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type of academic who translated Communist dogma into academic
rhetoric, where it could not be deciphered easily. Thus, he knew
enough not to describe Mao's Communist troops as "agrarian reform–
ers," as some of the China hands called them-but rather referred to
Mao's Yenan area by "the more pompous, 'dynamic popular govern–
ment in North China'." And he was so successful that his views became
those of "the entire body of respectable opinion-conservative as well
as liberal-on the Far East." Thus "ingratiating pseudo-Marxist plati–
tudes became the stock-in-trade of all the 'experts'," a modern
trahison
des clercs.
Perhaps, however, the most succinct statement about Lattimore came
once again from Sidney Hook. Writing to a critical correspondent,
Hook pointed
to
what he called the "opinionated ignorance" of those
abroad who believed that Lattimore was "a well-meaning liberal mar–
tyrized by McCarthy for telling unpalatable truths about Asia." The
fact, to the contrary, was that Lattimore "at the very least, was a devi–
ous and skillful follower of the Communist Party line on Asian affairs."
Moreover, Lattimore had hardly suffered as a result of his so-called
ordeal. "Allegedly hunted as a witch," Hook wrote, he was "secure in
his job, published a best-seller, and still exercises a professional influ–
ence...greater than all anti-Communists combined."
Even Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. found it hard to defend the embattled
Asia scholar. Schlesinger opposed the indictment of Lattimore for per–
jury, made on grounds that he had not told the truth when he denied
remembering visits with a Soviet diplomat years earlier, to which he had
testified before the McCarran Committee. Schlesinger made it clear that
he thought the prosecution to be "outrageous." But that did not mean,
Schlesinger wrote
to
Thurman Arnold, that he had to regard Lattimore
"as a great liberal with a consistent anti-totalitarian record." Like
Kristol and Hook, Schlesinger pointed to Lattimore's now-famous
endorsement of the Moscow purge trials written in
1938,
in which he
notes that Lattimore "defends every item of Stalinist justice." While
Lattimore wrote that the Moscow Trials "sounds
to
me like democ–
racy," Schlesinger concluded that his words "sound
to
me like fellow–
traveling." And like Mrs. Trilling, Schlesinger urged the eminent judge
to read Irving Kristol's article on Lattimore. Moreover, the few anti–
Communist statements he found in Lattimore's book,
Ordeal by Slan–
der,
were "a pathetic list."
In
fact, he found from reading Lattimore's
book that he really "was opposed to fascism but was not opposed to
Communism." To Schlesinger, there was a simple dividing line: "I
have never seen any reason to admire men who," he explained, "under
