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voyage, their duty was to do whatever the captain told them to do. That does happen. A man goes beserk and tries to kill another sailor. You've got to arrest him. That might have happened. The police were all right, were just there to see that nothing untoward happened. Our people were there to see that nothing untoward happened. McGrady was there to meet Curran and arrange with him and with any committee of his for a meeting the next day, which he did.
There were an awful lot of people on the dock to meet that ship and they hadn't all come to meet the passengers that were coming off. McGrady and one of our old-fashioned conciliators who was very wise said to me afterwards, “There were a lot of people who don't ordinarily meet ships there - quite a handful of them. They were talking to Curran. Some of the newspaper reporters came around. The reporters told us that there were Commies there. We didn't know the Commies in New York, but the newspaper men pointed them out.” McGrady and our conciliators reported to me that there wasn't any question but that a number of Communists had come down to meet that ship.
I still think that Curran never was a Communist, but I think that Fitzgerald's observation that there were some fancy ones in the crew was probably true.
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