THE TRAGEDY OF WILLIAM KNOWLAND

...He is a tall, broad-shouldered, heavy-set man with a strong, well-molded face...

...Since Eisenhower has never clearly endorsed the views of either, it is somewhat difficult to conclude that Knowland is necessarily any more conservative than the President...

...Either we have a system of law and order or the doctrine of might makes right is recognized...

...If his opponents counter that these moves would incur the heavy risk of precipitating a world war, Knowland answers, in effect, that there will be no world war unless the Communists decide to risk one and once they do so decide, they can be counted upon to start one whatever we do...

...The critical issues in Knowland's career are those of foreign affairs...

...Warren's political success had been aided by the elder Knowland, and he had long been a friend and coworker of "Young Bill...

...If the actions of the U.S.S.R...

...If one accepts Knowland's premises, his conclusions always follow with sure predictability...

...Because Tito in Yugoslavia and Gomulka in Poland are, for all their deviations, still Communists, Knowland opposes military asssistance to the one and economic assistance to the other...

...Knowland's political outlook is well to the right of that of the present Chief Justice...

...It derives from the marvelous vision of America, this new land, shining not in its material might but in its moral innocence and dedicated to spreading the beneficent results of human liberty, economic freedom, and the rights of man to all quarters of the globe...

...His instinct that this generation, like that of Lincoln's in the Civil War, may have to pass through a "fiery trial," a demanding moral and physik' cal ordeal, may very well be prophetic and should not be lightly scorned...

...In 1938, he succeeded Earl Warren as GOP national committeeman when the latter became state attorney-general...

...As heir to Taft's broken dream of power and caretaker of Taft's political estate, can Knowland smash the grip of Eastern business interests and of their political agents, the Deweys and Brownells, on his party and lead American conservatives to the promised land...

...What of India...

...He is a likeable man who gives the impression of one who wants to be liked in return but whose inner security in no way depends on the reactions of others...

...Knowland, again like Taft, is the scion of a native political dynasty...

...Knowland strives always to be consistent...

...Kadar, Khrushchev, Gomulka, Chou En-lai are not to be trusted...

...Their friendship endures but no philosophical inferences should be drawn from that relationship...

...He states his arguments in a sober, straightforward, declamatory way...

...as feckless appeasement...

...I believe the U.N...

...He is the opposite of the mercurial or the introspective...

...Elected to the state assembly in 1932 and to the state senate two years later, Knowland was a well-established political figure in his own right before he was thirty...

...In conversations with him, there is no fencing, no shadow-boxing, very little double-talk...

...The war interrupted his rushing onward progress...

...Long ago, he is said to have remarked to friends, "We are going to make Billy President...

...In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free . . . We shall nobly save or meanly lose this last best hope on earth...

...Knowland has wasted little time in marching upon this high destiny...

...His eyes are on the capital in Sacramento because he believes the longest way around is the shortest way home to the White House...

...General Assembly last autumn, no one exceeded him in his fervent support of the Eisenhower-Dulles policy of forcing Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw from Egypt in accord with the mandates of the U.N...

...I believe this to be the case...

...To be sure, America opposes the horrible evil of Russian totalitarianism, but that opposition is played out on a stage in which the important secondary characters are not angels and devils but rather are Gomulkas, Titos, Chiang Kai-sheks, Krishna Menons, Francos, Ibn Sauds, and others of equally ambiguous moral stature...

...Knowland, like Taft, is that authentic figure: an honest, true-blue American tory...

...If Taft, with all his energy, brains, and determination could not capture the ultimate seat of power, it seems rather unlikely that Knowland, a more limited and less creative figure, can succeed...

...The U.N...

...How can any nation ignore the moral issue involved in Soviet destruction of freedom in Hungary and want sanctions applied in the case of troubles in the Middle East...

...Similarly, Knowland's demand for budget-cutting appears to be either a failure of logic or a calculated appeal for business community backing...

...Because, although not a lawyer, he has a rigid outlook which tends to confer moral authority upon mere legalisms, he supports the Bricker Amendment and calls for the ouster of the U.S.S.R...

...Unlike Taft, he has a genuine interest in what goes on in other parts of the world...

...Foreign affairs is a matter of prudence and not of moral absolutes, of calculated risks and not of sure things...

...He does not have Taft's intellectual brilliance or cutting edge in debate, nor does he compensate tor this lack by any show of intellectual sophistication, grace, or humor...

...In a city where politics is the major industry, compromise the way of life, and a tolerant skepticism about men and causes, not to say a certain cyncism, is the prevailing attitude, Knowland continues to surprise and disconcert by his bedrock integrity, his adamant refusal to compromise, and his intellectual rigidity...

...Knowland is the son of a New Yorker who went west in the Gold Rush and founded a fortune in lumber, shipping, and banking...

...Knowland's decision seems sound for he cannot add further to his national reputation in Washington, and the reputation he has already earned here limits as much as it advances his progress to his goal...

...In earnest of his belief, he has embarked on a daring gamble...

...He seems always to be drawing upon an inexhaustible source of energy provided by a clear conscience and an unbreakable ego...

...Newsmen in the press gallery and colleagues in both parties may disagree with his judgment and sometimes doubt his perspicacity, but they universally respect him as an honorable person...

...This adamant quality reassures some listeners and alarms others...

...It is illogical, moreover, because the logic of Knowland's foreign policy would seem to call for a huge military establishment and a popular willingness to sacrifice for exigent moral ends abroad...

...from the Second Corinthians and is usually used to document, if that is the word, his objection to allowing Russia to stay in the United Nations: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness and what communion has light with darkness...

...The first is...

...One should not argue for talking tough to the Communists and taking daring gambles in foreign policy and at the same time cater to the complacency and selfishness of the Chamber of Commerce...

...Knowland's failing is that he does not comprehend what contemporary theologists have preached about the dangers of self-righteousness and what our generation has learned by weary and trying engagement in world affairs for the last two decades...

...His actions do not belie this first impression...

...from the United Nations...

...Forsaking an established position of power in Washington, he has announced his retirement from the Senate and has entered into a struggle with Governor Knight for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in California...

...Note the key words in these sentences: indivisible, principles, morality, compromise, victim, evil, trusted, double standard, might makes right...

...His father J. R. (Joseph Russell) WILLIAM V. SHANNON is the Washington correspondent of the New York Post...

...J.R...

...Since Knowland does not shrink from the possibility of hydrogen warfare because he sincerely believes the Russians and Chinese are often bluffing and therefore can be outbluffed, . he favored bombing across the Yalu during the Korean War in 1951 and favored sending guns, bazookas, and brigades of volunteers to assist the Nagy government in Hungary last fall...

...Czechoslovakia was a casualty of such an exchange and Munich should have taught the world that appeasement is not the road to peace but is only surrender on the installment plan...

...Because he thinks in terms of moral absolutes rather than prudential immediacies, he tends, perhaps unconsciously, to downgrade the importance of their divergence from the Stalin-Khrushchev orthodoxy...

...Contemporary America, in its rapid rise to power and sophistication, passed Taft en route and relegated him to the status of an interesting but passe figure left over from its innocent, insular past...

...Before entering this complex area, however, let us look for a moment at the man himself...

...Against this background, the writer hopes his readers will understand Knowland's positions on foreign issues and his motivations which may otherwise appear incoherent and incomprehensible...

...With China gone, is it not the one last great hope of demonstrating the viability of democracy in Asia and should not the United States, as Chester Bowles and others argue, provide really substantial economic assistance to Nehru's five-year plans...

...It is not easy to choose between good and evil, not because the will is lacking, but because those attributes are not readily distinguishable...

...Whereas Nixon shrewdly conveys an impression of flexibility, not to say fluidity, of conviction and exhibits an impressive capacity for liberal-sounding noises and gestures, Knowland is inevitably stolid, painfully honest and unequivocal, and somewhat heavy-footed...

...He moves through the corridors of the Capitol at a loping pace, forcing shorter or less energetic men to go at a near run to keep abreast of him...

...Defeated for the Senate in 1914, he acquired the Oakland Tribune (across the bay from San Francisco) and became, by virtue of his acumen, his wealth, and his strategically located newspaper, one of the behind-the-scenes powers in state politics...

...I only argue that others should be equally realistic in recognizing its defects," he told this interviewer...

...Already the forces of the Party's right and far-right are rallying to his presumptive candidacy...

...Senate, for all its seductive prestige and power, is no hospitable staging ground for a Presidential campaign...

...Now the ordinary orator would regard any two or three of these flat statements as thematic sentences around which a speech would be developed to amplify, explain, and develop the ideas they suggest...

...A term or two in the governor's chair, for example, may remove the curse of being known as "the Senator from Formosa...

...Knowland's error, and it is an error in terms of public relations if not in moral terms, has been his refusal to dress his old-fashioned orthodoxy in glittering language and ambiguous metaphors...

...He was an Army major in Europe in 1945 when he received the news that Warren, then governor, had appointed him to the Senate to succeed Hiram Johnson...

...Taft's disillusioning experience three times demonstrated that the U.S...

...This is not a man who plays with ideas, who enjoys or is driven to looking at both sides of an ¦ issue or, as necessity would sometimes seem to dictate, four or five sides of it, or who believes in tempering moral and legal injunctions with pragmatic expediencies...

...Taft, it may be remembered, also extended his sheltering support to McCarthy at critical moments...

...Knowland seems destined to meet the same end, but untouched by self-doubt, he is determined to wrestle the fates and find out for himself...

...Those who call Knowland an imperialist, or an isolationist, or an America Firster, libel him...

...And most emphatically unlike McCarthy, Jenner, and that crowd, he is deeply and seriously concerned with trying to combat Communism in its international manifestations...

...His central failing is his unsophisticated righteousness...

...On roll calls he has gone down the line for the President's measures more than 90 per cent of the time...

...He sees the vast world drama as a morality play...

...Communism is an evil thing...

...In private life, meanwhile, he pursued a rather nominal career as assistant publisher of his father's newspaper, but politics was his consuming preoccupation and only real career...

...We either believe in the supremacy of an international moral order or we don't...

...An active campus politician in high school and at the University of California, he attended his first Republican National Convention in 1924, at age 16...

...It is illogical since the proposed Eisenhower budget represents only 16 per cent of the gross national product whereas the 1954 budget represented 21 per cent of the GNP...

...Knowland's positions, nevertheless, have their inner contradictions...

...He meets every question squarely...

...The battle lines are forming for another massive struggle for control of the Republican Party...

...His concerns in foreign affairs are too innocent and pure to be termed imperialist and too all-encompassing to be called isolationist...

...The second is from Lincoln: "Fellow Citizens, we cannot escape history . . . the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down to the latest generation . . . We, yes even we here, have the power and bear the responsibility...

...Knowland is widely regarded as an enemy of President Eisenhower and of the doctrines of Modern Republicanism...

...During the six years Nixon was in Congress, his voting record was virtually indistinguishable from Knowland's...

...He is beyond all doubt one of the busiest, hardest working, most tireless men in Washington...

...What organization can survive such a double standard...

...Knowland, for all his energy and moral fervor, or more accurately because of them, seems doomed to be a frustrated if not a tragic figure...

...Every participant bears a moral tag and the line of conflict is almost invariably clear at any given moment, between the forces of good and of evil...

...For two generations, he has been one of the half-dozen men who can make or break Republican hopefuls in California...

...Labor Secretary Mitchell opposes them and Commerce Secretary Weeks supports them...

...The key to understanding Know-land's views on foreign affairs is a comprehension of his passion for airtight logic and his inner need to be always morally in the right...

...He is in many, though not all, senses Taft's intellectual heir...

...He can be counted upon to give any antagonist a battle...

...On any domestic issue one might care to take into account, whether public housing or public power, agricultural subsidies or labor relations, atomic energy or cutting the budget, Knowland, of course, is a thorough-going conservative...

...If William Knowland is vanquished, the logic of history, the only logic he resists, will be the victor...

...He appears to see his own role as that of a battle commander spurring a laggard and complacent America to face up to its moral duty, to charge the enemy, to make good the everlasting faith...

...Know-land's speeches are drenched with moral passion...

...Knowland believes he can...

...None of your mushy Modern Republicanism or rhetorical liberalism or advertising gimmicks for him...

...As a delegate to the U.N...

...This is, is it not, the oldest and most ingrained American response to world affairs...

...Knowland speaks out of the American tradition which sent thousands of missionaries to civilize the pagans of Asia and Africa, which prompted McKinley to decide to annex the Philippines in order to "Christianize" them, which sent American gunboats and marines to the banana republics to civilize their inhabitants and teach them to pay their debts, which prompted Wilson to call the first world war a crusade "to make the world safe for democracy...

...Listen, if you will, with your mind's ear to these sentences from a Know-land speech: "Freedom is indivisible and is diminished everywhere when it is lost anywhere...

...Let us not as a great free republic ever compromise the basic principle of human freedom...

...He arrives at his office early, stays late, and drives ahead through vast quantities of work like a bulldozer clearing away a hill...

...The Tragedy of William Knowland by WILLIAM V. SHANNON AT 48, William Fife Knowland, the senior Senator from California, Republican Leader in the Senate, and prospective candidate for governor of California in 1958 and for the Presidential nomination in 1960, is at the same age as was the late Robert Taft when he began his long, futile quest for the Presidency twenty years ago...

...Yet it is dubious whether he is any more conservative than the President and his top advisers...

...For a man who shuns the practice of McCarthyism as Knowland does and who reveres law and due process, his refusal to censure McCarthy had the earmarks of a bid for political backing from the McCarthyites in his separate struggle for political power...

...The present absurd situation has nevertheless developed in which Vice President Nixon is depicted as the leader of the more liberal, modern-minded Republicans while Knowland is often seen as the "Young Fogey" leading the Old Guard...

...The fact is that, however the doctrines of Modern Republicanism may be defined in domestic, as distinguished from foreign, issues, Knowland has devotedly supported the Administration...

...He is not arrogant but he is self-convinced...

...Listen again to Knowland's two favorite quotations which crop up in almost every speech...

...Communism cannot be allowed to place itself above international law or God-given moral law...

...His father's strong backing, his inherited wealth, assured social position, and unbroken upward ascent in politics makes these habits of mind understandable even if they do not entirely explain them...

...As part of the party's "youth movement," Knowland was named chairman of the National Committee's executive committee...

...Here Knowland interjects the argument that, while we indeed hope India will succeed, it should first help itself by repealing laws that discourage foreign investment and stimulate the hoarding of capital by its own wealthy class...

...J. R. served in the state legislature and for ten years in the House of Representatives...

...took the position that aggression is unlawful and that position had to be upheld...

...He may overpower audiences by his earnestness and vigor, but it is not likely that he ever charms them or sways their deepest emotions...

...Foreign affairs is with him a preoccupation, not a distracting intrusion...

...The public judgment of his views on these matters will decide, if indeed it has not already decided, the shape of Knowland's future on the national scene...

...Know-land, however, crammed every one of them into a brief speech to a Lithuanian Independence Day celebration in Chicago last February 17...

...Again Knowland has indicated in vague terms his support for state right-to-work laws...

...He always gives the impression of having thought everything out for himself and arrived at a position which is at least superficially logical and, come heaven, hell, or high water, he will not retreat an inch...

...The first impression he gives is one of enormous physical vitality and stamina...

...He believes the maxims Dulles only preaches...

...Moreover, the forum of the Senate provides a parade ground on which Knowland cannot resist exhibiting his views on foreign affairs which for him, as for Taft, are a source of political weakness...

...has certain assets and I recognize them...

...There are principles of international morality that cannot be compromised without fatal effects on the compromiser or on the sacrificial victim...

...It should not, in all fairness, be overlooked by his critics that his moral impulse is sound and praiseworthy...

...has doted on his son since the latter's birth and worked unceasingly to foster his political career...

...His manner is friendly, clear, direct...

...What sort of person is William Knowland...

...Because he believes no accommodation with the Communist powers is possible short of a drastic shift in their policy, he staunchly denounces recognition of Red China or admission of Red China to the U.N...

...The central point of this teaching and this dearly-bought experience is that human corruption is pervasive and endemic, that few problems in this real, tortured, terribly complicated world in which we live present themselves for solution in simple moral dress...

...Despite Knowland's pet statistics, the country by any reasonable assessment of its economic future seems in no danger of going bankrupt or into the slough of ruinous inflation...

...He believes, for example, that the present budget should be cut by three billion dollars, but then so do the chief officials of Eisenhower's Treasury Department...

...Although he has sensibly deferred a public announcement of his statewide ambitions until October, no informed observer doubts his intention...

...Knowland was Taft's choice as his successor in the Senate leadership...

...during the Korean and Hungarian conflicts are examples of what we must contemplate for the future, the United Nations will have a better chance of survival without the Soviet Union than with it...

...Already the febrile pamphleteers who pass in this country for conservative intellectuals are burdening his cause with their gray, leaden presence...

...As a public man, he has certain limitations...

...His refusal to vote for the condemnation of Senator McCarthy in 1954 was one...