Stevenson

Heroes are no new thing to Western Civilization; they serve to define ambition and to personify philosophy. In them we see the world we would have if we could choose our world. "The search after great men," Emerson wrote, "is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood ...Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons." For a free nation whose moral flesh has become soft with disuse and fat with self flattery, a Great Man has a special role. More than the leader who would direct us, or the philosopher who would admonish us, he must be a man in whose image we would mold ourselves. To liberal Democrats during the 1950's, Adlai Stevenson served as the Philosopher-Would-be-King--a symbol and promise of the once and future Republic.

In December 1960, Governor Stevenson agreed to become the United States permanent representative in the United Nations. For the past three years he has dignified our foreign policy in that forum. Now Robert L. and Selma Schiffer have collected a volume of the Ambassador's speeches and have persuaded Mr. Stevenson, President Kennedy (in a preface), and publishers Harper and Row to collaborate in its publication. Looking Outward, as the volume is called, carries the subtitle "Years of Crisis at the United Nations." Actually, less than half of the book is devoted to Stevenson's U.N. speeches; but those speeches deserve some scrutiny. They demonstrate what happens to the theorist when he comes to power.

Fifteen speeches are included in the section of the book entitled "The Crisis." They range in subject from the Congo to disarmament, to Red Chins, to Cubs. While without exception they ring with Stevenson's impeccable rhetoric, almost every speech is an infraction of the Ambassador's public philosophy. In some cases they go so far as to attack his own beliefs as expressed as a private citizen. For example, in opposing Red China's entry into the world body, he condemns their "aggressive violence" at length, and argues against those who maintain that membership in the U.N. would encourage China to act responsibility. Yet in the title essay of Putting First Things First--Stevenson's most recent book, published on the eve of the 1960 Democratic Convention--Stevenson urged Red China's admission to the U.N. because she "would be more accountable to world opinion than as an outcast." Speeches where the Ambassador most seriously violates his own convictions--speeches on Angola, the Union of South Africa, and the American supported invasion of Cuba--are not reprinted here.

But in general the Ambassador abandons the role of the philosopher not because he is explaining the policy of others but because the perspective of the diplomat and the philosopher are so widely different. As a private citizen and a public candidate, Stevenson time and again stressed the importance of cooperation with the Russians; repeatedly he declared useless a policy based on anti-Soviet attacks. Yet more than half of the U.N. speeches in this volume are little more than anti-Soviet propaganda. In these speeches, of course, Stevenson does not abandon his over-all philosophy. But in responding to an anti-imperialist circular, or commenting on the 100th Soviet veto, or discussing the positioning of Soviet missiles in Cuba, he can't afford to remind the world that no one has a monopoly on morality. The U.N. speeches, then, abetted by spicy slaps at the Soviets in the editor's brief introductions, portray a world of democrats and autocrats, of judges and criminals, of defenders and aggressors.

Happily, in the last sections of the volume we discover that the Ambassador has taken time from his U.N. duties--and role--to give speeches to University students, to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and to the Organizations of American States. When lecturing around the country, Stevenson is more than an apologist for our status quo; he challenges the meaning of freedom in an affluent society he describes a world community where our best interests are served by our contribution to the welfare of others. But these speeches hardly serve to recapture Stevenson's image. The message of the U.N. addresses is too clear.

Adlai Stevenson has meant more to America as a symbol than as a creative thinker or as a policy maker. He once explained the meaning of Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln was not an original thinker, yet it is to him "that people look today as democracy's foremost spokesman and exemplar. The supreme test of a democratic leader is in his democratic faith--and for this Lincoln stands pre-eminent." Although no Lincoln, Stevenson is important as a symbol and as a man. His U.N. speeches show the man in a different role, one which clouds the meanings of the symbol.