BOOKS OF THE WEEK
• Washington's Problem Child
McCarthy. By Jack Anderson and Ronald May. (Gollancz. 18s.) IN the last few weeks the Republican Senator for Wisconsin has bellowed his way into the news not merely in America, where he has been making headlines for the last five years, but in London and Paris. He has, in fact, achieved his penultimate ambition : he has become internationally important, his final objective being the ?residency of the United States. Neatly timed, then, is the publication in this country of the Senator's life story—an analysis of his lifeman-' ship is perhaps its true description—by two witty, diligent and democratically-minded American journalists who thought the time had come to blow the man and his " ism " wide open. If this book was entirely fictitious, it would still be good reading. A little over- drawn, one would think, but a story that gripped one from start to finish like a Graham Greene novel and left behind the same complete certainty of how the central character would react to any given situation. The difference is that Mr. Greene 's heroes possess unnaturally active consciences ; McCarthy shows no sign of having one.
In one way it is a relief to read all about him. One knew before Eisenhower'shat he was an enemy of democracy and a thorn in President s side. But one was never quite sure that his anti- Communist campaign was not sometimes both accurate and altruistic. One discounted most of the things he said, but one was left with a twinging doubt about his motives and his facts. Now, Whatever may be the truth about Communism in America, one can be absolutely certain that McCarthy's facts and McCarthy's motives are irrelevant either to truth or to defeating. Communism. He emerges as a man who wanted so badly to become a State judge that he was prepared to add seven years to the real age of his opponent ; who, in the interests of his " friends," thought nothing of erasing with a flick of the judicial finger the court records of cases on which he had given most unjudicial judgements.; who, in order to get to Washington, blithely violated the State law that no judge can run for political office ; who finally arrived in the Senate on the back of the Communist vote (" Stalin's proposal for world disarma- ment is a great thing "), and who, once there, began earning Publicity—and apparently other things too—by creating a furore against the death sentences imposed on the Nazis responsible for the 1VIalmedy massacre, with the aid of documents supplied by a German Communist.
All this one now knows. The book is so well documented that doubt is hardly possible, and nobody in America, where it has already appeared, has tried to doubt it. But one is left with a number of perplexing and less reassuring questions. How has McCarthy done it ? And—with that nervous curiosity that the uninitiated Englishman always feels about the underworld of American politics—how, having done it and having been proved to have done it, has he been able to get away with it ? Part of the answer lies in the American Constitution itself: To an Englishman, it is shocking that any judgeship, be it only a minor one, should be granted by popular vote on the basis of a house-to-house post-card campaign. But an American probably thinks it just as strange that the appointment of all judges in this country should lie with the Executive. To an Englishman it seems iniquitous that members of Congress have the power to make not merely private individuals but members of the Administration face accusations that may or may not be founded on fact, while the accusers are safe from the libel laws; But an American could well consider that the immunity of the British civil servant is a potentially dangerous thing. But part of the answer does undoubtedly lie in the fact that in America corruption and ruthlessness are one of the prices that are Paid for free enterprise and personal liberty. The fact that, in the Process, liberty becomes limited is just one more proof that this is an imperfect world and that all political systems have their penalties. When McCarthy tore out the tell-tale court record, the State Agricul- ture Department's lawyer, who knew the true story, was fired by When superiors who knew which way the political wind was blowing. when Wisconsin's Secretary of State challenged McCarthy's right, as a judge, to run for the Senate, the Wisconsin Supreme Court waived the issue on the grounds that " Judge McCarthy may be defeated in November, in which case the entire matter would become moot. election.Moreover it might be his misfortune to die before the . ." He lived, but the Court never looked at the matter again.
One is left on the one hand with a clear picture of a brilliant politician whose politics are nothing but a ferocious personal ambition, on the other with a confused impression of the workings of the political machine in America. Finally, there is the revelation of how dangerous is the weapon that McCarthy has discovered. Once an ambitious man hits on the idea of denouncing his personal enemies as Communists and, thus, as the national enemy, his power may become vast unless he is removed from the place where he can exercise it. Newspapers, Senators and harmless little men have no defence in law when a Senator, as a Senator, chooses to abuse them. Nor, apparently, has the American Constitution.
JENNY NASMYTII.
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