Reflections on John Dos Passos’s “USA”

[Having just read John Dos Passos’s USA, my father reflected on the author’s depiction of society in the early 1900s, including the stagnation of the “propertied class” and the qualified “revolution” of the workers. My father appreciated Dos Passos’s ability to see both sides of the social debate, and my father generally strove to match this kind of balanced objectivity in his own observations and critiques. His analysis that the New Deal prevented, rather than caused, a revolution has meaning today in the context of the various federal efforts to mitigate the current recession’s effects. Unfortunately, it’s no easier today than in the past to counter criticism of the government’s efforts with a “things would have been much worse” defense of those efforts.]

January 26, 1944 (Jefferson Barracks, Mo.)

…Yesterday I finished Dos Passos. In the last paragraph of the narrative, Mary French says, “Say, Rudy, if Ada Cohn calls up again, tell her I’m out of the office… I have too much to do to spend my time taking care of hysterical women on a day like this.” She put on her hat, collected her papers, and hurried over to the meeting of the committee.

When you know the situation and the characters, that paragraph sums up a lot of Dos Passos’ ideas and hopes. Ada Cohn is a rich Jewish girl, a dilettante musician. Mary French is a radical social worker. She and Ada become friends during college days at Vassar. The night before, they’d gone to a Greenwich village party given by Eveline Hutchins, a jaded member of the idle rich. Next morning the papers carry the story of Eveline’s suicide. That’s why Ada’s hysterical. Mary herself is terribly discouraged by the impending failure of the strike on which she’s working. But Mary, you see, has a cause to work for. No hysterics for her. She hurries off to a meeting of the strike committee. The year is about 1928.

That’s Dos Passos’ way of summing up what seemed to him the significant trends in the social history of the USA at that time. The rich propertied class had lost contact with creative living, was collapsing, stagnating; the “revolution” of the workers, on the other hand, was not strong enough to take over the state, as had happened in Russia, but the workers weren’t giving up.

If Dos Passos had been a professor, and written his book as a text, he might have called it The Radical Labor Movement In the United States 1900-1928. But he had more of a mind for people than for statistics, so he wrote as he did. He himself was on the radical side, but he saw more than the shortcomings of those on the other side of the tracks. He understood how faction and treachery within his own ranks had as much to do with the failure of the cause as did interference and persecution from the outside. Because of this objectivity, his work deserves a high rank as history, and powerfully drawn history. It burst far beyond the bounds of narrowly defensive propaganda put out by some “party-line” communists.

The conditions which Dos Passos describes, – the strikes, the beatings, the massacres, the official murder of civil liberties, – have never been part of my America. Yet I know that they happened, and still do happen. But to speak now of a revolution sounds ridiculous. The New Deal wasn’t a revolution. In fact, it probably prevented a revolution by restoring to the working people enough economic security to keep them from resorting to violence. But this security was largely restored through the channels of the existing industrial machine, and the owners of that machine remained in power.

Was this a triumph of the American democratic system? Have the men of property at last learned the responsibility of property? Can the unions settle peacefully their differences with the managers without the domination of both by government? And if government domination of both groups becomes necessary, can the real values of democratic society be maintained and strengthened?

Those are some very general questions for a liberal democrat today. I didn’t ask them to answer them here, because I don’t know the answers. To me now they’re like sign posts on the road.

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Conflicted Sentiments about Participating in the “Great War”

[My father’s perspectives about the war effort, about religion, about democracy and about politics continually mutated and evolved, so it would be a mistake to associate any point-in-time journal entry as a definitive statement about his life-long views. In this entry, he comes across as somewhat depressed and cynical — certainly with regard to a famous fighter pilot of the time, Eddie Rickenbacker, and his story of being saved from starvation by a seagull. In October 1942, Rickenbacker was a passenger on a B-17 which ran out of fuel and ditched in the open water of the Central Pacific.  On the eighth day adrift in a raft with the plane’s crew, a seagull landed on Rickenbacker’s head, he captured it, and it served both as a small meal for the survivors and as fishing bait. After 24 days adrift, the men were all rescued, and the seagull became a heaven-sent symbol for Rickenbacker, confirming his strong Christian faith. At the end of this entry, my father’s skill in prognostication proves a bit shaky; contrary to his closing statement, he never did marry Jeanne, despite their shared doubts about God.]

January 22, 1944 (Jefferson Barracks, Mo.)

… And when they ask me Were you in the Great War, I shall answer Yes little children I was in the Great War. And when they ask Were you brave, I shall say No I was not brave at all and I thought the Great War was a hell of a way to be wasting my time, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Besides, I figured a substantial service record might help me later in a political way, even though I would know that it didn’t mean a damn thing. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever even get into politics, but it was one of those things that could happen.

But weren’t you proud to be fighting for the American Way of Life and democracy? No, I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t proud. I was ashamed when I met Negro boys, and knew I was worrying about if they thought I held something against them on account of their color, and I was angry when I heard Southern boys talk about Negroes as if they were animals. I was disgusted when I heard the radio announcers plugging War Bonds “to keep the materials of war moving to the front lines.” I was perplexed when I saw the railroadmen and the steelworkers threaten strikes, and Congress refuse to tax adequately, refuse to support subsidies, and the President refuse to forget the Fourth Term and politics. I was hopeful when Roosevelt and Stalin and Churchill didn’t fail at Teheran, but I was apprehensive when the Polish border question festered and wouldn’t heal. I was disappointed when the little, insignificant men continued to stay in power in the Republican party. I was happy when letters came from my friends and from home. And I was lonely for the life at Middlebury, and for girls, – always lonely for girls. Yes, I was a lot of things in the Great War, but I wasn’t proud.

And they won’t ask me this, but some of them will wonder why I didn’t find religion in the Great War. Men are supposed to find God in times like war. Eddie Rickenbacker did, and God saved him from death in the Pacific wastes. (Of course, there were a lot of other fellows He didn’t save from the wastes of the Pacific, but they naturally couldn’t come back to stir up a fuss with their side of the story.) Eddie had the floor all to himself, and boy! did he get to feeling wonderful and full of loving kindness. He even went so far as to say that the Russians were fine people.

But I kept on thinking Eddie Rickenbacker sounded kind of silly, and I could almost scream whenever I heard about that goddam seagull.

Once in a while I’d say Well for christsakes I may as well make a stab at it, but nothing ever came of my momentary intentions, except maybe I’d go to Sunday chapel and get mad at different things the chaplain said.

When a letter came from Jeanne in which she said that she couldn’t see why a God was necessary, and wasn’t I surprised and shocked, I wrote back that I was surprised and delighted, and to myself I said that settled it, I’d marry Jeanne. (I’d already figured I’d marry her, anyway, but that settled it.)

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War-Time Politics Clash with Democratic Ideals

[My father begins this entry referencing a column by Raymond Clapper, a syndicated writer at The Washington Post. In researching Clapper, I see that he died two months after my father cited this column, perishing in a military plane crash while on assignment in the Marshall Islands. This journal entry is interesting largely as a snapshot of the war-time political maneuverings going on, including the Cairo and Teheran conferences attended by the major allied leaders. My father’s comments about the challenges and calculations associated with the Middle East are interesting, of course, in light of our current ensnarement in that region. My father also expresses disappointment about the undemocratic deals being struck by the major powers (although he accepts the economic and military strategy behind some of them). His description of the U.S. as “a nice kid who got dragged into a drunken brawl,” seems apt.]

December 9, 1943 (Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo.)

Raymond Clapper said it in his column, and I’ve been trying to think just how to say it here. He said there was something disquieting about the way these Cairo and Teheran conferences were held, especially in the rotten treatment of the correspondents. Apparently they didn’t get to first base. For certain, they’ve made all kinds of formal protests themselves, and undoubtedly plenty of informal cursing, but the only news they could get sounded like the wirings of a garden party.

Clapper went on to recall a saying that part of the greatness of great men consists simply in their being there. Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang are the men who are there. And in this sense they are indispensable men. They are making decisions that will affect hundreds of millions of people for years to come. On the face of them, then, these conferences seem almost the antithesis of democracy.

But there’s this to say about the press. The correspondents did miss out on this most important news of the year. But in the nature of things, there wasn’t much of importance that could be told, anyway, so far as the military decisions are concerned.

The political decisions are another matter. There was the formal declaration guaranteeing the independence of Iran. This was built up as an application of the Atlantic Charter, but it’s main purpose was probably to reassure all of the peoples of that section of the world that the big Western brothers aren’t out to gobble them up this time. And it’s also intended to sooth the French leaders who’ve been having trouble with little Lebanon, and charging the British with a plot to remove their influence from the near East.

The great democratic ultimatum to the German people, which many hopefuls had predicted, was not forthcoming. And this is probably because Roosevelt was the only one who was ready to issue it. Stalin has used some fine democratic language lately, but Russia is yet a long way from the methods of democracy, though their racial democracy is way ahead of ours. And England may be democratic, but she still has a huge subject empire whose millions of people might think they deserved a democratic chance before the Germans.

So we got only a very general declaration of good intentions, and a determination to cooperate. There is no doubt that Poland and the Baltic states will go to Russia by graceful default. At least, Churchill and FDR probably are praying it will be graceful. Personally, I think that this arrangement is a good thing from the economic and military points of view. But whether the peoples of these countries will figure that they have tasted the read-meat promises of the Atlantic Charter is another matter. To them, it may seem much more like a Munich sellout, before the glorious days of international idealism.

Eliot Janeway, in FORTUNE, thinks that Roosevelt is on the way to pulling another Wilson, – political isolation at the very time when he most needs the support of a majority of the nation. It seems to be a question of how far he can irrevocably commit the nation without the support of Congress or the people. Thus far he hasn’t taken the bold, but sincere, chance that Wilson did with his Points. He attends Conference after Conference; each time we hear that he’s worked out with the other leaders war plans for the months ahead. But actual political decisions, from all that has been revealed, have been so thin that sometimes one sees right through them and wonders if they’re really there. Too often, our actual political management in the field speaks much louder than these declarations, and not in the same voice.

I think that many Americans feel cheated, and ashamed, because of the deals our government has made with European rightists, reactionaries, and outright Fascists in North Africa, Vichy, Spain, and Italy. I know that I feel ashamed of these deals. There’s talk now of a deal with Franco.

It may be that this is the hard realistic way that nations must work together in the world. But if it is, a lot of us Americans have been brought up wrong. We have been told that our country is the foremost champion of democracy in the world. We expected that our country would stand on democratic principles in all of its business with other nations. But now we have a feeling that the US is very much like a nice kid who got dragged into a drunken brawl. He may protest a little at what goes on, but who the hell gives a damn! Come on, kid, you’re here, so you may as well join in and have some fun!

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Military Might a Poor Measure of America’s Democracy

[In this short excerpt, my father warns against rating the success of America’s democracy by using the scale of its military might. Interestingly, he suggests that the better measures are variables including “the happiness and the mental and spiritual development of the citizens of the democracy.” Such subjective measures have become in vogue in recent years, with various studies attempting to measure the happiness, life satisfaction and “subjective well being” of citizens in different nations. (See, e.g. http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/and http://www.gnhusa.org/.) Sadly, on such measures, the U.S. often doesn’t score on a level that would make many “America-always-the-best” boosters very happy. Also, I think my father’s critique of Churchill’s empire-centric statement relates nicely to some of America’s recent missteps and misadventures in the Middle East.]

November 30, 1943 (Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo.)

… A repatriated Japanese, as reported in TIME, told the folks at home that America was a formidable enemy in spite of the weakness she imposed on herself by her indulgence in free speech and other democratic perversions. A lot of people will react to such a statement like this: “Wait until we’ve trampled Japan in defeat. Then they’ll see how strong a nation can be that has free speech.” There’ll be a certain truth in their statement, a good democrat would agree, but a dangerous emphasis. The implication will be seen that free speech is a foundation of our military greatness and strength. And military strength is a dangerous standard to become accustomed to in the evaluation of the liberties of democracy. The true standard is the happiness and the mental and spiritual development of the citizens of the democracy. Militarism seems to be one of the surest roads to the suppression of the democratic liberties, and shouldn’t be linked with them in the minds of the people.

This little distinction flashed to my mind as I was reading TIME, and later applied itself to another situation. It occurred to me that national leaders may sometimes strive for objects that will do their people no good, and possibly much harm, because they measure their actions and plans by wrong standards. What was Winston Churchill thinking of, for instance, when he stated that he was not elected prime minister to preside over the dismemberment of the British Empire? Was it perhaps the pages of history, where empires stand in great prestige, or was it the millions of people who have some reason to believe that empire accounts for a least a share of their present misery. The standards of history in the past have been mostly aristocratic. If Churchill takes his cues from this history, he is reduced in stature as a democratic leader, of whom more popular standards are demanded.

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Impressions of Texas, Circa 1943

[The following is the last entry in my father’s third journal, and also his last before leaving Texas for another Army camp in Missouri. He uses the entry to reflect on his time in Texas, and on Texas itself. Nothing very consequential here, but a nice descriptive picture of the environs and of my dad’s passage through it. Judging from the last paragraph, some characteristics of present-day Texans were shared by their 1942 precursors.]

October 14, 1943 (Camp Fannin, Tex.)

Powerful circumstantial evidence has accumulated during the past two days which permits me to accept the conclusion that this is my last day in Texas. In the first place, I’m on orders to ship out of Fannin at 5 this afternoon, and in the second place, I’m shipping in OD’s [olive drabs]. OD’s are not yet worn in Texas. Those are the facts. The official rumor has us headed for Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. But that’s for the future. Right now I’m going to declare open season on all stray Texas memories and see how many I can rope in.

First impressions were unflattering. Dawn in railroad yards of Waco, the gray half-light giving hesitant shape to a drab neighborhood. Our train had stopped there sometime in the early morning. As soon as I was dressed, I walked out on the rear platform. “What place is this?” I yelled at a lone trainman up the tracks. I knew, and just wanted to hear him say it. “Waco,” he said, and swung along with his lantern without another word. Across the street a little eat-joint had a light showing through a dirty back window. A woman was in there, apparently washing dishes.

A couple of hours later the train chugged to a stop in what seemed to be a blank wilderness somewhere to the south and west of Waco, and then backed up onto a right angle spur. Five minutes later we slid into North Camp Hood. After four days on the train, I had that gritty feeling all over my body, and the reality of Hood there before me in the sun-baked valley put my mind in a similar condition…

I kept saying in my first letters to my friends and folks that I thought I’d make out OK with everything except the heat. I really didn’t know how I’d stand up under the Texas sun in midsummer, and the thought of it frightened me.

It got hot, all right, but I stood it, and with only a few bad days. I can remember only once that I hoped desperately that the sun actually would strike me down and put an end to the terrific burning. That was about the last week in June when we were practicing dry firing with the carbine just before going on the range. There were a couple of times when I got up from the prone position that things almost went black on me.

We began to learn something about going without water. It got so that the biggest moments in the day came for me at dinner and supper with the first swallows of the iced drink, no matter what it was. How we used to plead with the KP who was dishing it out. “Just a little more” or “Fill it up, chum” or “How about a piece of ice?” …

I’ve never yet gone on a real weekend binge, for the principal reason that such activity seemed to represent an expenditure of money, time, and body, without commensurate returns. This probably sounds too coldly calculated, but I have been on binges at other times, and, except in the unique case of fraternity beer parties, remember them as decidedly incomplete and unsatisfactory occasions. What I liked best at Hood was simply to stroll off a little way into the country with a congenial pal, preferably [Kal] Kaufer, and just doze or chat or read or write in the shade and breeze. This would be change enough after a tough week of basic. Kal was a good boy to talk with.

I spent a good many dreamy hours lying on a coal bin watching the night come on. There would always be brilliant stars in the clear purple sky, with usually a cool breeze, and, at the proper periods, a moon, slim retiring maiden in the west, or full bosomed matron striding up the east. It was a beautiful time to think thoughts not too profound, to muse, – and to fall asleep.

I liked the country around Hood, even though the unusually dry summer made it a little ragged and dusty by the end of July. There were a lot of flowers when we first came. I don’t know what they were, but they were for me a strong recommendation for the land that bore them. The wooded pasture land that had recently been farms was pleasant to wander through, though most of the time I spent in it was on night problems when opportunities for appreciation were at a minimum.

Here at Fannin my favorite spot is very definitely located. It’s the junction of four sturdy limbs near the top of a big walnut tree. These limbs have been my home for many hours during this last week. While reclining in their embrace, I’ve been able to see the troops go marching up and down the road, and to see them from a really detached position. This has been an escape from the Army without benefit of furlough… I’m really sorry to say goodbye to that tree.

I haven’t met many Texans, so I can’t declaim upon their mass characteristics, if any such exist. I hope that the two clergymen whom I observed in action aren’t representative, but I’m afraid they are. Texans apparently want plenty of blood and thunder with their religion, because that’s what they get. Their inordinate pride in their state is probably compounded about fifty-fifty of their ignorance of the rest of the country, and their state’s tangible assets, which are considerable. I’ve seen the cotton fields, and also had a look at the East Texas oil fields. If bigness counts, they’ve got plenty of it.

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Nazi Philosophy of Destruction versus Christian Morality

[The Nazi strategy of destroying towns and villages while retreating has my father contemplating the importance of Christian morality — and its emphasis on creativity — as a countervailing force. Although my father didn’t adhere to some of Christianity’s core faith beliefs and symbols, he recognized the importance to the war effort of the moral system that these beliefs promoted.]

October 8, 1943 (Camp Fannin, Tex.)

The shape of the Nazi scheme for the great withdrawal to the Fatherland begins to appear in the utter destruction they are leaving behind them in Russia and Italy. They will not return to the places they’re leaving now, and they know it. So they will attempt to stamp death indelibly upon all the places they have occupied, – to drag all of Europe down into hell, as Hitler has already threatened. We have heard for months of the rape of Russia, of the systematic destruction of all that represents civilization. There are no military objectives for the Germans. Just this morning we read that in Naples hundreds of tons of high explosive, planted in the basement of the post office, exploded yesterday, killing hundreds of people.

This is the way it will be all across Europe as the Nazis retreat. Towns will be completely blotted out, and great cities reduced to rubbish. The terror in Europe will grow more intense, as the advances of the Allied armies will come to mean not liberation, but torture and death. People will not dare to stay in their own homes, for fear that they will blow up. Water supplies will be polluted; there will be no food.

From our point of view this is senseless, and utterly criminal, but to the Nazi mind it probably appears as the supreme logic of their philosophy. For it would seem that that inner drive, which in most civilized human beings has been turned to creative ends, has been perverted in the Nazi mentality to a terrible force of destruction. It is possible that a Nazi commander surveys the ruins of a pillaged city with the same triumphant elation that Michelangelo feels as he stands before his completed David.

“Build thee more stately mansions,” someone says in the Bible. And so far as I can remember, the Bible is often stressing creation, even though metaphorically, as of the soul. Creation, and respect for those who create, for God, the supreme creator, are among the teachings of Christianity, and are in the foundation of the general morals of Christianity. If the Nazi terror is indeed the result of the deliberate destruction of Christian morals, that is reason enough for the preservation of these morals.

I have spent much time arguing with myself and with others over the technicalities of the Christian religion, – God, miracles, the true nature of Jesus. To me, these are matters of unimportance, because I believe that the moral system they are employed to inculcate is of major importance. But I guess I was wrong to argue, if for most people the moral system has meaning only through these symbols. And it is also true that a faith in the strength of these symbols is translated into a corresponding moral strength in the believers which otherwise might not be there.

So why continue arguing over nonessentials? The essentials themselves are being brutally challenged today, and my whole fight should be directed against the challengers. That bomb in Naples was not planted to kill men and women, but to kill beliefs and faith and morals and whatever else has been instrumental in the building of Western civilization. 

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Idealism As a Defining American Characteristic

[At this writing, my father had moved to a new Army camp in Texas, Camp Fannin. He comments on the idealism that underlies of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and a number of famous political speeches and documents. My father also notes his own shift from cynicism to embrace of the idealism expressed, which he considers a defining characteristic of the country and its citizens. It’s fair to say that cynicism largely has won the battle over idealism in the U.S. in recent decades, with one of the rare exceptions, perhaps, being the collective idealism inspired by the Obama Presidential campaign. Post election, it didn’t take long for our dysfunctional federal government and its crop of self-serving elected officials — combined, of course, with the hope-crushing recession — to snuff out most of that idealistic sentiment. So is an America without idealism, in all its impracticality, still America?]

September 25, 1943 (Camp Fannin, Tex.)

This week I’ve been reading a Pocket Book Anthology of American literature, which includes the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Washington’s Farwell Address, a part of Jefferson’s first inaugural speech, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, Wilson’s War Message to Congress, FDR’s speech on the Four Freedoms, and Wallace’s “Price of Free World Victory.”

In every one of these papers, which have played such tremendous roles in American history, there run the same words of high idealism, of devotion to the concept of human freedom under law, of deep respect for the Christian morality. Two years ago I was in a mood to sniff out of these words all kinds of shameless hypocrisy. Today I am proud of these words, and proud to be a member of the nation that has attempted to live up to their high challenge. The very fact that the mark is held so high guarantees many failures in our attempts to reach it, and the consequent ridicule or curses of those who choose to consider our experiment cynically. But now I know that I myself would far rather lay myself open to this ridicule and cursing than to play the “safe” game of flattering power, wherever it exists, for the simple reason that it is power. That may be a good way to keep the flesh stirring, but it’s a sure way to kill the creative spirit.

It’s not all dismaying to come to the realization that most Americans usually disavow the idealism that is the core of American greatness. They do this for many reasons, but largely because for most of their lives they are practical businessmen, and idealism is impractical. On a certain plane of reasoning they are perfectly right. It’s on this plane that a national policy of isolationism works out to be practical. I’m going to offer the thesis that on this plane they are not distinctively Americans, for I believe that the distinctive thing about America is its idealism. The bright fact about the American people is that, however much they belittle idealism in their personal lives, they are proud of it in their national life, and continue to put the reins of government in the hands of idealists.

Every nation has had men of the moral stature of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson (I believe), Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR (I hope), but no other nation has so consistently made them its political leaders. And this, I believe, is the sole justification needed for the democratic forms of government. It overwhelms all those criticisms which can possibly be raised against it.

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