What about wars that are
economically
lost?
Ezra-Pound-Speaking
When I mention Mr.
Morgenthau to you, you turn off the radio, the subject is so disagreeable.
Mr.
Morgenthau is returning to gold so that-- --as soon as he possibly can.
That is, as soon as it will mean the highest possible profits on monies lent to humanity, on the debts made by the war which is to be used according to ritual to control the currency after the war, the world currency return. No small-- --by mere manipulations by kikes of the money of your little empire or of the American continent, but the world currency is to be stabilized and you are old with 3 jockies in livery.
And that livery will not include coat and pants. You will go out in your underwear. It will be the livery of the new-- --, of the new-- --against which the prices of wheat and clothing will fluctuate.
I'll say they will fluctuate, but the money will remain fixed and-- --and there will be no boys on the board of directors. Shop dressing, window dressing has prevailed up to the present. There always have been a few Lord (Windrums and Dindrums) on the board of directors to bamboozle the soft hearted public.
? Oh, but the new money will not be measured by labor. The Morgenthau prices will most certainly not take into account the value of labor. The price of foodstuffs, fuel and clothing in Morgenthaudia, the new Soviet Paradise, will most certainly not be regulated so that the working man, nor the office worker can feed, clothe and house his family on the fruits of his labor, or by wearing a clean shirt to the office in the hope of getting good marks.
Lord, love you, no, the money is going to be stable. There'll be plenty of men out of work, millions and millions on the dole and of the dole so that the labor market may remain open. If there is any uncommunist district left where the worker is not slave of the plebe, where he is not conscripted to do sixteen hours a day in the factory or fifteen in the mines for the Soviets, for the Soviet Order, for the sacred Christian community of the Seligmans of the all holy, trinitarian no-God republican Paradise of the lenders of non-money at a somewhat higher return than is now asked by the-- --, fifty percent.
Let us not look for help from democracies because there just won't be any democracies in that sense of the word. The war was made for the sake of doles, you were told that; it was made to make debts, it was made to impose the gold standard.
In other words you were the-- --end; you were told and the gullible in Europe believed that the British working man sided with England because he got a share in the profits; he profited by the misery of India and of China; that his working conditions were better; that he could buy more copies of -- --, see more pictures, read more-- --news printed on more pieces of paper, see more Hollywood products and then his poor benighted brother the Hindu. -- --
Now this poor brown underling who after the return to the gold standard paid two bushels where he before that had to pay one bushel and one in honor of the Queen. Well, now next time it might be that the receiving
? end will be over in [Goonland? ], over in [Cleveland? ], over in the new Roseman Paradise where blooms the-- --in the new stabilized unity, with no non-Jews on the board of control, with no English control whatsoever, though a few British names may appear as representatives of the Canadian people so-called, and a few London agents of the golden Republic of Soviets may fly back and forth to see that the rent is paid promptly.
But at any rate you can now go to sleep again. You've been told what the war's about. You've been told what Rabbi Wise and Mr. Wiseman, your [Sasson? ] are having a war for.
It is inconvenient: well, you've got used to it now and, when it's over, everything will be just as it was before. No, not quite as it was before, you won't have to worry about any novelties, there'll be no innovations. You'll not have to readjust yourselves to horrible novelties that threaten you from abroad. The money will be stabilized. You will have returned to sound money.
Perhaps you will be able to get some employment but that isn't necessary; you're used to not being busy so that will not disturb you. You will not have to think about anything. That will be a comfort to your penury. You never did like to think about anything. And the war will be over. That is, there will be a few-- --interruptions before the next one gets going and you will have killed off some women and children and you'll feel proud of being conservative.
You will be told that the-- --based on gold brought you prosperity. You will be told that it's really for England's benefit that her money should be controlled from abroad. I'll repeat that,-- --. It'll relieve England of all that bookkeeping, trust Mr. Morgenthau to look after all your accounting; it is much simpler.
? Mr. Keynes will explain. He will have had his little fling in the drawing room; he will have uttered the minority murmur and said that it will not quite be the millenium promise, by the prophet Isaiah. But that after all the old system of economics, the orthodox system, was the basis of Cambridge and that you have at least preserved the ideals that he stood for, and, of course, prices of foodstuffs will fluctuate, so someone can still make a little money by speculation, a little more money by speculation than they could by productive labor, which is, of course, another aim of the war.
#106 (July 6, 1943) U. S. (C69) CREDIT: LEGALITY
John Adams won the American Revolution as a law case before the peculiarly venal and squalid government of England at that time had recourse to arms.
The 1770's were possibly imbued with a much more sensitive and active sense of legality than can be found today in the Anglo-Jewish countries.
We saw the United States flooded with quite squalid ballyhoo, telling the simps that they can make more in the army than in civil life. A level of baseness in some of these articles quite such as to turn the stomach of what was once considered the plain honest man, but will today be counted an hyper-sensitive by Hollywood standards.
Besides the offers of high pay for the army, such as appeared before America had OPENLY entered the war, are probably out-of-date by now. I am merely contrasting the venality of this purely mercenary disposition with the Italian state of mind or that of our American forebears.
? Adams HAD a public to whom law and justice, equity, meant something. He could arouse indignation. He had also the moral courage to stand up for law AGAINST the popular passion, as shown in his defense of the British soldiers in Boston, the implements, not the fount of the tyranny exercised against the people of Boston.
Today one HAS no such public. One has no law court. One can only insist that, IF there WERE a court, the line of justice COULD be demarked, and that from the European, continental side, there is an appeal to such equity.
And in contrast to the jitterbug state of mind DELIBERATELY induced in the American public by years of foetid press propaganda and demoralization, I have cited and shall continue to cite Franco Rusconi, now in military service, one of the four editors of Il Barco, a student paper issued in Genova, three of the four editors being in military service and the fourth carrying on the editing. Rusconi calls not only for peace WITH justice, but for peace AS justice.
That may be a fine and delicate distinction, a demarcation of the idea beyond the general grasp. I doubt if it IS beyond the general grasp. It is a profound distinction.
Highbrow stuff if you like. And Marshall Field and Colonel McCormick are possibly responsible for the lack of such highbrow stuff in America. When you start tearing down, there is no saying where it will end. The contempt for intelligence, the contempt for equity was not an overnight product.
YET there is no government with the consent of the governed UNTIL the governed believe that government includes at least SOME sense of justice. It is precisely on that ground that the majority was once respected. I mean that there arose in the U. S. A. in the time of Miss
? Harriet Martineau and President Madison a general feeling that the majority should rule.
That idea was DEFINED, it wasn't just plopped down like a poached egg, to break in its flop. The idea of majority rule implied that the majority should have the facts at its disposal. Just as Liberty in the program of the Droits de l'Homme was defined as right to do anything that don't HARM someone else.
Pardon me, if I seem to make a complicated statement. I am really working round to Mr. Welles, yes again. Sumner's speech BEGAN with an IDEA, with an appeal to some sort of reality. NOT Germany's military force, but Germany's commercial or economic energy was therein proclaimed the cause of Anglo-Judaic nervousness. Economic aggression.
The joker showed toward the end when Sumner wanted to leave the capacity for economic aggression in the exclusive control of ONE side, and of a hidden and irresponsible congerie of commercial and usurious interests. I know that's not what Sumner called it. He wrapped it up in a free-trade palaver. His essay was promptly debunked by every European economic observer. It was automatically debunked, or almost, and so quickly that it hardly got to the radio posts. I am almost the only radio commentator who gave the speech DETAILED attention. And I go on doing it because of the opening paragraphs. A lot of hooey WAS swept away. Sumner, despite the American time lag, got rid of a lot of pretense. And a LOT more, oh a LOT more, went west from Virginia Hot Springs.
If a man appeals against economic aggression, he appeals TO economic justice, or at any rate he takes ground from which appeal to economic justice can, one would say from which appeal to economic justice MUST, be eventually made. What is economic justice? Is it based on property? Do the communists answer that in the negative? Is economic justice material justice?
? In modern society I think the answer must be: economic justice means an equitable distribution of purchasing power. It means a living wage for labor in all places where the means of subsistence exist.
WHO is to administer that distribution? Churchill, Roosevelt, and the filth of Judea? Answer US, us exclusively. Tear away the verbiage, and that is the Morgenthau-Roosevelt war aim.
And there being NO indication that Roosevelt, Churchill, or Morgenthau have in the past EVER for five minutes cared a damn about justice, the rest of the world demurs. Demurs with cannon.
All that we have got to--it has cost three years of war--all that we have got to is the collapse of a certain number of hoaxes, designed by the London Times, Eden, and the rest of the press swine TO conceal the basic issue.
A sane world, or an honest debating club, would take up the matter from there. And from that point I shall attempt to proceed in my next conversation or monologue.
#107 (July 17, 1943) U. S. (C71) AUDACIA / AUDACITY
I reckon my last talk was the most courageous I have ever given. I was a playin' with fire. I was openly talking about HOW the war may be prolonged by the fellows who are scared that the war might stop.
I mean they are scared right out of their little grey panties, for fear economic equity might set in as soon as the guns stop shootin', or shortly thereafter.
The stage scenery fell with a flop, simultaneous with some anti-Axis successes. Mr. Welles tread on delicate ground. But DID make a step
? forward, I mean when he spoke of economic aggression. How do you prevent economic aggression INSIDE a nation? If you can't prevent it inside a nation, how do you expect to prevent it on the world base? How do you expect to prevent it internationally if you can not prevent it internally inside the territory already squashed and defiled by the plutocracy, by the usury system, by the rump end of the mercantilist system, which has been diseased and worm eaten by the cancer of usury (at 60 PER cent) and by the wheeze of varying the purchasing power of the government money, at the airy whim of the kikes and financiers? And if you won't, or if a given gang of profiteers, sometimes called politicians, WILL not even try to prevent it INSIDE their own countries, how the Sam Hill do you expect the rest of the world to expect 'em to do anything about preventing it OUTSIDE the borders of their own oppressed and unhappy countries?
London slums and the rest of it, as proofs of Churchill's misanthropy, of his contempt for ALL social justice, his loathing of the ideas of justice or equity. Of the three murderers, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, conscious or unconscious, Stalin is the more open. I think he has never tried to deny his hand in mass murders, assassinations, etc. He would argue that it is just part of his business. Roosevelt would try to say that a murder today is committed solely in the hope of preventing murder by his great grand children's nephews. Mr. Churchill who is an arrant coward and clever scene shifter has never faced Mencius' question: Is there any difference between killing a man with a sword, and killing him with a system of government? Hence the pink popularity of Bolshevik propaganda amongst Lord Prof. Keynes' students in Cambridge, England, the seat of hermaphroditic aesthetics.
Parts of the world prefer LOCAL control, of their own money power and credit. It may be deplorable (in the eyes of Wall Street and Washington) that such aspirations toward personal and national liberty still persist, but so is it. Some people, some nations, prefer their own administration, to that of Baruch and Lemanthau and the Sassoon, and the problem is: how
? many more millions of British, Russians, and Americans of both the northern and southern American continents, plus Zulus, Basutos, Hottentots, etc. and the lower, so-called lower races, phantom governments, Maccabees and their sequelae, are expected to die in the attempt to crush out European and Japanese independence?
Oh yes, I want it to stop. I didn't start it. I should like to conserve a few art works, a few mosaics, a few printed volumes, I should like to shore, or bring to beach what is left of the world's cultural heritage, including libraries, and architectural monuments. To serve as models for new construction.
I hear you are spending 45 billion dollars to keep this nasty little kike in the Treasury. It seems a high price to pay for one mangy Hebrew, but American taste is peculiar.
The American people ONCE knew what it wanted to buy with its money, but it looks as if that time was a passin', or had been poured out with the bath water at the time of Roosevelt's second election, I say second not fourth election. I wouldn't spend 45 billion dollars, not if I had it, I wouldn't spend 45 billion dollars, to keep Heine Morgenthau, wormy son of his biosophic father settin' there in the Treasury, spending the American people's purchasing power, in the attempt to bottleneck Ukraine wheat and Iranian petrol. And paying two or more dollars instead of one on purty nigh everything bought by the government in the hope of extinguishing the human lights of humanity. But there is no accountin' for the peculiarities of the American people, or for their lack of coherence, They seem to LIKE spending their money on war, destruction, and inedible metal. Perhaps the biosophists or other American votaries of the infinite will IN TIME produce some sort of diagnosis of the neurosis of the American ethos.
In the meantime, how do you EXPECT to emerge from the shindy, where do you expect it to END? Do ANY of you, except Mr. Welles,
? Sumner, and Mr. Agar expect the American, or the British or Yittisch mind to collaborate in reformulation of a workable plan, for international equity? Does Mr. Welles expect the eschewment, the laying off, the desistance from economic aggression (or its more stable state, economic oppression) to be BILATERAL in the postwar world? And if so, why don't they or he step on the gas.
A lot of old card tricks have been published. They do NOT allure the world. The cheese in the free trade trap is too stale to cause the tremor of any exotic whisker. Have we got to wait for a new (possibly pink, or milk white) American generation to SHOW up, and demand local administration? Demand a government with the consent of the governed and NOT by a secret Committee of irresponsibles?
#108 (July 20, 1943) U. S. (C77) OBJECTION (PROTESTA)
I object quite as much as the next man to the loss of American life and to the misfortunes of the American people. I don't know how far I am makin' this clear. I have perhaps two other objections NOT shared by my hearers, or by those who turn off the radio at the sound of my protests.
The American gangster did NOT spend his time shooting women and children. He may have been misguided, but in general he spent his time fighting superior forces at considerable risk to himself. But not in dropping boobytraps for unwary infants. I therefore object to the modus in which the American troops obey their high commander. This modus is NOT in the spirit of Washington or of Stephen Decatur.
I also object to the misuse of the American army and navy. 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.
That is, as soon as it will mean the highest possible profits on monies lent to humanity, on the debts made by the war which is to be used according to ritual to control the currency after the war, the world currency return. No small-- --by mere manipulations by kikes of the money of your little empire or of the American continent, but the world currency is to be stabilized and you are old with 3 jockies in livery.
And that livery will not include coat and pants. You will go out in your underwear. It will be the livery of the new-- --, of the new-- --against which the prices of wheat and clothing will fluctuate.
I'll say they will fluctuate, but the money will remain fixed and-- --and there will be no boys on the board of directors. Shop dressing, window dressing has prevailed up to the present. There always have been a few Lord (Windrums and Dindrums) on the board of directors to bamboozle the soft hearted public.
? Oh, but the new money will not be measured by labor. The Morgenthau prices will most certainly not take into account the value of labor. The price of foodstuffs, fuel and clothing in Morgenthaudia, the new Soviet Paradise, will most certainly not be regulated so that the working man, nor the office worker can feed, clothe and house his family on the fruits of his labor, or by wearing a clean shirt to the office in the hope of getting good marks.
Lord, love you, no, the money is going to be stable. There'll be plenty of men out of work, millions and millions on the dole and of the dole so that the labor market may remain open. If there is any uncommunist district left where the worker is not slave of the plebe, where he is not conscripted to do sixteen hours a day in the factory or fifteen in the mines for the Soviets, for the Soviet Order, for the sacred Christian community of the Seligmans of the all holy, trinitarian no-God republican Paradise of the lenders of non-money at a somewhat higher return than is now asked by the-- --, fifty percent.
Let us not look for help from democracies because there just won't be any democracies in that sense of the word. The war was made for the sake of doles, you were told that; it was made to make debts, it was made to impose the gold standard.
In other words you were the-- --end; you were told and the gullible in Europe believed that the British working man sided with England because he got a share in the profits; he profited by the misery of India and of China; that his working conditions were better; that he could buy more copies of -- --, see more pictures, read more-- --news printed on more pieces of paper, see more Hollywood products and then his poor benighted brother the Hindu. -- --
Now this poor brown underling who after the return to the gold standard paid two bushels where he before that had to pay one bushel and one in honor of the Queen. Well, now next time it might be that the receiving
? end will be over in [Goonland? ], over in [Cleveland? ], over in the new Roseman Paradise where blooms the-- --in the new stabilized unity, with no non-Jews on the board of control, with no English control whatsoever, though a few British names may appear as representatives of the Canadian people so-called, and a few London agents of the golden Republic of Soviets may fly back and forth to see that the rent is paid promptly.
But at any rate you can now go to sleep again. You've been told what the war's about. You've been told what Rabbi Wise and Mr. Wiseman, your [Sasson? ] are having a war for.
It is inconvenient: well, you've got used to it now and, when it's over, everything will be just as it was before. No, not quite as it was before, you won't have to worry about any novelties, there'll be no innovations. You'll not have to readjust yourselves to horrible novelties that threaten you from abroad. The money will be stabilized. You will have returned to sound money.
Perhaps you will be able to get some employment but that isn't necessary; you're used to not being busy so that will not disturb you. You will not have to think about anything. That will be a comfort to your penury. You never did like to think about anything. And the war will be over. That is, there will be a few-- --interruptions before the next one gets going and you will have killed off some women and children and you'll feel proud of being conservative.
You will be told that the-- --based on gold brought you prosperity. You will be told that it's really for England's benefit that her money should be controlled from abroad. I'll repeat that,-- --. It'll relieve England of all that bookkeeping, trust Mr. Morgenthau to look after all your accounting; it is much simpler.
? Mr. Keynes will explain. He will have had his little fling in the drawing room; he will have uttered the minority murmur and said that it will not quite be the millenium promise, by the prophet Isaiah. But that after all the old system of economics, the orthodox system, was the basis of Cambridge and that you have at least preserved the ideals that he stood for, and, of course, prices of foodstuffs will fluctuate, so someone can still make a little money by speculation, a little more money by speculation than they could by productive labor, which is, of course, another aim of the war.
#106 (July 6, 1943) U. S. (C69) CREDIT: LEGALITY
John Adams won the American Revolution as a law case before the peculiarly venal and squalid government of England at that time had recourse to arms.
The 1770's were possibly imbued with a much more sensitive and active sense of legality than can be found today in the Anglo-Jewish countries.
We saw the United States flooded with quite squalid ballyhoo, telling the simps that they can make more in the army than in civil life. A level of baseness in some of these articles quite such as to turn the stomach of what was once considered the plain honest man, but will today be counted an hyper-sensitive by Hollywood standards.
Besides the offers of high pay for the army, such as appeared before America had OPENLY entered the war, are probably out-of-date by now. I am merely contrasting the venality of this purely mercenary disposition with the Italian state of mind or that of our American forebears.
? Adams HAD a public to whom law and justice, equity, meant something. He could arouse indignation. He had also the moral courage to stand up for law AGAINST the popular passion, as shown in his defense of the British soldiers in Boston, the implements, not the fount of the tyranny exercised against the people of Boston.
Today one HAS no such public. One has no law court. One can only insist that, IF there WERE a court, the line of justice COULD be demarked, and that from the European, continental side, there is an appeal to such equity.
And in contrast to the jitterbug state of mind DELIBERATELY induced in the American public by years of foetid press propaganda and demoralization, I have cited and shall continue to cite Franco Rusconi, now in military service, one of the four editors of Il Barco, a student paper issued in Genova, three of the four editors being in military service and the fourth carrying on the editing. Rusconi calls not only for peace WITH justice, but for peace AS justice.
That may be a fine and delicate distinction, a demarcation of the idea beyond the general grasp. I doubt if it IS beyond the general grasp. It is a profound distinction.
Highbrow stuff if you like. And Marshall Field and Colonel McCormick are possibly responsible for the lack of such highbrow stuff in America. When you start tearing down, there is no saying where it will end. The contempt for intelligence, the contempt for equity was not an overnight product.
YET there is no government with the consent of the governed UNTIL the governed believe that government includes at least SOME sense of justice. It is precisely on that ground that the majority was once respected. I mean that there arose in the U. S. A. in the time of Miss
? Harriet Martineau and President Madison a general feeling that the majority should rule.
That idea was DEFINED, it wasn't just plopped down like a poached egg, to break in its flop. The idea of majority rule implied that the majority should have the facts at its disposal. Just as Liberty in the program of the Droits de l'Homme was defined as right to do anything that don't HARM someone else.
Pardon me, if I seem to make a complicated statement. I am really working round to Mr. Welles, yes again. Sumner's speech BEGAN with an IDEA, with an appeal to some sort of reality. NOT Germany's military force, but Germany's commercial or economic energy was therein proclaimed the cause of Anglo-Judaic nervousness. Economic aggression.
The joker showed toward the end when Sumner wanted to leave the capacity for economic aggression in the exclusive control of ONE side, and of a hidden and irresponsible congerie of commercial and usurious interests. I know that's not what Sumner called it. He wrapped it up in a free-trade palaver. His essay was promptly debunked by every European economic observer. It was automatically debunked, or almost, and so quickly that it hardly got to the radio posts. I am almost the only radio commentator who gave the speech DETAILED attention. And I go on doing it because of the opening paragraphs. A lot of hooey WAS swept away. Sumner, despite the American time lag, got rid of a lot of pretense. And a LOT more, oh a LOT more, went west from Virginia Hot Springs.
If a man appeals against economic aggression, he appeals TO economic justice, or at any rate he takes ground from which appeal to economic justice can, one would say from which appeal to economic justice MUST, be eventually made. What is economic justice? Is it based on property? Do the communists answer that in the negative? Is economic justice material justice?
? In modern society I think the answer must be: economic justice means an equitable distribution of purchasing power. It means a living wage for labor in all places where the means of subsistence exist.
WHO is to administer that distribution? Churchill, Roosevelt, and the filth of Judea? Answer US, us exclusively. Tear away the verbiage, and that is the Morgenthau-Roosevelt war aim.
And there being NO indication that Roosevelt, Churchill, or Morgenthau have in the past EVER for five minutes cared a damn about justice, the rest of the world demurs. Demurs with cannon.
All that we have got to--it has cost three years of war--all that we have got to is the collapse of a certain number of hoaxes, designed by the London Times, Eden, and the rest of the press swine TO conceal the basic issue.
A sane world, or an honest debating club, would take up the matter from there. And from that point I shall attempt to proceed in my next conversation or monologue.
#107 (July 17, 1943) U. S. (C71) AUDACIA / AUDACITY
I reckon my last talk was the most courageous I have ever given. I was a playin' with fire. I was openly talking about HOW the war may be prolonged by the fellows who are scared that the war might stop.
I mean they are scared right out of their little grey panties, for fear economic equity might set in as soon as the guns stop shootin', or shortly thereafter.
The stage scenery fell with a flop, simultaneous with some anti-Axis successes. Mr. Welles tread on delicate ground. But DID make a step
? forward, I mean when he spoke of economic aggression. How do you prevent economic aggression INSIDE a nation? If you can't prevent it inside a nation, how do you expect to prevent it on the world base? How do you expect to prevent it internationally if you can not prevent it internally inside the territory already squashed and defiled by the plutocracy, by the usury system, by the rump end of the mercantilist system, which has been diseased and worm eaten by the cancer of usury (at 60 PER cent) and by the wheeze of varying the purchasing power of the government money, at the airy whim of the kikes and financiers? And if you won't, or if a given gang of profiteers, sometimes called politicians, WILL not even try to prevent it INSIDE their own countries, how the Sam Hill do you expect the rest of the world to expect 'em to do anything about preventing it OUTSIDE the borders of their own oppressed and unhappy countries?
London slums and the rest of it, as proofs of Churchill's misanthropy, of his contempt for ALL social justice, his loathing of the ideas of justice or equity. Of the three murderers, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, conscious or unconscious, Stalin is the more open. I think he has never tried to deny his hand in mass murders, assassinations, etc. He would argue that it is just part of his business. Roosevelt would try to say that a murder today is committed solely in the hope of preventing murder by his great grand children's nephews. Mr. Churchill who is an arrant coward and clever scene shifter has never faced Mencius' question: Is there any difference between killing a man with a sword, and killing him with a system of government? Hence the pink popularity of Bolshevik propaganda amongst Lord Prof. Keynes' students in Cambridge, England, the seat of hermaphroditic aesthetics.
Parts of the world prefer LOCAL control, of their own money power and credit. It may be deplorable (in the eyes of Wall Street and Washington) that such aspirations toward personal and national liberty still persist, but so is it. Some people, some nations, prefer their own administration, to that of Baruch and Lemanthau and the Sassoon, and the problem is: how
? many more millions of British, Russians, and Americans of both the northern and southern American continents, plus Zulus, Basutos, Hottentots, etc. and the lower, so-called lower races, phantom governments, Maccabees and their sequelae, are expected to die in the attempt to crush out European and Japanese independence?
Oh yes, I want it to stop. I didn't start it. I should like to conserve a few art works, a few mosaics, a few printed volumes, I should like to shore, or bring to beach what is left of the world's cultural heritage, including libraries, and architectural monuments. To serve as models for new construction.
I hear you are spending 45 billion dollars to keep this nasty little kike in the Treasury. It seems a high price to pay for one mangy Hebrew, but American taste is peculiar.
The American people ONCE knew what it wanted to buy with its money, but it looks as if that time was a passin', or had been poured out with the bath water at the time of Roosevelt's second election, I say second not fourth election. I wouldn't spend 45 billion dollars, not if I had it, I wouldn't spend 45 billion dollars, to keep Heine Morgenthau, wormy son of his biosophic father settin' there in the Treasury, spending the American people's purchasing power, in the attempt to bottleneck Ukraine wheat and Iranian petrol. And paying two or more dollars instead of one on purty nigh everything bought by the government in the hope of extinguishing the human lights of humanity. But there is no accountin' for the peculiarities of the American people, or for their lack of coherence, They seem to LIKE spending their money on war, destruction, and inedible metal. Perhaps the biosophists or other American votaries of the infinite will IN TIME produce some sort of diagnosis of the neurosis of the American ethos.
In the meantime, how do you EXPECT to emerge from the shindy, where do you expect it to END? Do ANY of you, except Mr. Welles,
? Sumner, and Mr. Agar expect the American, or the British or Yittisch mind to collaborate in reformulation of a workable plan, for international equity? Does Mr. Welles expect the eschewment, the laying off, the desistance from economic aggression (or its more stable state, economic oppression) to be BILATERAL in the postwar world? And if so, why don't they or he step on the gas.
A lot of old card tricks have been published. They do NOT allure the world. The cheese in the free trade trap is too stale to cause the tremor of any exotic whisker. Have we got to wait for a new (possibly pink, or milk white) American generation to SHOW up, and demand local administration? Demand a government with the consent of the governed and NOT by a secret Committee of irresponsibles?
#108 (July 20, 1943) U. S. (C77) OBJECTION (PROTESTA)
I object quite as much as the next man to the loss of American life and to the misfortunes of the American people. I don't know how far I am makin' this clear. I have perhaps two other objections NOT shared by my hearers, or by those who turn off the radio at the sound of my protests.
The American gangster did NOT spend his time shooting women and children. He may have been misguided, but in general he spent his time fighting superior forces at considerable risk to himself. But not in dropping boobytraps for unwary infants. I therefore object to the modus in which the American troops obey their high commander. This modus is NOT in the spirit of Washington or of Stephen Decatur.
I also object to the misuse of the American army and navy. 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.
