ON THE OTHER HAND
Mayer, Milton
On the Other Hand MY minnesinging takes me to far places. One of the farthest is Meadville, Pa., one of those places of which it may be said, with justice, "You can't get there from here." You can...
...All in all, he's as keen as they come...
...But we can't stop being right just because bad people, on this occasion, agree with us...
...We pray that he be forgiven his sins and spared such suffering as is not absolutely necessary for his redemption...
...Well," said Dr...
...Now Chambers identifies himself as a Christian and his crusade as a Christian democratic counter-revolution...
...I spent the half hour cursing Dr...
...As the author of God Is My Fuehrer, written in Germany, in 1937, he was as keen as Ben Franklin...
...He swore in the name of God that he knew nobody who had turned over secret or confidential documents to the Communists...
...But I'm not sure that you're supposed to get ahead running a Christian democratic counter-revolution...
...I was in Wausau, Wis., and the earpieces, if that's what you call them, were broken off my glasses...
...I went in with my glasses and asked Dr...
...I like to see a fellow-hack get ahead...
...I am told that it is very hard to be a Christian, and that there are not very many...
...Now he's in the big time, selling confessions, exposures, and double-exposures to everybody...
...I always do this in Omaha, I don't know why...
...We dupes can't help being used...
...I'm only a dupe...
...I'm for the Statute of Limitation, but I'm not sure that it covers blasphemy...
...And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many...
...I don't even know how to be saved —-what do you expect of a dupe?— but I know that it involves suffering...
...But I'd hate to be poor...
...You will be interested in how this happened...
...Wilke to the Committee on Optometrical Ethics of the American Medical Association...
...Wilke gave me my glasses, repaired...
...I'm not acquainted, personally, with either of these converts, but what I like best about Augustine is the way he prayed for the dupes...
...I am pretty sure that money, fame, and power are not the end of suffering undertaken in the interest of salvation...
...You have never seen me with my glasses on because I'm proud as a peafowl...
...You can get there via the Erie R. R., which is tantamount (as we say in the Mississippi primaries) to not getting there from here...
...Why some people call it Nut Valley, I do not know...
...I get the idea, from what it says, that you're supposed to be delivered up to be afflicted, not to deliver up other people to be afflicted and light your Per-fectos with C-notes...
...All through the night we rolled through the dark in the darkness...
...He doesn't say we know we are wrong...
...Well, sir, I'm for forgiveness of sin...
...The party rolled around Meadville looking for a place without a juke-box...
...You, since you oppose McCarthyism, are Communist dupes along with me...
...They put up with my silence...
...These ex-pots and ex-kettles have their hands full saving themselves...
...This time, on the Erie, I pretended there was a bullet-hole in the winBy Milton Mayer dow and, since the lights were off, who was to say there wasn't...
...I figure that will bring a laugh...
...That's what it pays...
...Wilke...
...I am going to report Dr...
...But I think that Chambers ought to leave us dupes alone...
...George W. Wilke is the optometrist in Wausau...
...I am glad Chambers stopped being a Communist and started being a Christian, even though he backslid on the first three Commandments...
...Nobody could tell him, and he went on caring all night...
...We're for peace, and the Communists use us...
...It was amended to include as grounds for dismissal, infer alia, "persistent participation in public meetings conducted or sponsored by a group listed as a Communist front...
...He is on Third Street, just across from the bank...
...It raises the status of our whole profession...
...We dupes need a Christian to pray for us, not to burn us...
...If it were not for his gentleman farming—I suppose he still raises and stuffs pumpkins—he'd have time to count his royalties...
...All I ask of other people is that they put up with me the way I put up with them...
...Wilke if he could fix them...
...It also was amended by the elimination of the word "gross" from the term "gross immorality...
...And that's all I know about being saved...
...Wilke was finished seeing how they sat, I said to him, "What'll it be, Doctor...
...I calculate that you get two minutes of music for a nickel, and I am willing to pay a dime for two minutes of silence...
...We pray for Chambers, unworthy as we are...
...Wilke...
...He tells us for money, fame, and power, and...
...I was minnesinging at Allegheny, and after the performance (and after the applause died down, which was soon after the performance), I was taken for coffee...
...We Dupes Just about the keenest mind I have ever encountered is Pastor Martin Niemoeller's...
...They said, "He's a Communist dupe...
...W^hen Dr...
...When I can't find my glasses in Omaha, I look for them on my forehead, but it always turns out that I'm sitting on them...
...he says we think we are right, but we're dupes...
...I, since I oppose the restoration of German militarism, am a Communist dupe, myself...
...But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved...
...I never did anything like that, and I'm not even a Christian...
...That is twenty cents, in addition to the dime for the coffee and the dime for the tip...
...I put up with their music...
...Now immorality is forbidden in California...
...And all that time, and right up to Nov...
...Christianity, I am told, is a slow start, with a lot of backslides, and a long climb, and a strait gate...
...And a knave knows what he is doing...
...On Oct...
...I asked him if he could repair them—since the bill would be high anyway, I thought I might as well be grammatical—in half an hour...
...No—charge...
...I never did anything like that...
...The Statute might run a lot longer in that Jurisdiction...
...But the night I went with it the lights were out...
...does not go to Erie...
...I think Chambers should leave me alone...
...It says so: "Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted . . . and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake . . . then shall many betray one another, and shall hate one another...
...hoping against hope that this homely (albeit respectful) approach would melt the bill a little...
...Here," he said, "let's see how they sit," and he sat the glasses on me...
...He swore in the name of God that he knew nobody guilty of espionage...
...One thing Niemoeller is not is a dupe...
...The conductor sent for the electrician before we rolled, and the electrician said, "The generator is gone, but the lights will go on as soon as you roll...
...And light a candle...
...A dupe doesn't know what he's doing...
...Land of Spilled Milk and Honey The California Legislature passed so many laws against Communism in its last session that the state may now be said to be safe to enter, if you care to enter it...
...The man who calls us fools is Whittaker Chambers, who is now emerging from his public penance to rejoin the fashionable Capitol Hill Hunt that is running down the dupes with hound and horn and nailing up their pelts to dry...
...He was wrong, because Communism was wrong...
...said I. "No charge," said Dr...
...I'm just a dupe, I'm told, in the service of a phony peace movement...
...Another thing he is not is a Communist...
...I am told, further, that the essence of repentance is plugging away in private and when I think of Augustine, it seems to me that after thirteen unbroken years of mocking the Lord, hammer and tong (and sickle), at home and abroad, Chambers might have taken another thirteen to square himself and then save his confessions until he was Bishop of, say, Baltimore...
...We can't help being used...
...Wilke, "I can try...
...If the coffee isn't too hot, I can get it down in four minutes...
...The Wilkes of Wausau I wouldn't mind being poor in Wausau, Wis...
...The Statute of Limitation saved him from the espionage and treason raps...
...But they don't know better than to call him a dupe and refuse to face him...
...Wilke said, "Well, I'll try...
...We're against Communism, and Chambers uses us...
...My idea is that you ought to be able to buy silence on a juke-box...
...Wilke and freshening up a bit, and when I went back, Dr...
...This meant the bill would be still higher...
...I won't say it's the deepest, but it is just about the keenest...
...This meant that the bill would be high, but I had no choice, not in Wausau...
...Sometimes, when I say the wrong thing in public, something I didn't mean to say at all, such as, "I'm not sure it's a bad thing for a country to lose a war once in a while," I get in trouble...
...I had sat on my glasses in Omaha...
...And I judge not, lest I be judged...
...There wasn't one...
...Blasphemy is tried under a different Law, with a different Judge...
...Nor do I want to interfere with other people's pleasure...
...Now I call it the Eerie Railroad...
...And the specialty market was never hotter...
...I have plenty of money, luckily...
...After all, we are no more foolish now than he was then, and, on the record, a lot less treacherous to our country...
...Chambers tells us he has suffered —und wiel I'm not even sure about telling people you have suffered...
...18, 1937, while, by his own admission, he was transmitting stolen secret documents to the Communists, he swore in the name of God to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...
...I could have said "repair," but the bill is sometimes cheaper when you say "fix...
...Maybe, when he is on his knees, which must be often, a reconstructed old knave like Chambers would put in a word for a few poor fools like us...
...But the Erie R.R...
...We rolled all the way to Meadville, but the lights never went on...
...An old law providing for the immediate dismissal of school teachers for gross immorality was amended...
...The philosopher of this party is Chambers, a Communist for thirteen years, and a blasphemer after that, and the chief of staff is McCarthy, who said in 1946: "Stalin's proposal for world disarmament is a great thing and he must be given credit for being sincere...
...Chambers wasn't right when he was a Communist...
...Five Cents A Minute Meadville, Pa., is all right when you get there, a nice little old town with a college on the hill, Allegheny College...
...It wasn't so much of a job...
...But he doesn't tell us free...
...Chambers was a knave, he tells us, in the service of a bloody, criminal, world revolutionary tyranny...
...Well," I said, whistling in the dark, "when the lights go on we'll look for the generator, won't we, fellows...
...At the place we went, I got my idea while the juke-box played...
...It does go to Meadville...
...You and I are not Communists, but fools, like Niemoeller...
...But I don't know for sure...
...That "let's see how they sit" pitch always means more money...
...17, 1948, he was breaking and re-breaking the first three Commandments, swearing in the name of God to what he now admits were falsehoods...
...That's all I care about," he said...
...There was a drunk aboard who wanted to know if the headlight was on...
...everything does...
...Before Chambers became an anti-Communist, he was just making do, a $30,000-a-year hack...
...But whenever I begged American officials in Germany to meet with Niemoeller and argue with him—he leads the opposition to the American restoration of German militarism—they refused...
...We dupes need a Christian to pray that we be forgiven our foolishness and likewise spared...
...I pretended they were off...
...And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold...
...This brought a laugh, and, laughing and whistling, we rolled...
...You would suppose that when you went somewhere via the Erie R.R., you would go via Erie, Pa...
...He stopped being an atheist in 1937 and became one brand of Christian in 1940 and another in 1941...
...Since there are more of them than there are of me, I feel I ought to indemnify the restaurateur for the loss of good will he will suffer while the silence is going on...
...It's because I read my notes wrong, and I won't wear glasses in public...
...No charge," said Dr...
...I don't want anything for nothing...
...Last year, when I really was on the Orient Express from Zagreb to Milan, Jane was with me, and there was a bullet-hole in the window, but the lights were on...
...Gross immorality used to be forbidden in California...
...I'm just sure about the suffering...
...But Chambers, by his own perfervid witness, made the grade...
...And he knows he was wrong, and says so...
...As Church President of Hesse and Nassau and as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Council of the German Church, he's as keen as Barney Baruch...
...I pretended I was on the Orient Express...
...The Americans in Germany know better than to call him a Communist...
Vol. 17 • September 1953 • No. 9
