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
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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.