A Cold War satire with lessons for today

The Mouse That Roared

By Leonard Wibberley

Four Walls Eight Windows. $13.95 paperback.

Is America the great benefactor of humankind? As the lastpresidential election demonstrated, it's a question that attracts aspectrum of answers, and not only from Americans.

Once, however, in the mid-1950s, the answer was far simpler. Tothe vast majority of Americans, we of course were the world's greatbenefactor, as we loudly told ourselves and anyone else who wouldlisten. That self-assurance about the United States' beneficent rolein the world is one of the many things Leonard Wibberley ever sogently pokes fun at in his pleasant Cold War satire The Mouse ThatRoared, which marks its 50th anniversary in 2005.

Wibberley, it quickly should be added, approaches the matter fromthe viewpoint of a believer. In his novel the U.S. president states,"We are a reasonable nation. We stand for peace. In fact, it is ourpolicy to protect the weaker nations."

Sometimes we say of something that if it weren't so true it wouldbe funny. But Wibberley says, Because it's so true, it's funny.

Probably most people know Mouse from the 1959 movie. While themovie follows the book in general outline, it changes some plotelements and fails to capture all the book's subtleties.

The story is this: The tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick, an English-speaking country five miles long and three miles wide located "in aprecipitous fold of the northern Alps," faces a crisis when aCalifornia winery puts out an imitation of its only export, the PinotGrand Fenwick, threatening it with economic ruin. After discussionwith her advisers, Duchess Gloriana XII, the fetching, 22-year-oldruler of the country, decides that the country should start aCommunist Party so that the United States, alarmed at the prospect ofanother European country turning Red, will give them money.

Gloriana asks Tully Bascomb, the country's chief (and only)forester, to head the party. Tully declines, arguing that the onlyhonorable way for one country to get money from another is to go towar.

Gloriana, who realizes she is beginning to fall for this crankymaverick, agrees, and appoints Tully leader of the "expeditionaryforce" of 20 or so 14th-century-style longbowmen who will invade anation of 160 million people. Gloriana's idea, of which Tully isignorant, is that Grand Fenwick will declare war and immediatelylose, thereby reaping the bonanza in monetary aid that the big-hearted United States -- in the afterglow of the Marshall Plan --showers on its former enemies.

And so forth. The American fear of a nuclear attack by the SovietUnion makes the idea of an attack by an absurdly small countryabsurdly comical. The author has a merry time ringing all the changeson that theme, including the fact that for a long time the UnitedStates remains unaware that it has been invaded.

Alas for Gloriana, like the connivers in "The Producers" who planon making money by creating a musical that will surely flop, thescheme falls through when Grand Fenwick actually wins.

But how times change. Some things that might seem funny (either ha-ha or strange) to us now would have passed unnoticed by readers 50years ago. For instance, the Fenwickians actually agree to letthemselves be taxed to pay for the costs of the war -- specifically,for hiring a ship to transport their bowmen to New York.

Then there is Dr. Kokintz, a native Fenwickian, who has developedthe Q-bomb, so powerful it makes the H-bomb seem like a firecracker,for the United States. By capturing him and his still super-secretbomb, Tully calculates, they will have the United States over abarrel.

Kokintz asks when Tully comes to seize him, "How can I be aprisoner of war of the place where I was born?" -- a question thatdoubtless sounded more reasonable then than now, when people aredeclared enemy combatants of their native land.

This quirky, light but not quite slight little tale ends, as itshould, with everyone living happily ever after. Not just Tully andGloriana -- who, naturally, wed -- but all the people of the world,whose peace is secured by Grand Fenwick's possession of the Q-bomb.Again, what a difference half a century makes: Today that would putGrand Fenwick squarely in the Axis of Evil.

Only one thing remains: a neat little surprise on the last page,one that shows, in the manner of another charming comedy, that it wasall much ado about nothing.

Roger K. Miller is a Janesville (Wis.) free-lance writer, reviewerand editor.