by Allen Drury
“You of the Congress have just passed at my request a ten-billion-dollar emergency defense budget. I had fully intended, when I made that request, to use it simply as a bargaining point, and to abandon all of it except the very minimum necessary to maintain small defense forces—if the Russians and the Chinese would do the same. Now it appears they will not. So I shall use it as I am constitutionally bound to use it, to preserve and protect the United States of America.
“I am very much afraid that it is time for us in America, in an old prairie frontier phrase, to ‘turn our backs to the wind and hunker down.’
“Devastation such as the world has never seen has occurred in Asia. It may resume again at any moment. If it does, no one can predict where it can be contained—if it can be contained. No one can predict whether we can survive the hurricane if we do ‘hunker down.’ But it does not seem to me that there is, now, any other sensible course for us to follow.
“It may be that we will be the very last citadel left to save whatever mankind has achieved of culture and civilization. It may be that we will survive to put the world together again—or we may just as likely go down with it. It is all uncertainty, all conjecture, all dark and desperate, all filled with frightful peril for us all.
“But we must be brave—and we must be strong—and we must look to our own defenses—and we must hold ourselves ready to help where we can—and we must pray.
“The Lord has preserved us through many perils, for some purpose. We must be confident that He will continue to do so. I make no pretense to you whatsoever that it will be easy. But I call on you to join me in meeting whatever the future holds, with courage, with determination, with unity and with faith in ourselves, our traditions and our purposes.
“I shall keep you advised at every opportunity of events as they develop, and of what your government is doing to meet them. Goodbye and God bless you until we meet again.”
That it might be soon, the early-afternoon headlines reporting his speech made clear:
Knox calls on all Americans to be prepared for whatever future may bring. Says chance of renewed atomic war may be “70-30.” Will send delegation to Geneva disarmament talks but will also build defense to highest peak. Asks nation to “turn backs to wind and hunker down.” Gets mixed but generally favorable reception from tense congress as new war crisis grows.
By 6 p.m. Events had taken a more ominous turn:
Major new fighting, growing air clashes reported on Russ-Chinese border. Hong Kong observers fear new atomic exchange, possible germ warfare.
By 10 p.m. The news was more ominous still:
Chinese report big breakthrough in ground and air fighting! Russians hurled back over hundred-mile sector! No new a-blows yet, but observers believe atomic field weapons, lead-shielded tanks used in fierce new Chinese onslaught.
And shortly after that, a reaction that was, in its ultimate implications, perhaps most ominous of all for the United States of America:
National anti-war activities head urges president to intervene on side of Russia. NAWAC’s Van Ackerman says “America must save the civilization of the west from the godless yellow hordes of Asia.”
With his sure instinct for the jugular and his sure understanding of the lowest common denominator of his countrymen’s fears, Fred had put his finger on what now rapidly became the heart of the matter.
5
“Orrin,” William Abbott said from the Capitol shortly afternoon next day, “we’ve got trouble up here.”
“No doubt,” he said with an inflection both weary and disgusted. “It hasn’t taken them long, has it?”
“Not after what’s happened in Asia, and Fred’s statement, and the way it was all played up in the media this morning,” the ex-President said. “Apparently some people have been hankering for an excuse to take sides ever since we left Peking. Now it’s become respectable.”
“Not all that respectable,” he said. “I’ve read the Times and the Post too, you know, and watched Today and all the rest of them. They’ve naturally given it all the news play, but editorially they’re being very cautious and still very supportive of me. There haven’t been any calls to chaos except Fred’s—which is standard procedure for him, of course. He had to find some issue.”
“Don’t underestimate this one, Orrin,” Bill Abbott warned. “This one hits home with far more people than we’d like to think.”
“Oh, I know,” he agreed, his tone less weary, sharper now with intimations of coming battle. “But how can people be so inconsistent? One minute they’re terrified to death of atomic war, literally scared silly—and the next they want us to jump in on the side of one of the belligerents and send ourselves down the chute with them. It’s insane.”
“As I’ve heard you remark on various occasions,” his predecessor noted, “people frequently are insane. Reason says one thing, fear says another: occasionally they coincide but more often they part company. And when they do, you know which one wins out.…Intellectually they know we shouldn’t get involved, because their great fear of atomic war agrees with their intellectual conclusion on that point. But they also have a great fear—never honestly acknowledged any more—very old, very atavistic—going back through who knows what eons—of different skins and different faces. All races have that fear, they as much as we, although in this country we’ve tried sincerely to get rid of it, with good and earnest intentions, in the last few decades.
“But now, suddenly, atomic war has stripped all pretenses away. Everybody has reverted to basic emotions—terrified of atomic war but terrified of the alien races, too. Now the question has been raised, as inevitably it would be raised in the event of war between Russia and China: our race or the alien race?
“I’ve always thought Fred Van Ackerman was a minor Hitler: he has the same genius for going straight for the most ugly and elemental instincts of the human animal. And mark my words, Orrin: all it takes is for one man like that to open the door. Then a few others begin to follow—then still more join—then, under the pressures of popular hysteria, and being themselves only human, the institutions and elements which represent respectability and responsibility gradually begin to come around. And then suddenly everything becomes respectable and responsible. And before you know it, the herd is on its way, running wild and impossible to control.
“We’re heading straight into a terrible problem, my friend. Don’t underestimate it.”
“I don’t underestimate it,” he said sharply. “All problems are terrible today. What indications do you have up there that have you so upset all of a sudden?”
“Both Jawbone and Arly have just had their regular pre-session press conferences—you’ll be getting them on the news tickers in a minute. I dropped in on Jawbone’s, which he didn’t like, and Bob Munson eavesdropped on Arly’s, which he didn’t like. Both are wavering—not openly yet, but beginning. And now there’s some young kid from New York—I think his name is Bronson Bernard—who is taking Fred’s lead and starting to make a speech about it here in the House. And Tom August is up in the Senate and God knows what he’s going to say. So”—his expression was lit for a moment by a grim humor—“maybe we’re the ones who should turn our backs to the wind and hunker down.”
“Not me. I sail straight into it. You know that.”
“You may have to do something,” William Abbott said, “because instinct tells me it doesn’t look good.”
“I’ve known since the beginning that the moment would come when it wouldn’t look good,” the President said. “I’ve had a timetable ticking in my mind for two weeks. I’ve known I could use fear as an ally but I’ve known that unless I was terribly lucky it would turn against me.
“I only made one mistake: I thought that when world fear lessened to the point where international cooperation began to fall apart again, in this country fear of the consequences would unite my own people behind me in staying aloof and holding the high ground for civilization. I didn’t quite imagine that fear would
divert into new channels and send them plunging in another direction—in the direction of taking sides.…
“And after all,” he said, with a sudden impatient movement of the shoulders as though shrugging off unnecessary burdens, “who says it’s going to, Bill? Just a few calculating adventurers like Fred Van Ackerman and a few waverers like Arly and Jawbone. That doesn’t mean they’ll carry the whole country. What are we doing, letting ourselves be hounded by that fear?”
“You study those editorials and those press conferences and keep your eye on what happens up here today,” William Abbott suggested.
“Naturally,” he said, impatience open now. “What else would you expect me to do?”
“I don’t quite know,” his predecessor said soberly. “What will you do?”
“Probably make a couple of speeches, if I have to,” he said with an almost flippant irony.
“What will they be?”
“The first will be: ‘Come on, gang, hold the line!’”
“And the second?”
“The second—” He paused, his eyes widened in thought, he saw many things, none he wished to communicate at the moment, even to this dear old friend.
“Yes?” the ex-President persisted.
“The second will be what-I-do-then.”
“Which will be?”
“Christ, Bill!” he said. “Don’t bug me!”
“Just so you know,” William Abbott observed with a certain flippant irony of his own. “Just so you have it firmly in mind.”
“Don’t Presidents always have everything in mind?” Orrin inquired. “That’s what Presidents are for.”
William Abbott studied him for a long time. Then he grunted.
“I hope that won’t be it,” he said finally. “Let me know any way I can help.”
“Thanks, Bill,” the President said with a genuine gratitude. “It won’t be if I can help it. The best thing I can ask of you at the moment is: get in there and fight.”
“I’m on my way,” the ex-President said. “Young Bronson is going to hear from me.”
“And Tom August from Bob Munson, I trust.”
“All troops are at battle stations,” Bill Abbott said.
“I, too,” said the President. He paused, his eyes again far away, his expression infinitely sad. “Such hatred,” he said. “Such terrible hatred, to mount such an offensive even now in the condition they’re in, to make such a desperate onslaught in spite of all their devastation and chaos.”
“Lin wanted to be helpful,” William Abbott observed.
“Yes,” the President agreed. “For a very little minute, he did. I should have held that minute, Bill. I shouldn’t have let it get away.” He sighed. “I tried. But it just wasn’t good enough.”
“You did all you humanly could,” the ex-President said sharply, “so stop worrying about it. You can’t look back, it’s futile and impossible. Too much lies ahead.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Too much lies ahead.…Thanks for calling.” His expression eased a little. “Go on the floor and give ’em hell.”
“I’m on my way,” Bill Abbott said with a reviving cheerfulness. “I’ll be in touch.”
And for the next few minutes, as the President turned back to the mammoth desk covered with intelligence reports, newspapers, news digests, news-ticker tape, letters, telegrams, he too felt a little more cheerful, for some reason he could not exactly define—having to do, he supposed, with the fact that there was only so far down you could go, then you had to start going up again. And admittedly the press reaction helped. So far they were holding the line. But how long, if their own long-standing intellectual sympathies with Russia and their fear of China, as human as anyone else’s, became imperative?
“This newspaper,” the Times had said this morning, “cannot and will not join the call of former Senator Fred Van Ackerman for a kind of revived racism that would drag this country willy-nilly into the revived war in Asia.
“We can think of nothing more tragic than to intervene in that terrible conflict—and for such a repugnant and unworthy reason.
“The intervention itself would be dreadful. The reason would betray all that this nation stands for, and all the small hopes left to mankind that the world can somehow work its way out of this awful situation.
“Even if intervention could be possible without drawing America and the entire world into the vortex of renewed atomic war, such a reason would defeat all we might achieve—if we achieved anything. And it is almost beyond belief that we could.
“Earnestly and sincerely for several decades now, America and the world have tried to slough off the burden of racism, the blind and crippling feeling that one particular skin color or facial configuration is somehow, in and of itself, superior or inferior to some other. We had thought that idea had been buried once and for all. Now Senator Van Ackerman, using the public platform accorded him by the original worthy purposes of the National Anti-War Activities Congress, is apparently trying to revive it, and to use it as a fulcrum to send this nation rushing to the defense of the new government of Russia.
“Perhaps, by some fantastically remote way of reasoning, there might be some argument to be made for intervention in the war. We can just barely conceive of it. But surely an absurd and foolish attempt to revive the myth of ‘the Yellow Peril’ is not the one.
“We would suggest the ex-Senator turn his talents back to the original purpose of NAWAC—namely, no war at all. He should be supporting the President’s determination to stay out, not trying to subvert it by attempting to revive racism. Certainly he should not be raising at this point in history the specter of ‘Yellow Peril’ to encourage an intervention that could very likely only end in complete disaster for the whole world.…”
“Shades of William Randolph Hearst!” the Post exclaimed. “The world is on the brink of terminal disaster and here comes Frantic Freddy Van Ackerman trying to revive ‘the Yellow Peril’!
“We had never thought we’d live to see the day.
“In fact, none of us may live if we do see the day.
“We reject the notion that the United States of America should, or could, intervene in the conflict between Russia and China. Until we see extraordinarily convincing arguments to the contrary, we shall continue to support President Knox’s determination to build up this nation’s strength as a balance for the world, and to stay out. We agree with him that intervention would be insanity, at least under any circumstances foreseeable now.
“We particularly agree that intervention on the basis of such a repugnant, antiquated, mindless racism as ex-Senator Van Ackerman proposes is utterly unworthy of America and all it stands for. It would be unbelievable. We refuse to contemplate it. There might by some fantastic stretch be reasons to intervene, but ‘Yellow Peril’ is not one of them.
“‘Yellow Peril’ indeed! Somewhere in these dreadful days we must summon up sufficient laughter to hoot the idea off history’s stage. If it did not come from the head of NAWAC—whose purpose, after all, is supposedly No War—it would not even deserve a moment’s attention. Since the source unfortunately demands that it be noticed, it should receive what it does deserve, namely scorn and derision.…”
“Washington,” Walter Dobius wrote busily in the Senate Press Gallery after attending Arly Richardson’s press conference, “has been affected more than some of its leaders might like to admit by the startling move of former Senator Fred Van Ackerman in calling upon the President to intervene on the side of Russia in the rapidly reviving Russo-Chinese war.
“This turnabout on the part of the leader of an organization supposedly dedicated to no more war is surprising enough, and can only be put down to the political adventurism which has too often darkened his name. That it should turn upon so reactionary a point as an attempt to revive America’s ancient and unworthy fear of the so-called ‘Yellow Peril’ is profoundly disturbing.
“If there were, by some remote and fantastic stretch of imagination, any reas
on at all for taking sides in Asia’s tragic and cataclysmic conflict (and while it could conceivably happen, none comes to mind at the moment), then certainly this echo of the dead past is not one of them. Yet there are some in the Congress who already appear to be toying with the idea. And with ideas like that, certain ideas that spring from humanity’s grossest atavistic instincts, history has shown on far too many tragic occasions that it is not necessary to lower the dam very far before the tide rushes in.”
(Which, Walter thought, pausing, was something of a mixed metaphor, but expressed it. He was a shrewd student of his countrymen and he did not for one moment discount either the impact or the potential of Fred’s surprising statement. He was also a highly experienced reporter, and it had not taken him more than an hour wandering both sides of the Capitol to catch the atmosphere among far too many members: it was electric. The fact scared him, he was honest enough to admit to himself, to death.)
“President Knox,” he went on, “has clearly and unequivocally stated what the great majority here still feel: that America should stay aloof and do what she can to save civilization and provide a stabilizing influence in the chaos that will ensue if Russia and China do indeed battle to the death.
“But whether that majority will hold may now be in doubt. It is amazing that one man’s statement can have this effect. The reason is both simple and ominous: it can only have such an effect when it synthesizes what many men are secretly thinking.
“This may be the bleak reality that confronts the President, though all responsible citizens in this fear-haunted city hope not.…”
And Frankly Unctuous, just back from Jawbone’s press conference, spoke from the House Radio-TV Gallery in the same vein:
“Here on Capitol Hill, where only yesterday President Knox called his country to a vigilant neutrality in the steadily re-escalating conflict between Russia and China, there is already evident today an erosion of the firm and united purpose he sought, prompted by a startling, and at first blush ridiculous, statement from the head of the National Anti-War Activities Congress.