Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

Mr. Corinth stared at Jimmie. “In the case of crime or danger there is only one question important to a human. That isn’t—How big is the danger, or, How terrible? It’s—How faraway is it? Only, Jimmie, there’re two kinds of ‘faraway.’ One is—How far in distance? The other is—How far in time? The murder and rape of a few thousand Chinese is pretty faraway in distance. So is the German Army—in spite of the cruising range of bombers. That reassures people. But they aren’t any distance away in time! Even with the telegraph, distance in time was still distance. It took time to get the messages translated and printed in the newspapers. But with the radio that’s all gone. We’re isolated in distance, only a few hours, all over the world. And in time, not at all—any more, ever! ”

“I never thought of that,” Jimmie said. “Not that way.”

“Nope. People don’t. I pick up my radio. I hear the AA going in London. Shrapnel hitting the roof where the announcer stands. Fire crackling. Bombs screeching. I think— Well, that’s London and it’s faraway. But I can’t think—That’s something that happened. I know darn’ well it’s something happening right here and now! There’s the trouble. It isn’t history. It’s present tense. Therefore, my conscience won’t let me overlook it. My instinct is to do something about it because it’s going on now! If I still try to tell myself it’s faraway I feel I’m a hypocrite. I feel that I’m an accessory to the whole bloody affair. I am—in the sense that I haven’t the excuse of isolation in time any more. Particeps criminis, the law calls it. That is, if you’re going down the street and you see a robbery take place and you don’t try to do anything about it the law can punish you. You’re an accessory. That’s what radio makes the whole world: accessories before, during, and after the rotten crimes now going on. Not eyewitnesses, earwitnesses, which is just as damning.”

“Not to my family,” Jimmie answered grimly. “Not to them! They think we’re safe. They call the destruction of a continent a ‘European quarrel.’ They say I’m a ‘warmonger.’ I’m not, because I don’t plan in any way to profit by war—which IS what the word really means. They say I’m an interventionist. I’m not, because my reason for wanting to help is not to high-pressure somebody else’s war, but to do a long-range job of saving our own skin. They say I’m pro-British which I am—though the reason is, the English have changed. Before the war I was almost anti-English. Munich made me sick.

But England changed! My family says England betrayed France in the end. Actually—in the end—England offered France an even-Stephen union with the British Empire—a thing which would have caused every tory in the country to shoot himself, three years before! They made that offer, to keep France from betraying herself. Oh—the hell with my family!”

Mr. Corinth smoked. His eyes were as near to twinkling as their opacity permitted. “I know your family. Listening to their radios they feel like accessories to all the crimes. But to stop the crimes—means war, maybe. To go to war means—well, a terrible risk. Perhaps it means they’ll lose their money, their clothes, their cars, their house with the new glass brick panels, maybe Biff’s life, maybe yours. Maybe, even, their own. They will all tell you that Hitler can never touch America. They even say he cannot cross the English Channel—though he crossed it often enough in the air. They will say that Muskogewan can never be harmed. Then, when a little time has passed, and the discussion warms, they will recommend staying out of war tin order to save the lives of Muskogewan’s innocent women and children.’ Oh, they contradict themselves—people like your mother and father! But they talk very much and very loudly, because they are talking nonsense—and their consciences know it. They realize, at the very least, that they are refusing to answer a moral demand. Refusing, because they fear the cost will be high.

That means I hey are putting a money value on their own characters. To admit that out loud, would destroy them. So they deny it; inevitably, they contradict themselves.”

Jimmie stood and stretched. He paced his new laboratory for several moments.

“They make me so mad! Last night the whole crowd at the club said that an American declaration of war on Germany amounted to ‘pointing an empty gun’! Where do they get that kind of garbage? Is a world war the same thing as a stick-up? Is the biggest navy in the world—an empty gun? And what about declaring in the greatest economic plant on earth? Then my old man said that if England lost the whole of Europe would be Communist overnight. Does he believe that? Can’t he read? Hitler has never kept a promise. But hasn’t he carried out every threat he ever made—so far?

“Dad says Fascism is the same thing as Communism. Even if it was—exactly the same thing—what would we do with the whole world like that? I asked him, and he smiled like a sap and said, ‘What we’ve always done, son. Mind our own business.’ I asked him what business we’d have left to mind, and he said I didn’t understand world trade. Imagine! I understand world trade on Hitler’s terms, all right! But Dad doesn’t—and yet he runs a bank! He says, ‘Leave it up to the common people, and you’ll get the right answer every time.’ I say—a lot of things are too damned complicated for the common people! Even at that, I say, the polls of American sentiment show the majority feels a hell of a lot different from Father! So he says the polls are rigged. Are they?”

The old chemist shook his head. “No. They’re honest—and reliable. Only—time enters in, again. That’s why these polls drive people crazy. People overlook the fact that polls are always history. They represent what the nation thought yesterday, or last week, or even last month. Which, with the radio knocking time down to zero, means that the polls are not news, but reminiscence. They have no positive value in deciding what to do now. They only show what should have been done last month, when the poll was taken.

We’re able to live in the present everywhere, now. People ought to think what that means.

One reason the isolationists always talk about this war in historical terms is to try—subconsciously—to push it back into a less uncompromising focus. The kind of focus they grew up with. The focus in which the dying, and t he killing, are always over when you learn about them. That’s comfortable—because it does not make you an accessory. The radio does.”

Jimmie raised his foot onto the top of a stool. He relaxed his weight against his knee. His gray eyes were blazingly alive; his reddish brown hair was uncombed, so that it jostled when he spoke. “The bunch that Father and Mother work with is sure baffling! They take the word of a pilot as gospelon all things military and aerodynamic. They sit on platforms with a prominent Socialist—and you ought to hear what Dad thinks about Socialism! They listen to anybody on their side, no matter how obvious. No matter if he’s a manifest crackpot, or publicity-crazed, or an ax-grinder, or a professional Irishman, or a long-established baiter of Britain, or a discredited politician trying to make headlines—just anybody! No rhyme, no reason, no order—just rant! And big applause.”

“Sure. I’ll introduce you to a few ‘interventionists,’ though, Jimmie—to keep you sane. You’ll find that they’ve pretty much thought their way through all the changes of black and white—to the real answer. It’s funny. The interventionist attitude toward the isolationist is one of worry. Worry about how to convert him. Worry about the factors that made him the way he is. An earnest attempt to reason with him. But the isolationist’s attitude toward his interventionist friend is just—rage. Instead of reason the isolationist has been using slogans. ‘Don’t plow under our boys.’ Frantic, hysterical swill like that. Malicious stuff.” The old man sighed. “The difference in their attitudes toward each other is just about a definition of who’s doing the calm thinking and who’s doing the terrified yelling. Well, Jimmie, there’s a lot wrong with America—”