Books: Fervent Sermon

A TIME FOR GREATNESS—Herbert Agar—Little, Brown ($2.50).

Herbert Agar is not afraid to deliver a sermon. A Time for Greatness is a 300-page editorial on democracy that has the fervor and some of the moral reach of the Old Testament prophets. Two quotations set the framework of Agar's thinking:

> Lincoln's: "The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history."

> Goethe's: "That which the fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it."

Young Man's Return. In the '30s, Herbert Sebastian Agar, poet, playwright, columnist and editor, returned from London to the U.S. disgusted with the aftermath of World War I, feeling that there was little in Europe worth fighting for. So he concentrated on U.S. domestic problems. In 1934 he won the Pulitzer prize for history with The People's Choice, a study of U.S. Presidents. Other books followed, but with the approach of World War II Agar began to feel that the U.S. had an important stake in world affairs.

Three months ago the Louisville Courier-Journal (of which he was editor) and Manhattan's Freedom House (of which he was a founder) granted Agar a leave of absence. He went into active service as a lieutenant commander, leaving behind him his fourth book on U.S. polity, A Time for Greatness, expounding his new philosophy.

The Wrath of God. Agar practices what he has often told the U.S. press: "The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." Like an early Father of the Church, Agar believes that Hitler and the other great malefactors of mankind are sent by Providence to punish people who have betrayed their spiritual heritage. The standard-bearers of democratic civilization failed to live up to their own standards. If they want to survive, they must practice what they preach.

This moral approach distinguishes A Time for Greatness from the current run of "think" books. A self-styled "creative conservative," Agar preaches no new U.S. revolution, but a new adherence to the social and political principles of the Founding Fathers (U.S.), which he considers in accord with the principles of all Western civilization. "Civilization means rules and promises which are kept. ... It rests upon power to discriminate in the name of moral values."

Convinced that America's cardinal mistake has been to consider this civilization as a by-product of economic progress, Agar believes that merely economic arrangements will not prevent future wars, in short that peace cannot be bought.

Explosive Idea. Agar argues that the "explosive idea" of America is equality—equality of opportunity, equality in access to civilization, equality in protection against the abuse of political and economic power. But neither the U.S. nor the rest of the world has ever completely achieved this equality. In the U.S., the status of the Negro and the poverty of the South constitute the worst violations of historic U.S. principles. In the rest of the world, racial discrimination and the poverty of backward countries indict the weakness of the white man's works.