TO BILL, BACK FROM THE WARS

...When I got out, I was offered my old job back as copy-writer in an advertising agency...

...It was just good luck and not, believe me, any matter of high principles, that, at this time of indecision, I happened to run into Oscar Ameringer...

...We envy you your fighting chance to make the shape of things to coine close to your heart's desire...

...We all of us from Minute Man Abijah, who ran down the lane at Concord to take a pot-shot at the Redcoats, to the last discharged Private Bill, got bounced around in a bewildering manner...

...Don't forget that in our prime we saw the labor movement of America get to its feet, after the vicious Open Shop reign of terror of the '20s, and stride to power in the middle '30s with the rise of the CIO...

...You may think that you can help by writing little publicity pieces, after hours up here in this fancy New York office...

...This time, you are not going to repeat the mistakes so many of the returning veterans of the last war made...

...No need to tell you that...

...Compared with you I went nowhere, saw nothing, but just the same I guess men coming back from service from the day Cornwallis surrendered to Hirohito's sponge-throwing, have had a little bit in common...

...Be picky, even if you have to coast along on short rations for a bit...

...Oscar with his' beloved comrade Victor Berger had just been thrown out of Jersey City by Frank Hague (yes, that same bum) and a corps of motorcycle cops...

...And I went, and I did find a happiness in those crowded years that followed such as I had never known before...

...And now we're all dressed up in civvies and where do we go from here ? Because you've had so much tougher a time so much longer than the great bulk of us who were dragged into World War I, you had better sit down for a spell and figure out how to grab some happiness for yourself for the rest of your natural life...

...I want to talk with you about that...

...Fraternally, McALISTER COLEMAN...

...SO Bill, don't let them panic you into taking the first job that comes along by pointing at the crowd that is pushing up behind you...

...If you can remember that far back, you will recall that I returned from the last war, after a year's struggle with the clayey soil around the U. S. Engineers Camp Humphreys (now they call it Belvoir) in Virginia...

...The two "Dutchmen," as Oscar used to describe himself and Victor, had been trying to make a speech in Journal Square when Hague's Gestapo arrived and Oscar's description of the "schmier" that followed, delivered to a eonvulsed group at the Rand School, was something special...

...You are not going to gang up into labor-baiting, privilege seeking outfits and go hunting down your best friends under the propulsions of your worst enemies...

...Boy, it's great to have you back, back to enlist in the war from which there is "no discharge," the only war worth the fighting, the war against poverty, bigotry and hate, the war for decency, democracy, and brotherhood...

...And that antiquated two-party set-up in our political life and how to burn a few fires under it...

...You won't be in it...

...OF course you'll have to set up your economic base, the useful, self-respecting job that's the guarantee of three squares a day...

...You come down to Southern Illinois and help us stand off these Open Shoppers who are trying to bust all unions by first destroying the United Mine Workers, and you will have real joy in your life...

...Don't forget that a major political party, the Democratic, tacitly accepted much of the progressive and democratic socialist philosophy and changed the old concept of the state as policeman to the state as cooperator...

...Now you're back, Bill, soon to be joined by the other millions of your comrades...

...Nor that it isn't going to be easy to get a "useful, self-respecting job...

...We old heads are trying hard not to go soft on you, so if you notice that our eyes are a bit wet and our lips tremble a bit as we greet you, put it down to advancing senility, will you ? When you get your land legs back, and have seen all the lads and lassies, and brushed off the silly hero worshippers, and looked over the old plantation to your heart's content, how about having a little talk with your doting Uncle Mac...

...To be sure, the brave, new world we envisaged was literally shot to hell with the coming of the war, but don't forget that the sound heart of America was against that tragic thing...

...They told you you were fighting for democracy...

...That's where the struggle is going on...

...THERE are a lot of things, Bill, besides the atom, well have to take apart and put together again...

...Some of the jobs that will be offered you, will be far from that, no matter how fancy the pay...

...To start at scratch, education, for instance, and how to get it out of the dead hands of the Brass Hats, military and civilian...

...New York is too far behind the front lines...

...We all got bumped out of the life we had planned for ourselves...

...It isn't altogether true that we of another generation had the chance and muffed it...

...Every advertiser, big and little, was upping his appropriation at that time (1919), riot only to peddle his stuff, but also to cut down his income tax and it was a cinch that there was big money ahead in that unsavory profession...

...Now you make them make good, even if you have to fight them to do it...

...That will be with the j, progressive labor movement, the cooperatives, the farm groups, like the Farmers' Union, the educational liberals, the conservation forces, the public power battlers, and the new political party that's just beyond the horizon...

...Like the war-horses in the Bible we old-timers can sniff the battle from afar...

...But you can't...

...Later on he came to see me while I was threshing around in my mind about that advertising job...

...Putting his hand on my knee, he looked at me through his spectacles and said: "Sonny, we need you out in Illinois...

...Heaven knows, you've got it coming to you...

...We had our victories and they were no minor ones...

...That life you have risked so often of late is too precious to throw away now...

...You are not going to be seduced by this old and bedraggled harridan of finance capitalism even though she sports the new duds of "free enterprise" and flaunts the flummery of "individualism...

...They are trying to run our coal-diggers ragged out there...

...And the trade unions and how to get them out of the grip of the hierarchs and return them to the rank and file...

...Don't forget TVA and the advances made in conservation of resources and men alike...

...You aren't going to take out your grudges and such frustrations as you and every man has on minority groups, Jews, Negroes, and Catholics in the manner of the between wars Klan...

...And the cooperatives and how to put a little militant warmth into their rather clammy systems...

...Get yourself into the front line of the real fighting that's just ahead...