Essays of E. B. White

  Weapons are worrisome and expensive; they make everyone edgy. But weapons are not and never have been the cause of the trouble. The only weapon in this decade that is intrinsically harmful is the nuclear weapon during its test period, and that is a new and separate problem, which must be dealt with separately. I think it can and will be dealt with, for although it is related to the balance of power, and therefore is capable of being used for national advantage, it carries a threat that is the same for all nations, Eastern and Western, atomic and non-atomic—the threat that the earth will eventually bear too great a residue of poison and will no longer support life. All nations know this, though some are reluctant to admit it. At any rate, a test ban, though full of danger for whoever signs it, has at least a reasonable chance of success, provided the nations signing it do not disarm. A nation signing an agreement to quit exploding nuclear devices has a selfish interest in honoring the agreement. The debris from tests falls on home ground as well as on enemy territory; it covers the earth like the dew. And although the nation might find many attractive reasons for breaking the agreement, the selfish reason would still be present, as a deterrent to violation. That is why we may profitably talk about stopping nuclear tests: national self-interest happens in this case to coincide with universal interest, and the whole business is a simple matter of human survival on a shaky planet. Usually, in negotiations, that isn’t true. It isn’t true of a disarmament agreement, which is no sooner signed than a thousand selfish reasons crop up for wanting to violate it.

  We hold arms so that, in the event of another nation’s breaking its word, we will have something to fall back on, something by which we can command respect, enforce our position, and have our way. Modern arms are complicated by their very destructiveness, their ability to turn and bite whoever unleashes them. That is why everyone is pleased by the prospect of disarming and why there is a great hue and cry raised against arms. And how are we to disarm? By signing a treaty. And what is a treaty? A treaty is a document that is generally regarded as so untrustworthy we fee! we must hold arms in order to make sure we’re not disadvantaged by its being broken. In other words, we are seriously proposing to sign an agreement to abandon the very thing we will need in the event that the agreement itself fails to stick. This seems a queer program to me.

  In drawing up plans for disarming, the nations are making it clear that their distrust of one another and of treaties is as strong as ever. They’re insisting that there be “controls”—they are called “adequate” controls—and that there be “inspection.” President Eisenhower has suggested an “open-sky” system. And everyone agrees that the treaty must be “enforceable”—some say by an international disarmament organization free of the veto and affiliated with the United Nations. As for control, there is no way to control any aspect of a sovereign nation’s internal life. The U.N. designers sensibly bowed to this sticky fact when they installed the veto and provided that the internal affairs of a member should be nobody else’s business. (The Hungarian revolt demonstrated how sad are the facts of international life.) It is possible to influence a sovereign nation, through public opinion and through pressures of one sort or another, but it is not possible to control it, short of domination by force. In the case of arms, which are among the most intimate of a nation’s garments, and which a nation instinctively conceals from view, we do not even know at any given moment what we would be hoping to control the next moment, so speedy is the evolution of weapons and counterweapons. National life is secret life. It is always been secret, and I think it is necessarily secret. To live openly, one must first have a framework of open living—a political framework very different from anything that now exists on the international level. A disarmament arrangement backed by controls and inspection is not such a framework, it is simply a veiled invitation to more and greater secrecy.

  Can we inspect the Soviet Union? Can it inspect us? In this jungle world, inspection would be an attempt to license an international legion of Peeping Toms. I cannot believe that it would work. It would probably spawn a legion of counter-Toms, fellows to peep at the peepers. An “open-sky” system in which the inspectors carried operator’s licenses would itself be under the surveillance of the open-spy system that all nations feel obliged to maintain at all times. And the open-sky system, although a new idea, has already been overtaken by events: the sovereign sky is no longer top-level—space hangs above it, from which East and West are taking pictures of each other with flying cameras.

  As for “enforcement,” an arms pact is by its nature unenforceable. It would be enforceable only if there were an authority higher and more powerful than that of the parties involved in the deal. The principal characteristic of life on earth today is that no such authority exists. An international disarmament organization, created by treaty and representing the East and the West and equipped with police powers, would not constitute such an authority. This does not mean that nations do not take their treaty obligations seriously; it simply means that no nation takes any obligation seriously if it begins to threaten the national safety or obstruct the national will. In the case of a disarmament “authority,” any attempt to invoke it might easily result in a riot or a war. National arms would quickly resume their ascendancy over pooled arms, because national forces are responsive to the will of the nation, and this is a fluid, living thing; whereas international arms would be the servant of the signatory powers and of a status quo—the conditions that prevailed on the day the treaty was signed. The Soviet Union wants this police force to be under the Security Council, where it would be subject to the veto—in short, a cop who would swing his club or fail to swing it according to the whim of one of the parties.

  Many statesmen feel that weapons are in themselves evil, and that they should be eliminated, as you would crush a snake. They feel that vast stores of arms create tension and threaten the peace by the mere fact of their existence. This is perfectly true. I doubt, though, whether the tension created by the existence of arms is as great as the tension that would arise if there were no arms, or too few arms. President Eisenhower has said that war in this day and age would yield “only a great emptiness.” So, I think, would disarmament in this day and age. An arms race is a frightening thing, but eighty sovereign nations suddenly turning up without arms is truly terrifying. One may even presume that Russia came forward with the most sensational of the disarmament proposals—total disarmament in four years—just because it is terrifying. A dictator dearly loves a vacuum, and he loves to rattle people. Disarmament in this day would increase, not diminish, the danger of war. Today’s weapons are too destructive to use, so they stand poised and quiet; this is our strange climate, when arms are safer than no arms. If modern weapons make war unlikely, had we not better keep them until we have found the political means of making war unnecessary?

  To hold quixotic views about disarmament is my lot, and it is not a happy one. What happens to arms in the next few years may save all of us, or destroy all of us. In these circumstances a man feels uneasy at expressing any opinion at all, since it might in some slight way affect adversely the course of events.

  In a letter to Dag Hammarskjöld, Khrushchev said, “General and complete disarmament cannot result in advantage to any side.” This is nonsense. The side that enjoys numerical superiority stands to gain by disarmament, the side that does not have any intention of remaining unarmed for more than a few minutes stands to gain, and the side that uses the lie as an instrument of national policy stands to gain. If disarmament carried no chance of advantage, Mr. Khrushchev would not be wasting his breath on it. He likes it because of its propaganda value and because it gives him a chance to oust us from our advanced military bases—which is the Soviet’s precondition of an arms agreement.

  Perhaps the most valuable clues to peace nowadays are to be found in the Soviet Union’s own fears, and these are many. Russia’s greatest fear, apparently, is that Western democracies will act in a united and constructive way. Russia is constantly on
the alert to divide us and drive the wedge that we read about every day in the papers. Mr. Khrushchev’s March visit to Paris was designed primarily to arouse France against West Germany. His conniptions at the summit and his vilification of President Eisenhower were designed to stir up irritation and allow him to threaten the countries that had accidentally got involved in the spy-plane affair. If it’s so very important to Russia that the West be a house divided against itself, then it should be equally important to the free nations that they stand together, not simply as old friends who have a common interest but as a going political concern. A successful attempt to open discussions on this subject has yet to be made, and the matter is seldom referred to in exact terms.* The Western nations are still content to put their trust in what they know—the techniques of diplomacy, of alliance, of collective security, of bargaining, of last-ditch solidarity. A few months ago, when the United States and Great Britain were faced with a decision about nuclear-test arrangements, Macmillan had to duck over here at the eleventh hour for a quick talk. This kind of hasty tucking up should be unnecessary. It is appalling that at this late date the two great English-speaking countries, both equipped with atomic weapons, both desirous of presenting a solid front to the world, each wholly dependent on the other for survival and neither sure that it will survive, should have no political machinery for translating the wishes of their peoples and should still be obliged to go philandering to gain a decision on some vital point. England and America in this fateful decade remind me of a fabulous two-headed sheep I encountered in a book by Laurie Lee: “It could sing harmoniously in a double voice and cross-question itself for hours.”

  Well, politicians are busy men. Primarily they are not paid to indulge in the pastime of shaping the world in an ideal mold, out of pure theory and pure reason; they are paid to get us through the day as best they can. A public servant has a thousand pressing obligations as well as a strong distaste for theoretical ideas that are bound to irritate voters. But I believe that if a public man speaks of the rule of law at all, he should stay with the subject long enough to say what he has in mind: Who are the authors of this law? Who are the enforcers? From whom do they derive their authority? What are the geographical conditions? What is the framework within which it lives? The simple truth is, we in the West have not yet attempted a political inventiveness, we do not seek a political framework, the centrifugal forces causing friendly nations to fly apart are still operating, we are in disarray, and “the rule of law” is a cloudy phrase in a closing paragraph, not a clear gleam in somebody’s eye.

  Perhaps this is not the proper rime to explore the foundations of unity of the West. Many people would say that although the vision of a federal union of free democratic capitalist states is a pleasing prospect for dreamers, actual work on it would be too upsetting, would shake us at a ticklish time. We might become so absorbed in establishing order on a higher level that we’d lose what little order we now enjoy, and thus play into the hands of our enemies. Others would say that if the political unity of free powers were to become an accomplished fact, it would merely increase the challenge and the fury of the East. Others would argue that most people find unity repugnant; it spoils the fun.

  These are all good arguments against trying to bring greater order into Western society. As an American citizen, though, I would welcome the stirrings of political union with the United Kingdom, with Scandinavia, with the Western European nations—with any nation, in fact, that practices government by the consent of the governed. For I would feel that although I was being placed temporarily in a more dangerous position, I was nevertheless occupying higher ground, where the view was better.

  The Communists have a shape they pursue; they propose an Eastern union that will eventually erode the West and occupy the globe. In a day when imperialism is despised and languishing, they brazenly construct an empire. To do this they engage us in a Cold War. I believe this war would be easier to fight if we, too, could find a shape to pursue, a proposal to make. Let us pursue the shape of English liberty—what Santayana once described as “this slow cooperation of free men, this liberty in democracy.” English liberty in a federal hall—there’s a shape to conjure with! “Far from being neutralized by American dash and bravura,” wrote Santayana, “or lost in the opposite instincts of so many alien races, it seems to be adopted at once in the most mixed circles and in the most novel predicaments.” A federation of free states, with its national units undisturbed and its people elevated to a new and greater sovereignty, is a long way off, by anybody’s guess; but if we could once settle on it among ourselves, and embrace it unashamedly, then we would begin to advance in a clear direction and enjoy the pleasures and disciplines of a political destination. Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.

  In the long debate on disarmament, I encountered a statement that has proved memorable; it was in a piece in the Times magazine last October, by Salvador de Madariaga, who for a number of years watched disarmament from the vantage point of the League of Nations. Señor de Madaringa ended his article with an observation that should inform and enliven every free nation.

  ‘The trouble today,” he wrote, “is that the Communist world understands unity but not liberty, while the free world understands liberty but not unity. Eventual victory may be won by the first of the two sides to achieve the synthesis of both liberty and unity.”

  I have never seen the matter stated more succinctly, nor have I ever read a prediction I felt greater confidence in. President Eisenhower often talks of “peace with justice,” but fails to supply a sketch. Diplomacy, treaties, national aspirations, peace parley hot, peace parley cold, good-will tours, secrecy, spying, foreign aid, foreign trade, foreign relations—these seem to be only building blocks we are trustful of. From them justice cannot be expected to arise, although occasionally some benefits do come from them, more by good luck than by good management. Our national strategy goes something like this: Keep your chin up, keep your powder dry, be willing to negotiate, keep your friends happy, be popular, be strong, get to outer space, stall for time, justice is bound to come eventually, and the rule of law.

  I doubt whether justice, which is the forerunner of peace, will ever be pulled out of a hat, and some suppose. Justice will find a home where there is a synthesis of liberty and unity in a framework of government. And when justice appears on any scene, on any level of society, men’s problems enjoy a sort of automatic solution, because they enjoy the means of solution. Unity is no mirage. It is the distant shore. I believe we should at least head for that good shore, though most of us will not reach it in this life.

  III

  THE CITY

  The World of Tomorrow

  MAY 1939

  I wasn’t really prepared for the World’s Fair last week, and it certainly wasn’t prepared for me. Between the two of us there was considerable of a mixup.

  The truth is that my ethmoid sinuses broke down on the eve of Fair Day, and this meant I had to visit the Fair carrying a box of Kleenex concealed in a copy of the Herald Tribune. When you can’t breathe through your nose, Tomorrow seems strangely like the day before yesterday. The Fair, on its part, was having trouble too. It couldn’t find its collar button. Our mutual discomfort established a rich bond of friendship between us, and I realize that the World’s Fair and myself actually both need the same thing—a nice warm day.

  The road to Tomorrow leads through the chimney pots of Queens. It is a long, familiar journey, through Mulsified Shampoo and Mobilgas, through Bliss Street, Kix, Astring-O-Sol, and the Majestic Auto Seat Covers. It winds through Textene, Blue Jay Corn Plasters; through Musterole and the delicate pink blossoms on the fruit trees in the ever-hopeful back yards of a populous borough, past Zemo, Alka-Seltzer, Baby Ruth, past Iodent and the Fidelity National Bank, by trusses, belts, and the clothes that fly bravely on the line under the trees with the new little green leaves in Queens’ incomparable springtime. Suddenly yo
u see the first intimation of the future, of man’s dream—the white ball and spire—and there are the ramp and the banners flying from the pavilions and the brave hope of a glimpsed destination. Except for the Kleenex, I might have been approaching the lists at Camelot, for I felt that perhaps there would be the tournament all men wait for, the field of honor, the knights and the ladies under these bright banners, beyond these great walls. A closer inspection, however, on the other side of the turnstile, revealed that it was merely Heinz jousting with Beech-Nut—the same old contest on a somewhat larger field, with accommodations for more spectators, and rather better facilities all round.

  The place is honeycombed with streets—broad, gusty streets, with tulips bending to the gale and in the air the sound of distant choirs. There are benches all along for the weary and the halt, but though science’s failure to cope with the common cold had embittered my heart and slowed my step, the ball and spire still beckoned me on. It was not particularly surprising, somehow, when at last after so many months of anticipation and after so much of actual travail and suffering, when at last I arrived, paper handkerchiefs in hand, at the very threshold of Tomorrow, when I finally presented myself there at the base of the white phallus, face to face with the girl in the booth behind the little bars behind the glass window with the small round hole, expectant, ready, to see at last what none had ever seen, Tomorrow—it was not, somehow, particularly surprising to see the window close in my face and hear a bald contemporary voice say, “There will be a short wait of a few minutes, please.”