MIDDLE EAST REALITIES
KOHN, HANS
Middle East Realities ARABS, OIL AND. HISTORY. ThefStory of the Middle East. By Kermit Roosevelt. Harper <& Bros. Til pp. $3.50. If viewed by flAM* KOffff iN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS British...
...Decrying "mental walls" that hem exploration till a crisis arrives, he says of the supposedly unlivable Amazon valley: Those who have in the past condemned tha entire region on the strength of the woods th'ey saw from river steamers while traveling from city to city and collecting barroom gossip to put Into books, are Ilka soma hypothetical early explorer in North America who might have taken one horrified look at Louisiana's mangroves, or Florida's Great Cypress Swamp, and concluded therefrom that the entire area of the United States was unfit for consideration by civilisation...
...ROOSEVELT is a trained' historian, the book resembles rather the infownal and anecdotic accounts of the best American journalists...
...It was only in recent years that this strategic interest began to include also the rich oil deposits found in that region...
...Are we doomed by our prolific procreation and the earth's exhaustion...
...Duell, Sloan as Pearce...
...In spite of this recent conection, the Middle East has become one of the most important concerns of United States security...
...The cooperative movement, social legislation, free clinics for workers, and now even government-ownership of certain industries — as in Latin America and Africa — are being used, not to ruin capitalism but to strengthen it...
...The dramatic change in American foreign policy, inaugurated by President Truman's "doctrine" in March 1947, expressed itself not in regard to the Far East or Europe but first with regard to the Middle East...
...THOUGH MR...
...He has...
...Roosevelt is convinced that "the Anglo-American team, if it can work as a team, has the ability and the resources, and should have the incentive, to do the job...
...Britain was concerned about the stability of the region and afraid lest a vacuum might invite other extraneous forces to assume control and use the Middle East as a springboard for further expansion, in repetition of the daring plans of Alexander the Great and of Napoleon...
...American interest is infinitely younger* It started during and after, World'War II, running entirely parallel to British interest, and centering like the latter around strategy and oil...
...When, anywhere outside that area, someone urges you to support the 'democratic' forces, examine him closely...
...Kermit Roosevelt who knows the Middle East well from years of residence, travel and interest, will be highly welcome...
...If viewed by flAM* KOffff iN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS British explorers have given us many highly informative books on the Arabs...
...But for air our liberals—tired of being against various forms of brutality for so long, and hankering for something bold, • constructive, and thrilling to be for—Earl Parker Hanson's call for a new economic renaissance is a "must...
...Roosevelt rightly warns that "we must stop thinking foreign policy in terms of cliches which spring from outown lives and not from the lives of the people with whom we must reasonably and realistically deal...
...It is written with an open and critical mind, and it frankly reveals all the weaknesses and the shakiness of Middle Eastern society...
...Now here is Earl Wnker Hanson, veteran explorer, geographer and upsetter of fanfared taboos, to hold out a courageous message of hope for those prematurely cowed by neo-Malthusian seers and just plain pessimists...
...However, he probably never studied anatomy in West Africa and he wrote several years before the sensational popularity of the wired bra proved that nature Is more effective with a lift and some concealment...
...Words lpokea truthfully between friends are...
...Thar* are critical words In this book, and I male no apology for them," Mr...
...If one adds to it the violent' cross-currents of nationalist ambitions and imperial interests, it is not difficult to foresee that a well written book on this subject will be full of curious incident...
...It began with Napoleon's expedition to the East...
...NeWewed by 4N4TOLE SHUB HAVE WE RUM OUT OF FRONTIERS...
...This is a position which is true not only of the Middle East but also of all regions in which democracy has not become an ingrained political habit...
...Like their good reportage, the present work is on the whole authoritative and well founded...
...Hanson takes as his text Robert ThorriVs dictum (1527 vintage): "There is no land uninhabitable, nor sea unnavigable...
...Hans Kohn is professor of history at Smith College...
...can only be supported by energetic economic development...
...This interest, prior to all political considerations, was certainly reinforced by Britain's determination not to allow any great foreign power to contWI1 the strategic hub where the three continents of the old world join...
...written a lively book for the general reader...
...In doing away with colonialism today, capitalism is only purging itself of another institution that it inherited—like the scientific concept of the burning, debilitating tropics — from ancient Greece and medieval Europe...
...From the Amazon Hanson moves to Puerto Rico, Liberia, Africa, Iceland, the Polar Sea, the Arctic and Alaska— showing in each area the possibilities for creative effort and economic development...
...The Islamic world, and especially the ancient and well-preserved way of life of the Arabs in the desert, on the fields and in the crowded cities of the mysterious East, has fascinated many English minds...
...In many instances, his assertions are startling...
...Yet studies ot the Middle East written, by Americans with the intent of informing a larger public of the realities of the situation, are still extremely rare...
...Even birth control...
...British interest in the region is now exactly one hundred and fifty years old...
...Must we tighten our chastity belts and piously plant alfalfa to survive...
...JJEW WORLDS EMERGING...
...By Earl Parker Hanson...
...MANY MODERN MYTHS irk Hanson —old-fashioned colonialism, new-fangled Malthusianism, immemorialized racism—but nothing irks him more than the climactic determinism of Ellsworth Huntington...
...Southward, Ho...
...In some, they are downright sarcastic: "Huntington believed that the tropics are held back by the fact . . *. that native women often go bare from the waist up and so prevent white men from keeping their minds on their work...
...or should be, the best proof of friendship, even though for a time they may be hard to take...
...Either he is very sloppy in his choice of words, or he does not know what he's talking about, or he's trying to fool you...
...Life among the Arabs, with its strange contrasts of the most modern machines side by side with ancient customs unchanged since the times of Abraham, lends itself easily to interesting writing...
...373 pp...
...There the oil represents the only great natural resource, while on the whole the Middle East has little fertility or wealth to offer...
...Hanson believes in capitalism (he uses the mealy-mouthed euphemism "free enterprise" only in derision) but it is about as enlightened a capitalism as you'll see preached hereabouts: "A militant labormovement is an inseparable part of capitalism...
...The key* to Hanson's book is perhaps this phrase: . . what men of one race have accomplished by way of adapting themselves to any one climate, men of other races—and especially of the supposedly 'superior' race—can also learn to do...
...Roosevelt has made broad use of these opportunities...
...Not only do people need money for buying contraceptives, but they, need many children for cheap labor so long as they live in poverty and degradation...
...But the book also has its very serious implications...
...This straightforward, clear-thinking attitude persists as he takes a parting pot-shot at-Vogt, who preaches largescale conservation and larger-scale birth control: * "The means for conservation on a large scale...
...Mr...
...To these questions Fairfield Osborn's Our Plundered Planet and William Vogt's The Rvad to Survival recently repliedwith a discouraging "yes...
...From there he moves, in 373 well nigh fascinating pages of determined and pungent prose, to demolish a host of contemporary notions about the tropical and polar regions...
...can be accomplished only by raising standards of living through industrialization...
...Therefore, the book by Mr...
...For the development of these areas (perhaps through Truman's Point Four), says Hanson, is as inevitable and necessary as the great ages of exploration and colonization were in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries...
...To proclaim a numerical limit of the world's arable lands, while decrying the technical advances with which that limit can be stretched by many millions of acres, is to turn one's back on reality...
...Readers of this book will gain a much better understanding of the realities of the Middle East and of its urgent need for social reform and for the growth of a responsible elite...
...Somehow this stimulating book has not received the attention from the plusher magazines that went to doomboys On born and Vogt...
...Roosevelt writes...
...There is a great opportunity for building a healthier social order in the Arab lands and in Iran...
Vol. 32 • June 1949 • No. 26
