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PARTISAN REVIEW
Communist to be
in
public affairs? Surely not enough to split a per–
sonality. Actually, he need only temper his passions, suppress his
ultimate aims and stay with the immediate practical idealism""':"'and he
could both think like a Communist and act like a good servant of a
liberal America.
And this is, of course, what Hiss's staunch partisans know, though
they cannot let themselves be conscious of it. They know not only how
thin a line divided their own principles from Hiss's overt principles, but
also how narrow a bridge Hiss had to span between his overt and his hid–
den beliefs. Could they too have taken the step Hiss took-the step, at
least, to the Party,
if
not the step to espionage? Certainly not. And
yet-the emotional-intellectual factors involved in such a choice are
mysterious. Who knows? Perhaps there but for the grace of God go
themselves. (The anti-Hiss liberal also thinks, "There but for the
grace of God go
I."
But by "there" he means Chambers as well as Hiss.
And he refers, usually, not to a mysterious possibility in his emotional
and ideological life but to a choice fully confronted.) They defend
Hiss to defend their own areas of ideological agreement with Hiss.
And they defend him so absolutely, with such emotions of outrage at
whoever thinks him guilty, because they dare not contemplate where
they themselves might be blown by the uncharted winds of fashionable
doctrine. Hiss must be innocent to prove that they are themselves in–
nocent.
The misery which so many nice people feel at the thought that
Hiss is guilty is thus not to be derided or taken lightly. The Hiss case
represents a capsule of self-knowledge which it is not easy to swallow.
I have said that if this case is to serve any purpose in our lives
there must be salvaged from it a better notion of liberalism. I mean by
this two things. The case will have been useful, I think, if it helps us
detach the wagon of American liberalism from the star of the Soviet
Union and if it gives liberals a sounder insight into the nature of a
political idea.
Most American liberals are not Communists. They would not
dream of joining the Communist Party. They would be horrified at the
possibility of a Communist America. And they severely and sincerely
condemn certain aspects of the Soviet regime. But their great point of
difference with the anti-Communist liberals is that, whereas the latter
fear the Soviet Union and anyone who tolerates it, they measure the
degree of their liberalism by the degree of their tolerance of Russia.
Their position is supported by their fear of war. They hope to
