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Churchill (not to mention Eisenhower and De Gaulle)-if Churchill
writing in the '50's can hail the "Grand Alliance" as a triumph of
diplomacy and as an indispensable precondition for victory, and if he
can afford to label the break-up of this wartime alliance a "tragedy"–
surely, some other factors beside fellow-traveling liberals were respon–
sible for the dominant pro-Soviet attitudes during the war, and for the
acute relations with the USSR since. How can one explain such a
blackout of the simplest and most banal historical facts? How else–
except by assuming that the vision of this species of liberalism is blurred
and blinded by an excess of "self-criticism"?
This compulsive urge for self-incrimination leads to dubious criti–
cal practices. Out of the almost 1,000 pages of the transcript, Mrs.
Trilling cites one section from the testimony of Colonel Lansdale, a
conservative Cleveland lawyer, then security officer at Los Alamos.
The Colonel tells about the difficulties he encountered in highest gov–
ernment quarters because he "dared to stop the commissioning of a
group of 15 or 20 undoubted Communists," about the vilification and
frustrations he suffered because of the "blind, naive attitude of Mrs.
Roosevelt and those around her in the White House." Now this is just
what Mrs. Trilling wants us to know; for she continues: "Indeed,
be–
tween the lines of the record one reads the strained embarrassment of
all of Colonel Lansdale's listeners as they have such a bitter dose of
historical truth forced upon them." Does one, indeed? One does not
read anything of the kind if one reads the transcript and not Mrs. Tril–
ling's expurgated edition of it. For if one reads the record, he discovers
that the Colonel is citing Mrs. Roosevelt-and General McNary (pre–
sumably not a blind, naive liberal he!) -in order to make an altogether
different point. He is not really concerned with the political climate
of 1943, but he is protesting against the political atmosphere of today.
The section cited by Mrs. Trilling occurs in the following context:
MR. ROBB: Do you have any predisposition of feeling that you want
to defend Dr. Oppenheimer here? ....
COL. LANSDALE: I do feel strongly at least to the extent of my knowl–
edge that he is loyal. I am extremely concerned by the current hysteria
of the times of which this seems to be a manifestation.
MR. ROBB: You think this inquiry is a manifestation of hysteria?
COL. LANSDALE: I think . . .
MR. ROBB: Yes or no?
COL. LANSDALE: I won't answer that question "yes" or "no" ... I
think that the hysteria of the times over Communism is extremely dan–
gerous. I can only illustrate it by another dangerous attitude which was
going on in 1943 when we were worrying about Dr. Oppenheimer's
loyalty ...
