Army Pay Rises to $100 per Month, Warranted or Not

[This entry notes the “political extravagance” of a House bill authorizing a “substantial” pay raise for officers and enlisted men — from $78 to $100 per month in my father’s case. In his tongue-in-check reporting of this “economic blasphemy,” my father allows that he’ll happily accept the government’s largess, warranted or not. He also worriedly contemplates a potential return to Okinawa (an assignment that never materialized).]

April 18, 1946 (Fort Devens, MA)

It is very easy to declaim in an rage against political extravagances wherein public money is appropriated for the undeserved benefit of a special group, – easy, that is, until you find yourself a member of just such a group. A bill just passed by the House authorizes substantial pay raises for all officers and enlisted men in the armed forces. Speaking as one detached from the issue, I will say that ninety-nine percent of all officers and enlisted men are already getting paid more than they are worth. But it happens that I am not really detached. I’m in the Army, with a rating of technician, fourth-grade, and am slated by this bill for a raise in pay from 78 to 100 dollars a month. As a man of principle, I would protest against this economic blasphemy. I would point out that it would take a generous imagination to demonstrate that I have done a month’s productive labor during my last twelve in the service. My own candid conclusion is that my value to the people of the United States, whom I have supposedly been serving during that period, has been practically nil. Yet now the Congress is on the point of giving me a 25% raise, along with all the other jokers still in uniform. I pointed out that as a man of principle I would protest this infamy. As a GI, however, I will gladly accept the extra lettuce.

Of course, a man can claim that he deserves some compensation for mental anguish, even though his anguish may be of no particular benefit to anyone else. I am at present suffering an anguish which would probably bring a rather fancy price in the open market, in the sense that most people would be willing to pay good money to avoid having this particular anguish for themselves. I refer to the fact that I am apparently on the point of shipping back to Okinawa. Come on folks! Step right up! Who’d like to have a nine-month vacation with pay on Okinawa, with transportation both ways paid for by the government? Well, look at the people running. But they’re running with their backs to me, which I take as an indication that no one wants to go to Okinawa, not even those many poor souls who have never had the privilege of visiting that island before. And it’s only because I’ve been there before that I’m willing to offer my opportunity to some less fortunate sucker.

True, my orders don’t say that I’m going to Okinawa, – not yet. They just carry me as far as Fort Lawton in Seattle, and also provide for a seven-day pre-embarkation furlough. I’m not always as stupid as I am sometimes. The boys who stayed behind laughed when I left Okinawa last December. “You’ll be right back here next spring about the time we’re leaving for good,” they said. I laughed back and told them there wasn’t a chance of it. Now I expect to feel slightly embarrassed when I meet a bunch of the old SIAM boys embarking from Machinato Point, just as I am landing there.

Of course, I may ship to Japan.

And the Phillies may win the National League pennant.

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Reflections on Post-War Seattle, New Year’s 1946

[One more vignette of post-war Seattle, written on New Year’s 1946. As a 20-year resident of the city’s suburbs, I find many of my father’s observations of mid-1940s Seattle quite interesting (the aversion to umbrellas remains strong, but is no longer universal). It seems that the good citizens of Seattle were more than happy to make a profit off the returning troops, who for all their drinking and partying couldn’t — to my father’s mind — conquer the “loneliness of spirit” that they shared with most other Americans.]

January 1, 1946 (Seattle, WA)

Seattle is one of the northernmost of US cities, but, being within breezing distance of the Japanese current, its winters are not as severe as they are exasperating. It’s an unusual day when a little rain falls. On a usual day a lot of rain falls. No one really worries about getting wet, but accepts his daily soaking as a matter of course. I haven’t noticed an umbrella during ten days in Seattle.

Seattle, like most other American cities, is much less impressive as an old acquaintance than as a bustling stranger. As a port city, it sees more than its share of soldiers and sailors, and sees them only as short-time transients bent on having a good time. Entertainment is a booming business for Seattle people, and the boys in the service are never in any doubt that it is a business. They pay top prices for anything that’s offered to them, and most of what they get is second-rate, or worse. But the simple pressure of their numbers makes them powerless to protest, and most of them have enough money to give them a “what-the-hell” attitude. But among themselves they curse the city volubly.

No doubt the good people of Seattle do a little private cursing of the troops. The boys go into town to get drunk and look for girls. These are the things they’ve been dreaming about most avidly during the months overseas, and as they come plowing deep into Puget Sound on the ships, they begin to build Seattle up into the Mecca of their longings. The people of Seattle apparently don’t make much objection to the damage done their city’s morals by the uniformed pilgrims, but they probably grow quite weary of their streets reeling with drunken, brawling, flirting kids.

On First Avenue are the military trinket stores and the penny arcades. Most of the boys make a bee-line from the ships to the trinket stores to stock up on the stripes, patches, medals, buttons, theater ribbons, overseas “hershey bars,” caps, and hash marks which become the visible marks of glory. Then, after everything is sewed and pinned in place (often at the USO on Second Avenue), they launch off into the city to consume and conquer. Several hours and a good many dollars later they drift back to their ships and barracks to boast or bitch, according to their respective fortunes.

The only regular stage performance in Seattle is a dingy burlesque show at the Rivoli on First Avenue. (Sin, by the way, is arranged symbolically in Seattle. It parades in its rawest forms along First Avenue, which is the waterfront, becomes more refined on each succeeding avenue up the hill, and is sophisticated practically beyond recognition by the time one reaches Sixth Avenue.) The movie theatres, which carry such piquant names as the Blue Mouse and the Music Box, are mostly all owned by a Mr. John Hamrick. Mr. Hamrick had a very mediocre offering for the Christmas season. “The Stork Club,” featuring Betty Hutton and Barry Fitzgerald, was as good as anything going, and it was not good at all. But the theatres stay open all night, and draw the bulk of their late-evening patronage from boys on pass who have no other place to go.

There’s one thing about Seattle, and about any other American city, that most fellows can’t understand, because they’re products of the city way of life. They’ve learned to depend on the mechanical, commercialized dispensers of “pleasure,” which never really please. The human spirit has probably never before been more completely neglected than it is in America today. Even lovemaking has no significance beyond its physical thrills, and the most intimate moments are shared by fellows and girls after an evening’s, or even an hour’s, acquaintance. There is in almost every American a tremendous loneliness of spirit coupled with an ignorance of the means of spiritual fulfillment. Spending money is the most obvious opiate for his vast restlessness, and just now he has plenty of money. Probably during this New Year of 1946 Americans will spend more money to satisfy personal wants than ever before, and then come to the end of the year as dismally dissatisfied as ever.

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A Soldiers’ Bull Session: Capitalism versus Communism

[In this entry, my father recounts a late-night debate about politics and economics among the soldiers in his tent. Many of the comments reported touch on issues that remain hot-button topics today. They include the lamentation that “politics always seems to boil the scum to the top” and the fair observation that a Constitution “written over a hundred and fifty years ago for a little colony of thirteen states” might need some tweaking to remain relevant in the current America. If only the conservative “originalists” on the U.S. Supreme court could exhibit such common sense!)

September 29, 1945 (Okinawa, Japan)

I come back to the tent about eleven-thirty after an evening of bridge. The only light is at Fisher’s improvised work bench, where he sits with black-bearded head bent forward, puzzling over some piece of electrical equipment. But there are voices in the dark. Old Buck and Stan Graham are deep in a discussion of economics and politics. Right in this one tent we have concentrated the best bull-shooters in the whole platoon. Last night it was Army organization, and war responsibility. Tonight it’s communism versus capitalism. These guys are so serious that they can complete one of these discussions without once bringing in women or sex. Of course, they’re never completed in the sense that unanimous conclusions are arrived at. They die out either from the exhaustion of the participants, which is rare, or from the intercession of perverted individuals like Tom Pearson, who believes in going to sleep early because he can’t help waking up early in the morning.

The discussion tonight is even more hopelessly abstract than usual. “I’ve read, or, er, I’ve heard it said,” Buck says, “that capitalism is just the thing for a young country – “

“That’s right,” Stan breaks in, “it’s OK as long as she’s expanding, as long as there’s a frontier. But now the frontier is gone.”

“Yes. Yes.” Buck says. “That’s just what I mean. So now I think that this country is ready – er, really needs some kind of economic regulation.”

“Yeah,” Stan says, “and then we come to a situation where we’re advocating just the things we’ve been fighting this war to prevent.”

“Well,” Buck says, “I think we ought to have a group of economic experts study the situation, and then make an honest report to the people on just what has to be done to stop depressions.”

At this point I enter the discussion and explain that a large number of such studies have already been made, and the reports are available to the public for whatever they’re worth. But Buck says he’s never heard of them. Then I try to explain the dilemma that arises when anyone attempts to press economic sanity through the maze of American politics.

“Well,” says Buck, “it seems to me that if we could educate the people on those things…”

Here again I’m skeptical. I point out that good education demands exceptional teachers, and there aren’t enough exceptional teachers to go around.

“Yep,” Stan agrees, “you can’t get a good man to work for nothing, and that teaching’s one of the lowest-paid professions.”

Then Buck starts working around towards communism again. Joe Graham comes in and says that communism, without the dictatorship part, is the only solution.

“Sure,” I say, “but just take away Joe Stalin and the club over a man’s head, and see what happens to your communistic system.”

Buck has an idea of more “personal” government at the township level. “The township is a closeknit unit, and, with the right kind of supervision, there hadn’t ought to be a single person in it on direct relief.”

I don’t seem to agree with anything that Buck has put forward. “What about the huge cities?” I ask. “That’s where most of your unemployment is. And besides, local economic problems are only tiny segments of disorders that have to be considered on an international scope.”

Stan tries a new tack. “I don’t know why it is,” he says, “but politics always seems to boil the scum to the top. Now if we could have some kind of group down in Washington, and salaries high enough to attract good men, and let this group hold a whip hand over all the sonsabitching senators and representatives, maybe we’d get something done. If they didn’t do a good job, they’d just get their asses booted out of there…”

“And we get some guys just as bad in their places,” I say.

“And how would you know when they’re doing a good job?” Fisher asks.

“Well, you’ve got something there,” Stan admits. “Look, fellows, I’ll tell you what. Don’t you just think that a Constitution that was written over a hundred and fifty years ago for a little colony of thirteen states might be a little obsolete today?”

“You’re absolutely right!” Buck agrees. “Now if we could just make the right changes…”

“Listen,” T. J. Pearson breaks in with a weary voice, “there’s a bunch of guys in this tent you have to shake their asses to get them out of bed at seven in the morning for breakfast, and that starts talking politics at eleven-thirty at night. That’s the one thing that’s wrong with the American way of life.”

 

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“National Sovereignty” Concept Cripples U.N.’s Mandate

 [In this third installment drawn from the July 22, 1945 entry, my father presciently identifies the problems the new United Nations organization will face, especially due to its adoption of the slippery concept of “national sovereignty.” In many ways, this entry foreshadows the rocky road that the UN has travelled since its founding, particularly the Cold War-era face-offs between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Whether it’s from China, Libya or the U.S. itself, the constant invocation of National Sovereignty by U.N. member countries shows no signs of dissipating.]

 July 22, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.), con’t.

…We may already have congratulated ourselves on the part we played in the drafting of the United Nations Charter at San Francisco, and on the part we now expect to play in whatever international organization is established under the charter. But our congratulations should be well-tempered with caution. The document on which we are preparing to set our Congressional stamp of approval is well booby-trapped with those supposedly rational words and phrases which technological developments have made largely obsolete in the modern world. We may bandy them about in good faith, but when we shape national policy on them, we’d better be damned sure we know what we’re talking about before we act.

“National sovereignty” was a phrase stressed more, perhaps, than any other at the Conference, and it’s by all odds the most dangerous. For what does “national sovereignty” mean in today’s world? The most common interpretation seems to be that the administration of domestic affairs is solely the concern of the respective national governments. This, at least, is the best that the delegates to San Francisco would allow themselves publically to express, though if they are the able men they’re supposed to be, they must all privately have realized that this interpretation is little more than a verbal evasion for the time being of a practical problem which must be faced repeatedly whenever the international organization begins to function. For it is simply a backhanded statement of isolationism (You let me alone, and I’ll let you alone), and  thus at the very beginning a flat admission that the nations are not willing to attempt to enforce that international law and order which could be their only justification for joining together in the first place.

Of course this is an overstatement of the situation. But it’s better to see it that way than to attempt to hide it or minimize it. Its most optimistic supporters admit that the charter is only a hopeful beginning. At least it gets most of the nations on the world peacefully together under one roof. What goes on after that admittedly depends on the willingness of the great powers, or the US and the USSR, to cooperate. But it isn’t clearly pointed out that international cooperation must inevitably mean a continuing compromise on matters which are still considered to be purely domestic in nature. Until “national sovereignty” is whittled down to about the present significance of “state sovereignty” in the US, no international organization will have a ghost of a chance of keeping the world at peace.

This is going to [be] a tough job of whittling, when most of it must be done by two nations of such divergent political opinion and practice as America and Russia. We want the Russians to come a certain distance towards democratic capitalism. We must then be prepared to move a certain distance towards democratic communism. I say this without meaning that Russian communism is at present markedly democratic. We believe that much is lacking in that respect, though we must concede that millions of Russians are apparently well-satisfied with their government, and convinced that we Americans are politically backward in certain respects. This is certainly not a situation which can be helped by name-calling. But we should insist on steadily expanding facilities for the interchange of unbiased news, as well as facts and figures on industrial production and military strength. Among nations which honestly desire to remain at peace with each other there can be no reason for suppressing such information, and its dissemination in reliable, public bulletins should have the effect of dissipating that unhealthful atmosphere of intrigue and distrust with which nations have habitually carried on their diplomatic relations. Texas doesn’t feel injured when Massachusetts knows how much oil it produces, or how many airplanes. The members of an international organization which means business should invite the publication of all such devious facts.

The possibilities of such forms of international cooperation are as numerous as the problems which the nations of the world share in common. But we will never see them realized if we place our hopes in the formal signing of documents and treaties, and the dispensation of high-minded advice. Ours is the potential power, and therefore the responsibility, to set practical examples of cooperation for the maintenance of international law and order. There’ll be no law and order in those places where people have no food and shelter and clothing. In those places it’s our responsibility to provide the essentials of life as far as our means allow without the actual deprivation of any of our own citizens of these essentials. Our business sense should tell us, if it’s as keen as we claim, that we won’t get something valuable without paying a good price for it. International order and peace in a world so terribly devastated by war comes at a high price. Millions of American men are still paying that price in the actual  waging of war. But most Americans have a chance to get off incomparably easy as compared with the peoples of the rest of the world. Near the all time material peak of their standard of living, in spite of the war, they have only consent to the slight cut in that standard which will be necessary to supply the peoples of devastated areas with the means of staying alive and starting a new community life from scratch.

Put didactically, as I have done it, this sounds like an easy thing to do. But put practically to Sam Jones and family, in the form of continued rationing so that our ships can cart off to foreign countries some of the things “we’ve been fighting for,” it will be near to a political impossibility. In the abstract, perhaps, it won’t be so hard to convince Sam that primarily we’re fighting for a peaceful world where all men will be able to enjoy a larger share of the things which make life more pleasant, – the beef steaks and the automobiles. But then tell him that he’ll have to wait a little longer than he expected for his own postwar beefsteak and automobile, and he’ll write to his senator: “Dear Bill: How much longer is this country of our going to play Santa Claus to those damned foreigners? Cut out sending them good stuff that American citizens can use right her and now!”

Already this outcry is rising like an Anvil Chorus throughout the nation’s newspapers. And no doubt it’s rising to a roar in Congressional mail. That’s public opinion. The poor Congressmen have little choice. Cut down UNRRA shipments. Stop feeding civilian populations in liberated and conquered countries. Relax rationing at home. No foreign loans without guaranteed security….

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The Limits of Letting Public Opinion Drive Public Policy

 [In a long journal entry — close to 4,000 words — on July 22, 1945, my father opined about foreign policy, the imperative of the United States to engage in reconstruction, the downside of public opinion driving public policy, and a host of other topics. In this first excerpt from that entry, he notes the proclivity of the “everyman” American, Sam Jones, to worry more about a steak dinner today than a recurrence of world war 15 or 20 years into the future. My father’s comments about the need for political leaders willing to buck the pressure of uninformed public opinion seem apropos to the present day (as his journal writings often do). Another of his statements that remains true for our times: “…we easily persuaded ourselves that national good was necessarily universal good, and failed to perceive that certain of our cherished advantages were maintained directly or indirectly at the expense of other parts of the world.”]

July 22, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

… Basically, these war years, with their extravagant spending of men and material, have outraged the practical “business sense” of the common American who carries on the national business, be he civilian or soldier. Right now, he’s getting angry about our large scale handouts to our Allies, and President Truman, his perfect representative, is apparently telling the boys at Potsdam that from now on it’s “put up or shut up.” This attitude is generally applauded, and rightly so, if we don’t let ourselves get talked or scared into “practical” deals which end by increasing, rather than diminishing, the various frictions still existing among the nations. But that’s a big IF, and will often call for national policy which demands present sacrifices as the investment in future security. UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] presents such a situation now, and we don’t seem willing to go very far beyond a profession of good intentions. Exasperated, but well-fed Americans get the preference over starving Europeans. And later many Americans will become exasperated at these Europeans for embracing Communism after we’d gone to the trouble and expense of liberating them from Fascists totalitarianism. We’ll never know how quickly the sweets of liberation can pale on an empty stomach.

As a nation we’ll make these “mistakes” simply because a steak dinner today seems more important to Sam Jones and his family than another world war fifteen or twenty years from now. That doesn’t mean that Sam Jones is a bad or irresponsible man, but it would seem to mean that he’s a poor man to entrust with the shaping of American foreign policy. Yet Sam Jones, taken by the million, is public opinion, and we are told with authoritative finality that American foreign policy between these last two wars was increasingly isolationist and appeasing because public opinion would allow nothing else. “We knew what was coming,” many of our leading statesmen have said, “but we were powerless to act because of public opinion.” Of course, one seriously questions the omniscience of most of these bleating sheep, but at the same time one must admit a measure of truth in their argument. If important information was made available to the members of Congress, information which revealed the extreme danger of our position in an Axis dominated world, and if these men, reflecting the naturally limited viewpoint of their constituents, refused to believe in the significance of this information, refused, possibly for reasons of election strategy, to pass it on to their constituents, and thus left us dismally unprepared when the strike came, then our foreign policy set-up is certainly inadequate.

There is always pressure for various changes in any governmental system, and unimportant changes in both personnel and procedure are constantly being made. Over a period of years these minor changes may add up to a real change in political philosophy. This is evolutionary development, and has been a privilege of the American people since 1789, with the exception of the Civil War. At that time the revolutionary concept of the right of secession from the Union was advanced, and it was denied only at the cost of a bloody war.

The present war has been as much a Civil War as that war between the North and the South, but because it concerns a world union of “sovereign” nations rather than a continental union of “sovereign“ states, because the apparent national differences of the peoples involved have obscured the basic philosophical issue, we, as the victor side, are likely to bungle the victor’s responsibility of directing reconstruction even worse than we did after our Civil War, when the issues were relatively clearer. The German and Japanese totalitarian governments have been a mortal challenge to our own democratic institutions. This challenge could hardly have been made with such ferocity if democratic government had seemed as fair and advantageous to the rest of the world as it seemed to us. In other words, we easily persuaded ourselves that national good was necessarily universal good, and failed to perceive that certain of our cherished advantages were maintained directly or indirectly at the expense of other parts of the world. And to bring it closer home, we may as well admit that during the thirties the democratic way of life left several million Americans out in the cold of economic privation. Had these millions become a majority, or seized political power while still a minority, Americans might possibly have found themselves attempting the desperate cure for their ills which the Germans tried under Hitler….

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Potsdam: Juggling the Fate of the World

[My father’s cynical — though realistic — side is on display in his jaded take on the Potsdam Conference, which ran from July 16 through August 2, 1945. At the conference, the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union met to decide upon the punishment for Nazi Germany, which had unconditionally surrendered on May 8, 1945 (VE Day). The victors also sought to develop peace treaties and a model for a new world order that would reduce the liklihood of yet another world war.

The Potsdam Agreement issued at the end of the conference included a long list of penalties and prescriptions for Germany, as well as for the disposition of Poland. The conference also produced the Potsdam Declaration, which proposed terms of surrender for Japan. Japan rejected the Declaration and, within a week of the conference’s conclusion, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the entry’s last paragraph, the “eccentric character” referenced is, of course, my father, himself.]

July 17, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

Potsdam! Look to Potsdam, ladies and gentlemen, for the super-historical spectacle of the Big Three juggling the fate of the world like a rosy, red apple. Back and forth it goes, flipped from one to the other, twirling through the solemn air, caught at the last moment, and tossed up again. Look close, ladies and gentlemen. These three great performers have practiced their act for a long time, but no human is infallible. Will one of them make a fatal slip? Will we all end by being communists? or democrats? or imperialists? or will we get a bastard mixture, with a little of each? Forty centuries of recorded, bloody history look down on this momentous gathering, watching with the bated breath to see if the appointed time has come for that miracle of miracles, that dream of the ages, – the generation of the sweet perfume of universal peace out of the stinking cauldron of war. Forty centuries have tried this desperate alchemy time and again, and failed. But look to Potsdam, ladies and gentlemen. The curtain rises on the grandest attempt of all.

And now we take you to Potsdam for a ringside seat at this latest delivery from the pregnant womb of history. Will the nations of the world finally accept the issue, or will it, like all its predecessors, be scorned as a bastard, and left to die miserably in the next great clash of arms?

Well, it makes good newspaper copy, anyway. It provides fertile grist for the greedy minds of the columnists and commentators. And perhaps it even puts a little zest into the lives of the common people these hot summer days. Certainly something is wanting for that purpose, though a bottle of iced beer may prove to be more practical in the long run. The college debating societies, of course, go wild over this sort of thing, and the women’s clubs will be a set-up in the next few months for lectures prepared to discourse on “The Implications for America of the Potsdam Conference.” Next Christmas will be time for an enterprising correspondent to sum it all up in an authoritative volume entitled “World After Potsdam.”

As a comic sidelight to this epic page of history, we heard yesterday of an eccentric character, now serving in the Armed Forces (and better out of them, we submit), who claims that the Potsdam Conference has as little significance to go with its pomp and circumstance as a presentation of grand opera at the Metropolitan, and that the Metropolitan could perhaps improve upon its leading characters. There will be the customary situations of suspense and discord, and then the final scene of overwhelming triumph to bring the waiting cheers from the expectant audience. Afterwards, the people will return to their familiar occupations, and go on deciding through their mysterious collective force, as heedlessly and unwitting as ever, the future issues of war and peace, irrespective of the wishes or formal agreements of Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. This heresy, which could be dangerous coming from a man of any standing, serves in this case as an ironically humorous comment on the vagaries of an irresponsible and immature mind.

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Business-Government Imbalance Poses Potentially Fatal Risks

[This entry begins with an analysis of the interplay between government and business in communist and fascist countries, and contrasts that interplay with America’s historically more-balanced model. From that foundation, my father revisits one of his favorite themes — the importance of individual self-expression and creativity — and discusses how America has done better than most in cultivating and nourishing the individual. Near the entry’s end, however, he cautions that “A society is thrown fatally out of balance when one group within it accumulates the power to deny expression to all conflicting interests.”

Sadly, in our current electoral season, corporations have been given carte blanche by the U.S. Supreme Court to spend endlessly and anonymously to promote their preferred candidates and causes. While Tea Partiers and other right-wing zealots worry endlessly about Big Government, they seem completely oblivious to the threat that Big Business poses to our democratic institutions (to say nothing of the threat to their own self interests…). Perhaps we’ve already reached the tipping point where American democracy is beginning to spin “fatally out of balance.”

September 10, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

Call government the chicken and business the egg. Then ask which came first, the chicken or the egg. In the Communist state it was the chicken, nor was this simply a matter of chance. In Russia at the time of the Revolution there was only a comparatively small industrial plant, and its owners were on the losing side. So, entirely aside from the Marxist theories, it was quite natural that the political organization should come first, and that it should assume complete control of the development of the nation’s industry, making it a state enterprise. Nor is it strange that the Communist leaders should believe that their way was the best way. They made it work.

In Germany after the World War, the ruling class, mostly in the person of the Kaiser, was eliminated, but German industry, already highly developed, and not greatly damaged by war, remained in the hands of its pre-war owners. Thus they, by default, became the top-dogs in Germany, and controlled the government as they saw fit. This was the prime condition of Fascism. These businessmen picked Hitler as the best front-man available, and have perhaps lived to regret their choice. But that’s debatable, since it isn’t quite clear that Hitler has ever got completely out of hand, or crossed them up badly.

In the United states, the question of the chicken and the egg remains a riddle. Business and government, through the historical accident by which our state was established at the beginnings of the industrial revolution, have grown up together and though the preponderance of power has sifted back and forth during the years, they’ve never been completely out of balance with each other. It’s this system of constantly-maintained balance between business and government which we’ve come to call democracy. It’s an extension of the system of checks and balances which was written into the original Constitution, and which is probably one of the most fruitful social theories ever formulated. Though we may have acquired it partly through accident, it’s very important today that we understand its value and function, so that we’ll be the stronger to dismiss all temptations to destroy it.

The Communist and Fascist states are both built to ignore the most pressing need of modern society, which is the need for individual self-expression. The leaders of these states have become fascinated with the idea of the mass, and have forgotten that the strength of the mass is in its individual members. And though, for a limited time, and under special conditions, it may be possible to inspire mass movements of considerable force, there is nothing more permanent in such a movement than in the display of the pent-up force in a released rocket. Both are brilliant, and soon spent.

Democratic society has few moments of this type of hysterical mass movement and in these moments it’s the least democratic. The crude techniques of mass appeal have no place in a democratic system, and should be avoided except as a last expedient at times when the state is threatened by outside force. Even then such appeals should be strongly salted with emphasis on the individual.

For the end of democratic society has never been conceived as the power of the state, but as the opportunity and happiness of the individual citizen. In a civilization which seems peculiarly suited to the creation of great Force-States, this democratic theory may appear almost archaic, and certainly very fragile. But the facts don’t bear out this fear. The United States is today the most powerful state in the world, and at the same time, among the large nations, the most democratic. We have demonstrated that mass effort can be demanded of millions of individuals without destroying their individuality. The danger among us now is that fascination with the material power we’ve built for ourselves will make us forget that the main source of this power is in the individual who is free to think for himself, and, to a large degree, free to direct his own creative activities.

In any society it’s always been hard to find a way of guaranteeing a practical degree of freedom to every adult individual, and most societies haven’t even attempted to find such a way. Industrial society, perhaps, makes it at the same time more possible and more difficult than ever before. The material and mechanical means exist which can free men from slavery to the labor of maintaining a bare subsistence. But these same means can also be used to subject men to the most terrible slavery in history. This is the slavery which makes them not slaves of themselves, or of other men, but of the machine. All human quality is sapped out of this relationship, and men can be brutalized to a point where they are themselves nothing more than machines. Something of this sort has happened to the leaders of the Nazi state.

The safest state of affairs exists in a society where no element or interest is completely satisfied, and no one is completely denied satisfaction, where everyone has an opportunity to voice his own desires and have their merits submitted to a forum of the whole. A society is thrown fatally out of balance when one group within it accumulates the power to deny expression to all conflicting interests. In such a society, sufficiency is sacrificed to efficiency. The machine-quality displaces the human-quality. Such a society cannot last…

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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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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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Modern World Threats to Creativity and Culture

[This journal excerpt revisits the theme of individual creativity, which my father saw as being threatened by many of the conveniences and distractions of the “modern” world in 1942. After all, how could the average person be creative when they were so easily drawn into passive activities such as listening to the radio, watching movies, or driving their automobiles through the countryside? Plus, people’s association with culture was fast becoming one of paying to experience its expression by others, rather than one of contributing to culture themselves.

My father, of course, would eventually see television eclipse all other forms of passive entertainment, and lived long enough to witness the emerging role of the Internet as a huge time sink. One can make a case that the Internet cuts two ways — both as a vehicle for endless browsing and superficial exchanges, and as a platform on which individuals can create and disseminate creative works with an ease unparalleled in history. On balance, though, I think the warnings my father raised in 1942 are much more apparent, and dire, today.]

January 28, 1943 (Middlebury College)

A central point in the arguments for socialism is the increased leisure time that will redound to the working classes, which they will be able to use in “a new burst of cultural feeling,” as E.C. Lindeman puts it. More efficient organization and utilization of the means of production will make comparatively short that part of the day which each individual must spend in physical labor. In other words, we put the machine in the proper place, as our slave, or, at least, as a subordinate partner, and then use our leisure time to participate in a great revival of the arts.

Maybe. We might remember, however, that our leisure life is as completely mechanized as our working life, – the automobile, radio, motion picture machine, and mass production printing presses. So we wonder if our machines really can give us new leisure, to be used creatively, or do they simply force us to live at such a whirlwind pace that we shall never really have the time for a “new burst of cultural energy.” We get our culture in such fitful and varied snatches that each one of these snatches becomes practically meaningless to us. We cram our lives up with incidentals in which we ourselves have no creative part – listening to the radio, watching sports contests, going to the movies and the theatre, driving through the countryside.

All these activities are supposedly part of the “broader, fuller life” which our machines have made possible for us. I don’t agree. If anything, the life of the common man today is narrower, even than that of the pioneer on our Western frontier a century and a half ago. Then a man was forced to produce the essentials of his own life. Though this was admittedly hard labor, it furnished a wide range in which he might exercise his creative powers. Today we don’t build; we buy. Our vaunted division of labor has been carried so far that we learn to spend our days as assembly lines, performing the simplest single operation in the manufacture of a product which we shall probably never use ourselves. For this degradation into an automaton we learn to be satisfied with a wage with which we can buy the essentials of life, and perhaps have enough left over to buy a little culture. Is it any wonder that men who find their lives crammed into such a narrow orbit sometimes go on strike. Wages aren’t their primary objective, no matter what they are told. Way down in deep they have a yearning to be men. Of course they are fighting against the feeling of insecurity, but behind this feeling is the caged fury of wild creative beings who have grown up in a society that has made the cramping of their native powers a prerequisite of existence.

No malevolent “ruling class” has consciously willed this situation. We grow up learning to listen to the radio, to watch movies, to ride in automobiles. Most of us never have a chance to be born, in any creative sense. We become culturally lazy by learning to admire the cultural activities of a few outstandingly creative, or skilled, persons in our society, and worse than this, we learn to look upon this admiration as a privilege, by often being forced to pay for it. We become hero-worshippers, and forget that we ourselves might have become heroes.

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