It has gone out of use, it is not
necessary
as is oil or wheat.
Ezra-Pound-Speaking
I mean in view of a long term policy.
It is known, and should be known better, that an empire to be solid, to be a goin' concern has to be able to stand the expense of policing its trade routes.
Now I see Roosevelt and his Jews
? and his monopolists setting out on a scheme that implies very expensive trade routes, i. e. , routes that will require police expenses much greater than would be the case of trade routes maintained by amicable agreement with other nations.
The trade route to the Orient, via the Pacific Ocean, has become very costly. After one-fourth of a century, American plus Rooseveltian methods have generated a degree of friction that has become suddenly quite expensive. The U. S. has irritated Japan. Now I see very considerable likelihood that the methods, and their intensification as registered during the last unfortunate decade, I see, I repeat, a very considerable likelihood that these methods of grab and extortion and bottleneck will in time irritate other eastern and near-eastern peoples. And all that will go into the bill, as it has gone into England's, and the U. S. will have either to pay or get out. There is an old motto about the inutility of winning wars militarily when they have already been politically lost.
What about wars that are economically lost? To win a war, economically, as distinct from merely carrying out an incursion, the subsequent system, the subsequent peace system, or pacification system must bring with it at least a temporary economic stability. Stability enough, that is, to permit the trade routes to pay for their upkeep, that upkeep including the cost of maintainin' order along them.
It was suggested in the American Congress in the 1870's that "as it costs the government 20,000 dollars per head to kill off the red warriors" (i. e. , American Indians), it might be humaner and even cheaper to educate. But you were there dealin' with a very sparse population of improvident scattered tribes, NOT with millions and millions of, say, Mohammedans, proud with age-old tradition, thousand and more years of unified doctrine, traditions, customs, and a dislike of the Anglo-Saxon disposition, let alone their feelings toward other races. Now I have no doubt, any more than you have, that one Dupont or whosis or Vickers
? tank can make a good deal of head way against a bevy of Bedouins. But you have to get the tank there, you have to feed and maintain its incumbents, you have to feed it with petrol. Of course you can make a desert, or make two deserts where before had been one, one desert and one oasis. BUT then again, you have to take into account the cost, the cost of life and convenience to the incumbents, of your Dupont or Vickers tank as well as the taxes falling with increasing weight on the home population, in Kansas and Missouri, for example. To say nothing of the mental and spiritual degeneration of troops used against half- armed opponents under the airs of the Orient.
What sort of old age do you picture for the boy who is sent off to machine gun women and children? Supposin' he has one? And what sort of bill is the American people expected to foot for the attempt to control Persia and Mesopotania in concurrence with hordes from the Urals? Your English loolahs spent a good deal of air on telling Germany about Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the winter campaign and the rest of it. Now wouldn't it be better to stop and consider for a moment Mr. Henry Wallace's projected invasion of Russia from the Potomac? Wouldn't those arguments apply with still greater force?
I think you will be successful in kicking the British Jews out of Persia. You have already the Bahrein Islands, which you reach via the Cape of Good Hope. BUT Mr. Roosevelt wants also to police the more direct route via Suez. Which has become rather costly. And WILL remain very costly unless you precede it by a complete absolute and permanent crushing of France, Spain, and Italy. I say permanent, not merely spasmodic. If you put a permanent garrison into Europe, to hold down, 20 million Spanish, a few MILLION Portuguese, 45 million Italians, 80 or whatever million Germans, the Scandinavians and the Russians who now wish liberation from Stalin. Just how large a garrison would it require, and WHAT would the annual cost be to the taxpayers in Kansas, and Californy? To say nothing of your Pacific commitments which England shows no sign of wishing to share, having kissed goodbye to
? her strongest bases, and having handed over such commercial prestige as she possessed in Australia and New Zealand. And showin' no real hope of competing successfully with the New Orient, it being now generally believed that the Japanese troops are quite ready to die, after having killed off per man three Americans, or done equivalent damage to the instruments of Roosevelt's police squads.
Of course if some Santa Claus is going to come along and pay the bill for you, that is a different matter. But just what far planet, or comet do you expect Santa Claus to descend from? The interstellar spaces have not yet yielded to the Pan American Airways. You can not feed American garrisons on inedible metal, even if it has been bought by the American Treasury. You are already projecting curtailment of Europe's supplies of grain, in conformity with the plow under policy, which was said to have ruined the morale of American mules. IS it intelligent? Does the project inspire confidence on the Stock Exchange?
#109 (July 24, 1943) U. S. (C79) CIVILIZATION
If we were in normal times, that is to say if it weren't for this tiresome war, I should be writing letters to a small number of people, say 10, 20, a dozen, two dozen, on what some of you would call rather special subjects.
For example, I should be writing to Mr. Otto Bird: I suppose he is now Doctor Bird, Ph. D. He was up in Canada, I forget which university but he was a studyin' with Etienne Gilson, who has writ in French among other things an admirable history of medieval philosophy. And I had sent Dr. Gilson some very pretty photos of the manuscript, unique manuscript, containin' Dino del Garbo's commentary on Cavalcanti's canzone "Donna Mi Prega. " Cavalcanti, a friend of Dante's and that poem of very great interest. I spent a good deal of time translatin', and editin' Cavalcanti's poems with paleography, I mean reproductions, of
? the manuscript so as to show what we really do know and can know, about one of the finest poets that ever lived, sortin' out what is ascertainable from what is not ascertainable. How the stuff was first written down. No autograph stuff, but the earliest copies, and then the later manuscript editings: some of 'em under the general supervision, or stimulus, of Lord Medici.
All this may seem very specialized. However I found it of interest, and were it not for this tiresome war I should be writin' to Mr. Bird, now probably Doctor O. Bird, as he was adoin' his thesis on the above mentioned comment by del Garbo's (no relation of Greta's), to point out that whatever I said about Guido's genial thought, his probably having read some Avicenna, and the general ideas entertained by the better minds of his time on the subject of LIGHT. That needed some attention to terminology. I should now want to add to what I printed, and to correlate it with Aristotle's Metaphysics, I mean Aristotle's particular treaties [treatise] called "Metaphysics," and that Guido Cavalcanti might have taken his terminology from it, almost entirely.
del Garbo refers to Aristotle and to the treatise. So mebbe Bird has done so in any case. But the matter is interesting at least to a small number of people who think that precise terminology matters; and that that poem and comment give one a very nice chance for ascertainin', gettin' your idea clearer and more precise, as to the likenesses and differences between 18th century thought and our own. Have we got better at thinkin'? Do we think with greater clarity? Or has the so-called program of science merely got us all cluttered up mentally and pitched us into greater confusion?
No, the comment on a medieval poem don't just stop there, any more than Frobenius' research just STOPS with some bit of African sculpture, or with some prehistorical drawin' on the side of a rock. Grosseteste writin' on light, hooks up with the ideogram of the sun and moon at the start of Confucius' testament. Incidentally, if medieval bishops in
? England were anything like as intelligent as Robert Grosseteste, it would look as if the standards of English episcopacy have declined. I'll say DEclined since that date. Of course Bird wouldn't be my only or even chief correspondent, I am just taking the point most recently come up in my personal business. Wars interrupt this sort of thing. They mostly lower the level of livin', of the good life. Now as far as I am concerned, you have lost some of my contributions. I don't say that matters much, but the sum of such European contributions to the good life, or the life of the American mind does matter. You got to lump 'em in with the deterioration of some of the American human material. My edition of the Great Learning is in Italian, not in American, as was my first edition. And it has the Chinese text facin' it. And I know a good deal more now than when Glenn Hughes printed my first version in his University books. And you haven't got my translation of Pea's novel Moscardino. Carta da Visita is written in Italian. I believe something special was done about Geo. Santayana's manuscript or proofs of something or other. But other voices are silent.
You say I also am losin' something, I don't deny it. I don't hear from Mr. Eliot or Mr. Cummings. If they write anything, we got to wait for it. You've got to multiply that. After all immediate contacts probably count less for a man of my age than for a young man. One understands 'em more, but they probably incommode one less in one's mental business. Eighteen or however many years ago S. Putnam was askin' me about Italian writers, livin' writers: and I knew considerably less. I finally got round to mentioning [Morelli? ] (I mean of writers not known like Pirandello. And Basil Bunting). Wanted to translate Tozzi, but no English or American publisher had sense to let him. I now see some sort of clearance: clearin' up in Italian style. Carlo Scarfoglio whose political notes you sometimes hear on this radio, did a preface that pretty well coincides with my views on writin' (no collusion). Two men headin' from different quarters, come to the same main conclusion. He startin' with translatin' Aeschylus, and doin' it beautifully. Clear like a piece of glass. And his version of the Hymn to Demeter, homeric Hymn to
? Demeter. You may remember that Doc. Rouse calls Greek a necessity of civilized life. IT IS. So is Latin. Take time to go into these matters. I was layin' for to point out the difference. The European and specifically Italian SENSE of these things. It shows in my bein' here at this radio. That is due to [the] Italian sense of civilization, sense that special work like mine, and like that of other writers, Carlini, for example ought to go on. That communication OUGHT to be kept up war or no war. Like they go on having picture shows. Go on holdin' up and improvin' criterion in the arts. NOT universal in any country. But a field where competition is healthy. And I have before now said that from England and America I do not HEAR any indication of a similar sense of civilization. The best writers in England and America do NOT get to the microphone, which is the only way of communication left open. The American microphone descends to the level of Hollywood.
I could trace that back a good way to the decay of integrity in the BETTER American magazines. Decay of sense of responsibility, to and FOR the thought of the American nation. Sedgewick and other blights that I started objectin' to 36 years ago. I got no time tonight to be political. I meant to be political, but nobody here ASKS me to be political. I wanted to make a little list of lies and swindles that are breakin' down, not catchin' coneys (that means catchin' suckers) so plentiful. The swindles England put over on others; that she don't like you puttin' over on her. Mr. Welles bein' pious, and trying to resell us the free trade hoax. And up jumps the Bolshevik threatenin' to DUMP like all hell, according to the most rabid pluto Bolshevik methods.
All that is instructive but on a more popular (mebbe I ought to say in a certain sense less popular) plane.
#110 (July 25, 1943) U . K. (C74)
LOST OR STOLEN (PERDUTO O RUBATO)
? A friend of mine once entitled a poem "Attys or something missing. " I wonder if any of you realize, or could by an effort arrive at realization of the degree of detachment that I feel at moments or if you, on your own, ever do try to see the present historic moment from the outside.
The thing in my case goes beyond an effort of will, I simply find myself outside, observing. Le reconnaitre et le savoir. There is a poem of Guy Charles Gros that does not end in the same manner, for he ends: "Ai-je cru un seul instant a la realite? du monde . . . " That is French poetry, and Buddhistic detachment.
But I do not make out what has become of those Englishmen, or of that English tradition that led one to believe in the existence of Englishmen who protested against the drift of their governments. Mebbe they are too old, the ones I remember, or too young, the ones whom I have not met. Certainly the few dozen voices that rose from the printed page in Britain, before this war, demanding justice, social justice INSIDE the borders of England, and comprehension, or at least some degree of attention to fact outside the borders of England, those voices are silent, or smothered. Or at any rate they are inaudible here.
Lord knows you have the equipment, as contrasted to what I have available. You have your BBC with your archives. And I have not one disc, not one phonorecord available. And perhaps those past records are the BEST that you have. But your use of them is deficient.
You know, the most flatheaded among you knows that your press has lied, and that your BBC is not impartial. And no one expects it to be impartial. But there are degrees in all things. And some of you must perceive that from the difference between a howl for monopoly and dominion and a demand for justice. Or at any rate I am not yet brought to believe that that type of man is wholly beaten, is wholly extinct in England.
? Some of you MUST stand back now and then, and sift out what you hear on your air. What you read in your papers. Must perceive that most of it is flimflam, that is, stuff poured out to get your mind off the fact, and to KEEP you from reflecting on the facts, and keep you from thinking at all of a sane order. There are plenty of flights of what Lenin called derisively "revolutionary inventiveness. " Meaning schemes detached from reality and possibility. Plans divorced for [from] true data.
All right. Where have we got to? You don't know. Perhaps no one does know. But at any rate in the debating club, the international, mondial world wide, etc. academy of the air, certain points have been made. In fact nearly all the points I have been arguing these past few years HAVE BEEN made. And made so thoroughly that your official world just has to pretend they aren't there. Just as the press always did ignore certain facts for as long as possible.
Your parliament does discuss points that were smothered for decades. Gold for example. Even Monty Skinnergue Norman knew that the value of gold is not stable. It fluctuates. Tables of its fluctuations were printed. A few bright lads deplored a gold standard simply because it did not recognize the mutable value of gold. Didn't let it rise and fall on the market according to the law of supply and demand.
Irving Fisher's arguments about its fluctuability were, I suppose, used to help in the greatest gold brick swindle (I suppose it was about the greatest of all time). Gold fluctuates, Its price today is as never before a fancy price.
It has gone out of use, it is not necessary as is oil or wheat. Nations can live for years without it. They could live without it altogether IF they were not attacked from outside. Its price is a fancy price. Not a fancy price such as is paid for a Rembrandt; not a fancy price as is paid for an old painting by a great master. Say there are only a dozen or 1/2 dozen Giorgiones, mostly in museums, national property, and, if there is one for sale and you can get six or eight millionaires all to think that they want it, you run up a fancy price. But gold is not even
? like that. There is more of it. AND its value is mutable: and the need of it or the want of it was declining, has in fact declined; could decline to almost zero, no, not quite to zero, but to dental etc.
Well the answer was not to lower the price on the market but to put UP the price, and to sell it to the American boobs, the great American public, in what was probably the greatest gold brick wheeze of all time. When the boobs have it all, the price will come down again rapidly as is usual, when the boobs have obtained possession of anything, but during the course of the present unpleasantness: old wheezes HAVE dwindled, as the Virginia hot air conference showed. The sham about money flopped. The wheeze of 60% interest has been ventilated. The wheeze of varying the value of any national currency has at last had some publicity. At the Hot Springs all the sham and the scenery fell, there was nothing left but the stark evil desire to extort and monopolize. Flash lit from a dozen capitals, "corner the world's grain market," said one Rome commentator A half dozen voices from Berlin, at once denouncing the swindle. AND also a few voices from England. Aware that the British farmer will be better off if he has an INTERNAL market in England, at a just price, for what he can grow.
But that is NOT in itself a desire for JUSTICE. That does not constitute in itself a willingness to DO justice. It does not constitute in itself a perception of justice. Let alone a will to support it, to support justice or even to permit justice to others.
There was a murmer on the BBC air about unfairness; but it wasn't of unfairness extending outwards; it was a complaint that somebody had said you hadn't imperial confraternity, or solidarity. God knows you have EXPLOITED Australian sentimentality about the mama country. And probably will exploit it still further. That don't mean that a new Burke has risen amongst you. Row after row of pretenses has fallen, but the sense of equity? What was at one time, or was at one time supposed
? to be your sense of equity? Has it been lost, mislaid or stolen? And if stolen, by whom?
Part II
10 Miscellaneous Scripts
#111 (early 1941) HOMESTEADS
What will remain from this struggle is an idea. What spreads and will spread from the determination to have a New Europe is an idea: the idea of a home for every family in the country. The idea that every family in the country shall have a sane house, and that means a house well built, with no breeding space for tuberculosis bugs. I have seen the details of some of these houses. It means that every family's house will have land enough, fields enough to support the family. It means that these houses will not be burdened with mortgages. They will be inalienable, and indivisible. The eldest son if he likes, or at any rate one son or daughter will keep the farm, but above all the farmer will be guaranteed a sale for his crop AT A PRICE that will cover his needs.
You may have heard that Andy Jackson OPENED the American lands to the settlers. As against John Quincy Adams who had what might be called a more communist idea, not that he was read, but he wanted at least some land reserved to the nation and its proceeds used for schools, and more highfalutin' branches of education. He was "out of time. " Jackson beat him. Jackson's policy was a bit sketchy. American homesteads in great part passed into great estates very quickly grazing in place of farms etc , etc. My grandmother and great grandmother lived on claims, land claims. The boys of 20 in New York now know very little of
? such affairs. My father still has 80 year-old cousins living I take it on claims in Montana They do not represent the majority life of America.
But Jackson's land policy was called DEMocratic. The New Europe is in that sense DEMociatic, and if you folks rush out to SMASH this New Europe history will NOT give you ANY medals whatever for saving DEMocracy.
Italy does NOT confiscate the farmers' crop. I have seen that lie along with 200 others. Italy has not set up Utopia in XIX years, but the farmer here knows he will be paid for what he grows. He knows what he will be paid for it. Nobody will get an option on it and grab excess profits. Get it quite firmly in mind that war mongers are asking you to prevent and smash this idea of a solid and clean well built house with land for each family. Look into it before you decide to go out and die for something or other, without quite knowing what.
Let me remind you that Brooks Adams was seen shortly before his death, an old man of 80 in running shorts and sweater, pulling the weights in the gym of the Boston Athletic Club and prophesying a 30 years' war, an IDEO LOGICAL war. And let me remind you that the notion of ideological wars is FORWARD, not backward. Our American forebears, given an empty continent, sketched in a civilization. Rough draft without very great attention to detail. Settlers rushed onto the land, they had hunger, land hunger, each man to be free: Free of RENT, free of mortgage. Reflection came later. A new idea rises in Europe, it is not confined to the continent. You can not confine it. No amount of postal thieves, censors, examiners, can smash it or swush it. There arises the idea that a man may own all he can use. But that he may not own what he can't use. And especially he may not use this surplus to starve his neighbor, he may not prevent farmer Jones selling his corn. The millionaire may NOT rush in and undersell Jones till he has ruin'd him, taken a mortgage on Jones' farm, turned out Jones' children the day the interest isn't paid to the full. I will get round in time to the flimflam of a
? past kind of pacifist, the suppression of news, the gyrations committed by the Carnegie so-called Peace Foundation, their failure to get thought into America.
Wars are made to make DEBT. Our Civil War had a relation to DEBT. Christopher Hollis knows this. Read his book, the TWO NATIONS, debts of the South to the City of New York.
Greece spends 54% of her income paying the interest on DEBT. Until you know who has lent what TO WHOM, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles.
I wish Hollis hadn't taken to silence and solitude just when he did. But on the other hand has ANY man in England now the power to speak out or communicate with his fellows?
Little Red Riding Hood, better look out for Wilikie's false teeth! Is Wendell saving DEMocracy? Is Wendell selling the New Deal to Winston? Or is Wendell trying to shovel a few million farm boys into the trenches? And SO soon after headlines "It's War OR Willkie"? Is Wendell now for it at all costs; just to prove not having elected him, war is the consequence? Is Mr. 'Opkins selling the New Deal to London?
My venerable friend Doctor William C. Williams roars with laughter when I suggest that people might THINK. "Ever see a communist THINK? " writes ole Bill. I been told the process ain't nacheral. Waal, the Doc. is their white-haired boy. Will even he notice that one group of people has steadily tried to EXtend this conflict and to SUPPRESS all kind of intercommunication between Europe and the U. S. ? The other side (my side) has asked [for an] investigation. Now what CAUSES that?
Did this war start for Danzig? Did this war start for POland, and if so why such silence re the half of Poland that has been et [eaten] up by
? Rhooshy? You people don't believe those sad tales? Or do you? Some people want to make money. Some people want to keep on with a racket that has paid 'em and their papas large dividends. There may be six or eight rackets. Debt interest, gun selling. Is American youth expected to run out and die for debt interest and gun selling? If that is what the war- wanters WANT, let 'em say so.
In England for years it has been KNOWN that the English war plant could NOT produce the goods. Is it to be supposed that a lover of England pushed his country into war, KNOWING that country could NOT produce the goods?
It has been declared in England for years that there was a plot on to bash out the WHOLE of Europe for the profit of Russia and the moneyed in America. It now appears that England has been caught in the tweezers of the attempt but that continent largely has NOT French bon sens showed itself at the last minute They declined to have Paris completely coventried in order to hold off the German advance for six days or whatever.
The English are not so quick on the uptake. My Hollis has ceased to talk about "the debts of the South to the City of New York being 200 million. "
I have been 20 years on this job, but you will not read. The new generation will not read AFTER it has been bombed to blazes or buried by high explosive. It may be your last chance. I suggest that you try to read Hollis' Two Nations and read pages 206, 207 to learn what the Civil War was ABOUT, who and what caused it.
Then you may see who and what is trying to get you yet again into the trenches, and to KEEP British men UNDER fire despite the fact that they did NOT vote for this war. The gombeen men's idea is that the MORE of England gets smashed, the higher the rate of interest, and the
? MORE of it, they can change the survivors. What [does] the farmer in West Africa get out of this war? Who now owns THEIR government, for example? If Mr. Hull means to say: I hate the English, I hope there will be in England not one stone left on another. I hope the Stone of Scone will be smashed into powder and made into portland cement. I don't want ANY life left in Britain.
All right, let him express himself. If he means: let's grab all, positively all the British assets, let him say so, but in that case why dress up as a friend of Britain? And in the meantime let me remind Messrs. Roosevelt and WALLACE of the Report of the National Survey of Potential Product Capacity, published by Hodson, Chairman of the Emergency Relief Bureau and Post, idem, New York Housing Authority in 1935, one of the greatest glories of Mr. Roosevelt's administration which has also been somewhat neglected both by administration and its opponents. As to the Academy of Social and Political Science, I keep wondering when they will start a serious study of ANYthing whatsoever that is vital to American welfare. A bunch of playboys.
#112 U. S. (1941) MARCH ARRIVALS
All the world knows that Mons. H. E. Matsuoka arrived in Rome last evening. I also arrived in Rome last evening, at a different station, through no intentional disrespect on my part toward the Orient's first rank diplomat. The events quite naturally received different degrees of attention; after all I arrive here more often, and have not come from so great a distance. At the present moment I see no chance whatever of breaking into official circles and discussing with his Excellency my proposals for PEACE in the Pacific.
I do not know that even the rank and file of our own leaders would take the plan, treat the plan with due gravity, I do not know whether either they or my present auditors will follow my meaning. The plan is simple
? but even that may not recommend it. I should quite plainly propose to give Guam to the Japanese in return for one set of color and sound films of the 300 best Noh dramas.
The films could not be delivered all at once, so we would not need to give up Guam all at once.
We Americans are, or were, as you probably know, considered a set of soulless roughnecks, by most of the outer world. Of course we are not, but fact and opinion differ so often in this imperfect world.
Of late there has been added to our portrait a touch, a, eh TOUCH of hysteria. Old blokes like me begin to wonder where all the Dan'l Boones and Davy Crocketts have got to.
Americans are supposed to run wode at reports of Martian invaders. Well now, I don't suppose more than two or three chaps ran out and committed hara-kiri at the news of those parachutists from Mars.
You may think I am joking about this Guam proposition. I am not. I ask the impartial auditor whether the individual American citizen wouldn't get a great deal MORE out of a set of such films as I saw, the one I saw in Washington two years ago, than he would out of a few tons of tungsten, with possibly a few family coffins thrown in. It would mean, and I admit it would mean, getting educated up to the point of knowing what is meant by Kumasaka and Kagekiyo.
The film I saw was of Awoi no Uye. The Japanese would be truly grateful to us, not for Guam, but for prodding 'em on to make a complete high grade record of these plays before the tradition gets damaged.
Umewaka Minoru is dead. I have heard discs of Noh music that did NOT seem to me up to the mark. It is never too soon to start on such records. And for the American auditor who doesn't yet know what I am
? talking about, let me say that half a century ago an American professor with a Spanish name went over to Japan and brought back the news and some notes on a number of remarkable plays, said to have been kept unchanged in their stage tradition for 4 or 5 centuries. Centuries. And after a lapse of years W. B. Yeats said it was the form he had been seeking all his life in an attempt to write drama that should be also high poetry.
And in the play Kagekiyo we have, I think, the soul of Japan. As its delicacy in Nishikigi, and its epos in Kagekiyo, which contains so far as my very imperfect knowledge extends, the one truly Homeric passage in such of their literature as Fenollosa brought back to us, or other of our translators have come on.
That is the JAPAN we WANT. That is the Japan that could mean something to us, and be in the high sense of some use to us. We have most material things inside our own borders, though in a bull market for means of murder we may want a little more tungsten etc. We do not need Indian opium.
I don't know about taking a plebiscite. Probably the bulk of the population would not understand it, but given time to know what I am driving at, I believe this proposal would come nearer the normal American wish, a wish after all for the good life, than any of these dinimiteros and earth hoggers have any idea of.
Is there any need for the whole earth to run mad because two-fifths have gone beserk?
The American people WANT civilization. Get under their skin and even that crack about the 5-cent cigar does NOT move the American deep. We like a wisecrack some of us, including the high bracket writers aim to be TOUGH, I say TOUGH and HOW when appearing in public. But in private they lay it off.
? That old phrase about clarifying one's intentions is not worked nearly enough. In trying to give the American people what they WANT, I mean WANT, no one can offer them blood and destruction. The sob stuff aimed at getting 'em into trenches is all based on NOT getting into the trenches. It is all based on how wrong it is for anyone to get into trenches. Which being the case, why not move DIRECT toward the goal? Why has so little been done in and FROM North America to stop the war or before that to prevent it, or at any rate to keep it from overflowing the whole of the earth?
I gather that if I am to go on with these talks, I shall have gradually more to say about letters and less about international politics. I might even say a word or two about Joyce, but before I get onto that subject, I shall one of these days read you a letter from Mensdorff, Count Mensdorff Dietrichstein-Pouilly, containing a few ideas on peace, and how to attain it, written in Vienna back in 1928. Just to show how long it takes to get ideas into action. Then again they asked me here a couple of weeks ago what I thought about one or two American writers, handin' me samples. And I wrote out a couple of comments, which I will also read you one night, if the spring advances, and rain lays off and the spirit of man takes on a little normality.
You probably still think I am joking about those cinema records of Japanese plays. I am not.
? and his monopolists setting out on a scheme that implies very expensive trade routes, i. e. , routes that will require police expenses much greater than would be the case of trade routes maintained by amicable agreement with other nations.
The trade route to the Orient, via the Pacific Ocean, has become very costly. After one-fourth of a century, American plus Rooseveltian methods have generated a degree of friction that has become suddenly quite expensive. The U. S. has irritated Japan. Now I see very considerable likelihood that the methods, and their intensification as registered during the last unfortunate decade, I see, I repeat, a very considerable likelihood that these methods of grab and extortion and bottleneck will in time irritate other eastern and near-eastern peoples. And all that will go into the bill, as it has gone into England's, and the U. S. will have either to pay or get out. There is an old motto about the inutility of winning wars militarily when they have already been politically lost.
What about wars that are economically lost? To win a war, economically, as distinct from merely carrying out an incursion, the subsequent system, the subsequent peace system, or pacification system must bring with it at least a temporary economic stability. Stability enough, that is, to permit the trade routes to pay for their upkeep, that upkeep including the cost of maintainin' order along them.
It was suggested in the American Congress in the 1870's that "as it costs the government 20,000 dollars per head to kill off the red warriors" (i. e. , American Indians), it might be humaner and even cheaper to educate. But you were there dealin' with a very sparse population of improvident scattered tribes, NOT with millions and millions of, say, Mohammedans, proud with age-old tradition, thousand and more years of unified doctrine, traditions, customs, and a dislike of the Anglo-Saxon disposition, let alone their feelings toward other races. Now I have no doubt, any more than you have, that one Dupont or whosis or Vickers
? tank can make a good deal of head way against a bevy of Bedouins. But you have to get the tank there, you have to feed and maintain its incumbents, you have to feed it with petrol. Of course you can make a desert, or make two deserts where before had been one, one desert and one oasis. BUT then again, you have to take into account the cost, the cost of life and convenience to the incumbents, of your Dupont or Vickers tank as well as the taxes falling with increasing weight on the home population, in Kansas and Missouri, for example. To say nothing of the mental and spiritual degeneration of troops used against half- armed opponents under the airs of the Orient.
What sort of old age do you picture for the boy who is sent off to machine gun women and children? Supposin' he has one? And what sort of bill is the American people expected to foot for the attempt to control Persia and Mesopotania in concurrence with hordes from the Urals? Your English loolahs spent a good deal of air on telling Germany about Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the winter campaign and the rest of it. Now wouldn't it be better to stop and consider for a moment Mr. Henry Wallace's projected invasion of Russia from the Potomac? Wouldn't those arguments apply with still greater force?
I think you will be successful in kicking the British Jews out of Persia. You have already the Bahrein Islands, which you reach via the Cape of Good Hope. BUT Mr. Roosevelt wants also to police the more direct route via Suez. Which has become rather costly. And WILL remain very costly unless you precede it by a complete absolute and permanent crushing of France, Spain, and Italy. I say permanent, not merely spasmodic. If you put a permanent garrison into Europe, to hold down, 20 million Spanish, a few MILLION Portuguese, 45 million Italians, 80 or whatever million Germans, the Scandinavians and the Russians who now wish liberation from Stalin. Just how large a garrison would it require, and WHAT would the annual cost be to the taxpayers in Kansas, and Californy? To say nothing of your Pacific commitments which England shows no sign of wishing to share, having kissed goodbye to
? her strongest bases, and having handed over such commercial prestige as she possessed in Australia and New Zealand. And showin' no real hope of competing successfully with the New Orient, it being now generally believed that the Japanese troops are quite ready to die, after having killed off per man three Americans, or done equivalent damage to the instruments of Roosevelt's police squads.
Of course if some Santa Claus is going to come along and pay the bill for you, that is a different matter. But just what far planet, or comet do you expect Santa Claus to descend from? The interstellar spaces have not yet yielded to the Pan American Airways. You can not feed American garrisons on inedible metal, even if it has been bought by the American Treasury. You are already projecting curtailment of Europe's supplies of grain, in conformity with the plow under policy, which was said to have ruined the morale of American mules. IS it intelligent? Does the project inspire confidence on the Stock Exchange?
#109 (July 24, 1943) U. S. (C79) CIVILIZATION
If we were in normal times, that is to say if it weren't for this tiresome war, I should be writing letters to a small number of people, say 10, 20, a dozen, two dozen, on what some of you would call rather special subjects.
For example, I should be writing to Mr. Otto Bird: I suppose he is now Doctor Bird, Ph. D. He was up in Canada, I forget which university but he was a studyin' with Etienne Gilson, who has writ in French among other things an admirable history of medieval philosophy. And I had sent Dr. Gilson some very pretty photos of the manuscript, unique manuscript, containin' Dino del Garbo's commentary on Cavalcanti's canzone "Donna Mi Prega. " Cavalcanti, a friend of Dante's and that poem of very great interest. I spent a good deal of time translatin', and editin' Cavalcanti's poems with paleography, I mean reproductions, of
? the manuscript so as to show what we really do know and can know, about one of the finest poets that ever lived, sortin' out what is ascertainable from what is not ascertainable. How the stuff was first written down. No autograph stuff, but the earliest copies, and then the later manuscript editings: some of 'em under the general supervision, or stimulus, of Lord Medici.
All this may seem very specialized. However I found it of interest, and were it not for this tiresome war I should be writin' to Mr. Bird, now probably Doctor O. Bird, as he was adoin' his thesis on the above mentioned comment by del Garbo's (no relation of Greta's), to point out that whatever I said about Guido's genial thought, his probably having read some Avicenna, and the general ideas entertained by the better minds of his time on the subject of LIGHT. That needed some attention to terminology. I should now want to add to what I printed, and to correlate it with Aristotle's Metaphysics, I mean Aristotle's particular treaties [treatise] called "Metaphysics," and that Guido Cavalcanti might have taken his terminology from it, almost entirely.
del Garbo refers to Aristotle and to the treatise. So mebbe Bird has done so in any case. But the matter is interesting at least to a small number of people who think that precise terminology matters; and that that poem and comment give one a very nice chance for ascertainin', gettin' your idea clearer and more precise, as to the likenesses and differences between 18th century thought and our own. Have we got better at thinkin'? Do we think with greater clarity? Or has the so-called program of science merely got us all cluttered up mentally and pitched us into greater confusion?
No, the comment on a medieval poem don't just stop there, any more than Frobenius' research just STOPS with some bit of African sculpture, or with some prehistorical drawin' on the side of a rock. Grosseteste writin' on light, hooks up with the ideogram of the sun and moon at the start of Confucius' testament. Incidentally, if medieval bishops in
? England were anything like as intelligent as Robert Grosseteste, it would look as if the standards of English episcopacy have declined. I'll say DEclined since that date. Of course Bird wouldn't be my only or even chief correspondent, I am just taking the point most recently come up in my personal business. Wars interrupt this sort of thing. They mostly lower the level of livin', of the good life. Now as far as I am concerned, you have lost some of my contributions. I don't say that matters much, but the sum of such European contributions to the good life, or the life of the American mind does matter. You got to lump 'em in with the deterioration of some of the American human material. My edition of the Great Learning is in Italian, not in American, as was my first edition. And it has the Chinese text facin' it. And I know a good deal more now than when Glenn Hughes printed my first version in his University books. And you haven't got my translation of Pea's novel Moscardino. Carta da Visita is written in Italian. I believe something special was done about Geo. Santayana's manuscript or proofs of something or other. But other voices are silent.
You say I also am losin' something, I don't deny it. I don't hear from Mr. Eliot or Mr. Cummings. If they write anything, we got to wait for it. You've got to multiply that. After all immediate contacts probably count less for a man of my age than for a young man. One understands 'em more, but they probably incommode one less in one's mental business. Eighteen or however many years ago S. Putnam was askin' me about Italian writers, livin' writers: and I knew considerably less. I finally got round to mentioning [Morelli? ] (I mean of writers not known like Pirandello. And Basil Bunting). Wanted to translate Tozzi, but no English or American publisher had sense to let him. I now see some sort of clearance: clearin' up in Italian style. Carlo Scarfoglio whose political notes you sometimes hear on this radio, did a preface that pretty well coincides with my views on writin' (no collusion). Two men headin' from different quarters, come to the same main conclusion. He startin' with translatin' Aeschylus, and doin' it beautifully. Clear like a piece of glass. And his version of the Hymn to Demeter, homeric Hymn to
? Demeter. You may remember that Doc. Rouse calls Greek a necessity of civilized life. IT IS. So is Latin. Take time to go into these matters. I was layin' for to point out the difference. The European and specifically Italian SENSE of these things. It shows in my bein' here at this radio. That is due to [the] Italian sense of civilization, sense that special work like mine, and like that of other writers, Carlini, for example ought to go on. That communication OUGHT to be kept up war or no war. Like they go on having picture shows. Go on holdin' up and improvin' criterion in the arts. NOT universal in any country. But a field where competition is healthy. And I have before now said that from England and America I do not HEAR any indication of a similar sense of civilization. The best writers in England and America do NOT get to the microphone, which is the only way of communication left open. The American microphone descends to the level of Hollywood.
I could trace that back a good way to the decay of integrity in the BETTER American magazines. Decay of sense of responsibility, to and FOR the thought of the American nation. Sedgewick and other blights that I started objectin' to 36 years ago. I got no time tonight to be political. I meant to be political, but nobody here ASKS me to be political. I wanted to make a little list of lies and swindles that are breakin' down, not catchin' coneys (that means catchin' suckers) so plentiful. The swindles England put over on others; that she don't like you puttin' over on her. Mr. Welles bein' pious, and trying to resell us the free trade hoax. And up jumps the Bolshevik threatenin' to DUMP like all hell, according to the most rabid pluto Bolshevik methods.
All that is instructive but on a more popular (mebbe I ought to say in a certain sense less popular) plane.
#110 (July 25, 1943) U . K. (C74)
LOST OR STOLEN (PERDUTO O RUBATO)
? A friend of mine once entitled a poem "Attys or something missing. " I wonder if any of you realize, or could by an effort arrive at realization of the degree of detachment that I feel at moments or if you, on your own, ever do try to see the present historic moment from the outside.
The thing in my case goes beyond an effort of will, I simply find myself outside, observing. Le reconnaitre et le savoir. There is a poem of Guy Charles Gros that does not end in the same manner, for he ends: "Ai-je cru un seul instant a la realite? du monde . . . " That is French poetry, and Buddhistic detachment.
But I do not make out what has become of those Englishmen, or of that English tradition that led one to believe in the existence of Englishmen who protested against the drift of their governments. Mebbe they are too old, the ones I remember, or too young, the ones whom I have not met. Certainly the few dozen voices that rose from the printed page in Britain, before this war, demanding justice, social justice INSIDE the borders of England, and comprehension, or at least some degree of attention to fact outside the borders of England, those voices are silent, or smothered. Or at any rate they are inaudible here.
Lord knows you have the equipment, as contrasted to what I have available. You have your BBC with your archives. And I have not one disc, not one phonorecord available. And perhaps those past records are the BEST that you have. But your use of them is deficient.
You know, the most flatheaded among you knows that your press has lied, and that your BBC is not impartial. And no one expects it to be impartial. But there are degrees in all things. And some of you must perceive that from the difference between a howl for monopoly and dominion and a demand for justice. Or at any rate I am not yet brought to believe that that type of man is wholly beaten, is wholly extinct in England.
? Some of you MUST stand back now and then, and sift out what you hear on your air. What you read in your papers. Must perceive that most of it is flimflam, that is, stuff poured out to get your mind off the fact, and to KEEP you from reflecting on the facts, and keep you from thinking at all of a sane order. There are plenty of flights of what Lenin called derisively "revolutionary inventiveness. " Meaning schemes detached from reality and possibility. Plans divorced for [from] true data.
All right. Where have we got to? You don't know. Perhaps no one does know. But at any rate in the debating club, the international, mondial world wide, etc. academy of the air, certain points have been made. In fact nearly all the points I have been arguing these past few years HAVE BEEN made. And made so thoroughly that your official world just has to pretend they aren't there. Just as the press always did ignore certain facts for as long as possible.
Your parliament does discuss points that were smothered for decades. Gold for example. Even Monty Skinnergue Norman knew that the value of gold is not stable. It fluctuates. Tables of its fluctuations were printed. A few bright lads deplored a gold standard simply because it did not recognize the mutable value of gold. Didn't let it rise and fall on the market according to the law of supply and demand.
Irving Fisher's arguments about its fluctuability were, I suppose, used to help in the greatest gold brick swindle (I suppose it was about the greatest of all time). Gold fluctuates, Its price today is as never before a fancy price.
It has gone out of use, it is not necessary as is oil or wheat. Nations can live for years without it. They could live without it altogether IF they were not attacked from outside. Its price is a fancy price. Not a fancy price such as is paid for a Rembrandt; not a fancy price as is paid for an old painting by a great master. Say there are only a dozen or 1/2 dozen Giorgiones, mostly in museums, national property, and, if there is one for sale and you can get six or eight millionaires all to think that they want it, you run up a fancy price. But gold is not even
? like that. There is more of it. AND its value is mutable: and the need of it or the want of it was declining, has in fact declined; could decline to almost zero, no, not quite to zero, but to dental etc.
Well the answer was not to lower the price on the market but to put UP the price, and to sell it to the American boobs, the great American public, in what was probably the greatest gold brick wheeze of all time. When the boobs have it all, the price will come down again rapidly as is usual, when the boobs have obtained possession of anything, but during the course of the present unpleasantness: old wheezes HAVE dwindled, as the Virginia hot air conference showed. The sham about money flopped. The wheeze of 60% interest has been ventilated. The wheeze of varying the value of any national currency has at last had some publicity. At the Hot Springs all the sham and the scenery fell, there was nothing left but the stark evil desire to extort and monopolize. Flash lit from a dozen capitals, "corner the world's grain market," said one Rome commentator A half dozen voices from Berlin, at once denouncing the swindle. AND also a few voices from England. Aware that the British farmer will be better off if he has an INTERNAL market in England, at a just price, for what he can grow.
But that is NOT in itself a desire for JUSTICE. That does not constitute in itself a willingness to DO justice. It does not constitute in itself a perception of justice. Let alone a will to support it, to support justice or even to permit justice to others.
There was a murmer on the BBC air about unfairness; but it wasn't of unfairness extending outwards; it was a complaint that somebody had said you hadn't imperial confraternity, or solidarity. God knows you have EXPLOITED Australian sentimentality about the mama country. And probably will exploit it still further. That don't mean that a new Burke has risen amongst you. Row after row of pretenses has fallen, but the sense of equity? What was at one time, or was at one time supposed
? to be your sense of equity? Has it been lost, mislaid or stolen? And if stolen, by whom?
Part II
10 Miscellaneous Scripts
#111 (early 1941) HOMESTEADS
What will remain from this struggle is an idea. What spreads and will spread from the determination to have a New Europe is an idea: the idea of a home for every family in the country. The idea that every family in the country shall have a sane house, and that means a house well built, with no breeding space for tuberculosis bugs. I have seen the details of some of these houses. It means that every family's house will have land enough, fields enough to support the family. It means that these houses will not be burdened with mortgages. They will be inalienable, and indivisible. The eldest son if he likes, or at any rate one son or daughter will keep the farm, but above all the farmer will be guaranteed a sale for his crop AT A PRICE that will cover his needs.
You may have heard that Andy Jackson OPENED the American lands to the settlers. As against John Quincy Adams who had what might be called a more communist idea, not that he was read, but he wanted at least some land reserved to the nation and its proceeds used for schools, and more highfalutin' branches of education. He was "out of time. " Jackson beat him. Jackson's policy was a bit sketchy. American homesteads in great part passed into great estates very quickly grazing in place of farms etc , etc. My grandmother and great grandmother lived on claims, land claims. The boys of 20 in New York now know very little of
? such affairs. My father still has 80 year-old cousins living I take it on claims in Montana They do not represent the majority life of America.
But Jackson's land policy was called DEMocratic. The New Europe is in that sense DEMociatic, and if you folks rush out to SMASH this New Europe history will NOT give you ANY medals whatever for saving DEMocracy.
Italy does NOT confiscate the farmers' crop. I have seen that lie along with 200 others. Italy has not set up Utopia in XIX years, but the farmer here knows he will be paid for what he grows. He knows what he will be paid for it. Nobody will get an option on it and grab excess profits. Get it quite firmly in mind that war mongers are asking you to prevent and smash this idea of a solid and clean well built house with land for each family. Look into it before you decide to go out and die for something or other, without quite knowing what.
Let me remind you that Brooks Adams was seen shortly before his death, an old man of 80 in running shorts and sweater, pulling the weights in the gym of the Boston Athletic Club and prophesying a 30 years' war, an IDEO LOGICAL war. And let me remind you that the notion of ideological wars is FORWARD, not backward. Our American forebears, given an empty continent, sketched in a civilization. Rough draft without very great attention to detail. Settlers rushed onto the land, they had hunger, land hunger, each man to be free: Free of RENT, free of mortgage. Reflection came later. A new idea rises in Europe, it is not confined to the continent. You can not confine it. No amount of postal thieves, censors, examiners, can smash it or swush it. There arises the idea that a man may own all he can use. But that he may not own what he can't use. And especially he may not use this surplus to starve his neighbor, he may not prevent farmer Jones selling his corn. The millionaire may NOT rush in and undersell Jones till he has ruin'd him, taken a mortgage on Jones' farm, turned out Jones' children the day the interest isn't paid to the full. I will get round in time to the flimflam of a
? past kind of pacifist, the suppression of news, the gyrations committed by the Carnegie so-called Peace Foundation, their failure to get thought into America.
Wars are made to make DEBT. Our Civil War had a relation to DEBT. Christopher Hollis knows this. Read his book, the TWO NATIONS, debts of the South to the City of New York.
Greece spends 54% of her income paying the interest on DEBT. Until you know who has lent what TO WHOM, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles.
I wish Hollis hadn't taken to silence and solitude just when he did. But on the other hand has ANY man in England now the power to speak out or communicate with his fellows?
Little Red Riding Hood, better look out for Wilikie's false teeth! Is Wendell saving DEMocracy? Is Wendell selling the New Deal to Winston? Or is Wendell trying to shovel a few million farm boys into the trenches? And SO soon after headlines "It's War OR Willkie"? Is Wendell now for it at all costs; just to prove not having elected him, war is the consequence? Is Mr. 'Opkins selling the New Deal to London?
My venerable friend Doctor William C. Williams roars with laughter when I suggest that people might THINK. "Ever see a communist THINK? " writes ole Bill. I been told the process ain't nacheral. Waal, the Doc. is their white-haired boy. Will even he notice that one group of people has steadily tried to EXtend this conflict and to SUPPRESS all kind of intercommunication between Europe and the U. S. ? The other side (my side) has asked [for an] investigation. Now what CAUSES that?
Did this war start for Danzig? Did this war start for POland, and if so why such silence re the half of Poland that has been et [eaten] up by
? Rhooshy? You people don't believe those sad tales? Or do you? Some people want to make money. Some people want to keep on with a racket that has paid 'em and their papas large dividends. There may be six or eight rackets. Debt interest, gun selling. Is American youth expected to run out and die for debt interest and gun selling? If that is what the war- wanters WANT, let 'em say so.
In England for years it has been KNOWN that the English war plant could NOT produce the goods. Is it to be supposed that a lover of England pushed his country into war, KNOWING that country could NOT produce the goods?
It has been declared in England for years that there was a plot on to bash out the WHOLE of Europe for the profit of Russia and the moneyed in America. It now appears that England has been caught in the tweezers of the attempt but that continent largely has NOT French bon sens showed itself at the last minute They declined to have Paris completely coventried in order to hold off the German advance for six days or whatever.
The English are not so quick on the uptake. My Hollis has ceased to talk about "the debts of the South to the City of New York being 200 million. "
I have been 20 years on this job, but you will not read. The new generation will not read AFTER it has been bombed to blazes or buried by high explosive. It may be your last chance. I suggest that you try to read Hollis' Two Nations and read pages 206, 207 to learn what the Civil War was ABOUT, who and what caused it.
Then you may see who and what is trying to get you yet again into the trenches, and to KEEP British men UNDER fire despite the fact that they did NOT vote for this war. The gombeen men's idea is that the MORE of England gets smashed, the higher the rate of interest, and the
? MORE of it, they can change the survivors. What [does] the farmer in West Africa get out of this war? Who now owns THEIR government, for example? If Mr. Hull means to say: I hate the English, I hope there will be in England not one stone left on another. I hope the Stone of Scone will be smashed into powder and made into portland cement. I don't want ANY life left in Britain.
All right, let him express himself. If he means: let's grab all, positively all the British assets, let him say so, but in that case why dress up as a friend of Britain? And in the meantime let me remind Messrs. Roosevelt and WALLACE of the Report of the National Survey of Potential Product Capacity, published by Hodson, Chairman of the Emergency Relief Bureau and Post, idem, New York Housing Authority in 1935, one of the greatest glories of Mr. Roosevelt's administration which has also been somewhat neglected both by administration and its opponents. As to the Academy of Social and Political Science, I keep wondering when they will start a serious study of ANYthing whatsoever that is vital to American welfare. A bunch of playboys.
#112 U. S. (1941) MARCH ARRIVALS
All the world knows that Mons. H. E. Matsuoka arrived in Rome last evening. I also arrived in Rome last evening, at a different station, through no intentional disrespect on my part toward the Orient's first rank diplomat. The events quite naturally received different degrees of attention; after all I arrive here more often, and have not come from so great a distance. At the present moment I see no chance whatever of breaking into official circles and discussing with his Excellency my proposals for PEACE in the Pacific.
I do not know that even the rank and file of our own leaders would take the plan, treat the plan with due gravity, I do not know whether either they or my present auditors will follow my meaning. The plan is simple
? but even that may not recommend it. I should quite plainly propose to give Guam to the Japanese in return for one set of color and sound films of the 300 best Noh dramas.
The films could not be delivered all at once, so we would not need to give up Guam all at once.
We Americans are, or were, as you probably know, considered a set of soulless roughnecks, by most of the outer world. Of course we are not, but fact and opinion differ so often in this imperfect world.
Of late there has been added to our portrait a touch, a, eh TOUCH of hysteria. Old blokes like me begin to wonder where all the Dan'l Boones and Davy Crocketts have got to.
Americans are supposed to run wode at reports of Martian invaders. Well now, I don't suppose more than two or three chaps ran out and committed hara-kiri at the news of those parachutists from Mars.
You may think I am joking about this Guam proposition. I am not. I ask the impartial auditor whether the individual American citizen wouldn't get a great deal MORE out of a set of such films as I saw, the one I saw in Washington two years ago, than he would out of a few tons of tungsten, with possibly a few family coffins thrown in. It would mean, and I admit it would mean, getting educated up to the point of knowing what is meant by Kumasaka and Kagekiyo.
The film I saw was of Awoi no Uye. The Japanese would be truly grateful to us, not for Guam, but for prodding 'em on to make a complete high grade record of these plays before the tradition gets damaged.
Umewaka Minoru is dead. I have heard discs of Noh music that did NOT seem to me up to the mark. It is never too soon to start on such records. And for the American auditor who doesn't yet know what I am
? talking about, let me say that half a century ago an American professor with a Spanish name went over to Japan and brought back the news and some notes on a number of remarkable plays, said to have been kept unchanged in their stage tradition for 4 or 5 centuries. Centuries. And after a lapse of years W. B. Yeats said it was the form he had been seeking all his life in an attempt to write drama that should be also high poetry.
And in the play Kagekiyo we have, I think, the soul of Japan. As its delicacy in Nishikigi, and its epos in Kagekiyo, which contains so far as my very imperfect knowledge extends, the one truly Homeric passage in such of their literature as Fenollosa brought back to us, or other of our translators have come on.
That is the JAPAN we WANT. That is the Japan that could mean something to us, and be in the high sense of some use to us. We have most material things inside our own borders, though in a bull market for means of murder we may want a little more tungsten etc. We do not need Indian opium.
I don't know about taking a plebiscite. Probably the bulk of the population would not understand it, but given time to know what I am driving at, I believe this proposal would come nearer the normal American wish, a wish after all for the good life, than any of these dinimiteros and earth hoggers have any idea of.
Is there any need for the whole earth to run mad because two-fifths have gone beserk?
The American people WANT civilization. Get under their skin and even that crack about the 5-cent cigar does NOT move the American deep. We like a wisecrack some of us, including the high bracket writers aim to be TOUGH, I say TOUGH and HOW when appearing in public. But in private they lay it off.
? That old phrase about clarifying one's intentions is not worked nearly enough. In trying to give the American people what they WANT, I mean WANT, no one can offer them blood and destruction. The sob stuff aimed at getting 'em into trenches is all based on NOT getting into the trenches. It is all based on how wrong it is for anyone to get into trenches. Which being the case, why not move DIRECT toward the goal? Why has so little been done in and FROM North America to stop the war or before that to prevent it, or at any rate to keep it from overflowing the whole of the earth?
I gather that if I am to go on with these talks, I shall have gradually more to say about letters and less about international politics. I might even say a word or two about Joyce, but before I get onto that subject, I shall one of these days read you a letter from Mensdorff, Count Mensdorff Dietrichstein-Pouilly, containing a few ideas on peace, and how to attain it, written in Vienna back in 1928. Just to show how long it takes to get ideas into action. Then again they asked me here a couple of weeks ago what I thought about one or two American writers, handin' me samples. And I wrote out a couple of comments, which I will also read you one night, if the spring advances, and rain lays off and the spirit of man takes on a little normality.
You probably still think I am joking about those cinema records of Japanese plays. I am not.
