Monsieur Bonaparte. Napoleon I, made several mistakes, but it is generally conceded that he possessed military ability. Several of his discoveries lie outside the range of my subject but I shall probably be permitted to remind you of one of his dicta, namely, You can’t conquer a map.
Not only do the main geographic features of our planet remain fairly stationary, but the nature of the soil and of the climate can not be altered suddenly even by the greediest politician, or most ignorant man hater and Knudson/Stakhalevite.
The AIM in all the more important human endeavors must count for SOMEthing. And you can not get to San Francisco by going to Boston. Granted ? Or NOT granted.
No one has examined the genesis of the “muddle thru theory in old England.” No one so far as I know has taken the faintest interest in my citation of the Jew prosecuting attorney, for one of America’s largest, oldest historic cities.
“All I’m interested in is BUNK,” he said to me. Meaning that BUNK, falsification, was his sole interest. Seeing what you can put over. This is one thing from the late P.T. Barnum, from a music hail artist, a circus owner. It is the prestidigitator’s job to illude. That’s what he is paid for.
It may take another 40 or 80 years to get any of you calm enough, ever again, to ask yourselves whether this is the desirable legal attitude, whether this is the beau ideal, the ne plus ultra, the summum desiderium for a public official, engaged regularly in great municipal law courts. It is open to doubt whether there are six men listening now to this broadcast who are capable of facing this question. If there are, let ’em find six others. Some day you will all have to face it, and face all of its implications, not merely one of ’em.
Some day the remnants of the American people will begin to wonder WHICH side was right. They will wonder whether the choice was wise. They will even begin to wonder which side of WHAT. Which side stood for which PRINCIPLE, not merely stood for which interest.
Hank Wallace has shown up the INTEREST. Gold. Nothing else uniting the three governments, England, Russia, United States of America. THAT IS the interest—gold, usury, debt, monopoly, class interest, and possibly gross indifference and contempt for humanity.
Now if you know anything whatsoever of modern Europe and Asia, you know that HITLER stands for putting men over machines. If you don’t know that, you know NOTHING. And beyond that you either know or do not know that Stalin’s regime considers humanity as NOTHING save raw material. Deliver so many carloads of human MATERIAL at the consumption point.
That is the LOGICAL result of materialism. If you assert that men are dirt, that humanity is MERELY material, that is where you come out. And the old Georgian train robber is perfectly logical If all things are merely MATERIAL man is material and the system of ANTI-man treats man as matter.
Now your President exceeds his powers in demanding that you adhere to his politics As Commander in Chief of the Army he can command you to assail enemy forces but even Congress in its most ABJECT and servile moments has not conceded this blood-thirsty maniac the control of your OPINIONS
In fact as long as ANY law is left whatsoever in the United States of America which no Jew and no Roosevelt will LIKE having left there, but as long as it is left there, powers do NOT inhere in officials unless delegated TO them by law. Thus when a lying Dutchman tells you that you have GOT to prefer Bolshevism to Fascism, you can ask: WHY ? Who says so? AND if you are more than cattle ? If you rate yourselves above cows and sheep, you will in defense of that rating have to ask YOURSELVES whether men are more important than mere machinery.
Whether you intend to be slaves, lifelong slaves, hereditary slaves to machinery and whether you propose to sell your children and your grand children into long lasting slavery to usurers and to machinery.
I mean you will have to make up your MINDS. YOU can not live on cold iron, you can not live on airplane spare parts, YOU can not live well without LAWS which even the officials obey.
And for however long your answer to me is Jim’s answer “No boss, no body here in America is INTERESTED in taking things as seriously as you do,” there will nevertheless and finally come a time when at least a few of you will have to face things or DIE; you will have to THINK or die. Hard choice for the daisy pickers, but a real choice.
Roosevelt’s gang have got you hitched up with Russia. Not a very good bet. Russians attack general Winter. Mightn’t it be that Joe Bloodsucker KNOWS his army will starve in three or four months ANYHOW unless they break the Germans before that ? Why suppose that winter attack means STRENGTH on the part of the Russians ?
Not my job to speculate on military conditions, but might be. My job, as I see it, is to save what’s left of America, and keep up some sort of civilization somewhere or other. I decline to abet the destroyers. I decline, so far as the light is conceded me, I decline to climb trees to catch fish. That’s an old one, 24 hundred years old.
Mencius referred to the folly of starting a war for something you couldn’t GET; something the war could not bring to the monarch Mencius was talking to. So he said, climb trees to catch fish.
In the present juncture I refer to the POSSIBILITY that even the swiping and squashing of South America and of Canada may not catch even South America and Canada. Suckers, of course, you will get hold of some of ’em. Am I fanciful ?
Look at least at the possibility that this mere distention of U.S. borders MAY not be the way to get what you are battling for. It WON’T be unless you pay some attention to what happens INSIDE America.
It won’t be if you lose ALL internal structure. When the turnpike depends upon Congress, local control is lost. Well, that was said a long time ago. The central government must in modern life have some powers. But as human beings it might be well to ask how many powers, and which powers ?
And IGNORANCE and feeding on lies won’t help you to make a lucid decision. You go yellin’ hurray for Litvinov. Do you believe in the ABOLITION of all private ownership ?
I’ll say you do not. You have colluded in the OLD British habit of employing the savage to wipe out the civilized rival. Your school has been hooded. You have had a SLOW one put over you. For 80 years, moving imperceptibly, an inch here and an inch there, you have been euchred out of your history, out of knowledge of history, both American and world history. It can not be done, said Henry Adams to Santayana. Oh, you wish to teach at Harvard. It can not be DONE. Henry Adams said he had tried it. Yes, I came LATE, but I am still a bit ahead of the band wagon. Beard, Bowers, D.R. Dewey (not Tommie) been gittin’ down TOWARD but not TO the real bedrock. Get on and PUSH. Get into the diggin’ and LEARN the face of American history. ADAMS, John Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, also Brooks Adams. It’s 40 years late for Brooks Adams, but you can’t do it sooner. And in watching contemporary flim-flam, do at least TRY to sort things OUT.
DO you believe in the Homestead or in communal ownership ? If you believe in the Homestead, WHY fight FOR the abolition of ALL private ownership ?
In taking sides in a quarrel do at least try to find out what’s fighting WHICH. Do you stand for the obliteration of Finland ? If not, why fight against Finland. Do you stand, those of you who are above goose gangster level, for the obliteration of all Occidental civilization ? If NOT, why join the Anglo-Jewish clique which has been and still is out professedly and openly for the obliteration of Europe ? Western Civilization, all of it that you have still got.
Our forebears made a DISTINCT contribution. The Jesuits in Paraguay made a distinct contribution, but they were wiped out for discovering things. We were wiped out largely in the old 1860’s.
A man who ain’t got any foresight gets kicked in the tail. Man fed on lies and lackin’ in foresight got kicked in the Guam.
DO you think that is an ISOLATED instance of the hind effects of lackin’ foresight ? The starve-the-enemy theme has been sung for a long time on your Victrolas.
Go back and examine it. The cornered weasel will fight. And your MIS-leaders have been out for some years annoying several things larger than weasels. Was it an error ? ARE you going to start NOW trying to evaluate their misdemeanors, or are you all of you going to go plum 100% haywire and stay so ?
DO you believe in the homestead or in communal ownership ? If you do NOT believe in the abolition of ALL private ownership, and the abolition of ALL private initiative, watch your Nelson. He has already got a half-Nelson on you. And if you got to please pore ole Hank Wallace and go on buying all the world’s gold from now till the terminus of eternity, you got a day’s work comin’, with 24 hours labor. And no trade union organization, legally recognized, to put up a tombstone: here lies the 8-hour day.
EZRA POUND SPEAKING 