ON THE OTHER HAND
Mayer, Milton
On the Other Hand By Milton Mayer Bad Men I have never met a bad man. Or put it this way: I have never met a man I knew was bad. Or this way: I have never met a man who knew he was bad. This,...
...Those who think that UN can at least prevent war forget that war is caused by injustice...
...News & World Report, to read the entire transcript of that ten-hour hearing, and your servant's rejoicing is considerably modified...
...But, then, the art of measurement is not designed to keep men out of trouble...
...it did not find that he was not a Communist dupe, as charged...
...I am under the obligation not to bear false witness, and I will not risk doing so by supplying this Committee with gossip, rumor, or derogatory opinion about any man...
...In the second place, said the Chronicle, "the State Department has big fish to fry in Morocco, and it is only candid to acknowledge it . . . These interests consist of military bases—airfields on which we have already spent some $200,000,000 and will end by doubling that expenditure...
...It reported the United States' having "thrown cold water on the burning desire of fifteen Asian and African members of the United Nations to bring France to book before the Security Council for her policy in Morocco...
...I was the first man off...
...Some of them also have refused to say whether they have been or are Communist spies...
...He defended himself brilliantly, even though, as he may have known, he had no chance of being exonerated...
...I think the art of measurement, under such terribly trying circumstances, failed him...
...Be it said that the Bishop made this statement after some nine hours in the Committee's sweat-box...
...Virtue," says Socrates, "is nothing but the art of measurement...
...Fritchman and Mr...
...I am now ready to be offered $100 to sit on the local flagpole, or $1000 to go down Fifth Avenue in my union suit...
...Was there ever such wickedness...
...The Bishop's words, in that case, would have got him in trouble...
...It is all a matter of the art of measurement...
...Now, when I parse that statement, and parse it close, I see that these "several dozen former government employees" are identified with the Rosenbergs and Hiss and are "concerned with . . . Communist activities...
...Robert Lasch, whose business it is to know how newspapers go, will agree with me...
...But a gentleman's club will not prevent war or stop Communism, because a majority of the people in the world are what is known in the club as bounders who want some of what the club-members have, and they are in the process of breaking up the club to get it...
...Like the Rosenbergs and Hiss —who never confessed—Chambers confesses that he once saw Communism as the greatest good, for which all other goods must be rejected...
...I knocked over a sailor—who had knocked over a woman with a baby —and the sailor caromed off a grandmother and hit the agent, who hit me just as I punched a small boy in the face...
...As a Communist, he lied, stole, betrayed, blasphemed, perjured, and hated for thirteen years...
...We were having, last time around, a gander at Whittaker Chambers, the Communist who hit the glory road with a handful of rocks to shy at the sinners who were still in the ditch...
...Bishop Oxnam is, like me, a master of the art of measurement...
...It has sold twelve more tickets for this flight than there are seats...
...I start parsing again, and I say, "Here is a bad man indeed...
...proud of his having acquired, however late, the art of measuring Communism correctly, and shying at those whose measuring is still deficient...
...It is only the art of measurement that has failed him...
...May I say this, that since that time, and I will not name the men, but two prominent officials of the Unitarian Church have conferred with me and gave me information that gave me grave doubts concerning Dr...
...But maybe he thought that Communism was the greatest of goods, for which the others, like truth, fidelity, honor, and love had to be rejected...
...No, says Socrates, virtue must be something else, the gift, perhaps, of God...
...they took the lesser for the greater good, because the lesser was closer to them and, like all objects seen close up, it looked larger than the object far away...
...What a confession, not of the failure of measurement, but of the pitch-blackness of soul...
...Dear me, I say...
...Liberals everywhere—your servant among them—rejoiced at the plastering Bishop Oxnam gave the Committee...
...I will accept any invitation given me to speak anywhere, consistent with the demands upon my strength, and, above all, in any church, for my obligation is to call men to Christ and every invitation to speak is a precious opportunity...
...And then the Bishop, had the art of measurement not failed him in such trying circumstances, might have spat square and episcopally in the Committee's collective evil eye and said: "No disagreement, however serious, that I have ever had with Harry F. Ward in the course of a long lifetime has shaken my conviction that he is a good man and a laborer in the vineyard of the Lord, who will, very probably, in spite of any errors that he may have made, and that any good man may have made, enter the Kingdom ahead of me and even, for all I know, ahead of the members of this Committee...
...What wickedness...
...I must say, in behalf of Socrates, that he is wise enough to contradict himself later on...
...He should not, before Fritchman was accused, have accused him himself, giving the Committee more of the kind of "information" the Committee was using to destroy the Bishop—-"information" unsworn, unverified, and uninhibited by the right of the accused to defend himself...
...Then we call them, but never ourselves, bad men...
...But the art of measurement fails us all...
...What he should have said, in the sweat box, had the art of measurement not failed him, was: "Yes," to the question, had he spoken in Fritchman's Church...
...Counsel for the Committee had, at that point, said not one word about Fritchman...
...Fritchman was in any way related to the Communist Party...
...But your servant was enabled, through the great public service of U.S...
...If it never failed, the Chronicle would have said: "It is only candid to acknowledge that the UN is predetermined failure because it can not do anything about injustice, any more than the League could...
...In the first place, said the Chronicle, "rioting in the streets of Marra-kech and Rabat hardly constitutes a threat to the stability of the world, however disturbing it may be to internal order...
...He was accused, and falsely accused, in a star-chamber session, and he tried to defend himself...
...They mean to do well, all of them, all the time...
...In his place I should have done much worse, and you, too...
...Does he know he is bad...
...The Bishop was up against eight hostile men—the ninth, Congressman Doyle of California, was not—and a staff of lawyers and research experts...
...Fritchman, and had I known what they informed me I would, of course, not have lectured at his church...
...What a wicked man...
...I think it failed Bishop Oxnam before the House Committee on Un-American Activities...
...But I made it...
...When I parse it close, I see that it is a great big terrible black lie...
...For one instance of many: The Bishop was asked if he had spoken at the first Unitarian Church of Los Angeles when Stephen A. Fritchman was its pastor...
...They are not bad at all, says Socrates, they have only made a mistake...
...Now, within the last month or so, he has written as follows: "Why should anyone take American Communists more seriously...
...W^hat Communism has done is make the morality of war its permanent single standard, by which it always lives and acts—such an evil thing as never before happened on such a scale in human history...
...I read on, and this is what I read: "In the past, civilized men have lived by a double standard, varying in degrees with place and time...
...To get the pack's fangs out of his neck he threw Harry F. Ward to them—Harry Ward, that fighting old fool for Christ, who would have gone Communist or anywhere else his good heart led him—-and on top of Harry Ward he threw another half dozen men accused of wrongdoing by the likes of Chambers...
...all the more reason for my associating with them...
...And the answer: "In the United States, there have been the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss and several dozen former government employees who have refused to say whether they are or have been Communists...
...Those we do not know are likely to be just as arresting when we find out about them...
...What consummate wickedness...
...After a time a United agent appeared and said: "Ladies and gents, United Air Lines has made a mistake...
...It is a lie if so many as one— only one—of these several dozen is not a Rosenberg, a Hiss, or "concerned with"—"concerned with," there's an expression to gladden a libel lawyer and nobody else—-"Communist activities...
...Dear me, my eye...
...I am under the obligation to call men to Christ, and if Dr...
...What a thing to be said by a man who talks about "the Christian democratic counter-revolution," calling upon Christ crucified and risen to support the view that there is one morality for peace and another for war...
...The Bishop replied: "Yes...
...The Committee found that he was not a Communist...
...Perhaps he has measured wrong both times...
...But I'd rather you did not offer me $50,000 to snatch the crown jewels or sell one of my babes into peonage or tell the Russians where the bomb is hidden...
...It was only a matter of the art of measurement...
...Good Men It is a far whoop and a holler from Whittaker Chambers to Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam...
...T'other day the Chronicle carried an editorial headed, "UN Is Not the Place for Dismantling Colonialism...
...Oh, my friends, if the art of measurement never failed...
...I had no knowledge whatsoever that Mr...
...This manner of incriminating him, the Bishop protested, was unfair...
...There was a traditional morality of peace, according to which it is wrong and unlawful to steal what does not belong to you, to lie under oath, to plot against the state and to murder your friends or even people you do not like...
...It is the way of the world to protect such investments and interests from the meddling of one's enemies—and of course if the Security Council were to get jurisdiction over Morocco, the way would be open for Russia to look around, meddle and make trouble to the great disadvantage of our national interest...
...And there was a traditional morality of war according to which practically anything goes against the enemy...
...Cornered by the pack, the Bishop used every honorable and eloquent technique to defend himself, but, when the pack got its fangs in his neck, he resorted to the technique of what might be called innocence by dissociation...
...Perhaps truth, fidelity, honor, and love are the greatest goods, which must never be rejected...
...I do not...
...Imagine meeting—even on a light street, or in a magazine—a man who for thirteen years held it right and lawful to steal what did not belong to him, to lie under oath, to plot against the state, and to murder his friends or even people he did not like...
...My art was tested, most recently, at the Chicago airport, where I climbed aboard a United Airlines plane for San Francisco...
...I do not know the members of this Committee intimately, but it is not for that reason that I am readier to testify to the purity of heart of my lifelong friend Harry Ward than I am in the case of the members of this Committee or, indeed, of myself...
...Do I know that this man is bad...
...It is not because they are bad that they don't, but because they must always choose between conflicting goods, and, in rejecting one so that they may accept the other, they do bad...
...An uncivilized man—as he himself says—who lived for thirteen years by a single standard, while civilized men lived by a double standard...
...But the art of measurement failed our friends here...
...Most certainly not...
...I received an invitation to lecture at a forum there...
...This, like all notions, is an old Socratic notion, that what fails men is the art of measurement...
...Dear me...
...Like the League, the UN is a gentleman's club, and gentlemen do not concern themselves with their clubfellows' concerns...
...Here is a man who for thirteen years made the morality of war his permanent single standard, by which he always lived and acted—such an evil thing as never before happened on such a scale in human history...
...Now he sees anti-Communism as the greatest good, for which all other goods must be rejected...
...Dulles are Communists, they need the call worse than other men...
...Then I say, "What bottomless, irredeemable wickedness, to say that civilized men live by a double standard, one for peace and one for war...
...Sometimes my hand gets to shaking and I can't measure so good...
...If America is a Christian country, and if Harry Ward is an enemy of America, then, gentlemen, I am an enemy of America...
...Bad Man Who can...
...These people are concerned with only a tiny part of total Communist activities...
...Fritchman and John Foster Dulles may both be Communists...
...And then, when he was asked if Fritchman were a Communist (or was told that he was), he should have said: "Your question is irrelevant to this proceeding and I can not, therefore, answer it or any other such question...
...Such a man as this seems to me to be a bad man, full of pride, than which, among the deadly sins, there is none deadlier...
...Be it said, too, that he went on to protest that the Committee was now going to inform him that Fritchman had been identified by somebody as a Communist "and they will begin to draw inferences as far as I am concerned in the matter of lecturing at his church...
...Good Newspaper The San Francisco Chronicle may not be a great newspaper but, as newspapers go, it is a pretty good one, and I think that my colleague Mr...
...Good Man I am happy to report that, as thousands have long suspected, I am a master of the art of measurement...
...Under its Covenant, as under the League's Charter, the French can enslave and, if they care to, murder every Moroccan, and the UN has nothing to say...
...The teacup in my hand js larger than the moon...
...I settled myself in my seat, but, when everyone had entered the plane, there were twelve people standing...
...Scratching his head, his chin, and, I imagine, the seat of his pants, he says that if virtue is only a matter of measuring, then virtue is knowledge and can be taught...
...But we all know that virtue can not be taught—did we not see Pericles try to teach it to his sons...
...The Germans can murder every Jew, and the Russians enslave every peasant, and the UN can say nothing...
...We can only ask that if there are twelve among you who are willing to fly via Los Angeles a little later, we will deliver you in San Francisco three hours after the arrival of this flight, and pay you each $50 for your trouble...
...The Committee accused Bishop Oxnam of associating with all sorts of persons of whom it had been said—said, mind you, not proved —that they were Communists...
Vol. 17 • October 1953 • No. 10
