I downloaded John Ross Browne’s book on his travels in Russia and Scandinavia, The Land of Thor, because it was an old account of those regions that I’d never heard of (such accounts can be invaluable for the historical writer), and because I could get it free as a Kindle e-book. Now that I know better, I recommend going to The Guttenberg Project instead, and downloading the illustrated version, as the author’s drawings are half the point.

John Ross Browne was born in Ireland, but raised in the United States. He eventually became a proud—nay, arrogant—citizen of the state of California. He was a frequent contributor of both stories and illustrations to Harper’s Weekly Magazine. For a period of his life around the Civil War he moved to Germany and took the opportunity to travel extensively, sending reports to Harper’s and compiling them into books when he was finished. The Land of Thor is one of those. Continue reading The Land of Thor, by J. R. Browne →

Despite my tremendous and unfeigned admiration for, and enjoyment of, the writings of G. K. Chesterton, I’ve raised some people’s ire in the past by giving my opinion that, on the basis of my own reading of his work, I consider him an antisemite within a reasonable definition of the term. Perhaps I need to clarify that I don’t mean—as many people would—to suggest that he was a Nazi, or sympathetic to Nazism. His antisemitism was of an older and arguably more benign sort—the antisemitism of the Christian peasant who truly believes that the Jews are hoarding all the gold in the realm, and using it to manipulate the rulers.

That Chesterton was not by any stretch of the imagination a Nazi can be demonstrated by a single reading of Eugenics and Other Evils : An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State.

In Chesterton’s time, those pre-World War II years that seem comparatively gracious to us today, Eugenics was a massively popular movement. Some of the most eminent social reformers in the world, people of unquestioned philanthropy and integrity, thought it self-evident that the government ought to be given the power to “improve” the race through selective breeding and the sterilization of “inferiors.”

To all of this Chesterton, out of his “medieval” mindset, cried “Infamy!” To deny a basic right like marriage and procreation to any human soul, simply because someone in authority judges him unfit, was to him a denial of basic human dignity—dignity which, he believed, sprang from the image of God, not from some biologist’s checklist of desirable traits.

Further, Chesterton was deeply concerned that such a program would place in the hands of the state a power that would destroy liberty—power that no human being deserves or is capable of exercising innocently.

The first half of the book contains a wealth of quotations just as apt for our own time as for Chesterton’s:

Say to them “The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females”; say this to them and they will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them “Murder your mother,” and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same.

The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen—that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics.

A remarkable element of this book is that Chesterton warns in particular that Germany is likely to be the source of great Eugenic evil.

I liked the second half of the book less than the first, because I’m a reactionary capitalist and less poetic-minded than Chesterton. Chesterton hated Socialism, but he hated Capitalism (I think) more, and in the second section he traces all the evils of Eugenics back to the Capitalists and their presumed plan to organize society in such a way as to produce a more efficient source of labor. I don’t know if that’s true. It certainly is no longer the case, for today’s great Eugenists (Chesterton’s name for them) are overwhelmingly Socialists and Leftists.

But the first half made it all worthwhile. I highly recommend Eugenics and Other Evils.

It is probably the measure of Whittaker Chambers’ success that he’s largely forgotten today, except in conservative circles. If his enemies had found a way to satisfactorily discredit him, he’d be included in the Rogues’ Gallery of Red Scare Crazies, like Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the members of the John Birch Society. But in fact his witness has stood the test of time (especially since Soviet intelligence files were made available to the public). So he has been ignored, made a non-person in the Stalinist tradition.

The title of his autobiography, Witness, has a double meaning. Its obvious reference is to his testimony, as a former Communist, before the House Committee On Un-American Activities in 1948. In that testimony he named several people he knew to be Communists, or Communist collaborators, in high government positions. In particular he named Alger Hiss, a state department official who had played a major role in the establishment of the U.N. When Hiss sued Chambers for libel, Chambers produced documentary proof that Hiss had lied about their association. In the end Hiss went to prison for five years, for perjury (his espionage activities fell outside the statute of limitations).

But the second meaning of the name Witness is Chamber’s confession of his Christian faith, a faith he adopted about the same time he left Communism (he became a Quaker). Those who know Christian history will immediately think of the ancient Greek word for “witness,” which is martyr. Although he does not mention that connection, Chambers makes it plain that when he went to the government to inform on his former comrades, he expected that the Communists would try to kill him, and that the government would very likely indict him for his espionage activities. He expected his life to be ruined, but he felt that was the duty he had to perform, the ministry to which God had called him.

He was not a perfect witness. His memory was sometimes inexact when testifying about events more than a decade in the past. He held back, at first (to the point of perjuring himself), the fact of his and his friends’ spy work for the Soviets. At one point the pressure became so great that he attempted suicide.

But he persevered by grace, a dumpy, not very photogenic celebrity, the butt of many jokes and the target of endless slanders. He came through at last, a little the worse for wear, to return to his beloved farm and family.

Witness is a moving book. It’s a long book, and the later parts featuring long transcripts from the Senate hearings sometimes make heavy reading. But he was a fine writer with a sensitive spirit, and the impression the reader comes away with is, most of all, what a great lover he was—of nature, of his family, of his country, and of his God.

Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways. Faith is the central problem of this age.

Highly recommended.