Mr. Tavenner. So the matter of making nominations through a committee was a mere matter of form.
(At this point Representative Morgan M. Moulder returned to the hearing room.)
Mr. Dennett. The district organizers still carefully looked it over and still had a controlling influence there. But in this particular case Mr. Rappaport exercised his influence not in any arbitrary way but in a convincing way, because we all recognized that his broader experience and his tremendous capacity for work equipped him to give us the benefit of better wisdom than we had.
Mr. Tavenner. Going back to the Washington Commonwealth Federation, you were asked a question as to what the membership of the Communist Party was in the district. Do you know what the membership of the Communist Party was in the State of Washington at that time?
Mr. Dennett. Well, most of that membership was in the State of Washington. And I don’t know the exact number, but I think it would be quite safe to say that around 85 to 90 percent of it was in the State of Washington.
Mr. Tavenner. How long did the Communist Party succeed in bringing its influence to bear on political elections through this organization known as the Washington Commonwealth Federation?
Mr. Dennett. Until the international situation became unstable in about the year 1938.
Mr. Tavenner. How did the international situation affect political matters locally here in the State of Washington as far as the Communist Party was concerned?
Mr. Dennett. The Communist Party had as one of its principal objectives and one of its chief propaganda weapons, which it used upon other persons of political mindedness, that the Communist program was a consistent program on a domestic policy and on foreign policy, that our program was liberal domestically and liberal internationally. However, in 1938, after a long period of struggle and effort, the Communist Party succeeded in prevailing upon many people to accept the slogan of collective security as the proper policy to pursue in foreign affairs. That, of course, was quite consistent with the policy of the Soviet Union because it was the Soviet delegates to the League of Nations who had continually agitated for a policy of collective security.
I think it was some time in 1938 that the Italian Premier launched his attack in Ethiopia, and while we were clamoring for collective security to be applied to that situation, it wasn’t too long afterwards when the Soviet Union had a serious dispute with Finland, and hostilities broke out and the Soviet Union smashed the Finnish Army and the Finnish military installations.