Four Pundits & the World

THE INTERPLAY OF EAST AND WEST, by Barbara Ward (152 pp.; Norton; $3.50), performs one of those housewifely miracles of sorting out centuries and civilizations as if they were so many knives, forks and spoons. It is a pleasure to behold if not always to believe British Author Ward as she tidies up the Hell's Kitchen of history.

As she sees it, the drama of East and West has three acts and an optional ending. In Act I, lasting roughly from 500 B.C. to 1000 A.D.. the Far East (India, China) and the Mediterranean world made only fitful contact through commerce and, occasionally, war; the spread of Islam and the Mongol invasions actually "cut off Europe from any direct knowledge of the East." In Act II, lasting roughly from the 16th century to the early 20th, the West, vitalized by ideas of progress and purpose in man's life, turned its power on a static East still lost in the illusion that this world is an illusion. In Act III, the last quarter-century, the East is fighting back with aggressive nationalism and/or Communism.

As Author Ward sees it, the East's option is between the "mixed economy" and relative freedom of India and the "total state" tyranny of Red China. The West's course should be to: 1) help the East before it helps itself at the West's expense, 2) pool sovereignties in a supranational organization that could solve and mitigate the problems with which today's fanatic neophyte nationalisms are anxious but technologically impotent to cope.

Author Ward's most astute observation is that the West may not be able to export the idea of individual dignity and freedom without the Judaeo-Christian metaphysics to which it is linked. She gingerly hopes that a deistic, syncretistic "perennial philosophy" may fill the gap.

TIDES OF CRISIS, by Adolf A. Berle Jr. (328 pp.; Reynal; $4), finds the mellowing (62) ex-brain truster of F.D.R. days conducting a mildly condescending seminar on the key events of the last quarter-century for the benefit of that global slowpoke, the U.S. public. Author Berle is most provocative when he looks at the mid-century world as a stage and finds it peopled with ghosts.

They are the ghosts of six concepts, argues Berle--Capitalism, Communism, Nationalism, Imperialism, Race Superiority, Spiritual Supremacy. Capitalism, Berle has decided, "is not a philosophy for which to fight and die. It is a tool, and a great tool, to be used or laid aside as the genius of any people directs." Communism is "a means of dividing and enslaving thought and will. It should go back to its historical cemetery." As for Nationalism, the twentieth century subtracted from it the ability "to maintain national life." As he flicks the shrouds of his chosen ghosts. Author Berle agrees with Barbara Ward that the only way to exorcise them permanently is to set up economic and political "world organizations."

If world and especially U.S. leadership faces up to the twin probabilities that poverty can be universally extinguished and that war means universal extinction, then, argues Berle hopefully, "opportunity does exist for a century of peace . . . more soundly based even than that of the Victorian Age."*

RUSSIA IN TRANSITION, by Isaac Deutscher (245 pp.; Coward-McCann; $4.50), is a sheaf of essays mostly written during the '50s further bolstering the author's accurate 1953 prediction (in Russia: What Next?) that the Soviet political tundra was due for a big thaw after Stalin's death. Indeed, Polish-born Author Deutscher consumes an inordinate amount of time and space just crowing ("As to my severe critics, I shall only ask how many of them would venture to republish now in book form the views they expressed on Soviet prospects six, seven, or only three years ago?'').

Deutscher passionately believes that Russian workers and intellectuals "are throbbing and stirring," that Russia is "relearning freedom." Often scholarly and hardheaded, Crystal-Gazer Deutscher (a Communist until he was thrown out of the party in 1932 for anti-Stalinism) is also a sentimentalist who believes that Stalinism is wrong but not Marxism. With the snobbery typical of many ex-Communists, Deutscher looks down on other ex-Communists and muses about vintage years--1921 was a good year, and Communism was still fine and heady stuff; 1932 was a bad year, because the party had begun to turn sour.

Perhaps the heart of Deutscher's message is that the West should not become hypnotized by an Orwellian view of Soviet Russia as a mere incarnation of horror that must be wiped out--because, such hate will only blind the West in trying to devise sound policy. Most readers will accept this as sensible advice. But Deutscher goes on to plead elaborately that Russia is not really like 1984 at all--and in this plea he shows a pedantic failure to understand satire. Or could it be that Author Deutscher, like the characters in 1984, uses doublethink without any longer being aware of it?

THE INNOCENT AMBASSADORS, by Philip Wylie (384 pp.; Rinehart; $4.95), whips around the world with America's most emotional writer. When not gawping at the tourist sights ("I wept as I sat on that bench and looked at the Taj Mahal"), Author Wylie is dazzling the natives with his knowledge of Shinto, his deft handling of chopsticks, his keen analytic mind. Everywhere Wylie trails disasters--Hong Kong was harassed by bubonic plague, Calcutta by cholera, "just after we left"--confounding Communists with his arguments, straightening out the thinking of Asian leaders and U.S. officials. Wylie's heart is obviously in the right place even when his head is not.

He blasts U.S. foreign policy, grows unexpectedly lyrical about traveling U.S. businessmen ("these Eds and Harrys and Bills are America") and believes that individual Americans must go out in great numbers as lay missionaries to practice the American Faith. Concludes Wylie: "And hear this: Everyone who goes forth in that fashion will be welcome. For I have looked into a million brown, beseeching eyes, and in all I saw the light of liberty, here dim but there radiant. And all those eyes implored me to tell you."

*The "peaceful" Victorian Age encompassed the Mexican War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, found Britain embroiled in the Crimean War, the Opium War with China, the Indian Mutiny, the Afghan Wars and the beginning of the Boer War.

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