: THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY BULLETIN OCTOBER 1962 self-reliance, hope, intellectual honesty, codes of honor, the family's place and responsibilities in social organization, all religious beliefs or even any sense of reverence in human life, and every virtue and tra- dition which have contributed to man's upward reach. The breakdown of all of these supports of a humane civilization has not been just a natural result of man's weakness in the face of temptation. It has been a deliber- ately forced result of tremendously extensive and painstaking effort. This breakdown, now so widespread and so frightening, has visibly been pro- moted, patiently and with almost infinite pains and subtlety, on a hundred fronts through a million thrusts of the conspiratorial purpose. Here, in the imagery of the poet, is the sky of all beauty in life, which our stubborn hearts shall have to repair, and the sun of all duty in life, which we must reconstruct. * * With that much renewed emphasis on the epic nature of our undertaking, and that much obeisance to our dream of a better world, as background to what follows, we now want to come out of the clouds and very much down to earth with regard to our most urgent and important duty at the present time. Which is simply to do our part, and to induce all others we can to do their part, in first slowing down, then stopping, and finally destroying our Communist enemy. We want all of our past, present, and prospective members once again to take a very matter-of-fact look at the devouring monster whose tentacles already wrap themselves around our institutions and pull our whole body politic into its Communist maw. There is still entirely too much viewing of the whole Communist con- spiracy as something academic, far off -- a nightmare that will disappear as soon as we constrain ourselves to sit up and turn on the light. To discuss some aspects of this euphoric fallacy, as they come squarely into the midst of our every-day labors, we wish to reproduce, with only the signature changed and with small index numbers added for convenience of reference, a letter of resignation which we received about two weeks ago, And then a copy of our letter of reply, in which we have commented specifically on some of the arguments and reasoning these good people advenced for resigning. Mr. Robert Welch Belmont 78 Massa chusetts Dear Sir: My wife and I wish to inform you of our desire to resign from The John Birch Society. Rather than merely fail to pay our dues, we felt in fairness to you, -3-