THE TWO WORLDS
Mayer, Milton
THE TWO WORLDS /—Get Homing, Pigeon by MILTON MAYER This is the first of a series of articles by Mr. Mayer based on his recently concluded year and a half of living, learning, and...
...We will— we must—continue to be apathetic as long as we can think of no more glorious a War Aim than to hold what we have...
...We wiped our wet little noses on our sleeves and kept on going...
...Excess and want side by side...
...He gave me my Green Stamps, and we kept on going...
...Yes," I said...
...Their governments aren't my government...
...So it was in liberty-loving Germany, where Herr Globke, the official commentator of the Nuremberg Laws is Chancellor Adenauer's State Secretary, and in liberty-loving Switzerland, where women are not allowed to vote, and in liberty-loving Russia, where they're compelled to...
...The two worlds...
...Ah, liberty," said my host...
...His articles have appeared in Peace News, Fellowship, Life, Harper's, Commonweal, the Saturday Evening Post, and many other publications in this country "TTTHAT YO U SAY/' said my Commu •V nist host, "is certainly true: both worlds talk peace and both are armed to the teeth for war...
...Now whoever has read the Great Books from Plato to Marx—and who, in the land of labor-saving machinery, has not had time to?—knows that it was not Marx but Plato who said, "Every city is two cities—a city of the rich and a city of the poor...
...Bill had come loping over to tell me and I had called My Nearest FBI Office and My Nearest FBI Office said oh, no, there hadn't been any one inquiring about me...
...Do the natives think they're going to win...
...But we Communists have moral standards, and we say that there is good and bad food for the mind, just as there is for the body, and we do not allow bad food for the mind to be circulated any more than you allow bad food for the body to be circulated...
...Poverty in the midst of plenty...
...There are a dozen civilian jobs waiting for everyone here, and everyone knows it...
...You read Marx there...
...When we came into Carmel, California, where we live, the old Carmel Hill was gone...
...he said...
...We rich might win, but the odds are awful against us...
...If you read the words, "East Germany," you see a Communist dictatorship and heaven only knows what all else unpleasant, but if / read them I see a dark slab of marble in the floor of the Thomas Church in Leipzig on an August afternoon...
...That's true," I said, "but everything else...
...If that is true in the West, then there could be a great difference in the effectiveness of our peace propaganda and yours...
...Bill gave the man the back of his hand and said, "Like the back of my hand...
...And what would that be...
...Ain't it worth nothin...
...Who will win...
...We kept on going...
...On the slab are three words: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH...
...That's different...
...Who will win...
...It is a serviceable War Aim only against invasion...
...I said...
...We believe that dialectically, and we have proof of it historically...
...In the West every kind of magazine and paper, all of them saying different things...
...So it was, too, in Prague, the Golden City, and in Warsaw, where, when I asked, "But how did the ghetto come to be before the Nazis destroyed it...
...The second in the series, entitled "Who Fights for Freedom...
...What bodes fore is his sharp recollection that the old homeland was in pretty bad shape when he went away and, in his absence, and because of his absence, must have got worse...
...And we must produce armaments because of the world situation...
...We stopped at the pos toff ice and there was a letter for us...
...East and West Berlin...
...We mean to hold what we have," said Winston Churchill twenty years ago...
...That's enough to keep 1,400 Laotian Communists, and no fractions, in rice for a year...
...My host was no chump, and neither was I. "You talk peace in your country, too...
...The decisive battlefronts are—always and in every war—at home...
...The mortal test will be disarmament: Will we then want our taxes reduced—or raised to pour socialistic investment into the city of the poor...
...Oh, no," said the man with the badge, and left...
...I've read about it," I said...
...In Madison the fellow told us it would cost $42,000 to send the University of Wisconsin Band—not the Team, the Band—to the Rose Bowl...
...he said...
...Excuse me," he said hastily, "but I want to say something about peace propaganda in the socialist and capitalist worlds...
...But also unforbidden by you liberty-loving capitalists are the magazines and papers of pornography and violence, and you may have noticed that these sell more than any others in the West station kiosks...
...We rich might win, but the odds are awful against us...
...in this year-and-a-half three actual peace men have been elected to public office, the first in our modern history: Congressmen Byron Johnson of Colorado, William Meyer of Vermont, and Robert Kastenmeier of Wisconsin...
...There are shafts of sunlight and someone is playing Bach on the organ on which Bach once played Bach...
...This isn't tiny and tidy Denmark that runs like a toy...
...But it wasn't...
...Code 611-621...
...True," said my host, "so we are equal there...
...he said, "Oh, yes," I said, and I showed him a letter from home, the stamp cancelled with the words, "Pray for Peace...
...But," he continued, "our Marxist-Leninist doctrine teaches us that capitalist production without the possibility of colonial exploitation requires a war economy to prevent the shutdown of industry...
...It was the day after the 1948 Presidential election and I was coming down in the elevator of a hotel, and a fat lady in a fur coat said to the elevator man, "But everybody in the hotel voted for Dewey...
...Coming into Fernley, Nevada, we saw a sign on a rock...
...The same percentage as the non-natives," he said...
...This is the War Aim of the rich...
...I said...
...To come back home to it from the city of the poor which is eastern Europe, and southern Europe, and Asia and Africa, is to be confronted by the vision of two children playing, and one of them says, "Now 111 be the rich man and you'll be the poor man and we'll live next door and be friends...
...It isn't that he believes what they say in the Communist countries...
...We didn't repent or get lit...
...What it does it does because I tell it to—or fail to tell it not to...
...It had been bulldozed away, one hundred sixty acres of perfect pine, to make room for a new turnaround into Pebble Beach, where we don't live...
...Naw," said the man...
...We can not produce all the civilian goods our people need...
...We thought it might be the European edition of the New York Times, which calls the Hungarian uprising of 1956 (which put the Communist Imre Nagy in power) "an anti-Communist uprising...
...And these two cities are always at war...
...Who didn't...
...No," I said, "that we can not deny...
...And they all say different things," said my host, "providing that they all say the same thing about capitalism...
...said the fat lady...
...The man wanted to know what Bill knew about me...
...One (this one, at least) comes back to his own, his native land with foreboding...
...In Reno I asked the gas station man what percentage of the natives of Reno played the games...
...You have ridden the 'L* train between and abroad—THE EDITORS...
...It began: "This letter is to advise you that the Postal Service has received foreign mail addressed to you consisting of certain publications which contain political propaganda as defined by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (22 U.S...
...In a midwestern town I advocated recognition of China and the local woman's Club applauded...
...The country is ahead of the politicians—running away from them— and the Republicans are ahead of the Democrats...
...The odds are awful against us...
...was what my Communist host asked me...
...A regular contributor to this magazine, Mr...
...We put the bottle in the suitcase and kept on going...
...Against attrition it is useless, and the city of the poor is staging a war of attrition...
...But to come back home, back to the Big PX, is to come back to responsibility, and to have to face or dodge it...
...Only the magazines and newspapers that say something different about capitalism are forbidden...
...On the next rock but one was a sign that said: "Get Lit at the Lighthouse Bar...
...Paying people for not producing...
...We read anything we want to," I said...
...Ninety," said the man...
...My country is the city of the rich...
...said I. "We will," he said...
...Do they make people pray for peace...
...And I think that the people are not fooled either in your countries or in ours...
...We had a bowl of rice and kept on going...
...I didn't see Spain or Hungary or Finland or Poland...
...will appear in the March issue of The Progressive...
...said my host...
...So it was in Paris, the City of Love, where Algerians are frisked on the street and swept into the long French salad-baskets to be taken to the station and put to the test by torture...
...I said...
...Mayer is a widely known and deeply controversial writer and lecturer...
...Mayer based on his recently concluded year and a half of living, learning, and lecturing on both sides of the curtain in Europe...
...THE TWO WORLDS /—Get Homing, Pigeon by MILTON MAYER This is the first of a series of articles by Mr...
...But these countries aren't my country...
...Then there's the afterglow of far places, where one sees always the sunny side...
...You don't say," said the man...
...Not as much," said Bill, "as he knows about himself, and he's just baked a cake...
...And we are so sunk in profligacy that, like Machiavelli's fat lion against the lean wolf, we want only to be let alone...
...We readdressed the letter to Big Brother, Moscow, and dropped it in the slot and kept on going...
...Nothin'," said the man...
...nor has he accepted the picture of desperate decadence painted by the West European press, which panders to the anti-Americanism of its readers...
...It said: "Repent or Perish...
...said my host...
...Depression...
...A month later we were just off the boat, in Quebec, after a year-and-a In Chicago we saw red Kleenex for the first time, especially designed for hunters...
...And of course," my host went on, "there is war between them...
...Waste as the cornerstone of the market and fashion as the key to obsolescence...
...In the socialist world we are poor countries whose people hunger for necessities...
...What do you think...
...War between capitalism and socialism," my host went on, "no matter how it is fought, hot or cold...
...To live in beauty, and to live in it without responsibility for the unbeautiful, without even the necessity to see the unbeautiful, is to live (as the Germans used to say) like God in France...
...In the East stations only the deadly dull magazines and papers, all of them saying the same thing...
...I nodded...
...So...
...In small print it said that the red ran when wet...
...Pressure to buy luxuries instead of necessities...
...Marx," I said, "Karl, not Hart Schaffner...
...Peace, too, is busting out all over...
...We are just beginning to fight on two of them, the battlefronts of race and housing, and on these two fronts our advance in the past year-and-a-half has been magnificent...
...That we can not deny...
...Surplus production and no colonies to force it on...
...I think that these words are just American government propaganda to make Americans believe that their government wants peace, and I think that the peace propaganda in your countries is the same thing...
...Yes," I said...
...And in the East," I said, "only the magazines and papers that say something different about Communism...
...the Pole replies, "Oh, they preferred to live together," and we went on to see the meticulous reconstruction of the city's lovely landmarks...
...Oh, no," said my host, "in the West no Communist magazines or papers...
...We closed our eyes and kept on going...
...This is my country and my government, and I am its highest office-holder, with the sovereign title of Citizen...
...Ill take you in the back door and introduce you to him...
...But in ours I can say this openly, and here...
...The doors of the church are open...
...Where...
...And there was our little home...
...You don't say," I said...
...The people in the basement," said the elevator man, "and, lady, you got no-o-o idea how big the basement is in this hotel...
...We are half a century late getting started on the decisive battlefronts...
...I think not," I said, "although millions of Americans pray for peace...
...In Dubuque I said, "How much on the bottle...
...Why," said I, "that's the same as the percentage of aircraft production for military purposes...
...Hot or cold," I said...
...But there is not one worker or soldier—not one—who believes that he would be unemployed in case of disarmament...
...Are these words effective...
...And seen the magazines and newspapers in the station kiosks...
...Not everybody, lady," said the elevator man...
...That's liberty...
...Ah, who...
...We will win because of the inherent contradictions of capitalism...
...They know they're not," he said, "but they think they are...
...And right next door to our little home was the little home of Bill Brandon...
...And we believe that in America and the other capitalist countries workers and soldiers and even farmers—and of course investors and owners—believe that their jobs or profits might be threatened by disarmament...
...I saw what my hosts, like good hosts everywhere, wanted me to see because they knew that that was what I wanted to see...
...One day—before we left for Europe—a man came to Bill Brandon's house and showed him an FBI badge and asked him if he knew me...
Vol. 24 • February 1960 • No. 2
