TRUMAN'S INHERITANCE

In the genre of John T. Flynn's diatribes against the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Edwards has contributed his analysis of the sum and substance of the inheritance Mr. Truman has used as the foundation of his eight years of maladministration. He argues that there may have been worse men in the White House, ""but none quite so cocksure, stubborn and so poorly equipped"". He sees the country taking the road to statism after D.R.'s twelve years ""socialistically minded and communistically inclined"". He charts the heritage:-minority blocks, a Labor government, a Welfare State, a machinery of self-perpetuating partisan government, the hierocratic mechanisms of Big Government. The last half of the book is devoted to a breakdown of the foreign policy, and the Democratic Administrations the brunt of everything that has gone awry in Europe and Asia, the United Nations is littled and castigated, and only grudging concessions made to a few sound moves in Western Europe. Ammunition -- not often supported with concrete evidence -- for the opposition. In losing he urges the Republicans, if they would survive, to build a platform which isn't ""me-too"". He outlines his ten points of conservatism, based on private ownership as the core of a new statement of policy...The Postscript at the close-a dialogue in which the opposite number in even right of the author -- weakens rather than strengthens the text.