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About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (June 8, 1958)
SUNDAY, JUNE 8, 1958 HERALD AND NEWS, KLAMATH FALLS,-OREGON PAGE 11 D BOOK REVIEWS Communism Aired By J. Edgar Hoover : Communism ha produced a vast literature. That literature has Hi been notably enriched, with 'X Edgar Hoover's newly-published "Masters of Deceit" (Henry Holt It Company, New York: $5.00), -"-Mr. Hoover's book carries the subtitle "The Story of Communism .in America and How to Fight it." . No man is more familiar with ' that story. He was made director of the Federal , Bureau of Inves tigation during the Coolidge Ad ministration, has been retained in ''office by every president since, and has done an outstanding job in keeping the bureau free of polit ical influence, inefficiency and cor ruption. And, in recent years, Mr. Hoover and the Bureau have be : come more and more involved with ' the Communist conspiracy. The purpose of VMasters of De ceit" is intensely practical. It is to explain the facts 'about com munismwhat it is, how it works, what its aims are, the dangers it poses, and what loyal Americans must do to protect their freedom. Mr. Hoover provides a short ac count of communism's beginnings and goes on to explain who Amer ican Communists are and why they adopt the ideology. He shows how the party is organized, and deals with its subtle and devious strat egy and tactics. Espionage and sabotage weapons with which trained Communists are ex traordinarily adept are given careful attention. Mr. Hoover is particularly con cerned with the danger of discount ing the menace of communism in the United States. It is true that party membership has declined. The Wily Old Were World s Sycamore Men, by David Taylor (Lippincott): The third of David Taylor's novels of the American Revolution. It tells of the handful of Americans who proved in the swamps of South Carolina that they were fit to .rank with the world's great guerrillas 30-odd years before the word had been invented. The wily old Indian fighters, Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter and Andrew Pickens, harried the Redcoats back and forth across their state, raiding outposts, am bushing patrols and hijacking sup plies." They took 10 lives for every one they lost, whether in guerrilla skirmishes or on the few occasions when they could muster enough strength for pitched battle at King's Mountain, the Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse and Eutaw Springs. They won no single de cisive victory but they drove the British out of South Carolina ex cept the base city of Charleston, and they set Cornwallis on t h e road to vorktown. Because their operations were necessarily secret and often unre corded, the guerrillas' story offers Taylor more latitude than the more conventional fighting he de scribed in "Lights Across the Del aware" and "Farewell to Valley Forge." He has taken advantage of this license to interweave an exciting fictional account with his historical details, describing the romance of Col. Dixon Blakely, one of Marion's "Swamp Foxes, and Jewel May Ward, patriotic daughter of a Tory. "Sycamore Men" is an exciting and inspiring account of daring and triumph against heavy odds. Sex and love are topics that have fascinated men since the dawn of mankind. They have been treated in a vast variety of ways from Homer to Mickey Spillane but in few places have they been examined so analytically and dis passionately as in India. Anand (better known as Arthur) Lall, India's permanent delegate to It reached its peak of 80.000 in 1S44, dropped to 22.600 in 1955. and has gone down farther since then. However, no less an authority than .villiam z. roster has said: . . . we no longer measure the import ance of revolutionary organizations by size. In some places where there are only one or two men, more results are obtained than where they have larger organiza tions. ..." If conditions are ripe, a comparative handful can take over a nation and they have done exactly that time and time again. To quote Mr. Hoover: "Un der communism, a tiny minority, lerhaps 10 to 20 men, would rule the United States. An open dictator ship called the 'dictatorship of the proletariat would be established Communist party henchmen would take over, and opposition would be ruthlessly liquidated. What can the individual do about the danger? Mr. Hoover's answer a lot. He must know the answers to communism s false claims. If what appears to be sub versive activity comes to his at tention he should report it, stick ing to the facts, to the nearest FBI office and the FBI, inciden tally, is as much interested in pro tecting civil rights, including the right to hold unpopular opinions, as it is in combatting those who would destroy us. He should be alert and informed. No one can fight communism if he doesn't know what to look for. In this con nection, Masters of Deceit con tain a glossary, in which terms fre quently used by Communists are listed and defined, which will be especially valuable to those whose familiarity with the movement is sketchy. Indian Fighters Best Guerrillas the United Nations, makes an in teresting contribution to the -tra dition with "Seasons of Jupiter," (Harper) a fictional biography of a man who devoted his life to a search for a satisfying relationship with women. Pages That Breathe By W. G. ROGERS THE MAGIC BARREL. By Ber nard Malamud. Farrar, Straus & Cudahy. $3.75. . What is so rare as a writer whose second book can compare with his fine first, and whose third with both? That rare bird, as rare as a whooping crane and a much more whimsical whooper, too, is Malamud, with two novels, The Natural" and "The Assis tant," for which he won the Na tional Institute's Rosenthal award. and now this collection of a doz en short stories. One of them, "The Lady of the Lake. doesn t quite measure up the man can't be perfect all the time, and there ends my fault finding. The various other plots, inci dents or happenings come from the rich and, I hope, inexhaustible wellspring of the corner store, the basement shop, the dingy tone ment, the small neighborhood: The shoemaker wants his daughter to marry the college boy though she secretly loves her father's em ploye: an egg candler repents lor oeserting his family, and the land lord repents for ousting him; a writer exciting to read is disap pointing in person; a prayer is answered, an apartment is found, a child is caught stealing candy, a beggar proves to be a leech, an old friend begs a loan, a boy pretends he likes to read, charity and love are rejected, and in the title story a rabbinical student asks a marriage broker to lind him a wife. Hiss Story Is Relived Alger Hiss was convicted of per jury eight years ago, and he has served his five-year sentence. But the Hiss case is still a matter of controversy as to the guilt or in nocence of the man concerned and especially as to the circumstances of his conviction. The real charge against Hiss was treason, that he gave secret Slate Department documents to Whit taker Chambers, as a fellow-Communist, for transmission to Soviet Russia. Fred J. Cook has written a pene trating and disturbing analysis of this dramatic case in "The Unfin ished Story of Alger Hiss" (Mor row). Cook is a veteraiTnewspaper man, a star crime reporter for tHe New York World-Telegram and Sun. Nobody can accuse him of any leftist slant. He wrote his book because, like many others, he questions Hiss' conviction. Hiss wrote a book in his own de fense. It was not a good iob. Cook has done better. There are some exceedingly ugly implications in cook s DooK. One quotation will give an idea of them: "Either Alger Hiss was a traitor to his country and remains one of the most colossal liars and hypo crites in history, or he is an Amer ican Dreytus, framed on the high est levels of justice for political advantage. FIRST, BUT LAST Rhode Island was first to de clare its independence from Eng land (two lull months before the other colonies), yet was the last of the 13 original colonies to rat ify the Constitution. The Magic Barrel," "Angel Le- vine, about the tailor who prays lor help and gels a marvel of a response in a Jewish Negro "an gel, "The Prison." about the lit tle girl who steals these perhaps demonstrate most rewardingly the peculiar virtues of Malamud s writing. "The Prison" has a rapid fire climax: The man slans his wite, the mother slaps the child the child sticks out her tongue at her would-be benefactor. But this sounds more, pat than Malamud ever is. We sidle into his stories, we run most unexpectedly into a laugh, the talk is roundabout, we Hop for tea with lemon, and sud denly we are caught up in the full bitterness of life or its ecstasy. Malamud has some of the fanci fulness of Chagall, for instance in the visitation of the angel, or in Finkle's vision of violins and candles in the sky as he runs to his beloved. Malamud's people and his milieu you recognize at once census take, ex-coffee salesman, storeman barely able to make ends meet, egg candler, shoemaker, tailor and baker, and just as distinctly. the jobless. But there is more and better - at the core of it. These aren't so much stories; they are, rather, actual lives: you glow with the warmth of friendship, you tremble with first love, you are held fast by fear, you ache for a man's hurt exactly as in sober ing reality. The pages breathe, this is utter naturalness. This isn't just reading a book; you enter Malamud's world, you are there. Science Laid To Schooling By DOUGLAS LARSF.N NEA Staff Correspondent WASHINGTON (NEA) The bottleneck regarding America's ef forts to regain a clear-cut lead in weapon technology can be found in the American school system. This is the belief of colorful Adm. Hyman Rickover, the devel oper of atomic submarines. He is now fighting for reforms in the American school system in the same unorthodox, tiamDoyam manner that he has run the A-sub program. He says: "In my work in nuclear energy I have interviewed more than a thousand young college men and officers. But I never found more than a very small percentage who had the necessary qualifications for this work. I could not but come to the conclusion that something was radically wrong with the schools and colleges to whom the education of these young men had been entrusted. The reaction to Rickover s free swinging, outspoken entry into the field of education has the nation s top educators upset and condemn ing him for talking about some thing he doesn t know anything about. In reply he says: As long as I kept to the line about American teachers needing higher salaries I got nothing but praise from them on how well in formed I was on the subject. But as soon as I said things which might have the effect of making them work harder and making them think, they started a cam paign against me." , Rickover s office is in a creaky. World War II temporary build- Life Changed By Sled Accident A sledding accident in February, 1884, nearly maimed for life its 7- year-old victim, Robert Nelson Spencer, and barred him from an education until he was practically a grown man. But the acute suffering drove him to seek comfort in religion. He listened avidly to his mother s Bible readings and went on to become one of the outstanding churchmen of his day. His story the fight to save the arm, the carting of slop buckets to get an education, his eventual consecration as a bishop whose program was simply to help make the Episcopalians of West Missouri Christians is told dra matically by Lee Hastings Bristol Jr. in "A Seed for a Song" (Lit tle Brown). Among the highpoints are Spen cer's verbal joustings with Clar ence Darrow and Sinclair Lewis, his campaign to loosen the Pender gast machine's grasp on Kansas City and a tangle with the notori ous Tully gang of Chicago. Bristol, a director of public re lations for Bristol-Myers, wanted to enter the ministry himself but was convinced his duty lay -with the company his family helped to lound. He wrote his book while commuting between his home in Princeton, New Jersey, and New York. oimmc Pirintfin BUSINESS FORMS Designed Especially to Fit Your Needs Letterheads Envelopes Cards Invoices Statements Checks All types of Snap Out Forms GUIDE PRINTING CO. 1205 Klamath Ave. Phone TU 4-5373 Bottleneck ing behind the World War I tem porary building, which used to house the main Navy offices on ' Constitution Ave. The confusion of the somewhat shabby offices is un doubtedly ordered. He discusses the schools between fr e q u e n t barked, terse long-distance calls: They say I don't know what I talk about. That's bunk. I know the schools don't give me the peo ple I need. I'm a customer of their product and I'm not satisfied. That's fact. We know that Euro pean kids of comparable age and grade are two and three years ahead of American kids. That's a fact which experts have estab lished. So I do know what I'm talking about and have the right to talk about it." Rickover's most controversial recommendation is that U.S. schools should be made tougher, in the European tradition. He ex plains: "Europe has always demanded 1 more of her children than we have of ours. To attain a high standard of living given a similar level of technology a country must either have a favorable ratio of people to land and resources, or its people must work harder and more intelligently. They must ac quire more competence. We are approaching Europe's situation in this regard. "The Dutch school day is 10 per cent longer than ours, for exam ple. Their school week is six days. or 20 per cent longer. Their school year lasts 240 days, or 33 per cent longer. The Dutch class period is 50 minutes and the homework re quired is a minimum of four hours daily." Rickover's critics charge that Europe's schools are undemocrat ic and that the Admiral's recom mendations' w o u 1 d make U.S. schools the same. "And that's nuts," he insists. "It's the other way around, be cause with the U.S. public schools getting worse, the wealthy people are all sending their children to private schools to get a better ed ucation. That's about the most un democratic thing that can happen to education. This is really creat ing a class society, with only rich kids getting better educations." He adds. "Furthermore, U.S. educators some years ago decided among themselves that they would start teaching kids how to adjust to life and live together happily. They ar bitrarily took over the functions of the home and church to make hap py little ants out of American kids, without anybody's permission. This was undemocratic. "What's Europe's schools do, and ours fail to do, is develop in the most intelligent youngsters the de sire to make the best use of their good minds," he charges. "Hence we see 200.000, or the top quarter of our high school graduates lost each year to higher education while the nation suffers the most acute shortage of trained profes sionals in all fields." William P. Odom, in 1947, made a 19.645-milc flight around the world in 75 hours, five minutes and 11 seconds.
