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...GENERATION ON TRIAL, U.S.A. v. ALGER Hiss (342 pp.)-Alistair Cooke -Knopf...
Like most important U.S. trials, the case of the United States v. Alger Hiss was so fully reported that many surfeited newspaper readers still wonder just what went on in the courtroom. The most convenient and agreeable way to find out is to read A Generation on Trial by Alistair Cooke, brilliant U.S. correspondent of England's Manchester Guardian, himself a U.S. citizen since...
Cooke has made no effort to go behind the trial evidence or to probe into the personal histories of Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. Using only the court records and documents, and the evidence of his own eyes & ears as a reporter of the trials, Author Cooke has succeeded in the difficult twin task of fairly boiling down the thousands of pages of testimony while vividly restoring the sometimes dramatic, often boring, courtroom scene. Cooke never forgets that he has set out to be a reporter and not a judge; as one result, his book induces in the reader some...
...Cooke is laudably fair as a reporter, the title of his book is a misnomer -one that his introduction labors unsuccessfully to justify. He concedes that "though the count was perjury, the implied charge [against Alger Hiss] was espionage." At the same time, he works overtime to imply that Hiss's whole generation should now be saying to itself, there but for the grace...
...able conduct of the Alger Hiss trials, U.S. Prosecutor Tom Murphy, who in eight years has never lost a case for the Government, got the President's personal thanks, but that was as far as it went. Unfortunately, Murphy had not bothered to cultivate the men who dispense New York's Democratic plums-or even to join a political club. Since there was little chance for reward or advancement (i.e., the judgeship Murphy was hoping for), there was little point in staying on the Government payroll for a piddling $9,400 a year. After Hiss's appeal...