OUR CLOUDED CONSCIOUSNESS

...that Europe has slowly matured to an acceptant, controlled, gracious loveliness...

...Not many words have come into western tongues from Russia, which has rather sought to absorb culture from west European lands...

...Millicent wants only to be allowed to ssve Percy Jones, a romantic novelist, from the wounds of his "anger, protest, indignation with America, selling her soul to the gadgets...

...This is s diminutive of Russian rode, water...

...WORDS AND OUR WAYS 4—Words From Russia By JOSEPH T. SHIPLEY, author, DICTIONARY OF WORD ORIGINS We learn something of the relations between countries from the words their languages exchange...

...The Idea that Stalin was getting a great deal out of the naive amateur in win Id affairs, Harry Hopkins, and giving nothing in return never seems to have entered the President's mind...

...Millicent attends a cocktail party in which she sees all the uiassuaged hungers and ego conflicts of almost-successful American intellectuals...

...Ciechanowski has let a flood of light into dark places...

...Harry gets on like a house aflre with Stalin—in fact they seem to have become buddies," was his comment on one occasion...

...Because of this symbolism and other aspects of style, such as the author's fondness for qualifying phrases, which are reminiscent of Henry James, her observer-participant, Millicent, ought the more strongly to be dissociated from those of James, who were never endowed with habits of nostalgia, identification with other characters, and subetitution of poetry for analysis...

...Out of the minute records of several talks between the Ambassador and President Roosevelt emerges the picture of a man of magnetic personal charm, but with little grasp of realities or statecraft and less of the hard doctrinsire foundations of Soviet policy...

...3.60...

...It is hard to know whether we learned less from the speeches of Churchill or from the silence of Roosevelt...

...All of them enable morality to dissolve into Impressionism...

...None of these criticisms has to do vvith Miss Bolton's organization anil interweaving of plot and symbol, which are unusually deliberate, consistent and skilled...

...If some dsy a common Ired Poland should become the base for a Soviet atomic bomb attack an the United States or Great Britain, there would be an element of grim historic retribution in the proccas...

...but the Russians, In 1918, changed the name of their majority party to Communitt, and banned all other parties...

...WHEN exiled Polish legionaries, were lighting in Italy with the French against feudal reactionary regimes, they proclaimed the slogan: "For your freedom— and ours...

...In these fixations, Miss Rolton means to describe the cultural disparity and .mutual yearning that existed between Europe and America in UK...

...The only thing that pleases Millicent at the party is a dream-like conversation about flowers with a Swedish cartoonist, who responds to her phrasing instead of to her person, and politely leaves when the conversation is done...

...The Soviet determination to destroy Poland's independence was implicit in the German-Soviet agreement for the partition of Poland which unloosed the Second World War...

...A d<sperate direct inquiry, addressed to Roosevelt, elicited a bland and complete and non-committal note of replyafter the election was safely in the bug...

...Cm dell Mull meant w< II, but was handicapped by bad health, unfamiliarity with European politics and lack of close direct contact with the President...

...DIANA TRILLING h*i spoken of the intellectual strength of this novel ("quite the beet novel thet has come my way in four years of reviewing" for The, Nation)' and Edmund Wilson in The New Yorker referred to its "exquisitely perfect" accent and neat, subtle criticism of contemporary society...

...Even for those who followed the Polish situation closely during the war, there were some obscure links in the gradual process of moral disintegration and loss of the sense of true national interest that found climactic expression at Yalta...

...rouble (1554...

...Roosevelt must personally bear primary irsponsibility for the betrayal of Poland on the American side, since he p< i sunnily directed American foreign policy...

...The connected exposition in this bopk refutes completely the suggestion, oerasionslly voiced iii apology for American and British actions, that Poland's fate might have been happier if the Government in London had been more conciliatory...

...impact of European upper classes (Bridget is a new version of the Russian emigre, enchanting through culture instead of title) on a very particular type of middle class American is here involved...

...Harry Hopkins played a consistently ignoble part...

...Instead, turn the tap of the samovar (used in English in 18.10...

...Percy, in turn, wants to champion a lovely European refugee, Bridget, and rescue her part-Jewish child from the Nazis...

...Her .able persuades us that Americans are blunderingly compassionate, morbidly evangelistic, yet vigorous...

...She does not see, for example, the falseness of participating in Ku rope's tragedy through a nevvsieel...

...The whole narrative develops from one late-afternoon to the next, in which time three characters strikingly unequal in their degree of self-sufficiency reach a climax si interdependence...

...One of the many interesting bits of untold history in the book is the fact that the British Government was willing to consent to Soviet annexations at Poland's expense in 11142, at the time when it concluded its twenty years' treaty of alliance with the Soviet Union...

...Poland's Defeat — and Ours Reviewed by WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN DEFEAT IN VICTORY...

...Her persistent vagueness really amounts to a simultaneous statement and shirking of responsibility...

...Soviet—which means assembly—came in 1917...

...Thete is an ugly picture, bused mi an exact and interesting record of the negotiations in Moscow, of Churchill bullying ami threatening Mikolajczyk in an effort to make us accept for Poland teuns which Churchill Would never lisve accepted for England...

...But she sees them as merged, typical of an age, mounting to a disembodied frenzy...

...And he cannot be acquitted of doubledialing when, with an election in the offing and an eye on the Polish*Amei ican vote, he greeted Mikolajczyk (then Prime Minister of the Polish Government in London) with effusive enthusiasm and promised to help him get a frontier which would leave Lvov and Wilno to Poland...

...Throughout,she remains unruffled, without any obligation, lucidly intent on finding someone financially capable of helping her, which Percy only wishfully is...

...For another rentury there is a gap...

...The fourteenth century gives us the word amble, indicating that the first English contact with Russia was through trsde in furs...

...but if you're wise you'll lake little...

...and moujik (1568...

...Physically, New York seems to Miss Bolton a long list of gleaming objects or a plate of hois d'oeuvres daintily savored by a connoisseur...

...It' any country was entitled to the full benefit of the Atlantic Charter, with its specific guarantees of national self-determination and the Four Freedoms, it was surely Poland, the first country to resist Hitler by force of arms...

...But this was after be had accepted the so-called Curzon Line as Poland's frontier at Teheran, a point which Molotov cast in the amazed Miknlajczyk's face when the latter was negotiating in Moscow in October, 1!M4...

...These imply some Interest in the social organization of the land...

...But the fable is self-confined...

...What they have not considered is the nature and extent of its criticism, and the evasive quality of Mies Bolton's mind...

...exmr (1555...

...The story of Poland's betrayal by its western allies is one of the darkest and most obscure, and at the same time one of the most important episodes in the diplomatic history of the war As is usual when some disreputable piece of « ullduggery is in the making, this betrayal was covered up with an elaborate camouflage of make-believe...

...Stcttinius seems to havi possessed the brains and manner of an extrovert Elk, as his typically breezy j<mark, on the departure of Mikolajczyk, after the latter had been subjected to Roosevelt's deception treatment, would indicate: "Our friend Stan is a regular (ru.V, and we shall do all we can to help in ois undertaking...

...Two centuries later, when in Queen Elizsbeth's time the Muscovy Company began its operations, the English took such words as krass...

...It i; now obvious to everyone except the wilfully blind, deaf and dumb, and Ralph Ingersoll, that Poland's freedom was not purchased at the price of its territorial integrity, as we were hypocritically assured by so many official and unofficial spokesmen at the time of Yalta...

...filament,'' "spell," "queer...

...Roosevelt seems to have reduced the whole immensely complex problem of laying the foundations of s viable postwar order in Europe to one of getting on friendly personal terms with Stslin...

...literally, vodka means little water...

...In this brilliant and extremely informative book the former Polish Ambassador to this country, Jan Ciechanowski, has told the story of Poland's defeat—and ours...

...It is one of the merits of Ciechanowski's work thaf i"" depicts the deterioration of the moral climate in Washington to the point where America's .solemnly affirmed war ideals could be treated as scraps of paper, where the attitude of a rabbit toward a boaconstrictor could be passed off as intelligent statesmanship...

...But when a moral Issue has to be pursued and exhausted— and it is just because she so often bares herself to the possibility of moral perceptions that it is easy to overreact to her book—it is relegated to its place in dream or nightmare...

...But the American attitude weakened with the passing ot time and, by curious illogicality, with the growth of American effective military power...

...Her guilt comes so easily and is so overwhelming that we may be justified in calling it, gniltpleasure...

...The author makes clear the demoializing effect on American foreign policy if the pro-Soviet propaganda to which the Government committed itself, lie Hsserts thst "notorious pro-Soviet propagandists and fellow-travelers" were entrusted by the OWI with broadcasts to occupied Poland...

...The discovery of their progressively clearer relationships is left to Millicent, a writer of articles •nd little stories, who thinks of herself as "living always at the center of her own emotions," never expressing quite what she intended or receiving quite what she expected...

...A firm veto from Washington stopped this premature appeasement...

...In 1802 came vodka...

...What is in actuality nebulous, like New York's atmosphere of potential fulfillment, can be excitingly felt in Miss Fulton's writings...

...Doubleday It Co...

...knout (I7I...

...Released from the inhibitions of diplomatic office, he has told the whole story at once so fully and with such an amazing lack of bitterness that it will be difficult for future historians to add to or detract from anything' he has written...

...ukase (I72f...

...When Ciechanowski intimated some doubt as to the qualifications of Harry Hopkins ss America's emissary to Stalin, Roosevelt was surprised and a little hurt...

...By Jan Ciechanowski...

...Ciechanowski has deseived we.ll of his country, and of all who are interested in historic truth and justice, by living us so soon an authentic insight into the daik and devious ways of secret d.ph into y in the last war...

...For some years, it wss loosely esed In English, to mean a radical...

...Note in contrast the wpnderfully specific nature of rejection and irony in the party scene of Mary McCarthy's The Company She Keep...

...Authentic" is a key word, so are "indefinable," "awesome...

...then come roperk (1898...

...397 paget...

...For the mass of Europeans, the concept nt their continent as emotional and social sponge on our compassion and innocence is rudely irrelevant...

...Remembering the effect of newsreels, Millicent thinks: "And wasn't it the case that you# felt some queer, indefinable, yet authetic sense of guilt, responsibility, as though you were yourself implicated in the whole awesome and terrible business...

...If Stettinius possessed any other qualifications for conducting American foreign policy in the concluding phase of a momentous war, these are not appaient...

...If in James' novels one enjoys the presence of a full, exposed consciousness, one is irritated in /'" / It'nAe or Sleep by its exact opposite: the sense of unreality or clouded consciousness which is implied in the title and is the prevailing mood of the central character...

...mammolh (I7M...

...About the same year came bolshevik Literally, the word balthevik means member «f the majority party...

...Only the...

...This objective was pursued relentlessly and has now succeeded temporarily because of the craven and shortsighted weakness of Poland's vestern allies...

...A less pleasant word came from Russia in 1905: pogrom...

...she has been protected from the shock of its texture, its concretized forms, its composition and animation...

...If looks like water...

...Thus a critique of the tempo, the snobbery, and the urgency of life in New York occurs in a rush of soft, warm words and is almost immediately neutralized by them...

...In Bridget, Miss Bolton has evoked very well a certain kind of precocious, superficial, self-indulgent European intellect, "all flash and emanation...

...Both were sacrificed in a futile effort to appease Stalin...

...Much more than the fate of Poland was at stake in the handling of the Polish issue...

...Poi.AND braced itself for the shock of Hitler's attack under the shadow of a British treaty which promised to maintain its independence...

...Part of the fault undoubtedly lay with the defects at Individuals who were charged with the xesponsibility of directing American foreign policy...

...Yet as early as the summer of 1!mi Anthony Eden, who comes off very badly as a consistent semi-appeaser n Ciechanowski's narrative, was at pains to weaken the effect of a British statement that no territorial changes in Poland were recognized as valid...

...It is published, most appropriately, at a time when the cynically fraudulent "election" Poland has stripped the last flgleaf of phony respectability from the disgraceful Yalta Agreement...