THE GOLDEN WEDDING #3 (November 4, 1941)
The sight of elderly wedded couples dwelling in mutual devotion sometimes impells one to think of their early loves. In the present case the spectacle of Mr. Churchill’s government wedded to Stalin’s , and Mr. Roosevelt’s inviolable word mixed into it; in short, this triangual Darby and Joan of the three hebraicized governments leads one to look back at the forgotten incidents of their courtship.
In particular, the love feasts between our American Reds and Moscow invite beautific contemplation. Our idealist loved Moscow while Mr. Churchill was still playing the bashful Swain. In fact he was scowling at Stalin, and from the incomprehension of his eternal love for the Muscovite he was being not only sulky, but insulting. So with true love. Never, Never, NEVER would he come and kiss the Russian Joan under the sickle and mistletoe.
Our own American Trande Unionists were more oncoming. They LIKED the bud of Russian promise. Ref. Worker’s Library No. 3 bearing the dim and lavender dated: Sept. 9, 1927.
Jay Lovestone (ne possibly Liebstein) on the first page of amorous paean inscribes the luminous words “THE establishment of the 7-hour day in Russia. “Well that’s far off enough and long enough before the Stakhelevites, and Mr. Lovestone is very hard on the American Federation of Labor. “Reactionary trade union bureaucrats” he call’s em.
And in that memorable day an’ year our dewey-eyed workers (trade unionist and idealists technical advisors they figger in the catalog, Brophy, R.W. [?] Dunn, C.H. Douglas, Rex Tugwell, Stuart Chase, a lot, as you see, of brawny fellows who had used either the hammer or sickle in daily life, went over to visit the Kumrad. And apart from the general, as opposed to the specific nature of the answers, the kumrad didn’t do so bad. The questions being rather more nebulous and UNspecific than the answers. How could the debonair murderer get down very near to brass tacks in his answer?
After all Marx was pretty good at history and diagnosis. Nobody on the Axis side denies that Marx discovered several genuine faults in the usury system.
All we ask is a way to CURE ‘em. And the torture chambers in most countries where Stalin’s power has reached, and in a few embassies where he had been unable to get control of the total police force, rather indicated that the Bolshie system never got UNIVERSAL approval from its victims.
However, when next dining with Rabbi Lehman, or Scholem Mosestha and the rest of the international bankers, spring a few pages of the kumrad’s answers between the caviar and the pheasant and see if it don’t enliven the dinner.
Sure Stalin approves of Marx and Engels wantin’ to take ECONOMIC, political, cultural and organizational measures. And seein’ as he put ‘em in that order, you would expect me to fall for it?
ECONOMIC first. Of course the Bolshies didn’t. Any party that comes into power, probably puts ORGANIZATIONAL measures first, and the economic belong, alas to the almost inaccessible part of culture. So FEW remarked, about three centuries delay.
Three centuries, to get people to understand anything about anything havin’ to do with money. An ‘ it is now demonstrated on the corpus vilis of British reformers’ hopes that very little economic reform gets into practice without precedent organizational and political measures of an almost earth shaking nature. A curious phrase about “reconstruct capitalist society” must belong to the translator. I don’t want to pin that on Joseph, tho’ mebbe that was part of his muddle. I am far less concerned with Joe’s lacunae than with a few clear positive statements. Joe said he was aware that “a number of capitalist governments are controlled by big banks,” notwithstanding the existence of “democratic” parliaments.
Not bad for a Georgian assassin. And possibly several decades ahead of the American public and professoriat. Not a single power in which the Cabinet can be formed in opposition to the will of the big financial magnates. I wonder: is that why they took Joe for a ride?
“it is sufficient to exert financial pressure to cause Cabinet Ministers to fall from their posts as if they were stunned.”
Joey was talkin’ of European cabinets; not of the so very different American DEMocracy (as they call it) etc. where, unless there is absolute surety that financial pressure won’t be used, the blighters seldom or never get in.
Joe SAID that the control of government by money-bags is inconceivable and absolutely excluded in the U.S.S.R. How different from the home life of our own DEMOCRACY (as they call it), etc. and how different from anything any British politician has ever encountered, and how different from any state of things that Churchill’s group would desire.
“Narrow circle” said Joe of individuals connected in one way or another with the large banks and because of that they strive to conceal the part they play in this from the people.
What a PERFECT ally for Churchill, Morgenthau, Lehman, and the present Anglo-Jewish regimes! Well, the starry eyed Mr. Tugwell, and the cautious Mr. Chase and Jim Maurer and Brophy took it all down hook, line and sinker. Seven hours day and the rest of it. It was a stirring occasion. The only thing is that the idealist’s ideals have got going so much faster and gone so much further. The Axis side of the present hard feelings.
Here the TRADE UNIONS, with their syndic. organization, and their recognized legal status whereby they propse, formulate, and GET what they want in Italy is really of so much MORE interest for any member of ANYtrade union, or for any leadaer of labor who cares a hang about the welfare of the led that one only hopes the American trade unionist wil someday red Por, or at least read something about Italian organizationsl measures.
The Stalin interview is a tough piece of reading, very hard to take hold of. That was probably the secret of his hold-plenty of people who KNOW Russia have been puzzled by the gap between their effective propaganda and their local failure in solving human problems. I believe the human material they had to work on explains part of the latter. I mean why they did NOT make a paradise, but mostly a sweat shop-machines before men-men as material. But the other side, the devilish efficiency of their propaganda, is worth study.
And it seems to be a variant on the old political wheeze of sticking to general statements that each auditor interprets to mean what HE would mean IF he said it.
And now for contrast, close harmony, let us look at a recent emission from Joe’s faithful companion, fellow idealist, and pledged ally, Mr. N.M. Butler. On June 3, 1941, year current, as delivered at the commencement of Columbia University, when Ole Nick was awaitin’ another Waterloo, and as is common with his kind, he wasn’t puttin’ it in the first person singular. Nick wanted Americans to go fight for the British exploiters; so he said
“THE WORLD” etc. In this case THE WORLD (meaning Nick and his paymaster). The World he sez, awaits another Waterloo. And on the fifth page it turns out he meant a defeat of Hitler!! Which might be called “metonomy" or takin’ a part for the “whole,” and not the better whole either.
Now the WORLD, as any college president ought to know, before the trestees pay him his fat annual salary, is spherical in form, and is composed of MORE than one continent, and not wholly and totally enraptured with the big usury central.
However let Nick Butler speak for himself, as he has never failed to do in all his oleaginous lifetime.
Several pages of the old scamp’s palaver contain statements by which no right thinking man would be offended. the slabs of print, the page undivided by paragraph divisions, tends to lull the reader or auditor into security.
Mr. Butler even disapproves (mildly, of course) of the “controlling desire for gain,” alias our old enemy the profit motive. Of course he keeps off the specific MEANS of gain, exercised by his owner. He then pays a delicate compliment to Lord Holy Fox, without committing himself, in fact nothing could be more downy.
The FIRST Lord Halifax, unaided by his charming and formidable Lady, said there were three hundred years ago many thing’s that riches cannot buy. Therefore the American boys should bleed for the present Lord Holy Fox. Now Ole Nick don’t go as far back as all that, he stops back in the 17th Century; before Robert Cecil was so vigorous in defense of the British OPIUM interests in Shanghai.
Victory for a moral ideal is not enough, according to Nicholas, because the “gain-seeking interest has control of so vast a proportion of mankind.” That is true enough, but it ain’t reduced the moral ideal to ABSOLUTE impotence. This is what was worrying Butler; but he hadn’t got down to bed rock. He said there was a time, back apparently when Mark Hanna was running the United State of America, when the moral ideal was to all appearances gainin’ ground.
Of course if by that he means that some empires were GAINING territory, he might have said so, only he didn’t. Ole Nicholas puts the rise of the triumph, real or apparent, the IDEAL, from the McKinley to the Wealsohn administration.
Note of HOpe and progress.
In 1910, the American Congress was unanimous for the moral principle (so long as no questions were asked about the privileges of the usury central). Nic complains that the moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations.
Which shows the state of DEEP ignorance the WORLD; as distinct from Nicholas Butler’s circle or pot.
And lookin’ at dates, he must have been blurrin’ this blurb the same week that a Chinaman, not of Wang Ching Wei’s party, but of Chiang Kai-shek’s party, and FAITHFUL to Chiang, saying what Hitler’s justice in scuttling international affairs was such that the Chinese of the ANTI-JAP, anti-Wang party might accept Hitler’s arbitrage.
Mr. Butler then seems to fall into incoherence. He talks of a PLEDGE as something to be kept; what price, England, Churchill, and Roosevelt? He objects to having the savings of generations swept away; he asks what has become of the influence of and guidance of the great religion; Christian, Mosel, HEBREW, and Buddhist, and begorrah, of Plato, Aristotole, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, leaving out St. Ambrose and St. Antonio da Firenze, and graciously waivin’ a hand to the captions of the mind, Spanish, Italian, French, English, German. And of course Abraham Lincoln, not quoting old Abe on the currency issue. And then barbarous brutality, without mention of Esthonia, Finland, or places occupied by the –Bustin of churches and museums. Wot price Louvain and Cyrenaica? And all this “However dark the skies,” etc. ends up wiht a historic parallel; the WORLD waitin’ for a new Vaterloo; because Napolean Bonypart Y went into Russia, and if Hitler ain’t licked in Europe, it wil come in Asia or Africa. Well that is a bad slip, because Knox and Stimson, etc. are retching for to rape Africa. But at any rate you git a picture of Nicholas, and METONOMY or takin’ a part for the HOLE. A figger of Rhetorik sez Sam Johnson, whereby one word is put for another.
Now if Butler, the old goof, wants me to give him a clean bill of health, he can use the enormous power conferred on him by his position, to get Columbia University to issure a series of volumes containing the GIST of the beliefs and knowledge of John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, and Lincoln. NOT leaving out every phrase and paragraph which I, and men like me, consider vital to the understanding of American history.
JEFFERSON and/or MUSSOLINI
CHAPTER TEN
IN 1917 or 1918 Major Douglas began to think out loud, about credit. The British Press showed itself for what it was, a hired toady, a monkey garden where thought was taboo. You could not get any discussion. If the Major said or wrote something that sounded all right, the layman couldn’t in that year corroborate it. No one of “greater experience” either contradicted him lucidly or confirmed him from adequate knowledge.
I set out on a longish trail, asking questions from all and sundry.
Old Spire who had sat on a Credit Agricole board said: Yes, very nice, communal credit, but when you get your board, every man on that board has a brother-in-law.
I said to Max Pam: “As a banker can you tell me, if I want to build a chicken coop, is there any reason why I shouldn’t do so, instead of coming to you for permission and giving you six per cent. on the money I borrow to pay someone to build it.”
Mr. Pam replied: “The only thing is that if someone happened to see you building it they might think you were too poor to be able to afford to borrow the money, and that would be bad for your credit, and a lot of people might send in their bills.”
A Boston millionaire said something for which I can find parallel in the “writings” of Henry Ford.
And a chap that had started a what do you call it, credit club, I think they call it, in Californy, said : “Now you’d think the simplest thing to do, which was all I asked ’em, would be to meet once a month and say who paid their bills.
“Would they ? Naw. And every time they sold a lot to a dishonest merchant they were doing harm to one that was honest.”
And going back a little, the Sinn Feiners as they were then called before that meant so exclusively Eamon de Valera, put a man on to studying the New Economics. And Senor Madariaga was called back to Spain to look after the treasury or something or other of that sort.
And, more recently, all this yatter about technocracy got out from under the lid. Without, apparently, much moral direction … my own belief being that all or most of the technocracy results had to be got surreptitiously, in so far as the members of the Columbia University faculty had, in great measure, to conceal the significance of their findings, and stick to the purely material phase. But in 1918 we knew in London that the problem of production was solved, and that the next job was to solve distribution and that this meant a new administration of credit. I don’t think there was any ambiguity about that.
The question being how and who was to break down the ring of craft, of fraud, and of iron.
PERSONAL
London stank of decay back before 1914 and I have recorded the feel of it in a poem here and there. The live man in a modern city feels this sort of thing or perceives it as the savage perceives in the forest. I don’t know how many men keep alive in modern civilization but when one has the frankness to compare notes one finds that the intuition is confirmed just as neatly or almost as neatly as if the other man saw a shop sign. I mean the perception is not simply the perception of one’s own subjectivity, but there is an object which others perceive.
Thus London going mouldy back in say 1912 or 1911. After the War death was all over it. I said something of the sort to Padre Jose Elizondo. There had been a number of Spaniards in London during the War, there being no Paris for them to go to.
“Yes,” said the Padre, “we feel it, and we are all of us going back,” i.e., to Spain.
London was in terror of thought. Nothing was being buried. Paris was tired, very tired, but they wanted table rase, they wanted the dead things cleared out even if there were nothing to replace them.
Italy was, on the other hand, full of bounce. I said all of this to a Lombard writer. I said: London is dead, Paris is tired, but here the place is alive. What they don’t know is plenty, but there is some sort of animal life here. If you put an idea into these people they would DO something.
The Lombard writer said yes … and looked across the hotel lobby; finally he said: “And you know it is terrible to be surrounded by all this energy and … and … not to have an idea to put into it.”
I think that must have been 1920. I can’t remember which year contained what, possibly in ’21 the cavalieri della morte passed through the Piazza San Marco, and when I got to Milan that year I asked my friend what about it. What is this fascio ? He said there was nothing to it or words to that effect. At any rate not a matter of interest.
You know how it is when you stop off for a night in a hurry and haven’t much left but a ticket to where you’ve got to get back to. Or perhaps that was the year when one was lucky to get there at all. I did go out via Chiasso by tramway but I suspect that was 1920 and that in ’21 or ’22 or whatever spring it was, I hadn’t any excuse save an interest in other matters and the supposition that IF it were interesting my friend would have known it.
It may be, of course, that one’s intuition takes in the whole, and sees straight, whereas one’s verbal receiving-station or one’s logic deals with stray detail, and that one’s intuition can’t get hold of the particular, or anything particular, but only of the whole.
Let it stand that I was right in my main perception but that any stray remark or any wisp of straw blowing nowhere could fool me as to the particular point of focus.
Say I hadn’t a nose for news.Why should I have had ? One may learn several trades in a lifetime but one can’t learn ’em all, all at once.
And if I had gone then to the Popolo d’Italia I don’t the least know that I would now have any better sense of the specific weight of the fascio. I might have got lost in a vast welter of detail.
What I saw was the line of black shirts, and the tense faces of cavalieri della morte. I was at Florian’s. Suddenly a little old buffer rushed up to a front table and began to sputter forty-eight to the dozen: “chubbuchcuchushcushcushcuhkhh.” Violent protests etc., “wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t.” It was a different kind of excitement, a more acrimonious excitement than the noise of the midday pigeon-feeding.
Then came the file of young chaps with drawn faces and everyone stood to attention and took off their hats about something, all except one stubborn foreigner, damned if he would stand up or show respect until he knew what they meant. Nobody hit me with a club and I didn’t see any oil bottles.
Life was interesting in Paris from 1921 to 1924, nobody bothered much about Italy. Some details I never heard of at all until I saw the Esposizione del Decennio.
Communists took over some factories, but couldn’t dispense with credit. No one has told us whether ANY Italian communist even thought of the subject.
Lenin couldn’t, after all, be both in Turin and in Moscow.
Gabriele declined to obey the stuffed plastrons of Paris, Marinetti made a few remarks in the Chamber. It can’t be said that the outer world cared. When one got back to Italy things were in order, that is, up to a point.
I heard an alarm bell in Ravenna. A lady who had long known the Duce complained about Italy’s being Prussianized one day when a train started on time.
The Tyrolean bellboy or boots or factotum at Sirmione ran up the tricolour topside downward on a feast day, either from irredentism or because he didn’t know t’other from which. Nobody noticed it save the writer. You don’t go to Italy for criticism, there is a lack of minute observation –I mean when Giovanni isn’t being punctilious or having his sensibilities ruffled. …
“Noi altri Italiani,” said one medico, “we don’t pay attention like that to EVERY word.” This was during a discussion on style (in writing).
And another year I went down to Sicily.
Lady X was worried about the work in the sulphur mines. The Duce had been there, but he had been steered into and through the one decent mine in the place. …
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