Stowe's World

WHILE TIME REMAINS (379 pp.)-- Leland Stowe--Knopf ($3.50).

As a war correspondent, the Chicago Daily News's Leland Stowe served with the armies of seven nations, traveled in 44 countries. The worst behaved troops he saw anywhere, he declares, were U.S. troops--the rawest, rudest, most irresponsible, most scornful of the rights and ideas of others.

"I am not scared of the Russians, the British or anyone else," says Correspondent Stowe. "I am scared of ourselves. . . .The most frightening thing in today's world is. . .the terrible unpreparedness of the American people. . .to assume their necessary role in world leadership."

While Time Remains is an effort to assess the degree of that "unpreparedness" and an inquiry into U.S. relations with the rest of the world. For the most part, Correspondent Stowe writes in lumbering, low-gear journalese ("diabolical idealistic window-dressing to make cannon fodder out of the cream of their countries' youth," etc.), but certain of his assertions are perfectly plain. Among them: 1) the U.S. itself started the atomic armament race with the U.S.S.R.; 2) the U.S. with its concentrated seaboard metropolises could not protect itself as well as Russia, were matters to come to an atomic showdown; 3) the U.S. has thus far shown little interest in making its democratic ways more attractive abroad to offset the appeal that Soviet Communism, with its racial equality and promise of economic gain, seems to have for masses of people throughout the world.

The Challenge. On the contrary, Stowe goes on, many of the G.I.s abroad exhibited to Frenchmen, Chinese and other foreigners a kind of bully-boy arrogance which was scarcely surpassed by that of Soviet troops on the rampage after V-E day. He relates it to traditional U.S. treatment of Negroes, Catholics, Jews and foreigners at home. Russia's Communist challenge is real enough, says Author Stowe. But it will never be met, he insists, merely by calling Stalin names or by deploring the contradictions in the Soviet system.

The present or potential threat of militant, strong-arm Soviet imperialism worries Stowe surprisingly little; he is far more worried about what the democracies should do to put their own house in order. A war to "stamp out Communism," he feels, would probably result in world dictatorship even were Stalin & Co. overthrown. He doubts that survivors of such a war--the remnants of Western civilization, the burgeoning Asiatic millions--would give democracy another chance to prove its devotion to the cause of peace.

What, in the meantime, Stalin & Co. might do themselves to prove their devotion to the same cause Correspondent Stowe does not stop to explain. His vague, but earnest, urgent domestic prescription:

1) education, more education and still more education of U.S. citizens to what he calls their atomic-age responsibilities;

2) a broadened political & economic U.S. democracy as token of what ultimate world government could and should be.

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