Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

“The Germans under Hitler have done a frightful thing; they are Frankensteins and their monster grows against them, day by day. In ten years—or, if they succeed, in even a thousand—it will be big enough to consume all of them. You can’t buy hatred, Wilson. When it exists, you can’t buy it off, either. Real hatred—the elemental force these Nazis have created—is as sacred to the hater as love. It is the same thing as love, Wilson.”

The banker said nothing.

Mr. Corinth cleared his throat. “All over America, beginning many years ago, were the small, brave voices of alarm. We called them ‘militarists’ in the early days. ‘Jingoes.’ Get ready, they said. Stop the Japs in Manchuria. Stop Ethiopia. Don’t let the Germans reoccupy the Rhineland. On and on the voices went, repeating the warning—to a nation that was dedicated to peace, prosperity, and an undefined asinine thing they called ‘normalcy.’ The voices rose as the crimes increased. Bigger navy, they said. Put the boondoggle money in rearmament. They were right. We were wrong.

“We filled our magazines with wishful advertisements for peace. War, we said, was murder. War, we told ourselves, was a money game. An economic matter. And, while we insisted all war could be prevented by negotiation, we also refused to sit at a table for any negotiation—thereby exhibiting the essential flaw in our own lulling argument. On went the voices. Nations fell. At Munich, America relaxed, as did Britain, with an eloquent sigh. Peace was assured. Hitler was a barrier against Communism—and no more. In the sigh was a note of humiliation—a decent people had been ‘sold,’ but the price was worth the gain. Anyway—it cost America nothing. The Paul Reveres kept riding, though. Poland next, they said. The Balkans. And then France.”

Mr. Corinth looked around at the faces. A few conversations had started at the other end of the room. Jimmie was sitting with his eyes shut, frowning. Mr. Wilson lay back in his chair, staring scornfully down his nose. The others kept making little motions, as if they wished to interrupt the old man. But his voice plunged ahead of them before their arguments could crystallize; he spoke with such assurance that many of his listeners—even those who stopped a while and went away—were evidently persuaded of his point for the time they listened. They would go back, for the most part, to their convenient views, when the memory of what they had heard became dimmer. The old man paused as if he were trying to summon some sort of idea, some point or topic, which would rivet his attitude irrevocably onto their brains.

“When France fell—fell so fast—a lot of Americans were frightened. By a lot, I merely mean a relatively large number. Most Americans think France is a dirty, remote, semi-civilized country where a second-rate people converses mainly about sexual perversions in an incomprehensible language. Even the majority of veterans who have been there think that. So its fall didn’t impress the national opinion much. The common people still thought one marine could lick a panzer division.

“But history, if future history is to be written in English, will talk about the Paul Reveres of this recent age. At the head of them will be Roosevelt—who saw and understood. Next will come Willkie. And, after that, a few hundred men and women. A few hundred —if America survives the coming years-will be responsible! Maybe it’s always a few hundred—who save things. They were all sorts of people, these few.

Reporters who had watched the sinister crusade set fire to the sullen Germans. A statesman here and there—a very few statesmen—who, like Churchill, had seen the misshapen things to come. Some scientists and refugees, a handful of college presidents, a few Jews, a few editors and publishers, by God’s grace, and a number of writers. If you think I mean Walter Winchell among ’em—I mean Walter Winchell. His rabid memoranda may have a bigger place in history than you think. The realist often looks shabby to the reactionary—and always survives his social superior in the annals. William Allen White, and Pierre van Paassen, Van Loon, Sinclair Lewis, John Gunther, William Bullitt, Henry Luce, and so on. You could name ’em all, if you’ve read anything except the propaganda of your own crowd. Different sorts of people. Dorothy Thompson and Thomas Mann and his kids. Pearson and Allen and Clapper and Alsop and Kintner. They wrote. They published. They formed committees.

“Do you think that’s all they did, Wilson? Do you know what has opened the eyes of your fellow Americans? These people. They met in New York and Washington and Chicago and Miami and every big city. They formed, not two or three, but thousands of groups. And they were not interested in trying to sell the American people a notion—as you are. They were interested, very simply, in trying to put before their fellow citizens the facts of what was happening. They talked till dawn. They lectured; they begged the microphones. They beat their typewriters when they could barely sit up straight enough. They made their living somehow, ran up bills, raced across the nation at their own expense-and they did not preach, like you. They said to all the people that they could reach: Here’s what’s going on; make up your own mind.

“They had faith in the Americans. They believed that if the Americans understood what was roaring and clanking toward them out of Europe, the Americans could be trusted to act. Unlike you, Wilson, they didn’t try to skid over, and ignore, the hideous implications of thing. They didn’t advise that a comfortable course could lead to a comfortable future. They advised that the facts were such and such, and the future, whatever it was, would certainly be uncomfortable. These Minute Men of Truth—whose every fact you called an unholy lie and a trick to lead us into war—these unpopular people who yelled, ‘To Arms!’ received no compensation, got no orders, had no millionaires to back ’em, no political big shots in their pockets—nothing!

“The bill of goods they felt impelled to offer was most unpalatable. Their sales talk had no appeal for people who just wanted to be left alone. They fought their Lexingtons and Concords, and when, for instance, by a single vote in Congress, America kept its army, these were the men who passed out cold on their desks with relief. A spontaneous little army—without leaders—because every man jack in it was a leader. An army that Hitler’s wizards in the Munich geopolitik bureau had not foreseen. Volunteers who could not give their blood, because there was no tangible attack, but who lent to the psychological attack such fury that the ruinous Hun policy of division and destruction, which was already swinging through America, began to backfire.

“I think someday a psychological history of this war will be written. And when that is done, the early heroes, the first strategical geniuses, the original guarantors of ultimate victory, will be these writers, these editors, these statesmen—who licked Mein Kampf with its own weapon: the pen. One angry person, one Hitler, one John Brown, one Christ, one Joan of Arc, can change human history. A few hundred angry men and women have changed America right under your nose, Wilson! America can be grateful in the future—that these people rose up like the embattled farmers and did as brave a job on a subtler front.”

“America in what future?” Mr. Wilson asked sarcastically. “America with two or three hundred billions of debts? America in the middle of a wrecked world? America without trade, because no one has the wherewithal to buy? America with—if your private panic is right—a million dead sons and cities in ruins? America bankrupt in a depression that makes the last one look like a boom? America geared for war in a world that has at last quit fighting? That America, you mean?”