Human Odium

GUARD OF HONOR (631 pp.)--James Gould Cozzens -- Harcourt, Brace ($3.50).

Most so-called serious novelists have an ax to grind, a true bill to find, a point of view that they want to uphold regardless of how many opposing points of view they may have to howl down or ignore in the process. James Gould Cozzens is like his fellows in this respect--with one admirable difference. The point he insists on making is that the world is far too wrapped up in different points of view for any one of them to be entirely true, that "the Nature of Things abhors a drawn line and loves a hodgepodge."

In three of his earlier novels, Cozzens presented the hodgepodge of the medical profession (The Last Adam), the ministry (Men and Brethren), the law (The Just and the Unjust). In Guard of Honor he not only shows again his fine descriptive talents but boldly tangles with two of the toughest subjects of the day--the nature of war, and racial intolerance. Guard of Honor is a big, fat book--much bigger than Sinclair Lewis' Kingsblood Royal or Laura Hobson's Gentleman's Agreement--bigger, and far better.

E Pluribus Unum. No technical innovator, Author Cozzens demonstrates his theme by the popular "Grand Hotel" method of assembling hordes of people, all with singular points of view, in one place--a huge World War II airbase. in Florida. Some of them are elderly, Regular Army officers to whom the mechanics of war are as vital as the winning of it. Some are much too bogged down in personal miseries and prejudices to recognize the overriding claims of victory: others are far too intent on victory to show any tolerance for human weaknesses. In fact, as Author Cozzens shows, the marvel is that any mass of human beings can ever achieve a single, united aim, such as victory, at all.

It is the job of youthful General Gus Beale to see that his men do. Unlike most generals in fiction, Beale is not only a very likable man, he is also fit to be a general. A brilliant fighter pilot, a veteran of Bataan and the North African front, he is now being kept out of harm's way in Florida, his every move watched by the men in Washington who must decide whether or not to choose him as commander of the expected air assault on Japan.

But Beale must do more than continue to show that he is an A-1 airman. He must know the difference between orders that really are orders, and orders that Washington has issued mainly to keep the press and public happy.

Storm in Black & White. Gus Beale's test comes when a Negro pilot, member of a squadron that Washington has created merely to pacify pro-Negro opinion, is beaten up by a white colonel. The affair has nothing to do with racial prejudice, but before the next day is out it has ballooned into a shocking black & white scandal. Angry Negro officers, hitherto amenable to unofficial discriminatory rules, decide that this is the moment to claim their right to membership in the "restricted" officers' club. Knowing the effect this will have on white personnel, Gus Beale orders MPs to keep the Negroes out. Soon the U.S. press is ablaze with a garbled, press-service version of the story, while Washington, drawing back its skirts, coldly leaves Beale holding the bag. When the book ends, the storm has subsided as suddenly as it began. It is ready to break out again any day; but meanwhile Gus Beale has escaped by a hairsbreadth, Negro equality has been officially confirmed and white supremacy unofficially enforced, and the march to victory proceeds.

Guard of Honor is sure not to please those who are accustomed to novels that passionately beat generals over the head with the common soldier and intolerant whites with the oppressed Negro. For Author Cozzens has performed the far more courageous and more painful job of putting down ugly facts. Unsentimentally, grimly, he says out loud what is often left unsaid--that in the U.S. "the big majority may feel that a Negro is a human being all right; but when you add that they want to see him treated fairly, you're wrong . . . The big majority does not want to insult or oppress him; but [it] has, in general, a poor opinion of him." Least of all, concludes Author Cozzens, does the big majority want the Negro to be fairly treated in wartime, because at heart it believes that in a time of national crisis it is proper for the weak to be sacrificed to the morale of the strong, whose savage, intolerant instincts are essential to the prime aim--victory. "I really saw nobody all day who was not in one way or another odious," admits one of Author Cozzens' characters sadly--adding, "and, of course, in every situation, I was odious, too."

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