A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By WITH relatively few exceptions, the American people have, up to the present time, shown remarkable poise and judgment in their emotional attitude toward the enemy and at least...
...Instead of going back into the Dark Ages when men were punished for nervous breakdown, we must recognize it as the result of conditions which themselves must be removed...
...all the time is because the first night they arrived in camp they raised so much hell in the nearest town, dancing on the tables and such, that authorities complained...
...However, as with the individual whose emotions have been damned up under great stress over a long period of strain, we are now observing a strange form of emotional blow-off...
...This gave her pause, and she replied thoughtfully, "Well, honestly, I can't imagine Jim killing people off— he is such a peace-loving guy...
...I tried to put this problem to an eye-for-an-eye proponent the other evening, asking her if she would like her son now in France to be assigned to that detail...
...Thoughtful Americans recognize the serious national problem in store for us in coping with the thousands of fine American youth who have been trained in wartime survive-and-conquer techniques...
...They told us of the systematic selection and brutalization of men and boys assigned to this work, and recognized with hopeless horror its future effects...
...another described a debate with a friend over the exact number of Germans who should be murdered in reprisal...
...and generally behaving in a fine and noble manner...
...to the devil-take-the-consequences of wartime psychology...
...The reason they are A.W.O.L...
...A lot of it is normal, animal spirits but rather than the sobering, natural discipline of peacetime life and work, these lads will be exposed to the ruthlessness of battle conditions...
...A Room Of Our Own By WITH relatively few exceptions, the American people have, up to the present time, shown remarkable poise and judgment in their emotional attitude toward the enemy and at least a self-controlled intellectual tolerance toward those whose opinions differ from theirs...
...Men and women who will seriously tell you why they cannot express their true political convictions if they run counter to the status quo seem to have no hesitation in condemning to death enemy men, women, and children whose crime was not standing up and being shot like countless numbers of their friends and neighbors during the Hitler-Mussolini-Tojo regimes...
...On this specific issue, because it is so largely an ephemeral blowout of the emotions, we must stand firm and keep our light shining...
...Of course I am one of those old-fashioned Puritans who considers it blindly selfish and unmoral to expect sacrifice from others which we ourselves do not have to pay...
...They have not changed the names of streets or foods, nor banned the art and music of the enemy nor, with few exceptions, persecuted Americans of foreign descent...
...Our son wrote me before he went overseas of a group of paratroopers: "We have a very large number of paratroopers here, and as a whole I like them better than the doggies (regular, infantrymen like myself...
...Patton's slapping of a soldier which came near causing his removal and sent his stock to the depths...
...Within a few short months the fact that he Is now "getting results" has wiped out the criticism and raised him to the status of a hero...
...What will be their readjustment to civil conditions...
...Even so, it was a bold plan, worthy of success...
...I think now, as I did at the time, that the soldier-slapping episode was, like war itself, inexcusable ideally, but likewise the product of recognizable conditions...
...The other morning a bunch refused to fall out, which finally brought in the first sergeant and the lieutenant who threatened to use a riot gun on them and charge them all with mutiny...
...If it were not so dangerous I would wish I had joined, but as it is I guess I am better off where I am...
...Giving In To Emotion The perplexing fact is that most of these same people oppose capital punishment of hardened criminals in our own country and talk with apparent reason and concern about the conditions that produce them...
...The Army now has the power of life and death discipline over them...
...I well remember on our last trip to Germany the perpetual nightmare of our German friends: the ghastly holocaust they recognized was in store when revolution either by war or internal explosion turned loose upon the population the victims and the guards of the concentration camps...
...But the sergeant sat down on one of the bunks to check the fellows who were shipping out and saw a rifle...
...and by myself I thought of exactly the same idea this morning after I had started and I intended to use it this noon...
...One woman told me the other day that every German over 10 years old should be liquidated...
...Ordinarily sensitive and sensible men and women seem to be wallowing in an orgy of bloodlust against the German people as a result of the disclosures of the ghastly prison camp atrocities, and have apparently pulled down the curtain on any reasonable consideration of that sordid problem...
...can carry its beacon through the turmoil...
...So he looked under all the mattresses, took all the rifles to the orderly room, and now the fellows are in bad...
...In times such as these I sometimes think of each individual as a tiny island in the sea of humanity, and that each island, small though it be...
...We must keep our gaze on our goal rather than giving way to our natural, immediate fury at conditions we face...
...I have watched (I admit with a wicked pleasure) the effect of calling attention to the uproar over Gen...
...And frankly, when anyone talks about "killing off the Germans," I think about who is to do the "killing off...
...And even if our understanding does not reach out to the basic problem underlying world peace, we cannot escape the consequences to our own flesh and blood...
...Patton, the paratroopers, the common folk of Germany, all find themselves under nerve-wracking strain...
...This morning about 6 of them hid their rifles under their mattresses and 'took off' instead of training...
...It will take the utmost skill and patience and magnanimity to build a firm foundation for lasting peace rather than a fragile paper superstructure over a world of seething discontent and misery...
...So they had to fall out, but 2 of them are still A.W.O.L...
...In spite of the strain and pain we all suffer under tbese days, I am deeply convinced of the fact that we cannot permit ourselves the "luxury" of this kind of emotional release...
...The world and any international organization to "keep the peace" will have to live and deal with great areas of people of German and Japanese blood...
...Bob thus describes normal, healthy American boys Isabal B. La Follette and their reaction (not to mention his own...
...No one knew about it...
...Keep Beacons Shining It does no good to get into an argument which only arouses further excitement, but one can lodge a little seed here and there which will sprout later on under calmer conditions...
...They raise hell, there are always 4 or 5 of them A.W.O.L., they are always 'takin' ten,' etc...
...Many times I have chalked this up to the credit of increased civilization...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 19
