the subjection of nature by humanity isnto be found less in Genesis (St. Augustinenwrote that “increase and multiply”nreferred to “physical signs and manifestations,”nas well as to “thoughts whichnour minds conceive”) than in the NewnTestament, which teaches us that wenmust replace the principle of our naturalnlife with that of our spiritual being;n4) that Western religious and secularnlearning are quite competent to refutenthe claim of Kirkpatrick Sale, DavenForeman, and other modern “ecologists”nthat man is simply another biologicalnspecies, on a plane of moralnequality with bears, trees, and insects;n5) that the separation of the Europeanncultural tradition from nature does notncome from the Bible, that it is a defectnof the virtues of that tradition, and thatnthis defect is presently being overcomenby the West, even as the former savagesnof the Third World, in their fascinationnwith what Jacques Ellul calls technique,nare doing their happy best tonBRIEF MENTIONSndestroy the environments in whichnthey themselves live; 6) that, thoughnslavery were the worst evil imaginablen(St. Paul tells slaves to obey theirnmasters), slavery, far from being inventednby Europeans, was mitigated tonserfdom during the Middle Ages bynChristian Europe; 7) that, far morenthan the Europeans who bought andntransported black slaves to America,nblack Africans were culpable for sellingntheir own people to the white “invaders”nof the African continent; 8) that,nKirkpatrick Sale to the contrary, therenis in fact plenty of evidence that thenIndian tribes of the Americas did notnlearn violence, antisocial behavior, andn”ecological hubris” from the Europeannconquerors and settlers, nor werenthey impelled by them to resort tonthese things by the destruction of theirnaboriginal culture (Paul Valentine, innan article published some months agonin the Washington Post, concludednthat, “The entry of Europeans ontonIN DANGER UNDAUNTED: THE ANTI-INTERVENTIONISTnMOVEMENT OF 1940-41 AS REVEALED IN THE PAPERSnOF THE AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEEnEdited and with an introduction by Justus D. DoeneckenStanford: Hoover Institution Press; 491 pp., $35.95nNo political movement in American history has been slandered worse than thenAmerica First Committee. During its brief life, the committee was attacked publiclynby the pro-Roosevelt press, and its members were slandered and abused, in public andnprivate, by New Deal officials, including the President himself. The parody ofnAmerica Firsters survived the war as part of the dominant mythology of the period,nand it is a fine symbolic moment in The Best Years of Our Lives — one of the finestnfilms made in America at any time — when an America Firster tries to tell thenhandless sailor that the war was all for nothing. But what sort of “nativist” orn”fascist” movement would have attracted Chester Bowles, Lillian Cish,- New-nDealer Hugh Johnson, several Progressive senators, and even young JohnnKennedy, who sent in a check for $ 100? And what sort of unpatriotic movementncan it be, when Eddie Rickenbacker and Charies Lindbergh both joined? (The liesnabout Lindbergh continue to be told today, even though the memory ofnRoosevelt’s persecution of Lindbergh is lost.)nAs some Americans begin to understand the real costs of imperialism, they maynbegin to rethink this mythology — not so much the war itself but the conduct andnmotives of patriotic citizens who did their best to keep us out of it. The best sourcenfor this wholesome revisionism is Justus Doenecke’s collection of documents,nprefaced by a meticulous and impartial account of the committee’s history. Thencommittee did not achieve its objectives, and its failure helped to discredit thendoctrine of nonintervention, but — as Doenecke insists — theirs was-not a futilencrusade: “By rallying dissenting opinion, it forced debate on major administrationnmeasures and did so amid attacks that were often as sweeping as they werenunfair . . . .The AFC was an intensely patriotic group that could offer cogentnarguments against intervention. If Americans had failed to speak out against whatnthey saw as threats to the nation’s security, they would have been abdicating theirnresponsibilities as citizens … .In later times, when the United States enterednundeclared wars with little or no previous debate, such activism would be sorelynmissed.”n— Thomas Flemingn30/CHRONICLESnnnthis scene 500 years ago was … in annhistoric sense, simply an elaboration,nan extension, of what had been occurringnduring the millennia before theirnarrival — expropriation, war, imperialism”);nand finally that, even if thenaborigines did learn these things fromnthe Europeans, they were plenty quicknand hotly enthusiastic learners.nIt will be useless and unwelcomenalso to suggest that a partial but peculiarlyndistortive view of history resultsninevitably from the attempt, when inspirednby resentment of one’s ownnpeople, to see the world from thenstandpoint of alien cultures. In othernwords, a lot of plain truths are going tonbe taboo next year. Perhaps prudentncommentators who feel compelled tonbe anti-anti-quincentennialists willnchoose to defend the proposition —nuncontroversial by comparison — thatnthe wodd really is flat, after all.nIn Search of Columbus: The Sourcesnfor the First Voyage, by DavidnHenige, is an interesting and wellwrittenntextual criticism of the famousndiario from Columbus’s first sortie intonthe Americas, as purportedly transcribednby Fray Bartolome de lasnCases, the priest who later became theneloquent defender of the Indians in thenhands of the conquistadores. By comparisonnwith Kirkpatrick Sale and BarrynLopez, Henige has chosen for himselfna restricted canvas indeed; but howngood to read the work of an author whonknows what he is writing about!nIn his book, Henige argues that anvariety of errors and misstatementsnsuggests that the diario may no longernbe accepted as comprising Columbus’snown words, or even a faithful transcriptionnof them; that the account it givesnof the first voyage may not be annaccurate description; and that the identitynof the Bahamian island on whichnColumbus landed may never be discovered,nor discoverable. Charging thatnhistorians, faced by the Columbiannenigma, have been efi’ectively temptednby foregone conclusions, sentiment,nand the urge to special pleading,nHenige takes as his epigraph for chapternone the words of Peter Hulme:n”Columbus scholarship is a fertilenground for that peculiar academicnblindness whereby an interesting butnindefensible hypothesis is followed tonits logically necessary but increasinglynlunatic conclusions.” n