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side of Soviet Communism: admit the facts when you have to, but
always reprove them gently as "mistakes" or "excesses of enthusiasm"
and never damn them as something evil. Freda Kirchwey could go on
for columns that way about the Moscow Trials- wasn't it just too obtuse
of that nice old Stalin not to understand that if he hoped to convince
the Western mind, weakened by centuries of Anglo-Saxon common law,
he would have to produce some evidence? It never occurred to the dear
lady that maybe Stalin just didn't have any evidence to produce, just
as it never occurs to the dear boys that maybe McCarthy commits so
many "inaccuracies" not out of carelessness but on the contrary from
the most deliberate, and to date highly successful, calculation.
The authors' apologies fall into roughly three categories. (1)
T ac–
tical Error:
"McCarthy got off on the wrong foot"; "McCarthy . . .
took an unnecessarily hard row to hoe." (In the
Nation
this used to run,
"It is doubtful whether such severe repressions of the peasantry in the
long run serve the interests of the Kremlin as well as a more moderate
policy would.") (2)
Over-Enthusiasm:
"Early in 1952, Senator Mc–
Carthy learned that copies of Edmund Wilson's
Memoirs of Hecat e
County
were being forwarded to Europe at government expense. Im–
pulsively and absurdly, McCarthy denounced government sponsorship
of books which "follow the Communist Party line"-although it is notor–
ious that Wilson turned his back on the Communists in the '30s and ...
the book is no more pro-Communist than the author. . . . Here Mc–
Carthy was reckless." ("Excess of revolutionary zeal," the
Nation
used
to put it, never failing, however, to concede that "you can't make an
omelette without breaking eggs.") (3)
It's a Wicked World:
"Such in–
terpolations, [i.e., putting his own words as direct quotes by his victim]
to be sure, pay scant heed to the rules of scholarship. But to condemn
McCarthy on the strength of these rules is
to
judge him by unusual
standards . . . to demand . . . a norm of behavior not subscribed to by
other politicians and, for better or worse, not expected of them." (The
Nation:
"It would be a mistake to let our abhorrence of the Commu–
nists' putsch overthrowing the Benes government blind us to the fact
that political morality is rarely on the level of personal ethics. Nor
should we forget England's long and shameful record in India.")
At several points, the authors rebuke McCarthy for his "exaggera–
tions" and "misstatements," on grounds not of morality but of expedi–
ency. Such tactics, they correctly maintain, make it harder to get rid
of the Communists. Thus, apropos McCarthy's "blunder" in lying him–
self blue in the face about the mythical 57 card-carrying Communists
in the State Department, they ponderously opine: "McCarthy's blunder
would prove costly. His lpecific charges, just to the extent they were
