Books in Brief

Seeds of Treason, by Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky; revised and updated by Ralph de Toledano (Regnery, $2.00). Even the 83,000 who made this vivid account of the Hiss trials a best-seller shouldn’t miss the paperback. A new chapter details the eight more or less compelling proofs of Hiss’ guilt unearthed since the trials and describes his oddly detached efforts to undo justice. The case remains an indictment of Liberalism, naked and scabrous before the Communist threat, but quick to lacerate the anti-Communist. Meanwhile, Hiss turns up at this cocktail party, that SANE rally; and those who move in less rarefied circles can watch the perjurer go by on his matutinal forays up lower Fifth Avenue into —the capitalist world? So we are told. But are there really that many stationery buyers who will never turn their backs on Alger Hiss? To whom does he peddle, besides Howard K. Smith? n. mccaffrey

The Survivors, A Report on the Jews in Germany Today, by Norbert Muhlen (Crowell, $3.95). No journalist writing in America today is better qualified to present a clear and critical interpretation of life in postwar-Germany than Norbert Muhlen. He is both sympathetic and honest in his appraisals and his humanity has taught him to evaluate and to explain rather than to castigate. After the dreadful events of the past quarter-century such an irenic talent is needed in any discussion so potentially explosive as that dealt with in The Survivors. The story of the 40,000 Jews now living in Germany is as sad as it is interesting. For the most part they have returned to die or they are the remnants of the displaced persons who came from the East in such great numbers. Norbert Muhlen poses the question of whether or not they will become effective communities within modern Germany. It is too early to give a definitive answer but it would seem that the long and culturally dynamic association between Gentile and Jew in Germany was terminated by men who did not understand that charity is the basis of the natural as well as the supernatural life. From both a human and political standpoint the most interesting chapters of the book deal with the effort of the West German Government and individual West Germans to disentangle themselves from the web of Nazi guilt. The tragedy of great sin is that it can never be undone, but repentance, which is so notably lacking in the Communist world, is certainly the road to manhood as well as nationhood.

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Seeds of Treason, by Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky; revised and updated by Ralph de Toledano (Regnery, $2.00). Even the 83,000 who made this vivid account of the Hiss trials a best-seller shouldn’t miss the paperback. A new chapter details the eight more or less compelling proofs of Hiss’ guilt unearthed since the trials and describes his oddly detached efforts to undo justice. The case remains an indictment of Liberalism, naked and scabrous before the Communist threat, but quick to lacerate the anti-Communist. Meanwhile, Hiss turns up at this cocktail party, that SANE rally; and those who move in less rarefied circles can watch the perjurer go by on his matutinal forays up lower Fifth Avenue into —the capitalist world? So we are told. But are there really that many stationery buyers who will never turn their backs on Alger Hiss? To whom does he peddle, besides Howard K. Smith? n. mccaffrey

The Survivors, A Report on the Jews in Germany Today, by Norbert Muhlen (Crowell, $3.95). No journalist writing in America today is better qualified to present a clear and critical interpretation of life in postwar-Germany than Norbert Muhlen. He is both sympathetic and honest in his appraisals and his humanity has taught him to evaluate and to explain rather than to castigate. After the dreadful events of the past quarter-century such an irenic talent is needed in any discussion so potentially explosive as that dealt with in The Survivors. The story of the 40,000 Jews now living in Germany is as sad as it is interesting. For the most part they have returned to die or they are the remnants of the displaced persons who came from the East in such great numbers. Norbert Muhlen poses the question of whether or not they will become effective communities within modern Germany. It is too early to give a definitive answer but it would seem that the long and culturally dynamic association between Gentile and Jew in Germany was terminated by men who did not understand that charity is the basis of the natural as well as the supernatural life. From both a human and political standpoint the most interesting chapters of the book deal with the effort of the West German Government and individual West Germans to disentangle themselves from the web of Nazi guilt. The tragedy of great sin is that it can never be undone, but repentance, which is so notably lacking in the Communist world, is certainly the road to manhood as well as nationhood.