Transcript
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{word} = hard to understand, might be this
You remember the toast story last time, and it may have to -- was -- seemed to -- some of you a superficial story. We said that John Winthrop declined to toast, because it was -- health was a serious business, and toast was not serious. And I tried to show you that the forms of social life are not quite so indifferent, and so unserious, so playful as Mr. John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, thought. I gave you the story of the king's -- queen's guards, the Cold Streams in London, and the embarrassment of Mr. Lloyd Griscom in meeting the challenge there, the -- her majesty, the queen.
Now I have chosen these rather strange examples which seem to be of the moment--what is a drink, what is a toast, what is a dinner?--in order to bring up the much more serious question: how in a nation the living and the dead are connected. And that brings up the question of war and peace. Now since 1776, this country has never been able to solve the relationship between war and peace in its own heart. And the problem of all the secret societies, of all the Masonic order of which I'm going to talk to- -- have to talk today has always been rested on this embarrassment: couldn't this society the -- of the people of the United States be organized in such a peaceful way that war makes no difference? Or on the other hand, could the war veterans have the real place they deserve in American life secured?
Some of you may know that in 1932, Mr. MacArthur forfeited his popularity by putting down the veterans' march on Washington. That finished his career. In, I mean, as a -- as a man in politics. And the relation of war and peace is the main theme of the real social problems of America from 1800 to this day. And for purpose of your practical perusal, I'll show you where the trauma--as they call it today in analysis--of the national soul occurred, which has made this interplay between war and peace so fruitless, so sterile in American history.
As you know, this country became able to become a nation in its own right, through the French and Indian wars. And they were fought by Sir Pepperell and George Washington in the service of the English crown. They were English wars, and the Americans took part in them as the -- so to speak, the front line soldiers. Then the -- French were thrown out of Can- -- of -- of Canada, and in -- as a consequence, the Americans no longer needed the British protection. And so in 1775, they were quite safe to proclaim their independence. Without the loss of Canada by the French, this wouldn't have occurred.
So there was a war which the British and the Americans fought side by side. And as in a -- at its conclusion in 1776, we get the Declaration of Independ-
ence. And here you have a mysterious after-effect of one war, which doesn't appear in your history books, because your history books make the break in 1776. And so it appears that the one event belongs to the colonial time, and the other event, you see, starts a new epoch. And so you interrupt the relationship between the inner politics of the American colonies forming a nucleus, a bond; and the external, here. And there is this gap of memory.
Now you go on, and you have exactly the same event, between 1815, the Battle of New Orleans, and 1829, the spoils system of the Jackson administration. Again, the relation of this, as you know, western frontier battle, which was done by the western man, while the peace already was signed in Europe--you remember this--and this again surprised the people of good standing, all the people of good feeling. The Adams party in this country, they were amazed that this upstart Jackson could rise in '29 on the basis of this military reputation, which he had established, and which of course, the -- John Adams -- John Quincy Adams was lacking.
We go on to have the Mexican War fought, as you well know, and then we get the desert years of the Missouri Compromi- -- of the -- of the Wilmot Proviso of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and in 1860, you get Lincoln and the Fort Sumter, and the outbreak of the war, which of course was predicated on the fact that in 1845, there were -- was so much new territory that -- which brought the slavery question, you see, to an inevitable decision. The California settlers in 1849 passed a constitution which excluded slavery, you see, by this -- the Civil War was on.
Now we come to 1918 -- -17. and you get the same tragedy. The American soldier goes home. Mr. Wilson is defied. The people -- goes crazy against that it ever went to war. You read the history books of the -- or the memories of the '20s. The idea is that the -- it was just a mistake; we shouldn't have gone to war, you see. Everything is forgotten. And by 1929--you call it the Depression--the war comes home. The crash of 1929 in your mind is still as disconnected with World War I as the Declaration of Independence is with the French and Indian War. But underneath, it's quite different.
Now we have the same tragedy. And you'll see it in 1960. We have a world war ending in 1945; and we have this scandalous situation with the Korean business, in which people who had fought bravely for their country for four and five years had to re-enlist, because the American Legion has disarmed this country totally and had taken down all our defenses.
I have here a statement by a famous physicist, Dr. {Ableson}, the head of the Carnegie Research Foundation in Washington, in which he said -- he was the
first to delineate a plan for atomic submarine, for the Nautilus. And from him Mr. Rickover got his idea. And he left this specification, this -- his specification, this plan with the Navy in 1946. And he goes on to say:
"Who asked me to do it? I had no specific request from anybody, but if I didn't do it on my own, someone would eventually have told me to do it. I just knew the Navy needed an atomic submarine; and the military advantages were obvious."
Now comes the sentence I -- I would like you to jot down, even, because they are very important:
"Anyone who has glanced at history -- anyone who has glanced at history realizes that nations are put to the test at least once a generation. And that too often the friends of today are the enemies of tomorrow. Although"--may I repeat?--"Anyone who has glanced at history realizes that nations are put to the test at least once a generation, and that too often the friends of today are the enemies of tomorrow. Although everyone was going home after the war, I felt we could not abandon some kind of defensive position. It would have been shortsighted -- it would have been shortsighted not to have a program for developing weapons that might take five or 10 years."
Now here you have the Bill Mitchell situation of course, of the '30s, all over again. There had to be somebody who volunteered his services while the country went crazy with peace propaganda.
"It would have been short-sighted not to have a program for developing weapons that might take five or 10 years."
I can only tell you that I persuaded some of my students to stay in the Army after '45 voluntarily, and not to go home, because this was the only thing that could save the country from dire disappointment. Unfortunately, of course -- they did, by the way. And they don't hold it against me now, because they understand that I was right, and that the country was wrong. But this has cost them tremendous sacrifices, because they stayed in the army for five very fruitless years in which there was no promotion, and in which of course they were laughed at as idi- -- idiots. Well, if everybody had done this, there would have been no Korean War. Instead, as I said, this -- this country just was absolutely bent on -- hell-bent on forgetting the war, again, the second time.
But this is the American story, gentlemen. The relation of war and peace is repudiated by the electorate. It is repudiated. And then it comes home with a bang. It comes back. It cannot be repudiated. And it is anti-American, however, because it connects the dead with the living. And this is against the American
idea of death, that death is the end of things. Now gentlemen, a nation is founded on death. Death comes before life. Nothing is val- -- valuable for which nobody has laid down his life.
I can -- I have mentioned this before, and you don't believe it, and it is not fashionable, gentlemen, but nothing in history would have to be remembered if it were not for the reason that the dead have a right to live with us by being remembered. And I may at this moment settle the issue of the veterans, because we come to this in social history -- in the history of the states from the very beginning, right back: the -- the veteran doesn't deserve any special treatment by his grateful ci- -- co-citizens, except that he represents the dead. Anybody who has lost his pal in the trenches can speak with more authority, because he also represents the man who died. It is expected from the veteran that he doesn't speak only in his own self-interest, you see, but that he makes people aware of the fact that he knows how this youngster, whom he embraced before his death, was able to die for his country. That's a very serious business. Veterans represent the dead. They should never get any bonuses just in their own right. That's not the problem. But they have a moral position, you see, as long as they remain the witnesses to the sacrifices made by their comrades.
Now this three-hand corner situation is never expressed in American pep talks, and so. It's either the veteran has a right, and his widow has a right, and his grandmother has a right, and so you pay pensions, as you know, to veterans from the Civil War, and from the Revolution War, if you can. And you -- you have the third widow of one man who died in 1861, and she's still drawing a pension. But that's just a total, individualistic misunderstanding of the position of a veteran in -- in a human socie- -- in a nation. The veteran represents simply the comrades that are not there. That's why they gather every year, you see, the -- the Army of the Republic, or whatever it is--you remember, I mean, these veterans--in order to remember the dead. And they are listed, and they are -- and that's the whole meaning, and the whole dignity--it should be, at least--of the faith of a soldier. You made it -- I recommend to you, if you want to bring home this problem very clearly, the famous speech given in 1898 I think, or '97, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Faith of a Soldier."
Now it is not -- fashionable to mention soldiers. It is even less mention- -- fashionable to mention the faith of the soldier. In this country of prudishness and -- and -- Abol- -- Prohibitionism, you think a man is a believer when he doesn't swear, and when he doesn't drink, and when he doesn't whore. Soldiers do that, but they have faith. They have faith that their life is not the ultimate value of their existence, that their life has to be invested in something bigger. That we call faith. Soldiers are not godless. Church people usually are.
I can -- know so many women who in their spiritual jealousy for their husbands are the most godless creatures, but they go to church, of course, and send the children to church. But they are godless people, because their own selfwill is their highest. The women in this country, you see, are the atheists, because they make their husbands after their own image.
I'm -- it's very serious, and all this comes from this contempt for the dead. If the living are the only ones then at le- -- of course women who give birth to children at least are -- have some connection with the future generation, you see, must rank highest in a civilization. It is only when the men who con- -- you see, who have died connect us with the past in a valid manner that you can balance women and men. We are nobodies in our own life. In hi- -- for history we don't count, unless we represent some promise made in the past, and if he promised to his loss, he makes his promise good. That's man, you see. And a woman, you see, if she has loved a man, she bears the fruit of the -- her womb, and gives life to this, and there is no abortion. That's the same difference between -- cowardice in -- on a battlefield and abortion is the same thing. One connects the living generation with the next generation, with the future, and accepts the consequences of love. And the other accepts the consequences of your own word, of your own promise to uphold the laws of your country. And thereby, this man who dies on the battlefield restores these laws for another generation to reality. And only through the death of men and the birth of children are -- is man a historical being. And no other way. All your talk, your pep talks, your parties, your -- 4th of July celebrations, they don't help us. That's not history. And all your brass monuments. And -- and your rebuilding of missions and so -- what's all this? That's all just an escape from the real -- debt we have to the -- to the dead who died on the battlefield, and on the other hand, to the unborn children whose patrimony we must not waste. We cannot whittle down the redwood, because our grandchildren still have to see it, you see. That's the problem of conservation, is it not? But it's only because of our grandchildren, if you don't feel any obligation for your grandchildren, if you are immortal, if you have -- need not have children, because you will live to the end of time, you can squander it all. As the Nazis did. They -- they just said, "We are the last; there has to be no Germans after us," so they squandered the whole patrimony of the -- of the German nation.
We are -- but here we are in the same boat, gentlemen. If -- by 1960, you will see in what dire straits this mighty republic is, because there is no memory of the two world wars, let alone that Wilson and Roosevelt have been, so to speak, put to compost, and compound together in one great figure of -- of the American immersion into a global order. But Wilson and -- and Roosevelt make sense only together. There are no two world wars. It's one war.
That's why Mr. Churchill calls the Second World War the "superfluous war," you see, "the unnecessary war." And he was allowed, for this reason, to be the only statesman who in a leading position was al- -- able to fight both wars. It's a very important fact that the English alone, by their sense for the -- for the -- for their patience, by their sense for the old, had statesmen, you see. The same statesman Churchill, you see, was sea -- war -- lord of the s- -- you see, of the -- what is it called? The lord of the -- not of the sea -- what's the word?
(Admiralty.)
Admiralty, you see, and in -- 1919 -- and '18, and the head of the government in the Second World War.
But Mr. Roosevelt, you see, is a tragic figure, because every morning in his presidency, he would wake up and think of the mistakes Wilson made, and said, "How have I to go about it, to do the same thing as Wilson, but with the right means?" And he never was allowed to mention Wilson. That was taboo under his administration. That's very interesting, you see. You -- the people of the United States and their leaders do not talk frankly to each other. They -- you want to be lied to, because Roosevelt felt that the people wanted to live day by day. They wanted to live in 1939. You couldn't take them back to 1918. That would have cost him the election. But it was the truth. He knew everything that was going to happen by 1938; but by 1939, he had to say, "There won't be a blackout of peace in America." I've heard him say this myself over the radio. And he knew it wasn't true. But you force your presidents to say all these pious lies. Because otherwise you have -- you have this idea of yourself that you are peace-loving people, and never have any reason to go to war. Yes?
(Is it your contention that if we remember past wars, then we will be able to have some sort of peace?)
Exactly.
(And if that's so, you...)
[tape interruption, plus a lot of talk and recorder playing of "The Walls of Jericho."]
I can only tell you that the American soldier is more ruthless on the battlefield than the disciplined soldier as, for example, of Great Britain, or of the French -- France, or Germans, because it is -- he's out of his mind. It's so extraordinary that he should be a soldier; it's all against his Sunday school principles, that he should kill anybody, you see, that he is schizophrenic. When he then
goes out killing, he really does. And if he then returns home, he's again sweet, you see, and on Mr. Dun- -- Mrs. Duncan's apron strings.
This picture yesterday in the paper, you may have seen it, of Mrs. Duncan Hines, the -- the -- the tie of her son is really a tragedy of the American soldier coming home.
There is no relation between the two. The reason of course is that the schoolteachers in this country are usually females. And so there are -- is no bridge between your peacetime existence and your military existence. And as long as the she- -- the teacher is said -- thought in this country of as a she, I don't think there can be any improvement. Because a man -- a boy of 14 must be brought up by -- by men. He cannot have women teachers. He cannot. He's destroyed by them. But since you don't pay sufficient high -- high salaries, you have no teachers, no man teachers. It's a very serious ob- -- it's begging the question all the time, you see. Women cannot educate young men, because the outgrowing into -- into manhood is a slow process. It has to begin at 10 or at 11, latest.
And so there is this -- from this there comes -- I -- I'm quite sure of this. I've -- nine grandchildren myself in this country, so I know a little bit about it. The man who has to become a soldier is taken aback. He has gone in a different direction from 10 to 19 in his thoughts, and in his manners, and in everything. And then suddenly he is asked to do this, you see, and he's shell-shocked himself, he's --.
I can give you a good example. I had a wonderful student. When the Fir- -- Second World War came, he knew he had to enlist. He was an Episcopalian, he was an acolyte, he was -- loving his church. And he felt so badly about his being -- becoming a soldier that he left the Church. Imagine! He left the Church. He was -- as an Episcopalian, under the spell of the Mennonites, and the Quakers, and said, "War is murder. I have to commit murder. So therefore I -- I have to admit that I'm no longer worthy of going to church."
Now I think that's not an extreme case. But it's just an opening up of the inner conflict of the American soul, a young man. Of course it -- the whole British Empire wouldn't exist--this is an Anglican, Episcopalian kingdom, is it not?--if the British, who where -- are very lustily warring all the time, would have to leave the Church each time that they went to war.
But this either-or situation is therefore projected into the real history of this country. What I have here described as a state of mind, that the boy from a -- 10 to 19 is not able to grow into his virility, but suddenly then is brought up
short, and of course then has to face these stars, whether he likes it or not--this I think is reflected in a very strange manner in this list of events. Will you kindly now see to it, you see? You have here -- I could put in with 1812 to 1815. You have here war, 15 years' lapse, 13 years; and this happens. This is already all in the -- in the limbs of the event, in the womb of time, at this moment, you see. But dreaming goes on, and all of a sudden, the Boston Massacre, and the -- happens. And here you have the -- the same thing with Jackson, who comes as a total surprise as a meteoric rise, with his new system of western, you see, democracy, to this staid Eastern seaboard, I mean, who don't even understand that there suddenly is the spoils system, you see; hadn't been heard of, before.
And here, you come of course, to the greatest tragedy of American life, you see, his people had realized, as John Quincy Adams had long before 1845, that the commander-in-chief would have to declare emancipation, you see. You can read this in the '30s in the speeches by -- of John Quincy Adams, second president of the United States, as Representative in the Congress. He said, "The only way of solving the slave question is by declaration of the -- you see, of the -- president as commander-in-chief of the army." Now Mr. Polk could have taken a leaf of -- from that, and he would have saved us much trouble, because it had to be done this way in 186- -- when was the Declaration of Emancipation?
('63.)
There was one, only. And here you have of course the same thing, you see, in a -- this leaving the -- Europe in the lurch, in 1919, going home, and going crazy, and building up this investment empire, of the -- you see, till its crash, 195- -- 1929; lending $15 million to the Europeans -- made this crash inevitable. The Marshall Plan was an attempt to do the same thing in a reasonable way, you see, under government control, whereas the arbitrariness of the loans to Europe after the war -- first war, you see, made the -- made it into -- nobody could pay the interest on { }.
We have now not quite the same situation, because it is a Second World War. And still the Korean venture may show you that one thing is lacking in American policy. There is no group of people who are allowed to have a memory, because everybody depends on election. The whole elec- -- the whole statesmanship is geared to the day. You go to Europe, you well know that people are in despair, bec- -- every -- at every election, because for one year, there is no foreign policy of the United States to be had. Anything -- you see, can happen in the world in this one year. Since the presidential election is on, no decision can be reached in Washington.
Now for a modern business society, this is very funny; but it is tragic, too,
you see. This country puts ev- -- always the election before everything else. I mean, it was the same with Mr. Wilson's campaign of course, you see, in 1920, that he -- he just had to be elected. So what do you do? And we have -- we have this, of course, now we -- again, that the English, and the French, and the Germans, and the Russians know one thing: that the American foreign policy is bankrupt always for one year out of four. It cannot reach a decision.
This makes for a loss of memory, because if you are so spellbound by the moment -- I think that's one of the more external explanations, that there are, of course -- it's a very complex question, why this country cannot develop a memory. Yesterday, however, one of my colleagues here, a man who's 30 years younger than I, told me that he already was considered by you as dated, that you had no memory even of the Korean War, that the Second World War meant just nothing to you, and certainly you barely had heard of the Depression. Now these are three epochal events in American history. And if they don't make epoch in your memory, you have a blurred picture -- conception of our problems. And if you think that you live after 1850, I can only tell you that by this very fact, that you believe that you live after 1850 -- 1915, can forget it. You live probably in 1910.
Because to live after an event is difficult. Most of you extrapolate it. You say, "Well, this has happened before," but then it hasn't happened at all for you. So it will happen to you one day. An event has only happened for you if you have made con- -- reached conclusions from this event, you see, and thereby keep it alive. You may say that the -- the air squadrons that circle the Pole, they are conclusive evidence that we have learned something from the Second World War. But that's a technical s- -- aspect of the whole thing; it's not the whole thing. As long as this country, for example, calls the -- the payments to the -- to the other nations "foreign aid," you live in the times of 1900, because there is no "foreign" at this moment any longer in politics. You believe that these people should come to your assistance. You believe that the people of Berlin should be willing to be bombed out of existence for resisting the onslaught of the Russians against the Americans. After all, Berlin is an American fortress. And you believe that they shouldn't go over to the enemy.
This is the real situation. It's not as is put in our papers, that we -- you -- we defend the Berlins. The Berlins defend America. America -- it is -- an American colony. But since we have no colonies, and have no empire, we can't say that. So we say that we defend the English, or defend the Berlin people. But gentlemen, whose -- whose prestige is at stake? That Berlin cannot defend itself, that's no cause for shame for these unarmed Berliners, you see. But that if Berlin isn't helped, it's a comp- -- loss of prestige and of political power for the United States, is it not? In Berlin, they lose their lives, but they don't lose their political
status.
And in politics, only this counts. Politics is not concerned with material things, but it's con- -- with roles in politics it is concerned. This is one of the big lies. Foreign aid, gentlemen? It is nothing but -- but if King George had called the pay for -- of his Hessian mercenaries who fought his war in this colonies, if he had called this "foreign aid," would have been rather funny, you see, with his own soldiers. That's about what we do with foreign aid. They are our mercenaries.
But you shy of course from all these impious terms, because you all have she-teachers. It's very serious. The -- I can't tell you what the word "foreign aid" des- -- destroys in American policy at this moment. This country has to be integrated with other parts of the globe in a serious manner of cooperation. The administration has tried to give -- give it this term for -- how is it called? But it is fought by the isolationists under the term, "This is foreign aid, given to others," you see, "outside the United States -- why should we?" As long as you call it this way, the -- the two world wars have not happened. And they have not happened in Kansas. And they have not happened in California for most people. Ja?
(Are you saying that it's in the very nature of woman to corrupt man?)
It's mutual. It is mutual. Absolutely mutual.
But I -- you know -- this is quite serious, and not just to laugh off. This is not my -- not my task here to -- to go into this. But -- let us be serious for one moment.
The preservation of the human race depends on the chastity of the age between 10 and 20. Incest, marrying within the family, you see, weakens the race. And the most primitive tribe has rules of incest. This has nothing to do with physical incest, but with moral, with mental incest, with making things too -- too easy. You have to wait until you can beget progeny. This is a serious business. And what I have said is only the exclusion of certain -- certain interpenetrations. Give the young man time to become a man before he must become a human. To be male is not everything. I know this very well, you see. To be a human is more than just to be of one sex. As children, we are sexless, you see. Then comes the time where you have to develop the masculine and the feminine traits. And then comes the time where you have to transcend them again, and be more than just male and female. But if you do- -- never give time to any of these chapters of your life, you see, to -- to grow and to develop, you wrong yourself. And this, I think, is done in this country without much thought. It just -- it happened from frontier conditions, where the women were the only people available for teach-
ing, I mean. It's nothing to be sorry for, I mean; they did a great job. But they did it when there were 90 school days in the year; and for 270, the people were -- shooting down Indians. Now that's a different story than the she-teacher from Vermont that taught the Virginian, you know, in Wyoming. You know -- Owen Wister's beautiful book? That's -- was all in balance. But today, we send these poor youngsters to school for 365 days, because on days off, there are organized games.
So where is the experience of these youngsters, you see? I know -- I've seen it with my own eyes. And I was really crying with disgust. A -- 14-year-old Boy Scouts led by a woman of the weight of 250 pounds. Don't you think that has a terrible effect? In our little village, we are 1500 inhabitants. You think that's just -- it's Vermont. It should be still -- have some reason, some instinct. No! The only woman who sh- -- couldn't do it -- shouldn't do it is the leader of the Boy Scouts.
And of course, their daughter, ha- -- in consequence of this impression, has intercourse with every boy in town.
She sells the condom at the ripe age of 15 to the other girls. This is interrelated. One begets the other.
So historical memory is only memory if it can -- if war can be remembered in peace, and peace can be remembered in war. And therefore, this is not astonishing to hear that not only has Mr. {Ableson} and my own friends tried to keep the war memory alive in peacetime, but this is the beginning of the republic. It's -- the failure of this attempt in the Revolution War to establish a group who would extend the memory of the war into peace, is more than a failure of this one s- -- group. It is -- should be remembered as the constant question and the constant task unsolved still by this country.
This order who tried to do -- perform this task was the Society of the Order of Cincinnati. You have all heard of it, but you have never taken it seriously. But I want you to take it seriously, because I want to show that, by its failure, the problem of the Masons and of the churches in this country arose, which has plagued America, via the Mormons and other denominations ever since, and still is plaguing us.
The -- Henry Knox, general of artillery under George Washington, was still quite a young man. He was born in -- 1750 in Boston, and died in 1806, so he didn't reach a great age, is an important figure, because he understood that peace and war were not mutually exclusive. This is what you think, and which makes dealings with American politicians impossible. Because war is peace, and
peace is war, and they are not distinguishable. A man in war who is still a civilian will be chivalrous. And he would not act like General Quantrill, who took the lives of 150 citizens -- unarmed citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, in 18- --when was it?-- -64. And -- a man in civil life must be a soldier, then he will not give in to trends, you see, and will not say, "I cannot do it, because it's against the trend." That's the soldier in civil life.
So if you have no soldiers, no warriors in peacetime, and if you have no civilians in wartime, you have brutal wars, and no peace; but just soup in peacetime -- so-called peacetimes. Just like the -- crazy '20s. Could just erase from American history, and nothing would be missing. Wanton years. Absolutely unnecessary lives -- lives lived, so to speak.
When Sinclair Lewis, the novelist, came back from England in 1928, and stepped into his publisher's office--he has told me the story himself--he said to the man, "When I am looking down on Fifth Avenue, I -- I think they are -- I'm in a lunatic asylum. And very soon the cows will eat here the grass from the curbstones, because that's what's bound to happen." It was one year before the Crash.
Peace without the awareness of war goes crazy. And war becomes hell, and of course unredeemable, and you can't have peace if you have no civilians in peace in the hearts of man. Without chivalry, there can be no end to war. There can be no end to the slaughter. You can only destroy Troy, and -- and wipe it out, you see. And we are many ways, we -- the wars have become more cruel. You just have to think of the Nrnberg trials. You have to think of the execution of the whole Russian army, which we handed over to the Russians after -- at the end of the war. It will be a stain on the American honor forever, that we handed over these -- these Russians who had fought under Hitler, and had surrendered to the Americans. And every one of them was killed. Cossacks, Vlasov's army, I mean; perhaps 30- -- 40,000 people. So we no longer make prisoners of war. We just execute them.
So war is back, you see, to the days before the Trojan Wars, in the days of Nineveh and Assyr. We are much more cruel than the Greeks were, and the Romans. And that's why the renaissance of the old virtues, gentlemen, of preGreek and pre-Roman times, is so much my interest, and my line, because I feel that automatically if we do not have the virtues of those times, you see, we'll only have the vices of those times. The cruelties. Take the bomb. In 1850, such a bomb couldn't have been thrown over Hiroshima. Would have been quite impossible. And now a very gentle president, like Mr. Truman, thought he had to do it. But it hasn't been redeemed, yet. We have thrown the bomb. Nobody else.
It's a step in a -- in a new kind of -- of -- a new dimension of warfare, the
annihilation of the whole city, you see, of man, and not just of soldiers. As you know, today a woman and a child are more in danger in wartime than the front line soldier. If you want to have a -- you see, be secure, become a general.
Yes. It's -- it's a complete reversal, you see. This is very true that today the greater danger today is with the civilians, because they have no order. They have no discipline in the same sense as the soldiery. The danger is at least the same for both. So we have reached a new point in warfare, and therefore, the -- at this moment, I think the separation of war and peace destroys our human character.
Mr. Henry Knox, general of artillery, proposed in 1783, I think it was in the -- May, just before the Peace of Versailles came to its completion, that the army should found a remembering society, the Society of the Order of Cincinnati. Now, who is Cincinnatus? The city of Cincinnati of course owes this plan its existence. And Cincinnatus was a Roman senator--a Roman farmer, you may even say--whom the senators of Rome beseeched to become their general, and found him plowing his land. And so the emblem on the chain of this Order of Cincinnati was exactly what I've said at this moment: Roman senators beseeching a plowman to become -- to accept the sword that they were handing to him. And here you have the Cincinnati idea that the peaceful man should become the soldier.
But here you have also the fiction that peace is the first, and war is the second, step in human history. The Society of the Order of Cincinnati was doomed to failure, because they na‹vely assumed that although the symbol was from plow to sword, you see, from farmer to general, that of course, since they had experienced the war as a tremendous event in their lives, and had made -- become good comrades, that it should give leadership to the veterans of the war. So you have -- the whole American quandary; mentally the picture is -- ja, peaceful farmers, pioneers, settlers who burned down the brush, and had cleared the ground, and had made good. And then comes the enemy, and they have to take up their arms and have to defend their homes. This is the peaceful picture. But the historical picture is of course, as I told you, that the Americans became Americans through the Indian and French War. The war emancipated these civilians. And so the true content of the Order of Cincinnati also was meant to be the same, that the warriors had acquired a certain authority, and that they should then stand together in peacetime.
So this is our eternal American problem. Just as nobody knows what is -- first, chicken or egg, so I'm asking you this question: which comes first, war or peace? What constitutes a nation? Now my answer is not so very difficult. And I'll try to give it to you next time.