A COFFEE HOUSE PUNDIT
Wittmer, Felix
A Coffee House Pundit THE NINE LIVES OF EUROPE. By Leo Lania. Funk and Vf agnails (in association with United Nations World). 278 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by FELIX WITTMER BETWEEN the two World Wars...
...If he 6an remember what he has seen inside of Soviet Russia, why is there any reason to suppose that he cannot also remember what he heard...
...Moral and aesthetic values also constitute "data" upon which reason can construct proofs of God...
...It all sounds thin and squeaky beside the Barthian evangelistic thunder...
...His criticism of our unconditional surrender policy, of the fraternization ban and of Mr...
...217 pp...
...Lania has stated convincingly...
...And one misses Barth's famous rhetorical question that so powerfully sums up his "marginal note" to theology, "What manner of God is he who can be proved...
...DEWOLF'S BOOK is a curious blend of overemphases and omissions...
...Lania usually chooses not to disclose his sources...
...Quite often his sentences don't even make any sense...
...The recipe for success was simple: spice whatever you concoct with a few judgments on persons who were talked about" and, by all means, be not harsh on the Soviet Union...
...In what year...
...Is that sort of thing too dry for the "cafe...
...Does not the very core of Bolshevism exclude "free competition...
...Why not make a pact with the bubonic plague...
...If Protestant rationalism cannot make a stronger defense than this against the Continental revolutionaries, then Protestant rationalism is indeed dying, if not already dead...
...Such matters — they are few — Mr...
...A major criticism of this book, it seems to me, is that the author simply hasn't worked hard enough on his material...
...What blow Hans Zaisser's East German army of Communist toughies would deal to the whole of Germany, and then to us, he does not reveal...
...But I always had to take full notes on anything I took in through the eyes...
...Has he ever studied a list of Russia's broken pledges...
...With uninhibited generosity Leo Lania splashes unproved conclusions over the pages...
...His quotations from the irrationalists, for example, are seldom the strongest that can be culled from their writings...
...Then he tattles nostalgically about the "Cafe Central" and the "Cafe Herrenhof," whose blond and very pretty girls—low heels, short hair and no corseting—had passed on from Peter Altenberg's free love to the worship of Lenin and Werfel's poetry...
...I know for a fact that my verbal memory is excellent, whereas my visual memory is frequently defective...
...He thinks that would be "a blow" to Communism...
...Memory and Dialogue By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN ISEE that one of the oft-repeated objections to the books of Vladimir Petrov (Soviet Gold, My Retreat From Russia) is that he puts remembered conversations inside quotation marks...
...Lania that Bulgaria, in her function as a Soviet colony, represents a threat to our way...
...Despite experiences in concentration camps...
...The God who stood at the end of some human way—even of this way —would not be God...
...And what did he see in Hungary besides some literary cafe in Budapest...
...Has he never seen the estates of the Prince of Tasca in Sicily, or of Count Romanones in Spain...
...Yet no one, to my knowledge, ever objected to Steffens' use of quotation marks...
...for trade between western and eastern Europe...
...liberties...
...Naturally, he advocates simultaneous withdrawal of all troops from the four zones of Germany...
...You did not need to be well grounded in anything...
...He claims that "Germany was the only European nation unable to purge herself from the still potent poison of feudalism...
...Lania a genius...
...What interests me is why Petrov— an anti-Communist—should be singled out for attack on this matter of remembered dialogue...
...The imputation is that a man who does that is an unreliable reporter...
...Spain may well be needed by us as a base if and when another war breaks loose...
...John Chamberlain Is a Life editor...
...Why doesn't the author acquaint himself with the strategy and tactics of Leninism-Stalinism...
...Apparently he would insist that Dewey is deficient in the ability to reason...
...M. Lania has not outgrown some of the inconsistencies and irresponsibilities of his early literary days...
...The polite name for it is "selection...
...The objection to Petrov's remembered dialogue goes for anything set down in reminiscence and autobiography...
...And there is no mention at all of Unamuno, the passionate Spanish mystic who was neither Catholic nor Protestant, but certainly one of the greatest of modern Christian irrationalists...
...Again: "That is the mystery of the message of the Bible—that here we are told of God whom we do not find in the glow of twilight, or in the blossoming tree that we admire, or in a creation of art, or even in the voice of conscience—no, not there...
...When I was a reporter I would make subject-andverb notations to recall a conversation...
...PRESENT-DAY GERMANY, in the vision of Mr...
...In the "Dome" or the "Rotonde" in Paris, the "Cafe am Zoo" in Berlin or the "Central" in Vienna, you could pick up dozens of statements and witticisms on anything, from philosophy and the most recent fad in dancing to the newest cliches in politics...
...For reasons known to him alone he asserts that "'in most cases those critics are the same who subscribed wholeheartedly to Churchill's, statement that 'this was not an ideological war...
...Some of Mr...
...If the ear is fallible, so is the eye — or the taste buds, or the nostrils...
...Those "realists" were even the same who demanded that the "Voice of America" be silenced, and our boys be sent home...
...Forgetful of Benes, who went all the way to Moscow to sign a pact with Russia, Mr...
...Has he ever heard of Alsatian bauxite...
...The fact was that Steffens had an accurate ear...
...F#om there on he talks about "them" for two pages, without ever coming to grips with the esence of the Yalta conference...
...Harper and Brothers...
...Has he gathered them in the Caf6 Flore or at some pitiful party...
...One wonders how he would account for, say, Dewey's failure to believe in God, considering the fact that Dewey is a stout champion of moral and aesthetic values...
...It is long, specific, and impressive...
...WHEN HE OFFERS figures, Mr...
...He accuses American public opinion of applying a "double standard" to freedom in Bulgaria and freedom in Spain...
...Lania's incoherent tidbits on Europe, we need not deposit any wreath on the grave of the stillborn babe...
...We must come to an agreement with the Soviets...
...2.50...
...Felix Wlttmer teaches history at the New Jersey State Teachers College al Moniclalr...
...for the others resentfully would have dubbed him pedestrian, pedantic, and conventional...
...Those were the days when Leo Lania made a name for himself by adapting Sergei N. Tretyakov's anti-Anglo-Saxon, Communist hate play Roar China for the German stage...
...The peculiar fact that an American lieutenant was permitted to marry a German girl whereas any soldier below the rank af sergeant was not, is worth remembering...
...191...
...Our Department of State can furnish him with one...
...Lania, believe it or not, holds that there ought to be "free competition" between the Bolshevists and the free countries...
...There is, however, a scarcity of American books which urge us to rise in behalf of our...
...Isn't it touching if it :s pitiful...
...Lippmann's theories on German federalism s to the point...
...But, for that matter, can one remember anything at all with absolute accuracy for that length of time...
...Maybe no one can remember dialogue with absolute accuracy for eight or ten years...
...Lania, is "a Dali picture...
...Does he mean import...
...Later on, he mourns that the coffee houses of Prague are gone...
...When he muses, prattles or pontificates on our relations with the Soviet Union, Mr...
...Lania's opinions on Germany—the one country with which he seems' genuinely and emotionally concerned—ring true...
...Why the 'but...
...Lania does not like the critics of the Yalta conference...
...Martin Oardner has written for Philosophy and Science, Scrtpla Mathematics, International Journal of Ethics, and other publications...
...Is there any reason to suppose that Petrov's verbal memory is defective...
...In the Beainnina the Word' THE RELIGIOUS REVOLT AGAINST REASON...
...There does not seem to be any shortage of paper and printer's ink these days...
...Has Alsace already been incorporated in eastern Europe...
...As to Mr...
...By L. Harold DeWolf...
...I can remember a conversation practically verbatim, if it interests me...
...Unfortunately, DeWolf does not give the steps in the rational "proofs" which he believes can be based on experiential data, and so the reader is unable to determine the strength or weakness of his case...
...A party he attended there was "a pitiful pathetic affair, but very touching...
...L. Harold DeWolf, professor of systematic theology at Boston University, has attempted a survey and critical evaluation of the new irrationalism, which has its origin in Kierkegaard, and its leading exponents in Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Reinhold Niebuhr...
...There is no way from us to God," declares Barth in a neglected passage, "not even a via negativa— not even a via diaiecttca—nor parado.rica...
...Well, here's something to ponder...
...No one, so the reviewers say, can remember conversations verbatim over a span of years...
...For example, the emergence of creative novelties in the evolution of the cosmos, and even "the very existence of a causal system may be taken as an evidence of a cosmic purpose and hence of God" (p...
...I could subsequently fill out the whole speech from that, and no one ever called me for being inaccurate...
...In the coffee house atmosphere, military considerations are usually disdained...
...Reviewed by FELIX WITTMER BETWEEN the two World Wars a good many characters on the European continent, especially in Austria, France, and Germany, made a living by selling coffee house opinions for publication...
...He calls the left-wing writers of Lodz, who publish the weekly Forge, "forceful Marxists," "Communists" and "fellow travelers" who have "resisted spiritual regimentation until now...
...Solid preparation in any one field would have been a serious handicap for any aspiring "feuilletonist...
...Many references are made to the "finite God" theology of the author's friend and former teacher, Edgar S. Brightman, although Brightman's views have had little influence on the conflict under discussion...
...If you pleasantly blur the issues and don't hurt -anyone in...
...He might as well write of thieves who don't steal or of murderers who don't kill...
...He breaks a few lances (or quills...
...We might as well call black white or Mr...
...But for the life of me I can't remember the color of a person's eyes, or the texture of his coat, overnight...
...DeWolf recognizes the important differences between these three, but finds them in substantial agreement in their distrust of reason as a method of obtaining religious truth...
...particular, you will find a publisher...
...But he is clearly on the side of the rationalists, believing that human reason, operating on data obtained by experience, can arrive at the conclusion that God's existanv is highly probable...
...Lania, the "Cafe-Haus Literat," is at his best...
...Significantly, he opens his book on Europe with the profound remark that "the terrace of the Cafe Flore in Paris was crammed with people...
...Surely there was a place for Unamuno's agonized cry, "I do not know, I do not know, I do not know...
...After making a case for each side, DeWolf seeks to harmonize them by preserving ali he believes of value In both points of view...
...Lania does not advocate that, as a prerequisite for peace, Communism be smashed...
...What, for instance, does it mean that "Eastern Europe was responsible for 100 percent of Western Europe's bauxite...
...All memory is subject to unconscious editing...
...Lincoln Steffens' Autobiography is filled with remembered conversations, many of them dating back for half a lifetime...
...It has evidently not occurred to Mr...
...Reviewed by MARTIN GARDNER CONTEMPORARY PROTESTANT THEOLOGY has become a battleground for a renewed clash between the age-old adversaries, faith and reason...
...Lania exclaims: "Is America willing to sign a pact with Russia guaranteeing the complete and unequivocal neutrality of all of Europe...
Vol. 33 • March 1950 • No. 11
