Books in Brief

Regicide at Marseille, by Tibor Eckhardt (The American Hungarian Library and Historical Society, New York, $4.50). This book deals with a crucial period of prewar power conflict in Central Europe. Mr. Eckhardt does well to examine it in the light of King Alexander’s assassination in 1934. The study, fascinatingly presented through the author’s personal participation as a prominent Hungarian diplomat, has several merits: it makes the many-cornered wrangle a-mong Laval, Mussolini, Hitler, Benes, Eden, etc. crystal clear; it accords the necessary attention to personalities, ideologies, and interests, sordid as well as honorable; and it casts a much-needed light on the relationship between France and the Little Entente, and on Hungary’s role as a whipping boy when Laval’s and Benes’ various plans threaten collapse. Some weaknesses in organization of the book may make readers spatially distant from the events, feel it all to be a hopeless imbroglio to be dismissed as “Balkan politics”; and further, the author repeatedly returns to the episode of the Yugoslavian king’s assassination, thereby creating an otherwise avoidable impression of chronological confusion. But these minor technical weaknesses are largely compensated by Eckhardt’s virtue as a historian drawing lessons applicable today. He shows that small countries are almost invariably sacrificed to big-power appetites, and that the so-called “open diplomacy,” embodied in the League of Nations and the UN, leads only to greater hypocrisy, not to more noble moral conduct. t. molnar The Tyranny of Schooling: An Inquiry Into the Problem of ‘Stupidity,’ by Lewis Anthony Dexter (Basic Books, $4.50). To a conservative reader this is an exceptionally unassuming book. Professor Dexter opposes the idea of universal compulsory public schooling—and, therefore, so what? We all do, don’t we? But Dexter-manages to enlarge the framework of discussion so that the conservative critique joins the Liberal critique in the waste bin, leaving the Dexter critique, which is something to behold: to wit, that the unquestioned adoration of academic intellectuality, as a cultural obsession, works to the disadvantage of the “stupid” (or the “high-grade moron”). The conservative critique fails to win a mass audience because it bemoans the plight of the minority who are scholastically gifted, and the Liberal critique has no mass following because most folks know (from birth?) that an acquaintance with Shakespeare has nothing to do with good carpentry. Dexter thinks that public education has become a “sacred cow” that should be, to put it politely, gored. He wishes death to the spawning tribe of state-supported junior colleges and local colleges, and he opens the doors of the world to masses of children who couldn’t care less about scholastic niceties. Intelligence, he says, isn’t necessarily a function of readin’ ’n writin’. So why spend these quadribillions trying to make readin’ ’n writin’ universal, especially when the system introduces tension in young kids where tension need not have been introduced? Should everybody go to college? Dexter takes note of labor union practices, child labor laws, political realities. He’s fearless, and knowledgeable. His book stakes out the Great Divide.

W. F. RICKENBACKER

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Regicide at Marseille, by Tibor Eckhardt (The American Hungarian Library and Historical Society, New York, $4.50). This book deals with a crucial period of prewar power conflict in Central Europe. Mr. Eckhardt does well to examine it in the light of King Alexander’s assassination in 1934. The study, fascinatingly presented through the author’s personal participation as a prominent Hungarian diplomat, has several merits: it makes the many-cornered wrangle a-mong Laval, Mussolini, Hitler, Benes, Eden, etc. crystal clear; it accords the necessary attention to personalities, ideologies, and interests, sordid as well as honorable; and it casts a much-needed light on the relationship between France and the Little Entente, and on Hungary’s role as a whipping boy when Laval’s and Benes’ various plans threaten collapse. Some weaknesses in organization of the book may make readers spatially distant from the events, feel it all to be a hopeless imbroglio to be dismissed as “Balkan politics”; and further, the author repeatedly returns to the episode of the Yugoslavian king’s assassination, thereby creating an otherwise avoidable impression of chronological confusion. But these minor technical weaknesses are largely compensated by Eckhardt’s virtue as a historian drawing lessons applicable today. He shows that small countries are almost invariably sacrificed to big-power appetites, and that the so-called “open diplomacy,” embodied in the League of Nations and the UN, leads only to greater hypocrisy, not to more noble moral conduct. t. molnar The Tyranny of Schooling: An Inquiry Into the Problem of ‘Stupidity,’ by Lewis Anthony Dexter (Basic Books, $4.50). To a conservative reader this is an exceptionally unassuming book. Professor Dexter opposes the idea of universal compulsory public schooling—and, therefore, so what? We all do, don’t we? But Dexter-manages to enlarge the framework of discussion so that the conservative critique joins the Liberal critique in the waste bin, leaving the Dexter critique, which is something to behold: to wit, that the unquestioned adoration of academic intellectuality, as a cultural obsession, works to the disadvantage of the “stupid” (or the “high-grade moron”). The conservative critique fails to win a mass audience because it bemoans the plight of the minority who are scholastically gifted, and the Liberal critique has no mass following because most folks know (from birth?) that an acquaintance with Shakespeare has nothing to do with good carpentry. Dexter thinks that public education has become a “sacred cow” that should be, to put it politely, gored. He wishes death to the spawning tribe of state-supported junior colleges and local colleges, and he opens the doors of the world to masses of children who couldn’t care less about scholastic niceties. Intelligence, he says, isn’t necessarily a function of readin’ ’n writin’. So why spend these quadribillions trying to make readin’ ’n writin’ universal, especially when the system introduces tension in young kids where tension need not have been introduced? Should everybody go to college? Dexter takes note of labor union practices, child labor laws, political realities. He’s fearless, and knowledgeable. His book stakes out the Great Divide.

W. F. RICKENBACKER