Books: Liberty Is a Lady

THE SECRET OF DEMOCRACY (258 pp.)—Suzanne Labin—Vanguard ($5).

Suzanne Labin writes with a hatpin. This young (thirtyish) Frenchpolitical scientist impales totalitarian myths and neutralistdelusions, prods lukewarm intellectuals who rarely rise to the defenseof democracy, or if they do, praise it with faint damns. Author Labinhas small use for so-called thinkers who don the smoked glasses of aspurious objectivity and report that they can see no difference betweenWestern freedom and Eastern tyranny except “shades of grey.” Shebelieves that it is worth restating the great central truth, or”secret,” of democracy, i.e., that it is the first, last, best and onlyhope of 20th century mankind.

Hamlet or Othello? The book is an exercise in anti-gullibility, anexamination of the totalitarian sophistries about the free world whichdemocrats have often uncritically swallowed. The prime myth of thetotalitarians. Nazi. Fascist or Communist, is that they are modern,”the wave of the future.” In reality, they are as age-old as tyranny.According to the Soviet Union, “an ineluctable law governs history” intheir favor; yet it requires nothing less than “a constant reign ofterror to crush the plots that might alter its unalterable course.” Thesecondary myths are that the totalitarians are young, strong, healthyand decisive, while the democracies are decrepit, dilatory. corrupt andweak. In one sense, the totalitarians are young. The average lifeexpectancy in the U.S.S.R. appears _to be about 30 years, the same asit was in the Middle Ages. Starvation, slave camps and the liquidationsquads keep ripe old age rare. For the rest, the young are thedictator’s ideal dupes with their “excess of energy,” their “lack ofattachments, their impulse toward sacrifice, their ignorance.” Theybecome the zealots; the majority of SS men who ran Buchenwald in 1938were between the ages of 17 and 20.

Does debate weaken democracy? On the contrary, argues Author Labin, therigor of the dogmatic one-opinion police state leads only to rigormortis: “To believe that music must bring forth Leninistic harmonies,that physics must be de-Semiticized . . . non-Aryans sterilized, thekulaks exterminated: to believe all this, even unanimously—above allunanimously—must lead a people to catastrophe . . . Hamlet isfrequently cited as an example of the tragedy caused by thought notfollowed by action, but, as Bertrand Russell judiciously observes, thetotalitarians ought rather to meditate upon the fate of Othello, on thedisasters provoked by action not preceded by thought.”

10 Million to 2. How do the totalitarian regimes camouflage the rankodor of their crimes? By using the deodorant of the false analogy. Havetwo Negroes been lynched in the U.S. in the last five years? The SovietUnion says, in effect, “You are not qualified to condemn my 10 millionmurders, for you have two Negroes on your conscience. Clean up your ownbackyard first.” In their sham elections, rubber-stamp assemblies, andraids on the word democracy, the totalitarian regimes pay the false butgrudging tribute that vice gives to virtue. Always unstable, saysAuthor Labin, totalitarian regimes will be swept on into Trotsky’sfamous “dustbin of history.” Adaptable, realistic, vigorous, thedemocracies can preserve the dignity, freedom and future of man—ifthey remain vigilant.

Few of the things Author Labin has to say will strike American readersas new, but they are said with rare feminine eloquence. Above all, itis remarkable and refreshing—although not typical—to hear them saidin present-day France. The book is a heartening reminder that libertyused to be a lady, and French.