Volume 5, Number 3 · September 16, 1965
Hammarskjold's Mask
By J.M. Cameron
Markings
by Dag Hammarskjöld, translated by Leif Sjöberg, by W.H. Auden, with a Foreword by W.H. Auden
Knopf, 222 pp., $4.95
We are all vulgar Marxists now. The important question about a public man is what interests he represents. His quirks of character may provide variations, attractive or repulsive, upon the central theme; and he will have a private life and private loyalties that may harmonize or conflict with his social role. It is probably important that the private sphere should be known about and should be acceptable if a public man is to be successful. It will be remembered that it was a great and, before the presidential election, unanswerable question whether or not Kennedy's Catholicism would be a dire impediment to the highest success in politics. It was apparently considered a disadvantage that President Eisehhower should have been denominationally unattached; and it will be remembered that this disadvantage was overcome by his electing to become a Presbyterian. Had it been thought in either case that a particular denominational affiliation would have had decisive consequences for decisions on matters of high policy, that the private sphere would have impinged in a dramatic way upon the public sphere, then what was (as it turned out) no serious disadvantage to Kennedy and a positive advantage to Eisenhower would have stood in the way of success in politics. Indeed, in a society which professes religious and therefore, within limits, moral pluralism as a matter of principle, this is how it has to be. It is perhaps ironical that the two dire impediments to the highest success that probably still remain in American politics are not matters subject, as religious affiliations are, to personal choice. They are being a Jew or being a Negro.
Review, 2238 words
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