As an editor, Lorraine is best remembered for her work on Different. Subtitled The Voice of the Cultural Renaissance, Different offered readers an independent vision of SF that stood in sharp contrast to that of the profit-driven SF magazines of the day. In “The Story of Different,” an editorial in the March–April 1950 issue, Lorraine asserted that she received “no material remuneration” and made “considerable material sacrifice” for the sake of promoting and “training of the poetic temperament as it manifests in the various fields of creative art” (4). Lorraine derided those who were concerned about the “profits” and “monetary gain” of publishing, seeing them as warped by the “fetish of competition” that had narrowed human vision to short-term concerns (5).

  By way of contrast, Lorraine saw her magazines as “encouraging poetic talent in others, seeking to raise poetic standards, and striving to make the world safe for the poetic temperament” (“Story” 2). As she defined it, the “poetic temperament” was “the next step in evolution” and manifested itself in all forms of “creative imagination,” from literature and science to righteous revolution and divine sacrifice on the cross (2). As an experienced schoolteacher, Lorraine decried the deadening effects of a modern education system that deleted the classics and destroyed literacy, and dedicated her magazine to repairing that damage and contributing to the cultural renaissance announced on Different’s masthead.

  Like editors working elsewhere in modernist little-magazine production, Lorraine put her discussions of aesthetics in explicitly political contexts. For instance, in her editorial for the May–June 1946 issue of Different, Lorraine proposes that America’s cultural renaissance depends on a radically revised model of education designed to produce world citizens. Echoing the sentiments of scientists such as Albert Einstein, Lorraine writes that Americans must face the reality that “this is now one world” and the future of mankind depends on the ability of individuals from all nations to “love all humanity” (2). For this to happen, she argues, the United States must create a “Secretary or Minister of Education” who could supervise teachers trained to educate students in a critical understanding of government rather than blind obedience to authority (3). Unless we train our children for world citizenship, Lorraine argues, we might have another world war, which the atomic bomb would make fatal to the nation and the world. While commercial SF magazine editors such as Mary Gnaedinger and Dorothy McIlwraith limited their rare editorial comments to aesthetic issues raised first by readers, as an amateur press editor Lorraine was free to establish a politically progressive, independent voice and to produce magazines that were themselves socially conscious ventures.

  “Cracks—Wise and Otherwise”

  Acolyte, Spring 1943

  Some years ago, I had several science-fiction stories published, among them: “Into the 28th Century,” “The Isle of Madness,” “The Jovian Jest,” “The Brain of the Planet,” “The Celestial Visitor,” etc. I may still return to science fiction one day, whenever the market ceases to be so stereotyped and standardized that it kills out all new ideas and original manner of expressing them. I have a rather daring idea in mind of starting a national magazine for the publication of rejected stories and showing up just how fine some of the rejected stories of the really great science-fiction writers are; in other words, showing what people like Coblentz, Francis Flagg, Clark Ashton Smith, etc. can do if they are really turned loose, free from editorial fetishes.

  “Training for World Citizenship”

  Different, May–June 1946

  As several great statesmen have remarked, whether we like it or not, this is now one world and we are all citizens of it. The policy of national indifference, fostered by spineless isolationism aided and abetted by the warmongers who fatten on conflict, has already plunged us into two world wars. If we permit ourselves to be hypnotized into a third one, we shall lose both national and world citizenship. We shall become citizens of a sphere whose location and mean temperature will, according to the best Christian teachings, be determined by the degree to which we have fulfilled our stewardship as our brother’s keeper.

  National citizenship, in its broader, saner and more reasonable basis, can be gauged only in terms of how good a citizen of the world one may be. For the way life is now constituted, he loves his country best who loves humanity more. He who does not love all humanity is a traitor to his country. He is giving aid and comfort to those forces that will turn the world into an armed camp against the nation that turns its back upon the common problems of the human race and pursues a selfish path of its own.

  National patriotism in its narrower sense, in the sense of adopting an attitude of complacency founded on the moronic concept that we have, in its totality, the best government in the world, is a delusion and a snare. It is a tool in the hands of politicians and hypocrites. It is the fuel to the flame of war, the stirrer up of strife and the breeder of revolt.

  We must never forget that though we have a fine basis for free government, embodied in the noblest instruments ever designed by the brain of man, the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, there is a wide divergence between that foundation and the house of sand that weak and corrupt and clowning legislators have erected upon it. Yet in the last analysis it is our fault that we have sent clowns to Congress instead of statesmen, and clothed twelve-year-old mentalities with the garment of civic power. But this is no reflection on the few far-seeing statesmen that, by the grace of God, still sit in the halls of state.

  We must remember that many other nations are far ahead of us in some respects while, at the same time, they lag far behind us in others. In our asinine refusal to believe that any good can come from beyond our own borders, we have refused to investigate the splendid laws and institutions that now exist in a great many countries, which because they have not indulged in a mad race for money and enthroned it as a God above human happiness and human rights, we have chosen to ignore. We have made Frigidaires synonymous of civilization, football analogous to brains and Frank Sinatra the symbol of the Muses.

  How many Americans know, for instance, that the Republic of Mexico gave to the United States through Texas, which inherited many of the wisest measures in its constitution to that country, such laws as the homestead law, the community property law, and many laws for the protection of women and children? These laws and many others inherited from Mexico have since been channeled into the constitutions of other states and have greatly advanced the cause of human liberty.

  Still fewer of us know that the Constitution of the United States owes its great principle of representative government, as we now know it, to its close conformity to the government of the Five Nations, or the five great Indian tribes who sent their tribal representatives to their Great Council.

  How many of us realize that one of the first old age pension laws was passed in Germany during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm? This was long before it even occurred to us that we owed any responsibility to the aged and infirm. Norway, it should be borne in mind, owed its prewar prosperity to the great cooperatives organized, not by any act of government, but by the people themselves. New Zealand and Australia have laws so far ahead of ours in many respects that it will take us a hundred years to catch up with them.

  And now do we hear some moron rising out of the cesspools with the apely remark, “If you think our government is so bad why don’t you go where there is a better one?” That is what the average American considers an answer to all arguments. No one denies that this is a fine government in many respects. It just isn’t what it can be, when we throw off our complacency and our smarty smarty adolescence and attack the weak spots, preserve the strong foundations, and get it through our thick heads that just because some nation has to go half-starved is no reason why we should be satisfied to go one-fourth starved. Comparing our state of partial disintegration with some other country’s total disintegration is only a coward’s and a fool’s way of bettering the situation. And just because I don’t like a lot of things is why I’m staying right in here and pitching in and doing my part to make this the best nation on Earth, because it is my country and I have a right to do just that. And whoever doesn’t like my efforts to make this the best country on Earth can do the getting out, because I’m staying right here in the land that some of my forefathers wrested from some of my other forefathers who were here when they came, but who still live in me and aren’t afraid to live dangerously.

  Therefore, though we may have the best foundation for government in the world, and I sincerely believe that we do, the structure that we have built on that foundation is decidedly shaky, wobbly, inadequate, and unable to weather the storms of the future. It is as though one had built a hut of straw upon the eternal rocks. But let us praise God that the foundation is there. The Founding Fathers took care of that. We need only another generation of men and women with their vision to build upon the rocks a temple worthy of its foundation.

  Before we can do this, the youth of this nation must be trained for world citizenship. They must be taught, once and for all, that since we have one of the finest foundations for government on Earth, we could also have not only one of the best governments but the best government, once we get a few monkeys off our backs and some sense into our heads. But at present, the picture falls far short of the millennium that our children read about in the textbooks but of which they fail to discover any traces when they go forth in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

  In literacy, for instance, we are running a losing race. We are so fast descending to the sublevels of the ten-year-old mind that the rising tide of ignorance and indifference has submerged the voices of the few educators who are attempting to call attention to the alarming implications of such a crisis.

  What, however, can we expect when we consider the starvation wages that we pay those to whom we entrust the training of youth in this most perilous age of all history? What can we expect from a generation taught by the poor, cowed, frightened unfortunates who teach the lower grades during those years in which character is formed? Can a free, independent world citizenship be trained by the kind of teacher who permits a ward-heeling school board to tell her how long to wear her skirts, where she shall room and board, what church she shall attend, and who to vote for … or else?

  Until teachers are paid fair and decent wages to enable them to live full and unintimidated lives, only a few great exceptions will have the inborn stamina that will enable them to rise above such a slavish environment and become leaders of the people. The profession that, next to the church, should be the greatest spiritual and moral influence in the land has been so deliberately prostituted to the uses of the materialistic powers that few who are qualified for any other profession that enables them to maintain a dignified station in life will ever enter it. If they do they will not remain in it very long after the noose begins to tighten around their freedom of thought and their democratic privileges.

  But since the ward heelers know that qualified leadership in the teaching profession will sound the death knell of their own rottenness and corruption, unless the people finally take the matter into their own hands, they will certainly do nothing to stop the vicious circle.

  For their very continuance in office depends directly on the suppression of academic freedom which creates an electorate taught obedience to tyranny and indoctrinated with fascist principles.

  So before we can have an intelligent world citizenship, we must have teachers capable of training a generation fit for world citizenship. We must have teachers who will have a thorough knowledge of the social sciences and of the strong and weak points in all governments so that we may learn from all and may in turn give to all. We must forever discard the idea that we are the people and that wisdom shall perish with us.

  We must learn to analyze propaganda and trace it to its source, especially the kind that fills us with lies about other nations in order to keep us in a state of constant suspicion and distrust that can readily be fanned into war whenever the money powers deem it most profitable.

  We must have a truly free press, and I mean one that is free from pressure by big advertisers and who because of that pressure dares not print any facts that would endanger the profits of these advertisers. The only way to get a free press is to search diligently for the truth through many independent magazines and channels of information and let your big editors know that you have it, and then demand that it be published. In time these people will learn that no matter how many advertisers they may have, unless they also have readers and reader confidence they might as well go out of business. Remember, as I have told you so often, you are the real government of the country, the real arbiters of destiny. You have only to take the power into your hands, but quickly … for God’s sake … quickly.

  We must have a far-reaching system of cultural relations under the direction of a United States Secretary or Minister of Education. This Cabinet office will supervise a vast system of student and teacher exchanges so that we may give to and receive from other nations that knowledge of world affairs that will enable us to fulfill our duties as citizens of the world.

  But before all this can take place, we must, of course, have a Minister of Education. Again and again, we are going to remind you that we are the only civilized nation that does not have one. We still believe that dollars can take the place of brains. We did, not so very long ago, have a representative of big business that we gave some sort of high-sounding title, as a cultural relations man. He was, we have been told, directly responsible for the recognition of fascist Argentina by the family of nations.

  In closing, we quote from Miss Ellen Wilkinson, British Minister of Education who, as one of the British delegates to the General Assembly of the UNO, made some pertinent remarks concerning world citizenship. In answering a query on how world citizenship could be explained to students Miss Wilkinson said, “We want to show them that nationalism doesn’t solve anything and that this particular country they belong to is not the best in the world in every respect. We have to work out how we can get the children to think in their school time of the whole world as a place they are living in and we must develop a practical point of view of explaining that concept. We have to get down into the class room in these things.” Of course, if we had a Minister of Education, we might be able to quote from our own. Since we are deprived of that privilege, we shall just borrow from Britain. She borrows money and we borrow brains, but I fear poor Britain is going to get cheated on the deal.

  “The Story of Different”

  Different, March–April, 1950

  There is nothing that your editor would like more on the threshold of Different’s sixth year of publication than to give you its complete and unexpurgated history. But the experience has been so unusual, the adventures into the labyrinths of the artistic temperament so fascinating, and the human contacts so intimate and revealing that all save the highlights had best be preserved in the Avalon Time-Casket for the entertainment of the post-atomic rock-slingers who, according to Einstein, will fight the Fourth World War.

  Perhaps the question most often asked us during our lecture tours and in the course of our worldwide correspondence is, “How and why was this unusual publication started?” To avoid the repetition of our essential motivation in the entering upon this venture, we request you at this point to turn to our dedication paragraph on page one, read it carefully, and we’ll go on from there.

  Your editor, as you should understand, has had a varied experience as a high school teacher, efficiency expert, newspaper feature writer, columnist, and political reporter on two metropolitan dailies, small-town city editor, educational consultant and founder of her own academy of languages and commerce in old Mexico, lecturer on political science, personality building, and comparative religions, estate manager, poultry raiser, and occasional poet. Simultaneously with each separate occupation, she has managed a large home, cooked, washed, ironed, scrubbed floors, gone down in defeat before the “servant problem,” and even made three shirts for her husband, the buttonholes of which unkind friends have compared to a certain crater in New Mexico after having been struck by an atom bomb.

  During all this time, beginning with the reading of Shakespeare at the age of 10, Voltaire at the age of 11, studying comparative religions at 14, disavowing the Euclidian theory at 15, playing around with science, dancing, swimming, wild horses, psychology, philosophy, and boyfriends until 18, with periodical interruptions from then on as a result of 37 years of marriage to the same man, two world wars and a couple of Mexican revolutions, your editor has maintained a deep and abiding interest in poetry. This interest has not been essentially her own poetry, which she seldom feels inspired to write unless wars are raging, presses clanging, and planets disintegrating, but in encouraging poetic talent in others, seeking to raise poetic standards, and striving to make the world safe for the poetic temperament.

  We sincerely believe that the poetic temperament as we define it constitutes the Divine Mutation of the human species, the next step in evolution, the man beyond humanity, the “mystical minority,” the star-illuminated legislators for whom the ages wait. But please do not infer that we restrict the term “poetic temperament” only to those who devote themselves exclusively to the writing of verse, sitting out the housing shortage in assorted garrets and in ivory towers, reading little poems that “just came to them” at the women’s club, or putting a bewildered world to shame by producing examples of planned paranoia as practiced by experts.