The Peripatetic Reviewer

WE ARE getting along quite comfortably without boiled shirts, golf balls, and silk stockings (a few outcries here). The real pinch comes when we try to maintain the essentials. Meat is an essential, but how much is a family entitled to and what shall it be — horsemeat, hamburger, or good ribs of roast? Gasoline we used to think essential; now we are not so sure. But I don’t think it ever occurred to us that books might be rationed.

Reading is protected by the Atlantic Charter, for obviously you can’t ha ve Freedom of Speech without Freedom to Print. But despite this license from on high the growth of new books has been threatened, first in England and now in this country, by government restrictions. The crisis arose in England when the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to levy a purchase tax on books. The battle which followed was swift and loud. The London Times, the Manchester Guardian, the Spectator, and the New Statesman brought up the heavy artillery. George Bernard Shaw and J. B. Priestley led the phalanx of authors, and in Parliament one hundred members rose to protest, chief among them A. P. Herbert (is there any Atlantic reader who missed his “Two Gentlemen of Soho”?) who destroyed the pro-tax argument with this direct hit: “Bibles are to be taxed, prayer books, Handel and Shakespeare, but betting is not taxed.” The tax was rejected, and with it the dangerous philosophy that new books can be dispensed with at a time of enormous social change.

The debates in the House of Commons in May, 1940, when Neville Chamberlain was acknowledging the defeats of that fateful spring, stand out as an example to the world of how a democratic people can take self-criticism at a time of utmost peril. Ever since, English publishers have maintained the right of free speech. The shortage of paper has necessarily restricted the volume of new books and it has noticeably affected their appearance. They are uniformly small, the paper is gray, no longer creamy, and the type is close-packed. But the right to criticize has never been surrendered; unquestionably books are more essential in England today than at any other time this century.

Now we feel the pinch. We (and Canada) find ourselves short of men to process the paper and the gray goods used in bookbinding. Publishers of newspapers, magazines, and books have already taken a 10 per cent cut in paper — you can see the result in the Atlantic or in any new book you pick up. They say another cut is coming. But before the knife falls, let’s try to get a clear picture of our paper supply and so determine whether the amount consumed by books is essential or excessive.

Last year the American Bible Society manufactured more than eight million Bibles, Testaments, and books of Biblical selections. Sounds like a lot of paper. But wait a minute. The statistics show that less than one half of one per cent of all the paper used in America goes into books. Sterling North put it graphically in the Chicago Daily News: “In every hundred-car trainload of paper only one half of the last car goes into Bibles and textbooks, trade books and juveniles, and all other types of books issued by publishers. . .”

In this case the figures don’t talk, they shout. Approximately 20,370,000 tons of paper were consumed in the United States in 1941. Of this total (I am still quoting Mr. North), approximately 100,000 tons were used for books, 800,000 tons for magazines, and 1,100,000 tons for advertising. “We don’t burn books,” adds the critic; “we merely slash the paper allotment. The motives are vastly different but some of the results are the same.”

That is what it comes down to. We know that people are reading intently — millions of them reading as they never read before. We intend that this war shall free the spirit and open the mind. If books are, as the President says, “weapons for man’s freedom,” it would be reckless to suppress them. If further restrictions of paper are inevitable, then we must have the courage to discriminate between the comics and the Saturday Evening Post, between a 38-page government leaflet on the flea and the true story of an American pilot, between a Sunday newspaper in eight sections and Mr. Willkie’s One World.

A year ago we were holding on for our life. How close we came to defeat in Russia and the Pacific, Libya and the North Atlantic, history will tell us ten years from now. Then we were like a punch-drunk boxer who suddenly comes out of his daze to land a right to the jaw. Doolittle’s Raid was the blow I mean. It was desperately struck and the reprisal was terrible. But the audacity of the attack (remember it was our first) and the heroism of the eighty men who made it bucked up our home courage and I suspect strengthened our liaison with China beyond present calculation.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (Random House $2.00) is a pilot’s report of what the raid felt like: here are the long training under secrecy and the long haul in the carrier; here is the short, breathless takeoff on that bucking sea (could Doolittle make it?); here are the unforgettable seconds over Tokyo and then the scoot for the China Coast, ending with the crash as the gas ran out — and pain. This little book is a great deal more than graphic journalism. The author, Captain Ted W. Lawson, first takes you into his confidence and then into the fraternity of that hand-picked squadron. But after he has dropped his bombs on the secret targets in the city, he does something quite as difficult from a writer’s point of view: he takes you into the miasma of pain.

Military secrecy gave us a false assurance about these flyers. When The Ruptured Duck swung low for her landing on the China Coast., her motors suddenly went dead; her wheels caught a wave and the plane stopped as if it had hit a solid wall at 110 m.p.h. Captain Lawson was catapulted through the windshield, his left leg was laid open from hip to knee (he was to lose it later from septic poisoning), and his face was mutilated. ”You think of some funny things, irrelevant things,” he says, “when your life is suddenly filled with the unreality of being badly hurt" — things like trying to pull the wings off your shirt to reward a guerrilla and t he embarrassment of two silk slippers when you can only use one.

Ted Lawson speaks for the hurt, and the story of his healing and self-control makes you proud of him, of Doc” White, of the missionaries and the Chinese who gave him all they had.

He tells his tale with the editorial assistance of Robert Considine.

After the raid on Tokyo came retreats, came Midway, Sevastopol, then Stalingrad, the desert victory, North Africa — and our hopes began to lift. But not yet having to fight on home soil, it is hard for us to comprehend the anguish of our hard-driven partners. Said a friend recently, “The war goes too well. The generals are winning too fast.” Meaning that unless we can make firmer plans for the peace, we shall be hated by every ally we’ve tried to help. We are trying to balance the French factions, we shall be asked to intercede for the Poles and Norwegians, and what about our unresolved sympathy for India and China? “Kill the umpire!” we used to shout from the bleechers. Now we’re the umpire.

China’s case has been well spoken by Madame Chiang. Now it is pungently written by that philosopher long resident among us, Lin Yutang.Between Tears and Laughter (John Day $3.00) has in it the anger and grief of a patient people who have endured long punishment for the promised land and are still none too sure of the promise.

The issue, as Dr. Lin sees it, is the issue of empire versus freedom as it stubbornly divides the Allied cause in India, Burma, and China. Old sores are here — our shipment of pig iron to Japan; General Wavell’s commandeering of Lend-Lease supplies for China; the inability of Allied statesmen to comprehend Asiatic problems. Mr. Churchill’s “liquidation" speech makes him see red; he fiercely resents the British policy which insists on the status quo until peace has been won. “The Indians wanted real power in the defense of their country; the British government would not give it to them.” To Dr. Lin the issue is as simple as that and the implications enormous. “ Peace and Power are two jealous women,” the philosopher remarks, “and always refuse to stay in the same room.”

Few Americans will follow out this thesis without large reservations. To us, Winston Churchill and Mr. Roosevelt stand as men who mustered the Power to make Peace possible. We too dread the possibility that such Power will prove “intoxicating” when the fighting ends. We also dread the possibility of disgust leading to “hemispheric withdrawal” if the New World is reviled on all sides for not instantly relieving the burdens of the Old. The value of this book lies in its long sweep; the close view, I suspect, looks differently in Chungking. But even in disagreement it should be read, for its voice and passion and special pleading are of the reawakened Asia, no longer a princess sleeping and supine.

To watch Booth Tarkington slice open a selfcentered American community is still a good sight for anyone interested in the analytical powers of a veteran novelist. In Kate Fennigate (Doubleday, Doran $2.50) Mr. Tarkington has put on the surgeon’s apron and rubber gloves; he is grave, efficient, and, I must say, surprisingly cold-blooded as he exposes the antagonism, the jealousy, and the disloyalty which have made Kate’s spirit ingrowing and her days, so many of them, a torment.

The novelist warns us early in the story that Kate is a prig; her class has voted her “The Most Respected Girl,” and the illness of her mother and the defections of her father have made her conscientious as the devil. Inside her shell you know that she is a pretty good sort, but you never feel on tender terms with her.

And I don’t think Mr. Tarkington intends that you should. For, like The Three Sisters, this is a group portrait. Laila, Kate’s completely disloyal “best friend”; Aunt Daisy in her hermitage, the old house; and Kate herself with her elaborate defense mechanism — these are the heroines, and the point of the story is to watch their effect on the best men available. Each of the ladies is case-hardened, each lives in an iron cell of her own, and their triple persecution of Ames Lanning, Kate’s long-sought and always naive husband, provides a narrative so shrewd and ruthless that your curiosity never falters. Though, as persons, it would be hard to care deeply for any of them.

The strength of this novel is one-sided. The women have it all. Malcolm the tippler, Ames the malleable, Tuke the jealous, Bill the boor — yes, they are typical of any community, but I wish Mr. Tarkington had made one of them a man.

When the heat could not be worse, the fortyeight states run the cold water and say to themselves, “Pretty bad. It’s the humidity. But, gosh, I shouldn’t like to be in Washington!”

It was 114 degrees in the sun on my last visit to the capital, and to cool my thoughts I took refuge in Brentano’s Bookstore. The manager, Joseph A. Margolies (he has recently become a New York publisher), delighted me with his account of who reads what in Washington.

“There’s always a call for mystery stories,” he said. “I should say the two most inveterate readers were Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean and the late Mrs. Taft. Old and frail as she was, Mrs. Taft would come down to the store herself to select each wreck’s ration. Mrs. McLean read so many that she could never be sure of the titles. So we developed a system of back references to make sure she didn’t go over the same ground twice.”

“What do people do for presents?” I asked.

“Well, speaking of birthdays,” said Mr. Margolies, “I remember Mrs. Roosevelt’s telephoning at four in the afternoon one January 30th for a birthday present for the President. We sent over several suggestions by a messenger, and what she picked was a beautiful set of Robert Burns. Another time Harry Hopkins telephoned about a birthday present for his wife. He wanted a well-bound set of Tolstoy or Dostoevski — I remember because we didn’t have an expensive set of either in stock.”

“You must get a lot of business from the Embassies,” I said.

“Yes, before they left town the Japanese were the biggest book buyers of all. They never missed a book dealing with the Army or Navy, nor any that had to do with international affairs, particularly in South America. For instance, they would order at least twelve copies of every issue of Jane’s Fighting Ships, and so on down the line. The German Embassy was another good customer, though I noticed their secretaries were always in search of books by Americans which put our country in a questionable light — books on the Negro question and other racial and economic problems.”

“How about our friends?” I asked.

“Ever since Ambassador Litvinoff’s arrival, the Soviet Embassy has been one of Brentano’s biggest customers. As I remember it, they bought two complete sets of the WPA State Guides. They have a standing order for books on political matters — which, I may say, is well filled by a special clerk.

“The British are hard to keep track of, their tastes are so varied. I myself waited on General Waved when he was last here, and sold him The Three Bamboos, Von Clausewitz’s On War, and — a rhyming dictionary!”

If writing verse keeps General Waved cool in Washington, I dare say it will help him as he sits on the lid of India’s stove.

Were the Japanese buying our books today, one new one they would be sure to order is Vertical Warfare by Francis Vivian Drake (Doubleday, Doran $3.00), for here is the damnation total of what air bombardment has amounted to thus far; here is the terrible potential which we are only now seizing in our hands; here, if we prevail, is the handwriting on the wall for Japan. Beginning in 1940, Mr. Drake drove home the principles of modern air power in a series of Atlantic articles as prophetic as any in our history. Now in his book he narrates what precision bombing has achieved thus far, and then predicts what it will do in the immediate future if our generals and admirals allow it to be concentrated.

In crisp detail and in photographs (many of them released for the first time) he shows you the bombing of the German dams, the Ruhr, the land targets in North Africa, and describes the sinking of the 'Trieste by a Flying Fortress and the attacks on Japanese warships. Again and again the author underscores his thesis that we shall achieve victory by bombing much more quickly, and at infinitely lower cost of life, than by the traditional land invasion. No layman is competent to say whether this can be done here and now. But every layman will take from this book the awful understanding of what air power will be five, ten, fifty years from now. And who will then keep the freedom of the air?