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Agenbite of Inwit, whole no. 4, Spring 1944

Page 12

Agenbite of Inwit -- Spring, 1944 -- Page Twelve
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That the present war is a conflict of the People against Fascism is undeniable, as is the fact that, in the democracies, the majority of peoples have banded together under the banner of Democracy and Freedom to forever defeat the forces of world reaction. But, as Ivy Low has remarked, in America you would never know it. The President and the people understand the need for unity and progress, both now and after the war, but the loud voice of the press, representing the interests of the great concentrations of wealth and privilege, is busy propagating ideas treasonable to the goals for which we are fighting, and conducting a campaign, all along the line, not only to prevent further advances, but at the onset of peace to destroy the fruits of the patriotic war, and set us on the road back to economic and social barbarism.

If we have fought a war to preserve the right of tuberculous clerks to kill themselves on a pittance, of the poor and rich alike to sleep under bridges, to keep the philosophy and economic theory expressed by the Fuller Brush Man, and his knock on the door, alive; if sensitive flesh is pressing forward in a screaming hell of flame and bombs so that some Winchell can speak of the cutups at Club 21 in the Year of Peace 1950, to guarantee the survival of the Sunday advertisement of the axmister rug and the three-place parlor suite, to inject new life into the installment plan, to once more enthrone Babbit, and keep the presses rolling on the Wall Street Journal and the Bronx Home News, then the tidal wave of blood will have be spilt for nothing.

It is not enough for our armies to come home to a country of uneasy peace and underpaid jobs, to Harry James and his dishpan music, to the hypocrisies of Main Street. These concepts are not even an approach to the structure of a decent civilization. And, if they are to be the rule (as in the past), then we might as well be face the fact that the America of tomorrow, at its very best, will still be living in conditions of filth and squalor approximating those of the 18th Century -- a library's length from the science and truth that alone can show us the road to freedom.

The dreams of even the greatest of burgeois philosophers are so puny in the face of the terrific energies we are on the point of tapping, that they are on the level of a microbe's. The victory of what we have come to know as normalcy is not enough. The victory of the cyclotron tube, of penicillin, of the brush and typewriter; the triumph of the tractor and microfilm book; the synthesis of elements and intra-atomic power are the touchstones of the future. They are the bare, minimum requirements, and anything less is not only madness but stupid failure, the promise of an eventual catastrophe that will doom our country to a position at the tail-end of the March of Civilization.
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Reflection

New words for the old love, 
Old words for the new;
True words for the old love,
Bold words for the new.

I look at you, the same you I saw yesterday,
And the day before, and the week before, and the month before,
I look at you and my heart whispers all the old, bold words -- 

My heart never learned to count, even on fingertips; it doesn't know
How many days, how many weeks, how many months have passed.

I think of new, true words, but my heart says them in the old, bold way,
Dancing, my heart, as it did when our love was new.

Saving...

Agenbite of Inwit -- Spring, 1944 -- Page Twelve ************************************* That the present war is a conflict of the People against Fascism is undeniable, as is the fact that, in the democracies, the majority of peoples have banded together under the banner of Democracy and Freedom to forever defeat the forces of world reaction. But, as Ivy Low has remarked, in America you would never know it. The President and the people understand the need for unity and progress, both now and after the war, but the loud voice of the press, representing the interests of the great concentrations of wealth and privilege, is busy propagating ideas treasonable to the goals for which we are fighting, and conducting a campaign, all along the line, not only to prevent further advances, but at the onset of peace to destroy the fruits of the patriotic war, and set us on the road back to economic and social barbarism. If we have fought a war to preserve the right of tuberculous clerks to kill themselves on a pittance, of the poor and rich alike to sleep under bridges, to keep the philosophy and economic theory expressed by the Fuller Brush Man, and his knock on the door, alive; if sensitive flesh is pressing forward in a screaming hell of flame and bombs so that some Winchell can speak of the cutups at Club 21 in the Year of Peace 1950, to guarantee the survival of the Sunday advertisement of the axmister rug and the three-place parlor suite, to inject new life into the installment plan, to once more enthrone Babbit, and keep the presses rolling on the Wall Street Journal and the Bronx Home News, then the tidal wave of blood will have be spilt for nothing. It is not enough for our armies to come home to a country of uneasy peace and underpaid jobs, to Harry James and his dishpan music, to the hypocrisies of Main Street. These concepts are not even an approach to the structure of a decent civilization. And, if they are to be the rule (as in the past), then we might as well be face the fact that the America of tomorrow, at its very best, will still be living in conditions of filth and squalor approximating those of the 18th Century -- a library's length from the science and truth that alone can show us the road to freedom. The dreams of even the greatest of burgeois philosophers are so puny in the face of the terrific energies we are on the point of tapping, that they are on the level of a microbe's. The victory of what we have come to know as normalcy is not enough. The victory of the cyclotron tube, of penicillin, of the brush and typewriter; the triumph of the tractor and microfilm book; the synthesis of elements and intra-atomic power are the touchstones of the future. They are the bare, minimum requirements, and anything less is not only madness but stupid failure, the promise of an eventual catastrophe that will doom our country to a position at the tail-end of the March of Civilization. ********************************* Reflection New words for the old love, Old words for the new; True words for the old love, Bold words for the new. I look at you, the same you I saw yesterday, And the day before, and the week before, and the month before, I look at you and my heart whispers all the old, bold words -- My heart never learned to count, even on fingertips; it doesn't know How many days, how many weeks, how many months have passed. I think of new, true words, but my heart says them in the old, bold way, Dancing, my heart, as it did when our love was new.