SOURCE: Niemeyer, Gerhart. “Rewitness.” National Review 30, no. 31 (4 August 1978): 964-67.

In the following review of Odyssey of a Friend, Niemeyer explores the enduring impact of the Hiss-Chambers case.

Apart from the praiseworthiness of Henry Regnery's initiative, what is the meaning of re-publishing Whittaker Chambers' Witness a quarter of a century after the fact? One can probably dismiss as coincidence the simultaneous appearance of an exemplary piece of research, by Allen Weinstein, into the problem of Hiss's guilt. Other, similar efforts may still be in store, for we do feel a periodic urge to rehash this case.

Within the last hundred years, three long-drawn-out trials—those of Dreyfus, Sacco and Vanzetti, and Hiss—have brought into collision formidable political forces. There is a myth that legal verdicts can shape the historical course of nations. I doubt it. Dreyfus—sentenced, degraded, and deported—was eventually tried again, acquitted, and rehabilitated. It...