Reader's Choice

BY OSCAR HANDLIN

In THE PROUD TOWER (Macmillan, $7.95), BARBARA TUCHMAN sketches a portrait of the Western world in the quarter century before the guns of August, 1914, marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.

Her purpose is to describe the contradictory tendencies that were the legacy of the nineteenth century to the twentieth. The proud tower of European civilization “was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more selfreliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other’s company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest.”

A chronological framework is inadequate to contain all the elements of the picture. Instead, Miss Tuchman traces eight broad themes which organize the outstanding features of society at the turn of the century. An analysis of the English aristocracy at the point where a Conservative government took office in 1895 uncovers the modes by which a patrician elite exercised power. There is an abrupt contrast with the anarchists, intellectuals outraged by the injustices of their time, who denied the legitimacy of power and resorted to assassination to demonstrate their love of humanity.

These two introductory accounts lead into four ingenious chapters which deal with the issues of war and peace. Around the career of Speaker Thomas B. Reed, Miss Tuchman weaves the story of the end of the dream of American isolation and the involvement of the United States in imperialism. The life of the composer Richard Strauss is the guiding thread in a discussion of “Neroism” in Germany. The Dreyfus Case is the focus of a perceptive analysis of the military spirit in France. And the two Hague conferences knit together the disparate forces which shaped the peace movement.

The last two chapters deal with the successes and failures of organized labor. The process of parliamentary reform in England between 1905 and 1911 shows power slipping away from the Conservative aristocracy, with the Liberals the beneficiaries for the moment, but with the new Labor Party preparing to contest for control. The tragedy of Jean Jaurès, with which the book ends, is also the tragedy of European socialism, which proved incapable of meeting the crisis of war in 1914.

The Proud Tower is consistently interesting. Its author is a skillful and imaginative writer. She has the storyteller’s knack for getting the maximum dramatic effect out of the events which crowd her pages, whether the political debates over the reform of the House of Lords or the pomp of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Miss Tuchman knows how to bring alive personalities as diverse as the golf-playing intellectual Arthur Balfour, the anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin, or the insufferable Kaiser Wilhelm II. The effective use of anecdotes and quotations carries the reader effortlessly along.

That Miss Tuchman has not told the whole story she is well aware. The book, she explains, “could be written all over again under the same title with entirely other subject matter.” Her vignettes open eight windows through which we catch discontinuous glimpses of the life of a tumultuous era. But we do not thereby arrive at a comprehension of the forces that move the people we observe.

The disclaimer of completeness explains but does not justify crucial omissions. We arrive at the final page to discover the international solidarity of labor dissolved as the worker shoulders his rifle against fellow workers of another land. But there has been no coherent discussion of nationalism, nor indeed of such other major developments as industrialization and technological change.

Miss Tuchman is unwilling to judge some subjects more important than others because she does not aim to arrive at any overall conclusion: “to draw some tidy generalization from the heterogeneity of the age would be invalid.” As a result she is content to refrain from asking, and therefore fails to answer, the significant questions. Why did the English aristocrats acquiesce in the surrender of power? Why did the socialists so readily shoulder arms? If the Venezuela dispute so seriously inflamed Anglo-American relations, whence the rapprochement that developed almost at once? It is a tribute to Miss Tuchman’s narrative skill that she can guide the reader’s attention away from issues of this sort. But in doing so she misses the opportunity for adding to his understanding.

It is hardly necessary to remind Americans in 1966 of their stake in the Pacific and Asia. Yet the area is so remote and its culture is so far removed from that of the United States that policy judgments are hazardous indeed. The war, the collapse of old empires, and the development of Communism and nationalism have thrust upon us unfamiliar responsibilities.

Two disturbing books illustrate the complexities of these problems. FORMOSA BETRAYED (Houghton Mifflin, $6.95) by GEORGE H. KERR, argues that the island is not really Chinese in character and should therefore not be ruled by either Mao or Chiang. The author is familiar with the territory, having lived and taught there before the Second World War, and having served after the surrender as Naval Attaché and later as Vice-Consul. He knows the facts and writes with passion, but not always with conviction.

The thesis of the book is that the United States made a mistake in the Cairo Declaration of 1943 when it pledged the restoration of Formosa to China. The island’s connections with the mainland had always been thin, and the people had prospered under Japanese rule. Mr. Kerr believes that they would have preferred American trusteeship to government by the Chinese. Instead, they were handed over to the greedy Nationalist Army, which ruthlessly suppressed their effort at rebellion in February, 1947. After the military collapse of the Kuomintang government on the mainland and Chiang’s retreat to Formosa, the situation became worse, and the islanders’ hopes for independence died. The United States was ultimately responsible for the betrayal. It should have held control until the Formosans were in a position to govern themselves.

The analysis is somewhat overdrawn and fails to take into account the genuine economic and social progress in Taiwan in the past decade. Certainly the indices of economic development are encouraging. There is also evidence that the old animosities are subsiding and that the basis has emerged for a free China in which elements of both cultures will fuse.

Moreover, all such efforts to spell out what might have been discount the pressures of the actual situation. Even had the wartime leaders enjoyed the leisure to consider the case for Formosan independence, they could not have turned against Chiang, their ally in a desperate struggle against a common enemy.

Above all, Formosa illustrates the dilemma repeatedly posed to American policy makers. To have followed the line Mr. Kerr urges and to have assumed a protectorate over Formosa would have exposed the United States to precisely the charges of imperialism that undermine its position in the uncommitted areas of the world. Yet the United States cannot abdicate the responsibilities that power thrusts upon it. After 1945 it could neither leave the island to the Japanese nor assure it independence nor allow Chiang’s regime to collapse. Under these very difficult circumstances, the bestintentioned policies were bound to be imperfect.

The dilemma is even more clearly stated in AMERICA’S PARADISE LOST (John Day, $5.95) by WILLARD PRICE. This is a description of Micronesia, some two thousand Pacific islands held as a trust territory by the United States, the most important being Saipan, Palau, Truk, and Yap.

Mr. Price knows the islands well. He was one of the very few white men to visit them in the 1930s, when the territory was a tightly guarded Japanese mandate. The present book is the product of an eightthousand-mile tour, and it presents a lucid description of an area with problems for which there are no ready solutions.

Their culture has not prepared the islanders for political independence. Their economy is scarcely viable, and they have neither the training nor the institutions appropriate to a twentieth-century state. If all the strangers were to go away, the tribes would revert to the internecine warfare which retarded their development in the past. But all the strangers will not go away. If the United States, for whatever reason, should withdraw, other more aggressive powers would quickly pour into the resultant vacuum.

Substantial groups among the islanders understand that they need not political independence, but support and development. Indeed, the strongest resentments — among the followers of the curious Cargo Cult — arise out of the conviction that the Americans are somehow withholding gifts that are due the people.

The classic responses to colonialism are therefore hardly relevant here. Some of these atolls may have strategic value, but scarcely enough to give the United States an interest in holding them. American imperialism therefore involves a commitment to expenditure rather than the prospect of a gain. If we succeed in our task, our reward in the next generation is likely to be an antiAmerican nationalist movement. In a sense that Kipling did not intend, colonies have become the burdens of the developed nations.

TILLMAN DURDIN’S SOUTHEAST ASIA (Atheneum, $3.95) offers an excellent general introduction to the vast area that borders on China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Indochina, Burma, and Thailand. This is the most useful of the New York Times “Byline” Books yet to appear. Written by a veteran foreign correspondent who has spent more than thirty years in the Far East, it reveals an expert’s knowledge of the subject, yet it is concise and clearly written. Thoroughly objective, it gives the general reader an excellent, if not altogether cheerful, picture of the whole region.

A brief historical introduction opens up a survey of the diverse peoples and places in the area. There is a sober, balanced account of the independence movement and its consequences and a good analysis of what Sukarno has meant for Indonesia. Durdin’s characterization of the political and economic consequences of independence is judicious and leads to pithy chapters on Communist aggression, the influence of China, and the situation in Vietnam. Mr. Durdin concludes: “the simple if unacceptable fact is that Southeast Asia is too weak at the present stage of history to determine its own destiny. It must rely on the United States and the Thais to protect it from direct and indirect Chinese Communist domination.”Only thus can the forms of regional cooperation develop that would give these independent countries the opportunity fully to control their own destiny.

Useful as such accounts are, they offer only a narrow vantage point from which to regard the problems of Western contact with Asia. Political concerns are in the forefront of our attention, and it is understandable that books written around a topical focal point should concentrate on governmental affairs and should view economic and social issues in the context of public policy. The result, however, is sometimes to obscure the human beings involved and the traumatic shock of changes that have transformed the lives of millions in the past two decades.

The ability to keep the human context in view accounts for the unusual quality of MASLYN WILLIAMS’ FIVE JOURNEYS FROM JAKARTA (Morrow, $6.00). The author is an expert on documentary films for the Australian government, and perhaps for that reason has an eye not only for the intimate details of village life but also for their cultural meaning. His absorbing account of Indonesia’s people is written with, compassionate understanding and avoids alike the dangers of condescension and of sentimentality. It is a superb introduction to an alien culture.

In Indonesia as in many other parts of Asia, the first encounters with European influence were not totally disruptive. Village organization, family life, and religious values survived intact for hundreds of years. The description of Bali reveals the resilience of the old forms even in the middle of the twentieth century. But independence and industrialization have proved to be more powerful solvents, for better or worse, than imperialism; and the changes that began with the ouster of the Dutch twenty years ago steadily gather momentum. The confusion and corruption of Jakarta, and the disorientation of personal existence in the countryside, are evidence of the operations of profound social forces with which we shall have to reckon in the future.

The elections of December, 1965, which burst the bubble of Charles de Gaulle’s popularity in France, cast a curious light upon two recent accounts of that enigmatic personality. Both are the products of competent analysts. Both contain the materials for an assessment of the creator of the Fifth Republic. But both authors are so swept away by the illusion of De Gaulle’s necessity that they are incapable of dealing with him critically or of anticipating his repudiation.

DAVID SCHOENBRUN has earned an enviable reputation as a broadcaster and commentator on world affairs. He knows France intimately and writes with care and thoughtfulness. His THE THREE LIVES OF CHARLES DE GAULLE (Atheneum, $6.95) is a useful biography which takes its subject through his career as soldier, as wartime leader in exile, and as the statesman who solved the problems of his country.

The flaw in the book is the religious awe with which the author regards its leading character. “Incarnation and Reincarnation,” “The Immaculate Concept,” “The Moment of Truth for the French.” “Mortality and Immortality” are among the chapter titles which reflect a worshipful attitude uncongenial to criticism.

FRANCOIS MAURIAC’S DE GAULLE (Doubleday, $4.50) is even more candidly rhapsodic. The NobelPrize-winning novelist has not here attempted to write a formal biography or history but rather has chosen to describe the way in which he thinks about De Gaulle. The tone of the book is set in the account of the very first meeting with the hero, shortly after liberation. “Can anyone who has not lived, suffered, and, if not fought, at least resisted in some obscure fashion in occupied France . . . can such a person understand that I had to lean against the wall to keep from faltering?” The mystic’s faith in his savior leaves no room for questioning.

Both books therefore cling to the myth of De Gaulle’s consistency. From his earliest youth De Gaulle knew exactly what his duty was; he held inflexibly to his purpose; and by the power of his will, he attained his goal, which was the salvation of his country.

It takes true faith to adhere to this position in the face of the facts. De Gaulle, for example, commonly receives credit for the solution of the Algerian problem. Yet his stony refusal to make his position known in the years when a constructive compromise was possible encouraged the intransigence of the advocates of Algérie française who brought him to power. That he ultimately betrayed those who had been his most enthusiastic supporters is hardly evidence of foresight on his part. In the same way, expediency and uncertainty have been characteristic of his relations with Germany and Red China. That his own rhetoric covers up these shifts with affirmations that they are for the glory of France, of which he is custodian, accounts for his capacity to dazzle observers. But the belief does not make the emperor’s clothing real.

Paradoxically, Mauriac is more aware of the illusion than Schoenbrun. Mauriac realizes that there is no connection between the France of De Gaulle’s vision and that of actuality. De Gaulle “seems to have dissociated once and for all the ephemeral French from eternal France, as if he had finally decided that the nation’s greatness depends only on the mind that directs it.”Censorship, the failure to develop a coherent political order, the weakness of the educational system, the debasement of taste, sexuality, alcoholism, and corruption do not matter so long as the vision remains pure in the heart of the leader.

The irony lies in the extent to which the deception was successful until tested in December, 1965. It was not De Gaulle alone who believed in his indispensability; his most powerful opponents were unwilling to take what seemed the futile step of running against him. In the end, the French of actuality did have their say at the ballot box, and their verdict stands in mocking contrast to the laudatory judgment of these books.