Black Tie, 7:30

DINNER AT THE WHITE HOUSE (276 pp.)--Louis Adamic--Harper ($2.50).

There was Winston Churchill, dumpy, "mostly stomach," a cigar stuck in his "large, round mug." There was Franklin D. Roosevelt, jaunty in a dinner jacket, "vivid and agile." And there was onetime Slovene immigrant Louis Adamic. earnest, slow-spoken author of The Native's Return and other books. Adamic was all eyes, all ears.

Not long before Pearl Harbor, Adamic had had a special idea. It led, shortly after Pearl Harbor, to a special invitation. Adamic accepted eagerly. The confirmation came by wire: MRS. ROOSEVELT DELIGHTED YOU AND MRS. ADAMIC CAN COME TO DINNER ON TUESDAY, JANUARY THIRTEENTH. BLACK TIE. SEVEN-THIRTY.

Premise & Proposals. The idea had been broached in a book called Two-Way passage. Its premise: once Hitler had been beaten, Europe would be in chaos. Drawing heavily on his faith in democracy, not unmixed with political naivete, Adamic hoped that "qualified" U.S. citizens, descended from the stock of soon-to-be liberated countries, would work a sort of return passage to Europe. Trained and formed into teams, they would be sent into Germany, Austria, Rumania, etc., as soon as Hitler fell, partly to lead the countries out of their difficulties, partly to keep "undesirable" political elements from seizing control.

Chief among these undesirable elements: local "reactionaries" (e.g., Mihailovich in Adamic's native Yugoslavia) and representatives of Imperial Britain as in Greece). Adamic seemed to worry little about local Communists and representatives of Imperial U.S.S.R. His hope was that Britain--and the Soviet Union--would think it "wise" for the U.S. teams to take charge, at least for a while.

F.D.R.'s Study. The Adamics changed from their street clothes in the washrooms of Washington's Union Depot, taxied to the White House, were shown to the President's study. There was F.D.R. in fine humor, flipping a cocktail shaker full of Orange Blossoms. Fala sniffed shoes and trousers, did tricks; hors d'oeuvres were passed around.

"It will interest you," said Mrs. Roosevelt, "that the President gave his copy of your book to the Prime Minister and specially requested him to read it." Soon Churchill appeared, scowling. "I'm r-reading your book," he told Adamic, "and I-I find it--int'r-resting." Adamic nervously murmured thanks, asked how far the Prime Minister had already gone. Answer: halfway.

Dinner at the White House is an almost bite-by-bite account of the dinner, an estimate of the principals present and finally (and mainly) a series of bitter reflections on U.S. foreign policy. For that night Adamic decided that the Prime Minister would never accept the Adamic Plan--Two-Way Passage--or anything resembling it. The Churchill expression "was one of complex annoyance. ... He hadn't liked it at all. I was a bloody nuisance dragged in by F.D.R. and he had had to put up with me. This was implicit in his manner, integral with his whole personality. ... He muttered something I did not understand. His half-closed eyes squinted up at me, and he stuck the cigar into his face and pressed his back against the wall."

The Failure. Just what Author Adamic expected the Tory Prime Minister to do about such a Utopian plan as he proposed is hard to say. Whatever it was, he now concludes that Europe's present tension is due largely to the U.S.'s failure to insist on a "democratic revolution" over there, via the Two-Way Passage idea or something like it. His summary of what did happen: Churchill, symbolizing "Conquest" rather than "Liberation," was able to "seduce" F.D.R. into a "counterrevolutionary foreign policy" by drumming up the dangers of the U.S.S.R. Author Adamic himself sees the U.S.S.R. as no particular danger to anyone. He considers it the source of "a new dynamism toward general welfare" rather than of the old dynamism of Pan-Slavic hopes and the Marxian dream.

Whatever the evening's hostess may think of the accuracy (or propriety) of her guest's report, or citizens in general of Adamic's logic and tendency, Dinner at the White House is sprightly reading in parts. The old ban against quoting the President's most casual remarks without permission is now off in Franklin Roosevelt's case. The result is a kind of super-Winchellian account of White House gossip, undoubtedly the first of many. Sample: at dinner F.D.R. mentioned that ex-King Carol of Rumania wanted to come to the U.S., "but of course we can't let him in." Mrs. Roosevelt: "Franklin, don't say 'we can't let him in.' . . . You know who they'll blame . . . me." Churchill, with a "guileless" grin: "A matter of matrimony, I believe." Loud laughter.

Dinner is also interesting as a serious attempt at analysis of Franklin Roosevelt's strengths and weaknesses of character: was he "a kind heart, an adroit brain and a shower of sparks? Or [was] he these things harnessed to a firm and valuable purpose?" After digesting his dinner at the White House Louis Adamic was far from sure about the firm and valuable purpose. Today, badly baffled, he concludes: "We [had] no better man. . . . We'd not have tolerated a better man."

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