Caresse Crosby

  —INVITE YOU TO HOLD PRELIMINARY MEETING WITH OTHER MEMBERS BIG FOUR ON MY PROPERTY IN DELPHI WHERE 2,500 YEARS AGO AMPHICTYONI MET FOR WORLD UNITY AND PEACE—STOP—IN THIS INSPIRING AND SACRED PLACE YOU WILL FIND SOLUTION TO PROBLEMS NOW CONFRONTING HUMANITY—

  Back in New York she organized an art sale to provide funds for the building, bringing together more than 100 of the finest contemporary painters, a United Nations of the art world, all of whom she knew well: Joan Miró from Spain, Fernand Lèger from France, Alexander Calder from the U.S., Pietro Lazzari, an Italian-American, Michael Lekakis, a Greek-American, and Romare Bearden, a black-American. In Washington, Lazzari held a benefit showing of his paintings at the Crosby Gallery, half of the proceeds of which were earmarked for the Delphi project.

  “I plug away and cry ‘shame’ whenever the unbelievers cry ‘Utopia!’” Caresse wrote to newlyweds Charles and Connie Olson. “I am busy on various projects—Women Against War, the book [The Passionate Years] soon to be out, Delphi, not developing very fast, and a real Herculean task just now”

  She appealed to Dr. Stringfellow Barr, director of the World Government Foundation, in the hope that he might sponsor the Delphi project:

  I have been working continually, largely through women, for a United Nations Government. In every land our numbers increase daily, so much so that I, and my own financial resources, can no longer take care of these vast projects. . . . In the U.S., even a campaign for funds costs money, and too many people are suspicious of worldwide affiliations to sign up.

  In May 1952, we World Citizens will lay the cornerstone of a World Treasury at Delphi. World Citizens from England, headed by Hugh Schonfield—also from France, Italy, Belgium and Germany—will be present. A deputation from India, Mrs. Kamela-Devi and Ray Kamari Amrit Kar, are now with me.

  Michael Law, a British film producer, will make a 16 mm. color film of the ceremony. . . . He requires only $2,000 capital, but this I cannot supply myself. The architectural schools are interested in a [design] competition for a World Treasury—this competition will need organization and circulars—another $3,000 at least! Time is precious! This initiative must not die. . . .

  To Hugh Schonfield of the Commonwealth of World Citizens, she wrote:

  . . . a lack of funds is the thing I find most difficult at this point. All secretarial work and postage come out of my own pocket, as well as other incidental expenses, but in this country people seem to steer clear of investments in world ideology. However, I think we will get press and radio coverage from Delphi, and that will be important.

  Worldwide press coverage came—much sooner than Caresse dared hope. The invitations went out to World Citizens to attend “The Dedication at Delphi” on May 24.

  Caresse Crosby, Citizen of the World, will dedicate the land, and Hugh Schonfield, founder of the Commonwealth, has agreed to give the acceptance address.

  Other speakers:

  The Greek Minister, P. Sifneos

  (“for Freedom from Fear”)

  The Archbishop of Amfissa

  (“for Freedom of Worship”)

  The Mayor of Delphi

  (for “Freedom from Want”)

  Members of the diplomatic corps and the Greek government headed a distinguished guest list that included Albert Einstein, Lord Boyd-Orr, and other humanists.

  The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs graciously granted permission to hold a meeting on the Delphi site and issued the permit for a future Office of Information there. After the invitations went out, the Ministry—in an about-face—decreed that the dedication ceremony could not be held without sponsorship of an international organization. Hugh Schonfield agreed to give the official stamp of the Commonwealth.

  Then something unforeseen erupted in the Greek press. The act intended to symbolize a world without boundaries was perceived as a threat to Greek sovereignty, flying an alien British flag over Delphi, the “sacred” territory. Caresse arrived in Delphi two days before the ceremony, to be met by someone from Reuters, the international news agency: “Are you going ahead with it, Mrs. Crosby?”

  “Yes!” she answered, in disbelief that her attempt for world peace would be perceived as a political affront. Reuters wired, “We are sending reporters to cover the story.”

  The next communication came from the Ministry of Defense in Athens: “We are sending the militia if you continue.” Caresse’s humanistic dream was becoming a nightmare, a diplomatic incident. When she attempted to reach the Minister of Defense to rescue the ceremony, he had conveniently left the country. When most needed, the American Ambassador also made a diplomatic exit. Caresse called upon a higher power, King Constantine, but discovered that he was away on his yacht.

  Caresse captured in her memoir the comic-opera overtones of the events that followed. At the beginning of the ceremony, the Home Guard, wearing the traditional short white skirts of a more peaceful time, came carrying flowers to present at the ceremony. After receiving new orders from headquarters, they dropped the drooping bouquets and picked up guns to invade the promontory. They looked embarrassed, puzzled, not knowing what to do. According to Caresse, the Ministry of Defense ordered the local Commandant “to stop, by any means necessary, all artistic and spiritual activities near Delphi!” Soon, the guard began firing across the road.

  Caresse stood her ground. A reporter from the New York Times arrived on the scene. “We are Americans and this is your territory, Mrs. Crosby. We will go up anyway!”

  She insisted, “I have a right to read the Dedication!” but her voice was lost in the crowd. The apolitical opening remarks—approved by the Greek authorities—were never delivered:

  We Citizens of the World are both new and ancient peoples. We are spiritual, united from every part of the globe in the conviction that wars do not make peace. The world is facing universal disaster. It is now our duty to come forward as men and women with malice toward none, believing in goodness rather than power. . . .

  And so it is we return to ancient Delphi, where Humanism was born, to declare to all the world that we are here for friendship and for universal understanding and justice. . . .We believe in one another and in mankind. We believe in the great past and hoped-for future, and it is in this belief that I now dedicate this promontory of earth to the service of humanity and raise the flag of the Citizens of the World.

  On her copy of the dedication speech, Caresse noted: “This is what I intended to say at the ceremony on May 24. I agreed not to raise the flag after the police interfered, but I was stopped from saying anything at all. Can it be that the cradle of democracy is to become the funeral pyre of individual liberty?”

  The British cameraman started to record the ceremony, but the authorities confiscated his film. Busloads of World Citizens and VIPs were stopped at Delphi and turned back as an invading army. Caresse was left holding the symbolic green and blue flag (“the colors of earth and sky”), with a child’s stick-figure of World Man, its legs and arms extended to embrace the globe. Still protesting, she was taken back to Athens under armed guard and placed under house arrest.

  Later, when she stepped out on the terrace, a delicate moon was rising over the silent countryside. She could see the heads of the guards silhouetted below. “I will not give in,” she vowed, with the stubborn streak that sustained her Puritan ancestors during the Revolution and bleak New England winters.

  Friends throughout the world who read press reports responded by letter and cable. The Minister of Defense maintained, in interviews, that it was against national interests for large organizations to set up headquarters in Delphi, a Greek national monument. Caresse held firm: “I have a right to peaceful assembly, to freedom of expression, under the United Nations Bill of Rights.”

  She appealed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. At first, the Minister pretended ignorance—had she failed to obtain the necessary permission from the Ministry of the Interior? David
C. Berge American Consul General of the U.S. Embassy replied to her inquiry in typical bureaucratese:

  Dear Mrs. Crosby:

  You have requested this office to inform you of any decision reached by the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, in re: the status in Greece of “The Commonwealth of World Citizens.” The Royal Minister has informed this office that it is impossible to give any further consideration to your request. It was stated that according to the concept of the Greek authorities, districts like Delphi are considered sacred areas, and anything which might disturb the tranquility of such an archaeological site could easily be interpreted as sacrilege.

  In view of this decision by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it does not appear that this office can be of further assistance to you in the development of your project.

  Never one to surrender after the first encounter, Caresse engaged Angelo Prokopiou, a Greek associate of the distinguished law firm of Frere, Cholmley and Nicholson of London. She planned to take her case to the highest authority—the Greek Supreme Court. “I firmly believe that the interference of the Greek Government was a gross injustice,” she wrote Prokopiou. “The architectural plans for the building site were submitted to a committee chaired by Professor Piccionis of the Polytechnic Institute of Athens, and never had any of my hopes and plans been made without knowledge of the authorities. My aspirations as a Citizen of the World only add to the glory of Greece.”

  During the controversy, the World Citizens’ headquarters in London raised some 200 pounds in British currency for relief of Greek earthquake victims. “This should prove that in spite of the ungracious reception of the Commonwealth founder, its members bear no ill will towards the Greeks.”

  After she had not heard from Prokopiou for several weeks, Caresse requested an immediate reply to her queries: Will there be more than one hearing? Has the Declaration of Human Rights been ratified as part of the Greek legal code? Do I enjoy the same rights as any other landowner in Greece? (She attached a photocopy of the deed to the land at Delphi.)

  The Crosby case was mentioned in the Athens daily, Eleptheros Logos, by G. Vassiliades:

  This organization works for international peace . . . and although it may work for a Utopian dream, it nevertheless aims at no subversive purposes. . . .

  The case before the Supreme Court is of great importance. . . . The actions of the Administration . . . are contrary to the Rome International Agreement of 4 November 1950, “on the Rights and Basic Liberties of the Individual” which has been ratified by Greece. Article 10 of this agreement provides for the freedom of expression of personal, philosophical, artistic and political opinions. Article 11 safeguards the freedom of assembly for peaceful purposes, while Article 13 safeguards the above rights to all persons irrespective of sex, race, nationality, color, religion, and national origin. Mrs. Crosby’s attorneys will invoke the above Articles, and if her appeal is rejected, she will make a further one to the European Committee on Human Rights.

  We can only express the hope that this last step will prove unnecessary, so as not to present Greece in an unfavorable light to world public opinion which is carefully observing the case. . . . [Translated from the Greek]

  Caresse’s case before the Greek Supreme Court was defeated, despite Prokopiou’s valiant defense. Characteristically, she held no malice toward Greek friends and few regrets. By that time, she was enthusiastically embarking on another international venture, a World Man Center in Cyprus. She wrote to a Washington correspondent, Mrs. Julius Wadsworth:

  I will not be in Greece this summer. I must work on my projects here for awhile. If and when you do go to Greece, let me hear. I will send you some introductions, and above all, be sure to visit Delphi. Stay at the Castalia Hotel and go out on the balcony overlooking the valley, turn your head to the right, and just beyond the little Greek church that looks like a lump of sugar, you will see the promontory that belongs to me and to the Citizens of the World. If you will walk over and say a prayer there for the future of mankind, I am sure the gods will listen.

  Chapter XIV

  WORLD MAN CENTER, CYPRUS

  “Faith and love and venture are the values I have built my life on. I do not think they are going to fail on Cyprus.”

  —Caresse

  The world at this very moment stands on the brink of defeat or success, of Heaven or Hell,” Caresse wrote to Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus: “Why not be the one country to take the forward step . . . toward One World?”

  She was beguiled by the island birthplace of Venus Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Cyprus appealed to her sense of history. It was Mark Anthony’s love-gift to Cleopatra, the seaport where Desdemona waited for Othello’s return. She discovered that Zenon of Kitium, a follower of Socrates and Plato, first considered Cyprus as a neutral territory dedicated to peace. When she met another Zenon of Kitium—His Excellency Zenon Rossides, a suave international lawyer, then Cypriot Ambassador to the United Nations—from that time forward Cyprus and the Cypriots played an important role in her life.

  In recent history, Cypriots were ruled more often by Mars than by Venus. The island was the prey of contending faiths and factions, the British, the Turks and the Greeks. The British established a Crown Colony in 1878 that endured until after World War II, when the Greek Cypriots petitioned for énosis (union with Greece) and the Turks for partition. In the compromise government, the Greek majority won two-thirds representation, but violence and the énosis movement still persist.

  Against this historic backdrop, Caresse—at the suggestion of Rossides—proposed to install her World Citizens’ Center, ousted from Delphi, on Cypriot soil. If Makarios agreed, “the Archbishop would be known throughout the world as the leader who resisted greed, militarism, and power politics,” she said. She knew that Makarios was no stranger to American thought and ideals. The 37-year-old Bishop of Kitium had been studying theology in Boston when—in October 1950—he was called home to become Archbishop Makarios III. Some ten years later, after a plebescite, the Cypriots elected him first President of the Republic. In this man of impressive physical presence, ready eloquence, and mischievous sense of humor, the Greek Cypriots found a dynamic leader, and Caresse a man worthy of her unabashed admiration. She asked if she might come to the island to talk with His Beatitude and the women of Cyprus.

  She flew to Cyprus with Rossides to seek a site for World Man. From the air, Nicosia appeared to be an irregular row of white houses, green-shuttered with red-tiled roofs, against a backdrop of the majestic Kyrenia mountains. On the ground, it was obvious that some of the native charm was giving way to so-called “progress.” The old-­fashioned coffee shops still lined one side of the square, but a Ford garage now stood between the ancient Kyrenia Gate and the Convent of the Dancing Dervishes. A large municipal market had taken the place of the old trellised bazaars, and a beauty-shop replaced the spice-sellers’ stalls. Outside the walls, where once there were fields of barley, were blocks of suburban apartments, shops and offices, and a movie theater.

  Caresse knew that she could not complete her Herculean task on the first visit, but she began by purchasing eight acres of land (with $2,000 from her personal account) near the ancient Abbey of Belle Pais. British writers have compared the site to Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, but it was difficult for her to imagine this exotic southern isle transposed to a northern setting. In the spring of the year, the sea and sky were an unbelievably clear blue, the olive trees and cypresses a deep green. Anemones and cyclamen carpeted the ground, gladioli and wild irises and tulips were just beginning to peek through, and the red oleanders were already in full bloom. Rosemary and thyme were growing like wildflowers on the hillsides, and the air was fragrant with the scent of orange blossoms and bitter lemon. As Caresse approached the Abbey, she could hear the distant, doleful pan-pipes of a goatherd, as Euripides must have heard them. The sun’s reflection tinged the ancient stonework with gold. It was love at first sig
ht. Caresse said “Yes!” to Cyprus.

  Back in New York, she began to take practical steps to realize her idealistic dream. Incorporating the World Man Center with offices at 866 United Nations Plaza, she named herself president and called upon Rufus King—whose Manifesto for Individual Secession into a World Community (Black Sun Press published in 1948), a respected international lawyer, to act as secretary-treasurer. The Greek artist Michael Lekakis and architect Buckminster Fuller agreed to serve as vice-presidents. In addition to Rossides, 15 important names were listed on the letterhead as members of the executive committee: Norman Cousins, John Huston, Philip Ives, Elsa Schiaparelli, Cyril Connolly, Kay Boyle, and Jean Hélion, among others. Her granddaughter, Lorraine de Mun, now living in New York, would provide secretarial backup.

  Caresse’s long-standing friendship with “Bucky” Fuller dated back to the Depression days of the ’30s, when he came with Isamu Noguchi to Romany Marie’s restaurant in the Village. By the ’60s, Fuller’s star was rising. As architect of the U.S. Pavillion at Expo ’67, the world’s fair in Montreal, Fuller was featured as a cover story in Time and the subject of an in-depth article in The New Yorker. Bucky’s active participation as architect of the World Man Center was regarded as a coup by Caresse. It lent credibility to her idealistic Cyprus project.

  Fuller wrote to Caresse on Valentine’s Day 1966 from Carbondale, where he was then research professor at Southern Illinois University:

  Very dear Caresse:

  This letter confirms my agreement with you to act as your architect for the Cyprus undertaking. It also confirms my agreement to go with you sometime between June 15 and June 30 from Rome to Cyprus to inaugurate our design task. Now that you have substantial funds pledged to the project and Makarios’ assurance of an adequate portion of the whole of the island for a world headquarters, and have substantial friendly support of both Greek and Turkish youth, and probably with United Nations support from U Thant, I see no reason why you should hold back any longer on publicity.