The NATION

440
pression imposed by a fewwhograbthe
benefits meant
for all.
Her story, indeed, is necessarily as complex as an amazingly twlstlng rlver which runs not only out of the llttle lost
cores in the Smokles but out of a mlxed history of Indians
and Scotchmen and Confederates and Republicans, runs into
all thepuzzhng questlonswhich grow wlth cotton onthe
stalk, runs past the angry drama of Scottsboro, the new bitterness of new sweatshops In Tupelo, on wlth the threat of flood
to Paducah, Calro, the Misslsslppi, and the sea.
And I think MISSWhitman has told the story of that river
not only wlth honesty but, which is rarer even in thls wicked
world, with that clarlty In her own mlnd whlch makes clarity
in the mlnd of the reader. Hundreds of men have been busy
for years making TVA confuslng. They have succeeded, 1
thlnk, in making It seem only the scene for a fight over power.
Publlc-utlllty executives and pubhc-power advocates have
both contrlbuted to this confusion. And undoubtedly the emphasis whlch they putupon electrlc power is the prlmary
emphasis in TVA. But flood control and national defense and
fertllizers and navigation and all the other lesser aspects of
the coordinated development of a river valley not only have
part In the plan of TVA butImportant results to showin
TVA.And advocate thoughshe IS, angrypartisanasshe
sometimes is when descrlblng such a man as Rex Reed, the
garment manufacturer who was happy to get TVA power but
who fought C. I. 0. wage and recognltiondemands
In
Tupelo, MISSWhitman has, I think, drawn the full picture
of the Tennessee Valley Authorityin clearer and more
understandableterms thanhas yet been done by anybody
else.
It is pure coincidence undoubtedly but an interesting one
that the two most satlsfactory books (to me) whlch have been
written about TVA for the layman, the taxpayer, the power
consumer, and the citizen have both been wrltten by women.
Perhaps these two ladieshave had the good sense not to
undertake such a technlcal and financial dlscussion of the
Authorlty as would confuse not only them but thelr readers
also. Butdespite MISS Whitmans ignoranceabout beaten
blscuits, I think that there may be some good housekeeping
quality still left in the entlrely emancipated feminine minds
of MISSWhitman and Odette Keun (A Foreigner Looks at
W A , Longmans). Each at least has caught and presented
with well-swept clarity the idea of an area intelligently developed for the use and happiness of man. No fine-spun
theorlesbindelther of them. Nelther of them is caught in
the maze of tradition. They look with clear feminine eyes at
a valley better for the people in it: and they are pleased. Like
the puddlng and theeating, the pleasure is the proof. Perhaps
TVA is more complicated than this, as certainly the lawyers
would insist. Indeed, there are bewlldering problems left for
engineer, farmer, politician, and planner, MISSWhitman has
not answered with any certainty all thebig questions the
citizen and the technician must face together. But she has, I
think, provided the best basis for the beginning of wisdom
about TVA. And she haswrittenit with vividness, understanding, good humor, and flashes of a fine feminine wit. A
woman who can see so clearly and write so well may even in
the South be forgiven a lapse over a lambasted biscuit.
JONATHAN DANIELS

Hungry Caravan
T H E GRAPES OF WRATH. By John Steinbeck. The Viking
Press. $2.75.

HIS is in many ways the mostmoving and disturbing

soclal novel of our time. What is wrong with it, what
is weak in it, what robs it of the stature it clearly attempts,
are matters that mustpresentlybepolnted
out; but not at
once. Flrstit should be pomtedoutthatTheGrapes
of
Wrath comes at a needed tlme in a powerful way. It comes,
perhaps, as The Drapiers Letters or Uncle Toms Cabin
or some of the soclal novels of Zola came. It burns with no
pure gemllke flame, but with hot and
immedlate fire. It is,
from any point of view, Stembecks best novel, but it does
not make one wonder whether, on the basis of it, Steinbeck
IS now a better novelist than Hemingway or Farrell or DOS
Passos ; it does not invoke comparisons ; it simply makes one
feel that Steinbeck is, in some way all hls own, a force.
The publlshers refer to the book as perhaps the greatest
single creatlve workthat t h h country has produced. This
is a foollsh and extravagant statement, but unlike most pubIlshers statements, it seems the result of honest enthusiasm,
and one may hope that the common reader will respond to
the book with an enthuslasm of the same sort. And perhaps
he will, for The Grapes
of Wrath has,overwhelmingly,
those two qualitiesmost vitalto a work of social protest:
greatindignationandgreat
compassion. Itsthemeislarge
and tragic and, on the whole, is largely and traglcally felt.
No novel of our day has been written out of a more genuine
humanlty, and none, I thlnk, is better calculated to awaken
the humanity of others.
Throughout the Southwest hundreds of thousands of small
farmers and share-croppers have been driven, by the banks
and the big landowners, from thelr farms-to move westward, with their familles, i n a dusty caravan of jalopies, to
Callfornla. To California, because handbllls lure them there
wrth promises of work. But the real purpose of the handbills
is to flood theCallfornia market with such a surplus of
workers thatthe price of labor sinks to almost nothing.
Hungry men, by acceptlng lower wages, oustill-paidmen
from their jobs; then, in desperatlon, the ousted men snatch
the jobs back at wages even lower. The result is a horde of
the starving and homeless, l i v q in filth In roadslde camps,
foreverwandering, all thought of securlty ended.
In the fate of one such famlly-the Joads of OklahomaJohn Steinbeck hastold thefate of all. Theirfate is the
theme of an angry and aroused propagandist, but the Joads
themselves are the product of a llvely novelist. A racy, picturesque, somewhat eccentric tnbe, wlth certaln resemblances
to Erskine Caldwells Georgla exhlbits, the Joads-mean,
merry, shameless Grandpa ; brooding, conscience-stricken
Uncle John; strong, tough, understandlng Ma; AI, a squirt
thinking only of women and cars ; Tom, who has been in
prison for killing a man in a brawl-the Joads, with their
salty, slanting speech, theirfrankand
boisterous opinions,
theirunrepressed,irrepresslbleappetites,would,
in astable
world, be the stuff of rich folk-comedy. But suddenly uprooted and harassed, they ale creatures forced to fight for
their very existence. During the first half of Steinbecks long
book the Joads, both as peopleand as symbols, have tre-

441

April 15, 1939

mendons vitality. Steinbecks account of this one family leaving home and journeying forth in a rickety makeshift truck
is llke some nlght-llghted, rude Homeric chronicle of a great
migration. It has a vlgor, as of half-childllke, half-heroic adventuring, that almostblots outthe sense of Itsdesperate
origins and painful forebodlngs.
But afterthe Joads reach Callfornia, something-a kind
of inner hfe-dlsappears from the book. The economic outrage, the human tragedy aremade
brutally clear. The
chronlcle of the Joads remains vivld; the nature of their fate
becomes ever more infurlatlng. As a tract, the book goes on
piling up its indictment, conductlng the reader on a sort of
grand tour of exploitatlon and destltution. And all this has,
emotionally at least, a very strong effect. Butsomehow the
book ceases to grow, to malntaln directlon. It is truly enough
a story of nomads; but from that it does not follow that the
proletarian novel must fallintothe
loose pattern of the
picaresque novel. Artlstlcally speakmg, the second half of
TheGrapes of Wrath,thoughit
stlllhascontentand
suspense, lacks form and intensity. The people simply go on
and on, with Stelnbeck left improvising and amplifying until
-with a touch of new and final horror-he abruptly halts.
The Grapes of Wrath IS a superb tract because i t exposes something terrlbleandtruewlth
enormous vigor. It
is a superb tract, moreover, by virtue of belngthoroughly
animated fictlon, by virtue of living scenes andllving
characters (hke Ma), not by vlrtue of discursive homllies
and dead characters (Ilke the soclallstlc preacher).One
comes away moved, indignant, protestlng,
pltying.
But
one comes away dissatisfied, too,aware thatTheGrapes
of Wrathis too unevenly welghted,too uneconomically
proportioned, thework
of a wrlterwho
is still selfindulgent,still undisciplmed, stlllnot altogetheraware of
the dlfference in value of various human emotions. The
picturesqueness of the Joads, for example, is fine wherever
I t makes them h e more abundantly, but false when simply
laidonfor
effect. Steinbecks sentimentalism isgoodin
brlnging hlm close to the lives of his people, but bad when
it blurs his insight. Again, the chapters in which Steinbeck
halts the story to editoriahze about Amerlcan life are sometimes useful, but oftener pretentious and flatulent.
But one does not take leave of a book like thls In a captious
spirit. One salutes it as a fiery document of protest and compassion, as a story that had to be told, as a book that must
be read. It is, I think, one of those books-there are not very
many-which really do some good.
LOUIS KRONENBERGER

Betrayal in Europe
EUROPE ON T H E EVE. By Frederick L. Schuman. Alfred
A. Knopf. $3.50.

66

UROPE ON T H E EVEcanhardly
be too highly
E p r a l s e d . I t should be read by everybody who wishes
to know how the present deplorable sltuatlon In Europe has
come about. Professor Schuman shows by evldence the valldlty
of whlchcannot be contested, and for whlch he gives his
references in the copious notes at the end of the book, that
the big responslbillty for the present state of Europe rests

on the governments that have successively held office in England and France since 1933. The publlshers are indeed justified in describing the story as shocking. It is a record of
stupldlty, bad falth, fraud, and vlolatlon of treaty obhgatlons
such as mustbeunprecedented
in thehlstory of European
diplomacy.
There was only one break in the melancholy story-the
eightmonthsIn
1934 during which LOUISBarthou was
ForeignMinister of France.ProfessorSchuman
recognizes
the brilllant diplomacy of that interestlng man, who showed
in the last months of 111s llfe higher quallties than anybody
had prevlously believed hlm to possess. Barthous assasslnation atMarsellles on October 9, 1934, was a disaster to
Europe. It IS quite possible that the German and Italian governments,whlchwerebehlnd
the assassln, armed more at
Barthou than at King Alexander of Yugoslavla.
The few mistakes or omisslons In Europe on the Eve
do not detract from the great value of the book. Some are
qulte trivial. For example, Plerre Lava1 is not and never was
a devoutCatholic, and Pierre EtienneFlandinhas never
been a member of the Radlcal Party, as Professor Schuman
supposes. H e has always been a Conservatlve and a prominent member of the right center group to which Paul Reynaud also belonged.
Professor Schuman is, in my opinion,mistaken in saying
that the Pohsh flirtation with the Reich was in some measure
a consequence of the French fllrtatlon wlth Moscow, whlch
wasa very mild fllrtatlon untll Barthoutook office. The
estrangement of Poland from Francebegan with the FourPower Pact, to which the Poles were qulte rlght in objectmg,
for it was an attempt to substltute a dlrectorate of the four
great Western powers for the League of Natlons. It was also
almed agalnst Russia. What finally decided Pllsudski to slgn
the non-aggression agreement wlth Germany on January 26,
1934, was the discovery that Daladlerhad
been secretly
negotlatlngwithHltlerthroughFernandde
Brinon. Even
then Beck, on Pilsudskis instructions, told Paul-Boncour, the
French Foreign Mlnister, at Geneva that Poland would not
slgnthe pact if France wouldadopt a firm p o k y toward
Germany.
When ProfessorSchuman says that the U. S. S. R. was
certain of admisslon tothe League by the necessary twothlrds vote under Article I of the Covenant without Polands
vote, he forgets that the unanimous consent of the League
Council, of which Poland wasa member, was necessary to
glve Soviet Russla a permanent seat on the Council. When
he says that Leon Blum inducedthe FrenchCabinet
on
JuIy 25, 1936, to forbid all arms
shlpments to Spain, ProfessorSchuman IS confusingthe embargo,which was not
decided on untll August 8, withthe non-interventionproposal, which, if I amnot mistaken, was adopted by the
Cabinet onAugust 2, not July 25. The reason why Blum
agreed to the embargo was that the leading Radical ministers
threatened to reslgn if he did not, after the threats of the
Brltlsh ambassador to Paris, Slr George Clerk.
There is an obvlous slip in a date on page 110. The joint
Franco-Russiandeclaratlon
was issued at Genevaon December 5 , 1934, not 1935.
But these few errors, as I have said, do not detract from
the great value of Mr. Schumans book. O n the contrary it is