WHAT CAN WE DO?'
Mayer, Milton
Of Men and of Angels What Can We Do? By MILTON MAYER EVERYWHERE I go—and I go everywhere—people ask me, "What can we do?" I am not flattered; I know what it means. I know that they ask everyone;...
...I didn't know, until I hit Warsaw, Uniontown, and New York, how badly the people want peace...
...I tell them to remember the Spanish-American War and America's hijacking of Pearl Harbor...
...Frankly, you can forget about it...
...In Uniontown, in the ninth month of the short-week, part-work, no-week, no-work coal strike, the plate ran over...
...On the next page, the Chicago Tribune reports that the Board of Overseers of Harvard University are all card-holding Communists and that President Conant of Harv-vard is Molotov's maiden aunt...
...And we won't stop Communism that way, either, and we know it even while we do it, and this terrifies us too...
...In our nameless, useless terror, we can only sanction anything that anyone does in the name of tracking down spies...
...Everywhere the people said, "What can we do...
...At The University of California, almost three-fourths of the faculty have been terrified into signing the loyalty oath that Mussolini invented and Truman imported...
...McMahon might be one of them...
...When he says America is the greatest country in the world, I think he's sincere...
...I tell them to pray...
...What can we do about that...
...3,000) to New York City (pop...
...Nameless, useless terror...
...In his terror, Czar Nicholas II of Russia stalked Communists...
...What do we mean when we say, "What can we do...
...The nickels, dimes, unos, fins, and sawbucks piled up in the plate like mashed potatoes...
...I once heard a holy man named Muste say in a shaking voice, "If I can't love Hitler, I can't love at all...
...I think the answer here is God—I know it is—but I don't know how to make people believe in God and so be unafraid...
...Frankly...
...Neither can I. "What can we do...
...The offering was taken, for the work of peace, and they shelled out as you never saw people shell out in your life...
...but certainly not otherwise, If we can be unterrified, then...
...I don't know," I say, "but the Russians proposed just that a year ago and Truman and Acheson rejected it...
...Their sum total effect on us is to add to our nameless, useless terror...
...I tell them to remember the French seizure of the Saar a week ago, with its coal and its German-speaking population, I tell them to remember Hitler's first great victory, the Saar plebiscite of 1935...
...I preached peace, nothing but plain, straight peace...
...They think we have to blow up the world because we are Americans...
...Will it do any good...
...McMahon...
...Was it...
...I tell them to pray for the peace that passeth understanding and is theirs, and mine, for the asking...
...You can support Sen...
...are all terrified...
...May*not...
...First, "What can we do to change the course of history...
...I try to tell them...
...They don't even want to kill...
...I think Sen...
...I tell them to remember the leveling of Dresden in the last week of the Second World War...
...The money was going to the American Friends Service Committee, and the people knew that that meant peace...
...Barney Baruch...
...Just how it meant peace they didn't know, for sure, but they knew that it meant peace somewhere, for some tattered and torn creature, some American, some German, some Russian...
...If we can be unterrified, we can love Stalin...
...Christ came to fulfill the Old Law," said A. J. So I tried to love Hitler...
...They don't want to die...
...It was the dead of winter, income tax time, the town was busted, and you should have seen the plate...
...What they do is simply terrify us, because we who hear them can not do anything about making or not making the hydrogen bomb...
...He is fascinated by this discovery...
...So do we all...
...He thinks maybe non-atomic disarmament plus atomic disarmament is the answer...
...He stalked them good—we have a long way to go yet—but he didn't succeed in stopping Communism...
...I'm just trying to be a Jew...
...They want peace...
...I think he will lose the next 10 postmasterships in Connecticut...
...Peace," I said...
...He has discovered that the world was knocked out in the last war, prior to Hiroshima, without atomic bombs...
...Frankly...
...What about atomic energy control...
...So then I tell them to remember...
...afraid not so much of being destroyed as of having nothing more to believe in...
...Frankly...
...But of this I'm sure—he won't respond to our hate...
...Because I am trying to be a Christian," said A. J. "Oh, if that's all," I said, "that lets me out...
...He was one of the thousand, so of course there were only 999...
...But they want the peace of this world, too, the peace that does not pass understanding, and they can't understand why they can't get it...
...McCarthy of Wisconsin is offering to name 85 or 51 (or any multiple of either) employees of the State Department, former employees of the State Department, or persons who once spat in the State Department spittoon who are spies...
...God works in wondrous ways...
...Write him a letter...
...Terror...
...The terrified man doesn't know when the next man, in his terror, will strike at him...
...We believe in the work of our hands, and when we see it destroying us we are afraid...
...Why...
...What can we do to get the strength to be unterrified, in Warsaw, Uniontown, and New York City, and in Washington, where the most terrified man of all, Secretary of Defense Johnson, without even a pulpit to conceal his knees, says, "We'll lick hell out of Joe Stalin...
...I tell them to remember the high cost of purchasing Russia's unprovoked attack on Japan in the last days of the Second World War...
...When President Truman says his politics are based on the Sermon on the Mount and then says, 'I won't lead a mission to Moscow as long as I'm President, I think he's insincere about the Sermon on the Mount...
...Their man Dulles called it 'another blast on the Soviet propaganda trumpet...
...Six church suppers on six successive nights—chicken pot pie, mashed potatoes, green peas, more mashed potatoes, lots of gravy ("Have some more gravy, Rev...
...Frankly...
...You can't do anything about Truman and Acheson...
...You can repeal the Occidental Exclusion Law known as the Displaced Persons Act and tell the world's homeless that here is their home...
...If we are unterrified, we will know that we are men before we are Americans, children of God before we are Americans, and our brother's keeper before we are Americans...
...It says, in a Book, that we can lift up our eyes to the hills, whence cometh our strength...
...Mc-Mahon's proposal to cut down our armaments by 10 billion a year— but if 10 billion, why not 15...
...Maybe what we can do is love Stalin, without necessarily liking him...
...I don't know...
...Probably...
...I think not...
...I said...
...And since Truman likes to make speeches about the Sermon on the Mount and Acheson likes to make speeches about the Gospel according to Matthew, you can pray to God to help them...
...Will it work...
...But that's the Fourth World War...
...It seems to me that if we can do anything about changing the course of history, we have to begin by becoming unterrified...
...they ask each other, and they ask me...
...I certainly never got to like him...
...Tell him to start a bipartisan foreign policy with Sen...
...I tell them to remember Nagasaki...
...I stand behind the pulpit, in Warsaw, Un-iontown, and New York City, so they can't see my knees shaking...
...I tell them to remember the Oriental Exclusion Laws of half a century ago and the Japanese people's starvation for arable land...
...McMahon will be chewed to pieces...
...something terrific) and including Uniontown, Pa., a coal town owned lock, stock, and hopper by the heirs, assignees, legatees, trustees, and executors of the late Henry Clay Frick, may he rest in more peace than we do...
...They know we can't win, but they're terrified by nameless, useless terror...
...not Hiroshima, but Nagasaki...
...I am just back from a series of one-night stands in which I shot my cuffs at people in half a dozen cities, all the way from Warsaw, N. Y. (pop...
...And guess who has discovered it is no good...
...In our terror, we stalk Communists...
...If anybody in the house knows where to get it cheaoer...
...But do it anyway...
...They understand that, most of them better than I do...
...even if we can't change the course of history there are still things we can do...
...Frankly, I think not...
...On the next page, Judy Coplon is convicted of being a spy, and Sen...
...I don't know...
...Who...
...On the next page a man called Kravchenko tells the Un-American Activities Committee that the 1,000 employees of the Soviet Purchasing Commission stationed here during the war were all spies...
...But President Truman and Secretary Acheson say it's unrealistic...
...In today's paper we read that four atomic physicists said over The University of Chicago Round Table that the hydrogen bomb will blce us all away...
...The people who ask me, "What can we do...
...I sit in my basement at home all the time and write that the people ought to want peace, but I didn't know how badly they want it...
...Write them and tell them you've had enough of their realism...
...I'm on...
...II "I'll tell you," I say, "I'll tell you what you can do now to prevent the Fourth World War, 50 years from now...
...And second, "What can we do if we can't change the course of history...
...And they dug down into their pants, and the plate ran over...
...What can we do to get the still greater strength to love Stalin...
...We are all afraid because we don't really believe in the possibility of the world's destruction any more than we really believe in the possibility of its creation...
...If the Russians were sincere, Truman and Acheson certainly should have taken them up on it...
...I think we mean two things...
...We in Warsaw, N. Y., Union-town, New York City can't do anything about spies except be terrified...
...I don't say I succeeded...
...and if 15, why not the whole 20?—and give the 10 billion to everyone who needs it, including Russians...
...If it was, Truman and Acheson should have taken the Russians up on it, and then, when the Russians welched, we could blow a blast on our propaganda trumpet...
...I think...
...You can tell the French to get out of the Saar...
...I tell them to remember Wood-row Wilson's assertion that peacetime conscription is the root evil of Prussianism...
...I tell them to remember the 12 million unemployed in Germany in the winter of 1932...
...Peace...
...I don't know myself, and I try to tell them...
...Are the Russians sincere...
...If we can be unterrified, there may be something we can do to change the course of history...
...They don't want Formosa or China or the American Zone of Germany or the American Zone of Austria or the American Zone of Lower Slobovia—or the American Zone of Russia...
...But I often thought, as I tried, that maybe I could love him without liking him...
...They don't want to beat Stalin or win the cold war or stop communism or conquer the world...
...Mayer"), ice cream, and Nabiscos, all prepared by loving hands and eaten by lovely people, and after supper they all said, "What can we do...
...The only Russian I ever knew was sincere part of the time and insincere part of the time...
...I don't know...
...They need God's help...
...Taft refused to vote for the North Atlantic Pact...
...But—" "But what...
...What can we do about Truman and Acheson...
...They want us not to make it—their motive is good—but they think they can terrify us into not making it...
...I tell them to remember Woodrow Wilson's dream of open covenants openly arrived at...
...Truman and Acheson—remember when we used to tell them what to do?—won't yield on the Baruch Plan, and Russia won't accept it...
...Maybe he won't respond, I'm not sure...
...So am I. So is President Truman...
...We can communicate this unterrifying bit of intelligence to one another, and to our Congressmen and to Truman and Acheson and save them from their terror...
...Is it...
...they say, and they mean it...
...Then we turn to the next page...
...You can pray for them...
...I'm under the Old Law, you know...
Vol. 14 • April 1950 • No. 4
