CLOSE-BUT NO CIGAR
Mayer, Milton
Close—but No Cigar a dialogue by MILTON MAYER (This dialogue takes place at divers times in the month of July, 1957, and in divers places in the northeastern third of the United States.) Milton:...
...March—if you're a man— like a man...
...Rap on the door and say, "Let me into your house illegally...
...Oh, yes, you have...
...A thousand coppers, sheriffs, and Pinkerton's men, guns at the ready, barbed wire bales unrolled behind them, arrested them, and the "nominal shot" to celebrate Hiroshima Day was postponed by the government on account, of course, of a change in the weather...
...You've worked that one to death, you've grown old and fat on it—and look where we are...
...It really does...
...I'll go—if I can...
...I know...
...Nothing is perfect that people are mixed up in, and the time's never ripe until it is rotten...
...That always bothers me...
...Let's get these fellows at the top—they're responsible...
...Milton: Then why don't you go to Nevada?—They ask you to go, right here in this Call...
...What you're scared of is losing the respectability and status you'd like to have...
...If I ijrere out on the street in New York City, going about my business, and they blew the whistle for an idiot air-raid drill and a copper told me to get off the street, I wouldn't do it— Milton: You're not out in the street in New York City...
...Listen, if you go out there and grab the bomb by the tail, it's because your government is betraying your country and imposing suffering on humanity and you are protesting by taking the suffering on your own person...
...Mayer: I sure do...
...Wouldn't you lay down your life for a friend...
...So help him, he tried...
...The Fun-Loving Rover Boys in their Space Suits behind the Big Fence in Nevada decided to celebrate the anniversary by detonating what Admiral Straws calls "a nominal device," identical with the Hiroshima bomb...
...Mayer: How...
...And you can't give it a week...
...Shame on you...
...Ever read it...
...Milton: "Emphasis on publicity...
...Leave me alone, lay off me...
...Sounds phony to me...
...I have no capital, no reserves, no debentures, no gold certificates, and— Milton: "—and a large family...
...Milton: Of losing your respectability, your status...
...I don't see you wondering about refusing to pay...
...I think that's a fine thing...
...Here's a chunk of Nevada desert, all properly leased by the government, rent paid up to the first of the month, and they put a legitimate fence around it, and what am I supposed to do...
...But he couldn't get there...
...What are you going to do about it...
...Milton: Do you do anything they ask you to do...
...Mayer: The soldier's conscripted by the government...
...Early that morning eleven Americans walked into the Forbidden City, the first who had ever done it...
...I told you I sign lots of things...
...Milton: Oh-ho, just get a load of that—Rabbi Mayer, calling the brethren to righteousness, in the Saturday Evening Post, suddenly wants a guarantee that righteousness is going to pay off...
...I sign lots of things...
...Mayer: Well, I wonder if there isn't something artificial, somehow, about going three thousand miles out of your way to disobey a law...
...Who's got $10,000 or five years, or both, to spare, except the rich...
...Milton: So what you plan to do tomorrow—or next week, or next year—is more important than what you do today, is it...
...What food will it do...
...You're responsible...
...Mayer: What of it...
...Mayer: Well, like I told you— ^ Milton: "As I told you—" Mayer: All right, as I told you, I don't know if I can get there...
...I just haven't got $10,000 or five years, or both, to spare...
...Mayer: Well, when I heard about it, I was all for it...
...It asks Eisenhower to "take vigorous steps to stop the testing of nuclear bombs by all countries," to which his reply, of course, is that that is what he and Dulles have been doing for years, but the Russians won't let them...
...My child, what you plan to do in the future you may never live to do, or, because you're less important than you think you are, it may prove to be unimportant when you do it...
...I'm not...
...Mayer: Well, I'd hate to miss a good story, I'm an old fire-horse, but I've got to take care of my business, I really do...
...A Quaker woman's name—mother of four small children —led all the rest on the front pages in England, Germany, India, Japan...
...Mayer: Of what...
...Mayer: Who said I'm scared...
...Do you expect them to go...
...But you might be sorry...
...And they were pushovers compared to the revolution you talk about...
...Why, if it weren't for publicity, you wouldn't exist...
...Is that what you're scared of...
...You hold its highest and only permanent office—the office of Citizen...
...I refuse to pay taxes— Milton: Which costs Francis Heis-ler half his time as your lawyer and doesn't cost you a cent...
...If you weren't prepared to go and get irradiated, incinerated, calumniated, and incarcerated, you shouldn't have signed the Call...
...Mayer: Oh, I don't know...
...They're waiting for you there...
...You're a free enterpriser, and you have to hustle for a living, and you can't turn down a chance to make a buck, and so on...
...Of being tabbed as a crackpot...
...That's the difference between this country and Russia, and I heard you say those very words in Germany a few years ago...
...Mayer: All right, all right...
...Everybody is...
...It's no skin off my saddle...
...I'm not...
...I don't care if you go or not...
...Mankind awaits you...
...Mayer: Wait a minute, now...
...The revolutions of Russia and India took full-timers, not part-timers — and, even then, they didn't last...
...I'm an old— Milton: "—civil disobedience man myself," I know, I know...
...You want to "pour it on" somebody...
...I'm as good a man now I was then...
...Mayer tried...
...Milton: And thousands of people are falling all over themselves to sign it because it doesn't mean a thing...
...Milton: Who's asking you to go, except yourself and Dorothy Day and A. J. Muste...
...not much, but a little...
...Mayer: What do you mean, "doing nothing...
...What is the point in jumping all over a lot of poor working stiffs—guards and coppers and gatemen and mechanics and scientists, in Nevada...
...I'm no worse than was...
...Mayer: Well, maybe I shouldn't have, but I'm in favor of civil disobedience...
...Milton: You're conscripted by God, and God's bigger and tougher and meaner than the government and He's got a gun that never stops shooting at you...
...Milton: So that's it, is it?—You want to attack unjust men instead of attacking injustice...
...You know what I mean...
...Do you really want to do something for your children—or do you want to use them as an alibi for doing nothing...
...you're nothing but a publicity stunt, and a cheap one at that...
...What's there to wonder about Nevada...
...And still there's something—something cofie ved , something £re-meditated about Civil disobedience seems to me consist of saying No when the government comes to you and says, "Do this" or "Don't do that...
...Mayer: What makes you think I'm not going...
...So say I go, and get my block knocked off, or burned M—what have I accomplished...
...Milton (puts his hand on Mayer's shoulder): Then get going to Nevada, old boy...
...You write for the slicks, you go around lecturing, you apply for foundation grants— Mayer: I never get any...
...Milton: Isn't this more important than business...
...What I am to know is why you aren't going, | you're not going...
...Mayer: Look, friend, I'm a— Milton: I know, I know...
...Mayer: I didn't say I'm not going, but— Milton: "But" what...
...Milton: Oh, yes, you are...
...Mayer: I'll try...
...They're all trapped in this thing, the same as the rest of us...
...You, of all people, being bothered about "emphasis on publicity...
...The future calls you...
...It was the shot heard 'round the world—even in America, where, two weeks later, the American government made its first proposal of a two-year moratorium on nuclear weapons testing...
...Milton: So you're going to Nevada to walk into the bomb test area on Hiroshima Day...
...Listen, chump, the soldier leaves his family behind and risks his life for his country...
...And for this contingency you will have sacrificed the certainty of doing right today...
...Here you are, a great, or at least loud, Nay-sayer and Yea-sayer, been nuking a good living off it for years, and all of a sudden, when a little patch of your hide is at stake, you begin seeing both sides of the question and you're immobilized...
...Milton: Why do you sign lots of things...
...But when it comes to throwing yourself—your body, your possessions, your piddling reputation—into the struggle, then you "wonder a little, about the whole idea...
...Some pacifist...
...But what about this time...
...Get out there under that great big shady mushroom cloud and get your soul decontaminated...
...You wouldn't ask other people to go where you're not going, would you...
...In fact, your actual respectability and status have nothing to do with it...
...Don't be a troublemaker—that, said our German friend, was the only thing the Germans had to do...
...I don't know whether I'd be going out there to do the right thing or to be seen and heard doing it...
...Revolutions take professional revolutionaries, not hobbyists...
...Mayer: Don't "brother" me...
...I really don't...
...Milton: You'd better take time, and find out that the very essence of totalitarianism is having to go three thousand miles to disobey a law...
...Milton: Well, are you or aren't you...
...has nothing to do with it, although, if I may quote Mayer when he's talking for money, one man's standing up, all alone, and saying No notifies all men that a man can still stand up and say No...
...What for...
...You're the sovereign in this country...
...You and your free-ride petitions...
...You were a better man then...
...One of the Germans in that book tells the author what life was like for good Aryans under Hitlerism: "All that was required of most of us," he said, "was that we do nothing . . . just go on as we were and not make trouble" Don't go three hundred miles to Belsen, where they're gassing Jews, or three thousand miles to Mercury, Nevada, where they're gassing the whole population of America...
...Are you less of a man than he is...
...Mayer: (hysterically): No, no, it's not true...
...Mayer: But you can't go everywhere and do everything against every injustice at once...
...Mayer: That's a scream...
...Milton: That has nothing to do with it...
...I— Milton: "—haven't got any respectability or status to lose...
...Milton: A fine time to start wondering...
...of the ghost town of Beatty, Nevada—forgot to find them guilty or not guilty, but he sentenced them to a year for trespassing—and suspended the sentence...
...Oh, you're a great boy for suing the government...
...I'm not supposed to beat the door down, am I? Milton: I know it's not perfect, friend...
...Milton: Don't come that bogus bad grammar on me...
...Mayer: Business...
...I mean you either do something or you do nothing...
...So help me, I'll try...
...Mayer: All right...
...I've got stuff to say and write that's more important than sitting out in a fool desert doing nothing...
...Mayer: Mostly because Dorothy Day and A. J. Muste ask me to...
...half your taxes when most of the half you pay goes for war...
...August 6 was the twelfth anniversary of the glorious day that the United States of America—the present paladin of Christian civilization against the Bolshevik hordes—killed 75,000 defenseless civilians with the first atomic bomb...
...You're scared, that's what you are...
...You've beaten more "I's" off your typewriter than Jim Jeffries beat setups...
...Brother...
...They tell me you can get $10,000 or five years, or both, if you try to walk into that witches' kitchen...
...Mayer: Well, there's another thing— Milton: That's just what there isn't...
...Mayer: I'm not talking about me...
...But, besides that, I wonder a little about the whole idea...
...What good will it do...
...Milton: Why, here's a copy of "A Call to Non-Violent Action against Nuclear Weapons," and you're one of the signers...
...If you want a pacifist revolution, you've got to throw your life into it and not do a fan-dance around it...
...Milton: My boy, you can read all about it in a magnificent book about Nazi Germany called They Thought They Were Free...
...The government —every government—has to put a gun to his head to get him to go...
...Mayer: Wait a— Milton: "These fellows at the top" aren't responsible...
...Shame...
...Mayer: Then there's all this emphasis on publicity...
...Milton: Then you must be planning to go...
...Mayer: I ain't scared of nobody...
...Your children—that you say you have to stay here and take care of—are drinking up that good old bone-finding Strontium 90 with their good old bone-building calcium in their milk...
...I've got all these dates, all these commitments, I really want to go, I ought to go, I know I ought to go— Milton: Then get going...
...Mayer: What makes you so sure I'm going...
...Mayer: Never had time to...
...I don't know if I can make it...
...Right now you're in Pembroke, New Hampshire, preaching (as usual) peace (as usual...
...Attorney Francis Heisler went to court with the eleven prisoners, who pleaded neither guilty nor not guilty...
...A pacifist revolution in a country like this— armed to the teeth and fat and happy —takes lifetime time-and-a-halfers...
...Mayer: (ignoring the interruption)—But this is different...
...The government is burning up the babies that are going to be born fifty or a hundred years from now...
...Wouldn't you go into a burning house to save a baby...
...So you're not going, is that it...
...I was one of the prime movers in the great petition against the bomb tests that the American Friends Service Committee is handing around...
...Look, Mayer, old boy, why don't you just go out there and join the prayer vigil and follow the leading of the spirit, like (I mean as) it says in the Book...
...You don't do something by making speeches and writing your Congressman...
...Mayer: I know...
...Milton: I know what you mean, but you're wrong...
...I— Milton: Yeah, I know all about "I...
...Mayer: I don't know...
...You might just miss a good story...
...you never would have existed...
...The original flagpole-sitter...
...The place to go is to Washington to pour it on Admiral Straws (or Admiral Strauss, as his grandmother called him) of the A.E.C...
...I've got a large family of small children— Milton: Who hasn't...
...The bewildered judge— J.P...
...Bless my lights and livers, I never thought I'd live to hear Mayer pull out the old effectiveness stop—the last dodge of a Pharisee...
...I've got to be in the east just before and after Hiroshima Day— Milton: What do you mean, "got to be...
...Your country needs you there...
Vol. 21 • October 1957 • No. 10
