seldes-proclaim liberty.pdf

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PROCLAIM LIBERTY


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ALSO by GILBERT SELDESOn Related Subjects

Your Money and Your LifeMainlandThe Years of the LocustAgainst RevolutionThe Stammering CenturyThe Seven Living ArtsThe United States and the War

(London, 1917)

This is America(Moving- Picture)AND

The Movies Come From AmericaThe Movies and the TalkiesThe Future of DrinkingThe Wings of the EagleLysistrata (A Modern Version)


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71 7r* r n /T/ W/:.-2. I U (;*'% v;t:: t

L I B E RTY

By

GILBERT SELDES

Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all theinhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto them. . .

Leviticus xxv, 10,

THE GREYSTONE PRESSNEW YORK


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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICABY* TEtE WILLIAM BYRD PRESS, INC.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA


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To TECE CHILDRENwho will haveto live in the world

we are making


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are given to the Macmillan Company for their

permission to quote several paragraphs from Arthur Koestler'sDarkness at Noon in my first chapter. The Grand Strategyby H. A. Sargeaunt and Geoffrey West, referred to in chaptertwo, is published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

G.S.


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Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER i TOTAL VICTORY 13

CHAPTER ii STRATEGY FOR THECITIZEN 29

CHAPTER m UNITED . . . . ? 44

CHAPTER iv THE STRATEGY OFTRUTH 61

CHAPTER v THE FORGOTTENDOCUMENT 77

CHAPTER vi THE POPULATION OFTHESE STATES 92

CHAPTER vii ADDRESS TO EUROPE 111

CHAPTER vni THE SCIENCE OFSHORT WAVE 119

CHAPTER ix DEFINITION OF AMERICA 129

CHAPTER x POPULARITY ANDPOLITICS 156

CHAPTER xi THE TOOLS OFDEMOCRACY 163

CHAPTER xn DEMOCRATIC CONTROL 170

CHAPTER xni THE LIBERTY BELL 199


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PROCLAIM LIBERTY


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CHAPTER I

Total Victory

THE PERIL WE ARE IN TODAY IS THIS :For the first time since we became a nation, a power exists

strong enough to destroy us.

This book is about the strength we have to destroy ourenemies where it lies, what hinders it, how we can use it.It is not about munitions, but about men and women; itdeals with the unity we have to create, the victory we haveto win; it deals with the character of America, what it has

been and is and will be. And since character is destiny, this

bookis about the

destinyof America.

The next few pages are in the nature of counter-propaganda.With the best of motives, and the worst results, Americans

for months after December 7, 1941, said that Pearl Harbor

was a costly blessing because it united all Americans and

made us understand why the war was inevitable. A fifty-milebus trip outside of New York perhaps even a subway 'ride

within its borders would have proved both of these state-ments blandly and dangerously false. American unity could

not be made in Japan; like most other imports from that

country, it was a cheap imitation, lasting a short time, and

costly in the long run ; and recognition of the nature of the

war can never come as the result of anything but a realistic

analysis of our own purposes as well as those of our enemies.

What follows is, obviously, the work of a citizen, not a

specialist. For some twenty years I have observed the sources

of American unity and dispersion; during the past fifteen

years my stake in the future of American liberty has beenthe most important thing in my life, as it is the most impor-tant thing in the life of anyone whose children will live in

the world we are now creating. I am therefore not writing

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14 PROCLAIM LIBERTY

frivolously, or merely to testify to my devotion; I am writingto persuade -to uncover sources of strength which others

may have overlooked, to create new weapons, to stir new

thoughts. If I thought the war for freedom could be won by

writing lies, I would write lies. I am afraid the war will belost if we do not face the truth, so I write what I believe to

be true about America about its past and present and future,

meaning its history and character and destiny but mostly

about the present, with only a glance at our forgotten past,and a dedaration of faith in the future which is, I hope, the

inevitable result of our victory.

We know the name and character of our enemy theAxis ; but after months of war we are not entirely convinced

that it intends to destroy us because we do not see why ithas to destroy us. Destroy; not defeat. The desperate war

we are fighting is still taken as a gigantic maneuvre ; obviouslythe Axis wants to win battles and dictate peace terms .

We still use these phrases of 1918, unaware that the purposeof Axis war is not defeat of an enemy, but destruction of his

national life. We have seen it happen in France and Polandand Norway and Holland; but we cannot imagine that the

Nazis intend actually to appoint a German Governor Generalover the Mississippi Valley, a Gauleiter in the New Englandprovinces, and forbid us to read newspapers, go to the movies

or drink coffee; we cannot believe that the Axis intends to

destroy the character of America, annihilating the liberties

our ancestors fought for, and the level of comfort which wecherished so scrupulously in later generations. In momentsof pure speculation, when we wonder what would happen at

worst , we think of a humiliating defeat on land and sea,bombardment of our cities, surrender and a peace confer-

ence at which we and Britain agree to pay indemnities ; per-haps, until we pay off, German and Japanese soldiers wouldbe quartered in our houses, police our streets ; but we assume

that after the shooting war was over, they would not ravishour women.


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TOTAL VICTORY IS

Victory (Axis Model)

All this is the war of 1918. In 1942 the purpose of Axis

victory is the destruction of the American system, the anni-

hilation of the financial and industrial power of the United

States, the reduction of this country to an inferior positionin the world and the enslavement of the American people by

depriving them of their liberty and of their wealth. The actual

physical slaveryof the American

peopleand the deliberate

taking over of our factories and farms and houses and motor

cars and radios are both implied in an Axis victory; the

enslavement is automatic, the robbery of our wealth will de-

pend on Axis economic strategy: if we can produce more

for them by remaining in technical possession of our factories,

they will let us keep them.

We cannot believe this is so because we see no reason forit. Our intentions toward the German and Italian people arenot to enslave and impoverish ; on the contrary, we think ofthe defeat of their leaders as the beginning of liberty. We donot intend to make Venice a tributary city, nor Essen a fac-

tory town run by American government officials. We maypolice the

streets ofBerlin

untila democratic government

proves its strength by punishing the SS and the Gestapo,until the broken prisoners of Dachau return in whatever

triumph they can still enjoy. But our basic purpose is still to

defeat the armed forces of the Axis and to insure ourselves

against another war by the creation of free governmentseverywhere.

(Neither the American people nor their leaders have be-

lieved that a responsible peaceable government can be erected

now in Japan. Toward the Japanese our unclarified inten-tions are simple : annihilation of the power, to such an extent

that it cannot rise again as a military or a commercial rival.

The average citizen would probably be glad to hand over to

the Chinese the job of governing Japan.)Fortunately, the purposes of any war alter as the war goes


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16 PROCLAIM LIBERTY

on; as we fight we discover the reasons for fighting and the

intensity of our effort, the cost of victory, the danger of de-

feat, all compel us to think desperately about the kind of

peace for which we are fighting. The vengeful articles of the

treaty of Versailles were written after the Armistice by

politicians; the constructive ones were created during the

war, and it is quite possible that they would have been ac-

cepted by Americans if the United States had fought longer

and therefore thought longer about them.We shall probably have time to think out a good peace in

this war. But we will not create peace of any kind unless weknow why an Axis peace means annihilation for us ; and why,at the risk of defeat in the field and revolution at home, the

Axis powers had to go to war on the United States.

Ifwe impose our moral

ideasupon

thefuture,

the attack

on Pearl Harbor will stand as the infamous immediate cause

of the war; by Axis standards, Pearl Harbor was the final

incident of one series of events, the first incident of another,all having the same purpose, the destruction of American

democracy which, so long as it endured, undermined the

strength of the totalitarian powers.

Why? Why are Hitler and Mussolini and To jo insecureif we survive? Why were we in danger so long as they werevictorious ? The answer lies in the character of the two groupsof nations ; in all great tragedy, the reason has to be found in

the character of those involved; the war is tragic, in noble

proportions, and we have to know the character of our enemy,the character of our own people, too, to understand why it wasinevitable and how we will win.

Our character, molded by our past, upholds or betrays usin our present crisis, and so creates our future. That is the

sense in which character is Destiny.We know everything hateful about our enemies ; long be-

fore the warbegan we knew the treachery of the Japanese

military caste, the jackal aggression of Mussolini, the brutal-


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TOTAL VICTORY 17

ity and falseness of Hitler ; and the enthusiastic subservience

of millions of people to each of these leaders.

But these things do not explain why we are a danger to the

Axis, and the Axis to us.

Historic Necessity4

The profound necessity underlying this war rises from

the nature of fascism : it is a combination of forces and ideas ;

the forces are new, but the basic ideas have occurred at least

once before in history, as the Feudal Order. Democracy de-

stroyed Feudalism ; and Feudalism, returning in a new formas Fascism, must destroy democracy or go down in the at-

tempt ; the New Order and the New World cannot exist side

by side, because they are both expanding forces ; they have

touched one another andonly

one will survive.We might

blindly let the new despotism live although it is the most ex-

pansive and dynamic force since 1776; but it cannot let us live.

We could co-exist with Czarism because it was a shrinkingforce ; or with British Imperialism because its peak of expan-

sion was actually reached before ours began. We could nothave lived side by side with Trotskyite Communism becauseit was as aggressive as the exploding racialism of the German

Nazis.

As it happened, Stalin, not Trotsky, took over from Lenin ;Socialism in one country supplanted the permanent revolu-

tion . Stalin made a sort of peace with all the world; he

called off his dogs of propaganda; he allowed German Com-

munism to be beaten to death in concentration camps; and,as Trotsky might have said, the historical obligation to

destroy capitalist-democracy was undertaken not by the

bearded old Marxian enemies of Capital, but by Capital'sown young sadists, the Storm Troopers, called in by the

frightened bankers and manufacturers of Italy and Germany.

Thatis

why,since

1932,realist democrats have known that

the enemy had to be Hitler, not Stalin. It was not a choice


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18 PROCLAIM LIBERTY

between ideologies ; it was a choice between degrees of expan-sion. Moreover, Stalin himself recognized the explosive force

of fascism in Germany and shrank within his own borders ; hewithdrew factories to the Urals, he dispersed his units of

force as far from the German border as he could. By doingso, he became the ideal ally of all those powers whom Hitler's

expanding pressure was discommoding. The relatively static

democratic nations of Europe, the shrinking semi-socialist

states like France and Austria, werebruised

bycontact

withHitler ; presently they were absorbed because the Nazi geo-

graphy demanded a continent for a military base.

The destruction of America was a geographical necessity,for Hitler ; and something more. Geographically, the United

States lies between Hitler's enemies, England and Russia ; weare not accustomed to the thought, but the fact is that we area transatlantic base for England's fleet; so long as we are

undefeated, the fleet remains a threat to Germany. Look atthe other side : we are a potential transpacific base for Russia ;our fleet can supply the Soviets and China ; Russia can retreat

toward Siberian ports and join us. So we dominate the twonorthern oceans, and with Russia, the Arctic as well. That is

the geographic reason for Hitler's attack on us.The moral reason is greater than the strategic reason : the

history of the United States must be destroyed, its future

must turn black and bitter ; because fasci-feudalism, the new

order, cannot rest firmly on its foundations until Democracyperishes from the earth.

So long as a Democracy (with a comparatively high stand-ard of living) survives, the propaganda of fascism must fail ;the essence of that propaganda is that democratic nations

cannot combine liberty and security. In order to have security,

says Hitler, you must give up will and want, freedom ofaction and utterance ; you must be disciplined and orderedbecause the modern world is too complex to allow for thewill of the individual.

The democracies insist that the richcomplexity of the world was created by democratic freedom


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TOTAL VICTORY 19

and that production, distribution, security and progress have

not yet outstripped the capacity of man, so that there is roomfor the private life, the undisciplined, even the un-social. Theessential democratic belief in progress is not a foolish

optimism, it is basic belief in the desirability of change; and

we, democratic people, believe that the critical unregimentedindividual must have some leeway so that progress will be

made. The terror of change in which dictators live is shown

in their constant appeal to permanence; we know that theonly thing permanent in life is change; when change ceases,life ceases. It does not surprise us that the logic of fascism

ends in death.

So long as the democratic nations achieve change without

revolution, and prosperity without regimentation, the Nazi

states are in danger. In a few generations they may indoc-trinate their people to love poverty and ignorance, to fear

independence ; for fascism, the next twenty years are critical.

Unless we, the democratic people, are destroyed now, the

fascist adults of 1940 to 1960 will still know that freedomand wealth co-exist in this world and are better than slavery.

So much which is enough was true even before the dec-

laration of war ; since then the nazi-fascists must prove thatdemocracies cannot defend themselves, cannot sacrifice com-

fort, cannot invent and produce engines of war, cannot win

victories. And we are equally compelled, for our own safety,to destroy the principle which tries to destroy us. The alter-

native to victory over America is therefore not defeat or

an inconclusive truce. The alternative is annihilation for the

fascist regime and death for hundreds of thousands of nazi

party men. They will be liquidated because when they are

defeated they will no longer have a function to perform ; theii

only function is the organization of victory.

The fascist powers are expanding and are situated so that

with their subordinates, they can control the world. And th

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