Books and Writers
Books and Writers From the Clair Mountain Air By MILTON HINDUS TAPS FOR PRIVATE TVSS1E. By Jetee Stuart. 263 page*. New York: K, P. Dutton. $2.50. THIS i» in many respects a fine book, and I...
...Private Kim Tussie, a man in his middle forties, a rip-snortin' though married man, joins the Army...
...But 7'Ae New Europt is more then just a handy text book to bruih up your high school education...
...Some of his proposals, however, are likely te be repudiated...
...In the Sudeten crisis the Poles supported Hitler by demanding Teachen from the Czechs...
...Stuart writing for our civilisation...
...To judge by the best seller lists and its choice by the Book of the-Month Club, it's a popular story...
...On account of that little Sileaian duchy—Lloyd George once confessed in Parliame.it that he had never heard of Tesrhen—the relations between Poland and Czechoslovakia were strained...
...I don't know what the folks back home will think...
...Why, for instance, should East Prussia, with its predominantly German population and civilization, be ceded to Poland...
...Then he no longer stands apart from H4r character!, where alone a patronizing or sentimental attitude ii possible, and identifies himself with them...
...They haven't liked to think, perhaps, of their lives in terms of that insurance policy...
...As for Austria, it would be wiser to make her join the Central European Federation, where she would have '.rong economic ties with the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Hungarians than to let her play the last fiddle within the framework of the Germsn Federation...
...Political Baedeker By ALFRED WERNER THE NEW EUROPE...
...They rent a tremendous mime with a dance hall on the second floor...
...yet they sre not insoluble, if they can be approached free from the passion of propaganda or nationalist bias...
...New York: The MacMMan'Company 688 payee...
...The joke strikes too cloae to home...
...He admits, though, that "the idea of a Jewish settlement in Libya would be vigorously opposed by the Arabs, who have visions of an independent Arab federation in North Africa" and that "Italy would naturally protest at either scheme...
...They are not distorted and they are important...
...Most of the TusSies depart, lesving the original nucleus of five plus Uncle George, who with his "magic" fiddle which could "laugh, cry" has won his way into Kim's Widow's heart...
...8.76...
...The account of the roistering Tussies in the George Ray-hum mansion, their increase from an initial group of five to a final group of forty-six—all this sounds like a tall tale of the American frontier...
...In a similar way hs would like to see liquidated the racial problems ol Southern Tyrol, Bessarabia, Upper Silesia and the many other dangerspots in Europe...
...Consider the main outlines of the story...
...It is also difficult to understand why ha suggest...
...The more I saw, the more I wai dismayed by their intricacies...
...It's a little ridiculous, at the end, to find Kim turning up safe like the hero in an old comedy...
...After the Turkish-Greek war hundreds of thousands of \ Turks were shipped from Asia Minor to Griece, )while a large number of Turks was taken from Greece to Turkey...
...Fortunately for Stuart, his story, somewhere around the entrance of Uncle George into the picture, assumes the quality of a genuine folk-tale...
...Had the problem of 'I chi ht ii (which has a mixed population) been solved amicably before, the Poles and the Czechs might hsve united sgainst Hitler...
...Switzerland ought to be within the German Federation, and her democratic Germsn m-would be a valuable counter-balance against the Junker spirit of the North...
...The characters, especially in the first sixty or seventy pages, have the cuteness of those in "Tobacco Road...
...After the pitiful maundering...
...What the reaction of the men in uniform is likely to be is another matter...
...They sleep sll day and stay up all night, drink, love, eat until the money is nearly gone...
...Indeed, these mountaineers of Kentucky are the last remnants of individualism in this country, the guardians of the tradition of free choice...
...Therf would be the Iberian, West Kuropes i, Scandinavian, Baltic, German...
...THIS i» in many respects a fine book, and I enjoyed reading it...
...As the book opens his family has been informed of his death by the War Department and his "widder," Aunt Vittie is the recipient of $10,000 of his insurance money...
...NEWMAN forecasts the establishment ol '** seversl federations of states In Europt rather than s revivsl of the defunct League ol • Nations or the formation of a superstate, the "United States of Europe," since nationalism would be too strong to permit the growth oi such an ideal commonwealth of nations...
...What sort of parable is Mr...
...It's genuine...
...Forget about the rest of the plot...
...IF you wish to get a fairly accurate, though * brief, account of the geopolitics of quaint little Albania, of the importance of Czech Industrial power or of the minority problems in Ruthenia, you ought to follow thin political Baedeker through the European continent...
...In other respects, it reminded me of the artistic deformities of Erskine Caldwell...
...Its fifty small maps and its excellent index will grastly assist you when, during the coming Invasion of Europe, new names of places and people, hitherto little known in this country, will turn up...
...The introduction of Uncle George on the scene (¦age 70-71), the summary listing of his five marriages and of the sixteen sons he "planted" all over the West, has the quslity of a gay folk story...
...The character...
...At times it seems pretty dangerous, although the ending is rather lame...
...that Libya, or part of Libya, should be allocated as s settlement for Jews...
...which, he asserts, "resembles the attitude of a man in the top floor of a burning building who rlsims thst the fire hat nothing to 'o with i." Actually, we shall be kept busy for many yenrs extinguishing the fires that may still smoulder under the sshes of post-war Europe...
...The suthor claims that about 200,000 Jawi art slready living in Libya, while the statistics of 19.11 give a number of less than 26,000...
...Newman suggests a large-seals transference of population in order to prevent racist quarrels and minority problems from fomenting a Third World War in the near future...
...Many years ago, it is true, a commission was sent there to study the chances of Jewish settlement, but the scheme was soon abandoned as imprac tics bis...
...It endeavors to stress the necessity of providing the Europe of tomorrow with more satisfactory frontiers than were those that shaped the various countries between 1919 and 1989...
...By Bernard Newman...
...may be stylized as much as the elongsted, lantern jawed figures in a mural by Thomas Hart Benton, but the basic issues are real...
...They defy all types of "social thinking," and that (although The New Leader is a curious place to admit it) is the source of most of their charm...
...Of course, to obtain perfect frontiers which would eliminate completely the ethnic and economic difficulties of all parties involved, would be possible only in Alice's Wonderland — and there frontiers are not required, anyway...
...For twelve years before the war I spent every spare moment astride the disputed frontiers, studying their difficulties on the spot...
...It belongs to the Reich and should be connected with it by a narrow strip of land along the coast, whils the Menu Hand could be ceded to Poland to let her, too, have free access to the ses...
...Nevertheless, attempts will have to be made to prevent the repetition of such tragic incidents as, for instance, the fight for Teichen...
...Nevertheless, h- '"•nds it advisable to warn hit countrymen, the Britiih, ai well,as the Americans, not to indulge in any sort of complacent isolationism...
...Central European and Baltic Federation in addition to the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics...
...Whereupon the family that has been living on relief for the past ten years goes to hell with itself...
...And this cute-' P«hh (of which illiteracy and an "animal-like quality" constitute the principal points) is offensive to my taste...
...Ne man's book it well-written and composed in a spirit of highflown optimism...
...It is then that we discover that Grandpa, who had been shown to us by Sid (the boy narrator) as a mixture of idiot and buffoon is really a good natured, lovable old man...
...Italy unquestionably should belong to the Western European Federation...
...It's too true to be funny...
...of "The Human Comedy" and the artificialities of "So Little Time," thii comei like a breath of clear mountain air...
...In a mechanized, bureaucra-tized society, they make the most difficult decision of sll, which it not to work for s living...
...I like this book because of Stuart's down to earth way of seeing things and saying them...
...But it is haul to see why Switzerland and Italy should stay outside any federation...
Vol. 27 • January 1944 • No. 4
