A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette YESTERDAY, in one of my weaker moments, I succumbed to the offer of a farmer to sell me some "well-rotted manure" which he distributed about the bushes...
...It is obvious that both in Europe and Japan the ordinary healthy American reacts to other human beings of whatever race or creed in a normal healthy manner...
...Phil got home from a business trip late last evening and shot into the house...
...Just poor planning on your part, Mrs...
...The first reaction I had was dead Japs, then of course I realized where I was and that the smell was not quite the same...
...Sixteen-year-old Judy came in groaning, "What in the world have you done ? I could smell that terrible stench way up to the drug store and Jane and I wondered what it was...
...So I have just been out figuring if it would help if I raked the manure thinly so that it would dry out sooner, in case my helper does not respond to my urgent appeal...
...As I dropped off to sleep last evening, however, I thought again of how every time Phil makes some casual reference to such experiences as "the smell of dead Japs," what a great gap there will always be between those who have had the experience and we who see the pictures...
...I keep rubbing my unbelieving eyes to read in one line of a columnist of how we should send clothing, boxes of toys, etc...
...What have you done to our house...
...There are brutes and gangsters, potential and actual, in every country, but what a marvelous thing it is to see nature's rebellion against these perversities as she creates the great mass with normal healthy characteristics of sympathy, friendliness, and the desire for companionship...
...Why, a farmer came to the door with the well-rotted manure, said several of the neighbors had taken some, and I thought it would be good for our plant life...
...Nine^year-old Sherry came back from school: "Mother, I could smell something terrible way up the street...
...LaFollette...
...They are idle, bored, and increasingly bitter...
...What was the idea anyway...
...The effects of the war itself are enough of a shock to our body politic, and I question if we can afford the cost of the ruthless blueprints of the armchair "hard peace"ers...
...From a purely practical standpoint, we observe two great nations who have been in the grip of gangsters...
...Why encourage it further...
...I was much interested in Robert Shaplen's report in The New Yorker from Kyoto, where at the close of the war a group of American war prisoners, most of them survivors of Bataah a"hd the Luzon "death march," had taken over the town, but, says Mr...
...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette YESTERDAY, in one of my weaker moments, I succumbed to the offer of a farmer to sell me some "well-rotted manure" which he distributed about the bushes and hedge...
...And, frankly, the reports we get from correspondents as well as individual letters home, worry me about the effect of prolonged occupation on our own boys...
...that rule is dead, and since we stepped in and took responsibility, isn't our next step to win these people's confidence and desire to work out for themselves their own democratic way of life...
...The war is over and he doesn't harbor grudges...
...And his mother cried when you were defeated for governor...
...Phil said he had ridden up on the train from Chicago beside a young man who had seen prolonged action in Europe and who exploded as he was looking at a current magazine, "I can hardly stand to look at this tripe...
...I suggested tentatively that he himself might wield a spade, but being a nurseryman is not one of Phil's strong points, as I witnessed his labors with the pruning shears when he enthusiastically chopped off limbs and branches after an absence of over three years...
...Little did I realize what I was in for...
...Imagine my feelings to find that it came from my own house...
...If we who have been through the war don't hate individuals how can these soft-cushioned civilians get themselves up such a blood lust...
...The man who helps me with the yard is a most spasmodic helper, and here is the manure waiting to be "spaded under," and what of the neighbors' noses meanwhile ? "Well," Phil philosophized, "if the neighbors complain, just tell them that it is a sample of the atomic bomb, and that will hold them...
...Of course he was right...
...Well, to be-facetious in a comparison, I am well aware this morning that one should not take on more than he can handle...
...PHIL snorted, "Our plant life, as you call it, already grows like the jungles of New Guinea—you can't even keep up with it as it is...
...Shaplen describing their activities, "With only one or two exceptions their spirit was, so far as I could learn, one of carnival rather than vengeance...
...to form ties of understanding and friendship with other countries—and a paragraph further the same columnist admonishing us that we must never forget that the Germans are our enemies...
...AS a British pacifist paper I get remarked recently, one of the outstanding lessons of the past wars is that our enemies do not remain the same...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 43
