Swing (Jan-Dec 1953)

m s win say about our current passion for witch' hunting than about any other subject and possibly his wisest words were in answer to a man's letter, asking: "Do you mean to say that to defend free speech we must allow a lot of subversive talk?" "I am sure it never crossed that man's mind that his question was a lot more subversive than the worst Communist gabble because it suggested the abandonment of the very mudsill of American liberty. "A brief glance at any history of the United States will show you that more straight-out sedition was uttered in the administration of Thomas Jefferson than in the hundred years following. Nor was it confined to riffraff. Overthrow of the government, if necessary by force and violence, was openly advocated by clergymen, college professors, and newspaper editors. Yet this is precisely the period in which our form of government became genuinely democratic, and the loyalty of its people was firmly established." Not that Johnson endorses all speech, no matter how foolish. He feels that this republic, like the Philistines who tangled with Samson, "may yet be slain with the jawbone of an ass." He is shrewd enough to recognize that irresponsible gab and irresponsible secrecy (to cover incompetence in high places) are equally dangerous. "The jawbone of an ass is a fearful thing, whether it is flapping loose or bound by lockjaw." Johnson is a great one for the narrow but important distinction. Praising a Maryland judge for the quiet and orderly way he handled the sensational Grammer murder trial, Johnson declared: "A Maryland judge is accountable to the public but not accountable to the mob. There is a difference, a whale of a difference. If a man does a thing that is unpopular, the mob will tear him to pieces even though his act was essentially right. Yet if it was really right, in the end it will be popular. So protection from the mob means allowing time for the heat to cool off." Again and again he uses history as a guide to the present. For those who think that the end of the Korean war will mean peace everywhere, he warns wryly: "We can rely on it that if we do get Korea 9 quieted down, trouble will break out elsewhere. That is the bitter price of world leadership. We talk about the period from Waterloo to Sarajevo as the ninety-nine years of peace; but the British army was fighting somewhere in practically every one of those ninety-nine years." And the task of policing the world, he pointed out, was now ours, not Britain's. Few are as politically astute as Johnson. On Eisenhower's landslide, for example: "Millions came out to vote for the hero but did not vote for other Republican candidates. These were the sentimentalists and sentimentalists are the most cruel people in the world. They will ex' pect miracles from Eisenhower and when he produces none they will turn on him with a fury equal to their adulation at the moment. Within six months Eisenhower is going to be blamed for everything from the wickedness of Stalin to the foulness of the weather." Agree or not, Johnson's is an astringent, perceptive, deeply knowledgeable voice and it's a pity he's heard only in Baltimore. Ode to a Copy Writer ON the subject of commercials about which I occasionally wax pettish, I have a kind word to say for a change. Incredible as it may sound, I have become passionately fond of a particular advertisement writer, fellow by the name of Jack Goodman. Goodman is executive editor of Simon & Schuster, a frustrated writer (but not frustrated often enough), and the man who writes those crazy book ads for S S S. Goodman's specialty might be described as the "For heaven's sake, don't buy this book" gambit. His ads may start out with the startling admission that S & S has been bludgeoned into publishing a book of which they hopelessly disapprove. He'll warn the reader that the book will shock him to the marrow or bore him to distraction or utterly demoralize him. The piqued reader instantly buys the book to find out if any of these crazy claims are valid. They never are. But the device sells books, showing how contrary people (or at least readers, who are a specialized branch of the human race) are.