Dark Horses

The distinguished advocate of global peace was optimistic. Liberalizing tendencies were at work within the dictatorial regime, he said, and would eventually assert themselves. He found no “responsible person” who wanted war, and warned the United States against the graver danger of a “new arms race.”

Familiar verbiage. The difference is that these particular statements—quoted in Harold Rood’s new book, Kingdoms of the Blind (Carolina Academic Press, $15.95)—were uttered, not last week, but in July of 1934. The speaker was Nicholas Murray Butler, chairman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the people to whom he was referring were, of course, the Nazis —who one week later attemped a coup d’état in Austria, took the Austrian cabinet prisoner, and assassinated the country’s chancellor.

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M. Stanton Evans

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The distinguished advocate of global peace was optimistic. Liberalizing tendencies were at work within the dictatorial regime, he said, and would eventually assert themselves. He found no “responsible person” who wanted war, and warned the United States against the graver danger of a “new arms race.”

Familiar verbiage. The difference is that these particular statements—quoted in Harold Rood’s new book, Kingdoms of the Blind (Carolina Academic Press, $15.95)—were uttered, not last week, but in July of 1934. The speaker was Nicholas Murray Butler, chairman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the people to whom he was referring were, of course, the Nazis —who one week later attemped a coup d’état in Austria, took the Austrian cabinet prisoner, and assassinated the country’s chancellor.