These are only the beginnings of the instinctive events in the maternal program. The ewe goes on to dry her lamb and boost it to its feet. She keeps it moving so that it doesn’t lodge and chill. She finally works it into position so that it locates, in an almost impenetrable jungle of wool, the indispensable fountain and the early laxative. One gulp of this fluid (which seems to have a liberal share of brandy in it) and the lamb is launched. Its little tail wiggles and satisfaction is written all over it, and your heart leaps up.

  Even your own technique begins to grow more instinctive. When I was a novice I used to work hard to make a lamb suck by forcing its mouth to the teat. Now I just tickle it on the base of its tail.

  [ June 1940 ]

  COMPOST

  Today joined a society called Friends of the Land, as at my time of life a man should belong to a club so that he will have somewhere to sit in the afternoon. I am going to put an old chair out by my compost heap and shall go there whenever I feel sociable and friendly toward the land. Membership cost me five dollars, which is the first time my high regard for earth has ever cost me a nickel; but these are expensive times.

  Am writing this on the fourth day of the Battle of France, as the announcer calls it, so there will probably be no continuous thought from one paragraph to the next. I am not able to write on a single harmonious theme while jumping up frequently to hear whether freedom is still alive. I don’t think I would lose my nerve if I were directly engaged in war, but this radio warfare makes me edgy. I suspect I joined my club only because I was rattled. When I am composed I feel no need of affiliating myself with anybody. There is a lot of the cat in me, and cats are not joiners.

  So great is the importance attached to news from abroad, even my club intends to have foreign correspondents. I should imagine today would be a discouraging day for the northern France correspondent of Friends of the Land. The organic matter now being added to French soil is of a most embarrassing nature. Until we quit composting our young men we shall not get far with a program of conservation.

  I have a letter from a trader in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that begins: “How would you like to wear a tie that no other man in your town could have—a tie hand-woven exclusively for you?” He encloses a swatch and a drawing of the tie. It is very pretty. He invites me to join his “exclusive tie group.” If you like this tie, he says, it is “yours exclusively—no other person in your town can get it.” I replied immediately, inviting him to our next rummage sale.

  A friend of the land wouldn’t know where to go in an exclusive tie.

  The question of what to wear is always baffling. From Harper’s Bazaar, which is my Bible, I learn that the Boston group in North Haven frown on new garments in their summer colony, and that a man in a new pair of sneakers is snubbed. “The older the clothes, the bluer the blood,” says the writer. Society of course has lately found itself in the difficult position of wanting the comfort of old clothes without relinquishing the prestige that has always been connected with new ones. It took a long time before the elite surrendered to old clothes, and even now they publish frequent denials in the papers, hoping to be both exclusive and comfortable. It must raise the spirits of the millions to whom old clothes come naturally and inevitably to learn how blue their blood has been these many years.

  I am aging a pair of sneakers and a jacket in case I should meet a Bostonian in warm weather.

  I have given up planning a perfect state for America, as it is too small a field. Henceforth I shall design only world societies, which will include everybody and everything. Don Marquis began work on the almost perfect state but died before it came into being. I should let that be a lesson to me.

  It is easier to plan a good world than a good nation, or even a good hemisphere. Nothing can be worked out to the advantage of the human race as long as the mind is hampered and cramped by existing boundaries, however unfortified. The success of Hitler can be ascribed to his determination to see the planet whole. Besides, a man can always discuss a thing more intelligently and honestly if he knows he is not being taken seriously. The most forthright book that was ever written was Mein Kampf, and nobody gave it a second thought.

  Obviously the first contingency to provide for in a world plan is war. In the perfect state there will be no war, but this state will be arrived at only after much fighting, and I shall plan for this, too. From now on, no democratic nation must arm itself merely for defense, as the United States proposes to do. To arm defensively is to construct, not a series of fortifications and weapons, but a bad state of mind and a perpetual dilemma.

  Parenthesis: The good world will be based on the democratic ideal of individual freedom, but I am learning a good deal from tyrants. End of parenthesis.

  To arm defensively is to indulge in a most demoralizing form of deliberate activity. A vast defensive armament has all the costly, savage attributes of offensive armament and in addition is stuffy. A nation armed merely to defend its own territory is of no more consequence than a rather large safe deposit vault. It has become merely a front for intrenched wealth, and will eventually deteriorate. The armies of the democracies that will lead up to my world state will be built for attack. They will be imaginative, bold, and alive, but their minds will not be on conquest nor will they confuse raw materials with the good life.

  They will be trained to attack today’s injustice, rather than to repel tomorrow’s invasion.

  Remind me to discuss the necessity for reviving the word piffle.

  War, in the preliminary period leading up to the almost perfect state, must be conducted in a reckless and hasty fashion, with no discussion in advance. The democracies must take over war from the despotic powers and use it to clinch their advantage. The technique of military science will be to meddle in other people’s affairs frequently, gallantly, and without warning—but with no ulterior motive.

  Thought: Before democracy can become stable and perfect it must become arrogant and tough. The punky spots in the character of free men will have to be cut out before it is too late. It is as essential for this free country that its young men despise American piffle as that they despise European poison.

  Voice: If they despise piffle, how can they earn their living?

  Answer: How should I know? The important thing is to despise it.

  A first step in elevating the character of war and improving the world state is the abandonment of diplomacy. Events of the past few months have demonstrated that diplomacy gives the advantage to liars and tends to weaken democracies. Diplomacy reached its lowest ebb at Munich, when a conservative Briton carrying an umbrella entered a cage of live Panzers. A child could have seen that no good could come from any such heroics.

  Diplomacy is the lowest form of politeness because it misquotes the greatest number of people. A nation, like an individual, if it has anything to say, should simply say it. This will be hard on editorial writers and news commentators, who are always glad to have diplomatic notes to interpret; but it will be better for the people.

  Voice: How do you know what’s good for the people?

  Stinging reply: I know what’s good for me.

  Having dropped diplomacy, we can now employ the Army for the highest military purpose and train it for a career of inspired meddling. All branches of the service will be shifty, unpredictable, and arbitrary. Equipment will be the most modern and fierce obtainable. Singing will be a requirement of every soldier, and officers will be chosen for their likeness to Gene Autry.

  Let us suppose we had adopted my principles of warfare a couple of years ago at the time of Germany’s torture of the Jews. The President would have cabled the Nazi government the following message: CUT OUT TORMENTING MINORITIES—ROOSEVELT. He would then have dispatched a destroyer carrying a party of Marines, landed them at a German port, rescued two or three dozen Jewish families from the campaign of hate, and shot up a few military police in a surprise movement. Such a junket would have had no military significance and might easily have ended in the loss of the destroyer, but the effect on the world would have been incaculable. It would have excited the imagination of free men everywhere, and it would have put Germany in the extremely awkward position of being obliged to declare war on the United States at a time when she was in no position to do so. It would have called her bluff and disrupted her schedule of aggression against small neutrals. The United States Marine incident would not only have forestalled the invasion of Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium (in that order), but it might conceivably have increased Hitler’s rage to such a pitch of insanity that even the Nazi party couldn’t follow him.

  U. S. Marines going to the rescue of persons in distress is in the best Hollywood tradition, and I am convinced that the gesture would have achieved the same general popularity that Hollywood personalities and themes enjoy among all the people of the earth. It would have saved the world billions of dollars and millions of men. If we knew then what we know now, there would have been no question that it was the thing to do.

  Proposition: The duty of a democracy is to know then what it knows now.

  The way to know the shape of things in advance is to listen to seers and mystics instead of to economists and tacticians. The world had ample warning of every event that it has greeted with such gasps of surprise in the past twelve months. Part of the preparation for the perfect world society will be the recognition of seers. It will be required of the President of the United States that he read one poem and one parable or fable a day, in addition to the editorials in the Times. The brotherhood of man can never be achieved till the democracies realize that today’s fantasy is tomorrow’s communiqué.

  A seer a day keeps Armageddon away.

  Impudent interruption: You’re trying to sound like Don Marquis, aren’t you?

  Soft answer: Yes. I have not given up loving his almost perfect state, and will continue to discuss it any time I see fit.

  My almost perfect army will be picturesque as well as fearless. Their uniforms and flags will be designed by the foremost Hollywood scene and costume designers. The army will be as reckless as a suicide squad, as shifty as an American backfield, as merciful as the Red Cross, as relentless as the Northwest Mounted Police, as swift and terrible as a tank division, as heroic as the Coast Guard, as resourceful and tender as Tarzan, as chivalrous as a knight. It will be copied by all nations—which will be its chief merit. At home or abroad it will meet life bravely. It will swoop down on lynching parties and annihilate them. It will break up the Daughters of the American Revolution whenever they try to keep Negro singers from singing their lovely songs. It will rush to the aid of every country whose land is being invaded and whose homes are being destroyed and whose people are being murdered. If it were in existence today my army would be in Europe, helping to stop the German tide.

  Voice: We tried that once.

  Answer: You mean we tried it once after waiting three years. My army doesn’t wait. It is a swashbuckling organization, dealing with a foreign tyrant as brilliantly as with a domestic train robber. It would have started fighting Hitler years ago when he was just beginning to be a nuisance.

  Voice: But your army would get us in trouble.

  Answer: Where do you think we are now, pal?

  [ July 1940 ]

  FREEDOM

  I have often noticed on my trips up to the city that people have recut their clothes to follow the fashion. On my last trip, however, it seemed to me that people had remodeled their ideas too—taken in their convictions a little at the waist, shortened the sleeves of their resolve, and fitted themselves out in a new intellectual ensemble copied from a smart design out of the very latest page of history. It seemed to me they had strung along with Paris a little too long.

  I confess to a disturbed stomach. I feel sick when I find anyone adjusting his mind to the new tyranny that is succeeding abroad. Because of its fundamental strictures, fascism does not seem to me to admit of any compromise or any rationalization, and I resent the patronizing air of persons who find in my plain belief in freedom a sign of immaturity. If it is boyish to believe that a human being should live free, then I’ll gladly arrest my development and let the rest of the world grow up.

  I shall report some of the strange remarks I heard in New York. One man told me that he thought perhaps the Nazi ideal was a sounder ideal than our constitutional system “because have you ever noticed what fine alert young faces the young German soldiers have in the newsreel?” He added: “Our American youngsters spend all their time at the movies—they’re a mess.” That was his summation of the case, his interpretation of the new Europe. Such a remark leaves me pale and shaken. If it represents the peak of our intelligence, then the steady march of despotism will not receive any considerable setback at our shores.

  Another man informed me that our democratic notion of popular government was decadent and not worth bothering about—”because England is really rotten and the industrial towns there are a disgrace.” That was the only reason he gave for the hopelessness of democracy; and he seemed mightily pleased with himself, as though he were more familiar than most with the anatomy of decadence, and had detected subtler aspects of the situation than were discernible to the rest of us.

  Another man assured me that anyone who took any kind of government seriously was a gullible fool. You could be sure, he said, that there is nothing but corruption “because of the way Clemenceau acted at Versailles.” He said it didn’t make any difference really about this war. It was just another war. Having relieved himself of this majestic bit of reasoning, he subsided.

  Another individual, discovering signs of zeal creeping into my blood, berated me for having lost my detachment, my pure skeptical point of view. He announced that he wasn’t going to be swept away by all this nonsense, but would prefer to remain in the role of innocent bystander, which he said was the duty of any intelligent person. (I noticed, however, that he phoned later to qualify his remark, as though he had lost some of his innocence in the cab on the way home.)

  Those are just a few samples of the sort of talk that seemed to be going round—talk that was full of defeatism and disillusion and sometimes of a too studied innocence. Men are not merely annihilating themselves at a great rate these days, but they are telling one another enormous lies, grandiose fibs. Such remarks as I heard are fearfully disturbing in their cumulative effect. They are more destructive than dive bombers and mine fields, for they challenge not merely one’s immediate position but one’s main defenses. They seemed to me to issue either from persons who could never have really come to grips with freedom, so as to understand her, or from renegades. Where I expected to find indignation, I found paralysis, or a sort of dim acquiescence, as in a child who is dully swallowing a distasteful pill. I was advised of the growing anti-Jewish sentiment by a man who seemed to be watching the phenomenon of intolerance not through tears of shame but with a clear intellectual gaze, as through a well-ground lens.

  The least a man can do at such a time is to declare himself and tell where he stands. I believe in freedom with the same burning delight, the same faith, the same intense abandon that attended its birth on this continent more than a century and a half ago. I am writing my declaration rapidly, much as though I were shaving to catch a train. Events abroad give a man a feeling of being pressed for time. Actually I do not believe I am pressed for time, and I apologize to the reader for a false impression that may be created. I just want to tell, before I get slowed down, that I am in love with freedom and that it is an affair of long standing and that it is a fine state to be in, and that I am deeply suspicious of people who are beginning to adjust to fascism and dictators merely because they are succeeding in war. From such adaptable natures a smell rises. I pinch my nose.

  For as long as I can remember I have had a sense of living somewhat freely in a natural world. I don’t mean I enjoyed freedom of action, but my existence seemed to have the quality of freeness. I traveled with secret papers pertaining to a divine conspiracy. Intuitively I’ve always been aware of the vitally important pact that a man has with himself, to be all things to himself, and to be identified with all things, to stand self-reliant, taking advantage of his haphazard connection with a planet, riding his luck, and following his bent with the tenacity of a hound. My first and greatest love affair was with this thing we call freedom, this lady of infinite allure, this dangerous and beautiful and sublime being who restores and supplies us all.

  It began with the haunting intimation (which I presume every child receives) of his mystical inner life; of God in man; of nature publishing herself through the “I.” This elusive sensation is moving and memorable. It comes early in life: a boy, we’ll say, sitting on the front steps on a summer night, thinking of nothing in particular, suddenly hearing as with a new perception and as though for the first time the pulsing sound of crickets, overwhelmed with the novel sense of identification with the natural company of insects and grass and night, conscious of a faint answering cry to the universal perplexing question: “What is ‘I’?” Or a little girl, returning from the grave of a pet bird and leaning with her elbows on the windowsill, inhaling the unfamiliar draught of death, suddenly seeing herself as part of the complete story. Or an older youth, encountering for the first time a great teacher who by some chance word or mood awakens something and the youth beginning to breathe as an individual and conscious of strength in his vitals. I think the sensation must develop in many men as a feeling of identity with God—an eruption of the spirit caused by allergies and the sense of divine existence as distinct from mere animal existence. This is the beginning of the affair with freedom.