BRUSH WITH TERRORISTS

While we were living in Basel, Switzerland when I was a child, there was an international uproar among the growing communist sympathizers because two known communists named Sacco and Vanzetti (about whom a well-known movie was later made) were sentenced to death in New York. Even afterwards, man thought they had been unfairly convicted. The people in Basel had always been friendly to us Americans, however there were enough radical communists that they declared a day of strike. The bus company refused to obey it and their station was blown up. A great rally occurred at the large marketplace which I observed.  They were shouting anti-American slogans. I appeared like a Swiss boy, and so was not bothered, but I went home angrily and decided to show them who was an American. I hung out a large American flag on the front of the mission home. Mobs gathered that night, marching in front of us with torches and shouting at us. After the bombing it was considered so serious that some of the marine guards from the American embassy were dispatched to guard our mission home until things calmed down. My father complemented me on being a patriotic American, but suggested that it might be well to use better judgment in how I advertised it.