[In the following review, Muller discusses how the work of The Secret Name by Lin is “pretty shallow.”]

“Communism is the secret name of the dread antagonist,” wrote Heinrich Heine more than a century ago, in a remarkably prophetic passage about the “wild, gloomy time … roaring toward us.” Lin Yutang now has too easy, almost jolly a time exposing the dread antagonist; but it should first be said that the Communists have made it easy for him. As their secret is ideology, he asks a simple human question: “What have they actually done to the worker?” He has no trouble demonstrating that they have exploited and enslaved him. Making productivity their main goal, they have denounced as petite bourgois the principles of Socialistic equality and stripped workers of the rights and freedoms they enjoy in the capitalist countries.

Similarly the Russian dictatorship over the proletariat has made a farce of the whole Marxist vision: developing a powerful, privileged ruling class to prepare for the classless society, setting up the most despotic state in history so that the state may “wither away,” establishing by force a colonial empire to combat imperialism and unite the workers of the world. Dr. Lin is pleased to turn the ideological tables on the Communists, demonstrating that this whole reactionary development is in accordance with dialectical materialism. Marxism would naturally produce anti-Marxism. He quotes the familiar sayings of the master on how the interests of a ruling class “inevitably” lead to a growth in its power and privilege, to increasing oppression of the workers, and finally to its own doom.

Eager to agree with Marx here, Dr. Lin is impatient with the defensive tactics of the democracies. He deplores their habit of forever explaining apologetically, protesting their innocence, instead of carrying the propaganda war to the Russians, hammering away at their enslavement of the workers and the satellite countries. He deplores as well the complacent American line, the boasts about our high standard of living, while the Communists stir youth in particular by calling for heroism and sacrifice. All youth is radical and idealistic, he maintains—an idea that may surprise observers of American youth, especially in the universities, but might remind us that America has become a world symbol of conservatism.

This idea also brings up, however, the limitations of Dr. Lin as a political thinker. His book [The Secret Name] is woefully repetitious, often too coy, and finally pretty shallow. Although he once remarks that the problem of human destiny is complex, it turns out to be merely a matter of telling black from white. He sounds much like the voice of Moscow reporting the degradation of American workers when he speaks of the “appalling hunger” of the Russian masses, and asserts that in forty years Russia has done nothing at all for the poor. At the end he concludes that “the world conflict is simply a war between good and evil,” and so “it is inevitable that evil must pass and good must win.” The reason is simply “human nature,” which is bound to triumph over Marxism because “Marx neglected to study Confucius.” With this comes another chestnut, “the verdict of history” on the impossibility of suppressing “the human cry for freedom.” Dr. Lin ought to know that this cry has not run out through the history of the ancient East, and that China did not even have a word for “liberty” until recent times.

The trouble is that such cheery simplicities are not harmless. They tend to encourage the kind of self-righteousness that makes Mr. Dulles distrusted by almost the whole world, outside the sheltered White House. Dr. Lin admires Dulles, as about the only clear-sighted, resolute world leader in the struggle against Communism. And he seems even more eager to get to the brink.

Thus nothing will do for him but an all-out crusade for freedom. He dismisses the foreign-aid program as an evasion of the issue. He insists that we must give up the idea of relaxing international tension, must demand the liberation of the satellite countries, must tell the masses in the rest of the world that they must “fight Communism.” He counts heavily on a particular ingredient in our blessed human nature—the spirit of nationalism. (The real trouble with Nasser, Dr. Lin remarks in passing, is that he is not nationalistic enough.) His uncompromising idealism might be more inspiring were it not for an uncommon oversight: he never hints that his allout ideological war might bring on an atomic world war. Or possibly he has such fears in mind when he expresses his suspicion of scientists, as a type “eminently susceptible to Communism.”

Readers may still profit from Dr. Lin's well-documented exposé of the fantastic double-talk of Communists, and they may warm up to him (as to our President) because his heart is in the right place. As one who believes that our problems really are complex. I still think that a better place for the heart is under a clear head.