prize fighter and kept ramming his elbow into my companion for the rest of the meeting.

Budenz roared on for seventy-five minutes, mentioning scores of Protestants and Jews, inferring that these people were Communist conspirators. This technique of allegation instead of accusation reached a peak when Budenz lambasted Harvard. Apparently Harvard Professors Harlow Shapley and Kirtley Mather had been mentioned in some obscure Communist journal. Budenz claimed that this could not have been done without the "silent consent" of these men.

"Communists are proud of Harvard Professor John K. Fairbank," he cried, and in the next breath, "Concealed Communists are the greatest menace that the United States has ever faced!" The connection was crystal clear, but this indirect method makes it impossible for accused men to sue for libel.

Members of the large audience nodded approvingly during Budenz's speech; the only sound was a burst of applause when Budenz said "we must not continue to permit the British to recognize Red China." The speaker then lauded his own book ("Men Without Faces") as the "best single work on the Communist conspiracy;" later he mentioned that Pope Pius XI's encyclical on the subject was accurate "although it should have been annotated with my documents." In closing he called for a great crusade of prayer. Then, as the audience stood up to cheer, Louis Budenz sat down to admire his keys to the city of Boston.