I promised that I would eventually write a grand post about Roger Morris' discussion of the Alger Hiss case in his book, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.
I'll be doing that tomorrow. As I've said before, one reason that I
decided to add Morris' book to my reading list was so I could see how he
would present the Hiss case, since I have read in at least one review
that Morris defends Hiss' innocence of being a Communist spy (which is
probably an overstatement, but Morris does raise doubts about the case
against Hiss being air-tight). Let me say this: After reading Morris'
discussion of the Hiss case, I am not disappointed, for I found Morris'
discussion to be well worth the read. My post tomorrow will not cover
every angle of Morris' discussion of the Hiss case, but I do hope to hit
some of the important highlights.
What I'll talk about in today's
post is something that Morris says on page 452. There, Morris narrates
Whittaker Chambers' reaction to Harry Truman's 1948 Presidential win.
Whittaker Chambers was the ex-Communist who was accusing Alger Hiss of
having engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union.
"Out in
Westminster, Whittaker Chambers had listened to the first returns put
the Democrats ahead, told his wife tersely, 'I think President Truman
has won,' and then gone to bed and 'slept soundly.' But he awoke to the
old fearful air of persecution. 'I took it for granted that the
election results automatically meant that some way would be found to
punish me for having tried to expose Alger Hiss,' he wrote of the
morning after, adding about his friends on the HUAC staff or at Time, 'Scarcely anybody I knew supposed anything else.'"
The
reason that this passage stood out to me was that it reminds me of how
my own emotions can be. One minute, I can be sanguine about something,
or at least have a "who cares?" attitude. Later on, however, that very
"something" can give me great perplexity. Both emotions are probably
necessary, on some level. If I'm always going through life feeling
sanguine or indifferent, then I wouldn't plan strategies to get around
certain crises, and so some worry is probably a good thing. On the
other hand, life would be pretty dismal if I am always worrying and taking things seriously, so it is nice to be in a fairly good (or even a flat) mood, every once in a while.