Philip Roth - Our Gang

Now anyone familiar with Boy Scout training could have expected that they would be able to use their kerchiefs as tourniquets to stop one another’s bleeding, but few of us believed they could ever do the kind of near professional job they did making splints out of vines and branches and shirts torn up into rags.

As for eating, well, I’m proud to say that by morning they had discovered edible roots and berries we didn’t even know were there. And as for warmth, as you could expect, they managed during the night to start several fires in the classic Boy Scout manner of rubbing two sticks together. In all, what might have been a nightmare for the citizens of Chevy Chase, Maryland, was converted into wonderful scouting experience for the boys themselves, and one that I’m sure they’ll remember for a long time to come. I know that when the police vans returned this morning to take them away, many of the boys were reluctant to leave the campsite. So anxious were some to spend another night under the stars, and away from the so-called “comforts” of civilization such as medical attention, lawyers, telephones and food, that it was necessary for the police to chase after them and literally drag them off the premises and into the waiting trucks. With fewer and fewer opportunities available to our youth for “roughing it,” this administration naturally takes pride in what we were able to do for these youngsters last night. Moreover, we have given them every assurance that if and when they ever come to Washington again, we will make every effort to provide them with the same facilities, or ones even more primitive, if we can find any. Now I know that many of you out there across the country are asking yourselves why I should be making such a generous offer to the Scouts. Why do I praise them for their behavior at the campsite? Why am I willing to forgive these youngsters and give them another chance to make a decent start in life? It must seem to those of you who saw the Scouts waving their signs here in the streets of the nation’s capital signs offensive and insulting not only to me but, what is far worse, to my innocent family that I more than anyone have a right to harbor a grievance against these ten thousand Boy Scouts; and particularly against the three who are now dead and will never be able to come to me like responsible children and apologize for trying to smear my reputation. Why, you may ask, am I so compassionate, judicious, charitable, tolerant and wise, when it was my very own political career that stood to be most damaged by these signs? Well, those are good and intelligent questions. Let me try to answer them as forthrightly as I know how.

My fellow Americans, it is as simple as this ( quickly passes a sponge over his upper lip and slips it back into his breast pocket ): I would rather be a one-term President than carry a grudge against a lot of twelve- and thirteen-year-old American kids. Oh sure, somebody else might try to make political capital out of a vendetta against these youngsters, calling them hoodlums and bums and rotten apples, but I am afraid I am just too big a man for that. As far as I am concerned, these boys have learned their lesson, as they proved at the campsite; and that goes for the three dead Scouts as well. Even if those three dead boys don’t come and apologize, as far as I am concerned the past is past and I for one am willing to forgive and forget. For make no mistake about it: while it is true that I am strongly opposed to permissiveness, I am just as opposed to vindictiveness. I no more believe in punishing a wrongdoer to excess than I would subscribe to the liberal philosophy that allows a criminal to go merrily on his way, after he has committed a crime.

But of even greater importance, I just don’t think we ever cure a disease by treating one of its symptoms. Rather, we must get to the cause of the illness. And certainly you know as well as I do, that the cause of America’s problems is not the Boy Scouts of America. Nobody is ever going to believe that, and that is why I don’t even attempt to make a case for it.

No, the Boy Scouts of America — and I think this will come as a relief to all of you — are no more guilty of anything than you are or I am. They are just another group of American youngsters who have fallen prey to that small dedicated band of malcontents and revolutionaries who are out to destroy our country by destroying our most important natural resource of all, our wonderful youth. And unless we cut these sources of contagion from our society as swiftly and thoroughly as we would excise a cancer from a living body — and I know we are all united in our opposition to cancer, Democrats and Republicans alike — this disease that has spread even to the Boy Scouts will grow in virulence until it has infected every last child in the land, including your own. And so long as I am President, I am not going to stand idly by while the children of this country come down with cancer, leukemia, or, incidentally in that connection, muscular dystrophy.

No, it is not the Boy Scouts of America, but the man who incited them to this riot by tampering with their morals who must be made to take the punishment that comes to all who would corrupt the youth of our nation. And that man, my fellow Americans, is the very same fugitive for whom the Pro-Pornography government in Copenhagen is providing refuge at this moment.

Now I cannot divulge to you over nationwide television the overwhelming evidence compiled by the justice Department and the FBI, linking Charles Curtis Flood to the uprising of the Boy Scouts. We all know, however, the tremendous influence that major league baseball players have over the minds and hearts of the young boys of this nation. I am sure that anyone who remembers how he himself idolized the great ballplayers of his youth, will not even need the evidence in order to imagine just how Charles Curtis Flood might misuse and mislead these boys for his own subversive ends. I am afraid that is all I can say to you tonight about the evidence proving Flood’s guilt. As one who has practiced law, I am particularly sensitive to the Constitutional rights which every defendant is entitled to. And I certainly do not intend to endanger the chances of a conviction by appearing to try this fugitive on nationwide TV. Once he is returned to America, he will be entitled to a fair trial, despite what he has done, and by a jury that has not been prejudiced against him by so august a person as the President of the United States of America.

Right now, as your President, my duty is to do everything within my power to see that this fugitive from justice is returned to our shores. Of course, we have never expected of Flood that he would voluntarily leave his sanctuary in Denmark, given the kinds of pleasures such a man might feel free to pursue in a ‘Country with customs that are hardly those of our own. And if Flood is incapable of tearing himself away from his pleasures so as to face the consequences of his vicious actions, neither has the Pro-Pornography government in Copenhagen done anything whatsoever to force him to surrender himself to the proper authorities for extradition. On the contrary, they have rejected out of hand every legitimate request we have made of them. Even now, with the American Army massed on their borders, the American Navy blockading their coast, and the American Marines firmly in control of “Hamlet’s Castle,” they continue to provide him with the same protection from the law that they provide to pornographers and filth peddlers from around the globe.

I know that in the face of such profound contempt for American power and prestige, the great majority of Americans would agree that I have no choice but to order our troops onto Danish soil so as to establish the D.A.R. as the freely elected government in Copenhagen. However, I want to tell you this: because of my Quaker background, I have, only two hours ago, made one last valiant effort to bring about a peaceful resolution of our differences with Denmark. I am going to conclude my address to you tonight by recounting in some detail the nature of that effort. It is a story of bravery and devotion to country that every American will be proud of. It is a story that will convince the entire world how very far this great nation has gone in its attempt to avoid the armed confrontation that the state of Denmark seems committed to forcing upon us. My fellow Americans, only two hours before coming on television to address you, I gave the order, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces meeting his responsibilities, for a fleet of helicopters to make a surprise landing on the large Danish island of Zealand at a spot right here ( points ), only twenty nautical miles from the capital of Copenhagen.