Word: eisler
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...Dear Eleanor," his friend since childhood, Sumner Welles wrote a long and friendly letter. But it added up to a brush-off: the State Department had reason to believe that Eisler was a Communist; visas could not be given to Communists ; the U.S. consul general at Havana would listen to whatever evidence Eisler could present on his own behalf, but the law would have to be followed...
...Dear Sumner." Not unaware of the headlines it was about to make, the committee called upon Sumner Welles, former Under Secretary of State, to identify two "Dear Sumner" notes which Mrs. Roosevelt had written to him concerning Eisler in 1939. Eisler, as a refugee music professor from Hitler Germany, was then attempting to get into the U.S. through Cuba, but was being denied a visa as a suspected Communist. With her first note, on White House stationery, Mrs. Roosevelt sent Welles a batch of papers given to her by a friend of Eisler's, a "perfectly honest person...
...Roosevelt sent off a second note: "This Eisler case seems a hard nut to crack. What do you suggest?" This brought another polite brush-off from Welles. Last week Mrs. Roosevelt, now busy with U.N. duties, told newsmen that she had never met Eisler and did not remember writing the notes to Welles. "When I was in the White House," she said airily, "I had hundreds of such requests a month, and, depending on the character of the request, the letters were passed on to the correct Government department...
Mexicali Ruse. In any case, as the committee knew beforehand, neither Mrs. Roosevelt nor anybody else on its "prominent persons" list had actually been of any help to Eisler. He got into the U.S. late in 1939 on a visa obtained from a "sleepy" consul at Mexicali, Mexico. The consul, Wyllis Myers, whom the committee did not bother to subpoena, issued the visa without bothering to check his files on Eisler...
...Eisler's troubles did not end when he caught Myers napping. As soon as he crossed the border at Calexico, Calif., he was picked up by immigration authorities. He was allowed to remain in the U.S. only after he had sworn that he had never been a Communist and that he hated Stalin as much as he hated Hitler...