Air Show Over Okinawa

[Upon arriving on Okinawa, post V-J Day, my father — a member of a Signal Information and Monitoring Company — found that his skills as a high-speed Morse code operator weren’t much needed. He worked for a short time as a switchboard operator on the island, but, upon reenlisting for another year of Army service, was relieved of that duty and found himself waiting several weeks with the other reenlisting men for a priority return to the States. While on Okinawa, he spent a fair amount of time exploring the island and learning its history, and even gave thought to creating a guidebook for soldiers. This short entry gives some sense of the military presence on Okinawa — in this case, the warplanes.]

September 20, 1945 (Okinawa, Japan)

… Every day we look at one of the biggest air shows in the world. We see every type of modern American warplane, from the tremendous B-29’s and B-32’s down to the saucy little Cub liaisons. A single B-29 came overhead out of the east late yesterday afternoon. Directly overheat, it flashed a brilliant silver against the deep blue sky. As it swept on relentlessly into the sun, it became a black pencil-line silhouette. Another 29 circled low to the south of us with a B-26 on its tail. The Marauder isn’t a small plane. But it looked like a midget beside the mighty Superfort.

A formation of 15 P-38 Lightnings glides through the clouds several thousand feet overhead, like silver fish in a stream. The A-26 medium bombers, along with their close cousins the Mitchells and Marauders, are the most businesslike plane in the air. They usually slug straight ahead at top speed, making a terrific racket. The fat C-47 and C-54 transports are the most graceful, sweeping across the sky like handsome atrons. The Navy Hellcats rocket along like carefree young scamps.

Read Full Post »

“Irrational” Governments Doomed to Failure

 [In this excerpt, a continuation of the long journal entry he made on July 22, 1945, my father makes the case that tyrannical, nihilistic and “irrational”  governments — including Nazi Germany — must inevitably fail, though they may take decades to do so. His exposition is interesting both for its historical perspective as World War II neared its conclusion, and for its current relevance to the popular uprisings against tyrannical regimes now occurring throughout the Middle East. When he writes of the American government that “Irrational elements weaken it, and a preponderance of irrationality, long prolonged, will destroy it,” it seems a caution tailor made for our current political landscape, where right-wing rhetoric and policy — on topics ranging from climate change to the “threat” posed by public employees’ unions — long ago dispensed with hard facts and rational discourse.]

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

… Thus total military victory in this war will not be a total vindication of American government. On the contrary, it will be a dearly-bought opportunity to reorganize our government in such a way that America’s undoubted power may be used to improve living conditions generally for all the inhabitants of the world. This isn’t dreamy-minded altruism, but an historical imperative of any government any time in history. A government of any description is a social organization entrusted with the maintenance of law and order which are at the foundation of any civilized society. This is a responsibility which is automatically commensurate with the government’s power. When a government shirks, or neglects, or makes a mockery of this responsibility, it that far limits its power. And despite age-old traditions, and constitutions, and armed forces, it will eventually be discarded if it continues to fail of fulfilling its primary responsibility of maintaining law and order.

I don’t speak of “law and order” in a narrow legalistic sense; the Nazi government had its law and order, but in such a form that violence was done to ineradicable aspirations of millions of human beings for economic and intellectual freedom. Tyranny and persecution are not legitimate functions of any government from the point of view of the people being governed, and the deadly opposition of tyrannized and persecuted peoples is as sure the recurrence of the seasons. Total annihilation of these slave peoples would be the only method of stilling their rebellion, and total annihilation of a continental population is not yet a perfected human technique, though the Germans did make a promising advance in that direction. My guess, however, is that the regenerative powers of the human race will continue to outrun its destructive techniques for some time to come, at least as long as will concern anyone now alive. Persons who hold a contrary point of view, of course, and hope to see the entire human game played out to a finish in the twentieth century will continue to devise political and mechanical means of implementing their nihilistic theories, whether or not they have the inspirational guidance of such a leader as Hitler. And they won’t all be Germans or Japs.

Persons, on the other hand, who believe that this nihilism is leading the world down a blind alley, and this presumably includes the great majority of the men governing our country, should be interested in means of combating this abortive trend, and of getting the world pointed towards the goals named or suggested in the United States Constitution, and other documents which are professed still to be the foundation of American government.

This is a peculiar world we have today, in the sense that the words and phrases we have used to describe the relationships of its various peoples are now often quite inadequate for that purpose. Vocabulary, of course, like all things human, shows evolutionary changes, but it is, nevertheless, just about the most conservative of our departments. Words and phrases are naturally intended to supply our minds with ideas, which are necessary as a starting point for our rational actions. (And human civilization, of course, differs from animal societies only in its rational, and irrational, elements. Beavers, for instance, have never shown a development among themselves of the principle of the division of labor, which we may call an example of human rationality, nor have they seized on certain victims among themselves, to be slowly dissected to death, which is solely a triumph of human irrationality. Beavers, like all created beings with the exception of man, are strictly non-rational; and so spend no time worrying about how to improve or degrade themselves.)

Irrationality, therefore, doesn’t indicate the absence of mind, but simply, according to civilized standards, the misuse of the mind. Naturally no civilization can tolerate an irrational government such as the Nazis attempted. Insofar as such a government succeeds in perpetuating and extending its power, chaos and bestiality are the inevitable results. The fact that civilization has historically always asserted itself over chaos, has always, in the long run, dissolved predominantly irrational governments is sufficient proof for most of us that things were meant to be that way, so we may as well cooperate to the best of our ability.

Our philosophers concluded fairly early that, according to the conclusion of social experience to date, the Nazi government was highly irrational, and consequently not long for this world. And the American people, a bit slower than their philosophers, nevertheless soon gained an understanding that Nazi aggression on human rights challenged their way of living, which respected those rights, and they inevitably joined the opposition to the Nazis. And the defeat of the Nazis was inevitable, though it might well have taken sixty years rather than six.

If we want to save ourselves a repetition of this world misery in the not so distant future, now is the time for us to remember that our government operates under the same historical laws which applied to the Nazi government. Irrational elements weaken it, and a preponderance of irrationality, long prolonged, will destroy it. We’ll not be wise to forget that we must carry a large share of the blame for the original Axis aggression because of our irrational behavior, as a nation, in the past….

Read Full Post »

War’s Brutality, and Americans’ Smug Self Image

 [Often in his journal entries about World War II, my father exhibited an empathy for our German and Japanese enemies — especially the civilians in each country who he understood weren’t all that different from America’s citizens. His ability to see the world clearly, and to avoid being swept up in the sloganeering and mob-think of the moment, was a trait he exhibited throughout his life. Thus his later dismay at the Bush Administration’s fear mongering and demonizing, which it used in its successful post-9/11 efforts to push our country into the unnecessary and misguided Iraq war.]

April 23, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

The war with Japan has been waged with relentless ferocity from the very beginning. Every battle has been one of annihilation; the fact that the battlefields have been isolated islands may explain this. Whichever side happens to be losing has no hope of escape and has been convinced that death is a better choice than capture by the enemy. We have now broken deep within Japan’s defenses, and are plastering the home islands daily with our big bombers. Thus it happens that the Japs are catching the hell they hoped to pour on us. Fair enough, we say. They asked for it, and now we’re giving it to them. But sometimes I wonder at the feelings this brutal conflict stirs in us. We read of the flattening of whole square miles of Japanese cities with considerable satisfaction, – Serves them right! the dirty bastards! Yet in those ruins there must be the mangled bodies of thousands of ordinary Japanese people, inoffensive, hard-working people, proud of their country, no doubt, as we are proud of our country. This is obviously the same ruthlessness bombing of civilian populations which we damned when the Germans did it all over Europe, and the Japs in China. War, after all, moves ahead by destruction, and the more destruction the better. But in smugly believing that the Jap people somehow morally deserve their agony, which was an inhuman crime when the British and the Chinese were suffering it, simply highlights the easy habits of self-deception by which nations can allow themselves to condone war in the first place. War is convenient in that it allows us to direct all our fury against an enemy for faults which in peacetime we sometimes have the candor to see exist in ourselves. Now that we’re coming head on against the problems of peace, which demand the constructive qualities we’ve assumed we possess in unusual degree, as opposed to our enemies, we’ll find just how far our assurance was justified.

Read Full Post »

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.)

Read Full Post »

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!

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

Education for All, Balanced Budget or Not

[This lengthy entry — pared down from a much longer original — followed an evening of caroling by my father and his two siblings while home for the Christmas holiday. After meeting a young farmer among the carolers, my father went on to discuss his belief that all people should have access to the highest educational opportunities of which they’re capable. In this sentiment I see a foreshadowing of his eventual work in university administration and development. My father argues that, if our country is able to pay whatever the cost necessary to wage war, it can also pay the cost of offering the best educational opportunities to all its citizens, regardless of their economic circumstances.

As in the previous posting, my father states his opinion based on lessons learned during the Great Depression — i.e. the need for government spending to address pressing societal and economic needs, regardless of “such bogies of finance as the ‘balanced budget.'” Our country today faces many of the same challenges and, unfortunately, it seems that the no-taxes/cut-spending crowd is prevailing over those (most economists included) who warn that cutting back on stimulus spending too soon could stall, and possibly reverse, the halting economic growth we’ve begun to achieve. My father’s youthful idealism that America’s values were shifting to emphasize “social success” rather than “money success” has since been shown, repeatedly, to be wishful thinking.]

December 23, 1942 (Underhill, Vermont)

…At nine o’clock Kent and his wife arrived, and we proceeded to the main business of the evening. Most of the people who appeared to acknowledge our singing were old folks. They seemed genuinely pleased.

Kent is a young farmer, 23 years old. The local board had deferred him because he’s running one of the largest farms in the vicinity. There’s nothing deceptive in his nature. His face is pleasant, broad featured, Yankee; his body is big and strong, his hands massive. I suppose you’d call him raw-boned, a typical farm type. Bashfulness is a quality completely foreign to him. He was well-acquainted with me from the moment of shaking hands. Before I left him at midnight he had given me a frank appraisal of his fortunes and hopes…

I don’t envy Kent. He reminds me of Thoreau’s farmer who went through life carrying his farm on his back, a slave to his occupation. Kent isn’t degraded yet to this unhappy state, but the time may come. I just can’t see how he has much chance. His wife is a good kid, willing to work hard… he seems quite proud of her, partly because she’s an “out-of-state” girl, partly because she’s had an education…

…There is certainly a formidable barrier between the well-educated and the uneducated which can’t be melted down by simple appeals to humanitarianism. This doesn’t offer an excuse for snobbishness on the part of the well-educated. It does mean that the channels for communication between the two levels are considerably circumscribed. What a democratic state needs is an educational system which offers an opportunity for the maximum development of native talent (mental ability) in whatever economic level it appears. We should not be much concerned for the existence of these economic levels, so long as those at the bottom can earn enough to live without suffering. What we must avoid is the freezing of these levels. We know that exceptional minds appear at the bottom as well as at the top of the economic heap. The economic factors, however, have thus far been given far too much weight in determining what minds shall come to fruitful expression in the world. When genius is allowed to starve to death behind economic barriers, this is one of the most disastrous expenses that any society can shoulder. If the expenditure of money can build an educational system that will make such starvation or malformation of genius highly improbable, no sum will be too large to spend.

This was the point which was emphasized in that supplement to Fortune which I read in Burlington yesterday at the library. The National Economy, it was called. We have come traditionally to exalt money to a position where it becomes our master, instead of keeping it where it should be, in subjection as a slave to help us achieve social profits. We have too long been tyrannized into poverty and national weakness and unhappiness by such bogies of finance as the “balanced budget.” It’s taking a terrible war to break the delusion. We are finding out that we can spend just as much money as we need to preserve our national existence under the hammer blows of enemies who learned the same lesson several years before we did. It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of billions our national debt runs into on the books, as long as we keep our national destiny in our own hands, – it doesn’t matter, if we apply the knowledge that we already have for the control of our financial system. This, of course, is the basic idea in the compensatory government spending theory of Keynes, Hansen, and their associates.

It is indeed, not only a new theory, but a new philosophy of economics, and marks the overall change from the last century’s focus on “money” success to this century’s focus on social success. It can’t be repeated too often that money is properly a tool, and not a tyrant, for men.

We do have the knowledge and the mechanical means now to assure every inhabitant of our country, and ultimately the world, freedom from economic insecurity. While this cannot be considered as the highest aim of man’s activity, it is essential to any permanent progress of man in his spiritual sphere. It is very important that economic security always be recognized as a means to a better life, and not as an end in itself, or as a guarantee of that better life. For life can be “better” only in a moral sense, and science, including economics, which we are using as a means to that better life, is in itself amoral. The Nazis are demonstrating that it can very well be used as a means to a worse life.

We don’t debase ourselves or jeopardize our ideals by studying our science as avidly as do the Germans. In fact, we criminally betray ourselves to destruction if we do not seize upon science for all it can show us about the waging of war and the building of the new world order. The significant difference comes if we use science as a weapon on the side of Christian morality. Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr. makes this point clear in an interesting exposition of the science of geopolitics in the Dec. 21^st issue of Life. We don’t damn ourselves by using what knowledge we can discover to make ourselves powerful, if we use our power to give our ideals of Christian morality expression in the lower but nonetheless necessary, level of economic life. The name of [Halford J.] MacKinder’s book on geopolitics was Democratic Ideals and Reality. He brought it out in England in 1918. Our trouble was that we wrote out a peace in which democratic ideals continued to be abstracted from reality.

What excites me now is that today there are a lot of men who know that we must not repeat this disastrous experience. Keats it was who maintained that the ideal can’t be separated from the real. Democratic ideals are just so much hot air until they are expressed as relationships of men to men, and men to goods in the marketplace.

Read Full Post »

Max Lerner Lectures on the War

[Although this journal entry consists primarily of my father’s summary of a lecture by Max Lerner, I decided to include it as it demonstrates my father’s skill as a reporter — a skill that eventually led him to Columbia Journalism School and, then, to the Providence Journal in Rhode Island. Max Lerner was a writer and educator, who would go on, in 1949, to launch an influential column in the New York Post. As reported by my father, Lerner’s talk ranged from his growing optimism about the U.S.’s impact on the course of the war to his criticism that Jim Crow laws were negatively affecting America’s war efforts.]

December 2, 1942 (Middlebury College)

Max Lerner spoke here last night. In his introduction, Bob Rafuse spoke of him as one of the fighters in the front line of the battle of ideas. Lerner lived up to his characterization. I was not so much impressed with what he said as the way he said it. He spoke very clearly, in a pleasant voice, and knew just where he was every minute. He didn’t beat around the bush, but shot his ideas straight from the shoulder, so that there could be no doubt that he knew what he was talking about, and believed in it. “Name-calling can be a very good thing,” he said, “as long as you call the right people the right names.”

He began by saying that he felt better since the opening of [the] North African campaign than at anytime in the last decade. “Up until now we were worried as to whether the US would be able to gather itself for action in time. It is very late now, but it is in time. At long last I can see through the long dark tunnel to the clear air and sunshine ahead. We know now that we can win the war. But the tragic possibility is that we may not know what to do with the clear air and sunshine.”

“American business has handled production better than we had any reason to expect. But still there are too many men in high positions who are more interested in the plants with which they are connected than with the total war effort. Labor has still not been given the representation in the WPB [War Production Board] that it deserves, and that Donald Nelson [chairman of the WPB] promised to it some time ago.

“We are not making any apparent progress on our Negro problem. Industry refuses to hire black men. Baltimore imported 10,000 white laborers when there were that many negroes idle in the city. Jim Crow laws are still maintained in the Army. Henry Kaiser [whose Kaiser Shipyard built Liberty ships during the war] is a really great American businessman, but he is counteracted by too many men like the West Coast union leader who won’t admit negroes into his union.

“There are far too many of the men still in power who only a year ago were shouting that we could do business with Hitler, that we couldn’t get into a war against Fascism without becoming Fascist ourselves, that a European war was no concern of ours. Many of these men have just a month ago been returned to Congress, and have taken this as a mandate from the people to go right ahead with their program of opposition to the administration. These men are dangerous. They must be removed from power by intelligent voting on the part of American citizens.

“America has assembled a striking force stronger than Hitler’s, and done it without sacrificing the democratic liberties. A democracy can be strong, in peace as well as in war, and incomparably stronger than Fascism. Archibald MacLeish saw the true nature of our foe when he characterized it in The Fall of the City as an armored giant all empty inside. The sight of it is terrible only until you stand before it and fight.

“The military war is going well. Our real problem is in the diplomatic war and the idea war. This [François] Darlan deal can’t be stomached. It has shaken the faith of the French people in us, and can lose us many more lives in the long run than it may have saved us at present. Our State Department is showing an extremely dangerous tendency towards a Machiavellian diplomacy that puts the European powers to shame. Our victory must be morally sound all the way though, or it’s no victory at all. Apparently [Secretary of State Cordell] Hull, and possibly even FDR, regard the establishment of such Rightist regimes in Western Europe as a desirable counterpoise to the Leftist influence of Russia, which may well emerge from this war as the strongest European power. But such a policy can only lead to a perfect setup for another struggle.

“This, then, is the justification of our cause: To decide whether American democracy, and a world of democratic states, can exist and grow under the highly complicated conditions of our technical machine civilization.”

That was the main gist of his talk. He answered questions for an hour and half. The fine thing here was that he had his answers ready; he didn’t have to dig around for them, or retrench on what he had already said. He did say that Roosevelt has believed that it’s important to get things done without regard for the abstract principle, and that was disturbing. It’s what Emerson said about Napoleon.

Read Full Post »