Public Burning

  And then suddenly I had this stunning vision of little Ethel Greenglass, about six years old, standing naked by a kitchen coalstove, pulling on a pair of white cotton panties, watched furtively by her brothers, her mother nagging at all three of them from the kitchen table where she was laying out some kind of breakfast. It looked like bread. The table was spread with an oilcloth. Her swollen belly was pressed against the lip—

  I tried to shake it off. But the stove was still there. There was something like linoleum on the floor. I could smell the breakfast and feel that early-morning tremor of getting ready for school. Then I remembered that my brothers and I always used to get dressed huddled around the kitchen stove like that in Yorba Linda, and I caught this exact look of midwinter grayness out the window, only there were old brick buildings out there, not a lemon grove. And this peculiar sensation that Mama—Mrs. Greenglass, I mean—was pregnant, I could see the very shape of her swollen belly just about eye-level. Was it when my mother—? And Ethel’s amazing bottom: we didn’t have any sisters. Only the hired girls.

  I leapt up, grabbed my jacket, switched off the lights and, praying fervently: “God, get me home safe!”, fled the office, afraid even to look back over my shoulder, much less clean the place up. As I ran down the corridor of the old Senate Office Building toward the elevator, my footsteps echoing and reverberating through the empty marble hallways of that dark tower, I seemed to see rats and vermin everywhere, to hear the grinding racket of traffic and feel the violence and dereliction of tenement houses crowding around me, yet at the same time I felt the stomach-churning excitement of a school football game, a piano recital, dance date, my nostrils twitching with a wild murky reminiscence of chlorinated pools, choir robes, girls’ hair, pie crusts, and greasepaint. I felt angry with myself for giving way to panic like this, it was like lurching offside in a big football game, I tried to stop myself but couldn’t—I heard footsteps just behind or beside my own, somebody breathing, the stairwells were sunk in a swarming darkness, doors seemed to be yawning open. At the elevator I pulled up, tried to catch my breath, my heart was beating wildly, I—what? something rustling in the dark space behind the elevator! I wanted to cry out, to run the other way, but I was determined not to lose my cool, not to show fear in the face of the Phantom, not any more than I already had. I knew I had to do something unexpected. I turned and walked directly toward the shadow behind the elevator. “Coward!” I gasped, and gritted my teeth. There was a wall back there and I hit it with my face.

  I staggered back, half blinded by the blow, feeling hurt and alone. I found the elevator button and leaned against it, remembering that hired girl who let me fall out of the carriage and get run over, her big lap, big to me, yet not big enough. I could almost smell her as she came to tuck us in, fresh from washing up. To listen to our prayers. Read to us from James Whitcomb Riley: “Listen, boys…”—the elevator door gaped: a big mouth—I was frightened of it and took the stairs down, jumping them three at a time—“… I’m tellin’ you…

  “The Gobble-uns’ll git you ef you don’t watch out!”

  INTERMEZZO

  The War Between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness

  The Vision of Dwight David Eisenhower

  (from Public Papers of the Presidents, January 20–June 19, 1953)

  Tonight,

  as you sit in your homes all across this broad land,

  I want to talk to you about an issue

  affecting all our lives—the question

  that stirs the hearts of all sane men:

  How far have we come in man’s long pilgrimage

  from darkness toward the light?

  Are we nearing the light—

  a day of freedom and peace for all mankind?

  Or are the shadows of another night

  closing in upon us?

  Since the century’s beginning,

  a time of tempest has seemed to come upon

  the continents of the earth—great nations of Europe

  have fought their bloodiest wars; thrones

  have toppled and vast empires have disappeared.

  The shadow of fear has darkly lengthened across the world.

  We sense with all our faculties

  that forces of Good and Evil are massed and armed and opposed

  as rarely before in history.

  No principle or treasure that we hold,

  from the spiritual knowledge of our free schools and churches

  to the creative magic of free labor and capital,

  nothing lies safely

  beyond the reach of this struggle.

  You are even puzzled

  as to whether it is wise to say anything,

  because anything that one in my position might say

  could be used as an excuse to make

  these conditions worse.

  But do you cure cancer

  by pretending it does not exist?

  We must see, clearly and steadily,

  just exactly what is the danger before us;

  it is more than merely a military threat.

  The forces threatening this continent strike directly

  at the faith of our fathers and the lives of our sons,

  at the very ideals by which our peoples live!

  Freedom is pitted against slavery;

  lightness against the dark!

  Here, then, is joined no argument

  between slightly differing philosophies—

  for this whole struggle, in the deepest sense,

  is waged neither for land

  nor for food nor for power

  —but for the Soul of Man himself!

  We are Christian nations,

  deeply conscious that the foundation

  of all liberty is religious faith:

  we trust in the merciful providence of God,

  whose image, within every man,

  is the source and substance

  of each man’s dignity and freedom.

  This faith rules our whole way of life—

  we live by it and we intend to practice it.

  I think that is not hard to prove

  in the case of America: when we came

  to that turning point in history, when we intended

  to establish a government for free men

  and a Declaration and a Constitution to make it last,

  in order to explain such a system we had to say:

  “We hold that all men are endowed by their Creator”

  —thus establishing once and for all

  that our civilization and our form of government

  is deeply imbedded in a religious faith.

  Indeed, those men felt that

  unless we recognized that relationship

  between our form of government and religious faith,

  that form of government made no sense!

  Now, that is the doctrine of the administration.

  It is most certainly the doctrine of the Republican Party

  and those Republican leaders in Congress.

  The faith we hold

  belongs not to us alone

  but the free of all the world.

  This common bond

  joins the grower of rice in Burma

  and the planter of wheat in Iowa,

  the shepherd in southern Italy

  and the mountaineer in the Andes,

  the French soldier who dies in Indochina,

  the British soldier killed in Malaya,

  the American life given in Korea.

  We believe.

  The enemies of this faith

  know no god but force, no devotion but its use;

  they tutor men in treason;

  they seek not to eradicate poverty and its causes

  but to exploit it and those who suffer it—

  they feed upon the hunger of others.

  These forces

  seek to bind nations not by trust but by fear—

  whatever defies th
em, they torture,

  especially the truth. Against these forces

  the widest oceans offer no sure defense.

  We live in a time of peril.

  This is one of those times in the affairs of nations

  when the gravest choices must be made—a moment

  when man’s power to achieve good or to inflict evil

  surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears

  of all ages.

  The worst to be feared

  and the best to be expected can be simply stated:

  the worst is atomic war…the best:

  a life of perpetual fear and tension.

  We must act from a lesson learned at terrible cost:

  to serve our reasoned hope for the best,

  we must be ready steadfastly to meet the worst.

  These plain and cruel truths

  define the peril and point the hope

  that come with this spring of 1953.

  The world, at least, need be divided no longer

  in its clear knowledge of who has condemned

  humankind to this fate—we all know something

  of the long record of deliberately planned Communist aggression!

  It has been coldly calculated by the Soviet leaders,

  for by their military threat they have hoped

  to force upon America and the free world

  an unbearable security burden leading to

  economic disaster!

  They have plainly said

  that free people cannot preserve their way of life

  and at the same time provide enormous military establishments

  —Communist guns, in this sense,

  have been aiming at an economic target

  no less than a military target: prolonged inflation

  could be as destructive of a truly free economy

  as could a chemical attack against an army in the field!

  They seek to promote,

  among those of us who remain free and unafraid,

  the deadliest divisions: class against class,

  people against people, nation against nation—

  we cannot escape the implication of these attacks,

  their complete indifference to human life and to the individual;

  it is clearly part of the same calculated assault

  that the aggressor is simultaneously pressing

  in Indochina and in Malaya,

  and of the strategic situation

  that manifestly embraces the island of Formosa—

  the destruction of freedom everywhere!

  It is, friends, a spiritual struggle.

  And at such a time in history, we who are free

  must proclaim anew our faith; we are called as a people

  to give testimony in the sight of the world

  to our faith that the future shall belong to the free!

  History does not long entrust

  the care of freedom to the weak or the timid—

  we must be ready to dare all for our country!

  Human liberty and national liberty

  must survive against Communist aggression

  which tramples on human dignity;

  upon all our peoples and nations

  there rests a responsibility to serve worthily

  the faith we hold and the freedom we cherish

  —which means essentially a free economy.

  Let none doubt this:

  we are free men.

  I don’t like the word “compulsory”;

  I am against the word “socialized”;

  everything about such words seems to me

  to be a step toward the thing

  that we are spending so many billions to prevent—

  the overwhelming of this country by any force,

  power, or idea that leads us to forsake

  our traditional system of free enterprise.

  Private investment has been the major stimulus

  for economic development throughout this hemisphere;

  this is the true way of the Americas—the free way—

  by which people are bound together for the common good.

  Make no mistake:

  the reason we have representatives around the world

  is to protect American interests

  wherever they may be endangered or in difficulties;

  we do everything we can to protect the interests

  of the United States everywhere on the globe—

  the peace we seek is nothing less than

  the practice and fulfillment of our whole faith!

  It is on such simple facts as these, ladies and gentlemen,

  that your foreign policy is founded

  and established and maintained.

  I know these facts, these simple ideals,

  are not new; this idea of a just and peaceful world

  is not new or strange to us—all of this springs from

  the enlightened self-interest

  of the United States of America.

  But to be free and stay free,

  we must be strong—and we must stay strong!

  We shall never try to placate an aggressor

  by the false and wicked bargain

  of trading honor for security!

  If we allow any section of the world that is vital to us,

  because of what it provides us—say, manganese,

  or uranium, or cobalt—anything that we need

  —if we allow any of those areas to fall

  to a form of government inimical to us,

  that wants to see freedom abolished from the earth,

  then we have trouble indeed!

  It is necessary

  that we earnestly seek out and uproot

  any traces of Communism at any place

  where it can affect our national life,

  that all of us by our combined dedication and devotion

  may merit the great blessings

  that the Almighty has brought to this land of ours!

  It is up to every American to realize

  that he has a definite personal responsibility

  in the protection of these resources—they belong

  to the people who have been created in His image:

  they must, at any cost, remain armed, strong,

  and ready for the risk of war!

  In that way only, can we permanently aspire

  to remain a free, independent, and powerful people,

  living humbly under our God—

  in the final choice, a soldier’s pack

  is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner’s chains.

  But there is no security for a free nation

  in the sword alone.

  Security must spring

  from the hearts and minds of free men—

  our defense, our only defense,

  is in our own spirit and our own will!

  If we ponder this a moment,

  we all know that this really means the defense

  of those spiritual values and moral ideals

  cherished by generations of Americans

  —the true treasure of our people;

  this treasure of the spirit

  must be defended above all

  with weapons of the spirit:

  our patriotism,

  our devotion,

  our readiness to sacrifice.

  Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world

  must first come to pass in the heart of America;

  the true way to uproot Communism in this country

  is to understand what freedom means,

  and thus develop such an impregnable wall

  that no thought of Communism can enter;

  and we must seek

  in our churches,

  our schools,

  our homes and

  our daily lives,

  the clearness of mind and strongness of heart

  to guard t
he chance to live in freedom.

  I know of nothing I can add

  to make plainer the sincere purpose of the United States.

  My grateful thanks

  go out to each of you for your prayers,

  because your prayers for divine guidance on my behalf

  are the greatest gift you could possibly bring to me.

  Today I think that prayer is just simply a necessity,

  there is a need we all have in these days and times

  for some help which comes from outside ourselves

  as we face the multitude of problems

  that are part of this confusing situation—

  if we can back off from our problems

  and depend on a Power greater than ourselves,

  I believe that we begin to draw these problems into focus.