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which Dr. Oppenheimer put above loyalty to his country, but loyalty
to that amorphous but compelling entity called 'the movement.''' Now
her position is quite different. Whereas the critical scales looked fairly
evenly balanced in the first statement, they are completely upset and
unbalanced in the following sentence. And if Mrs. Trilling still thinks
that the personal factors carry some (or any) weight with her, she
never says so again. Her analysis of the personal charges proceeds en–
tirely on the basis of imputing to Dr. Oppenheimer certain inarticulate,
secret, or unconscious sympathies with the Communist movement.
Mrs. Trilling takes the same line in her criticism of Oppenheimer's
defense. He and his lawyers failed to make clear that his innaccuracies
and lies can be explained if we admit that "sympathy . . . with both
the Communist movement and the Soviet Union remained with him far
longer than he now realizes." And the defense should have brought this
out into the open as an instance of the general commitment to Com–
munism and the Soviet Union on the part of the liberal culture of the
age. Instead, Oppenheimer's lawyers (old-fashioned civil liberties fuddy–
duddies) conducted what Mrs. Trilling calls a "typical liberal-progres–
sive defense." By this she means that they were unwilling to disclose the
full (and presumably damning) record "of the evolving relationship,
over the last two decades, between the typical liberalism of our time
and the Soviet Union."
To put it in simpler language, Oppenheimer should have said:
"Look, it was much worse than I thought it was; I was much more
deeply and guiltily committed than I thought I was; still I deserve to be
cleared and forgiven because, you see, the whole liberal culture of
which I was a part was so much worse than anybody knew it was."
You think this is a peculiar line for a liberal critic; you wonder why?
Surprisingly enough because Mrs. Trilling thinks it would have strength–
ened-rather than weakened-the defense.
"If
Dr. Oppenheimer and
his lawyers had fully comprehended these historical facts, the outcome
of his hearings, at least so far as the hearings of the Gray Board are
concerned, might have been very different." The criticism expresses so–
licitude. Unfortunately, it is a solicitude that rests on a serious
non
sequitur.
The findings of the Gray Board were not concerned with
Oppenheimer's political involvements in 1943 or before. These were
not "controlling." Instead, the Gray Board was concerned with Oppen–
heimer's "continuing conduct and associations" (for which the evidence
is so feeble as to be practically non-existent) and with his opposition
to the H-bomb. The Gray Board did complain about a lack of candor
on the part of Dr. Oppenheimer ; but this complaint, again, referred,
