BOO KS
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tion.
It
is, in fact, a remarkably silly book.
It
is silly--or, if you prefer
a more elevated term with existentialist overtones, absurd-because (1)
it is intended as a defense of McCarthy but in fact tends to confirm the
main charge against him, which is that he is a chronic (in my own
opinion, a pathological) liar; and (2) it defends a coarse demagogue
in an elegantly academic style replete with nice discriminations and
pedantic hair-splittings, giving the general effect of a brief by Cad–
walader, Wickersham
&
Taft on behalf of a pickpocket arrested in a
subway men's room.
The latter absurdity comes out with specially comic force in Ap–
pendix F, which is devoted to "The George Marshall Episode." Until
the recent invitation to Army officers to break the law and disobey
their superiors by feeding McCarthy classified material, the Senator's
60,000 word speech on June 14, 1951, denouncing General George
Marshall, quondam Chief of Staff and at the time Secretary of State,
as a traitor working for the Kremlin was the most dramatic example
of McCarthy's demagogic impudence. The crucial passage ran as
follows:
How can we account for the present situation unless we believe that
men high in the Government are concerting to deliver us to disaster?
This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale
so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of
man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed,
its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest
men. . .. What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and
acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed
to incompetence.
If
Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability
would dictate that part of his decisions would serve his country's interest.
With their customary show of pained rectitude, the authors quote this
classic example of paranoiac demagogy, worthy to stand with efforts
by Hitler and the Kremlin along the same line, and admit that, Mc–
Carthy's later disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding, "it is un–
reasonable to conclude ... that McCarthy was charging Marshall with
anything less than pro-Communism." They go on to cite seventeen ac–
tions of Marshall which in their opinion worked for the benefit of
Russia and against that of this country (I agree with them in many
instances, my admiration for Marshall's brains not being excessive), but
conclude that, since each can be explained on grounds of incompetence,
since each was approved at the time by many indubitable anti-Com–
munists, and since McCarthy presented no other evidence, there is no
reason to believe General Marshall was a traitor. "In studying the
record of General Marshall, McCarthy failed to take into account man's
irrationality; he forgot that more often than not men stumble into pat-
