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About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (May 25, 1958)
SUNDAY; AY- 35, 1668 ----r- ......... r. .. 4IERALD-AND-NEWS. KLAMATH FALLS. OREGON KAUE 13 u Herald and News Book Reviews A New Challenge THE UNFINISHED STORY OF ALGER HISS. By Fred J. Cook. Morrow. $3.50. A bad penny always turns up, they say, and so does the Hiss case the case of the man whose very name was against him, the sissy Alger and the im plausible Hiss like some spy story concoction, as against the resounding, romantic Whittaker Chambers, who pinned on him the accusation of Communist and made it stick with Congress, courts and public. The book is published by a con servative house of which the pres ident is Thayer Hobson, whose di vorced wife Priscilla became Mrs. Hiss. It is written by a newsman who has specialized in crime-and-politics stories for his paper, the New York World-Telegram and Sun. It looks like a set-up not lor finishing the Hiss story but for finishing off Hiss. Well, it isn t. Dispassionately but emphatically. Cook challenges the verdict of guilty. " There is little new in this book except Cook. He asks which specific arguments proved Hiss guilty in the eyes of his judges. and whether they are valid. He bases these questions principally on the House un-American Activ ities Committee probe, the two trials, the important pretrial hearing. Hiss' own book, and Chambers' incidentally, Chamb ers two weeks ago reappeared the publishing field as translator of a cheap German novel about sexual abnormality, originally "The Scorpion and now in the paper back reprint called "Of Love For bidden." At bottom, Cook maintains, is Cracks In . By W. G. ROGERS THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY. By John Kenneth Galbraith. Hough ton Mifflin. $5. We live rich, we think poor. It's this contrariety for which Gal braith chides us wisely and wittily in his new book. The classical economists theor ized from the disadvantage point of a world of want. God gave mor tal creatures a rich land, but they naughtily multiplied too fast to subsist on its products, or too few grabbed too big a share. Then all nf .-i Ml,ln ,;h an .nnoh.il rush capitalistic United States devel- oped into a land of milk and hon- ev. of plenty. There is some pov- erty but it has been cut down per haps more, than ever before. There are some rich but we have per suaded ourselves that their wealth is not disproportionate; since we don't do badly ourselves, we don't begrudge them their gravy. In short, we have learned to produce all we want, to want all we pro duce, and to confine our wants pretty much to what is available. Here is Galhraith's point. At last we do have a real land of plenty, but we mistake quantity for qual ity. Our notions about production have led us astray; the goods we have only serve to make us feel and look rich, without giving us the substance and the security we blindly count on. Our ideal, he charges, our goal is to keep the wheels turning no matter what they turn out. He had his book finished just be fore the first Sputnik was launched. That may have taught us laymen a sobering lesson but Galbraith was prepared to teach it without Russian nagging: Great accomplishments are possible without a background of great production. Could it even be that great production interferes? This is the trouble, he maintains: Our production provided too many non essentials; it did not equip us to concentrate on essentials in a cri sis, and fostered in us such soft habits that we balked at sacrific ing the nonessentials when danger threatened. He says that during World War 11 we even increased the matter of credibility As the government once incautiously ad mitted it had no case it Chamb ers was not to be beiieved, so Cook in fact doubts he is to be believed, and cites glaring instan ces of Chambers self-centradic- tions: Stating on eight occasions that he quit the Communist par ty in 1937 but then changing it to 1938, thus allowing for an April 1938 date in the Pumpki'i Papers, or saying that Hiss was not en gaged in espionage and tnen charging he was. Piece by piece, line by line. word by word. Cook tackles such onetime headline topics as the collection of CP dues, the pro thonotary warbler, the rug, the rent or gift of the apariment, the sale or gift of the old Ford, and above all the Woodstock type writer No. 230,099, and liiss' tar dy charge of "forgery by type writer. It was a forpery ex pert at the Fogg Art Museum who inadvertently tipped off Hiss' investigators to the possibility 'hat the very typewriter introduced as Hiss' was itself a kind of base forgery. Cook asks solemnly whether there was a political conspiracy to frame Hiss. Does it sound ut terly preposterous? Does he dare suggest we could have a Dreyfus, or could this ever be "J'accuse?" Yet the appalling doubts which trouble this conscientious author, and presumably the cloak-and- dagger implications, too though they reach into high government circles, are impressively indorsed in some jacket quotes; and in truth no book yet, including Hiss' own, has asked the old disturbing questions so cogently. A Dream our aggregate civilian consump tion. And his lesson is made plainer by the consequences of three dev astating RAF raids on Hamburg: bombs smashed the sites of unes sential occupations and freed count less men to work on wartime ma teriel; in fact the city's martial productivity may have increased There are two kinds of produc tion, Galbraith says, public and private. We are too much for pri vate, in his opinion, and he jibes at us for thinking it's all right to expand phone service but not pos- .tal service, for paying for vac ullms for " houses but not for street cleaners, for imagining in general that alcohol, comic books and mouth wash, the fruit of pri vate enterprise, are economically more worthy than schools, judges and municipal swimming pools The man who "develops a new car buretor, cleanser or depilatory for which the public recognizes need ... is one of the valued members of our society. A politi cian or a public servant who dreams up a new public service is a wastrel Galbraith urges expanded public services, and the expenditure of more money for improving the hu man elements in our society rather than increasing the material. He would slap on even stiffcr sales taxes in order to check the con sumption of unnecessary goods; he would increase jobless pay in times of real depression, but cut it in time of prosperity. "Not the total of resources but their studied and rational use is the key to achievement," he con cludes. This is a challenging book by a free-swinging author who now lets the liberals have the back of his hand, and now lets the conserva tives. But liberals will be for him conservatives will be for burning him. Galbraith is always slipping something over on his guileless reader. While he makes passes at your funny bone as a diversion, he inches you over farther and far ther, imperceptibly but irresistibly into the unconscionably progrcs sive positions you've shunned be fore. Pillage Of A Birthplace KING ARTHUR'S AVALON: The Story of Glastonbury. By Geoffrey Ashe. Dutton. $5. King Arthur and King Cole, St. Bridget and St. Patrick, Joseph of Arunathea, the Holy Grail what a fantastic assortment of proper names to catch all in the pages of a single book where, ab sorbingly enough, Ashe makes! them fit. In 1525' Richard Whiting was chosen abbot of Glastonbury. In 1939 King Henry made sure he was the last: He was condemned to death, dragged through town on a hurdle, hanged, beheaded and quartered. It was one of the spec tacular, but by no means unique, acts of the religious upheavel. ine Abbey, which till then had been more important even than West minster, was pillaged. Except for ruins, that ended centuries of dom inance in English legend, history, church and state. In Glastonbury, superposed and overlapping, arc significant traces of Celts, Ro mans, Anglo-Saxons, early Catho lics and Anglicans. "Here if any where, symbolically at least, mod ern Britain was born," Ashe claims. He has numerous modest dis claimers: He may not be able tc prove a statement, but nobody can disprove it; or maybe nobody ever told of this or that but lots of things have gone unrecorded. Fact and supposition, dates, names and fairy tales are combined judicious ly to end sorqe of our illusions, and happily to preserve others. It's a bit of quiet good reading. Wholesome Shmolsome By W. G. ROGERS SEIDMAN AND SON. Elick Moll. Putnam. $3.95. Seidman leading his dog in Cen tral Park introduces himseh to another man on a bench, and to us: Dressmaker, has wife, daugh ter and son, dog named Samson has been scratching itself raw ever since the boy went off to Korea. The moment a dog appears in a novel, you can be sure it s tear jcrker, and this is it, and a beaut, too, richly sentimental and as wholesome shmolsome as corn flakes, as Seidman would put it. The boy comes home a blathering idealist impatient to reform the world, or at least Seventh Avenue and the garment district. Remem bering the poverty-stricken Kor eans, he can't let his wealthy father buy him a $100 suit; he wants to write, he stands up for the tenants against the dastardly landlord; he leads the revolution in his father's own shop, and even involves in his starry-eyed dreams the lovely model Marie, a Gen tile but as you can bet a rich one. Lots of novels are about the bad things in life, and there's nothing wrong with that. Moll writes about the good, and there s nothing wrong with that. Indeed in this particular case, lust about everything is all right. You'll love Scidman's zostful talk, and the conferences and rendezvous and family sessions that range from poignant to hilarious: and the warm fond telling of this story will tickle schmickle you to pieces. LIBRARY BOSTON UH George Washing ton's private library 835 books and pamphlets has reposed in the Boston Athenaeum for the past 110 years. In 1847 Henry Stevens a bookseller, bought '.he books from a grandnephew of the first President, boon afterward group of Boston businessmen raised $3,800 and bought the li brary for the Athenaeum. Collyer Encourages Study Of Economics By JOHN LYON COLLYER Chairman, The B. F. Goodrich Ct. (Written for NEA Service) AKRON, Ohio (NEA) One of the biggest discussions in educa tion history now is concerned with the question of what should be taught in our schools. In one specific field of study remarkable unanimity has been demonstrated in recent weeks: five major educational associations representing thousands of educa tors, from school administrators to teachers, have combined to bring to the attention of educators and laymen the use of one particular textbook for the teaching ot eco nomics in high schools. This textbook is the first dis cussion of the economics of the American capitalistic system spe cifically prepared for high schools. I! represents the composite efforts of some 200 educators, business executives, trade union repre sentatives, and economists. It has been tested in high school class rooms. Its title: "American Capitalism: An Introduction for Young Citi zens. Why all this stress on econom ics? . . Educators, like businessmen, .have long been painfully aware that most young people are uneducated economics; many leave high school completely ignorant of the way in which our economy or any nation s economy functions. According to a Brookings Insti tution study, fewer than five per cent of high school graduates have had any course in economics. Only two large metropolitan school systems require students to study it. And many schools do not reach it at all, even as part of their social study courses. Yet when these young people take jobs, when they spend their wages, save for future needs, buy homes, even vote in elections, they are faced with economic and po litical economic decisions. Eco nomics play a vital part in the day-to-day activities of every per son. Spearheading educators' efforts to firing sound economic instruc tion to the high schools is the Coun cil for the Advancement of Secon dary Education. This organization is as unique as the project it sponsoring. .- CASE was set up by the Nation al Association of Secondary-School Principals, a department of the National Education Association, whose nearly 20.000 members are principals of junior and senior schools, public and private. Its sponsor then asked the Na tional Better Business Bureau for help from business in working out programs to improve secondary education. The result: 39 of the na tion's leading corporations arc sponsors of CASE; eight of its 21 trustees arc business, labor and agriculture executives, while the rest are prominent ceucators. Economic education, educators say, must lead students to learn how lo think, not what to think. And the place to provide this train ing Is at high school level: High school students are lust at the age when an intense interest in the future develops, Ihey are young enough to learn eagerly, old enough to work with complex ideas and form sound judgments if the facts are prcsenied in stimulating form. Some 80 per cent of our eight million high school youths end their formal instruction in high school, so instruction in econom ics must be given lo them there if they ore to get it at all. The CASE program is designed to meet these two needs, and to do so within the framework of existing school study programs. That it achieves these objectives is shown by the voluntary support it is receiving from five depart ments of the National Education Association. Besides the National Association of Secondary-School Principals, they are the American Associa tion of School Administrators, the National Council for Social Studies, the Association for Supervision of Curriculum Development, and the United Business Education Associ ation. "American Capitalism" is but the first in a series of books that CASE plans to issue in its long range program to give our schools a new approach to economic edu cation. It will be followed by oth ers on related subjects. Given the support of educators, of business and labor leaders, of all citizens who recognize the need for training young people to face economic problems intelligently, the CASE Economic Literacy Scr ies promises to make a major con tribution to education in America. Best Sellers FICTION ANATOMY OF A MURDER, Traver. THE WINTHROP WOMAN, Se- ton. ICE PALACE, Fcrber. NORTH FROM ROME, Macln- nes. RALLY ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS! Shulman. NONFICTION MASTERS OF DECEIT, Hoover. PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES, Kerr. KIDS SAY THE DAItNDEST THINGS, Linkletter. INSIDE RUSSIA TODAY, Gun- ther. THE GREAT DEMOCRACIES. Churchill.. A Salute To Lasting Love THE QUICK YEAR. By Jean Ariss. Harper. $3.95. "My . grandparents had been married 27 years when I was nine, and five of their sons were young er than I." With this sentence, which takes a little getting used lo, the girl Sharon, granddaughter of Joseph and Sarah, begins Ihe fiery story of the Baer clan. "This family," complains one of Joseph's daugh ters. "It's like living in a zoo." In fact it's a combination of zoo and goldfish bowl, for many of these people are most unconven tionally uninhibited; and the grand sire himself, goatish, ribald and superbly intense, is followed from the time he wins 14-ycar-old Sarah till be becomes a great-grandfather. This is a novel about a great sprawling family life, and about a sort of swashbuckling fireside patriarch who rules his brood by his invincible passions and stirs up a surpassing affection and envy in his descendents. Miss Arris' frankness or rather, honest Shar on'smay disturb some readers It shoiildn t. This moving story eloquently salutes the line full everlasting love of the heart. MAYOR'S PLATES SYRACUSE, N. Y. Wl City Hall officials had a busy time ex plaining why Mayor Anthony Hen ninger's official car still bore 1957 license plates several days after the law required all vehicles to show 1958 plates. They explained the mayor's car was testing spe cial all-weather plates issued In 1957 and the tests would not end for several more months.
