The Press: Refugee Review

Of all the literary reviews which flourished like tropical flowers in a rainy summer after World War I, few have survived to greet the grim winter of World War II. The Dial went down in 1929; American Mercury became a minor political forum. Scribner’s died and was reborn in another form. Two survivors, Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s, survive like old-fashioned perennials. But last week in Manhattan a new one was born.

Its name was Decision, and it called itself “a new forum for the creative spirit.” Most distinguished thing about Decision was the list of writers and intellectuals who had banded together to produce it. Its editor is a German-born exile from Nazi-occupied Czecho-Slovakia and The Netherlands: slight, balding Klaus Mann, son of Nobel Prizewinning Novelist Thomas Mann. Editorial advisers include such refugee notables as Dr. Eduard Benes, Stefan Zweig, Somerset Maugham, such native littérateurs as Playwright Robert Sherwood, Newsman Vincent Sheean, Editor (of The Nation) Freda Kirchwey, Taletellers Stephen Vincent Benét and Sherwood Anderson.

Without any special cult or definite program, Decision was obviously planned as an international organ for European exiles and domestic liberals. Said the editors in a foreword: “This magazine is not meant to be a ‘mouthpiece’ for European refugees; it is designed to become instrumental in … proving and improving a solidarity between progressive minds that transcends all national boundaries.”

But more like a wake than a wakening was Decision’s first effort to revive western culture. Its first issue was ghostly and nostalgic, largely composed of sad reminiscences, tortured verse, confused self-questionings. Its most substantial pieces were a disillusioned essay by Aldous Huxley, condemning modern Europe’s faith in facts, and an elegiac article on French civilization by Janet Planner.

For Editor Mann, Decision was a continuation of a familiar chore. In Amsterdam, before the war, he published a refugee magazine in German, Die Sammlung (“The Collection”), which ran two years. Exile Mann got his idea for Decision last year, spent six months selling it to rich U. S. friends. Some of his backers: Edgar Kaufmann Jr. of Pittsburgh’s Kaufmann department stores; Lawyer Louis Nizer, who lately published a book. Thinking On Your Feet; Mrs. Marcus Koshland of San Francisco; Father Thomas Mann. A Czech citizen, in the U. S. on a visitor’s permit, Klaus Mann gets no salary for his editorial labors, is not an officer of Decision, Inc. His only pay is for his articles.

Even without his famed associates, Klaus Mann could do a good job of editing a magazine by simply depending on his family connections. Among his contributors and contributors-to-be are Father Mann, Uncle Heinrich Mann (a novelist too), Sister Erika Mann, Erika’s British poet husband Wystan Hugh Auden, Poet Auden’s British novelist friend, Christopher William Bradshaw-Isherwood.