But in the
immediate
foreground, get it into your block that the U.
Ezra-Pound-Speaking
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. You spend millions a year on education. Young men go to colleges to get education. You spend MONEY and time to get education. I am telling you how to get some. I have knocked 'round Europe for 30 years, I have seen some fairly good dancing, I have heard some music, Mozart, Janequin. I have even been paid for writing down my opinions on music. As to dancing, Russian or whatever, I have never seen anything that could touch the movement of the tennin in the Hagormo dance that Tami Koume? did for me in his London studio 25 years ago. And as to music, a couple of bars of modern Japanese film play, after 25 years, hit me straight in the midriff. You couldn't mistake
? it for any one music in the wide and blinkin' world. And it was worth hearing.
You've got land, when you don't let it go to hell with erosion. You've got God knows what in the way of material wealth if you'd only learn how to USE it, how to get about from one part of the U. S. to another, and not starve the share croppers. Sanity in foreign relations means getting IN what you haven't got, you haven't got any Japanese classical plays or anything like 'em. Yeats merely wrote some plays more or less in the form of the Japanese non-libretti. The Noh is made up of words, dance movements and music, as well as great acting. Think in terms of the individual. What does the American individual get out of such and such IMPORTS?
#113 (1941) U. S. (68) AMERICA WAS PROMISES
I do what I can to keep an even tone of voice; now when I drop my voice, they turn on more current. As to the tone, there are times to speak mildly and there are times to speak with asperity, and as to American war makers ALL thought of America going to war is bunkumb, it is hogwash, bug wash, unmitigated b. b. b. [? ]; and I will tell you WHY it is hogwash, and why we should not give way to the gibes of pink tea females, and their soupheaded consorts.
There has even come up the term "UNamerican" used by asinine females and tinhorn employees of Jewsfelt to define ANY man, woman, or child who isn't ready to chuck away and destroy every last vestige of the American heritage.
They git that way reading Jew papers for 40 years. They git that way hearin' kike radio, and I propose to use the word KIKE regardless of
? race. Use it to cover honorary Jews, AND TO EXCEPT honest Jews when we find 'em.
Talk of America enterin' war is sheer DIRT. And it is ignorant dirt because it HIDES a hundred years of American history. It forges and falsifies the WHOLE aim and purpose of the American national foundation. The colonists went to the stem and rock bound to get away from dirt, and start fresh.
The Union of the 13 Colonies after the Revolution was founded to efface certain differences and, whatever one may think now of the meltin' pot theory, it has had this effect. The U. S. A. is NOT formed and organized INTERNALLY to participate in foreign quarrels. It can't be done without a lot of small dirty meanness to millions of American citizens and that means appeal to the smallest and dirtiest human instincts. It is babyish, it comes from the natural akussed tendency of two or three kids to pick on some other one. A meanness which their mammies and pappies try to wipe out if there is any decency in the family. Anybody who will draw back a minute and look at the way people pick on minorities, can see what I mean by this statement.
When things are scarce, or fearing fear, when people git scared and make a run on a bank or a grocery store, there is a scramble and, when things go slower, there is a conspiracy, to shut out someone or other. Starts as a joke: ends as a monopoly. The only old style relation of emigrants IN America to aliens was in their Indian wars. They are over. As to how much dirt was done to the Injuns, as to how far the Injuns wuz fractious, I refrain from pronouncin'.
The Injuns were an alien race. Our other troubles came FIRST from or trying to git out from UNDER the rump and boot of money lenders and stinkers in London, who thereafter tried to bust us. Look up the history of our relations to London during the Civil War. I am not lookin' backward for the sake of rousin' a rancour. I am telling you something
? about the way the U. S. are built up inside for PEACE, and NOT for takin' sides in European combat. Our Civil War was wangled. Read Christopher Hollis on the DEBTS of the South to the City of New York. Also read Overholser, on the DEBTS to BE CREATED by that war so [that] London kikes and American traitors could control the American currency.
It is not today a case of being DARED to fight part of Europe. It is a case of getting rid [of] the whole snot and dung of usury propaganda, which conduces to slaughter. The British who are in part a softhearted, in part a dirty and brutal race, have been had. They have shown docility in fighting for their owners and masters. And these owners and masters have gradually become Jewish; but are not yet wholly so. When we did something clean, Europe honored us. Europe even longed for a U. S. of Europe. Toward which Europe is now movin', offered now only by the usury centrals.
It is such UTTER buncomb, this talk of America being menaced by FINLAND. And it is such utter buncomb, this alliance with the Bolshevik government. Fruit of utter hysteria. Fruit also of readin' periodical crap for the past 50 or 80 years. And these ninnies, these pimps, and shysters who now have the gall to use the words American and Unamerican with NO reference to the fiber of the American nation. Most of 'em have never read anything but magazines.
The extent of the betrayal, whereof Roosevelt is part, whereof he is an excrescence: a protuberant nose is indicated by the fact that there are NO handy volumes of the writings of the men who MADE and kept up the American Union from 1750 till 1864.
What does Mrs. Jonas Keikenbaum mean by "American"? These chicken-headed fat mammies have never given a glance at our history. They are wholly unaware of the purpose for which we are existin'.
? Clever Kikes runnin' ALL our communication system. Simple-hearted Wallaces and Wickards, trying to do good to the farmer; without gittin' down to bedrock. OF course there are scandals about Army contracts, and for defense of the Volga and the Yangtze-Kiang River in China. Where the WHOLE system is founded on fraud, fraud will crop up in the details. Does any man of my age reflect on the theory prevalent when I was in college, namely that you GOT TO BE dishonest to git on in business? What caused that theory at the turn of the century?
It warn't there in 1776. I'll say it WAS NOT. When you git a minority of Americans, that is, a large enough minority, to KNOW why it is tommyrot to issue all national purchasing power as INTEREST payin' debt, the nation will lay off so doing, and thereafter men can live, and carry on business without being told to run crooked. Without young men being advised to run crooked. You got to define your terms, define your words, think what money will BUY (as that constitutes the value of money). All that is part of a nation's INTERNAL structure.
But in the immediate foreground, get it into your block that the U. S. A. has not been livin' for a thousand years NEXT door to ALIEN races, formed, compacted with relatively clear national or tribal frontiers. We are all intermixed, interwoven, livin' next door to each other. We do NOT need more land, we may need land improvement. If you go on destroyin' and urging others to DESTROY, you will need more production. Don't believe me if you don't want to, but do at least look into facts of American history. Why was the U. S. founded? How come we had any colonial architecture, any American craftsmanship?
What part did local colonies' groups of different European races take in the development, in the foundation of what made our life worth livin'?
You look into that, before you go shootin' Frenchmen at Dakar, or keepin' up dope sales in the Orient. You can't go to war without small meanness to SOME of the neighbors. You get het up over the sorrows of
? Mrs. Ikestein, the tailor's wife; you can't DO anything about it without doin' dirt to Giovanni the grocer, and the Hungarian livin' next door, or the grandson of R. Schuz's old friend who sells delicatessen.
#114 (1941) U. S. (50) ARISTOTLE AND ADAMS
Johnnie Adams, the first, the real father of his country, the man who picked General Washington, George, to lead the Colonial armies against a damned, stinking and cheating British Government, no better than Roosevelt and Morgenthau, or Churchill or any other set of enemies of the people and thieves of the public purse, was on the trail of Aristotle's studies of constitutions, constitutions of a lot of Greek states. In fact Johnnie wanted to know what really was the best form of government. And more than any other man, not excludin' Jim Madison and Thomas Jefferson, he got on the trail. And it is a damn pity that the only known copy of Harry Stotl's brochure on the Athenian constitution was then lying on an Egyptian dump heap. In fact the back side had been used as a farmer's account book, and if Mr. Didymus, farm bailif, hadn't akept his accounts on the back of the sheets, that admirable work might have been lost to mankind altogether, near the Egyptian town of Hermopolis, in the year '78/'79 A. D. in the time of Vespasian. Well, Mr. Adams would have enjoyed readin' it; but as he didn't, you can.
At any rate it might broaden the mind, especially it might inconvenience some of them 4,000 paid liars attached to the British legation or embassy in Washington, and graduated from that sink of hell and bog of iniquity, the London Pseudo-school of Pseudonomics.
For years economics professors have been lying, even going so far as to deprecate loans BY THE STATE, when the fleet that won the battle of Salamis was BUILT with money lent by the Athenian state to the ship builders, INSTEAD of morgagin' the whole nation to kikes, Biddies,
? swine, and enemies of the people as has been done in damn near every nation ever since the Stank of England was founded.
Well states have lent money, and the Pennsylvania Colony lent it. And the French frawgs are lendin' it. So the British fire on their late allies. And every damn possible thing is done to prevent the American in Utah or Montana from learning economics or history.
And our Constitution DOES give Congress the right to determine prices, though it is worded, "right to determine the value of money," which is the same thing. If you can determine HOW long a yard stick is, you can determine how may yards there are in a piece of linen. Well, ole Harry he noted some features in that model DEMocratic and Republican constitution, along with regulations fer not having balconies overhanging roads, and conduits overflowing into the roads; he mentions market controllers. Blame it on me and on Mussolini. Go on, blame it on us. Athens was a light amid ancient civilizations. There was superintendence of merchandise, to prevent the sale of spurious and adulterated articles. And there were also the corn wardens, or wheat wardens, to see that unground grain was in market at a FAIR PRICE, and next, that millers sell their barley meal at a price corresponding with that of barley, and the baker women at a price corresponding with that of wheat, weighing the amount fixed by the officials.
HENCE, the Catholic doctrine of the just price, which, roughly speakin', built the cathedrals, and assured European civilization from the time of St. Ambrose to the time of St. Antonio. Sure, blame it on Hitler! blame it on Mussolini. And don't, don't learn anything of WHY there was a French revolution. What abuses it set out to correct, what abuses it failed to correct, and hence all the flimflam.
Even Marx KNEW what the abuses were. In fact he is pretty good at diagnosis of evil. Waaal, then there is also a very pretty little passage in
? Harry Stotl's li'l book labeled Politics. And if you had read it Franklin Delano might not have got so far away with HIS politics.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Times when money is humbug
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
People go alterin' the currency, and somebody is played for a sucker.
In fact a classical education WOULD be useful if the universities didn't wrap it in cotton wool, and keep the stewdents from reading the more vital passages.
In fact a little Greek of the right kind or even readin' some with a crib IF you have the real curiosity would be useful. It would put you wise as to WHY Keynes and Guggleheim alias Gregory, and the scientific departments have managed to get Economics, so called, studied so COMpletely separate from any general education, classical education and general culture, so that they can LIE and not get caught out, and ball up the simple facts about money, and what it is. Without havin' the student ask inconvenient questions based on a knowledge of HISTORY, of the salient facts in our history or Greek history, or Demosthenes law cases, or Lincoln's fight for a national currency, or the Pennsylvania Colony's loans of PAPER money to the Colonists, to be paid back in ten lot, one tenth per year, as brought prosperity to the colony, and was the admiration of Europe, till the sons of bitches in London cracked down on it, and tried to sell the 13 colonies into slavery as the same bastids succeeded in doing after the great betrayal of 1863, Ikieheims, Vandergould, Sherman, playin' stinky with Rothschild, and betrayin' the American people.
Like Roosevelt is doin' with Morgenthau's able assistance, down underneath, down at BED rock, and quite apart from using war as top dressing to keep your minds OFF the American Treasury.
? When will American college students realize that almost ANY bit of real knowledge would keep 'em from being dead rabbits? Aristotle, Demosthenes, Mencius or Confucius, all antidotes to bein' suckers. And of course it would be a revolution, and INTERlexshul revolution if college students would be wondering what they spend four years in college NOT learning! ! Which would be both an adornment in the conversation and of use in their business. Business of LIVIN', I mean, cent per cent, 100% livin', gettin' something out of life by the process of puttin' their interest, mental interest, into it. Instead of being played for a sucker, by an ex bank tout and international swindler, a specialist in inflation and devaluation. And of course it is a mere matter of opinion, but it WAS Aristotle's opinion, expressed in the 5th book of his Politics, that the three qualities which supreme magistrates ought to possess are loyalty to established constitutions; secondly, great capacity for the duties of the office; and thirdly, virtue and justice.
In each the sort of justice suited. It seems a bit hard on Franklin Delano, but so it is in the Greek ably translated by Mr. Rackham, and verified by the present speaker.
#115 (1942) U. S. (27) TO CONSOLIDATE
If anyone takes the trouble to record and to examine the series of talks I have made over this radio it will be found that I have used three sorts of material: Historical facts; convictions of experienced men, based on fact; and the fruits of my own experience. The facts go back to the opening of a copper mine by Tching Tang in the year 1766 B. C. , they mostly antedate the fascist era and can not be considered as improvisations trumped up to meet present requirements. Neither can the beliefs of Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, and Lincoln be laughed off as mere Fascist propaganda. And even my own observations date largely before the opening of the present hostilities, as do those of my grandfather expressed in the U. S. Congress in 1878.
? I defend the particularly American, North American, United States heritage. If anybody can find anything hostile to the Constitution of the U. S. A. in these speeches, it would greatly interest me to know what.
It may be bizarre, eccentric, quaint, old-fashioned of me to refer to that document, but I wish more Americans would at least read it. It is not light and easy reading but it contains several points of interest, whereby some of our present officials could, if they but would, profit greatly.
Or, considering the jack in office, of less importance than the whole people and the whole nation, I should say the nation would greatly benefit if the literate citizens would attend to the document, both it its more important details and in its spirit. Even if Charles Beard does think it a barrier against real democracy. I would remind Prof. Beard that Adams studied republics. Even Beard now knows less of the Constitution than did John Adams and Madison. The treasure of a state is its equity. That is to say, its capacity to give every man a square deal. Teddy used to say square deal. There is no sane economics, without a sane ethic at its base.
And certain kinds of honesty have been known for 5000 years. Certain kinds of dishonesty are equally well recorded in history; and the capacity, anybody's capacity, for fooling all men ALL the time is, as Lincoln remarked, limited.
A considerable force, in some cases a force of inertia, has been espoused to my views, to my perceptions, to my patient collecting of data, ever since I had any views, or perceptions, or started collecting data. I have in the main been confined to papers of very small circulation, but not invariably. As I can not AT ALL count on the present hearers, if there are any present hearers, [not] having read a line of [my] writing I have, for the sake of clarity, to repeat things I have said before.
? Sometime the DATE at which I emitted my beliefs adds, or should add, a bit of weight or interest, to the fact shown, or the conviction presented. This is not in retrospect, but in prospect. If I had always been WRONG, as nine tenths of the people to whom you listen, I should have less cause to rake up old articles printed, or old statements made when I have been interviewed, now and again often by reporters who did not expect their copy to get past the editor's desk. New York Sun, April 21, 1939: "We don't think that much will be heard of it since many of the author's comments . . . aren't likely to get beyond the copy desks. "
Most of the lads kept their notes simply as curiosities . . . and so forth, referring to remarks by present speaker, my own conclusion being that an American newspaper can occasionally print something useful, but can very seldom do so TWICE. American editors and newspaper men having a perfectly well grounded terror of the power that rules by night, and strikes mercilessly at the pocket. I did, however, suggest, and it is in print in the files of several N. Y. papers, that there was on April 21, 1939 a group of people in America trying to get a war started, there were people doing so. Mr. Wallace, now Vice President, in a definition of the Democratic body of faith, started off with demanding action based on the will of the majority AFTER the people have had an opportunity to inform themselves of the real facts. Mebbe he has changed his view since 1938, when his book was printed? The real facts about British bank agents in America, Mr. Ikleheimer, etc. , during the past 80 years have NOT been very amply revealed to the citizens. The real facts regarding the connection of at least ONE of Kuhn Loeb's directors, with the British Intelligence Service have not, so far as I know, had the publicity they deserve.
One of the Roosevelt cabinet, in 1939, asked me where I thought the link was? I told him. Mr. Dies hadn't been quite as diligent in looking into the activities of British financial agents in the U. S. as some of his own committee would at that date seem to have wished. What opportunity has the people had to get information regarding gold purchase by
? Morgenthau's department? What facts of American history are widely available? Not only of past eight years' sins against the whole people, but of the record of the past 80 or 100 years? Munitioneers? Speculations in war material? Speculation in other materials made scarce by diversion of work FROM sane activities in production [? ] of food and clothing to war material.
WAR IS THE MAXIMUM SABOTAGE.
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. You spend millions a year on education. Young men go to colleges to get education. You spend MONEY and time to get education. I am telling you how to get some. I have knocked 'round Europe for 30 years, I have seen some fairly good dancing, I have heard some music, Mozart, Janequin. I have even been paid for writing down my opinions on music. As to dancing, Russian or whatever, I have never seen anything that could touch the movement of the tennin in the Hagormo dance that Tami Koume? did for me in his London studio 25 years ago. And as to music, a couple of bars of modern Japanese film play, after 25 years, hit me straight in the midriff. You couldn't mistake
? it for any one music in the wide and blinkin' world. And it was worth hearing.
You've got land, when you don't let it go to hell with erosion. You've got God knows what in the way of material wealth if you'd only learn how to USE it, how to get about from one part of the U. S. to another, and not starve the share croppers. Sanity in foreign relations means getting IN what you haven't got, you haven't got any Japanese classical plays or anything like 'em. Yeats merely wrote some plays more or less in the form of the Japanese non-libretti. The Noh is made up of words, dance movements and music, as well as great acting. Think in terms of the individual. What does the American individual get out of such and such IMPORTS?
#113 (1941) U. S. (68) AMERICA WAS PROMISES
I do what I can to keep an even tone of voice; now when I drop my voice, they turn on more current. As to the tone, there are times to speak mildly and there are times to speak with asperity, and as to American war makers ALL thought of America going to war is bunkumb, it is hogwash, bug wash, unmitigated b. b. b. [? ]; and I will tell you WHY it is hogwash, and why we should not give way to the gibes of pink tea females, and their soupheaded consorts.
There has even come up the term "UNamerican" used by asinine females and tinhorn employees of Jewsfelt to define ANY man, woman, or child who isn't ready to chuck away and destroy every last vestige of the American heritage.
They git that way reading Jew papers for 40 years. They git that way hearin' kike radio, and I propose to use the word KIKE regardless of
? race. Use it to cover honorary Jews, AND TO EXCEPT honest Jews when we find 'em.
Talk of America enterin' war is sheer DIRT. And it is ignorant dirt because it HIDES a hundred years of American history. It forges and falsifies the WHOLE aim and purpose of the American national foundation. The colonists went to the stem and rock bound to get away from dirt, and start fresh.
The Union of the 13 Colonies after the Revolution was founded to efface certain differences and, whatever one may think now of the meltin' pot theory, it has had this effect. The U. S. A. is NOT formed and organized INTERNALLY to participate in foreign quarrels. It can't be done without a lot of small dirty meanness to millions of American citizens and that means appeal to the smallest and dirtiest human instincts. It is babyish, it comes from the natural akussed tendency of two or three kids to pick on some other one. A meanness which their mammies and pappies try to wipe out if there is any decency in the family. Anybody who will draw back a minute and look at the way people pick on minorities, can see what I mean by this statement.
When things are scarce, or fearing fear, when people git scared and make a run on a bank or a grocery store, there is a scramble and, when things go slower, there is a conspiracy, to shut out someone or other. Starts as a joke: ends as a monopoly. The only old style relation of emigrants IN America to aliens was in their Indian wars. They are over. As to how much dirt was done to the Injuns, as to how far the Injuns wuz fractious, I refrain from pronouncin'.
The Injuns were an alien race. Our other troubles came FIRST from or trying to git out from UNDER the rump and boot of money lenders and stinkers in London, who thereafter tried to bust us. Look up the history of our relations to London during the Civil War. I am not lookin' backward for the sake of rousin' a rancour. I am telling you something
? about the way the U. S. are built up inside for PEACE, and NOT for takin' sides in European combat. Our Civil War was wangled. Read Christopher Hollis on the DEBTS of the South to the City of New York. Also read Overholser, on the DEBTS to BE CREATED by that war so [that] London kikes and American traitors could control the American currency.
It is not today a case of being DARED to fight part of Europe. It is a case of getting rid [of] the whole snot and dung of usury propaganda, which conduces to slaughter. The British who are in part a softhearted, in part a dirty and brutal race, have been had. They have shown docility in fighting for their owners and masters. And these owners and masters have gradually become Jewish; but are not yet wholly so. When we did something clean, Europe honored us. Europe even longed for a U. S. of Europe. Toward which Europe is now movin', offered now only by the usury centrals.
It is such UTTER buncomb, this talk of America being menaced by FINLAND. And it is such utter buncomb, this alliance with the Bolshevik government. Fruit of utter hysteria. Fruit also of readin' periodical crap for the past 50 or 80 years. And these ninnies, these pimps, and shysters who now have the gall to use the words American and Unamerican with NO reference to the fiber of the American nation. Most of 'em have never read anything but magazines.
The extent of the betrayal, whereof Roosevelt is part, whereof he is an excrescence: a protuberant nose is indicated by the fact that there are NO handy volumes of the writings of the men who MADE and kept up the American Union from 1750 till 1864.
What does Mrs. Jonas Keikenbaum mean by "American"? These chicken-headed fat mammies have never given a glance at our history. They are wholly unaware of the purpose for which we are existin'.
? Clever Kikes runnin' ALL our communication system. Simple-hearted Wallaces and Wickards, trying to do good to the farmer; without gittin' down to bedrock. OF course there are scandals about Army contracts, and for defense of the Volga and the Yangtze-Kiang River in China. Where the WHOLE system is founded on fraud, fraud will crop up in the details. Does any man of my age reflect on the theory prevalent when I was in college, namely that you GOT TO BE dishonest to git on in business? What caused that theory at the turn of the century?
It warn't there in 1776. I'll say it WAS NOT. When you git a minority of Americans, that is, a large enough minority, to KNOW why it is tommyrot to issue all national purchasing power as INTEREST payin' debt, the nation will lay off so doing, and thereafter men can live, and carry on business without being told to run crooked. Without young men being advised to run crooked. You got to define your terms, define your words, think what money will BUY (as that constitutes the value of money). All that is part of a nation's INTERNAL structure.
But in the immediate foreground, get it into your block that the U. S. A. has not been livin' for a thousand years NEXT door to ALIEN races, formed, compacted with relatively clear national or tribal frontiers. We are all intermixed, interwoven, livin' next door to each other. We do NOT need more land, we may need land improvement. If you go on destroyin' and urging others to DESTROY, you will need more production. Don't believe me if you don't want to, but do at least look into facts of American history. Why was the U. S. founded? How come we had any colonial architecture, any American craftsmanship?
What part did local colonies' groups of different European races take in the development, in the foundation of what made our life worth livin'?
You look into that, before you go shootin' Frenchmen at Dakar, or keepin' up dope sales in the Orient. You can't go to war without small meanness to SOME of the neighbors. You get het up over the sorrows of
? Mrs. Ikestein, the tailor's wife; you can't DO anything about it without doin' dirt to Giovanni the grocer, and the Hungarian livin' next door, or the grandson of R. Schuz's old friend who sells delicatessen.
#114 (1941) U. S. (50) ARISTOTLE AND ADAMS
Johnnie Adams, the first, the real father of his country, the man who picked General Washington, George, to lead the Colonial armies against a damned, stinking and cheating British Government, no better than Roosevelt and Morgenthau, or Churchill or any other set of enemies of the people and thieves of the public purse, was on the trail of Aristotle's studies of constitutions, constitutions of a lot of Greek states. In fact Johnnie wanted to know what really was the best form of government. And more than any other man, not excludin' Jim Madison and Thomas Jefferson, he got on the trail. And it is a damn pity that the only known copy of Harry Stotl's brochure on the Athenian constitution was then lying on an Egyptian dump heap. In fact the back side had been used as a farmer's account book, and if Mr. Didymus, farm bailif, hadn't akept his accounts on the back of the sheets, that admirable work might have been lost to mankind altogether, near the Egyptian town of Hermopolis, in the year '78/'79 A. D. in the time of Vespasian. Well, Mr. Adams would have enjoyed readin' it; but as he didn't, you can.
At any rate it might broaden the mind, especially it might inconvenience some of them 4,000 paid liars attached to the British legation or embassy in Washington, and graduated from that sink of hell and bog of iniquity, the London Pseudo-school of Pseudonomics.
For years economics professors have been lying, even going so far as to deprecate loans BY THE STATE, when the fleet that won the battle of Salamis was BUILT with money lent by the Athenian state to the ship builders, INSTEAD of morgagin' the whole nation to kikes, Biddies,
? swine, and enemies of the people as has been done in damn near every nation ever since the Stank of England was founded.
Well states have lent money, and the Pennsylvania Colony lent it. And the French frawgs are lendin' it. So the British fire on their late allies. And every damn possible thing is done to prevent the American in Utah or Montana from learning economics or history.
And our Constitution DOES give Congress the right to determine prices, though it is worded, "right to determine the value of money," which is the same thing. If you can determine HOW long a yard stick is, you can determine how may yards there are in a piece of linen. Well, ole Harry he noted some features in that model DEMocratic and Republican constitution, along with regulations fer not having balconies overhanging roads, and conduits overflowing into the roads; he mentions market controllers. Blame it on me and on Mussolini. Go on, blame it on us. Athens was a light amid ancient civilizations. There was superintendence of merchandise, to prevent the sale of spurious and adulterated articles. And there were also the corn wardens, or wheat wardens, to see that unground grain was in market at a FAIR PRICE, and next, that millers sell their barley meal at a price corresponding with that of barley, and the baker women at a price corresponding with that of wheat, weighing the amount fixed by the officials.
HENCE, the Catholic doctrine of the just price, which, roughly speakin', built the cathedrals, and assured European civilization from the time of St. Ambrose to the time of St. Antonio. Sure, blame it on Hitler! blame it on Mussolini. And don't, don't learn anything of WHY there was a French revolution. What abuses it set out to correct, what abuses it failed to correct, and hence all the flimflam.
Even Marx KNEW what the abuses were. In fact he is pretty good at diagnosis of evil. Waaal, then there is also a very pretty little passage in
? Harry Stotl's li'l book labeled Politics. And if you had read it Franklin Delano might not have got so far away with HIS politics.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Times when money is humbug
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
People go alterin' the currency, and somebody is played for a sucker.
In fact a classical education WOULD be useful if the universities didn't wrap it in cotton wool, and keep the stewdents from reading the more vital passages.
In fact a little Greek of the right kind or even readin' some with a crib IF you have the real curiosity would be useful. It would put you wise as to WHY Keynes and Guggleheim alias Gregory, and the scientific departments have managed to get Economics, so called, studied so COMpletely separate from any general education, classical education and general culture, so that they can LIE and not get caught out, and ball up the simple facts about money, and what it is. Without havin' the student ask inconvenient questions based on a knowledge of HISTORY, of the salient facts in our history or Greek history, or Demosthenes law cases, or Lincoln's fight for a national currency, or the Pennsylvania Colony's loans of PAPER money to the Colonists, to be paid back in ten lot, one tenth per year, as brought prosperity to the colony, and was the admiration of Europe, till the sons of bitches in London cracked down on it, and tried to sell the 13 colonies into slavery as the same bastids succeeded in doing after the great betrayal of 1863, Ikieheims, Vandergould, Sherman, playin' stinky with Rothschild, and betrayin' the American people.
Like Roosevelt is doin' with Morgenthau's able assistance, down underneath, down at BED rock, and quite apart from using war as top dressing to keep your minds OFF the American Treasury.
? When will American college students realize that almost ANY bit of real knowledge would keep 'em from being dead rabbits? Aristotle, Demosthenes, Mencius or Confucius, all antidotes to bein' suckers. And of course it would be a revolution, and INTERlexshul revolution if college students would be wondering what they spend four years in college NOT learning! ! Which would be both an adornment in the conversation and of use in their business. Business of LIVIN', I mean, cent per cent, 100% livin', gettin' something out of life by the process of puttin' their interest, mental interest, into it. Instead of being played for a sucker, by an ex bank tout and international swindler, a specialist in inflation and devaluation. And of course it is a mere matter of opinion, but it WAS Aristotle's opinion, expressed in the 5th book of his Politics, that the three qualities which supreme magistrates ought to possess are loyalty to established constitutions; secondly, great capacity for the duties of the office; and thirdly, virtue and justice.
In each the sort of justice suited. It seems a bit hard on Franklin Delano, but so it is in the Greek ably translated by Mr. Rackham, and verified by the present speaker.
#115 (1942) U. S. (27) TO CONSOLIDATE
If anyone takes the trouble to record and to examine the series of talks I have made over this radio it will be found that I have used three sorts of material: Historical facts; convictions of experienced men, based on fact; and the fruits of my own experience. The facts go back to the opening of a copper mine by Tching Tang in the year 1766 B. C. , they mostly antedate the fascist era and can not be considered as improvisations trumped up to meet present requirements. Neither can the beliefs of Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, and Lincoln be laughed off as mere Fascist propaganda. And even my own observations date largely before the opening of the present hostilities, as do those of my grandfather expressed in the U. S. Congress in 1878.
? I defend the particularly American, North American, United States heritage. If anybody can find anything hostile to the Constitution of the U. S. A. in these speeches, it would greatly interest me to know what.
It may be bizarre, eccentric, quaint, old-fashioned of me to refer to that document, but I wish more Americans would at least read it. It is not light and easy reading but it contains several points of interest, whereby some of our present officials could, if they but would, profit greatly.
Or, considering the jack in office, of less importance than the whole people and the whole nation, I should say the nation would greatly benefit if the literate citizens would attend to the document, both it its more important details and in its spirit. Even if Charles Beard does think it a barrier against real democracy. I would remind Prof. Beard that Adams studied republics. Even Beard now knows less of the Constitution than did John Adams and Madison. The treasure of a state is its equity. That is to say, its capacity to give every man a square deal. Teddy used to say square deal. There is no sane economics, without a sane ethic at its base.
And certain kinds of honesty have been known for 5000 years. Certain kinds of dishonesty are equally well recorded in history; and the capacity, anybody's capacity, for fooling all men ALL the time is, as Lincoln remarked, limited.
A considerable force, in some cases a force of inertia, has been espoused to my views, to my perceptions, to my patient collecting of data, ever since I had any views, or perceptions, or started collecting data. I have in the main been confined to papers of very small circulation, but not invariably. As I can not AT ALL count on the present hearers, if there are any present hearers, [not] having read a line of [my] writing I have, for the sake of clarity, to repeat things I have said before.
? Sometime the DATE at which I emitted my beliefs adds, or should add, a bit of weight or interest, to the fact shown, or the conviction presented. This is not in retrospect, but in prospect. If I had always been WRONG, as nine tenths of the people to whom you listen, I should have less cause to rake up old articles printed, or old statements made when I have been interviewed, now and again often by reporters who did not expect their copy to get past the editor's desk. New York Sun, April 21, 1939: "We don't think that much will be heard of it since many of the author's comments . . . aren't likely to get beyond the copy desks. "
Most of the lads kept their notes simply as curiosities . . . and so forth, referring to remarks by present speaker, my own conclusion being that an American newspaper can occasionally print something useful, but can very seldom do so TWICE. American editors and newspaper men having a perfectly well grounded terror of the power that rules by night, and strikes mercilessly at the pocket. I did, however, suggest, and it is in print in the files of several N. Y. papers, that there was on April 21, 1939 a group of people in America trying to get a war started, there were people doing so. Mr. Wallace, now Vice President, in a definition of the Democratic body of faith, started off with demanding action based on the will of the majority AFTER the people have had an opportunity to inform themselves of the real facts. Mebbe he has changed his view since 1938, when his book was printed? The real facts about British bank agents in America, Mr. Ikleheimer, etc. , during the past 80 years have NOT been very amply revealed to the citizens. The real facts regarding the connection of at least ONE of Kuhn Loeb's directors, with the British Intelligence Service have not, so far as I know, had the publicity they deserve.
One of the Roosevelt cabinet, in 1939, asked me where I thought the link was? I told him. Mr. Dies hadn't been quite as diligent in looking into the activities of British financial agents in the U. S. as some of his own committee would at that date seem to have wished. What opportunity has the people had to get information regarding gold purchase by
? Morgenthau's department? What facts of American history are widely available? Not only of past eight years' sins against the whole people, but of the record of the past 80 or 100 years? Munitioneers? Speculations in war material? Speculation in other materials made scarce by diversion of work FROM sane activities in production [? ] of food and clothing to war material.
WAR IS THE MAXIMUM SABOTAGE.
