by Anne Conover
With greatest love, faithfully yours,
Bucky
That summer, Fuller wrote to Rossides proposing the construction of a building suitable for World Man’s oasis on “space-ship earth,” a large, geodesic dome “to act as a vast umbrella to protect the activities below it from rains, winds, and too intense sun.” He added, “I foresee that the Cypriots heretofore agitated by external sovereign nations to fight against one another may wish to cross the line for sovereign nation control into the World Man area, or may even request Archbishop Makarios to extend the World Man land to enclose their own homes on Cyprus. We are trying to . . . become transcendental to the international concept, wherein nations become as obsolete as sovereign boroughs, cities, states, countries. . . .”
Yet political disturbances erupted again on the island. On June 17, Fuller wrote to Caresse:
Mr. Lekakis called me today to say that Mr. Rossides . . . had become truly disturbed to learn that you had written to Makarios regarding talking with Dr. Kutchuk about our undertaking. Mr. Rossides feels, as do I, that it will be easy to upset this situation due to the smoldering conditions of yesterday’s fighting. I urge you to talk with nobody about the situation until we all meet in Cyprus, and some firm arrangements have been made.
Caresse well might heed Fuller’s warning to use discretion when dealing with the political leader of the Turkish Cypriot community, Dr. Fazil Kutchuk. He was a heavy-set, stubborn man with a gruff voice who presented a sharp contrast with Makarios, the shrewd tactician and patient bargainer. Kutchuk’s second language was French, not English; he was inclined to miss the point of much of the conversation and to assume that the jokes were on him.
While Fuller was dictating a letter to Caresse, a reporter from the Washington Post called to confirm a news item picked up from an international wire service: “Is it true that you have been retained by Mrs. Crosby to design an International Peace Center on Cyprus?” That was the first question. She then startled Fuller by quoting without a source the beginning of a sentence of his letter to Ambassador Rossides: “I foresee that the Cypriots, heretofore agitated by external sovereign nations to fight against one another, may wish to cross the line. . . .”
Fuller was alarmed that the reporter quoted the sentence out of context. To the best of his knowledge, he replied, none of the proposed agreements had occurred, and “if the proposed center was realized, it would be supernational. . . . I am not interested in anything international.”
It was a matter of semantics, but Fuller was agitated by the exchange, and warned Caresse:
It is my experience that nothing will bring about the perishment of a good idea more swiftly than premature publicity. My only hope is that we are dealing with something so evolutionarily solid in respect to emerging World Man that we will be able to weather the complex of misunderstandings and emotional disturbances and geopolitics in general . . .
He added a native New Englander’s word of caution: “When caught in a sudden lethal squall, experience has taught me that swift attention to cleaning up the ship and getting it on an even keel quickly enough sometimes prevents a following knock-down from sinking the ship.” He closed with a strong vote of confidence in Caresse:
The ramifications of your life are great. Nothing I have to say should make you feel that I have anything other than the greatest affection, admiration, and enthusiasm for you. . . . I am confident that if we weather this we may be about to establish the first true freehold of World Man. His numbers will multiply rapidly to hundreds of millions. In 2000 A.D. all humans will have become Universal Citizens. The concept of man as a citizen of a geographically limited ward, county, town, state or nation will seem as strange and foreign to the life and thoughts of 2000 A.D.’s “Universe Citizens” as now seem the lives of slaves in a Roman galley or the cave-dwelling events of Stone Age man.
Caresse was “terribly distressed and frankly astonished and angry about the abusive report” of the Washington Post reporter, she wrote Fuller. George Weller from the Chicago Daily News had lent her his house in Kyrenia, and she suspected that that was where the story originated. She had shown the portfolio of documents about World Man and enthused about Fuller’s participation in it over cocktails between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. on June 14. “He must have put the story on the wire that very evening or next morning . . . I was flabbergasted—what can I do to help get the ship on an even keel again? It does look as if it were rocking.”
Caresse mentioned to Fuller that Rossides was disturbed by the letter she had written to President Makarios, urging him to seek the cooperation of all Cypriots, including the Turks, in the World Man project as follows:
I know that you have many enthusiastic friends among the young people in England, in America, and in Greece, and I hope when I come to Cyprus with Dr. Fuller . . . that I will be able to meet the Vice President of Cyprus and talk with him about the possibility of interesting the artists and the youth of Turkey as well as the Turkish Cypriots in this concerted effort.
“I can’t play at secret diplomacy,” she admitted. “I believed that Makarios was the President of the Republic of Cyprus . . . not just a Greek puppet President. . . . I still have faith in his integrity.” She planned to meet Fuller in Nicosia on the Fourth of July, she added, and “I hope you are not too upset, for nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come . . . Our ship must not founder once launched.”
On July 7, she issued an official statement in the name of Makarios from the Presidential Palace in Nicosia. As the first head of a sovereign nation to cede land to World Man, Makarios offered the 200-acre property in the vicinity of the Abbey of Belle Pais, to be administered for 50 years under a trusteeship “of the highest order of intellectual and scientific capability.” (The World Academy of Art and Science, which included in its governing body a number of Nobel Prize winners, was one possibility.) Of the estimated cost of the conference building—about one million dollars—the Archbishop was to contribute $200,000.
Referring to the continuing violence on the island, Fuller used the opportunity of the Palace press conference to point out that armed conflict was always the result of the Malthusian principle that mankind multiplies far faster than the capacity of Earth’s physical resources to support human life. If mankind could succeed in increasing the world’s resources to support human life, then war—even political systems—would become obsolete.
In August, Caresse met representatives of the WAAS, Dr. Max Habicht and Dr. Boyko, in Rome. She wrote to Fuller:
You will guess that I am not completely happy at the turn our planning has taken. . . . I am wondering just what influenced you to name the Academy as caretaker at that first press conference in Nicosia? We know so little about their activities and their members. . . . I liked Dr. Boyko and Dr. Habicht very much, but from their point of view, my usefulness would be to raise money to enable them to make a year’s study for their report. . . . Their need for delay seems even a bigger hump than the hump the Washington Post gave us to hurdle.
Two weeks later, she wrote again: “I have not heard from you since Beirut and my last letter was a cry for ‘Help!’ I am waiting for your advice about the World Academy, and whether I should go ahead with the art auction. . .?”
From his summer home on Bear Island, Maine, Fuller replied that Ambassador and Mrs. Rossides had appeared there “in the wilderness,” on the same day the “cry for help” letter arrived. Together, they had re-read all the documents, including the letters from Boyko to Makarios, and it was “not as bad news as it at first seemed.”
Fuller had written to John McHale, who was in turn making it clear to Boyko, that there were several alternative trustee bodies that would be just as appropriate as the WAAS, but he found the WAAS roster of members impressive. Fuller himself recently had been accepted as a Fellow of the WAAS, along with Dr. Doxiadis, head of the Architectural College of Athens. Doxiadis gave their program his vigor
ous support, and “since . . . [he] deals with the high powers of Cyprus, this is good news,” Fuller reported.
I am confident that everything is in good shape. . . . I am also confident that Caresse Crosby . . . will be in a leading position of authority in respect to . . . the World Man Center . . . the unique consequence of her long years of dedicated work. . . . Very dear Caresse, I am sure that in taking the responsibility of being your advisor in your great undertaking that I am not going to let you down.
In October, the World Man Center received one encouraging letter from Philip Isely, Secretary-general of the World Constitutional Convention, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado. Isely asked Caresse to serve on the World Committee of the WCC as a member from Italy, her official residence. She preferred to represent Cyprus—“I actually own some land on Cyprus, aside from the World Man Center”—and would seek the approval of President Makarios on her next visit to the island. The fact that the WCC and other world organizations accepted Caresse into their membership shows that her efforts were highly regarded by those in positions of authority—that her activities were not viewed as the hobbies of a dilettante.
Just after the 1967 New Year, Caresse drew up a Cyprus Plan of Action. She listed the people and organizations to contact for loans and/or advice: the American Ambassador to Cyprus, Toby Belcher; Aristotle Onassis (“who is already interested”); the Hilton hotels and TWA (for an airlift from Nicosia to Kyrenia); Hormousias, editor of Kathimerini, the Athens newspaper; the president of the Bank of Greece; and Constantinos Doxiadis.
Her son-in-law, Polleen’s then-husband Stephen Drysdale, was among British investors in a Belgian real estate venture on Cyprus, which, Caresse observed, could also be a point in favor of keeping Cyprus peaceful. The Ford Foundation had expressed interest in World Man, but they would have to wait to appeal to other foundations until tax-exempt status was granted.
In addition, she proposed a Cypriot referendum to determine the greatest needs—schools, hospitals, roads? She supported the plan submitted to U Thant by the Parliamentarians for World Government to offer a military unit from Cyprus as part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, thereby replacing the British troops on the island.
In first place on Caresse’s agenda was the art auction to be held in New York in October to raise funds for Fuller’s geodesic dome. Robert Dowling, owner of the handsome East Side venue of the Parke-Bernet Gallery, promised Caresse that she might hold the auction there. Lorraine de Mun, acting as secretary to the art committee, was sending out letters from headquarters to prospective donors.
World Man at this gateway between East and West [is] . . . a meeting place for the arts. . . . World artists are spearheading this endeavor. Will you accept this invitation to participate by offering your work? . . .
William de Kooning and Isamu Noguchi gladly consented to donate their works for the auction. Dali suggested that Caresse might call upon some of the wealthy owners of his works to contribute. (He still held tight to his dollars.)
Caresse next wrote to Picasso at his atelier in Vallauris in the South of France:
You once wrote, and I published in Portfolio II: “A painting is not an object to frame and hang upon the wall, it is rather a weapon with which to fight the enemy.” Ever since that time, I have been dreaming that dream, that the artist must come into the arena from his ivory tower to save the world. . . .
Now I am writing to ask you to help us with your genius in the fight to save the world from holocaust. . . . Could you donate one of your paintings for the auction, or do a special poster, an original Picasso, on the theme, “One World or None”?
Throughout the summer, Lorraine at headquarters kept in touch with Caresse in Italy with a barrage of warm and affectionate letters:
I am absolutely thrilled that you are going to be in America on October 8 . . . in ten days I shall be seeing you! I spread the good news to Mrs. Rossides as soon as I got the letter, so Zenon and Mrs. Simpson will have been notified by now. I do love you, Gran. . . . My job is still going very well and as soon as the government grant comes through I shall be making a lot of money and shall be able to take you to Quo Vadis for lunch. I daren’t ask you for dinner as I know you will have millions of beaux as soon as you set foot in New York.
Oodles and oodles of World Love, Lorraine
In July, Caresse was involved with the contretemps that erupted between Fuller and Rufus King, who suggested that World Man should be confined to a smaller area of land. Fuller wrote to Rossides:
Rufus King is an excellent lawyer but his astronomical hypothesis is incorrect. . . . There are no fixed points in space. . . The World Man Center’s 200 donums of land . . . is a spot on the surface of the 8000-mile diameter spherical space-ship Earth. . . . It is obviously impossible to refer to “our airspace.” There is no static space. There are no straight lines. There are only geodesic relationships.
In Fuller’s view, laws made by human beings “do not give humans the power to substitute their futile hypotheses for the physical laws governing universal behavior . . . The word ‘sovereignty’ was invented by weapons-wielding bullies who asserted and maintained with their swords and guns their claims to perpetual ownership over various lands of the spherical space-ship Earth . . .”
If King’s idea of reducing the ceded area to an infinitely small spot were acted upon, Fuller repeated, “there will be no need for a dome umbrella, and I will immediately withdraw . . . Our joint acts of last summer can only prosper if we succeed in keeping the 200 donums utterly uncompromised for at least fifty years.” He ended the letter to Rossides on a pessimistic note: “The chances of man’s survival on the spherical spaceship Earth are in great jeopardy.”
Bucky and his wife, Anne, went to the official opening of Expo ’67 in Montreal that summer. He wrote to Caresse that they were “overjoyed by the reception of the Dome.” Fuller’s son-in-law, cinematographer Robert Snyder, described the Expo Dome “as a three-quarter sphere”, in which the walls start going away from you. [It] has the extraordinary psychological effect of releasing you, for you suddenly realize that the walls are not really there. . . . Something is keeping the rain away, like an umbrella, but you don’t feel shut in, you feel protected.”
In Fuller’s view, the Dome demonstrated “the doing so much more with less for all humanity . . . World Man will realize that his salvation on space-ship Earth is to be gained by such a design revolution and not by political revolution . . .” The Dome was also a monument to Fuller’s wife in the year of their 50th wedding anniversary. “I have brought about the production of our own Taj Majal as pure fall-out of my love for you [Anne],” Bucky wrote.
Caresse was distressed to hear news of the tragic accident that temporarily suspended Fuller’s efforts on behalf of World Man. After the Fullers returned to New York, the airport taxi in which they were riding at high speed skidded on a rainy street, crashing against a bridge abutment and bouncing across the highway. Neither Fuller nor the taxi driver was hurt, but Anne suffered severe damage, including two brain hemorrhages. After a siege in intensive care when her life was in danger and an even longer hospital stay, Anne recovered. But it was another of the many cruel blows of fate that stalked Fuller throughout his life.
That summer, Caresse also invited Garry Davis to serve on the steering committee of the Cyprus project. The young man who surrendered his U.S. passport in Paris to become a Citizen of the World in the ’40s was a delegate to the World Citizens’ Committee meeting in Wolfach, Switzerland, when Caresse caught up with him to ask if he would be coming to Italy during the summer: “We must have a talk. I thought the letter you wrote to the Herald Tribune was very fine, and as you know our beliefs are the same on that subject.”
In September, Caresse requested a progress report on the WAAS from John McHale, now serving as executive director of Fuller’s World Resources Inventory at Southern Illinois University. McHale replied that “I have no
further information. . . . The WAAS has not . . . accepted trusteeship, but merely indicated that they may do so when the land is ceded and funds have been secured for the operation of the Center.” In McHale’s view, the Arab-Israeli conflict might influence the WAAS’s cautionary stance—Cyprus seemed anxious to engage in the conflict just before it came to an end. The official attitude of the Cypriot government was incompatible with sympathy for World Man or peace.
Despite hovering war clouds, early in 1968 Caresse was in Beirut again, on a stopover en route to Cyprus. She wrote to Fuller that she had gotten the impression that “many English promoters already have their eye on Kyrenia.” Noel-Baker, one of the Parliamentarians for World Government, was anxious to know how to proceed in seeking the trusteeship. To Rossides, still in New York, she wrote:
Dear Zenon:
I am waiting here in Beirut to join you in Cyprus . . . impatiently, because I know that both the American ambassador in Cyprus, Toby Belcher, and the British High Commissioner as well as the heads of the NATO College in Rome are anxious to hear more about the World Man Center and are very much in favor. . . . I am being written to from all parts of the world asking for information on World Man and I am anxious to get on with it. The interest shown by the Belgian group of promoters who might put money into real estate . . . is important. . . . It is my son-in-law who is interested in this group and hopes to meet me soon in Kyrenia. I gather that you do not want me to return to Nicosia without you—therefore I am flying to Jerusalem on Monday and will stay there until you are able to leave New York. . . .
She added that “Everyone in Athens was praising Makarios for his One World project.”