Book Reviews

Two good men have dreamed recently about a forthcoming dra matic shift in American political behavior that will save us from the hive. One of them, Allen Drury, is an old hand at writing political fiction. His latest novel, Capable of Honor (Doubleday, $5.95), is the third installment of what has been pro j ected as a te tralogy. Once again we meet old political and diplomatic heroes and villains who made Mr. Drury's Advise and Consent and A Shade of Difference such memorable 250 JOHN CHAMBERLAIN stories of crises in Washington, D.C., and in the outer world. The other political dreamer is Holmes Alexander, one of our more lively conservative news paper columnists. His novel, The Spirit of '76 (Arlington House, $6.00) , follows the same basic pattern that forms the ground work of Mr. Drury's Capable of Honor, for each story is built around the flummoxing of modern collectivist "liberals" by a strong president of libertarian bent who happens to be in the White Hous~ because of the death in office of a predecessor.

Like Mr. Drury, Mr. Alexander has written an installment in a series, for two characters who ap peared in Alexander's collection of short stories about Washington political life, The Equivocal Men, are with us again in The Spirit of '76. One of the characters is Calvin Borton, the "liberal" scandal-mon gering columnist; the other is his conservative opponent, Phil Ober meister, a decent fellow who has 1967 POLITICAL DREAMS 251 a hard time selling his stuff to an opinionated "liberal" press. Together these characters give the reader a running commentary in piquant counterpoint on what hap pens in Mr. Alexander's spirited dream tale. The Role of the Press Of the two novels, Drury's Capable of Honor has the more professional finish. Like its two predecessors in the projected te tralogy, it makes canny use of contemporary parallels, taking bits and pieces of living people and recombining them to form new, but instantly recognizable, human beings.

Everything that Mr. Drury writes is courageous, but Capable of Honor is the nerviest thing he has yet done, for this novel takes the whole mass communications industry in the United States for its collective villain. The leader who gives the signals to news paper, magazine, radio, and TV in Capable of Honor is a porten tous columnist named Walter Do bius, more familiarly known to his old colleagues as "Walter Wonderful." He is not basically an evil man, for he believes in what he is doing. But he does evil with an utterly humorless inadver tence, for he can't conceive that there should be an elementary fairness even on the front pages in the presentation of news as such. Walter Dobius thinks there is only one side to any given story, and that side is the one that grows from his own "liberal" bias. So, when "good old Harley Hud sou," who has become President of the United States after seven frustrating years in the Vice Presidency, actually stands up to the communists when they massa cre American citizens and burn Standard Oil installations in far off Gorotoland in Central Africa, Walter Dobius takes it as a per sonal affront. His advice would have been to let the UN "nego tiate" with a bunch of bush com munists who had illegally seized the power in Gorotoland with the undercover help of Soviet Russia and Mao Tse-tung's Red China.

And, when Moscow and Peking compound their mischief by touch ing off a seizure of the Panama Canal by "local patriots," thus putting the U.S. into two small wars some eight thousand miles apart, Walter Dobius considers it as a sign from the Deity that Harley Hudson must be punished for his refusal to give in to the communists in the first place. Harley Hudson is a character that has been synthesized by tak ing a snippet of Harry Truman, a goodly portion of Lyndon John son, and large elements of Barry 252 THE FREEMAN April Goldwater, and whirling them all together. But the Hudson per sonality rings true for all of the oddity of the mixture, for it is the "old American" parts of Tru man, Johnson, and Goldwater that are here. Hudson's embattled Sec retary of State, Orrin Knox of Illinois, is one part John Foster Dulles, one part Bob Taft, one part Paul Douglas, and one part Karl Mundt, which is to say that he is a man to be trusted when the old-fashioned honor of the United States is involved.

But the new word with Walter Wonderful and his crowd is peace. It is the old story of Winston Churchill and Neville Chamber lain, told over again in American terms. But Walter Dobius and his TV friend, the Big TV Chain "anchor man," Mr. Frankly Unc tuous, can't see the Munich anal ogy in Gorotoland, or the parti tioning-of -Poland parallel in the communist connivance to "share" the Panama Canal with a local stooge, Felix Labaiya, who has been Panamanian Ambassador to the United States. When he succeeded to the Pres idency through the death of his predecessor, Harley Hudson prom ised his old colleagues on Capitol Hill that he planned to step aside after completing his term. But when Walter Wonderful and his friends turn virtually the entire mass communications industry in to a conspiracy to put Ted Jason, the Governor of California, into the White House, it is too much for "good old Harley" to take.

Like other politicians before him, he argues himself into taking an "indispensable man" position and decides to become an active can didate to succeed himself. Naturally, being the "head of the party" by virtue of his incum bency, he has certain built-in cam paign advantages. But he barely succeeds in making it, and the closeness of the shave is what makes Capable of Honor the ex citing fiction that it is. The day is saved only because one of Mr. Drury's old "villains," the Bob Leffingwell who lied in an earlier Drury fictional panel about his youthful association with the com munists, happens to turn "hero" at the eleventh hour, thus deliver ing crucial New York convention votes to the Harley Hudson col umn. There is vast excitement in the way Mr. Drury manipulates every thing, and there is much food for thought in it, too. The novel is particularly good in its portrayal of the effect which conniving with underworld violence and lawless ness has on politicians who would do anything to win. It is weakest in its failure to make allowance for the possibility that commu1967 POLITICAL DREAMS 253 nism in Red China, in Soviet Rus sia, and in satellite eastern Eu rope is about' to decay from with in. But this possibility, which is currently hinted in a hundred dis patches from Hong Kong and Tokyo concerning events in main land China, never occurs to Walter Wonderful and his gang. They want to temporize and shilly-shal ly with the rest of the West in the UN because they would in the last analysis rather be Red than dead.

A Principled Decision Mr. Alexander's story deals with a President, Jerry Chase, who actually does step down in order to keep his word to him self. But, unlike Drury's Harley Hudson, Alexander's mythical President has already succeeded in creating a "Chase cult" that is powerful enough to guarantee a victory for a good American con servative over a "liberal" Ameri can of the Finnegan clan. Where Mr. Drury's White House incumbent wins a victory for his side by using the great powers of his office, Mr. Alexander's pro tagonist actually succeeds by re linquishing many of the overag grandized perquisites of the mod ern chief executive. Thus, Presi dent Jerry Chase is more truly in the "old American" grain than President Harley Hudson. But Alexander's "liberal" columnist, Cal Borton, is far less of a menace to a good libertarian American fu ture than is Drury's Walter Do bius. In stooping to conquer, Har ley Hudson does what he has to do.

Mr. Alexander's novel is even more frankly a dream than is Mr. Drury's, for it involves revulsions in the contemporary American character that are more instan taneous than those which Mr. Drury writes about. The world moves swiftly in Mr. Alexander's happy prose where its tread is more hesitant in Mr. Drury's vi sion of what is in the cards for the day after tomorrow. But both novels are good bracers for liber tarians who are suffering from a loss of nerve. + ~ THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE U.N. by Hernane Ta vares de Sa (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966) 309 pp., $5.95. Reviewed by William Henry Chamberlin AN INSIDERin a world organization naturally sees most of the game. Especially· when the insider is as urbane, as sophisticated, and as free from propaganda cliches as the author of this book, a Brazilian former Undersecretary for Infor mation at the East River head254 THE FREEMAN April quarters of the United Nations.

Mr. de Sa has quit the organization and distributes his bouquets and brickbats without fear or favor and with a pleasing absence of in hibitions. One could hardly ask for a more readable guidebook on what makes the U.N. wheels revolve, on the hec tic U.N. social life, with an aver age of two cocktail parties a day. The rules for these parties are out lined in lively fashion; the reader is initiated into methods of gather ing diplomatic information, of un loading bores on wives, on observ ing such taboos as not creating mixes of Israeli and Arab dele~ gates, or throwing a South African representative into close contact with representatives of black African states. Some of Mr. de Sa's observations are on the social column gossip side; but he can be quite serious when the situation demands. He strengthens the misgivings of many Americans about their coun try's timid role when the Hungar ians struck for freedom in 1956; in his opinion, the Soviet leader ship was undecided about the ad visability of all-out intervention to crush Hungary and a firmer Amer ican attitude, with some appropri ate military gestures, might have tipped the scales in the right direc tion.

He is vigorous and forthright in his condemnation of U.N. action in using its expeditionary force to crush Moise Tshombe's autono mous regime in the Congo, a stupid move in which the United States unfortunately cooperated and con curred. He notes that this venture had no justification under the Charter, brought the U.N. to the brink of insolvency, and made any future similar operation unthink able, tartly summing up: So the Congo episode might turn out, after all, to have been a useful lesson. Still, at ten million dollars a week (the sum the U.N. was spending on its military and civilian operations) Congo College charged the U.N. a stiff tuition for its ed ucation. As a general rule, with one im portant exception, the Brazilian ex official of the U.N. displays a re freshing and often humorous qual ity of hard-boiled realism in dis tinguishing the men from the boys, the few genuine powers from the many phonies. He seems to go astray, however, in suggesting that the U.N. serves the interests of United States foreign policy. Just the reverse is the case.

This is most clearly illustrated by the way in which America's rep resentatives at the U.N. have let themselves be dragged along by African states into provocative positions toward Rhodesia and South Africa, two countries with 1967 OTHER BOOKS 255 which the United States has no ground for hostility whatever. Were there no U.N., it is scarcely conceivable that the United States Government would have partici pated in sanctions against Rhode sia, which, unlike some recipients of American bounty, has never in sulted the American flag, burned down United States installations, and made life unsafe for United States diplomatic personnel. Or that it would have struck a crusad ing pose on such an issue-as the South African mandate over Southwest· Africa, or apartheid in general. But, this one blind spot aside, the author gives a spirited and highly readable account of the way in which the passengers in the East River Noah's Ark fight and play and generally behave them selves. + ~ THE FIRST NEW DEAL by Raymond Moley, with the assist ance of Elliot A. Rosen (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), 577 pp., $12.50.

Reviewed byMary Jean Bennett FOR AN INSIGHT into the New Deal - and if the past is prologue, an outlook for the Great Society one could scarcely do better than read Raymond Moley's masterful The First New Deal. Moley, now a columnist for Newsweek, was the Columbia law professor who gathered together in 1932 and for a number of years directed the famous "Brain Trust." This was an early think tank that included such figures as Rexford Guy Tug well and Adolf A. Berle, J r 0' and that funneled policies and speeches to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and helped frame the social revolution known as the New Deal. To Moley, schooled on the Pro gressive Movement, on "progres sives" like .Henry George and Charles Beard, the Great Depres sion called for pragmatism - bold approaches. to solve the cruel prob lems of industrial stagnation: bank failures by the thousands, unem ployment in the millions, factories operating at a fraction of their ca pacity, home and farm mortgages being foreclosed at a rate never before witnessed in the country.

Moley was attracted to the New York governor by FDR's "prag matic optimism," which was "mar velously effective because it was so contagious." Again, FDR's "acti vism was a correlative of his opti mism and his love of experimenta tion." In one of his first assign ments as a speech-writer, Moley inserted the phrase, "the forgotten man," into an early FDR 1932 cam paign address. The phrase was lifted from William Graham Sum ner's famous essay of that title. But Moley and FDR used it in an 256 THE FREEMAN April entirely different sense. The phrase caught on; Moley was in. He witnessed history - and helped make it. He gives inside ac counts of the sweeping 100 Days beginning in March, 1933, and of the London Economic Conference beginning in July, 1933. But slowly disillusion set in; the vision of economic recovery in a free society receded; desperation and radical ism gained ascendancy. FDR's ac ceptance speech to the 1936 Demo cratic Convention triggered Moley's break with FDR.

Moley had a hand in the speech draft and in fact supplied the phrase, "rendezvous with destiny," but he was dismayed by the ex cesses that crept into the draft via other "ghosts": denunciations of "economic royalists," "new mer cenaries," "concentration of con trol," "privileged princes," and "economic dynasties thirsting for power." This was not the FDR of 1932 and earlier; this was not the man who had accepted the Demo cratic nomination for President in 1932 with the words: We must eliminate unnecessary functions of Government-functions, in fact, that are not definitely es sential to the continuance of Govern ment. We must merge, we must con solidate subdivisions of Government, and, like the private citizen, give up luxuries which we can no longer afford. Nor was this the man who had run on the 1932 Democratic Party plank: An immediate and drastic reduc tion of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating depart ments and bureaus and eliminating extravagance, to accomplish a sav ing of not less than 25 per cent in the cost of Federal Government, and we call upon the Democratic Party in the States to make a zealous ef fort to achieve a proportionate re sult.

In short, by 1936 Moley was fed up and soon submitted his resig nation. In 1939 he published his critical memoirs, After Seven Years. The metamorphosis was pretty complete. His teacher, Charles Beard, apparently went through the same cycle and Maley 'writes that "Beard and I had many conversations in his later days, in the 1940's, and perhaps he and I both went through -a change in which we re-examined all of our earlier preconceptions." So it came to be that Moley, a champion of reform, found that centralization can lead to excess, that there was truth in Acton's thesis on the corruptibility of power, that he felt more at home in the Republican Party for whose Presidential candidates he worked long and hard, from Wendell Will kie to Barry Goldwater. ~ THE FREEMAN MAY 1967 Vol. 17, No. 5 "'" It is when people are collectivized compulsorily, beyond the natural con trols of family living, says Dr. Curtiss, that a "population problem" appears ...p. 259 "'" Henry Hazlitt sees, in the latest offerings of the Welfare State in America, a promise of further inflation ....... p. 265 "'" The more he studies antitrust legis lation and its consequences, the less reason can Harold Fleming find for the faith of businessmen and others in such laws p. 267 "'" Because the yoke of slavery hangs always ready for those who neglect their freedom, we repeat earlier warn ings by Lord Byron, Horace, Archibald Rutledge, Samuel Gompers, and others ...p. 276 "'" And Helen Copeland turns an an cientfable to bear on those who cry "Wolf!" at prophetic warnings p. 283 ~ The principles of progress, accord ing to Robert Newell, all boil down toward mutual respect for property rights .,. . p. 285 "'" Leonard Read comes to about that same conclusion as he reviews the record of the rise and fall of civiliza tions - unto this day p. 292 1/ Harry Smith, in the tradition of Adam, credits the wealth of nations primarily to the entrepreneurial spirit in man .p. 298 "'" Dr. Edward Coleson of Spring Arbor College shares his experiences and deep reflections on the "Economic Development of Emerging Nations."