106
PARTISAN REVIEW
principle of despotism." For such leaps into an empirical void, the lan·
guage itself becomes straight Platonic-Hegelian.
·
The reason, I think, is that constitutionalism, empirically interpreted
in terms of the actual Constitution of this country, does not prov'de an
answer to the empirical problems of the present and future; therefore
Professor Beard also must escape to the World of Being. This opinion
is
confirmed by the fact that nowhere in the dialogue does Beard treat
plainly the two central developments of the present: the growth of the
unlimited bureaucractic state; and the bid of the United States for
world domination. Surely the first of these is the great threat to consti–
tutional government such as Professor Beard is defending, and is not
to be answered by a mere optimistic reminder that our form of govern–
ment has in the past proved flexible enough to meet new problems as
they arise. Nor, in the case of the second, is it enough, at the very time
when the United States is plunged into the mainstream of world poli–
tics, to linger on an American exceptionalism that was the temporary
product of local circumstance.-"! believe that there will always be an
America, an America with unique characteristics.. . . America is fated
to be America, and all the pulling and hauling of world-planners cannot
alter that fact."
There is a revealing dramatic symbol of Beard's unwillingness to
meet the problem of the United States' now irrevocable enmeshment in
world politics. I have already noted that, of the twenty-one "seminars"
that compose the dialogue, all but one are presented as if held at Beard's
own house. That one, where he leaves his fireside-for a satirized cock·
tail party crowded with straw-built "world planners"-is entitled, "The
Republic in the World of Nations," and in this short episode alone, and
in only part of this, are the world political problems seriously dealt with.
Sorel once showed how all utopias, though ostensibly projects for
the future, are invariably sighs for the past. In spite of its knowledge, its
integrity, good will and intelligence, this new
Republic,
like its original,
is finally utopian.
j AMES BuRNHAM
GANDHI IN MAYFAIR
BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOUR.
By Lionel Fielden. Seeker and Warburg,
3s. 6d.
If
you compare commercial advertising with political propaganda,
one thing that strikes you is its relative intellectual honesty. The adver–
tiser at least knows what he is aiming at-that is, money-whereas the
propagandist, when he is not a lifeless hack, is often a neurotic working
oft:' some private grudge and actually desirous of the exact opposite of
the thing he advocates. The ostensible purpose of Mr. Fielden's book is
to further the cause of Indian independence. It will not have that effect,
