LET THE PEOPLE IN ON THE PEACE!
Holmes, John Haynes
Let The People In On The Peace! By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES (Chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union) IT'S Sinai all over again I According to the old story, Moses went up on to the mountain to...
...Now, in place of Sinai, we have Yalta...
...It resulted in the Ten Commandments, written on two sacred Tables for the eternal guidance of mankind...
...Better reject the whole instrument, whatever its undeniable gains over anything ever achieved before, than to be saddled with a constitution which was dangerous to freedom, or imperfect in the fulfillment of the very purposes for which it was written...
...So it is Sinai come again...
...Aim for the farthest goal...
...And so they talked, and argued—and condemned...
...I demand an international settlement in this dreadful time that will hold—a settlement that does no wrong, that tolerates no ill, that makes no compromise with balances of power, imperialistic rule, territorial aggrandizement, or economic exploitation...
...If Yalta is any sign, then San Francisco is certain to be so inadequate, so evil a document, so much a sham and a shame, as to threaten every security and dispel every hope for which we have been fighting...
...And what did not measure to that line was doomed to fall...
...No objector, whether he were Patrick Henry, or the humblest farmer or artisan, was denounced as an obstructionist or pro-Britisher...
...Our leaders should be placed under searching cross-examination...
...Any Senator who opposes ratification of any treaties submitted from San Francisco will be instantly vilified as an arrant traitor...
...And already the same dictatorial atmosphere is being prepared for the San Francisco conference, so that whatever is or is not done there will be accepted with the same obsequious surrender of every faculty of judgment associated with the mind of man...
...But must this needs be...
...In the course of years this Constitution has come to take on a kind of sacred character...
...For the Most High hath spoken, and all men must heed his word...
...On the contrary, the moment the new charter of government appeared, there broke forth a storm of controversy . Thomas Jefferson, from far-away Paris, voiced strenuous objection...
...The only way to expose this betrayal of mankind is to subject the San Francisco settlement, whatever it may be, to the most rigorous public scrutiny...
...Accept it, if not with fear and trembling, then with gratitude and exultation...
...A More Perfect Union' Nobody, so far as I can remember, ever suggested that discussion should be stayed, or silenced...
...It's a different name and a different place—a Summer resort on the sea instead of a mountain in the desert...
...Everywhere, in every home, in every church, in every tavern and town-meeting, began excited and exhaustive debate...
...It was true that the convention, thus ably composed, labored through a long and hot Philadelphia Summer, and produced a document which represented profound and sustained consideration—but the citizens of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the other colonies did not contend, nor were they told, that anything sacred, least of all immutable, had proceeded from these deliberations...
...Nothing can save our world but a new international structure reared true to Amos' plummet line...
...In immediate anticipation of the San Francisco conference, and in continued preparation for the making of the peace after the war, this country should turn itself into a nation-wide town meeting...
...agreements, treaties, charters should be subjected to sharpest criticism...
...The rubber-stamp, please...
...dissent is criminal...
...It was true that the convention which wrote the Constitution contained such men as Washington, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, and others among the most distinguished colonial leaders of the time—but nobody assumed that these men were immune to criticism or their work not subject to improvement...
...Roosevelt is an easy-going, self-confident dilettante of international statesmanship...
...I keep thinking of the United States Constitution, and how this document was received by the citizens of the 13 colonies in 1787...
...Right here, in this great episode in our own history, is the perfect example of what should be our attitude toward the Yalta agreement, and still more the San Francisco agreement when it is announced...
...Full knowledge should be exacted of all public authorities, full discussion encouraged among all citizens—and propaganda banished from the state...
...We are living once more in an age of superstition, when a god thunders, and a great man speaks, and a holy law is given...
...Both of them together have as little claim to being Moses as Stalin has to being God...
...however successfully, what is low, and mean, and inadequate, and imperfect—that is the reprehensible thing...
...If we are a democracy still, that age must come again...
...This charter bears the will of the All-Powerful...
...Yes, I'm a perfectionist...
...I say it is rotten with them...
...Any journalist, or clergyman, or radio commentator who sticks out his neck to say that this or that settlement is one more betrayal of humanity, and like Versailles an invitation to the next war, will have his head cut off as neatly as by a Hitler axeman...
...As it will come, if we are worthy of our heritage...
...Set your sights high...
...Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect...
...These great affairs of Yalta, San Francisco, and places still to come, are the business of us all...
...And that was that...
...Two men, not one, came from afar, and met not with Jehovah but with Stalin...
...The intolerable thing about this whole Yalta business is the insistence that it is to be swallowed whole...
...We have an infallible charter, or table of the Law...
...But will any such discussion as this be encouraged, or even allowed ? Not if Teheran, Dumbarton Oaks, and Yalta are any indication...
...This was simply free speech at work, that's all...
...Churchill is a Tory of a particularly intransigent type...
...Do you declare that Yalta is the best that can be got...
...At last out of this demand came the Bill of Rights as it is called, by which is meant the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, the greatest single charter of liberty in the history of modern times...
...Already the propaganda is being organized and the pressure applied...
...Not failure but low aim is crime," wrote Browning...
...These sturdy forefathers of ours, in other words, were perfectionists, and therefore were unwilling to be satisfied with anything less than "a more perfect union...
...I have always thought it was commendable to seek the perfect...
...No discussion, no criticism, no frank and open thought...
...And yet here we are told that we are guilty of some kind of sin in measuring the Yalta agreement by the best rather than the worst that we know...
...Remember the words of Lincoln, how he said, in a crisis second only to this: "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people...
...I say that this "best" is bad...
...These men had fought a long and costly war to make their world safe for democracy, and they proposed to use this democracy to serve and protect their interests...
...The true American way is to submit these momentous decisions to the test of public discussion...
...Not to fail, but to seek...
...Any man who dares to object to anything done at San Francisco will be branded as a bad American...
...These were the Law...
...But the first Americans did not think of it in that way at all...
...It is accompanied by the thunder and lightning of the Kremlin...
...At last, it became clear that the new Constitution stood no chance of adoption at all unless it was drastically amended to the end of safeguarding the liberties of the individual citizen...
...They were to be accepted precisely as they were brought down from the mountain...
...No amendments, no reservations, no changes of any kind...
...Moses could not look upon the face of Jehovah, and live...
...But now that the tremendous moment is over, and Churchill and Roosevelt are once again actually walking among men, the result seems to be the same...
...IF this is a fumbling and stumbling way of expressing an idea, it is because it is so perfectly ridiculous to ask the great and general public, in this or any other country, to believe that there is any infallible wisdom in the Big 3 who met at Yalta, with no authority behind them except the sheer power of their armaments on land and sea and in the air...
...Even though it gave every prospect of being a landmark of progress toward peace and brotherhood, a true international Constitution, it should still be examined in every last word and syllable, that it may still be the best formulation of wisdom that the minds of mortal beings can conceive...
...They concern our fortunes, our lives, our honor, and the destiny of our beloved country...
...That was the great age of our brave, new democracy...
...Do you tell me that Yalta is free of these evils...
...But no man can question their revelation, and be endured...
...So state after state stood up and declared that it would accept the Philadelphia document only on the strict condition that it be reconceived and rewritten...
...There was a time when we believed that "the voice of the people is the voice of God...
...Discussion is unwise...
...Perfectionist...
...Churchill and Roosevelt looked upon the face of Stalin, and survived to tell the tale...
...Receive what is handed down from on high, with no questions asked, no suggestions offered, no exceptions taken, or else be branded this day and forevermore as a fascist, a pro-Nazi, an irreconcilable, an isolationist, or—worst of all, a perfectionist...
...We must follow in their way...
...Americans think of it as an inspired document...
...What matters it if you fall short, or fail...
...We must do their will...
...That's what the Bible says, in the words of Jesus himself...
...By JOHN HAYNES HOLMES (Chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union) IT'S Sinai all over again I According to the old story, Moses went up on to the mountain to interview God, and the interview was fruitful...
...Just because a free people refused to surrender their right of private judgment and of public debate, even in the case of the handiwork of the greatest group of men then living, this country is today free of the tyranny of government...
...Yet with utter audacity they are handing down fiats of destiny which the world is asked to accept with closed eyes, bated breath, and unthinking brain...
...I'm A Perfectionist' What there is so terrible about being a perfectionist I have never been able to understand...
...So far have we already gone in the direction of Nazi Germany...
...And throughout the ages this injunction has been laid sternly upon the aspiring soul...
...Our fuehrers know...
...These Commandments, of course, as coming from the Most High, were infallible...
...That line hung straight—it was the perfect line by which to build a wall...
...Is there any better or equal hope in the world...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 14
