The Face of Treason

The New Meaning of Treason, by Rebecca West. Viking, $6.95 Just as the feminists are telling us that women can do anything as well as men can, a decidedly feminine (i.e., non-feminist) writer reminds us that women do some things immeasurably better. For a certain kind of reporting, the woman’s gift for remembering what everyone wore at a party is the indispensable talent. And nowhere do we stand in greater need of this reporting than in the area of espionage. Trials and revelations and flights have not, even now, made us aware that there are spies among us, that this will very likely go down in history as the great age of espionage. Names like those of Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs are well known. They have been brandished on the placards of protest that surge up in Trafalgar Square during its hebdomadal inundations. They have taken their place in the right-wing litany of names meant to convince others that spying is a fact of modern life. Yet all this is the reporting of men, who remember what arguments were used at a party, but forget what the disputants wore. Rebecca West’s book places before us the substances that wore those names. It should be called The Face of Treason.

For years the author haunted the Old Bailey, during spy-trial after spy-trial, scrutinizing every defendant, each change of expression, each nervous tic, each prop brought to the service of a tottering pride. She came, day after day, to watch these men, who had risked everything in the shadowy back alleys of our century, as they were hauled resolutely into the light. And, though most of them passed through this ordeal without losing their wavering insubstantiality, she proves to have been their real nemesis. They were not really exposed by informers or lawyers or courts, but by the poise and plunge of that finicky pen in the spectator’s gallery.

GW

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Garry Wills

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The New Meaning of Treason, by Rebecca West. Viking, $6.95 Just as the feminists are telling us that women can do anything as well as men can, a decidedly feminine (i.e., non-feminist) writer reminds us that women do some things immeasurably better. For a certain kind of reporting, the woman’s gift for remembering what everyone wore at a party is the indispensable talent. And nowhere do we stand in greater need of this reporting than in the area of espionage. Trials and revelations and flights have not, even now, made us aware that there are spies among us, that this will very likely go down in history as the great age of espionage. Names like those of Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs are well known. They have been brandished on the placards of protest that surge up in Trafalgar Square during its hebdomadal inundations. They have taken their place in the right-wing litany of names meant to convince others that spying is a fact of modern life. Yet all this is the reporting of men, who remember what arguments were used at a party, but forget what the disputants wore. Rebecca West’s book places before us the substances that wore those names. It should be called The Face of Treason.

For years the author haunted the Old Bailey, during spy-trial after spy-trial, scrutinizing every defendant, each change of expression, each nervous tic, each prop brought to the service of a tottering pride. She came, day after day, to watch these men, who had risked everything in the shadowy back alleys of our century, as they were hauled resolutely into the light. And, though most of them passed through this ordeal without losing their wavering insubstantiality, she proves to have been their real nemesis. They were not really exposed by informers or lawyers or courts, but by the poise and plunge of that finicky pen in the spectator’s gallery.