The pattern in which a nation allows its liberties to be subverted and destroyed is a familiar one. It is often thought that certain peoples, like the Germans and Russians, are more susceptible to authoritarianism than others. One stereotype of the American--descendant of Minute Men, the man who hates cops, the fan who cherishes his right to boo the umpire--has contributed to the impression that this submissiveness to authority has never been a part of the American character. Lewis’s _It Can’t Happen Here_, Dos Passos’s _District of Columbia_, and the novels about dictators in southern states raise some doubts about the validity of this fundamental assumption. Each of these novelists seems to feel that the American citizen could well wake up one morning to find his rights gone as did the German citizen of the early thirties. Lewis dramatizes this catastrophe on a national scale, while Dos Passos, Warren, and Langley present it on the state level. Dos Passos, all through his trilogy, writes such frequent exhortations to vigilance that there is little doubt that he too has worries on this score. In _Stranger Come Home_ Shirer centers his fire on McCarthyism, but he also goes back into history to recall the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts and the domestic anti-German violence of World War I. The popular press and magazines may represent the American as one who hearkens to the great voices on each Fourth of July and understands what he is doing when he raises his banner on Flag Day. The novelist often has serious doubts that he does. Europeans have called the United States immature in world affairs. At least one of the novels in this group examines this accusation, and two others consider the same theme of irresponsibility on the national level. In both _A Fool’s Errand_ and _Bricks Without Straw_ Tourgée accused the federal government of irresponsibility. There is a close parallel between this case and the one Europeans have made. Pursuing an ideal, at least in part, the United States musters its enormous industrial and economic potential, puts its great strength into the field, and wins military victory. After talking a great deal about what should be done, it sets up committees which write many reports. Then the nation promptly forgets the problems of victory and happily returns to consideration of the tariff question or who is going to win the World Series. In the latter of his two books, Tourgée writes that the Northern statesmen and political writers seemed always to assume that the destruction of slavery would cure all the ills of the Negro. With a typical flourish, he adds: