COLD WAR AND COMMON SENSE

The subtitle reads ""A Close Look at the Record of Communist Gains and Failures and of Freedom's Fortunes in the Mid-Twentieth Century"" -- and this actually defines the approach and the scope of the book. But the important contribution the book makes is more than this. By close scrutiny of the assets and liabilities through the years of the Cold War, one comes up with a sense of relief that the balance sheet shows both concrete factors and idealistic ones on the side of what the author calls ""the Community of the Free"" that substantially outweigh those on the side of coercion. He makes no bones of the mess we got ourselves into. He charges that our position has always been a negative one, even in the days when Truman established the policy of containment, when the Marshall Plan set wrecked Europe on the road to revival, when intervention in Korea emphasized the use of might to prove right. But it was in the years following this upsurge- this acceptance of our role in the world- that deterioration of our position made any rosy estimate difficult to arrive at. However, these years found deterioration of the united Communist Front -- a deterioration that has continued. We must however escape from the fallacy under which Congress prefers military to economic aid, if we are to capitalize on this deterioration. Force is the technique under which Communism has expanded. We must prove that freedom's way is not the way of force. There are many straws in the wind for encouragement. Here's a chance to look at the record. Challenging, perhaps over-optimistic-but a good balance on the side of democracy.