The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-10-21

l prevented him from making a real contribution to an understanding of American democracy" in the best traditional melting-pot mean ing of the phrase.
 The main facts of Derounian's life he presents in the opening chapter of his book. Having es- capped from terrorism in Europe having been educated in American f schools, "Americanism" came to mean something to him, and when the threat of rise of Nazi terror ism in this country became ap- parent to him, he decided to dc something about 1t to prevent a made-in Europe totalitarianism from happening here.
 LEARNS SECRETS
 Posing as an Italian, becoming the publisher of a fake anti-Amer- ican pamphlet himself, he succeed ed in joining some 30-odd anti American organizations working in this country before the war and learning their secrets. The book is a record of what he discovered.
 What is not made plain in the book is that DerouniaIl-after get- ting his own start and after making preliminary survey of the New York Fascist scene for Fortune magazine, which later dropped the project-became chief investigator for "The Friends of Democracy, which really enabled the job to be done. This little known organization, founded and headed by the Rev. L. M. Birkhead, a Unitarian minister of Kansas City, Mo, really deserves much of the credit for making pos- sible the publication of Under Gov CT" in its present form After Der ounian had all his material, it was checked against Birkhead's files.
 The material was dynamite. Nine- teen publishers turned 1t down be. fore E. P. Dutton took 1t on, and that was only the beginning of the trouble. The possibilities for libel suits are still tremendous, but per- haps the best testimonial for the job Derounian has done is that while a number of the characters whose deeds he exposes bave threatened to sue for damages, to date not one suit has actually been filed.
 ATTACK BOOK
 Efforts to discredit the book, the author, Friends of Democracy and the Rev. MT. Birkhead have been numerous. The "vermin press," which is still permitted to publish in free America, has been rabid in criticism. Congressman Clare Hoff- man of Michigan, whose isolation ist activities are mentioned not too faVorably in Under Cover" has in- troduced a critical review in the Congressional Record, though not attacking the book directly himself.
 Under Cover" is open to criticism in that 1t tries too hard to make 6 case to show that all the crackpot pro-Fasc!st and isolationist activi- ties in the United States before and after Pearl Harbor and right now are linked in one vast super-duper plot to overthrow the American form of government. Maybe they were, but to date no one has put the finger on any one fountain head of anti-Americanism.
 Furthermore, Under Cover" tells only half the story. When you read 1t, you want to keep in mind Jean Valtin's Out of the Night" and whatever of merit there may be in the investigations of the Dies Com mittee which do for anti-American Communism what Derounian does for anti-American NaNsm.
 Taken together, these works re- veal in true proportion the real danger, which is a state of mind all too prevalent before the war and apparently not killed by the war. This attitude is a misguided, mis- led, misunderstanding of what American democracy and freedom should be. Perhaps the best name for it is tolerance. At any rate, i1- tolerance still stalks the land as one of the greatest of postwar dan- gers.