Ordeal of a Bard

When a plain U.S. citizen faces a U.S. Congressional quiz, the ensuing scene is apt to resemble a medieval inquisition. When a poet undergoes the same ordeal, it is more likely to resemble murder. Last week, lank, sallow, liberal Poet Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress and one of Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius' new team of assistants, was almost bumped off by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

MacLeish's inquisitor was Missouri's lame duck Bennett Champ Clark. MacLeish's offenses were the sins of liberal pamphleteering and rhetorical poetry. In the marble-pillared Senate Caucus Room, he gamely, lamely countered the poking and prodding of his tormentor.

A Rancid Odor. Bennett Clark began with the MacLeish prose. In his husky voice he read aloud from MacLeish's Preface to an American Manifesto: "The great American capitalist and his son and his daughter-in-law and his banking system might well have been chosen for hatefulness. ..." What, demanded the Senator, did that mean?

MacLeish: "I was describing the lay figure that the Communists had set up to attack. . . ."

Senator Clark continued reading: " 'They have soaked themselves in the rancid odor of capitalistic stupidity and greed. . . .'" With a note of triumph in his voice, the Senator asked: "Mr. MacLeish, do you think you would be able to bear, with your sensitive nostrils, standing in the same room with Ed Stettinius, Will Clayton, Mr. Grew and people like that?"

MacLeish: "I do not notice any giving-off of a rancid odor among those people."

Bennett Clark turned to the MacLeish poetry. He held up Immortality, which MacLeish deprecated as an undergraduate effort. Clark read:

How else am I, Love's acolyte, so wise

To know that dreams and passion turned devote,

And joy grown sad, are Love with wide girls' eyes.

Clark: "I do find myself, perhaps because of my low-type intellect, completely unable to understand some of your poetry."

MacLeish: "Senator, all I can say is that others have had the same difficulty."

Clark: "Do you yourself understand it?"

MacLeish: "You know the famous anecdote about Browning--one day one of Browning's friends called on him and asked him what he meant by a certain passage. Browning read it over and said, 'When I wrote that, God and I knew what it meant; but now God alone knows.' "

The audience tittered. But the laugh was not really on Bennett Clark. Next day, when the committee met in secret session, the nomination of Archibald MacLeish as Assistant Secretary of State was turned down, by a vote of 12 to 8.

Then began a curious skirmish. Senators Claude Pepper of Florida and James E. Murray of Montana, who had voted against all the nominees because they did not like ex-Cotton Broker Will Clayton, hastily switched their votes. Pennsylvania's New Dealing Joe Guffey wanted to do likewise, but Committee Chairman Tom Connally drawled: "If I let you change your vote, are you agoin' to stay hitched?" Infuriated, Joe Guffey let his "nay" stand.

The 10-to-10-tie on MacLeish, had it been reported to the Senate, would have meant his certain defeat. Tom Connally, fighting to get the whole Stettinius team in, suddenly ruled that he would hold open the poll until midnight. A search began for absent Committee Members Robert F. Wagner and Gerald P. Nye. Wagner, quickly found, broke the tie with a telephoned vote for MacLeish from his Manhattan home.

This week, as the MacLeish appointment faced a full Senate vote, it was as hard to predict his fate as it was for Bennett Clark to understand his poetry.

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