I admire Hammett in this matter, though I am not sure I agree withhim. Jumping bail is jumping bail. One presumes - perhaps wrongly - that the defendants, whoever they were, had a fair trial and were convicted under the law. We can't just obey the laws we agree with (ah, the Old Tory in me rears its ugly head). On the other hand, if you are willing - as Hammett evidently was - to suffer the consequences of objecting to a law or its application that you disagree with, well so be it. Hammett, obviously, was truer to his principles than the people he went to jail for.
I think you've hit upon the key, Frank: if you're going to defy a law because you think it's unjust, you have to be willing to bear the full consequences of that action. The question of whether one should defy laws one believes to be unjust is of course a vexed one, but I think that's got to be the starting point of any discussion about whether it's ever an appropriate response.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I am a big fan of Hammett's crime fiction, and I respect his military service and the courage of his convictions, the fact is he was a fool for supporting a repressive, evil empire and their world-wide agents.
ReplyDeleteThe proof of Soviet agents pentrating the film industry, as well as the government and the labor and Civil Rights movement, can be found in their KGB files, which were released after the Soviet Union fell.
Further evidence can be found in the Venona cables. "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America," by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr is a book I highly recommend.
Another recommended book is "The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB," by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin.
Lastly, one should read "The Black Book of Communism," which documents the murders commited by the Soviets and other communist states like China and Cuba.
We may not have had a "red under every bed," but that was not for lacking of trying by the Soviets.
I'm sorry to say that Hammett, one of my favorite writers, was a "useful idiot" in the eyes of the Soviets.
Paul Davis
daviswrite@aol.com