A time for truth [antikvár]

If, when a mutual friend had given me an opportunity to read this manuscript, I had been clearly aware that it was the work of a recent Secretary of the Treasury, I doubt whether I would have been particularly anxious to read it. Remembering only that the folder contained the work of a younger man of whom my friend expected much, I dipped into it one morning and at once got so fascinated that I could not stop until I had finished it. I still know very little about the role the author played in recent American history beyond what I learned from his own account of it, All I know is that this account of his experience and the lesson he learned from it is of the greatest importance. How a man with his views could ever have becóme U.S. Secretary of the Treasury is still something of a puzzle to me. But perhaps the explanation of the opinions so unlikely to be förmed in such a position is probably that he was young enough to be really shocked by what he experienced and to learn what mature politicians no longer can learn: that the compulsion under which our system of unlimited democracy places persons at the head of government to operate forces them to do things which they know to be permissive, but must do, if they are to retain the position in which they can still hope to do somé good. If this is the lesson which a first-class young brain has learned from bittér experience, we may hope to find in him a leader of opinion such as the United States and the Western world much need. But at least what he telis us in this book ought to teach many what the obstacles are to a sensible policy being followed