The Un-American Activities Committee immediately held hearings in Washington. Witnesses on all sides of the question were summoned. Among those who testified were Herbert Hoover, Gabriel Heatter, Henry J. Taylor, Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft, John Foster Dulles, Henry Luce, Gerald K. Smith, Representative Rankin, Louis Budenz, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Dilling and Westbrook Pegler, who revealed that the whole thing was a plot by Mrs. Roosevelt. Henry Wallace was also called, cited for contempt in the first five minutes, and thereafter the proceedings went smoothly.
The C.I.O. and the A.F. of L. held special conventions to consider what stand labor should take on the issue. Since they felt it had little bearing on wages, hours or the Taft-Hartley Act, they passed a resolution to remain neutral. Or, as one delegate put it, to live in a world without shape.
A wave of unrest swept over the country. Teachers went on record in favor of a flat world, out of sheer boredom with trying to cram the opposite concept into the thick skulls of small fry. Shipping companies and airlines spent millions in paid advertising to fight the flat world idea. They feared that business would fall off if people got scared about doing the same.
Those who accepted the theory were stigmatized as "flatheads," and were exhorted in black ad headlines: "DON'T BE A FLATHEAD!" This led to the coining of the counter-epithet, "globephobe."
M.G.M. announced it would produce "The Flat Earth," made by the same hands who turned out "The Good Earth." Warner Brothers promptly purchased a vehicle called "One Globe" to star Humphrey Bogart as Columbus, Lauren Bacall as Queen Isabella, and Paul Muni as the _Santa Maria_.
The controversy spilled over into the United Nations. Russia, which discovered that it looked more imposing on flat maps, demanded that all globe maps be destroyed under a death penalty for non-compliance. The United States, out of habit, opposed this idea. Despite $3,567,219,483,128.50 rushed as a loan to Albania, Iceland and 72 other nations, the U.N. vote went with the Soviet. As one Albanian grumbled, "They didn't send Chesterfields--just Wings."
Russia's victory had reverberations heard around the world ... or rather, along the sides of the world. Old geographies were burned. Globe maps were broken in half and used for ashtrays. The flat map won the international distinction of being referred to as the Moscow map. Globetrotters were laid off by the lecture bureaus in droves. Universal Pictures had the plane in its trademark sky-write the company's name around a terrestrial saucer.