Education the Hard Way

THESE days, when “poor, honest men” look about them, when they read their papers and their new books, their thoughts may be long, long thoughts, but they are not happy ones. Overseas, famine and misery, brooding threats from suspicious, truculent Russia, clashing interests, civilization in the balance; at home, unrest, selfishness rampant, cowardice and indecision controlling government, the postwar decay in full rot, the black market and the blackguard gnawing away at our decencies. Over all, the incredible and dreadful threat of atomic destruction. No, there is small comfort in the present picture, and little encouragement for the future.

At this time it seems that a responsibility far heavier than usual rests on all publicists — on journalists, foreign correspondents, writers of current histories, on news commentators and columnists — to work towards a common understanding among the perplexed peoples of the world. They must not twist or distort the news, by commission or omission — that is the unforgivable sin. They must not avoid dispute by professing a blind benevolence, but must speak out frankly and honestly concerning the situations and events which they have faithfully studied and are competent to assess and discuss. An education in men and things, an historical sense, a willingness to understand the other person’s point of view — these are qualities essential to the publicist if his work is to be profitable and constructive in these cloudy times.

Most of our better journalists are not lacking in good will. Many of them have had long experience in reporting events and interviewing responsible authorities. As a group they are conscientious workmen in a profession of which they are proud. Their most serious limitation — if it is safe to generalize about so diverse a gathering — is that they have been, in the nature of things, so busy going up and down the world that they have had little time for study and reflection. They learn through experience; and in the long run, if they are good men, they acquire an education the hard way. But their profession obliges them to speak out loud and clear, with confidence, just when they are in the process of educating themselves. Moreover, being human, they take sides and align themselves for A and against B. The result too often is good reporting of things seen and heard, but an inadequate interpretation of their importance and significance.

One feels this lack of historical perspective in many of the recent books dealing with various phases of the last war. No one, for instance, will question Mr. Ralph Ingersoll’s skill as a reporter, and few will deny a substantial element of truth behind his most controversial assertions in Top Secret, but thoughtful readers will question his scale of relative values and the conclusions he reaches so confidently. It is obvious that he can know only a part of the relevant facts and that his opinions are colored by prejudice. Similarly in Wrath in Burma (Doubleday, $3.00), the author, Mr. Fred Eldridge, writes his “Uncensored Story of General Stilwell and International Maneuvers in the Far East” not as a detached student and observer but as a partisan, and an angry one at that. I do not in the least question his veracity. He went through the whole Burma campaign in close contact with General Stilwell and he wrote the thing as he saw it.

To him the British and the Chinese were more than willing to fight the war in Burma and China as cheaply as possible, to let the Americans do the hard and expensive work, and then to cash in on the results for the greater glory of the British Empire and the government of Chiang Kai-shek. He records a series of delays and obstructions, and of failures to meet commitments, which he attributes to duplicity and double-dealing. Nothing could be more natural than such an assumption, given the extraordinary efforts of the Americans and the languid cooperation of their allies. But I think that Mr. Eldridge only vaguely comprehends the political significance of war as understood by the responsible statesmen and soldiers of far-flung domains. A victory in Burma would have had small value to them if it jeopardized British interests in India or the Generalissimo’s in China. It is infinitely distressing to the soldier in the field to believe that his allies are withholding aid when he most needs it, because their interests in the struggle are not the same as his own.

Mr. Eldridge makes an honest effort to try to see the British point of view but, frankly, he can’t quite understand it. On the other hand, few Americans would understand how the British felt in 1940 and 1941 when they faced alone the overwhelming forces of the Axis, fighting, as they believed, in defense of Western civilization, and America sent them obsolete destroyers, World War I equipment, and LendLease. One needs a certain detachment and a knowledge of more than current events to understand the violent inconsistencies of human actions in wartime.

The Last Phase: The Allied Victory in Western Europe, by Walter Millis (Houghton Mifflin, $2.50), is a far more restrained and thoughtful book than Wrath in Burma. Its tone is quiet, unexcited, and notably impartial. The author avoids the discussion of differences between the Allied commanders; he gives great credit to the Russian effort and to the activities of the French underground. Montgomery’s battle around Caen is highly praised, as is the skillful extrication of essential elements by the German High Command after their crushing defeat in Normandy. The blunders of the Nazis’ strategy, their failure to grasp the power of the forces opposed to them, their “moral incompetence,” are clearly if quietly presented. A small book, a calm one, and one which makes no pretense of covering anything but the most important elements in the campaign, it will give military historians something to think about when most of the shouters have been forgotten.

A book of wider interest and significance is Mr. Herbert L. Matthews’s The Education of a Correspondent (Harcourt, Brace, $4.00). Like other correspondents, Mr. Matthews acquired his education in foreign affairs — and war — the hard way and at first hand. Unlike many of them, he was always a conscientious student and an open-minded one. Constantly he reviewed his opinions and conclusions in the light of further experience and greater information. He took his obligations as a responsible journalist seriously. If I have criticized the slapdash omniscience of newspaper correspondents, here is Mr. Matthews to support me: —

I find myself unable to apologize for the slowness, the lateness, the reluctance with which I arrived at some degree of political education. The omniscience that so many journalists assume has always seemed silly and illogical to me. There is no royal road to knowledge or wisdom in a profession dealing with the most complicated forces of life. It should seem perfectly obvious that newspapermen, like other human beings, make mistakes, and yet how seldom does one find a willingness on the part of correspondents, and even more so on the part of their agencies and newspapers, to admit having been wrong about a particular story or situation! Political knowledge is not intuitive. It is reached by an exhaustive process of trial and error, of patient accumulation of facts that are judged and studied and pondered over and then placed in their proper perspective. . . .

It is easy for the young in age or mind to be quite sure of their political beliefs, but if they have not reached that assurance through a painstaking process of living and thinking, they deserve no hearing and no respect. You find that type of mind among young Communists, for instance, who may have lived the hard way and the right way, but whose reading has been confined to Marxist literature or whose attitude toward other literature is such that they approach it with closed minds. The blind acceptance of any doctrine, whether it be democracy, Communism, Fascism, or some other ism, does not entitle a man to claim virtue, even though such belief may place him on the side of righteousness in particular situations.

From 1929, when Mr. Matthews was sent on a junket to Japan, China, Manchuria, and Korea, he represented the New York Times as a foreign correspondent and, for much of the time, as a war correspondent. From the beginning he was ready and eager to learn. His book is divided chronologically into the courses in which he majored during his long education: “Abyssinian Course,”“Spanish Course,”“Italian Course,” “Indian Course,” and “PostGraduate Italian.” He marched with the Italian armies as a correspondent to Addis Ababa. Always a friend of Italian culture and the Italian people, Mr. Matthews mildly approved of Mussolini in his earlier phases and recognized value in some of the reforms introduced by the Fascists.

But he learned better. His service in the Spanish Civil War was long, arduous, and heartbreaking. He graduated from his “Spanish Course” a thorough enemy of Fascism and Nazism, a Liberal to the backbone. This attitude is most clearly indicated in his “Indian Course.” He visited that perplexing, unhappy country during the war, trying as best he might to arrive at some conclusions on the rights and wrongs of the “Indian problem” and its possible solutions. He finds no party altogether guilty and no party altogether guiltless. He believes that ultimately the British will withdraw from ruling India, but that India is not yet ready for self-government.

The Indians have a right to self-government and they are capable in the long run of governing themselves, but they will not find independence along the roads on which they are now traveling. They will find it only when Hindu and Moslem, Punjabi, Bengali, Madrasi, and Pathan, Prince and villager, can stand up together and say, “We are Indians, and we will all fight together for India.”

He must have been in India at the same time as Mr. Beverley Nichols, who of Verdict on India created a furor a few years ago. A reading of Mr. Nichols’s superficial but entertaining pages provides sufficient endorsement of Mr. Matthews’s more careful methods and his more restrained conclusions. Mr. Nichols finds Gandhi to be a hypocrite and a political selfseeker; Mr. Matthews finds him to be a bewildering enigma, for which he has yet no definite answer. To Mr. Nichols the Hindu cult of cow protection and the caste system are false and vile; to Mr. Matthews the Sacred Cow is “tragic farce" and the caste system a hideous handicap on India’s development.

But Mr. Matthews’s attempt to understand the’ Hindu religiosity, the attitude of mind which upholds what are to Western minds such vicious absurdities, is far more painstaking and his exposition is far clearer than Mr. Nichols’s. Mr. Matthews studied hard in his Indian course, and he rates high marks from me. Incidentally, an excellent handbook on conditions in India has just appeared: India Today: An Introduction to Indian Politics, by Raleigh Parkin (John Day, $3.75). This is a new issue brought up to the autumn of 1945 — with much new and valuable material.

So Mr. Matthews goes on to his post-graduate course with General Mark Clark as his professor, and the long South-to-North Italian campaign as his semester. This book is the record of an honest seeker after truth, of a fine and conscientious correspondent, and, I feel, of a brave and good American. In conclusion I want to quote him again: —

This is my examination paper, and I am putting down what I have learned. The tilings I have seen and done in my career forbid me to accept any dogmatic, all inclusive political faith, such as the economic interpretation of history in particular or Communism in general. 1 try to fit things into the picture of my experiences and knowledge — such as they are — and Communism does not fit.

Democracy and liberalism do fit in with my ideas, for I feel that through them liberty of a sort is realized on the political plane — not perfect, abstract liberty, but the nearest thing to it which modern political institutions can provide I want a government which will respect my rights as an individual as long as I obey its just laws and do not harm my neighbor and fulfill my legal obligations as a citizen.

I want freedom of speech and press and all similar freedoms. I want the right, in so far as it is feasible, to choose the men who will run my government, and to turn them out if they run it badly. I want to feel that the ruling minority is open to the pressure of public opinion, and that its ranks are open to new men coming from below — even to me, if I should ever prove my worthiness and desire to play my part in government.

That seems to me a good answer for any examination paper in this sad year. My salute to alumnus Matthews. Let us, like him, keep faith and lift up our hearts.