MY SEARCH FOR SECURITY
Davis, Garry
My Search For Security By GARRY DAVIS DON'T ever write anything for publication, Garry," my best friends have warned me. "Your field is action. Every time you try to explain what you're doing you...
...17, 1948, I received from the French clerk a refus de sejour, meaning, "Please leave France...
...I was willing to give up my homeland as long as nationality had its berth there because the past twft wars proved pretty conclusively tlwt nationality couldn't protect me, mY family or friends, or, in fact, any-one...
...I was greatly intrigued...
...If I were completely honest, I would see that my present position as a national citizen isn't tenable...
...I was amazed to find I had no answers— no answers at all, so I kept silent...
...This story of mine begins in show business, on Broadway...
...Zickler wrote me, and I sent him a card...
...He announced through his agency that he was officially a world citizen direct from the source (me) and wanted to know if any other Germans wanted to be world citizens, too...
...Only...
...I followed like the rest of the lambs to the slaughter...
...An ideal by definition is greater than any organization, and I felt that to join an organization was in fact a denial of that ideal...
...So, when the drums started rolling in 1941 and the parades started forming, I didn't question the Tightness of the cause, or ask if there were any alternatives...
...And it would have...
...My education had presented me with no alternative to settling disputes with our neighbors across the sea other than "glorious battle for home and country...
...How about your responsibility to the community...
...This independence from national citizenship and "self-styled" world status was brought to the attention of many Europeans by a curious set of circumstances which led, in September 1948, to my camping on the steps of the restaurant of the Palais de Chaillot wherein the august United Nations was deliberating current issues...
...I figure that others feel pretty much the same about their homelands, including my fellow comic in Pinsk...
...The second of Davis' two articles, in which he defines the present philosophy of his organization and discusses his own plans for the future, will appear in The Progressive next month...
...I understand a German has to have eight papers for daily existence—and I didn't have any...
...Though it was apparent that world citizenship had touched a responsive chord in Europe and especially in Germany, I felt I was simply one among millions who was searching to fill that shell with some solid content...
...I turned them all down...
...The Frenchman is not perturbed when there is a Cabinet crisis...
...But the paper battle here was immeasurably more difficult...
...Crack-pot" was frequently used...
...Some, however, recognized that my search was honest and responded with a kindly word of encouragement...
...When I say, no, I renounced it, I receive incredulous or hurt looks...
...Laughter was my cover for ignorance, wise-cracks my confession of emptiness...
...Your ideas aren't well enough formulated yet, and, even if they were, you don't have the technical skill to write them down clearly...
...of U.S...
...I was told that Communists were violent people, bent on destruction...
...If it were forms of violence that were in competition, it was a cinch, it seemed to me, that my own country had Russia beat by a mile...
...An international flag-pole sitter," one editorialist said...
...They had no police of theifl own to do it, of course...
...What are your particular contributions to peace and general happiness...
...III This reasoning, however illogical or impractical, led me on a beautiful May day in 1948 to the U. S. Embassy in Paris...
...My absence for almost two years has sharpened my appreciation...
...I started asking myself questions which at that moment had no answers: "Where are you going...
...Suddenly, after that summer at Tamiment, nothing seemed secure any more, neither my personal life, nor my country's...
...This made it difficult, often impossible...
...Its very existence denied humanity and One World...
...There I took the oath of renunciation of nationality before Agnes Schneider, one of the numerous consuls...
...I confess I had no answer for her official frustration...
...Just when it seemed there never would be another job for me, three jobs opened up at once—three of the best offers I ever had...
...That summer I worked in the Catskill summer resort, "Tamiment," as a straight man to Joey Fay, the celebrated comedian, but when fall came there wasn't a job in sight...
...I couldn't help but think that the next world try at destruction might prove that we were so clever in this field that we had out-smarted ourselves right off the green earth...
...Garry," he had said in a tone of finality, "The Progressive definitely wants to carry your own story of what you're up to here in the way of a program of ideas and action...
...national armies...
...This body did not represent humanity or progress, but the very suffocating bureaucracy and military rottenness from which I had divorced myself...
...I acted at this moment more out of desperation than teasofl^MI tending that I had the m6nopoly^|| world citizenship...
...The result was that I left the police station without papers—perhaps the only man in France official' ly recognized without them...
...It must be remembered that at that moment the world had a great deal of faith in the UN's peacemaking powers...
...or perhaps in some producer's office assuring him I know I can do that part...
...There seemed to be too much discord and misery in the world, and knowing this prevented me from being happy in that field I loved best...
...My friends and family in New York will testify that quite suddenly I seemed to awaken from a sound sleep and was so bewildered by the strange sights around me that I was speechless...
...One was with the Beatrice Lillie show, /n-side U.S.A...
...I believe now that I was simply a symbol of a generally prevailing feeling of insecurity and discontent, especially among young people...
...I remember one marvelous story...
...What is your real purpose...
...Logical reason: no papers...
...The nation-state with full sovereignty is obviously rotten and obsolete, and produces only war and misery...
...Frankly, I didn't know what Communism was, and the only Russian I knew was the headwaiter at the Russian Tea Room who had always seemed like a pretty nice guy...
...One simply hands over a paper—the paper takes the place of the man...
...place he had a legal right to live...
...Davis traveled as a "stateless person," with an American immigration visa, since he had voluntarily surrendered his passport and citizenship when he launched his movement for world citizenship...
...The average European, I have found, feels more or less like a pawn, or a leaf batted about by a high wind...
...After six days at my "home" oar the restaurant steps, the UN Sec*: retariat became visibly annoyed at his "pest" and called the French: Ministry of Interior to have me re...
...The good clerk at the Prefecture of Police in Paris didn't quite know what to do with the rubber stamp she had in her hand, since I had no paper upon which she could exercise her authority...
...But the experience of Stefan Zick-ler, a German editor of the DENA News Agency in Germany, cheered me somewhat...
...On Sept...
...IV When I arrived on the steps of the Palais de Chaillot at 6 a.m., Sept...
...Feeling this over-all fellowship with all men, in spite of the paper they read, or the church they go to, or the color their skin is, or the extent of their wealth, I made a statement that my release from national limitations was a step higher, and I considered myself a world citizen...
...I started a personal search for security, not quite knowing what security was...
...Why have I been living in Europe, where I have acquired the designation of World Citizen Number One...
...Capitalism, I confess, was just as vague a word as Communism...
...When the bureaucracy of government enters minute-by-minute existence, with food coupons, identity cards, visas, etc., humanity has a tough time showing through...
...This pi perhaps the place to say how much I love the United States...
...V I must say that the French authorities were also a little annoyed at having to "expel" me from what they considered their own territory at the request of the UN Secretariat and having to offer me "out of kindness" an identity card, after expelling me from France...
...And what community?'' "Aren't you doing a lot of superficial and frivolous things which are destroying your own creative possibilities...
...Weeks went by...
...This went against the grain of every governmental clerk in France...
...I had an answer for anything...
...I received thousands of letters from both Germany and France urging me to continue and declaring their support or desire to become world citizens...
...He sympathized personally, he said, but orders were orders...
...Earth men were Terrians, in astounding stories by H. G. Wells and Charles Fort...
...In September, 1947, I chanced upon a pamphlet put out by the United World Federalists...
...Alas, all this is true, and I find through bitter experience that, more often than not, my written or spoken words confuse rather than clarify...
...At the time, however, I didn't know exactly what had happened...
...from the two billion people outsifl the U. S., but for a long time didijjf know quite what to do about it...
...Something that had been deep inside for a long, long time slowly rose to the surface of my consciousness...
...II But in 1947 it was different...
...I had been a most exuberant extrovert...
...Every time you try to explain what you're doing you destroy its meaning...
...I felt I didn't have the right...
...This meant a lot, for I wasn't feeling too steady under the relentless stream of adverse comment...
...And amazingly enough, even now when I ask people what either means, nine times out of ten eyes get inflamed, anger mounts, vitriol pours forth, and before I have time to ask the question a second time, thinking that maybe I was misunderstood, reason is left behind in a great cloud of fear, prejudice, and hate—and ignorance...
...That io-cludes all men, naturally...
...What moved me away from the footlights of Broadway to play a part in a great historical drama on the world stage...
...This time, we were being told, Russia and Communism were the enemy...
...he regards it as natural and unavoidable...
...I should have held to my argument that I have no technical training, no real education, possibly no concrete ideas...
...As a member of the single world community, I must renounce this division and declare myself a partner with all men, regardless of minor differences...
...Shortly after completing this first of a series of two articles for The Progressive, Davis sailed for home and was scheduled to reach New York late this month...
...or Russian commandos to' remove a world citizen from the only...
...That's why I should have been firm when Morris H. Rubin, Editor of The Progressive, became persistent that day in the living room of the Quaker quarters in Paris...
...Thus even the title "world citizen" was a trifle limiting...
...It was not a fitting tribute to the millions who died in World War II nor the millions still living in misery and unhappiness...
...I had to sacrifice one or the other for the moment...
...During those three months, I continued my search quietly, reading and studying...
...This is accentuated by the two giants in the world who seem too hypnotized by each other to care what happens to the almost two billion human beings outside their borders...
...I wrote back to Zickler that he was my official representative in Germany, and to start registering world citizens...
...Weren't they needed for world government, too...
...He wrote me asking for instructions...
...But I didn't...
...The picture of a single non-violent world citizen, defying the armed might of the world, seemed an appealing image, especially among those oppressed most heavily by this might...
...Then, following national law rigidly, I would arrive at the only place I could live legally, the international territory of the United Nations, where, of course, there was no law, since that body was not sovereign...
...17, just after being removed by a van of policemen, that I had neither requested the police van nor the police, and to offer me a "kindness" after removing me by force seemed rather a tongue-in-cheek action...
...I was given three weeks, until Sept...
...He was literally overwhelmed with requests...
...Ter-rian" at least would imply the spatial universe, whereas world citizen was more or less an inward look...
...I have been hard put since this act to explain that it was not out of dislike for my homeland that I did it, but dislike of what nationalism was doing to my homeland...
...Recently I applied for the same permission, at the same Headquarters, and, with French identity papers all in order, I was again refused...
...The 1947 season was hardly a great success for me...
...I read Cord Meyer's book, Peace and Anarchy, and thereafter started working in west side New York for the UWF...
...I remembered all the destruction I had caused in a B-17 blitzing over Germany...
...Parties, night clubs, and idle chatter occupied most of my time...
...In my homeland, I was ridiculed for the most part...
...Besides, I felt I had done nothing to warrant this treatment...
...Many of my fellow-countrymen thought this a trifle presumptuous and usually referred to me in their writings as "the self-styled world citizen...
...moved...
...Another reason behind this declaration which I have never advanced till now is my youthful indoctrination to science-fiction...
...Another symptom of the general disgust with political exploitation in France is the large number of anarchists...
...As international territory, it was my birthright and not that of the so-called United Nations...
...The war didn't seem to have moved us any notches ahead...
...I asked a lot of questions...
...I should have told him to examine what I was doing, and write his own article...
...Zickler had to quit his job and open an office to handle the flood of correspondence...
...It seemed that she either had to satisfy herself that I was a bit unbalanced or resign her job, since her job was to protect American citizens...
...This was somewhat embarrassing, for I had neither traveling papers nor papers for another country...
...This has led to a psychosis of personal unworthiness and a depreciation of human values and personality...
...By the very fact that I'm an American citizen, I not only automatically cut myself off from my fellow men in other countries, but I support the very institution which opposes my ideal...
...I imagine they all breathed a secret sigh of relief when I refused this bounty, stating that governments are based on law made by the people and when they took it into their own hands to do things "out of kindness" they could do the same things out of hate...
...I found this psychosis especially prevalent in France...
...Here I could claim company with Socrates and Tom Paine, but that would be presumptuous...
...I felt a little cuff...
...The Lensmen, in which we were part of a whole galactic empire in conflict with another galactic empire...
...It was a dead concept...
...I could picture what my country had done in vaporizing human beings at Hiroshima...
...Upon re-applying at the Prefect of Police, Aug...
...We reasoned that perhaps this image of a world citizen appealing to the highest political authority on earth for law under which he could live would surely dramatize to the world the present impotence of the United Nations...
...the third was head man of all recreational activities at an ultra-modern vacation camp...
...Either the Lions Clubs were not ready for my brand of humor, or I wasn't ready, period...
...12, I had no idea of the avalanche about to fall over my head...
...And it was...
...A picture on the front page showed Premier Robert Schuman handing a golden key to Trygve Lie of the United Nations Secretariat, thereby ceding to him the territory of the Palais de Chaillot for the UN during its winter stay in Paris...
...The second of this series of two articles by Garry Davis will appear next month...
...Something happened to me after the war...
...Then I began to reason: "Here I am, an American citizen...
...It symbolized the divisions of men— the hate and fear and ignorance...
...My history books were full of battle dates, generals' biographies, and war cries...
...8, 1948, a friend and I were discussing what I was to do when our eyes fell on that day's Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune lying on a chair...
...I had been ripped out of my life once before by that Government letter of "Greetings," and now I sensed the recurrence of a call to duty...
...But not understanding too much about it, I accepted, along with most of my friends, the popular credo that it was indeed Communism that was the enemy...
...But administration is administration, and I prepared to leave for somewhere...
...It began really when the three-months French "visa" expired...
...She did not resign...
...And yet it's a world government I'm supposed to be working for...
...This was so unusual for me that some of my family and friends became quite concerned...
...Reason: none...
...Venus and Mars were colonized and great inter-planetary wars raged...
...It was into that French terrain, psychologically prepared for a symbol of One World and One People, that I stepped that day...
...This was to become a theme song between the French authorities and myself...
...Besides, how about all the rest of humanity...
...burgh, without too much success...
...I told the police inspector of the Commissariat on the night of Sept...
...The world seemed pretty much a mess in spite of all of our fighting, and there didn't seem anything much we could do about it...
...French journalists like to say that "Garry Davis tore up his passport," symbolizing a complete break with the unhappy past...
...And it was thus, I suppose, that I became, as a man without a country and without papers, a symbol in Europe of a paperless, no frontier, no war, joyous new world...
...The events between these two refusals, the first in May 1948, the second in December 1949, may have a certain historical significance...
...My personal search for security continued under the eyes of the world...
...We looked at each other...
...Why...
...11, to complete my affairs...
...I had sent to those who had written me a world citizen's card, 1,000 of which I had had printed to give to the UN delegates...
...This game was called "diplomacy...
...On the front there was a picture of an atom bomb dressed like a man asking another man: "Hey, bud, do you know what time it is...
...Four months before I had renounced nationality and declared myself a member of the single world community...
...I was stopped cold at the High Allied Commission's Headquarters in Paris...
...I existed in reality, and yet officially did not exist...
...Things that I didn't know, 1 gagged about...
...Study took a poor second...
...I should have been just as persistent...
...I never joined...
...Right after my renunciation—May 27, 1948—I ran into the huge French bureaucratic machine of identification papers...
...I left Three to Make Ready in Chicago in the winter and tried to break in a "single" around PittsGARRY DAVIS, 28-year-old former Army Air Forces bombardier, has won world attention and the support of a half-million followers in Europe and Asia with his organization of World Citizens...
...been a little silly to call in a squad...
...Why am I not now on Broadway listening to the overture while putting on my make-up...
...That week at the Palais de Chaillot marked my birth as a world citizen...
...One does not approach an official of any function, no matter how small, and say: "I am so-and-so...
...But even this appellation was condemned by many as too visionary...
...Only after I had returned to the U. S. Embassy and asked Miss Schneider if she would give me a letter testifying that I actually had had an American passport the day before, because the French authority wouldn't take my word for it, was I awarded a three months stay, which corresponded to the time allotment of my tourist visa...
...Needless to say, Miss Schneider and I had quite a discussion before the event...
...Many in America thought I was merely seeking personal publicity or was just plumb crazy...
...A man without papers in Europe does not legally exist...
...the second was the post of national director of a group of minstrel shows...
...So I continued my search for security without belonging to any nation...
...My desire was to go to Germany to repair a little of the damage I had wrought with my "incendiaries" and "oil demolitions...
...I hounded producers' offices with show business pals...
...I imagine it is chiefly because the Frenchman is weary of politics, government, and bureaucracy in general, having seen so much of it come and go...
...This is what had happened: From the relatively free U. S., I had entered a world driven by an unbelievable number of paper documents...
...I seemed to have struck a responsive chord among thousands of frustrated Europeans...
...His destiny is in unseen massive forces hopelessly out of his personal reach...
...More than this external uneasiness, I had started to get an objective glimpse of my own life, and the sight wasn't very pretty...
...In fact, things seemed a bit worse...
...I don't know why, except that I figured if I were working for an ideal, it wasn't necessary to join anything or sign a paper...
...Inside, the pamphlet gave three impelling reasons for world government...
...Perfect," he said...
...In moving to these restaurant steps, I moved into the position of symbol for One World and One People...
...I was known locally as a "wit...
...I knew at the time that I couldn'f remain in show business and work) for the ideal of world government...
Vol. 14 • April 1950 • No. 4
