WHO PUT THE CORPSES IN THE CELLAR?

...And we being Perfectionists, they put the finger on us because we can't get it through our thick heads that you can't have everything in this hard, cold world of stern reality...

...Stay tuned to this station, folks, and you won't have to wait until the commercial is over to get the answer...

...First off, we went under the name of Isolationists, in the pre-Pearl Harbor days...

...13, owiinously captioned, "Will America Back Out...

...We figured maybe there was more than met a democratic eye in those pious pro-nunciamentos handed out by the press agents for the pow-wow...

...After clearing things up to this point, Reinhold turns on us folks who don't like any of the man-made "complexities" of the "total situation" and says, "This brings us to the second hidden source of America's threat to world peace—our potential isolationism...

...On the other hand, we shouldn't go snooting at power politics because we play it ourselves...

...Isn't that obvious, or isn't it...

...What sinister band of masked murderers is behind the present diplomatic shambles in the "liberated" countries...

...To say nothing of Mr...

...Franklin and Winston and Joe know best and if you have any doubts about that, you are a low-down Perfectionist, who ought to be working for the Chicago Tribune...

...He begins with the statement, "American liberal and progressive opinion is not playing a very creative role in the rapidly deteriorating international situation," which I hereby nominate as the outstanding understatement of the month...

...Niebuhr, however, hurries on to the point out that "Russia alone cannot bring peace to the Continent," and that if we go around "undermining" agreements which have assigned various spheres to Britain and Russia ". . . the coming peace will be even more shortlived...

...Now, it turns out, we are Perfectionists...

...The book was written in English and I recognized all the words, but somehow I couldn't follow the argument...

...That is what the Snap-this-Country-into-War committees told the world, at all events...

...Every good mystery story ends with pinning the guilt on the parties the guileless reader least suspects...

...Just as the liberals were cheering "our explicit defeat of isolationism in the last election," that thing came sneaking back around the corner and has now got Europe buffaloed...

...When they went into that huddle in Teheran and came out smiling, like canary-swallowing cats, we didn't join in the jubilee that the "liberals" put on...

...This will be corrected no doubt in future issues of the Nation, the New Republic, PM, and the New York Post...

...Both of these positions betray a lack of critical vigor and failure to comprehend the complexities of the international situation...

...It was that honest-looking little feller who couldn't get into the house at all, who done it...

...Then we were Obstructionists, "Hang-back Boys...

...Bigs, with no questions asked...

...He ends with a crack at "American idealists" and the Chicago Tribune...

...The fear of our isolationism and of the unilateral expression of American economic power drives European powers into unilateral policies of security, which in turn makes our isolationism more probable" (Doctor, come get your patient, he's biting the rug again...

...In the dear, dead days before this war I once cherished a little book written by the incomparable Gertrude Stein and entitled Tender Buttons...

...Who threw the overalls in Mr...

...Realism, in this strange new world, consists of gulping down the decisions made by the Mr...

...The totalitarian liberals say so...

...Though the "liberal" clarifiers of our international complexities are not quite so conclusive as Miss Stein, they seem to be saying: "All this means that when you come to a state of hopeless confusion about the rights and wrongs of a situation which you helped set up by your own feckless surrender of the rights of criticism, turn around and blame the Perfectionists, i.e., the American idealists...

...We had our stiff-necked reservations...

...Second, if Stalin's Right hand knoweth not what his Left hand doeth, what "understanding" reached with Russia will ever make any sense...

...At any rate we seem to have improved our status a bit in the scale of "liberal" epithets...

...Niebuhr s Circle The above raises two questions...

...It was probably our fault, though at this writing the prosecution has not been able to connect us with the job...

...As Bruce Bliven of the New Republic put it, we "hung back...

...Unfortunately we have forgotten to arrange such a program and anyhow "the available moral and political resources are not sufficient for the task at hand...

...Yes sir, it's all our fault...

...All this," she said, "means a magnificent fountain—and also an asparagus...

...I'll tell you right now...

...But now it turns out that something was put over at Teheran...

...It is now evident, according to Reinhold, that "The crisis in Greece points to an understanding at Teheran —assigning Greece to the British sphere of influence— which the Russian Government seems to be scrupulously honoring, but which the Communist Party in Greece is not bound by...

...Then in her last sentence Miss Stein greatheartedly decided to let us bewildered ones into the secret of her message...

...In our naive, provincial manner, we waited until we could find out what really went on before joining the dancers in the streets...

...Of course that proved our lack of any realistic approach...

...She was the author, you will recall, of such unforgettable lines as, "Pigeons on the grass, alas, alas," and "A rose is a rose is a rose...

...It seems that "liberal opinion" is wrong on two counts: "Either its criticism has been directed primarily against Russia and Britain upon the tacit or explicit assumption that American policies stand upon a higher ground, or it has followed the old line of fellow-travellers and assumed the basic virtues of Russia...

...First, who authorized-anyone representing the people of the United States to come to an "understanding" that the Greeks would be handed over to the tender mercies of the Tories...

...This is not the fault of any American statesman (to whom do you suppose the author refers...

...Reinhold says that if we only had a program for "Europe and the world which would offer economic health and political stability, which would allay rather than alienate the harassed and disquieted masses of Europe, and which would prevent the domination of Europe by either Russia or the West," everything would be hunky-dory...

...Niebuhr proceeds to clear up...

...but inherent in the total situation...

...Niebuhr, who comes to a vicious circle conclusion, to wit: "Our policy, or the lack of certainty about our future policy, prompts Europe to action which increases the danger of the American errors of omission...

...The Strange New 'Realism' The circumstantial evidence against us proves our guilt...

...When I was nearing the end of Tender Buttons I was feeling a bit dizzy...

...Ergo, we are responsible for the mass assaults upon elemental decency, fundamental democracy, and just plain, common honesty now being waged in Greece, Poland, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, and points east...

...Wedunit...

...These complexities Mr...

...Reinhold Niebuhr, professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York, author of a number of beautifully written books on theology, which I have read with fascinated interest, though I don't understand the greater part of them, and altogether the best mind among the Teheranists, draws up the damning indictment of us all in an article in the Nation of Jan...

...Roosevelt's chowder...

...It wasn't the sinister-looking butler, the creepy-crawling lady in black who kept slinking up and down the back stairs with a sharpened dagger in her nylons, nor the masked man who was seen leaving the dead bodies lying in the cellar...

...Mr...