FRANCE TODAY
Epstein, Leon D.
France Today the united states and Rance, by Donald C. McKay. Brvard University Press. 334 pp. Reviewed by Leon D. Epstein HERE is reason to insist that academic specialists in the social ences...
...policy toward France does not lead to an overly rosy view of the strength and stability of France as an American ally...
...However, McKay does not write as an advocate...
...His assumption concerning the correctness of the main lines of U.S...
...For it is plain enough, on the basis of the book's explanation as well as the excellent statistical appendix, that Frenchmen as Frenchmen were hardly responsible for the post-war economic problems that required generous American aid...
...There is, for example, the generally conservative outlook of Frenchmen that is reflected in a resistance to change in business methods and in labor relations...
...McKay are not readily appreciated, by Americans...
...From such abdication of respon-ity the studies in the American reign Policy Library are a signifi-at departure...
...Reviewed by Leon D. Epstein HERE is reason to insist that academic specialists in the social ences have a responsibility to com-anicate with the fairly broad public intelligent and conscientious citi-ns as well as with each other...
...This, he is frank to state, is done in the focus of his own general acceptance of the Kennanist containment policy and its emphasis of constructing situations of strength in such places as France...
...Too en, in the past, the professional ial scientist has confined his con-oution to the heavily annotated atise that is practically inaccess- to the layman, and so left complication with the public in such a ld as foreign area studies to the its of the journalist...
...Also, the threat to Franco-American relations that might be posed by a Gaullist rise to power is explored carefully and soberly...
...The menace of the French Communist Party is described, not as a bogey, but with a full realization of its political appeal and its underground capacity...
...The author's method here is typical: he presents what he knows of de Gaulle and of his record, which is a good deal, and so gives a basis for understanding the potentialities of the General and his movement...
...And undoubtedly sympathetic under-standing comes easier when the qualities of Frenchmen are viewed in the perspective afforded by Prof...
...It is no less clear that present difficulties in mounting a large-scale French rearmament program are more directly related to limited resources than to human depravity...
...And happily McKay resists the tiresome habit of writers on France to summarize with one of •that stock of epigrams with which the French are supposed to conduct their political exchanges...
...There is no categorical judgment...
...A number of the qualities of French behavior described by Prof...
...Still, not all such qualities, which the author seeks to explain but not to minimize, are really so completely alien to American folkways that understanding is impossible...
...McKay's book, The ted States and France, is the th in a projected 25 volume ser-tfesigned to acquaint a substantial segment of the American public with the various considerations underlying our foreign relations...
...Or there is the typically uncooperative and individualist attitude toward the social responsibilities of rationing and payment of taxes...
...Consistent with this purpose of the series, McKay (of the Harvard history department) analyzes in clear terms the problems of contemporary France and their relationship to the making of American foreign policy...
Vol. 15 • September 1951 • No. 9
