Evening star., 1937-10-25
"Assignment in Utopia''
An American Revoutionist Goes to Russia and Finds
it On the Wrong Path.

side on which he believes that
history is marching. Faith and de-
sire struggle in these pages with
doubt. Doubt grows, observation
piling on observation, to pound re-
morselessly at the citadel OF faith.
The judgment must, finally, be
made. And when Eugene Lyons
makes 1t, he makes it definitely:
This is not that for which we have
suffered and fought. This is not, in
any sense, the fulf1llment of the
dream. 1t was not for this that We,
all over the world, have tried, at the
price of danger and outlaWry, to take
history by the bride and turn it
into another course. This is not
revolution! 1t is counter-revolutsonl
The whole of official Communism is
on the wrong path!
Why? That, after all, is the great
question. Eugene Lyons wrestles
with this question. Curiously. amaz-
ingly, across the world In Swiss yile,
the great German, Thomas Mann,
wrestles, also, and comes to the same
conclusion. Man is moral animal
and woe to the deniers! There are
attributes of the human spirit trans
cending class, transcending economic
systems. Revolution is made for
man, not man for revolution. Means
are integral with ends. Freedom,
Justice, order, reason-these are not
words to be played with cynically as
instruments to move the masses,
now in this direction, now in that.
These are realities; these are the
elan Of life. Justice demands that
men be just; freedom that they be
free; reason that they be reasonable.
Revolution, not to be successful but
to be revolutionary, must be noble.
It's end and its Justification are the
enhancement of the dignity and re-
sponsibility, and beauty, of man
kind. In hatred, terror. cruelty, am
bition, and cynicism the new world
is strangled at birth. The form is
there, but no breath moves the lips
to smile.
Thomas Mann's Credo.
In the current issue of Story,
Thomas Mann's editorial from his
new paper, Measure and Value, is
reprinted. 1t is the credo of revo-
lutionary artist, who. dares, in the
same breath to call himself con-
servative. A repudiator of existing
standards and forms-all along the
line, in art, in politics, in economics,
in life-who knows, nevertheless,
that man is the product of the
whole of his past, in which Is all OF
good and all OF evil. AS a revolu-
tionary, he denounceS revolutioniSm.
Yes, it is an ism, dogma, not
faithl The revolutionary ternlin-
ology is hopelessly discredited, and
compromised, it is utterly worn out,
having served to persuade the herd
minded citizen to think of himself
as revolutionary. 1t is a shabby,
scabby, herd-minded world where
these bold slogans echo today-cer-
tainly a world as remote as possible
from the world of art, of quality and
distinction"s Art and revolution,
Mann indicates. are of the same i'm
pulse: To achieve out of chaos: The
nti-barbaric, the triumph of form,
the triumph of the human. They both
search for pure quality. the unsatis-
fed, Unsuitable demand"
Eugene Lyons writes Of the Rus
sian revolution; Mann considers the
German revolution Of the Nazis.
They come to the same conclusions.
And to these conclusions, this col
umn says: Yes.
Copyright. 1887, New York Tribune, lnc)