The New Leader Book Page
The New Leader Book Page Sforza versus Sforza By PAUL CASTELAR OONTKMFOBAMr ITALY: IV* Intellectual and Moral Origin* By Count C*rU Bforta; translated by Drake mud Denis* De Kay. E. P. Dutton....
...Both ----¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ east as as I mw\A 11 I TVi*--t ,vnu were illogical and unreal The epileptic violence of early Fascism waa sstagre against the strength of the Socialists and the Popolari, yet Mussolini triumphed...
...But a man obviously offering himself to the public as a coming Premier of Italy, writing a platform, must face certain questions...
...Mongolia, Manchuria, the deep interior of China that this book describes historically, are known intimately to Lattimore...
...He sees China from the grand perspective of the iriterior—China's great open spaces...
...12.50 SoME years ago there was a mania for "composite photographs" which consisted in superimposing negatives of several persons, and presenting the somewhat blurred result as the "typical" picture of the whole group...
...He was the friends of important men, ever ready at the hour of decision to counsel or chide, to influence the course of history—he tells us so himself...
...To increase the stature of "San Hermann's" president, Chase > makes him a former fighter In the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War...
...He brings our perspective to normal, which it had never been before in our study of Chinese history...
...The narrower perspective to wheh we have been accustomed is due entirely to habit, and to our ignorance of tho«e deep...
...This book is a campaign document, a seed in the wind to .spread a Sforza legend...
...Wishfulfllmtnt...
...Davies of "Mission to Me...
...The book is full of the most fantastic aJventures, parachute jumping* of conspirators against the Falangists, who are not m power, hairbreath escapes in the nick of time from murderous attempts...
...sees a model of statesmanship ia Giolitti, that consummate ward politician (who at the moment of crisis preferred the Fascists to the Socialists or the Popolari...
...panks V'ttorio Emmanuel III, but is hardly concerned over the monarchial issue...
...Sforza has feathered himself a cuckoo's nest...
...In Allen Chsse's story the Vicepresident of "San Hermano" conspires with a Spanish Falangist doctor to kill the President, so that he and the Falangists may rule the country (in the interest of the Axis...
...Here is a new approach...
...But those who feel that they must improve their Spanish vocabulary, In order to maintain the proper tone in conversations with drunken sailors In Mexican brothels, will read this book with great profit to their linguistic proficiency...
...The letter H is always mute in Spanish and, therefore, the hero's name is pronounced by the Latins as AI (abtiti i iMimii for Allen...
...A similar attempt seems to have been made by Allen Chase, the author of a fairly good book on Falange activities in South America, published last year...
...Are the answers in Carducci...
...He looks at China not from the occanside, seeing only coastal mens, teeming with impoverished humanity with little space left to be divided between them...
...Sforsa was the Tom Swift of modern Italian history, ever present at times Tjf great moment to swing the balance towards far-seeing justice—for this we have his own word...
...This same fog of unreality surrounds Count Carlo Sforxa, a man of dingy liberalism posing as a sterling democrat, who left for Italy intransigesnt against the monarchy but wasted little time ones there in bending his knee...
...but the picture that he paints of China as a nation is as refreshing, as new and as accurate as an airline map...
...But tha Count left behind him a pret*nti«us document whose implacable Mack and white is not affected by its author's chameleon behavior...
...Hays, the most interesting scenes could not be shown, and Chase's favorsd words, though spoken in Spanish, would be expurgated from the movies...
...The Five Arrows of the title of his book is the symbol of Falangism, just as the swastika is that of Nazism, and a bundle of sticks with the ax on top is that of Italian Fascism...
...What of the monarchy...
...ttALIAN offleers have told me that, as a matter of procedure, no one in their Army tells the truth...
...Unfortunately, due to the intolerance of Mr...
...he Mends naturally into the landscape...
...2.50...
...Seeking to be all things to all men, he has become nothing to anybody...
...Some of the facts stressed in the book were also stressed by Wallace in statements when he reached China from Soviet Asia, particularly his reference to the common frontier extending nearly 6,000 miles between China and Russia, and the need for both those nations to work out a settlement, so that that border may become as peaceful as the frontier between the United States and Cnnada...
...What is more striking, 90 per cent of China's population lives in China Proper, and even of these, the overwhelming percentage lie parked alongside the coasts...
...This vast interior is Lattimore'* first love...
...These scenes are, however, in Chase's book, described much less subtly than similar scenes in Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover...
...In "Contemporary Italy," Carlo Sforza cannot escape the judgment of his friends or the irony of his enemies...
...Chile's liberal President Aguirre (tula was succeeded by another more or less liberal president, while the moderately liberal Argentine president, Roberto Ortiz, was succeeded by the reactionary, pro-Fascist Vicepresident, Ksmon Castillo...
...It is fortunate that Lattimore accompanied Wallace, for Lattimore has a new and a modern perspective on China...
...New Perspective on China By EDWARD HUNTER "THE MAKING OF MOVERS CHINA," by Owen and Eleanor Lattimore...
...obscures most of his pronouncements in such an unreal scramble of double-talk thst his views are never quite clear...
...Pnhlithcd by II...
...More's the pity: sincerity would have served him better...
...All these points he straddles...
...As Lattimore points out, this approach to Chinese history is not actually newIt is the way China started to become a nation—from the interior...
...Our previous views of thst great nation were always as distorted as our distorted maps...
...After years of diggingia, the corporative (sic) stste simply and easily collapsed because a group of disreputable palace politicians told il Dace that they no longer liked his attitude...
...Grade B Thriller By STEPHAN NAFT THE FIVE ARROWS...
...Chase Is lavish in the use of expressions referring to frontsl snd posterior activities, particularly in conversation among highly educated persons...
...Do you get it...
...In the confusion of today's Italy, its bewildering idee logical chaos of Fascist anti-Fascist, totalitarian democrats, and reactionary liberal, Sforsa needs no camouflage...
...It la fairer to say of Italian life as a whole that it ia characterised by a kind of unreality which puzzles Americans-^ especially those liberals who persist in trying to see around corners through a bent pipe...
...glibly passes over Bonomi's arming of the Squadristi...
...That, in fact, is the true perspective upon which China should be viewed...
...The murderous gangsters in the story are the Falangists, the noble and stalwart heroes are, of course, the Communists snd their fellow-travelers, and the stupid and almost traitorous cowards are, as can be expected, the Socialists...
...Hall, who, having made much money with a successful book, alter he was tished nut of the ocean when a battleship was sunk under him, looks for new adventures...
...There are shelves loaded down with histories of 'China, but I do not know of any book that approaches the subject from the perspective adopted by Lattimore...
...In it he attempts to be all things 'to all men, a prerogative of Godhead snd genius only, to paint a picture of himself as the sought-after leader, prescient, erudite, magnificent—a Renaissance man combining statecraft and philosophy...
...Nor can an impartial critic find much of the astute or sincere in a man who, while lauding truth on each page, 4inds Mussolini "baffled" by the Matteoti murder...
...many of his political findings are open to argument...
...As Lattimore points out, tlu'se Chinese areas comprise a great deal more land than all of China Proper's 18 provinces —a territory, in fact, which alone is almost as large as the whole United States...
...So he goes to South Amcrbar to destroy Falangism singlehanded...
...This book presents it...
...Chase tried his hand at writing a novel fictionalizing the Falange in South America...
...Ascribing, perhaps, Hemingway's and Farrell's success to their occasional use of the famous four letter words, such as small boys write on the walls of comfort stations, and young ladies of the pink penthouse society love to read to get a vicarious thrill...
...I DONT know whether Henry Wallace read "The Making of Modern China," but he certainly must have had its facts dinned into his ears on his swift but busy journey to China, for Owen Lattimore was one of the U. S. government officials assigned to accompany him...
...The sense of unreality in Italian contemporary history is heightened ai you investigate Fascism's seizure of power in the early Twenties and its crestfallen collapse under the stresses of Mussolini's tin can war...
...This time Mr...
...The student of I .ati n Americsn affairs will recognize in the heroic President of that mythical country the glorified composite picture of two former presidents of Chile and Argentina, both of whom died during their term...
...all this spiced of course by some sentimental snd some very biological love affairs, including a detailed description of the hero's seduction by the daughter of the American ambassador...
...Norton A Co., Inc., 212 page...
...8.50...
...In this novel Chase places, in fictional form, political events, plots, and intrigues of the Fascists and Falangists, reported from all Latin American countries, in one mythical country which he calls "San Hermann...
...What of the Army which is more loyal to Badoglio and its imperialism than to Italy...
...marks the Church only as s beneficent force in the days of the Duce's ascendancy...
...The story has enough stuff for several second grade political murder-inysterymovie thrillers, to be produced and released in Moscow, and t»„jbe sponsored by Mr...
...It is fair to ask: Is Sforza for or against a collective or Socialist society ? Does he accept the • «.!>>¦......¦ ix as full-time partners...
...Or the sit-tighters, such as his friend Croce, who have suddenly discovered themselves to be anti-Fascist now that Allied troops are at hand, but whose sins of omission are thunderous...
...The unhappy nomad of Mongolia, for instance, fas had few such faithful scribes in history as Lattimore...
...Now Ysrk: Random House, 1944...
...Some of Lattimore'* political deductiens can be disputed...
...Interior spaces...
...Contemporary Italy" convinces of one thing: that Sforza has subordinated everything to ambition...
...He was a Sforza, and the mention of his antique name made the statesmen take pause—he reminds us of this constantly...
...By Alien Chase...
...The greatest of all heroes is the newspaperman...
...cow" fame...
...It is very well to grow learned and philosophical about Machiavelli and Vico, or to pontificate on Mazzini and flavour...
...He knows its dialects and its byways...
...The author's name is Allen Chase...
...The Falangist publisher of the most important daily of "San Hermano" can be recognized as Count lose I. Rivers, the publisher of the pro-fascist Dial in de la Marina of Havana, Cuba, ami some of the Falangist or Fascist leaders of "San Hermano" resemble the Chilesn "nacista" leader, Gonzalez von Marees, and the former military dictator, Carlos Ibanes...
...where he traveled and explored, and of which he has written voluminously and affectionately...
...Is he for a return to traditional bourgeois democracy and the bribe and conquer system which characterized Italy's old Parliamentary government...
...Ideologically as well as in fact, he is a Minister without Portfolio...
...Certainly, Count 'Carlo played an important role among refugee politlcos, but even the most constant repetition cannot convince us that the Quai l>"Orsay and Downing Street clung to his every Cassandra-ish .prophecy...
Vol. 27 • October 1944 • No. 44
