“If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!”: Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties in the United States

Abstract

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 months earlier, essentially advocating for the export of capitalism. Also challenging Luce was Orson Welles, who observed that if such an objective were realized fascism's earlier “bid for world supremacy [would] look like amateur night.”49Downes both believed in the common man and publicly advocated for Wallace when the latter ran for president as the candidate of the Progressive Party in 1948. In June 1947, Downes spoke on Wallace's behalf “out in Westchester [County],” where he informed voters that “one of the reasons the people must get behind Henry Wallace [is] to put an end to this fascism flowering so richly in our midst,” clearly a reference to the HUAC.50 In decrying fascism, Downes alluded to contemporaneous debates about the term itself. Could “fascism” encompass racism, as was so tragically the case in Nazi Germany? Welles, for example, noted “fascism is a strong word” because “history itself has widened the meaning of that word”; no less a luminary than George Orwell wrestled with the concept as well.51 In May 1948, Downes took up these matters at Rutgers University, expounding on Wallace's principles to students.52 Ultimately, Wallace garnered less than three percent of the vote in what has been described as a “disastrous” campaign.53As noted above, Downes also called forth heroes from U.S. history. In invoking Patrick Henry (or at least believing he was doing so) he reinforced the Left's conviction that the current struggle for justice in the United States was no different from any prior assertion of freedom. Further, as Wallace and the Progressive Party had claimed, such assertiveness was quintessentially American. A decade earlier, the American Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) had taken a similar tack when its leader Earl Browder ran for president in 1936 under the campaign slogan “Communism is Americanism of the 20th Century.”54 If not a communist himself, Downes nonetheless embraced the broader message of working-class unity and civil liberties, both essential in defending U.S. democracy and thwarting the “fascism flowering so richly in our midst.”Other public speaking engagements proved more satisfactory for Downes—even as JAFRC was increasingly threatened. On March 31, 1947, a Federal Grand Jury issued an indictment against Bryan for her refusal to hand over JAFRC records, indicting Parker, Barsky, and the entire Executive Board.55 Now that JAFRC's case could well end up at the Supreme Court and the stakes were higher, Sheean asked Downes if he would “reaffirm [his] membership.”56 Downes's reply was unequivocal: “I am with you not only one hundred per cent but one thousand per cent.”57 In June the case was tried in the Washington Federal District Court. After exactly one hour of deliberation, the jury convicted all eighteen Board members of contempt, with most Board members sentenced to three months except Barsky, who got six months and was fined $500.58 Downes fumed to Barsky, “I doubt if five years ago anyone would have believed that such a travesty of justice could have taken place under our American Constitution and Bill of Rights.”59 He also offered to testify during the appeal.As the historian Phillip Deery points out, however, “appeals cost money.”60 To that end, JAFRC held more fundraising dinners. Downes would no longer be silent. In his keynote of March 1948 (the speech quoted at the beginning of this essay), he honored the Nobel laureate and former member of the French Resistance, Mme. Irène Joliot-Curie. (Often known as “Mme. Curie,” she changed her surname to distinguish herself from her mother Marie Curie, also a Nobel laureate.) Musicians Wanda Landowska, Laurence Tibbett, Jennie Tourel, Robeson, Kipnis, Anderson, Bernstein, and Schnabel were on the guest list, as were Osato, the poet and journalist Langston Hughes, and the dancers Martha Graham and Helen Tamiris.61 Thanks to her leftist connections, Joliot-Curie was detained at Ellis Island when she landed at La Guardia airport.62In presenting Joliot-Curie at the dinner, Downes relied on his customary wit, reminding the public of “the unique manner of reception she was afforded when she arrived here.”63 Besides marshaling some of the strategies just described, Downes speculated as to why “the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee [had] been singled out in the last two years for such sharp attacks by reactionary agencies.” Effectively, he concluded that the democratic freedoms currently suppressed in Spain, such as unfettered thought and freedom of assembly, were the very liberties the HUAC sought most assiduously to curtail in the United States.64 The speech earned rave reviews. Barsky called Downes a “valiant and courageous person” and a Reverend Eliot White told him that his speech was “an immense relief to those weary of . . . half-hearted and timorous expression.”65Word of his powerful rhetoric got around and various organizations invited Downes to speak. Among them was the Midwest Chapter of JAFRC in Chicago, which he addressed on May 22, 1948. Ruth Belmont, the chapter's Executive Secretary, asked him to expound on “Civil Liberties and the Artist Today.”66 Downes, however, was more inclined to present himself as a “plain citizen” than as a spokesman for the arts. In explaining his position to Belmont, he referred to his Rutgers speech on behalf of Wallace. “I wonder if ‘Civil Liberties and the Artist Today’ is exactly the best subject for attack,” he mused: “Perhaps it is so in your eyes on the ground of my particular standing in the artistic world. But as I told the [Rutgers] students . . . I was not present as a music critic, or as a political specialist, or as a learned lawyer or historian of national and international law, but . . . as one plain citizen speaking to other plain citizens about our perils and our duties . . . in [this] most grave crisis in our national affairs.”67 Whatever his strategy, Downes “made a big hit” in Chicago, where he shared the stage with Studs Terkel, who performed the title role in the puppet show “King Mundt,” a dig at the Republican senator and HUAC member Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota.68 On June 19, 1948, Downes spoke before a similar public in Great Neck, Long Island, joining up with Pete Seeger and the comedian Phil Leeds, both later blacklisted.69 By now, the Supreme Court had refused to hear JAFRC's appeal.70 That only fired up Downes, who scheduled another speech in Long Island, this time in Quogue. As he told Bryan, he would speak on “the outrageous miscarriage of justice . . . brought about through the illicit efforts of that damned . . . committee.”71 The Quogue talk raised nearly a thousand dollars ($11,350 today).72Bryan, awaiting her sentencing, continued to arrange events, including a dinner for the Boston chapter of JARFC, to take place on November 19, 1948. The composer Irving Fine was among the patrons and Nicolas Slonimsky would chair.73 Would Downes be willing to speak? Bryan inquired. He answered her in the affirmative, now addressing her as “Helen,” and adding the postscript, “do I address this letter to your last address or, to quote the old Southern folk song, ‘Bring me a letter, send it by mail, send it to me at Birmingham jail?”74 Likely smiling at the musical allusion, Bryan reminded Downes that her sentencing was still far in the future.75In Boston, Downes again spoke on civil liberties. But he was becoming increasingly careful about his affiliation with the Times. Upon discovering that he was listed in the program as “music critic of the New York Times,” he told Lillian Bloom, Executive Secretary for the Boston Chapter, “my politics are my own and are entirely separate from my official position with the Times,” adding “I feel very strongly on this subject.”76 Downes had reason to be concerned: more than once, the media had reported on his activism. The Times ran a story on a dinner sponsored by the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions at which Downes was master of ceremonies and at which several speakers (including Oscar Hammerstein II) attacked the “fascism . . . rampant in the halls of Congress.”77 In October 1947, Downes made the front page in a story about four members of the Hollywood Ten about to serve seven months for contempt of Congress, whereupon Downes signed a statement “protesting invasions of personal rights.”78 He appeared on the front page yet again in connection with the Committee for the First Amendment of the Constitution, formed after a congressional hearing on communists in Hollywood; his name also figured in an ad for the Conference on Cultural Freedom and Civil Liberties, held on October 25–26, 1947.79 Also making the news was a rally for Henry Wallace, at which “the biggest hand” was “well earned by Olin Downes, music critic for the New York Times.”80Closer to Downes's professional obligations—and more problematic for his employer—were music reviews the Times published in early 1948. By then, the Austrian composer Hanns Eisler had been deported on charges of communist activity.81 On February 22, the Times ran an ardent defense (marred by several factual errors) by the composer S.L.M. Barlow, not a regular critic for the Times. Barlow observed that “in 1948, the world may look upon the United States, and the Soviet Union, with considerable amazement” since their artists “have to toe a certain line; yet no one can say precisely what that line is.”82 Downes, no blind advocate for Soviet ideology, took up similar themes in his own essay, “Composing by Fiat,” which appeared the same day. He excoriated the Soviets’ “singularly stupid” edicts, concluding that “Shostakovich would have done far better for himself as a composer if politics and propaganda had left him alone.” Downes was equally unsparing about his own country: “At this time in human society, when great nations, including our own, do lip-service to democracy while clearly showing that they do not believe in democracy at all, but only in power politics and force, no mere attempt at coercion of composers need matter in the least . . . Isn't it comforting to reflect that this isn't mixing art and politics, as the Russians insist on doing?” Downes continued sarcastically. “Of course not!”83This was too much for Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, who immediately summoned Downes to his office. Bluntly, Sulzberger reminded Downes, “Our newspaper is divided into departments. You head the one devoted to music. I shall have to ask you to restrict yourself to that subject.”84 Apropos Barlow's piece (which Downes would have had to approve), Sulzberger demanded: “If [Eisler] had been arrested for murder would you have felt impelled to discuss it in this particular section of the newspaper?” To be sure, Sulzberger valued Downes as a professional, calling him “an excellent, mature music critic.” But he dramatically threw Downes's own words back at him: “you say [of Shostakovich] that he ‘would have done far better for himself as a composer if politics and propaganda had left him alone.’ Rearrange that sentence a trifle and then apply it to yourself. Then for the sake of the music department and your own—remember it.”85Immediately chastened (and surely aware that Sulzberger had to balance free speech, financial interests, and the image of the Times), Downes apologized.86 Sulzberger saw fit to create a paper trail, however, crafting a “Memorandum re Olin Downes” dated February 24, 1948 that opened with the words, “Olin Downes just left my office.” Some additional back-and-forth ensued, with Sulzberger ultimately informing Downes “You are the chief music critic of the Times and not the exponent of the Times's political philosophy. I should like it clearly understood that you are going to stick to music in what you write for the New York Times and I would appreciate a line to that effect.”87 Promptly, Downes acquiesced and no further discussion took place—for a while.88 Indeed, Downes managed to keep a low profile even while presiding over a fundraising dinner for the Spanish refugees, this time at the Astor Roof on March 13, 1949. He invited several musicians to perform, including Carol Brice, whom he hoped could sing selections from El amor brujo.89 Unlike the “Music Salute” of two years earlier, however, Downes received “kind but unavoidable refusals,” perhaps reflecting a growing fear of speaking out.90 Downes was also scheduled to participate in a tribute to Barsky but had to bow out at the last minute. His comments were read in absentia by the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the “Hollywood Ten.”91Sulzberger's fears came to pass in March 1949, when Downes presided over the much-ballyhooed Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. He both served on the program committee and moderated the session “Fine Arts: Art, Dance, Music, Theatre,” which he introduced with a speech.92 The session featured Copland, the painters Philip Evergood and Jacob Lawrence, the playwright Clifford Odets, and the dancer Helen Tamiris.93 Several leading Soviet figures attended the meeting, among them Shostakovich.Again Downes endured fallout. On March 25, the first day of the conference, the New York Herald Tribune reported on claims that various intellectuals had been pressured to lend their names to the proceedings, all part of “an intellectual reign of terror.” As the reporter Ralph Chapman observed, “the fear of what these book reviewers and music critics [e.g., Downes] could do . . . is frankly admitted by at least a dozen musicians and authors.”94 Yet no individual is quoted and only Downes, who presumably “could not be reached for comment,” is named.95 He lost no time in writing to Helen Rogers Reid, the president of the Herald Tribune. Complaining of these “ridiculous charges,” Downes observed that not one critic, “either literary or musical” was mentioned in the article, thus affording “no confirmation whatsoever of the quoted charge.” Downes also pointed out that the reporter for the Tribune barely attempted to contact him.96 Thanks to the conference, however, Sulzberger learned of “several complaints regarding Olin Downes.”97 A Mrs. James Campbell Lewis wrote that Downes was “closely associated with the Communist party”; further, “Dmitri Shostakovich . . . sitting next to Downes [at the conference] is not in this country to play the piano but as a political agent for the Soviet Union.” Convinced that Downes had no business working at the Times, Lewis promised to assemble like-minded supporters in “a number sufficiently large to really get action.”98In a memo to Downes, Sulzberger pointed out that since their exchange of February 25, 1948, Downes had “lived up 100 percent” to their agreement that he restrict himself to music. Yet, Sulzbe