466
PARTISAN REVIEW
proves, to use the phrase Fondane
borrows so neatly from Nietzsche,
that he was not always equal to
his crime, that his ideas were in–
ferior to his poetry.
L.A.
A Fault of Learning:
A Communication
In the United States our great–
est leaders have never been the
brightest men of their times. In
place of intellectual brilliance they
have had another quality which it
is the purpose of this short essay
to point out, no more than point
out-largely by implication.
Washington, who put the country
on its feet, was not even consid–
ered a good general by his asso–
ciates--except in the one respect,
that he was a good leader. He
began his army career by a blun–
der in the Pennsylvania woods
that all but ended in a scandal
and he lost nearly every battle he
joined thereafter through faulty
planning and lack of foresight due
to lack of
skill.
In fact it might
be said of his ability that he suc–
ceeded in nothing except that
which he set out to do, establish
the Colonies as an independent
state. He was a Mason and ac–
cepted that mood without quibble.
Lincoln certainly was no intel–
lectual giant. He merely kept the
States together and freed the slaves
-as an afterthought. He might
also have saved the South, eco–
nomically,
if
they had given him
the chance; a bigot murdered him.
But those achievements, significant
as they proved to be, were not of
intellectual mintage.
We had, meanwhile, the finan–
cial wizard Hamilton.
The intellectual in a demoeracy
has about him certain tendencies
inimical to the state. He may
dominate them and by so doing
put them at the service of the pub–
lic in the manner of Thorstein
Veblen but they are characteristic
and peculiarly seductive even to
the best minds.
These are, certain intolerances
which are likely to be forced upon
able men in their efforts to main–
tain their individual integrity in a
group intellectually inferior to
them. They can be readily tabu–
lated. In this the intellectual in a
democracy resembles intellectuals
everywhere in the world, tenden–
cies which if yielded to bring
about the most startling correla–
tions of "likes" in the various
political scenes: this, in a democ–
racy, comparable to that, in a
totalitarian state, hardly to have
been suspected until brought into
focus by some chance occurrence
of their virtual identity.
Two such occurrences, John
Dewey's letter to the New York
Times
attacking the picture,
Mis–
sion to Moscow,
and Max East–
man's recent article on
U.
S.–
Soviet relations in
Reader's Digest
constitute a case in point.
Relative to a democracy the in–
tellectual may or may not
be
well
meaning. The quality of his
thought makes it possible for him
to take either side in any con–
troversy and still maintain his
logic, a very special thing. It is
a type which has come to the fore,
sometimes disastrously, at prac–
tically every period of crisis in
the history of our nation; the same
group, with their characteristic
affiliations.
The thing to watch is this like–
ness between our own and others
of the same type the world over–
superficially as they may
be
col–
ored by the immediate environ–
ment. That is to say if democracy
colors their thought it is likely to
