Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

“You can see here why we cannot accept the President’s implications that Americanism connotes belief in God: Americans have too many diverse ideas concerning God to attempt conformity. And besides, they have, or once had, freedom in the matter.

“This last leads to a greater irony. For those Americans who are of most value in this terrible age—the men of science, the technicians, the sociologists and psychologists—the only persons who offer America any practical hope of deliverance from present panic—do not, by and large, believe in God at all, according to the conventional descriptions of organized Faiths. These men and women are in one sense opposed to ‘faith.’ They have accepted, in their heads and hearts, a search for truth and an inquiry into reality, in place of all creedal statement. Yet they are no less honest, honorable, pure and true than other men. On the contrary, because their minds are not suborned by the intellectual despotism of this outworn creed or yonder debunked dogma, they are, as a group, more honest, more honorable, more truthful and more reliable than the conventionally religious. They are the people who have made most of humanity’s advances; the rest are followers, often reluctant, sometimes sadistic and destructive.

“If, by pretending ‘Americanism’ is synonymous with religious faith, we alarm these people in our midst—the discoverers, pioneers, leaders of thought, inventors, scientists, educators—then we shall truly have beheaded the nation in the name of Godliness. It is one more symptom of our hidden panic.

“There are many others besides. If the McCarthys should remove from U.S.A. every single Communist and Communist suspect, the present danger to us all—so clear, so terrible —would not be measurably alleviated.” Coley cleared his throat. “Underline the last phrase twice, Bea.” He continued, “America would be Communist-free, spy-free, to be sure. But half a billion people elsewhere in the world, Communists all or slaves of Communists, would still be undeterred and laboring day and night to destroy liberty on earth and the United States in particular. We would have killed a few gnats and let fatal hemorrhage run unchecked. That is the measure of the cosmic unimportance of the Senator from our sister state. And that is the measure of the foolishness of those who hold the credulous notion that the McCarthys are accomplishing work of primary importance in the matter of our imminent doom.”

“I never thought of it quite that way.” Mrs. Berwyn stretched, sank long fingers in her rust-red hair and yawned.

“That’s what I’m getting at. The people in River City, the folks in Green Prairie, don’t think of it that way either. But that’s the way it is. It’s like anti-Semitism. You wipe out the Jews, and what have you got? The same old problems, sins, poverties, wars, troubles and evils as always. Plus a guilt-ridden population, a bunch of executioners who have learned to fear each other. You wipe out every Commie in U.S.A., and what would you have? Russia to deal with, unchanged. And a bunch of Americans who had violated their own trustworthiness and so become scared of one another, for dam’ good cause!—without solving their problem at all !”

Mrs. Berwyn demurred. “Still, I hate to think of any Commies sneaking around in Government, in the Pentagon, anywhere….”

“Me, too. Catching them, though, isn’t an amateur sport. It’s a hard job for the FBI and the intelligence and counter-intelligence people.” He whipped out a pocket handkerchief and wiped his damp face. “Do you realize how nutty we’ve become? Getting professors to sign oaths? Making a lot out of whether or not people refuse to admit party membership? Your real, dangerous, hard-core Commie will sign any oath. He’ll swear to any lie. He belongs to a church.

He maybe even works as an investigator for a Senate committee. His Communism is hidden under careful coats· of everything that looks ‘American’ to the most brassy patriot, the biggest oaf. These Senators have ‘exposed’ a number of Commies—sure. How many dangerous ones have they unearthed? Put it the other way. Why don’t they turn up some people who were unsuspected even of liberalism? Get my point? Let a Senator and his posse of meddlers expose one three-star general in the pay of the Kremlin, or a bishop or a nun—and I’ll have some respect for this empty game of sifting miscellaneous fools, skeptics and dissenters through a mesh. of senatorial bigotry, prejudice, empty-headedness and personal ambition. Show the people the enemies of freedom and you are really a great man, I say. Play on their fears, feed them straw men and whipping boys, and Huey Long’s your name!” Coley shrugged.

“Is that all,” she asked.

“All?” He stared uncomprehendingly. “No. Not quite all.” He walked across the room and gazed over the moon-ghosted cities as he talked on:

“Some of us, nowadays, take refuge in such medieval and panicky hiding places as these, undoing our own liberty in false hope of saving our skins. Some are sillier still. They look to people, imaginary people not unlike God, to come from ‘outer space’ and save them. They see Flying Saucers on every breeze and in every night sky and console themselves with the idea that beings ‘higher’ than themselves will soon come and save mankind from man and his bombs.

This is escapism, too, fantasy, exactly such superstitious stuff as was the foundation for many medieval tenets.

“Others take their qualms back to the churches—the churches they abandoned years back for golf on Sunday, bridge, pleasure riding, and TV. There are millions. They are praying for peace, now, and protection against holocaust. Such prayer, uttered ardently by billions to every major deity man’s been able to invent, has never yet been answered! The wars have gone on.

Those historic devotees who exhausted themselves, their time and energy in such incantations were merely easier prey for foes they would not prepare for. This indeed may be the American fate-the price of doing away with intellectual freedom and putting a compulsion on belief. Yet, in all the other provinces of peril, we stay sane.”

His eyes focused on the far phosphors of the night. “On our prairies,” he dictated, “farmers, fearing the onslaught of the wind, dig cyclone cellars. They rod their barns and ground their aerials, lest the lightning strike. If the autumn is dry, their ploughs make circuits around their homes and livestock pens so prairie fire cannot consume what they hold dear.” He looked far away, to his right. “Downstream on the Green Prairie River, and below on the Missouri, men have erected great dams, constructed lakes, set up levees, against Hood. In our cities, lest fire break out, we maintain engines and men to save us from burning. And against all crimes, police patrol our streets, in cars these days, vigilant with every electronic device. We have appraised many dangers and prepared against them in these and a hundred other fashions. What of the peril of world’s end?

“Today in Washington, men who do not, who cannot, understand what it is they are talking about argue interminably concerning how doomsday may be resisted or put off. Since, in their technical ignorance, they cannot appraise recent perils, their thoughts concerning the perils to come are useless. We maintain a navy—against what may never move by sea. We levy vast armies and hold them the final arbiter of every battle even though, just the other year, an empire called Japan fell to us with never a foot soldier on its main islands. We believe our airplanes can deliver stroke for stroke, and better, but we will not count the effect of strokes upon ourselves.