Two-Way Passage

IN July of 1941 Mr. Adamic found himself fired with an idea for the post-war salvation of Europe. It was an idea that had pieced itself together from stray suggestions in print, hints in his voluminous correspondence, bits of his own and others’ experience, and the general present desire of good men to hurl themselves into something constructive. For the next several weeks Mr. Adamic wrestled with the Lord, his idea, and maybe a dictaphone in a resolve to translate his inspiration from the domain of the fantastic to that of practical, political reality. The result is Two-Way Passage. The title says in a nutshell what the book says in six parts and an appendix: to wit, that we immigrants to America, having made a brilliant success of our national affairs, will have to go back whence we came and systematically teach the American way of life to Europe, which has made a ghastly mess of its affairs. Mr. Adamic works his inspiration out to the extremity of proposing that the United States forthwith organize a provisional government for each afflicted country and have all these governments ready to take over the moment the Hitler régime topples. Outstanding Polish-Americans will administer Poland, sound German-Americans will reorganize Germany, and so on, and American armies of bilingual sons of immigrants will go along to spread the gospel by infiltration and example. (The program stops short of recommending that descendants of Jamestown and the Massachusetts Bay Colony go back to indoctrinate the English in how we have made a go of it; and there is not much about exactly how we are to achieve the unqualified blessing and cooperation of Joseph Stalin.)

So runs the argument, deprived of the excited and sometimes gasping manner of its exposition. It is an argument certain to provide a rallying-point for many persons who have, with hearts as exuberantly good as Mr. Adamic’s, practically no heads.

W. F.