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32 — he gets really angry is w.. .. hele to “the self-rightcousness of Arnétiean support for a cause for which America was not prepared to assume responsi- bility.” = Although our propensity to give pious advice without doing anything to back ° it up irritates him, he understands why Americans are less impressed than are the British by the Arab claim to the country. It is, he believes, because, as a pioneer people who won our country from the Indians, we look upon the Jew- ish settler in Palestine as a pioneer and the Arab “as the aboriginal who must go down before the march of progress.” The English, on the contrary, are “the offspring of the families which did not emigrate, inheritors of unbroken tradi- tions going back for hundreds of years” and thus tend to appreciate the Arab position. He is certainly no defender of British colonial policy or of the pro- Nazi wartime activities of the Grand Mufti, but he doesn’t believe that Arab nationalism is 2 British invention, either, of that it is without its progressive ele- ments. B ECAUSE he has a way of seeing both sides and sympathizing with Arab as well as Jew, it‘is all the more im-_ pressive to find in the end that he is just as convinced of the necessity for a Jew- ish state as is his more volatile Ameri- can colleague. Appreciating all the points the Arabs make and admitting that a choice must be made between “two in- justices,” he advocates the immediate admission of 100,000 immigrants, a par- tition of Palestine to form a Jewish and an Arab state, and Anglo-American as- sistance toa both the Jewish common. | wealth and the Arab state in the con- struction of a Jordan Valley Authority and an irrigation scheme for the Eu- phrates. He believes that this Jewish nation will eventually become part of a Middle Eastern confederation, chicfly Arab in culture and numbers. “Because it is a socialist community,” he adds, “this small nation will have an influence on its backward neighbors disproportion- ate to its size, bringing to them the ideas and ‘techniques of Western civilization and accelerating the downfall of the present medieval social order. But in doing so it will grow into the life of 2 Ua ener eer nes ot the Middle East and grow away 1 i} it . ) obstinately to present dependence on the West.” The future this suggests is highly provaca- tive, RICHARD WATTS JR. I: From Vichy to Athens ILLIAM L, LANGER'’S Our Vicdy W Camoie (Knopf, $3.75) is a book which tries to do two quite dif- ferent, often conflicting, things at the same time. It sets out to give the full “inside” story of America’s offkial policy toward France from the collaps==="e-othee book - thas—rarmspabtistrer* in _June, 1940, to the death of Darlan mn’ December, 1942, based in large nieasure on hitherto unavailable official material furnished by the men responsi- ble for the policy. At the same time it seeks to provide an impartial, dispas- sionate “outside” evaluation of that policy. Langer has two differcnt, often conflicting, viewpoints. As’ Coolidge ' Professor of History at Harvard, he is an authentic professional of scholarly interpretation. As a wartime member of the high command of the Office uf Strategic Services, an intimate of the top-flight statesmen and soldiers who made the Vichy policy, he is an ama- teur of practical policy-making with a personal and partisan attitude. Thus, Cordell Hull wasn't gambling when he picked Langer as the right man “'to make a detailed and altogether inde- pendent study” and broke precedent to make available to him rele- vant material of the kind the public normally wouldn't have been given for many years. For though Langer con- sented to do the job on con- dition that he “could serve oniy as oa dispassionate scholar, not as an apologist,” it was inevitable that his atti- tude as a partisan amateur would play a part in his judg- ments as an aloof profes- sional. As an inside story, the book is extra- crdinarily timely, since it reveals that “our Vichy gamble’ was the first of a series in which the present Athens gamble seems likely to take an even more important place. It gives a factual account, readable, entertaining, excit- ing, frequently depressing, of how and why Washington chose and clung PETAIN ” NEW REPUBLI": Pétain, Darlan and the Vichy fascists instead of to de Gaul and those Frenchmen for whom free: - dom meant cmancipation from fascist. as well as from the Germans. As narr.’_ tive, the book has the virtues of exce:,” lent polemical journalism and the defects of partisan propaganda, sinc! the author, - much ney ‘material, omits oc subordinates muc _ | old material. Our Vichy Gamble take. the reader behind the scenes as ha: while using about a crucial period in the history oO. American policy-making. The first pos: tion, describing the collapse of Frances; the armistice and the first few month: of the Vichy regime, is patticular!:® fascinating. The reader is given a day by-day, sometimes an hour-by- hour: account of what cach of the major par’ ticipants was doing, saying, thinking 3 even feeling in those confused anc! dreadful days. : \ I ORE than any other individual.2 Langer reveals, Ambassador: William C. Bullitt was responsible for) the Vichy pelioy. Ta retra. spect, hiy de i-l 3 sion to remain in Paris instead of going ae te Bordeaux—a decision which Roose.’ velt approved despite the objection of Hull—scems to have been the first step | on the road which led to an American connection with Pétain instead of de’ Gaulle, Langer arranges and * Interprets the tacts to make Laval the villcn of the fice = an Pein dhe hero. Chanks / to Penun, le says, “France — was actually able to play both ends against the middle.” - And in his evaluation both (Ge? - of Vichy’s policies and cur “3 policy toward Vichy, Langer pulls no punches in an ag- © Bressive justification of the ~ utmost opportunism and ex- - pedicncy. He goes so far _ in his defense of Pétain as to say that the Marshal's conviction by a French court of law was a political act and not an act of justice. There is no effort to deny that Pétain was a reac. | tiouary, a fascist, a man who feared communism and hated democracy so | much that he was willing to connive : . with the Germans. Still, in Langer's . 3 '