From Here to Shimbashi

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It has been a tradition through all of CRIMSON history that I review my own books. True, it has also been a tradition that these never get printed.

This particular review is, of course, inordinately biased, and out of fairness to the reader you may want to parallel it with one of your own.

At any rate, I think you ought to preface it with some sort of explanatory matter. Some people just won't understand. JOHN SACK '51

(Mr. Sack is a former news editor of the CRIMSON. His review follows.)

Mr. Sack speaks to us in not one but nine languages on the pages of this dreary little treatise. There are passages in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, and a bastard tongue called Talkie-talkie; phrases like "non, ce n'etait pas moi" (French) and 'nihongo wa wakarimasu ka (Japanese, perhaps) go untranslated; and even when he keeps to English, Mr. Sack uses words like tarsier, euphoria, and hematemesis. The reader might well ask: what is Mr. Sack trying to hide? The answer can be found in chapter 19, if one has the idleness or stamina to read that far. We quote:

"My grandfather was born in Kiev," I said.

"Ha ha" laughed Mr. Smirnov. "You are a Russian!"

"Shh!" I said.

Mr. Sack's fumbling attempt to hush up his identity has little success. He stands exposed as a Soviet spy, smuggled to our shores to sow the seeds of sabotage.

In the light of this, it is clear why Mr. Sacks parrots the Communist line on page after page. One sickening example will be more than enough: it is the first sentence of chapter 13. "My relations with the Chinese People's Volunteers, I'm sorry to say, have always been rather strained." That Mr. Sack had strained relations with the Chinese is, of course, good news to all loyal Americans; but why is he sorry about it? The major goal of our foreign policy should be strained the relations, with the Chinese Reds; the more strained the relations, the better the foreign policy; and anyone who is sorry about this is surely a traitor. From Here to Shimbashi is a dangerous book for the soft minds of our youth; let it be burnt. JOHN SACK '51