The Uphaus Saga
THOMAS, NORMAN
The Uphaus Saga COMMITMENT By Willard Uphaus McGraw-Hill. 266 pp. $4.95. Reviewed by NORMAN THOMAS Author, "The Test of Freedom" Willard Uphaus was sent to jail for a year and a day in the...
...Uphaus' speech, of which he gives a condensed and somewhat expurgated version in the Appendix, was filled with criticism of things he considered wrong in America—with some of which I should agree—but he had not one word of criticism for Stalin's type of peace, imposed by force, as events were soon to make tragically clear, upon the satellite states...
...But it still presents problems to lovers of peace with freedom—and men must win both to make either secure...
...In a note on the book, the New Yorker concludes: "Dr...
...Uphaus' book...
...In the course of his narrative he has to say something about his relation to Communism, which led to his separation from his post as executive secretary of the Religion and Labor Foundation...
...We shall not successfully work out alternatives to war, however, without facing the nature of Communist totalitarianism...
...Commitment principally tells, and tells effectively, the story of this cause célèbre in the history of American civil liberty...
...Yet he concludes with no stronger condemnation of Russian Communist totalitarianism than to say that he can appreciate and defend "our heritage of religious and civil liberty and at the same time understand why Russian traditions and history are different...
...The Congress was organized by the World Council of Peace, which was completely under Communist domination—and at that in the era of Stalin...
...He begins with a warm account of his boyhood at the turn of the century in a sincerely religious farm family...
...The Center is not a Communist institution, nor is Dr...
...I dwell on this because I share Dr...
...Uphaus' book is clearly not intended as a full-length autobiography, he does tell us enough about himself to explain his "commitment" and how he came to make it in his great hour in New Hampshire...
...Communism is not the equivalent of the fundamentalist Christian devil, something to be hated and feared rather than analyzed and understood...
...In 1950, without waiting for the consent of his board of directors, he went to the Second World Peace Congress...
...Uphaus succeeds very well in explaining his commitment as a great service to civil liberty...
...In 1950 Korean Communists, aided by the Chinese and Russians, were still at war with the United Nations...
...Reviewed by NORMAN THOMAS Author, "The Test of Freedom" Willard Uphaus was sent to jail for a year and a day in the rockribbed state of New Hampshire for failing to tell what the State already knew or could easily have found out: the names of the guests at the World Fellowship Center, a summer camp and farm which he and his wife operated...
...Uphaus' passion for peace...
...But he serves the cause of peace—a cause he believes himself greatly dedicated to—far less well...
...It is showing itself capable of certain evolutionary progress and change...
...No man enjoys life in an American jail, but Dr...
...Uphaus was treated well in prison and his account of his stay there makes an interesting chapter in his book...
...He and his devoted wife subsequently took over the management of the World Fellowship Center...
...I believe disarmament and peace are possible under proper conditions because of a common desire to save the human race from obliteration in a nuclear war...
...One would guess that none of this was going on from Dr...
...His was a rather prevalent way of life in America that has now almost disappeared, but it ought not be forgotten...
...The glorious Russia he visited as the guest of the government was Stalin's Russia—the Russia not only of the arms race but of the vast slave camps...
...Uphaus' own interest in peace has led him to view the Communist record through glasses a good deal different than those worn by most of his own countrymen...
...The Supreme Court majority decision (5-4) which sustained the conviction of Dr...
...And it was after Stalin's death that the Hungarian rebellion was crushed and the wall built in Berlin to keep in the dwellers in the Communist paradise...
...But Dr...
...Uphaus is something of a landmark on our road to a garrison state...
...To be sure, while in prison he reflected that Russian friends could not have done for him in a Russian cell what his American friends were doing for him here...
...Justice Clark's majority and Justice Brennan's dissenting opinions are included in the Appendix to the book, and both are worth reading...
...Uphaus a Communist...
...Among other things...
...Uphaus' book is indeed instructive—it teaches prudence...
...While Dr...
...Louis Wyman, then attorney general, originally demanded correspondence and information about the camp's employes, but at the end of the long, drawnout judicial proceeding it was solely the failure to turn over the guest list which resulted in Dr...
...The Center welcomes guests of various beliefs whose common denominator, if any, is a shared interest in peace...
...The Poland which seemed to him to have expressed its craving for peace by popular enthusiasm was the Poland where Stalin, or the Stalinists, had expelled Gomulka from the Party and were soon to jail him...
...Uphaus' imprisonment for contempt of court...
...Uphaus does us ill service in ignoring this crucial fact...
...Under New Hampshire law, the guest register is always open to inspection by the county sheriff...
...It was for peace exactly as the Kremlin professed to be for peace...
...I think it teaches the ridiculous folly of a state obsessed with fear of Communism, and reveals the courage which conscience can give to any individual...
...As for New Hampshire, its government and attorney general succeeded in discrediting the State's sense of humor as well as its sense of civil liberty, and in making Willard Uphaus something of a historical figure many times more influential than before his incarceration...
...He is a benign, socialistically-minded Christian pacifist— as his book does not allow us to forget...
Vol. 46 • August 1963 • No. 17
