381 CHRONICLESnwoman triumphant, and the womannembattled of The Nation. Only duringna difficult Florida interiude in the earlyn1930’s, when she tried and failed tonnurse her tubercular third son back tonhealth, was she not the woman everpresentnat The Nation.nSara Alpern’s interest in FredanKirchwey initially derived not from hernsingular career as a liberal journalist,nbut from her triangular life as a wife,nmother, and professional woman. HownKirchwey balanced the conflicting demandsnof her three worlds was thenquestion that drew an awed Alpern tonher subject. How Kirchwey negotiatednher way among the assorted agendas ofnher allies on the left was the questionnthat sustained Alpern’s project longnafter the Clark-Kirchwey householdnceased to be either inspiring or effective.nOne Mrs. Evans Clark, unfaithfulnwife (to an unfaithful husband) andnuninterested parent (to her undisciplinednremaining child), was simplynMs. Freda Kirchwey, modern womanngone amuck. And not worth a fullnbiography.nBut Freda Kirchwey, keeper of thenflame of liberal antifascism (and dousernof the flickering fire of liberal anti-nCommunism) is another matter. Herena thorough biography may well be innorder, if only because of the extensiveninfluence that her Nation used tonwield. After all, the damage done tonMichael Clark was presumably limitednto him. He might blame his upbringingn(or lack thereof) on a mother whonlacked “maternal fiber.” But who arenthe liberals to hold responsible for theirnfailure to face the evil of Communismnin the postwar world?nAnd if such a question is too distastefulnor unfamiliar to them, theyncould point their collective finger atnone Freda Kirchwey. After all, she hadnlong employed her feminine charmsntoward effecting a permanent unionnbetween the wartime odd couple thatnwas the United States and the SovietnUnion. Having failed at that venture innmatchmaking, she then tried to playnmidwife at any number of (what shenhoped would be non-) aborted momentsnof postwar collaboration. And,nhaving witnessed innumerable stillbirths,nshe set out to mother a generationnof Americans unable to weannthemselves from the pap of MothernRussia.nSara Alpern, however, is not preparednto point a critical finger at eithernMrs. Clark or Ms. Kirchwey. Failurenon either the homefront or the PopularnFront was apparently not Freda’s fault.n”Freda and her peers were twentiethncentury feminists,” who, unlike theirn19th-century counterparts, “insistednthat career and marriage could bencombined.” After all, who could blamenFreda and Evans for thinking theyncould “raise children without giving upnany of their very busy lives,” especiallynwhen experts were insisting thatn”childrearing was the province of childndevelopment professionals.” When itnall came crashing down around hernthere was always psychoanalysis to enterninto and The Nation to retreat to.nAlpern may occasionally cringe atnKirchwey’s shortcomings as a wife,nmother, and liberal publicist, but hernwinces never get beyond an “oh well”nshrug, as in “conducting herself as anwhole person in office, home and bednwas much harder than she (Clark-nKirchwey) had realized.” Having earlynon conceded that she hoped to find innKirchwey a successful modern woman,nAlpern apparently could not bring herselfnto declare Kirchwey’s search fornprivate happiness and public influencena personal failure.nDuring the 1920’s and 1930’s, Mrs.nClark went on her own search fornanswers to her “perennial question ofnwomen and careers.” Never satisfiednwith her discoveries, Kirchwey simplynabandoned her public pursuit ofnwomen’s issues and instead turned hernconsiderable energy to “journalisticngoals that could be achieved.”nAnd just what were those goals? Innreality, there was but one—with ansingle, if crucial, variation: to make thenworld free from fascism—and to denynthat Communism could ever be anvirulent, if carefully disguised, form ofnfascism. In her fight for feminist independence,na young Mrs. Clark, headynwith the aroma of a “modern woman,”nset out to have it all without lookingnback. In her fight against fascism innSpain, a middle-aged Ms. Kirchwey,ncertain that she was on to the scent ofnher enemies, set herself on a coursenfrom which she never turned back. InnFreda Kirchwey’s worid there werenonly two kinds of political animals:nfascists in league with their imperialistnfellow travelers and antifascists of allnnnpersuasions. Between 1936 and thenonset of the Spanish Civil War andn1955 when she left The Nation (mercifullynon the eve of Khrushchev’snrevelations) Kirchwey was the personificationnof the liberals’ dictum thatnthere should be no enemies to the left.nAs Alpern would have it, Kirchweynsaw her role as the ultimate mothernhen. Rather than remove the bad eggsnor lock out any wayward chickens, shenwould draw her brood to her comfortablynfashionable antifascist hen house.nAnd the Soviet Union, “despite manynimperfections,” remained to Kirchweynan antifascist state long after the battlenagainst its Hitierian brand had ended.nWhat of those liberals who did notnshare her principle of nonexclusion?nThey simply chose to exclude themselves.nLouis Fischer “noisily resigned”nin June of 1945 over The Nation’sneditorial contention that Poland had tonbe sacrificed to allied unity. ReinholdnNiebuhr and Robert Bendiner subsequentlynleft The Nation to found thenliberal anti-Communist Americans fornDemocratic Action.nKirchwey officially (and officiously)nrefused to take sides between the ADAnand the Wallaceite Progressive Citizensnof America. Instead she contentednherself with deploring the divisionnwithin liberalism. But her own unwillingnessnto see the Soviet Union fornwhat it was—and is — helped to makenthe split unavoidable. To her credit,nKirchwey did not support the “foolish”nWallace candidacy in 1948, because itnhad both too much Communist andntoo little labor support. That singularnexception aside, she followed thenfrayed Popular Front line—even to thenpoint of blaming the United States forncontributing to the Czech coup ofn1948 by its refusal to lend money tonthe Masaryk government.nTo her credit, Alpern has rememberednwhat Kirchwey had convenientlynforgotten: namely, that the Soviets hadn”dissuaded” the Czechs from acceptingnMarshall Plan money. Alpern alsonreminds her readers that Kirchweyncould be guilty of the “sin” thatnGeorge Orwell attributed to “nearly allnleft-wingers from 1933 onwards”:nnamely, the desire to be “anti-fascistnwithout being anti-totalitarian.” But,njust as Kirchwey stopped well short ofnany fundamental criticism of then”workers’ paradise,” so does Alpernn