Word: events
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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King George VI's official birthday was an austere event last week.*Gone were most of the traditional trappings. But the custom of naming a Birthday Honors list was observed in a manner which provided a remarkable commentary on Britain's democratic wartime activities...
...Congressional balloting should show such a statement to be an indulgence of wishful thinking. Mr. Willkie's Republican colleagues are mostly sterile or poisonous so far as international thinking is involved. Nevertheless, Willkie's breadth of thought may influence the G. O. P. to a greater wisdom. In any event, he is their only candidate...
...single, dominant man, the "hero," absorbs Hook. He should not be confused with the simply eventful man such as Columbus. "Most historians would be ready to admit that, even if his ships had foundered, the new world would have been discovered . . . the whole period was one of enterprise and discovery. . . ." The hero, the event-making man, does not simply find "a fork in the historical road" -he helps create the fork. He is unique, irreplaceable. Event-making men: Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon...
Hook's most recent example of the event-making man is the Marxist hero, Nikolay Lenin. Hook disagrees with historians who read the Bolshevik Revolution into history as inevitable. What insured the successful culmination of the revolution was the fact that the individual hero, Lenin, was present. The evidence: Lenin returned to Russia on April 3, presented his thesis on April 4, called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government by armed insurrection. He demanded immediate cessation of the war against Germany. He cried "turn the imperialist war into a civil war." A bombshell, Lenin's opinions outraged...
Democracy, says Hook in effect, is possible if the general social tendency and the event-makers (if any) favor it. A democratic state must follow the leader, but should also be vigilant against his autocratic tendencies. Like Burnham, Hook recognizes the persistent power of the elite. But he thinks that democratic forces may overcome a ruling class. In Burnham's view, man is a long shot and history is doom. In Hook's view, man has the odds. For Burnham, Machiavelli is an aid to pessimism. For Hook, the concept of the hero bolsters optimism...