The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Understanding the Modern World MY OLD SCHOOL, the University of Michigan, has launched a publishing project which I hail with a good deal of pride. We are...
...What the four authors have done is to give rapid sketches of ancient times and to devote almost all of their space to the last 150 years...
...Can they be made over in their innermost being by fiat...
...In the Russian history, I have looked over the chapters recounting the Bolshevik triumph and in the Latin American volume I naturally first turned to the passages about Peron...
...But after that...
...My verdict is that this is a first-class job...
...The machinery of a police state can induce compliance for a time, no doubt, but can it forever, especially in a people not given to easy obedience...
...With regard to the "two Chinas," the United States has painted itself into such an awkward corner that any discussion of the matter usually goes up in steam...
...Nathaniel Peffer ties in the present embarrassing situation with all of the twisting and turnings of China's past century...
...We have been great friends of China...
...The available histories end far enough in the past so that the authors could secure plenty of orthodox and accurate information hidden in their cozy library nooks...
...The editors, Allan Nevins and Howard M. Ehrmann, have had an especially difficult task and have discharged it with distinction...
...There has been no bridge from history to journalism...
...And here is the answer: "So long as exigences of the international situation, of China's relation with the non-Communist world, America especially, constrain it to close affiliation with Russia for protection, Russian influence will doubtless remain paramount and with it the Russian scheme of life, and the Chinese people will accept it, taking it as necessary for their preservation as a state...
...The History of the Modern World, which it announces, is to consist of 14 volumes of five or six hundred pages each...
...But I have gone carefully through the history of the Far East...
...One of them, in fact, brings his narrative up to May, 1958...
...We have defended China against its enemies...
...In the book about the Near East, I have read the chapters on Israel and those telling the story of the Egyptian revolution...
...It is by my old friend, Nathaniel Peffer, and I wanted to see how he deals with the Chinese Communists...
...It will be relaxed, adapted to Chinese folkways, or it will burst through in some terrible, elemental convulsion—when, cannot even be guessed...
...I commend this book, especially, to the Far East experts of the State Department...
...But then the authors are not conventional...
...Four of them, called The Countries of Decision and devoted to the Soviet Union, the Far East, the Near East and Latin America, are already published and to be had in bookstores in a boxed set for $35...
...but unless the past, and in China's case a long, rich and glorious past, can be nullified in memory as well as existence, it may be ventured that the new constriction to which the Chinese spirit is being subjected will not last...
...After reviewing the long history of foreign conquerors and rulers, Peffer faces the vital question: "Can an old people, a people of an ancient and honored culture, be re-formed in a short time...
...This lack the University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, Michigan) has now undertaken to remedy...
...In a few passages, the historians have shifted to the manner of the journalist...
...We were faithful to our friends rather than to our principles...
...In every case, they come right down to the present time...
...We have given arms and money...
...And then, because there was a revolution, because the Chinese had had enough of Chiang and the whole way of life that was represented by him and his friends, we allowed ourselves to be pushed out of the country along with him...
...The remaining 10 volumes are to cover most of the rest of the world, with two books devoted to the U. S. I cannot pretend to have read all four of the volumes which lie on my table...
...So I have as much right as reviewers usually have to pass judgment on the entire project...
...I can best show what these histories will do for the reader by speaking in more detail of the volume on the Far East...
...We are expected to understand this complicated and changing world by reading snippets and snatches of news stories and magazine articles...
...We sent some of our best men to plan with Chiang Kai-shek...
...Each book or magazine article is a floating island of information...
...From the start we—under both Democrats and Republicans-have had the best of intentions...
...It was due to our help that the Japanese were defeated...
...They all have traveled widely in the countries they deal with and written about them in magazines and newspapers...
...And while here and there the journalist peaks through the mask of the dignified historian, in the main the writers are models of good judgment and scholarly fairness...
...When he has told his story, you see precisely how it all has happened...
...Now it is possible only to speculate...
Vol. 41 • November 1958 • No. 41
