There is a tendency nowadays to downgrade the thirties. The reason for this is that the prevailing mood of the thirties was what used to be called “left of center.” Beginning with the late forties— from the time the phrase about the “iron curtain” became part of the common vocabulary—our “intelligentsia” sounded the retreat. The Roosevelt administration, subjected to sharp criticism not infrequently close to slander, seemed to be in bad odor. “Left of center” might be construed as something worse than liberalism. To be “radical” implied that one might be tainted with some degree of “pink.“

A good many of the writers, artists and theatre folk in the thirties were inclined to radicalism. (Had not the Roosevelt administration sponsored the Projects for writers, artists and theatre?) In the early forties the fervor of the thirties was gradually absorbed by the pressures of the war.