Viewpoint of Victory

THE MOON IS DOWN-John Steinbeck--Viking ($2).

"By ten-forty-five it was all over. The town was occupied, the defenders defeated, and the war finished." With these brisk, matter-of-fact words John Steinbeck begins his brisk, matter-of-fact account of the conquest of a nameless country, resembling Norway, by an invading force, resembling the Nazis. The Moon Is Down is Steinbeck's first important work of fiction since The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and the most resolute and dramatic piece of propaganda that has come out of World War II.

Like Of Mice and Men, this book could be made into a play simply by turning the descriptions into stage directions and filling out the dialogue. The writing is spare, bold, sometimes tensely humorous. What makes it great propaganda, over & above the professional skill with which it is written, is a certainty of viewpoint that does not admit the possibility of final military defeat because it does not admit the possibility of moral defeat. This is the viewpoint of victory.

Conquest. Victory was not the viewpoint of "the town" on the Sunday when the invaders arrived. The first mood was confusion. The postman and policeman had gone fishing in a boat owned by Mr. Corell, "the popular storekeeper." They were several miles at sea "when they saw the small, dark transport, loaded with soldiers, go quietly past them." Conscious of their civic duties, the postman and policeman turned back in time to be thrown into the local jail. "The local troops, all twelve of them, had been away. ..." Mr. Corell, the popular storekeeper, had donated a lunch, targets, cartridges and prizes for a shooting match six miles back in the hills in a pretty glade that he owned. The local troops, "big, loose-hung boys" (a hallmark of Steinbeck heroes), saw the planes and parachutes and ran back to town in time to be machine-gunned. That ended the first phase of the invasion.

Phase No. 2 took place at Mayor Orden's "five-room palace." By the fire sat Dr. Winter, the town historian and physician, "bearded and simple and benign." "What's the Mayor doing?" he asked the butler. "Dressing to receive the Colonel, sir. . . . Madame is trimming the hair out of his ears. It tickles. . . ."

The invaders were very polite. "Our military regulations, sir, prescribe that we search for weapons before the commanding officer enters a room. We mean no disrespect, sir." They searched Dr. Winter. Then the captain took out his little black book and observed that there were firearms in the house. "You are thorough," said Dr. Winter. "Yes, our local man has been working here for some time." Said Dr. Winter: "I don't suppose you would tell who that man is?" Said the captain: "His work is all done now. I don't suppose there would be any harm in telling. His name is Corell."

Revolt of the Masses. Later Colonel Lanser arrived, and told the Mayor: "We want to get along as well as we can. You see, sir, this is more like a business venture than anything else. We need the coal mine here and the fishing. We will try to get along with just as little friction as possible." He added that the people must go on working the mine. "But suppose," said the Mayor, "the people do not want to work the mine." "I hope they will want to," said the Colonel, "because they must." He explained that the Mayor would continue to give orders. Said the Mayor: "Sir, I am of this people, and yet I don't know what they will do. ... Some people accept appointed leaders and obey them.

But my people have elected me. They made me and they can unmake me. Perhaps they will if they think I have gone over to you." Just then the butler broke in: "It's Annie [the cook]. She's getting angry, sir.

. . . Annie doesn't like the soldiers on the back porch. . . . They are looking through the window at Annie. She hates that." "They are doing no harm," said the Colonel. "Well, Annie hates to be stared at." Soon "from the doorway came the sound of an angry woman's voice and a thump and a man's cry." The butler scuttled in.

"She's thrown boiling water," he said.

"She's very angry." "You will have to discipline your cook," said the Colonel. "I can't," said the Mayor, "she'll quit." "She can't quit," said the Colonel. "Then she'll throw water," said Dr. Winter. "I could have her shot," said the Colonel, "I could lock her up ... [but] we are instructed to get along with your people. . . . Please cooperate with us for the good of all. . . .

Will you?" "I don't know," said the Mayor. "But you are the authority," said the Colonel. Said the Mayor: "You won't believe this, but it is true: authority is in the town. I don't know how or why, but it is so. This means we cannot act as quickly as you can, but when a direction is set, we all act together..." Then the invaders moved into the Mayor's house. Among them were Lieutenants Prackle and Tonder. Prackle was "a dancing-partner, a gay young man who nevertheless could scowl like the Leader, could brood like the Leader. He hated degenerate art and had destroyed several canvases with his own hands." Tonder was "a bitter poet who dreamed of perfect, ideal love of elevated young men for poor girls. ... He longed for death on the battlefield. . . . He even had his dying words ready." Only Colonel Lanser "knew what war really is in the long run. Lanser had been in Belgium and France 20 years before and he tried not to think what he knew --that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds." The invaders were almost entirely cut off from the population. "In the town the people moved sullenly through the streets.

Some of the light of astonishment was gone from their eyes, but still a light of anger had not taken its place. . . The people spoke to one another in monosyllables, and everyone was thinking of the war, thinking of himself, thinking of the past and how it had suddenly been changed."

Impossible Job. Then Alex Morden, a miner, bashed in one invader's head with his pickax. The invaders asked Mayor Orden to sentence him, to preserve order. The Mayor said he would, if the invaders would shoot the 20 men who killed the loose-hung soldiers. Then Colonel Lanser, who really knew what war is, smiled a little sadly. "We really have taken on a job, haven't we?" he said. "Yes," said the Mayor, "the one impossible job in the world, the one thing that can't be done." "And that is?" "To break man's spirit permanently."

They shot Alex. "And there was death in the air, hovering and waiting. Accidents happened on the railroad. . . . Avalanches poured down on the tracks and rails were spread. No train could move unless the tracks were first inspected. People were shot in reprisal and it made no difference. Now and then a group of young men escaped and went to England. . . .

"Now it was that the conqueror was surrounded, the men of the battalion alone among silent enemies, and no man might relax his guard for even a moment. If he did, he disappeared, and some snowdrift received his body. If he went alone to a woman, he disappeared. ... If he drank, he disappeared. . . ."

The flies, they said, had conquered the flypaper. Little by little "fear began to grow in the conquerors, a fear that . . . one day they would crack and be hunted through the mountains like rabbits. . . ."

"These horrible people!" cried poetic Lieut. Tonder. "These cold people! They never look at you. They never speak. They answer like dead men. They obey, these horrible people. And the girls are frozen. ... I want a girl. I want to go home. I want a girl. There's a girl in this town, a pretty girl. I see her all the time. She has blond hair. ... I want that girl."

Implacable. Lieut. Tonder's meeting with this girl is the high point of The Moon Is Down. For in this human episode there emerges for the first time in the literature of the democracies a pure jet of that implacability which has been the driving force of the Nazi revolution and without which the counterrevolution cannot succeed against it.

Tender took his life in his hands and visited the blonde girl. "I don't mean any harm," he pleaded, "please let me come in. . . . Can you understand this --can you believe this? Just for a little while, can't we forget this war? Just for a little while. Just for a little while, can't we talk together like people --together?" She looked at him for a long time and smiled. "You don't know who I am, do you?" she said. She was Alex Morden's widow, but she did not say so to Lieut. Tonder. She pitied him at last, stroked his hand, stroked his cheek. "God keep you," he said as he left. Then Molly Morden realized that her feeling of pity was an impermissible weakness that might lead to disaster. Others offered to kill the officer for her. She realized that, because she pitied him, she must kill him herself. The next time he rapped she looked down at the big-bladed shears that lay beside her knitting. She picked them up and held them like a knife. Then she hid them in her dress and blew out the lamp. Tonder rapped impatiently. "I'm coming, Lieutenant," she called as she groped her way in the dark, "I'm coming."

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