Man about the World

Officially the new course was called tories," "Military but all that Government of anyone at Occupied North Terri western needed to know was that William Montgomery McGovern, a sensible wild man, was teaching it.

McGovern is apt to explain Kant in terms of Buicks and boogie-woogie, and fall back frequently on McGovern reminiscences. These include boyhood in Brooklyn, a spell in the English theater, a junket to Tibet's Forbidden City of Lhasa, and his days as a Buddhist monk in Japan. He can also spin yarns about his explorations of Peru's Inca ruins and Formosa's head-hunting country. McGovern is a sound scholar withal, master of twelve languages, author of a Manual of Buddhist Philosophy, and From Luther to Hitler. He was one of the boys in the back room of Army & Navy Intelligence.

Life in the Navy had not changed 48-year-old Bill McGovern much, except to restock his cornucopia of anecdotes. Starchy Admiral King got indigestion every time Commander McGovern entered the room, his Byronic profile rising proudly above a pair of dandruff-laden shoulders, his uniform scarred with gravy. (In civilian life, McGovern modeled an otter fur hat by a Chinese Lily Dache at a formal dinner.) Once, smoking on Constitution Avenue, McGovern saw King coming. He stuffed the red-hot pipe into his pocket, threw King a salute--and scrambled down the street, his pants catching fire. Says he: "I lived in constant fear of courtmartial."

Breakfast-Table Briefing. Behind enemy lines on Guadalcanal, McGovern screamed Buddhist curses in Japanese, captured a few Jap prisoners to question. He crossed the Rhine with Patton's men, and later worked on the Potsdam declaration. But his biggest war job was in Washington. He had to get up at 5:30 a.m., to bang out a daily top-secret newspaper on enemy capabilities and intentions--required breakfast reading for President Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Later, for JANIS (Joint Army Navy Intelligence Strategy), he edited a 53-volume encyclopedia on potential invasion areas, written by 400 professors and assorted experts. Says McGovern: "It was right hard to get those highbrows to part with their beloved footnotes." Even abridged, the average volume was still too long to please King, Leahy or Marshall. On learning that it was 900-odd pages, they would shudder: "Oh my God! Boil it down to three or four."

McGovern was offered a top occupation job in Japan, but preferred to return to Northwestern to train, with the State Department's unofficial blessing, some of the 5,000 U.S. civilians needed in Japan and Germany. Says he: "I'm in favor of self-destructive military government."

Cut-Across Counts. A vivid, irreverent lecturer, he is less concerned with memorizing specific facts (like the details of Tokyo's public utilities system) than with understanding national cultures. Says McGovern: "So much of our university life is departmentalized. The really worthwhile things are the cut-across subjects--races, languages, religions, what people eat and drink-and how they treat their mothers-in-law. If you know the culture patterns of India, how the Bengalese feel about the Burmese, and the Burmese about the Kachins, and which hate the British, you can guess pretty accurately how India will react to a Jap attack. That is applied political science."

* William ("Mouse") McGovern Jr., now twelve, one of four children (the others are girls), has been called by connoisseurs "the best bartender this side of New Orleans." He also speaks Chinese and has a Quiz Kid's knowledge of history, picked up in Sunday bathtub sessions with Bill Sr.

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