Search for Significance

LAND OF THE FREE--Herbert Agar-- Houghton Mifflin ($3.50).

The dominant argument that runs through the 305 pages of Land of the Free is that the U. S. by virtue of its geographic position and the strength of its democratic traditions, need not fear a Communist or a Fascist dictatorship, the evils resulting from excessive centralization of wealth, or the recurring crises that beset European states. This argument Herbert Agar supports with informal and inspirational discussions of U. S. culture, quotations from Marx and Cornelius Yanderbilt Jr., from Spengler. Herbert Hoover. Walter Millis, Ruth Suckow, with occasional anecdotes drawn from his own experience. The result is a curious book, least impressive in its discussions of economics and politics, most provocative in its observations on native characteristics and customs.

Six years of residence in England made Herbert Agar sensitive to aspects of U. S. life that most citizens take for granted, enabling him to read a depth of meaning in current phrases, advertising, newspaper editorials, Hollywood practices, cartoons, casual conversations with strangers in small towns. It also taught him that "the best traits in American life are not the traits we have copied from Europe.'' Land of the Free is an attempt to define these "best" traits and to suggest how they may be utilized in a practical, affirmative, democratic political program.

Disliking large-scale industry. Author Agar visualizes a harmonious and fruitful society of small property owners, living on subsistence farms. However, he offers no convincingly concrete proposals for the establishment of such an order. Disliking the sterile pessimism of U.S. metropolitan intellectuals, he compares them with the tolerant Aztecs, who believed that Spanish gods were as good as their own, thus fell before fanatical invaders who permitted no such broadmindedness. Disliking advertising and sentimental publicity stories of big-business success, he lists some horrible examples, explaining: ". . . If our country is overthrown, it will not be by violence, but by 'baloney.' "

Sometimes Herbert Agar's search for significance in the insignificant and incidental phenomena of U. S. life leads him to a grotesque humorlessness, as when he writes solemnly about the cartoons of James Thurber: 'Tn Europe men are puzzled by Mr. Thurber. Not because they are strangers to his withering view of humanity. Thurber's men and women-- small, misshapen and malignant; subhuman because they have no trace of purpose, no memory of hope; sub-bestial because they have none of the dignity of beasts--Europe is accustomed to this view of human nature. . . . But what perplexes Europe is to find this scornful picture combined with such gaiety. . . . The mixture of moods that is found in a Thurber drawing is characteristic of New York."

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