Fighting Liberal

Thomas, Norman

Fighting Liberal Oswald Garrison Villard. Liberal of the 1920's, by D. Joy Humes. Syracuse University Press. $4.50. Reviewed by Norman Thomas In our noisy and tumultuous world, men who have...

...Oswald Garrison Villard, the celebrated crusading liberal editor, well deserved a biography...
...She returns to this business of relating the man to his time in the last chapter entitled, "Last of the Liberals...
...He still does...
...She offers no serious study of the relation of his pacifism to his thinking on political matters...
...In fairness to her hero, and to her own avowed intention, I think she should have done a more adequate biographical job...
...The reader who might be interested in following Villard's life grows dizzy by the back and forth method of recording events in it...
...But Miss Humes does little to help us understand the man...
...Reviewed by Norman Thomas In our noisy and tumultuous world, men who have played a significant role in it are soon forgotten and we are poorer because we have neglected our heritage...
...This was for him of an importance which forced him to agonizing appraisals and reappraisals...
...Her report of the nature and variety of Villard's activities and interests is informative...
...There is no mention of his wife and family or of the notable company of associates he gathered around him in h's long editorial career...
...She is examining his life as "a study of some of the principal strands of American liberalism in a period of cynicism, disillusionment, and reaction...
...She does not discuss the sadness of his later years during World War II when his health greatly reduced his activities and his pacifism cut him off from some old friends...
...Her division is a bit arbitrary and plays havoc with chronology...
...Her analysis of American liberalism is in general correct but lacking in depth...
...She is not, she says, writing a biography or a complete study of the entire period of Villard's activities...
...It is perhaps unfair to criticize D. Joy Humes for not doing what in her preface she says she did not intend to do...
...One gets no real picture of the man by this process or of the nature of his human contacts...
...Nevertheless, the book is easy to read and contains useful information...
...She presents her subject sympathetically, and she has made, I gather, a careful use of her sources...
...Her quotations are well chosen and give some insight into the man and his ideas...
...Her method is strictly topical...
...Thus, we have "The American Liberal Tradition," "A Liberal's Concern for Individual Freedom," "Noblesse Oblige, a Liberal Interpretation," and so on...
...I should, however, refer anyone deeply interested to read Villard's autobiography, published in 1939, entitled Fighting Years...
...Miss Hume tries to set the stage for her account of Villard's life by discussing briefly his family background and "the American liberal tradition...

Vol. 25 • March 1961 • No. 3


 
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