Search for a Policy
CANHAM, ERWIN D.
WRITERS and WRITING Search for a Policy Alternatives to the H-Bomb. Ed. by Anatole Shub. Beacon. 124 pp. $1.00. Reviewed by Erwin D. Canham Editor-in-chief, the "Christian Science Monitor'' No...
...In Mr...
...Public opinion has hardened against it in many areas...
...But each writer contributes something of great value, and the net result is correlative rather than conflicting...
...Further: "The colonial revolutions are neither liberal nor really nationalist...
...Reviewed by Erwin D. Canham Editor-in-chief, the "Christian Science Monitor'' No small and simple recent book is more useful, thought-provoking and urgent than this reprint of The New Leader's series on "Alternatives to the H-Bomb...
...Philip Rieff's essay is full of flashing paradox...
...Haven't we got to work harder on the blueprint...
...Niebuhr, and he would not compromise: "The least that the less timid of us can do is to go out into this generation and stand for the essential truths of our time-that man's future on earth need not be canceled...
...He tells us that we must be patient, cool, prudent and willing to "live together with a loathesome system in a narrow world...
...To contain Soviet Russia, we must include her...
...None of the other authors appears to agree...
...Professor Rabinowitch, in one of the ablest papers of all, tells us just what the H-bomb will do...
...And he concludes: "Since it is from Moscow that the permanent revolution in the peasant cultures of the world is now being led, the alternative, aside from the H-bomb, can only be a world system of welfare slates, modestly supervised from Washington and London...
...that our moral standards still are here...
...But there is a point when the impossible is just beyond reach...
...These authors are very good men, and the mere roster of their names tells more about the book than I can: Lewis Mumford, Reinhold Niebuhr, Chester Bowles, Norman Thomas, Hans Kohn, Salvador de Madariaga, Philip Rieff, Michael Karpovich, Eugene Rabinowitch and Averell Harriman...
...And there is utility in continuing to say it...
...I suspect the men in the Kremlin find the proposals a skilful move which they will combat when and as they can...
...Chester Bowles pungenlly calls upon us to end our own hypocrisies and set about winning the uncommitted world...
...To set down the revolt against colonialism as Communist-led and -disciplined will not meet with much agreement...
...Lewis Mumford starts us off bravely by demanding that politics become the "art of the impossible...
...At the very least, the rational reader will conclude that the political leaders of the free world have been tragically shackled to the cult of the possible...
...We must arm as never before, he says, and seek the long-range goal of a world community through change in the ethical standards of free peoples...
...We aren't getting there...
...He thinks the hydrogen bomb will not be used and that the problem, therefore, is to win the cold war...
...Mumford believes that President Eisenhower's "atoms for peace" proposals meet these specifications...
...To say that we must have world government in order to control atomic weapons and preserve peace by supranational power is a conclusion few will challenge...
...It is notable that the two-worlders among these authors are blunt and frank in their analysis...
...He asserts, contrary to most prevalent opinion, that "we are committed to using the H-bomb before other countries use it...
...I do not know whether Mr...
...Lewis Mumford himself well says: "Eventually, we must bring forth within the United Nations proposals for promoting the welfare of humanity as a whole which will make as much sense to the Russians as to ourselves...
...He describes the age of atomic plenty which we have entered, and affirms that effectively controlled atomic disarmament has ceased to be possible...
...Rieff declares that it is futile to search for a greater democratic faith with which to meet the Communists, but says that "in a world, including the Communist, in which the fetishism of commodities is at once the highest and lowest religion, America has a distinct ideological advantage...
...Is that what Mr...
...And isn't the best sometimes the enemy of the good...
...Mumford wants, or isn't it...
...Yet, can we go any farther than leadership-intellectual and political-can communicate persuasively to the people...
...Here, indeed, are the alternatives...
...There is naturally much diversity in the approaches, for each of these authors follows the road of his own experience...
...Niebuhr says many wise things, but mainly he counsels us as to mood...
...Salvador de Madariaga, similarly, would build a commonwealth of free nations...
...This is all very well, and it is an apt description of many of the alternatives to the H-bomb presented in these brilliant essays...
...In their embarrassment of riches, the editors had to leave out six other able essays...
...This is strong stuff, and cynical...
...the one-worlders mostly beg the question of what to do with the Communists...
...And do we have the practical blueprints of the new order...
...that some things, like war and injustice, may seem everlasting, but that these things are everlastingly wrong, must be everlastingly fought, and must some day be conquered...
...Hans Kohn would build the Atlantic Community into a strong union, and he states the case well...
...And each reader can pluck from this plum pudding of ideas the solid morsels of his choice...
...He regards the UN "as a vegetarian society with a butcher as chairman...
...Norman Thomas believes that our immediate hope is in convincing the Communist leaders of the suicidal dangers of atom and hydrogen bombs, and that our long-range hope is a crusade for universal controlled disarmament through world government...
...They are peasant movements disciplined by cadres of intellectuals and trained by a great world power...
...Alternatives to the H-Bomb provides infinite grist for the citizen's thought...
...May it not be that we need more precise examinations of the ways by which the Communist states and the rest of us can possibly pool our sovereignties...
...Harriman urges competitive coexistence, as does Professor Karpovich...
...He is not so patient as Dr...
...Mumford's neat phrase, policy must be heroic but not superhuman...
...Mumford is everlastingly right in demanding that we must stretch far beyond the bounds of statecraft attained in the past decade...
...But I suspect that the President's proposals do not really "make as much sense to the Russians as to ourselves...
...Certainly Averell Harriman takes a very different view, and so do Michael Karpovich and Eugene Rabinowitch...
...Well, these authors present limited as well as total goals, and we can choose among them...
...But the goal of some form of pooled sovereignties has receded, rather than drawn closer, in the last decade of danger and preachment...
...that our political ingenuity still may rescue us from ruin...
...The need for imaginative and fearless statecraft is irresistibly posited in these essays...
...He recognizes that the goal is not immediately attainable, but believes our crusade for it would strengthen our position in the world...
...Unless we are determined to use it first, the H-bomb loses its value as a deterrent...
...that we need not resign ourselves to catastrophe...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 47
