Mr. Davis Speaks His Mind
SHUB, ANATOLE
Mr. Davis Speaks His Mind But We Were Born Free. By Elmer Davis. Bobbs-Merrill. 229 pp. $2.75. Reviewed by Anatole Shub Reading this book, it is hard to shelve the memories of a thousand Elmer...
...Disagree, if you will, with this or that aspect of Mr...
...Davis recounts the damage done to the fabric of democratic society by McCarthy's anti-Democratic crusade and by such concomitants as the Velde attack on the churches: the smears of General Marshall...
...He is, too, a man of faith, who sustains a sharply-perceived pessimism about the human condition with the conviction that somehow reason and intelligence can improve things...
...Davis is an intellectual, who blends a savor for the hustle of practical life with a constant sense of history and an ever-deepening concern with ideas...
...Davis calls them "professional ex-Communist informers" and "wandering minstrels," and is uninhibited in his scorn for their views and testimony...
...Davis than his laconic surface...
...Davis's nature...
...Davis is thoroughly critical of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee's investigation of the Institute of Pacific Relations and its prize figure, Owen Lattimore...
...Second, Mr...
...Reviewed by Anatole Shub Reading this book, it is hard to shelve the memories of a thousand Elmer Davis broadcasts over the years...
...At a time when isolationism and fear-mongering are riding the rails in the name of a spurious anti-Communism, these credentials are impressive in their own right...
...But there is a great deal more to Mr...
...Davis is very much his own man...
...Despite all of this, I think Mr...
...It is that long first chapter on McCarthyism that will open the political sluice-gates...
...He specifically and resolutely refuses to call it a "reign of terror...
...Davis's fundamental analysis and conclusions, yet unhappy about some notes on the way...
...his annoyance with posturing, his distaste for evasion, etc...
...these anti-freedom crusaders show no interest in Russia at all...
...Like the late Mayor of Berlin, Mr...
...This very proclamation of skepticism conveys the surface of Mr...
...Almost everything he has to say is valid, but nothing is so trenchant as his curt dismissal of the McCarthyists' last-ditch argument: "Archbishop Richard J. Crushing of Boston has said that 'despite any extremes, or mistakes that might have been made, I don't believe anything has brought the evils and methods of Communism more to the attention of the American people than his investigations.' This amounts to saying that nothing brings the danger of fire more to the attention of the public than turning in false alarms all over town...
...and pass on...
...I think you will recognize it as a sane and inspiring appeal to America to face up to responsibility and to stop picking at its own entrails...
...I, for one, tend to identify Mr...
...Davis was always a liberal, always a staunch anti-Nazi, and never for a moment a fellow-traveler...
...A later chapter, concerning ex-Communists who have turned anti-liberal (Mr...
...There are some just-below-the-top-level members of the Administration who, if asked to name the two most important and dangerous Communists of recent years, would give you not Stalin and Malenkov, but Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White...
...The rest of the book contains essays on improving the Constitution, making reporting responsible, the virtues of longevity, and the philosophy of Toynbee...
...Mildred Horton, Agnes Mcyer and others: the Cohn-Schine pilgrimage: the covert slander of Lester Pearson...
...In short, we ought to think...
...Davis on these two points...
...Davis is a fighter who thinks courage a necessary part of being a man...
...So what should a mature and intelligent nation do in such a crisis...
...Having read in full Mr...
...This view, once confined to the unlettered, seems to be spreading into the more influential circles...
...Davis is very much concerned about the rise of Togliatti and Nenni in Italy, the vacillation of Sastroamidjojo in Indonesia, the terror waged by Hilde Benjamin...
...or, as George Kennan put it, they think Communism is something invented in this country about 1945...
...It is no surprise, therefore, that this collection of essays has been dedicated "To the Memory of Ernst Reuter...
...Davis somewhat mars his own thesis by two attitudes which many who believe as he does cannot share in good conscience...
...Davis thinks Lattimore was "persecuted...
...Louis Budenz comes in for special condemnation...
...Davis's book, but read it...
...No matter how one takes exception to a chance phrase or opinion in the text, one seems to hear always...
...Davis with the country-editor hero of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here...
...Lattimore's evasive, "cagey" testimony, I must view him as somewhat less than a martyr to the cause of truth, unless it be the truth of the Bolshevik agitprop man...
...All of these (especially the last) are both enjoyable and wise...
...Briefly, Mr...
...a man, as I remember, who viewed the noblest conceptions of mankind as plain horse-sense, and whose respect for common decency made him, in the ultimate test, a truer democrat than his seeming leaders...
...Why, we ought to keep our heads, keep our nerves steady, refuse to be upset by trivial provocations but be alert to really serious dangers...
...As for the committee which examined him, I must agree with Reinhold Niebuhr that it has been far more fair than its competitors or its predecessors...
...eternally aware of the distinction between might and right, serious enough about politics to have a sense of humor about it, acutely conscious of the inchoate human aspirations that rest below the noisy swirling of the political waves...
...Davis places what the McCarthyists are doing in its proper context: "Communism is dangerous, but they are not afraid of it where it is powerful and dangerous, in Russia...
...I know that Mr...
...Davis's frequent postscript to a daily bit of official humbug which he must report and which other, lesser reporters take...
...which is Mr...
...The most controversial part of this book is its first half, a single long chapter entitled "Through the Perilous Night," in which Mr...
...Here is his basic assumption: "We face a very powerful and dangerous foreign enemy whose rulers are animated by a creed that makes truly peaceful coexistence impossible so long as they take that creed seriously...
...yet nobody in this country wants to solve that situation by war if it can prudently be avoided...
...from the radio in the other room, as it were...
...The phrase of Mr...
...the actions of local vigilante groups, and the gutting of the Foreign Service and the Voice of America...
...They are unable to distinguish, as Philip Rahv once wrote, between Communism as a danger to America and Communism as a danger in America...
...And here I find myself agreeing with Mr...
...straight...
...And, of course, Mr...
...Though he may not admit it, Mr...
...I doubt if Senator McCarthy knows their names...
...Davis says they were wrong both then and now), may also raise some hackles...
...the lazy-ripsaw voice of the man who for so long has embodied the very best traditions of American liberalism...
...Davis describes the present "climate of fear...
...A fighter for freedom whom nobody ever scared...
...In a saner, calmer era when political passion was less poisonous and less polarized, I might be tempted to engage in extended polemic with Mr...
...But, once again, I hear that radio voice in the other room and recall that Mr...
...A few pages earlier, Mr...
...Without making any of these men the final authorities on the anti-Communist struggle, I have seen little to discredit their factual accounts, which have shed considerable light on Communist activity...
...Davis's that sticks most firmly in my mind is no tender cut of rhetoric, but three hard words, "whatever that means...
...we ought to distinguish between our real friends and our real enemies, make an accurate identification of the direction of the peril and a correct appreciation of its magnitude...
...The first is an undiscriminating hostility to those former Communists who have given frequent testimony to Congressional committees...
Vol. 37 • March 1954 • No. 9
