Books: Privileged Heirlooms

PRESENT AT THE CREATION by Dean Acheson. 798 pages. W. W. Norton. $12.50 to Dec. 31, then $15.

Twenty years ago, only a Metternich might have appreciated Dean Acheson, that rarest of all Americans, the model diplomat. Excessively sharp of mind and tongue—and not at all afraid to show the biting edge of either—Acheson was not destined for public popularity as Harry Truman's Secretary of State, particularly in an era when careers could be smashed overnight by little more than whispered innuendoes of "Communist" or "leftwing" sympathies. Present confusions and elapsed time, however, have created new perspectives on the diplomatic problems and achievements of the Truman Administration.

When the guns grew silent in 1945, much of the world had been torn apart. "Only slowly did it dawn upon us," writes Acheson in this, the second volume of his memoirs (1941-1953), "that the whole world structure and order that we had inherited from the nineteenth century was gone and that the struggle to replace it would be directed from two bitterly opposed and ideologically irreconcilable power centers." The title of the book is thus not a rhetorical fancy. As Under Secretary (1945-1947) and later Secretary of State (1949-1953), he was present at the creation of a new world order—and had a considerable role in its formation.

New Left and revisionist historians have argued in recent years that, in fact, Acheson and Truman fired the opening shots of the cold war, that such a policy as the Truman Doctrine was the equivalent of bombarding Fort Sumter. Acheson is aware of the argument, and like the careful lawyer he is, presents a formidable brief for the defense. Soviet troops had occupied the northern provinces of Iran; to force them out strong American pressure was needed. The Truman Doctrine, which combined military and economic aid, was developed only to counter Soviet designs upon the faltering regimes of Greece and Turkey. To restore a Europe close to economic disintegration, the Marshall Plan was the only possible remedy.

Summing up the immediate results of postwar policy, Acheson writes: "Our efforts for the most part left conditions better than when we found them." The man most responsible, in Acheson's view, was Harry Truman, "the captain with the mighty heart." Acheson is not blind to his chiefs faults. Truman, he admits, was guided more by feeling than by reason. His most provocative example is Truman's help in founding the state of Israel, a policy that Acheson felt would produce enduring chaos in the Middle East. Elsewhere, he extols the ex-President's judgment, orderliness of mind and ability to make a decision and stick to it. "If he was not a great man," remarks Acheson, "he was the greatest little man the author knew anything about."