The Shore Dimly Seen

GOVERNOR ARNALL will be forty years old this coming March; so The Shore Dimly Seen can hardly be called a definitive autobiography. But Mr. Arnall is jogging along in his profession, which is that of politician, at a fairly steady clip. It was a generous gesture on his part to commit his personality to the kind of public scrutiny which may be had only through a book.

For it remains true, even in this day of the ghost writer, that a book exposes its author as nothing else does. A book protects the reader from the deceptive magic of the warm handclasp and ready smile; it leaves him free of the mass contagion which oratory, even radio oratory, inspires. If more of our politicians could be persuaded to undertake midstream autobiographies, as Governor Arnall has done, representative government would function with perhaps a little more firmness and assurance.

This is all easy to say, because, on the whole, Mr. Arnall does very well by himself. He gives us a man of candor, courage, good motives, and intelligence.

Of candor, we have his admission that he has looked toward politics since he first began to feel the promptings of ambition, and that success in politics begins with careful fence-building and is achieved through the medium of artful electioneering and an “issue.” Of courage, Mr. Arnall spares his readers specific instances; but the readers have no trouble detecting it. His motives are those of all men of good faith. And his career has been a creditable application of such motives to public affairs.

Thus Mr. Arnall’s thinking on American industrialism is conditioned by the handicaps to industrialization which the South has suffered. His sturdy and reassuring antimonopolism has its springs in the South’s difficulties with railroad monopoly. His approach to the Negro question (and his discussion of this makes the best pages of his book) is at once humane and Southern. His views on the vices of demagoguery were acquired at his own front door. And his attitude toward the consuming problem of this age — which is that of reconciling nationalism with peace — has that kind of simplicity which, valuable as it is, comes out of unfamiliarity.

Mr. Arnall’s book is useful for what it tells us of the “new” South. It is useful for what it tells us about Mr. Arnall. And it provides comforting evidence that a clean and simple prose style can be compatible with the profession of politician.

PHILIP WAGNER