Not So Wild a Dream

ERIC SEVAREID’S Not So Wild a Dream is among the finest of autobiographies of American correspondents. It is more than a book about adventure in strange lands, among grim tumults of arms. It begins with a boyhood in the Dakotas, as World War I diminishes into history; it portrays life in the wheat lands; recaptures the excitement of an adolescent boy’s journey by canoe through the wastes of Canada to the Great Slave Lake and Hudson Bay; recounts wanderings among hoboes in the Pacific hinterland; spells out the bleak discoveries made during an apprenticeship at newspaper work in Minneapolis; chronicles the author’s adventures with ideas at the University. Here was preparation. The Fateful voyage to Europe in the late thirties, pre-war observation and reporting on the progressive dissolution of a precarious peace, and a job with CBS completed the course.

Not So wild a Dream grows from this foundation through its inevitable stages as the great war unfolds— in Franee, in England, in China, in Burma, in North Africa. in Italy, and once more in France. Yet the growth is not merely an affair of chronology and campaigns. What makes this hook important is that wisdom and perception keep pace with compassion and a constantly widening view of life. Here one encounters the drama of ideological conflict which has wracked our world and continues to harass us, even after the guns have fallen silent. The issues of human freedom and social justice are never forgotten; hut they are presented in terms of human hopes and human suffering, rather than as abstract principles.

Mr. Sevareid has a knack of sticking close to earthy facts, however painful. It may be doubted, for instance, that his chapter on the mission to China will please the champions of the Kuoinintang, who have been loudly vocal among us. That trip was undertaken at the request. of President Roosevelt, who sought to combat the propaganda campaign waged by Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who, in his opinion, was deluding the American public. Never has the Italian campaign been more mercilessly exposed. Here is a story of military fatuity, of pompous bumbling, of reckless waste of lives, which it. would be difficult to parallel on any war front. Here is the story of the American general who ordered an attack because he had a date with his official photographer! Here fascistminded martinets, gorgeous in brass, cavort with “the best people” — who were but lately vigorous champions of Il Duee. And here, incidentally, is one of the host narratives of the invasion of Southern France.

JAMES H. POWERS