A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette THE APPROACH of this New Year brings especially poignant hopes and fears. As I look back over 943 and think of the painful personal adjustments elated to...
...Even under wartime censorship facts are beginning to emerge and to trouble us as we grasp that Pearl Harbor, for example, was the logical, outcome of certain conditions and policies...
...World-wide plans can be luxuries in which we consciously indulge ourselves as such, but the basis of peace begins on our own doorsteps...
...To me this is like taking a woman who is almost ready for child-birth and who knows that "she has to get a lot worse before she can get better," to see a motion picture showing every detail of a woman going through her travail...
...They get comfort from reading books describing ideal Army theory and can escape from the brutal facts although at a Guadalcanal or Tarawa, theory must give way to grim facts...
...The Need For Moral Fiber For the time being, speaking practically in terms of today, is there any alternative for those of us who sincerely and realistically pledge ourselves to peace than to start at the bottom, in our own communities...
...Granted the bias of my own long experience in urging women to political participation, I still see no other effective route via democracy to our goal...
...No one that I know of has a monopoly or "cartel" on that quality yet...
...And yet there is also some very purposeful thinking being done today...
...The recent "Patton incident" is one of them...
...This ever-conseiousness of the agony in the world, and the resultant urge to "help," takes many forms, some of them peculiar...
...I have thought many times in the past months that I was slightly "touched" as the children say, but the various forms of zeal current today cause me to tear my hair...
...I wrestle with the problem of rallying and galvanizing that energy and purpose at the time it will most count...
...As a very brainy friend of mine says, "There are plenty of brains in the world...
...It is the least we can do for those who are sacrificing everything and who look to us for the preservation of democracy at home...
...As New Year's resolution first and foremost, let's see how many of us can search out others in our community who feel as we do, and start to work...
...It can be done, not by study groups and passing resolutions alone, but by the collective courage and energy of enough individuals...
...There is a growing appreciation that war is an effect rather than a cause...
...Doubtless all that has been written concerning the General's character may be true, yet regrettable as this may be, is it not but one of the incidences of war itself...
...So when we have that woman's ingrained urge, "How can I help...
...This week, for example, the press and friends tell me of an Army motion picture consisting of scenes taken on the battle fronts depicting the ultimate in war horrors...
...Those of us not personally face to face with the enemy have a tendency to let our natural revulsion from all this horror turn us to wishful thinking...
...As we probe behind the high-flown phrases, more and more people are realizing that war is the result of months and years of conditions which can be observed by anyone taking the time and effort to follow them...
...why wait until the flower of the world's youth is killed off before doing it...
...However, the public clamor over the Patton incident seems to me to confuse the main issue and to provide a convenient whipping post...
...Not only are there the millions of women doing volunteer war work, defense work, or grappling with chaotic domestic readjustments, but there are always some who apparently must "take it out" on others, probably since it is always so much easier to solve others' problems than it is our own...
...Perhaps this psychology will toughen the 18-year-olds into killers, but it has always impressed me that people can better adjust to even the most painful facts than to a tortured imagination...
...As I look back over 943 and think of the painful personal adjustments elated to me in word and letter by women scattered far and wide, the outstanding theme is the bitter waste of war Again and again has come the plea, "What can I do to help...
...Confusing The Main Issue The Commander in Chief and Gen...
...So as we face 1944 let us not allow ourselves to be hamstrung by the condition of the world...
...As one war mother said recently, "They'll have to sit around the table some time and settle their differences...
...Men pitted against a Japanese or Nazi soldier face inescapable fact—life or death—and it is a horrible, bestial job which cannot be dressed up and made "civilized" to those who have to do it...
...People who are burning in their arm-chairs to get at Hitler and Hiro-hito still insist that war must be civilized and gentlemanly...
...that war is not made overnight...
...what is scarce is moral fiber...
...Can't we, rather, each pick out an aspect of the fundamental problem that each of us can personally tackle in our own environment...
...The Causes Of War The element of surprise inherent in warfare, the question of plans miscarrying, and many another "slip," have to be dealt with by the men on the spot...
...Patton's particular, qualifications to pit an army against the ruthless Nazi machine...
...We are prone to escape the lesson of Chicago and Jersey City as contrasted to New York City where, at one time at least, enough responsible citizens put their ideals into practice and went to work to clean up under courageous and forceful leadership...
...More and more of us feel guilty for shutting our eyes or neglecting to see the forerunners that led to the present holocaust...
...I am personally less outraged by a nervous breakdown, which is undoubtedly being duplicated in "theatres" (how I love that word in this connection) all over the world, than by the deliberate and doubtless necessary "make or break" training administered to all our men to enable them to survive and conquer...
...The men in the Army camps are being lined up and shown this picture to "prepare" them for what lies ahead...
...As each of us examines her position, we face the lndictment of asking ourselves, "Does it take a war to arouse me...
...Eisenhower apparently feel the need of Gen...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 1
