Overdrive

by William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Mr. John Crane writes me from Washington, Virginia, to tell me that Dr. Franklin Littell is probably acting hypocritically in his capacity as Chairman of something called Christians United for American Security, which has just taken out a full-page ad objecting to the proposed sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia. How so? Well, says the correspondent, Franklin Littell is a secret agent of Israel.

  "Since I am familiar with Littell's past secret employment and Littell's strong anti-Arab views, it seems to me reasonable to suppose that this ad in the Washington Post— which must have cost many thousands—was financed by 'friends' of Littell, if not entirely, then at least in part. ... I don't object to a lobbyist lobbying if he does it openly, but I HATE hypocrisy—and wolves wearing sheeps' clothing."

  Franklin Littell! Dear me. Dr. Littell is a jerko I ended up suing a few years ago, for comparing me with Ribbentrop, and saying, among other choice items, that I made my living by lying and cheating. The lawsuit was against him and the Macmillan Publishing Company, which had published the libels in a book called Wild Tongues. Littell, a church historian by profession, had previously headed an organization discreetly funded by the Democratic Party some time after Barry Goldwater ran for office, which organization did its best to depict many conservative activists as fascistic.

  I had begun by asking Macmillan for an immediate retraction, and for reimbursement of my legal expenses, which at that moment could not have been greater than a few hundred dollars. .Macmillan replied by telling me that they themselves didn't believe a word of the unpleasant charges made by Dr. Littell, but that their devotion to the First Amendment made it impossible for them to apologize, or to remit lawyer's charges.

  Mr. C. Dickerman Williams, my attorney and surely my most distinguished friend, told me his advice under the circumstances was to proceed with the suit—"It will only last a couple of days" was his guess, based on his familiarity with the defense and his general experience of libel law.

  What happened was both painful and amusing. The district court judge before whom the case fell had, it happened, been nominated to his position by my brother Jim, then junior senator from New York. But Jim's modus operandi in the matter of court appointments had been impeccable. He had appointed a panel of distinguished lawyers (C. D. Williams was its chairman) who made nominations whenever there was a vacancy, nominations based on manifest qualifications. Without exception, Jim forwarded the panel's nominees to the President. The judge now volunteered to excuse himself, but Littell and Macmillan said: No, they trusted him, he should try the case (a jury had been waived).

  The judge in question was a youngish man with a brilliant record. If memory serves, he had been first in his class at Harvard twenty years before. But such was the attention he had evidently given to learning the law, he did not have time to learn much about certain other things. For instance, when my attorney began by denouncing Littell's comparison of me with Ribbentrop, his honor asked who Joachim von Ribbentrop was? During the ensuing four or five days, at about two or three thousand dollars per day, we were conducting a seminar on recent European history for the benefit of the judge. On the afternoon of the fifth day I got a telephone call from the president and unmistakable boss of Macmillan, Mr. Raymond Hagel, who said he would like to see me, how about breakfast, before the trial resumed that day? Fine I said; and the next morning in my apartment I was face to face with one of the world's premier salesmen.

  This is bloody ridiculous, he said; it's costing us both a goddamn fortune. Besides, you won't win, because New York Times v. Sullivan protects us.

  I replied that New York Times v. Sullivan, while it shifted the burden of proof where public figures are concerned from the suee to the suer, hadn't in fact repealed the laws of libel, to which he repeated that it was ridiculous, that Macmillan would clearly win, and he didn't care about Littell, Littell was Littell's problem, and anyway Littell was probably judgment-proof.

  Well, I said, we'll just have to see how it goes.

  And so he said, Look, just to prove to you that Macmillan doesn't believe all those unpleasant things about you, we'll publish your next book!

  That statement marshaled every arrogant corpuscle in my system, so I said look, Mr. Hagel, your telling me that Macmillan would consent to publish my next book is like your telling me Macmillan will agree to accept a gift from me of fifty thousand dollars, since I figure that's what a publisher typically makes off one of my books. He stood up, strode over to within three inches of me and said: Okay, tell you what. We'll publish your next book and the first fifty thousand dollars we make off it, we'll give to you.

  But—he added quickly—for the sake of our general reputation, we'll have to give it to you in a nonconspicuous way. So I said, well, you could buy fifty thousand dollars' worth of advertising in National Review. Yeah, he said, we could. He called his office to get some figures, and I mine to get some. Ten minutes later we had a deal, and a half-hour later my lawyer told the honorable court that the case against Macmillan had been settled; and one year later Macmillan published Airborne; and, for a lovely spell, National Review looked like a house organ of Macmillan, so heavy was our advertising schedule.

  Littell was then defended, free of charge, by Macmillan's public-spirited lawyer, and found guilty by the judge on three counts; the lawyer appealed, two of the three charges were thrown out, the third sustained, and I got a check from him for a thousand dollars or so.

  So now he's into AWACS. I told my correspondent that if indeed the government of Israel is paying Dr. Littell to argue their line, Dr. Littell is a crafty old bird, because the rest of us do it for nothing.

  I acknowledged a witty letter from John Burton, professor at the School of Business at Columbia, who is president of the board of trustees of Millbrook School, about my Millbrook piece. "All of us," he writes ironically, "who had felt the gentle whimsy of Frank Trevor's tongue, the self-effacing modesty of Ed Pulling, and Xavier Prum's uncertainty about mathematics answers could relate to the characterizations which you drew so well."

  For maybe five years in a row I found myself seated, by coincidence, at the annual A1 Smith Dinner on the dais next to Carlos Romero Barcelo, who was then the mayor of San Juan and is now Puerto Rico's governor. Fie was wonderfully obliging a couple of years ago when I went to Puerto Rico to do two "Firing Line" programs, and now he has written to ask me to draw attention to the anomalous impact the President's proposed tax reforms would have on Puerto Rico. I wrote a column based on his analysis which now I send him, thanking him.

  Kevin Starr is a Harvard Ph.D. in American history, a man of great shyness who gives play to a romantic spirit in a column he writes for the San Francisco Examiner. Last week, dining at Trader Vic's in San Francisco with friends, I bumped into him, but in one of those awkward situations where, although both of us were seated in the same extended seat, as in a church pew, conversation was not possible. I wanted to make it clear that I regretted this. I wrote him so.

  Jameson Campaigne, Jr., who heads up Caroline House, a small publisher, and who I've known for twenty years, reaching back to when he was fifty percent of the conservative student body at Williams College (the other one came to National Review to work), wants a blurb for a book which I simply haven't time to read, so I beg off. His letter contains also a proposal that at National Review we amass some of the apocalyptic statements being made about what's going to happen to the world under Reagan, and publish them a year later. "The feature might have a salutary effect on these fellows, in addition to being highly entertaining." His P.S. is, "Mightn't 'lagniappe' be a good substitute for 'exiguous token' in your next fundraising letter?" Actually, I don't think so. Because a lagniappe is not necessarily a token of esteem. It is simply a gratuity.

  My watch tells me it is almost time for Mass, so I ring the kitchen and tell Gloria we must go in five minutes. I write to Cheever Tyler in New Haven, the chairman of the Yale Daily News a half-dozen years after I served, and the most active trustee of the Yale News fund a
nd related activities, a charming and witty attorney. "Dear Cheever: My son Christopher is to be the featured speaker at the 4th of December Yale Daily News dinner, and under the circumstances I have decided to invite myself to that dinner. Question, could I have the pleasure of your company? The proceedings I am told will not be long. If that is agreeable, we might meet for drinks ahead of time. Advise." It turned out that he would be out of town. Moreover, Christopher subsequently confessed that my presence might make him a little (more) nervous, so I didn't go.

  Gloria sits in front with me, Rebeca and Olga in the back seat. Gloria's beautiful nineteen-year-old daughter has a weekend guest, and one of them will need to ride in rear of the station wagon, sitting on one of the boat cushions back there, but they insist they will both do this, so I let them in through the back and we drive three miles to St. Catherine of Siena in Riverside. To St. Catherine of Siena because there is a most beautiful service there at 10:30, to be sharply distinguished from most Catholic Masses since the awful events of Vatican II. I must not go on about it, because I have written on the subject, and it only makes me weep. But I have privately offered as final proof of the existence of God that Evelyn Waugh was struck down fatally after Mass on the Easter Sunday immediately before the procedure was instigated in which one is instructed, at one point in the service, to shake hands with the parishioner on your right and on your left; and before long, the one in the pew ahead, and the pew behind. Before long Catholics at Mass looked as though every one of them was running for public office. The thought of reaching over, hand outstretched, and running into Evelyn Waugh ... I don't know how exactly he'd have handled it, but I remember that on one occasion when Hilaire Belloc came to New York he stood during the canon of the Mass, as is the habit on the Continent. At which point a deacon shuffled over to him and whispered, "We kneel here, sir." Belloc, his hands on his missal, turned calmly and said, "Go to hell." The deacon, startled, said, "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were a Catholic!"

  The singing at St. Catherine's is utterly beautiful, the music marvelously selected, and, given the acrobatic compulsion to bob up and down every few minutes, it is actually possible, in the interstices, to worship the Lord, even while wondering why He permitted them to take from us the Tridentine Mass in Latin.

  The sermon, on the other hand, was provocative, in the unendearing sense of the word. The impression is widely held that Sunday mornings, for Catholic communicants, are devoted to homilies on abortion, or on communism, or on civil disobedience, or on whatever was the issue that figured most prominently in the week's news. It happens that this isn't so. For instance, I have yet to hear a sermon on the subject of Ireland—not one. And I have heard only two on the subject of abortion, one on the subject of the Vietnam war. Today's was by a visiting bishop from South Carolina who talked about justice, and soon one realized he was talking about social justice. I thought it worthwhile to write down (in the back of my prayer book) one or two of his points, perhaps for use in a column.

  For many years I have pronounced to myself the traditional words, no longer recited by the priest when placing the host on the tongue of each communicant. He used to say, and now I say it for him, "Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi, custodiat animam turn, in vitam aeternam, amen." May the body of our Lord Jesus Christ safeguard your soul through life everlasting, amen. I long since concluded that no other verbal sequence comes as close as this in documenting human equality. The same words, for prince or for pauper; reminding us, young and old, healthy and sick, rich and poor, of our common dependence on our Maker.

  Many years ago I was struck by a passage in one of the marvelous novels of Bruce Marshall. I had thought it was from The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith, but having now chased it down I find it was from Father Malachy's Miracle, one of the great tours de force in modern literature. In the first chapter are these wonderful paragraphs, which, I think, say it all on the subject of equality:

  A fat man climbed into the same compartment as the little clergyman, a fat man with a face that was so red and pouchy that it looked like a bladder painted to hit other people over the head with at an Italian carnival.

  He sat down, or rather threw himself down, in the corner opposite the priest and began to read a pink paper in which the doings of horses and erotic young women were chronicled at length. He was followed by a middle-aged woman who had a peaky, shiny nose with a funny little dent in the middle and whose hat was one of those amorphous black affairs which would have been, at any moment, out of fashion in any country.

  The priest was distracted from his meditation. It was impossible, he told himself, with a wry little mental smile, to think competently of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Ghost proceeding from Both, with such a bulging, red face in front of him and such a peaky, peering woman placing her parcels here, there and everywhere. How hard it was, here below and with the material and the temporal crowding out the spiritual and the eternal, to love one's neighbour, how hard and yet how necessary. For the soul behind that bulging, red face had been redeemed by Christ just as surely as had his own, and Our Blessed Lord, while He hung on the cross, had seen the funny little dent in the middle of the peaky, peering woman's nose just as clearly as He had seen the broad, bland visage of Pope Pius the Eleventh, and so merciful was He, loved it just as much. And yet it was difficult to imagine bulge or dent in heaven unless, among the many mansions, there were one which should be one-tenth Beatific Vision and nine-tenths Douglas, Isle of Man. Of course, if it came to the point, it was difficult to imagine the majority of contemporary humanity in any paradise which did not syncopate Saint Gregory, and whose eternal sands were without striped bathing tents and casinos.

  He closed his eyes again. If he must love his neighbour he would love him without looking at him. He closed his eyes, and not only did he close them, but he kept on repeating the reflex action in his brain so that, with the bulging red face and the peaky, peering woman, away went the compartment, the train, the station, the world; and, as Scotland went swinging after Scandinavia and Spain came scampering after and Australia flew to join the stars, he was alone with God.

  A great nothingness was before him, a great nothingness that was Something, a great nothingness that was All; and in the warm freedom from the tangible he knew his Saviour and was absorbed by Him.

  I am glad I found the passage, having remembered exactly only the sentence, "If he must love his neighbour he would love him without looking at him." But the radiance of the whole thing cries out, and the great mysterious dilemma is made plain.

  In explaining something to Olga on the drive back it becomes relevant to know the Spanish word for "flesh," which I suddenly can't remember. So I ask Maria—and she can't remember, though she spoke not a word of English when, at age five, she arrived from Mexico. I get terribly exasperated, and Gloria and Rebeca offer several substitutes, none of them correct, so I find a circumlocutory way to tell Olga what I had in mind to relate—about how, in the Catholic Mass, the species were united for hundreds of years, with only the priest taking both the bread and the wine, representing, or more accurately incorporating, the flesh and the blood; whereas of course now in many churches anyone who desires it is also given the chalice from which to take wine. I reflect that it is the failure to come up with the exact word you wish that can result in tiring one so awfully when using a foreign tongue. Consider, for instance, forgetting in English, let's say, the word "apple," and trying to communicate, let us say, that "fresh cider is made by crushing apples." I will find myself, in my desperation, saying some such thing as, "fresh cider is made by crushing the fruit that Eve gave to Adam." After a while that kind of thing tires you, as it must the listener. The alternative is to change what you intend to say, so that when you come to the thought that fresh cider is made by crushing apples, you find yourself saying that fresh orange juice is made by crushing oranges, but then you have to figure out a way to relate that to the jug of cider being sold at the side of the road that launched you into
this discussion in the first place.

  Always they thank me when I stop the car and let them out, and always I say, "For nothing," which is exactly accurate. I let the girls out of the back of the station wagon and then get into the driver's seat again, because I must go to see Tom.

  Tom Hume is in the hospital, having suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. It happened six weeks ago, and this is my third visit, having learned of the stroke from Tulita, his wife, only a fortnight ago. Tom and I were at Yale together. He is the architect of my music room, of our beautiful bedroom that looks out over so considerable an area of the sea, and of my swimming pool, though this he did not complete, having left to join a large firm of architects in New York City. We share also an enthusiasm for the sea, and Tom is as experienced a yachtsman as anyone I know. A month before his stroke we set out, with Van Galbraith and Danny Merritt and Reggie Stoops, in Patito, to take her to Newport where she would undergo refinements. We left at six in the evening and reached Newport at 10:30 in the morning, a distance of about 135 miles. We really flew to Newport that night, with absolutely relentless, but even-handed, winds all the way, coming in from the south and permitting us to exit the Sound at maximum ebb tide. Tom is tall, handsome, muscular, thin. He doesn't drink. He hasn't smoked for several years.

  Why a stroke? No one knows, of course. The competent Tulita, having brought up six children, now works for Channel 13 in New York, but substantially she has become a therapist, wholly confident of Tom's recovery.