fused, as he naively trusted in his abilitynto charm “Uncle Joe” Stalin, putting hisnfaith in a worthless United Nations,ncavalierly ignoring the warnings of annedgy Churchill. This historical turningpointnwas dominated by tired and dyingnmen and by the force of shabby and shortsightednideas. Hitler’s trembling framenwas declining at an incredible rate.nRoosevelt’s health had been slipping asnearly as 1940. “His ability to concentratenwas impaired,” says Lukacs, “He requirednten to twelve hours of sleep. In May 1944,nthe month before the invasion of Europe,nRoosevelt was ‘out of bed no more thannsix hours a day, on his back eighteen.’ BynJanuary 1945 he could no longer signnhis name without difficulty.” Churchillnwas little better, but he lacked the endurancento press his points. After an initialnburst of rhetoric, he would become bored,nhaggle weakly and then give in. OnlynStalin and Truman displayed any vigor.nEven more tired than the play’s leadingnmen was the ideological script thatnAmerican foreign policy was readingnfrom. The ghost of Woodrow Wilson’snsanctimonious League of Nations-styleninternationalism lingered over the publicnconsciousness and not only hovered butnheld total sway over polite society andnrespectable opinion. A sort of ideologicalnmonopoly was granted to it despite itsnflaccid thought and insupportable assumptions.nRoosevelt’s entire world viewnwas outmoded: “It rested on a view ofnhuman nature and of the nature of politicsnthat was a compound of Franklin andnJefferson and Gladstone and Wilson, verynmuch of the nineteenth century, and innmany ways more backward than [thenTory] Churchill’s.”nBoth Roosevelt and Churchill felt theyncould deal with the likes of “a Caucasiannbandit” like Stalin, although their approachesnwere vastly different. Churchillnfelt a show of strength and some keennhorse-trading was in order; he wantednEisenhower to push on into Berlin andnthe Soviet occupation areas so as to havensomething to barter for East Europeannconcessions. Roosevelt believed that andisplay of sincerity and trust was vital.nHis attitude made Churchill’s designsnunworkable.nLukacs feels that had FDR lived henwould not have easily changed his views,nat least not as quickly as Truman, whonwas relatively unencumbered by thenWilsonian ethos. Yet although Trumannwas mentally free of the gross illusionsnof his predecessor, his actions did notnimmediately reflect this change. In part,nthis was due to the influence of the NewnDealers that remained around the WhitenHouse. In part, it was because of thenforce of already consummated events,nbut it could also be traced to the prevailingnpublic opinion toward the Soviets in thatnfateful year. In 1945, popular journals,nsuch as }ne. Atlantic Monthly, still frothednwith the most rabid Sovietophilisms.nCommentators like Owen Lattimore,nHarlow Shapley and Anna Louise Strongnwere given wide circulation and morenmoderate souls rushed to keep pace so asnto keep in fashion. As Charles Peguynonce wrote, “It will never be known whatnacts of cowardice have been motivatednby the fear of not looking sufficientlynprogressive. DnNixon’s LotnRichard Nixon: RN: The Memoirsnof Richard Nixon;nGrosset & Dunlap; New York.nTo tell his truth about recent historynand himself, Richard Nixon has writtennand published a book. The liberal responsento it is a slogan circulated by thenradic-lib canards: “Don’t buy books byncrooks.” Hardly a better symbolism ofnthe Watergate incident could have beennconceived. The Nixon haters never seriouslynintended to discuss truth and untruthnwith him; in point of fact, it wasnnot the cover-up, but the “imperial”npresidency that has always been at issue,nand the liberals did not want to debatenwith Nixon, just to overthrow him. Sincen1968 all they craved and dreamed of wasna massacre, a jihad, a holy war—andnAllah provided them with a casus belli.nProf. John Kenneth Galbraith, thenImperial Maven of the North-East Realmnnnfired his salvo in the American-LiberalnPravda (The Truth)—T/^e New YorknReview of Books—and he didn’t evennbother to argue. “That Nixon was a rascalnis now generally accepted,” he wrotensimply. But with seasoned irony hendeclared himself against boycotting thenbook “… for reasons of professionalnpecuniary interest,” as well as for presumingnthat reading Nixon may resultnin even more hostility. And, quitendecently, he added: “… there never wasna time when more Americans were expressingnthemselves more stridently andndiversely with so little fear as in the Nixonnyears,” which practically voids the argumentnagainst the imperial presidency.nrLvery American who can still appreciatenwhat Henry Ward Beecher, in antime of m.ore complex moral dilemma,nsaid from the Plymouth pulpit: “Nobodynever sees truth except in fragments—“nshould buy the Nixon book. Just to makenclear that the vulgarity of the liberalnterror, though omnipresent in America,nis not yet America’s conscience. DnFecher’s MenckennCharles A. Fecher: Mencken: A Studynof His Thought;nKnopf; New York.nLike Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken wasnneither always right, nor always funny,nnor always impressive. But he certainlynknew “something” his contemporaries,nwhatever their intellectual standing, didnnot. He also had more to say on almostnanything than other people did, whateverntheir credentials and expertise. Thosenpeople vehemently questioned andnobjected to Mencken’s utterances, butncould do little against Mencken’s cognitionnin itself— unique and plainly vexingnto many. Now, from the proper perspective,nwe clearly see that this idiosyncrasynof perception, formulation and expressionnconstitutes Mencken’s bridge to the sagesnof the past and to his validity in the future.nHe shares with Twain a keen and elusivenknowledge of making Americanism—itsn19nChronicles of Culturen