were belittled. The Keefers have
sabotaged these defenders of free–
dom with their mocking cynicism,
says
Greenwald, and in Captain
Queeg's case, Tom Keefer not
only incited Maryk to an irrespon–
sible, if well-meant, act of disloy–
alty (for he could simply have
covered up for Queeg during the
storm and then returned the ship's
command to him), but compound–
ed
his guilt by his cowardly testi–
mony at Maryk's court-martial.
Here we must be struck by the
correspondence between what Mr.
Wouk is saying and what the pub–
lic wants to hear. It is his thesis
that the Second WorId War was
worthwhile if only because it put
a stop to the enemy's slaughters;
that it was won by a devoted and
previously trained officer caste, de–
spite the incompetence of individ–
ual members; and that the most
insidious enemy is the man who
works to destroy confidence in his
country's military leadership.
It must be noted first that this
is
a thesis which can be-and has
been-upheld by fascist as easily
as
by democratic theorists. Second,
and perhaps even more important,
is
the identification of the intel–
lectual as the villain of the piece,
with his cowardice and his shame–
ful
sniping at the regular officer
class. Here again it is necessary
to
point out that the middle-class
reading public would almost cer–
tainly reject such a brutal assault
on the intellectual (against which
one might have expected intellec-
251
tuals to rally, just as undertakers
or chiropodists rally to meet un–
fair representations of their pro–
fessions in the movies) if it were
made by a boor or an obvious
philistine. It is symptomatic of
Mr. Wouk's shrewdness that he
puts his assault on the intellectual
in the mouth of Barney Green–
wald, who speaks with the voice
of authority, from the "inside."
For in addition to embodying civ–
ic virtue as a wounded hero, he
gained enormous financial suc–
cess in the law, a field popularly
associated with the regular exer–
cise of the higher faculties; he is
also a member and fighting rep–
resentative of a minority group,
and a passionate defender of an
even smaller minority, the Amer–
ican Indian! And it follows, there–
fore, that Greenwald's opposite
number, the cowardly intellectual
who conceals his inadequacy be–
neath a surface charm that tem–
porarily captivates the susceptible
Willie Keith, should not be a shab–
by Greenwich Village Jewish bo–
hemian but a handsome and
successful
playwright
named
Thomas Keefer.
If
we reverse the roles, con–
ceiving of a clean-cut Tom Keef–
er charging a degenerate and de–
cadent Barney Greenwald with
being an irresponsible intellectual
whose writing and preachings have
had a devastating effect on Amer–
ican youth, we can imagine the
justified protest that
The Caine
Mutiny
would have aroused.
