{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

[Opening remarks missing]

... rule of thumb which is -- for those who especially have to deal with history in any relation, one day you will have to decide how much history the -- your town has to teach when you are on the board -- the school board. There is no understanding of history in this country because, gentlemen, history has only -- can only be taught if you understand that on a holiday you are the man who did this thing in the past. A man who cannot make a 4th of July speech as though he was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence should not make the speech. You see? Then he should be silent. He's impotent. He cannot do it. On a holiday, since you are the whole man, this is not somebody else's history. The holiday makes it very clear that this is your story, your holiday.

A little boy was told by his mother that God created the world in six days and that on the seventh, He rested, because He found it was very good. Next day she found this little boy of six -- here in Windsor, Vermont -- she found him digging a little molehill in the garden, and da- -- putting a little flag on top of it and dancing around and shouting, "And He saw it was very good." This boy celebrated history. He was at that moment God Almighty. Can you see this? And with no other gesture could he say that he had understood the story. He didn't know the story -- because he could repeat the -- prosaically, but he had understood the story because he felt that creation was continuing, and at this moment, he had built this little hill, just as God had built the earth.

And I wished you would understand, gentlemen, why there is no sense of history in this country: because you don't celebrate holidays. As long as the turkey is everything about Thanksgiving Day, of course you are not, despite the social register, a -- a descendant from the -- of the Mayflower people. But anyone from Czechia- -- Czechoslovakia or Romania, or Poland, or Russia who comes to this country and on Thanksgiving really is prostrate with gratitude that he has enough to eat, he -- and a free man -- can celebrate Thanksgiving. And it doesn't help you at all that you have the blue blood and a forged genealogy according to which Mr. {Brewster} is in your -- among your ancestors.

That {doesn't help}. But if you can enact this act as though you had done it yourself, gentlemen, and that's the only history that counts, all the other history books -- Toynbee and Spengler -- forget about them, gentlemen. Or Cummings and -- and -- { }. The only history -- why we are bothered with history is that this little boy, this Russell Thomas in Windsor -- in Vermont, was able to shout,

"And He saw it was very good." He's up to par. He has realized, you see, that he has the same -- the same endowment as his maker. In His image, he can create. But of course, he has to realize this coming later than it already has happened. And so the words come in -- upon his mouth, just as if you say in a diff- -- difficult situation, "This is a time which tries men's souls." Who said this?

(Thomas Paine. Paine.)

Thomas Paine, you see, in -- about Valley Forge. If you can say this, you are saved. That's history. And there is no other history, gentlemen. All the rest is bunk. But you try to get history as a science. History is me, written large. That is, my life is a part of the whole story in the sense that I can, at great moments of history, you see, realize that I would have loved to do the same, or I would have been ashamed not to do the same. You are -- all at this moment are prone to be Benedict Arnolds. I think very few of you would not have betrayed the new revolution, because you would have gone with the fleshpots of Egypt. You would have sided with security. Now the security was with George III, gentlemen. They -- was with the Loyalists. You wouldn't have made the revolution of this country. You know what the Daughters of the Revolution sing in this country, you see. You know it. "I'm a daughter of the revolution -- of the American Revolution, but I shall be ..." Wie? "... I shall never be the mother of another." And that's probably what you would sing, you see. You are the sons of the American Revolution, but you will never be the father of another. That's why it's so hopeless to teach you. You won't be revolutionaries. You have -- you are -- you are just all McCarthyists. That's just your conformity. So history to you, of course, means nothing. You are not waiting for the moment where you can join the dance of time, the march of time and also say, "This is the time which tries men's souls." But ev- -- is -- there is such a spark in all of you. You'll understand that I'm only saying this to provoke your -- your -- your contradiction.

And I want to reduce history to proportions which every man -- can ca- -- can carry. You see, if you look into history as all the facts, that's too much for us. Dump it, I mean, nobody can carry this. I think I know more history than anyone in Hanover, but -- I once walked in the mountains down with a friend, and we were in a hurry, so I -- I had to hurry -- or to slow down, because my friend couldn't walk fast. And in order not to irritate him -- he was suffering from his -- from his handicap very much -- I decided to give one event to every year by counting the steps. We wanted also to find out -- we had no map in this region. Was wild country, and so, in order to find out how long it would take us to go -- come down from the mountain, I gave to every step 1, 2, 3, 4, you see, in the -- in the chronology of -- I gave a year, when I had finished the years 195- -- it was then 1946, 1946 years of our era, I went backward, minus, you see, B.C. And I came out all right. I then counted a second time, and I knew a different event for

each year. So I knew two events for every year of our era. It only to -- goes to show that I know some history, gentlemen, yet I would gladly say that this is not necessary. The rungs of the ladder of history, gentlemen, are -- of course, they are endless, you may say. But you if you have -- pardon me?

(I just wanted to ask you if you think that remembering all these dates is not history.)

Well, don't you listen to me at this moment? I'm trying to tell you. Wie? I'm trying to say that I can -- can not -- have not to speak about history like the -- the fox about sour grapes, you see. Understand? So I defend you against my knowledge, you see, and praise your ignorance. Don't you understand? But the terrible thing is that you think -- you don't know history is something. I have -- say I am not going to boast about my knowing too much history, you see. This is the whole point. Can you follow me?

(Yes.)

But it is very serious, gentlemen, that you have to know 1776, and you have to know the date of the Reformation, and of course, in this country there has been, for very strange reasons, a very deep hatred of the German history. And therefore {1617} is never mentioned. You only know the Renaissance, and the -- that's a pagan attempt of the humanists to -- to out- -- to darken, so to speak, the religious story of the human race. The -- all the humanists under the leadership of Mr. {DeMayer} at this college, try to block out the -- the true story of the human race and to replace it by scholastic events, of inventions and discoveries like this man who says the pavement in New York -- the blacktop in New York is a great invention in the -- in the history of the human race. So in the same sense, they say the conquest of the -- Constantinople by the Turks is a great event, and the -- the liberty given to the soul by Martin Luther is not -- second-rate importance, because it is a religious event, so it mustn't be mentioned in your schoolbooks, as serv- -- as of the same rank. It's very strange, this forgery. It's under French influence, of course, in this country. You are imitating the French, who were competing with the Germans all the -- always and therefore blocked your understanding of history.

What I'm trying to say is, gentlemen, there are certain dates without which you are absolutely lost. You must understand the meaning of B.C. and A.D., which you don't. Because if you look into the big books now, Mr. Toynbee and so, he has a wonderful scheme by which nothing happened in the year 0, nothing important. It's little cycles and circles. They are all quite different. They begin somewhere and they end somewhere.

So the sum of it is, gentlemen, those events, like the events of the creation of man, which we can identify ourselves with, at certain occasions of great celebration, there are few -- there are few. But these few make demands on us, gentlemen. So you have really thrown out the baby with the bath. That is, you say, "History all has gone too wild, has been too much. Let's all go down the sink." But because it is wrong not to see the forest before the trees, and because I cannot ask you to know 2 million trees, it is not right to ignore the Yellowstone Park or the -- the -- the Great -- or the Great -- Grand Canyon, these miracles of hu- -- of the earth, you would admit. Who has seen the Grand Canyon? Oh, that's a mi- -- a very small minority. It's very interesting. And that is a unique thing. Even all the advertising cannot spoil it.

In history there are certain ev- -- such events, too. And this -- the holiday brings back those. And to come back now to the -- to the continuity of this -- of this course, gentlemen. Today is February 24th. And that's a very strange day. Does anybody know what kind of a day this is?

(It's Thursday.)

Does anybody know? Very strange date. Here I have a book by the famous Roman historian, Theodor Mommsen, written in -- 90 years ago, on Roman chronology, of which a whole chapter is devoted to February 24th. In -- in literature, gentlemen, for the last hundred years, there were many plays -- tragedies written on December -- on February 24th, because it was the day of fate, the day of fatality. There was a -- always a murder committed, or some tragedy. Why? On February 24th, gentlemen, in antiquity, in Rome, at least, strangely enough -- not on February 28th, but on 24th, the 13th month was interposed -- intercalated, as they said -- the Leap Year had a month, a 13th month, because they had a lunar year. The year had only 340 -- -54 -- -55 days. That's, as you can see, not enough. So every two or three years they inserted a month of another 30 days. And so they broke the February, the day -- the month of the spectres of the dead, februa means expiate or reconcile the -- the {limoures}, the spirits of the dead. There was this month. And it was such a violent interruption of the flow of time that people were frightened. In the Biblical -- in the ecclesiastical division, it was the day of the Apostle Mathias. Now Mathias -- or Mathias in the Bible -- in the New Testament, is the 13th Apostle who was appointed Judas Iscariot committed suicide. So he is a leap apostle. And so the -- the Church, very -- very fittingly decided to celebrate his day on the day which, you see, was in the calendar of nat- -- of artificial chronology, or historical chronology -- was the beginning of this extra month, in the same sense as the new Apostle, who was co-opted after Pentecost, in the -- in the Acts, if you read the Bible, was such a 13th Apostle, so the month also was the 13th month. And you see how very intelligently, or very meditatively the Church has proceeded.

For the Church, you see, and I think, if you come to think about it, even for you, who think you are no Christians any more, the lives of human beings, gentlemen, take the place of the life of the sta- -- movements of the stars. Jesus is the sun and the stars are the Apostles and the saints. This -- a very serious difference, you see, because they change constantly, and they are always new. And if you could think that our Heaven is composed of our predecessors, of our -- the Founding Fathers, of people like Luther or Pasteur, you would understand why we are no pagans. Why even with all your great attempt to go naked, and to be naturalists, and be Rousseauites, and what-not, you cannot, because you will know very well that your life in Heaven is laid up through time, that you must march through time. You cannot be the same two -- in two days. And this is all expressed on February 24th by the fact that the Christian Church put the 13th Apostle on this day in the place of the 13th month of the natural calendar, which -- in the pagan calendar, or the calendar of the chamber of commerce -- which is of course pagan -- is important.

Why is the chamber of commerce calendar pagan or pre-Christian? Because it doesn't consist of lived lives. But it is external, it is just sun, and moon, and seasons, and winter, and summer, external to your and my life. We can celebrate spring and winter, gentlemen, but you cannot celebrate as natural feasts Christmas and Easter. The Church has put us in the position, gentlemen, that every one of us has in a strange way two calendars in back of him. The seasons of antiquity, the natural -- so-called natural year, or the peasants' year. You know the hundred -- the -- what is it called, this calendar with the weather that comes back every hundred years?

(Farmer's Almanac.)

Wie?

(Farmer's Almanac?)

What? What do you mean?

(Farmer's Almanac?)

Yes. Farmer's Almanac. Quite right, yes. Sure. And that's a peasant's calendar and that's -- goes with the moon, the full moon, the new moon, the thaw, the freshet, the rainy season, the mud-time, et cetera. These things, gentlemen, we cannot possibly celebrate as having been there ourselves, and having tried to do the same. The natural calendar is outside my and your power really to celebrate, because we have already defined "celebration" as the whole man's realizing that he would have done the same. Now the natural calendar is outside your and my

participation. It comes and goes under its own power, and you can try to fall in with the birds, and the animals, and you cou- -- can go birding in May, but that's only, you see, a very faint participation. And you know that you really remain the outcasts of nature, because the birds just fly away when you come. And you have to be -- use ruses and -- and tricks to be a -- a member of the -- of the wilds, you see. You have to -- to -- to cheat, so to speak, to be received by the lion and the rabbit, like Mr. -- in this feature film, what was -- who -- Mr. Walt Disney. That's a great feat, of course, but you can see the whole picture is based on the one assumption that man has no proper place in it, you see, that he can only see it, and we marvel that he could see it. But if he would be there as a member of this game, we wouldn't see the movie, you see. They'd all run.

The natural calendar, gentlemen, however, is very imposing. The natural calendar is a calendar in the sky and on earth. And we'll have to do with it in -- later, just very extensively when we begin at the beginning and come forward and show how man really enslaved himself and fall -- fell prey to the natural calendar, thinking that the stars were our brothers, and the sun was our father, and the moon was our mother. It's very tempting to sink into this bosom and womb of nature and to say, "There is all the wisdom of the Egyptians." The Egyptians thought that this was all the wisdom. Only Jews and Christians, gentlemen, and Mohammedans, are free people and say, "We continue creation. Our creation -- the creations of mankind -- go beyond the creation of sun, moon, and stars. The stars, suns, and moons -- except for the few comets and meteors, with whom we cannot deal, you see -- are unpredictable -- are too predictable; no surprises, no change, no creation." They have been created, yes, but they do not continue creation. You and I, gentlemen -- you cannot possibly do the same all the time. That's why we pray for a calendar with which we can identify ourselves, which, because it contains an element of novelty.

You must look back, then, gentlemen, into two calendars. Every child does this, without knowing it. Into the sea- -- calendar of the seasons, where on which 24th of February is the beginning of leap -- the leap month in antiquity, for example, just to -- I -- this I use only paradigmatically, and the other calendar, gentlemen, in -- on which some human being discovered his destiny. It is very important to know, for example, on which -- in which year the Anglo-Saxons became Christians and gave up their purely natural calendar -- their purely cowardly, so to speak, bowing to the moon and the sun, which always is, by the way, coupled by human sacrifice. Christianity, gentlemen, to the ancients who converted -- became converts, always meant no human sacrifices. Therefore you are all Christians, gentlemen, because you don't believe in human sacrifice.

As soon as you get Hitlers, gentlemen, or you get Bolshevism, you get these labor camps, and you get concentration camps, and you get -- gas chambers.

That's inevitable, gentlemen, because any group on earth that wants to -- to have a -- a narrow diameter for its godlike-ness, for its sovereignty, for its existence, must sacrifice other human beings for its own grandeur. Look out, gentlemen. We have done this in this country with the red Indians for quite a while, too, as you well know. Just say, "They are not human beings."

Yesterday, a friend of mine wrote from South Carolina and Georgia where he went the last two months. There were the group of Cherokee Indians and with General Winfield Scott, you may know his name from the days of the Civil War and the Mexican War, at the point of the bayonet gathered up 14,000 farming, peaceful Cherokees in the '50s of this century -- of the last century, and drove them out. Twelve thousand reached their destination far -- out West. But 2,000 hid in the Smoky Mountains. And some charitable white man hid them for 28 years. And in 1878, the government relented and allowed these Indians to stay. And he just goes on to say what -- what could be done for them, and how they have disintegrated, and how fine specimens there are still among them. But they are, so to speak, to this day illegally in their own homeland, in the Smoky Mountains. And why? Because the white man had such a bad conscience, he had to drive them out. There was at that time in the United States a feeling, "I don't want to see the -- the red man, anymore. Where I am, I -- he must get out of sight." And so you get these -- these miserable conditions under which the Indians live, because we have not officially ever stated this question of sacrifice; but it is a fact that any one group that is not Christian, gentlemen, that is, that doesn't -- recognize the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God is driven by its own way to say that the Americans are the best people in the world. But if they are the best people in the world, next step, then every other race has to be sacrificed, you see. The master race is a very simple consequence, once you begin to say that any one group on this globe has a privilege in the eyes of our creator. It's logical. And you make sure that you prove your point by hitting the other fellow on the head, or -- putting him in the gas chamber, or in this case, driving them out at the point of your bayonet, with no reason, whatsoever, because as I said, these people were even paying taxes, which is quite a bit for red Indians to do. And this country, of course, has this great tragedy of the red Indian to this day.

I didn't know this, but one of you told me yesterday evening that in his home town a -- an Indian could not get a room in a hotel, which interested me. I hadn't known this. Did you all know this? That the discrimination was just as sharp against the Indians as it was against colored -- other colored men? Did you know this? Well, who knew this? I didn't. This is -- is this generally known? { }.

Only to show you this is very serious, gentlemen. Human sacrifice is the cornerstone, gentlemen, of non-Christian life. And you are Christians whether

you like it or not -- it does not depend on your confession -- if you reject human sacrifice -- really, practically, I mean, not -- not theoretically, but in your own behavior -- can you see this? -- that's the only thing that distinguishes a pagan and the Christian. And therefore, gentlemen, the abolition of human sacrifice is the central day of your calendar, or should be. If you don't want to lose your children this tradition, they have to celebrate Easter. Easter is the abolition of bloody sacrifice. That's why it's celebrated. To you, gentlemen, who know a little bit of anthropology and pre-history and know nothing of the Church, it is much simpler to say that Easter is the abolition of human sacrifice, than to talk anything about "sweet Jesus." He was neither sweet, nor did He want to be called Jesus, nor was He a member of the YMCA. But you are all Christians, just the same as long as you know that you lose your own -- status as a human being when you allow another race or another group to be killed for your aggrandizement. If you really practice this, and I think most of you do, you belong into our era, into our chronology, and in back of -- you have a dim memory that at one time, this was established, gentlemen, established, this abolition, that's the whole content of Christianity. All the rest, at least for you, gentlemen, at this moment, can go.

It is never mentioned in our sermons, because our ministers have gone so childish, that they only cope with the children in church. They never mention, of course, the real cruelty of humanity, which consists of using other people's existence for my own aggrandizement, making the other person a footstool of my power. And so they -- they from their -- from their Sunday school, Christianity has been so emasculated, gentlemen, that they cope with everything else except the content of the New Testament. And the New Testament says nothing but how the last bloody sacrifice came about in the person of Jesus, and how after that there cannot be any repetition; because after the best man of the human race has been sacrificed, it is evident, you see, that no such sacrifice can ever be {warranted}, because every one of us has at least a spark of this divinity in himself, too.

Well, you know all this, gentlemen, but I want to bring back the fact, gentlemen: Christianity is nothing interesting as a denomination, is nothing interesting as a -- as a good behavior for the FBI. And it doesn't prove that you are not a Communist. It is not good for anything, except for your power, gentlemen, to resist your relapse into the pre-Christian times. And therefore to -- in this one event -- and the February 24th is as good an occasion as any other to remember this, gentlemen -- in this one event of Easter, that's, so to speak, the minimum Christianity, you are people of our own time. You are not -- have not turned the clock back. And when we said, "Hitler turned the clock back," you remember that was a saying { }, "Germany turned the clock back," { } before your years the famous book in the '30s, they meant literally, and Hitler meant, to go back into

paganism, into pre-Christian time, and immediately had to institute these incredible torture chambers, you see, in which 6 million people were killed. Or many more, because it wasn't all the 6 million Jews alone, but I mean, he has murdered certainly 2 million Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles, besides. And this is forgotten now. Hitler is very popular in this country. Mr. McCarthy has made a study in Appleton, Wisconsin, of Mein Kampf, of his book, and he has -- came out after a fortnight of studying and said, "That's it. I'm going to comply with it. Of course I'm not going to -- to execute the Jews in this country, but I'm imitate -- going to imitate his methods." That's a famous say- -- fact, gentlemen, that your famous McCarthy, learned, went to school in Mr. Hitler's brewery.

It always happens in this country 15 years later. I mean, don't be surprised. Everything comes here 15 years after it has left in Europe. So I mean, I have always expected Hitler -- and I think its very mild form we had it, I mean.

But you must know this, gentlemen, that it consists in one single measure, that for the grandeur of the nation, the grandeur of a partial group of humanity, human sacrifice is recommendable, laudable, praiseworthy, necessary, inevitable, the thing of na- -- the natural thing to do. Your -- the universe of discourse, gentlemen, in pre-Christian times, in the old calendar of the nature, was strangely enough, a -- a double one. The universe was the whole world. The planets, and the sun, and the moon, and the -- Orion, and Sirius, and the -- the -- how do you call the -- the Polar Star, the Child's Wain, the Arcturus -- how do you call it? You don't say Child's Wain anymore. How do you call the -- the -- the -- the wagon?

(The Dipper. The Little Dipper.)

Ja. The Large and the Small Dipper. And gentlemen, that's very strange. That's far away, isn't it? That's millions of light years -- before you can reach these stars. And you who think that the man of nature should live in this natural calendar, and that would be wonderful, and if you knew every billion years there a mouse is born. That you call evolution.

And so you live in a vast universe. I'm always surprised what these so-called scientifically minded Americans can stomach. I cannot think anything about 400 million light years, gentlemen, by which one spark has to travel before I see the light from Uranus or Neptunus. Doesn't mean anything to me. I cannot -- I'm too stupid for this, too -- too -- too sleepy. On the other hand, you talk to these people, they are all nationalists, they all have limited allegiances. Here they -- people -- they sell the atomic bomb to the American Atomic Energy Commission, and in Russia, they sell the same atomic bomb to the Bolsheviks. That is, they have all very constrained and -- and small allegiances. That is, smaller than

mankind. So they have two -- strange calendars, gentlemen. They have one calendar which is smaller than humanity, and one calendar that is infinitely bigger than humanity. Now Christianity's -- tries to be in the middle. Christianity is very indifferent to light-years, gentlemen. I am, too. I cannot find any interest in this intoxicating fact of 400 million years of which Mr. Oppenheimer speaks, or knows, or the astronomer, Mr. {Urey,} who, by the way is a very nice man, and -- and knows that it is a -- rather odd interest he has. Certainly not my or any normal human being's interest to dabble with these figures by which nobody can have -- can see anything. I'm interested to see people live by a calendar which covers some ground which I can think is necessary: the ground of the story of mankind.

Now Easter is such a day. Your national calendar is not. Your biography is not. Your birthday obviously is too small an event. Before you haven't become a saint in the Church calendar, you have a very limited group of friends who are going to celebrate your birthday with you, you see. No harm done, but it's a clannish calendar. It's a small calendar. Then the planetary calendar, as I said, is too big, because it goes outside our earthly -- our earthly measures.

And now man is struggling. And this is what I have to say before we have -- make the break, gentlemen. Man has tried to find that rhythm, that calendar, that cycle which would really have to be repeated to keep it man. And he has, in antiquity, and in those remnants of paganism that are with us -- and they're still with us in large extent -- he has tried either to have too large a calendar, like the planetary calendar, or too small a calendar, a national calendar, or a clannish -- clannish calendar, or a local calendar. The problem, to hit it off right, to only mention events which are identifiable with men, you see, everywhere at all times hasn't been too successful, if I look at you. You didn't know what Shrove Tuesday was. You don't know what 24th of February was. That is, the central story of man's calendar, of man's living in a -- illuminated cycle of events of the past certainly is completely aborted at this moment in this country. You really live pro- -- prey to too vast a calendar, explosions of 900 million years ago -- what do we care? Or too small a calendar, the events of the history of the United States during the last 30 years.

Well, it is not important that you know all the football coaches of New York state. We talked about this, did we? Oh, no. It was the other class. You know, they made a ruling that you can't become a principal or a superintendent of schools in the state of New York unless you know the successful football coaches and football captains of the last 20 years in the city of New York. That shows you what you must do, you see. You have to cater to the moment if you abolish history. If you don't celebrate Easter, you have to celebrate the great issues. But the great issues, unfortunately, they happen at any one time. They don't happen in

the last 10 years, or in the next 10 years. So your education is a very poor one at this moment, because the greatness, of course, is dispersed, gentlemen. And Easter is a great event, when not one of the events which you hear in the Great Issue course will ever be mentioned. They will all be forgotten, and Easter will still be a great day. And it will be a day to be remembered because, gentlemen, not to sacrifice other human beings for your aggrandizement is -- what is it? -- this is an acquired faculty. Not to pave a -- to pave a road blacktop is not an acquired faculty of the human race. I't's a technological instrument, you see. It's like the reconstruction of a hammer, of a crane, of a -- of a -- of a saucer. Well, let's -- you paint it again. That's not an acquired faculty of you and me. You can see this. An acquired faculty, however, of mine and you, you have to re-acquire after your birth, because otherwise you don't have it.

Every human being, gentlemen, is really born, born first as an animal. It has to acquire, or re-acquire all the already-acquired faculties of the human race. You don't have them. Without Easter, gentlemen, McCarthy could have won in this country. It is only the silent resistance of the good people in this country who have just finished him, because they had so much faith that they gave him the ropes. And if you give a man enough rope, he'll hang himself. So he did. Just as Judas Iscariot. And -- it's exactly a similar thing. He betrayed the tradition of this country for his self-aggrandizement, and so he finished himself. Only as in this country everything is a little smoother. He hasn't committed suicide physically, but he has committed moral suicide. Total. He's finished. Just like Hitler. Hitler committed total suicide. Mr. McCarthy did it by -- in a -- in the gentle way in which Americans have, so to speak, a little sweetened tragedy. They finish people by just dis- -- disappearing. But you must not forget this, gentlemen, that the man has finished himself. He is not finished, if you don't know this. You must -- you must really deeply digest the way this man finished himself.

By his -- disrupting the loyalties, the most simple loyalties of this country -- in the army and in the ju- -- against the jury, and the courts, and this {Matusov} business, of course, only the aftermath of this whole sour thing that makes a decent fellow vomit. But he was, of course, inevitable, gentlemen, because with this official abolition of Christianity, people didn't even know that we lived in the Christian era.

If you ask a person -- I had a group of theologians the other day here at the Hanover Inn. Mr. Tillich had spoken. And so we -- we dined and wined, and the -- the rest of the company didn't even understand what Tillich and I were talking about, about the abolition of the Christian era. Nobody understands in this country what this means.

Well, it means, gentlemen, that a member of the human race in this country

can grow up without knowing that he lives after Easter. You see, that Easter is an event which gave him the faculty to resist the eternal temptation to say as a member of Ameri- -- the American nation, as -- of the United States, "I am entitled to erase by preventive war all the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Moscow." And Mr. McCarthy of course, has only cashed in on this great temptation which grabbed the nation and which nearly lead- -- led us to believe that we could. We haven't been forgiven yet for these two bombs, because they were purely experimental. They were not necessary to finish the war against Japan, as you well know. And it has to be said here, because everybody -- in every other nation that is well known that we didn't have to throw the bomb. But no one is allowed to say this in this country, because that's disagreeable. Yes, it is very disagreeable, gentlemen. It is our nearest approach to Hitlerism, because we did -- Hitler did it with individuals -- experimented with -- with the healthy prisoners in concentration camps. He had doctors operating on them, torturing them, seeing how far he could freeze them, and how far he could boil them, and how far he could steal -- stew them, and how far he could steam them. You know, he did all kind of these -- these incredible, cruel experiments. Well, we didn't do such a thing. Of course, no American would. Individual lives are sacred, gentlemen. But if you have news -- we had it from -- through Russia that the emperor of Japan was suing for peace, then you cannot throw the bombs, if you have not the vital interest to find out how it works. And so we experimented with the bomb. That had very little to do with warfare. It was very successful, the experiment, gentlemen. And therefore we can't sleep ever since, because now we know that the bomb might be thrown against us. It always -- the chickens always come home to roost. It's very strange how -- how soon the thing -- tide has turned against us.

Let's have a break.

[tape interruption]

... number of points which it is worth remembering. One is that the -- looking into the past, as you look perhaps into Greece or Rome, without its calendar, is non-committal. You -- we have -- do not celebrate the birthday of -- of Greece, and the battle of Salamis, or the Thermopylae by date. But we admire the marathons -- marathon, and we admire the Olympic Games. And you may participate in the Olympic Games yourself. There you see, that's called a renaissance, a renovation and a restoration of the past, but we really do not commit ourselves that this is indispensable. We take it up as an addition, as an implementation, as a kind of wealth. The Olympic Games are not a condition of being a citizen of the United States, or of the modern world. You can be a useful citizen and not run in -- in one of the meets of the Olympics. You will admit this.

Gentlemen, I think it's very important. The Church has as its only element --

without which you cannot acquire her creation, her qualities -- the calendar. Greece and Rome, or antiquity at large, they have their museums, and they have their pillars, and you can take a ticket and go to the Acropolis of Athens, and you can cruise in the Mediterranean. But there's no day in the calendar, in your calendar, which these people demand from you, you see, to celebrate. And I want you -- it's all quite strange to you. I'm quite aware of this, gentlemen. But still I have to make this point: that in your haste to shake yourself free from all obsolete religionism, ecclesiasticism, and what-not, and I can see your point in this -- don't believe that I am immune to your aversion against the clergymen -- in this haste, of feeling free, what you earn are pictures only. You can look into antiquity. You can read all the books. Mr. Toynbee and Mr. Spengler offer you even the Christian era as though it was just a museum of Greece and Rome. That's called the Renaissance spirit, gentlemen, and it's of course used in competition against the rebirth of the Christian Church. Now this is the technical term, gentlemen, of the Christian calendar. And this is the completing term of the Renaissance gentlemen, who teach -- used to teach Julius Caesar, and Homer, and now they have to be satisfied with Humanities 11 and 12. But human- -- humanism, gentlemen, is without timespans, without calendar, and it doesn't ask you to re-acquire a lost, or endangered, or a laboriously acquired faculty. But it only asks you to enjoy something, to be delighted by. They say, "Did you enjoy it?" That's the stock phrase of this country -- on this campus. And you just { } your parents. You come home and they -- and they ask you, "Did you enjoy it?"

Everything is to be enjoyed, when there is all just pictures. Holidays are not to be enjoyed, gentlemen. A funeral, and a baptism, and a wedding day, they are great days in your life, gentlemen. But they are not enjoyable. As I said, any bridegroom is sick on his wedding day, if he is a real bridegroom. And a man who is gay on his wedding day, I'm afraid is not a good bridegroom. It's a tragic -- it's a terrible day.

I was certainly sick on that day, and Bernard Shaw has some pertinent remarks on this score. That's an important day, gentlemen. Important days are not agreeable. The day of the declaration of war, the declaration -- or the signing of the indepen- -- Declaration of Independence, or the day of Easter, or the day of Pentecost, they are not agreeable days. And Mary didn't feel too well when she had to give birth to her baby in the manger. This is all nonsense, gentlemen, that what -- your idea of {a holiday is} of course all wet, because you really think it's just a pleasure. It isn't. Pleasurable days, gentlemen, are utterly unimportant. Just tickling your senses. Of course, we all want to have pleasure. But that's a sideline. If we are lucky, we have some -- we get the pleasure beside. You don't live for pleasure, gentlemen. And pleasure -- if you -- hunt it up, you -- you make most miserable. There's always time for pleasure, but it isn't in the center of your life. It is, as I said, a by-product.

Goethe, who was a very famous poet -- you may -- even you may have heard his name -- had one son, a very unfortunate creature who died long -- who {died} before him. And when the boy grew up -- the boy died, however, when -- he was a man of 38 years old, and the father was then 78. And Goethe has written a very strange sentence into the -- into the album of the boy. How do you call these books, where formerly people would collect autographs and have people write in distinguished stanzas, or the wisdom of the ages? How would you call such a collection of -- every young person in -- in -- still in my days would have such a book, and would ask the aunt, and the grandmother, and the parents, and the friends of the family, and old friends, to write in something. How would you call such a book?

(Autograph album.)

Ja. Ja. But today it's much more that a famous man writes his signature. But then it was the content, you see. They still had some more brain. And they believed that -- in what the man said, you see, not just that he should sign his name. It's a little different from the autograph hunter, you see. It isn't quite the -- I'm looking for this book. We called it the "album of poetry." And this album of poetry was an attempt to get the, so to speak, the book written for you by your friends, you see. And -- you must have a term for this, which is not just "autograph album." Of course, the autograph was part of the story. But today, they have -- degrade it into being just the autograph, you understand. At that time, 50 years ago -- a hundred years ago in this country, in Boston every one had this collection of pearls of wisdom, you see, and all these Bartlett quotations are a very poor imitation of these private possessions of every human being, you see, every educated person, by which he himself got the -- the -- those 300 pages filled with -- with wisdom.

Well, Goethe wrote for his son this sentence. In German, it runs:

Jngling, merke Dir bei Zeiten Wenn sich Herz und Sinn erh”ht Dass die Muse zu begleiten, Doch zu leiten nicht versteht.

I only tell you this because I can't translate it into verse and that's -- it's very good poetry. "My dear son: learn in good time that the Muses -- that is, the -- the -- the personifications of the arts, of poetry, music, composition, sculpturing, et cetera -- that the Muses know how to accompany life, but not to guide it." Not to guide it.

Humanism, gentlemen, is an embellishment of life, but it is never the leader. It has no direction. Just embellishment. And it shows because it has no dates of the

calendar. That's why you must learn to distinguish between the humanities and religion. It has nothing to do with each other. Religion is direction -- necessary direction toward the past and the future. And perhaps you will for the arg- -- for the sake of the argument, at this moment just grant me my statement that Easter is indispensable, that you have there a starting point from which you look forward -- this must not happen what went on until Easter. Can you see this? And Easter is an eternal date, gentlemen. When it came to China in 1911, when the Empress of China went -- first China became a Christian country, whether by baptism or not, because that is the Easter of -- of China, because it ceased to have a private history -- a Chinese history. A Christian Chinese translated Goethe's terms -- I can give you this in a minute, but first let me go back to Goethe's verse. "My dear son -- my little son ..." that's what {it really} said "... keep in mind and good time that the Muses only know to accompany life, but not to guide it, not to direct it." Now there's a pun. Geleiten in German means "conduct," you see, and then leiten means "duct," that is, leadership, like duce, in Italian, you see. Ducere in Latin means lead and conducere means "to conduct" like Mr. -- Mr. Toscanini. And in the same sense, conduct means also "accompany," be a -- on this -- your companion on the journey through life, and the other means to be the guide through life. So this is a very refined consideration.

In this country, where -- where -- where actors and actresses -- Tallulah Bankhead and so -- are celebrated as normal stars of life -- I won't even mention Hollywood -- you are in great danger, gentlemen, to believe that artists, and actors, and conductors are models of life. They are not. They are tolerated. They are embellishments. But they are not the norm-giving people. And you see what a mess they make of their own lives. They can -- must, because they sacrifice their life to the arts. A -- a great man in America, William James, has said, "Our literary men are sacrifices. They have no life to themselves." They squeeze out of them, like Edgar Allan Poe, you see, their poetry, but their life is in ruins. Walt Whitman, what a man! Pooh! Good poetry. But an indecent chap. You wouldn't like to have your sister marry him. And he wouldn't have { } now.

So be careful, gentlemen. This is the law of history, gentlemen. That all the adher- -- devotees of the Muses can embellish your life. They cannot guide it. Gentlemen, the Greeks were great artists. The Greeks were great thinkers. They were geniuses. The greatest historian, however, of Greece -- of the Greeks has written -- a very great man -- that these philosophers and these artists were not able for all the centuries in which they dominated Greece to abolish one superstition, to close one false temple or false god, to abolish war or slavery, or anything for that matter. They had no power, because they had not established themselves as the guides of life, but as the companions of -- of the life, of the amusement committee, the entertainment committee. Gentlemen, to entertain is not the same as to lead. And that's perhaps the strongest contrast which I can show. Enter-

tainment is there -- if you know already the direction of life, then you can also strive for a little entertainment on the way. But it's a -- a mistake to think that the Howard Johnson, gentlemen, solved the problem of how to build the highway. That's Mr. Eisenhower's concern now, with $101 billion for 10 years. That's very different from the Howard Johnson, who just makes money on your risks, on your entertainment on the road. Can you see this? You must see this, gentlemen. And most Americans are absolutely blind. Nine-tenths of all of you, gentlemen, think that the man who produces the entertainment is a great guy. He is not. I'll take his entertainment, I'll go to Barnum, but I will not {amatate} -- imitate the three bankruptcies of Mr. Barnum. I will not. All these movie stars I pity, that they should do this for my amusement. So I don't go there; I'm not amused. But I mean there is -- there -- I know they amuse you. But you mistake them to be the stars of your life, and of your wife's life. So why don't you build a house first in Reno before you get married?

It is incredible, gentlemen. Everything here is topsy-turvy. And everybody in the world laughs at the Americans who think that Hollywood is a national institution. Well, brothels are national institutions, of course, in the same sense. It is minor. It is of no importance. It's second-rate, third-rate, fourth-rate.

These poor future wives of you have to put up with your pinup girls. I mean, that's an -- insulting. Every good woman is better than all these girls who are -- there photographed. Marilyn and Mary Lee, and I don't know what { }.

And it is a complete perversion of values, and this is because of this abolition of the holiday, gentlemen, of -- on your calendar. If you would know that the calendar is the great, honorable institution by which you are introduced into your humanity, you would not confuse the evenings off for plays with the great holidays of the human race. Easter is not a day for entertainment.

But gentlemen, this is an old story in this country. In 18- -- 1923, the president of an American college, of Colgate College, Mr. { } -- I just wrote him the other day, because I wanted to tell him to his face what I am telling you now; I -- otherwise I wouldn't tell you -- wrote that the Puritans were idle on every Sunday. And he mistook the leisure of the leisure class, you see, for the celebration of the holiday. If we are idle on Sundays, then we'd better drop the Sunday right away. You can see this. If this is the content of -- of Sunday to be idle, or to have leisure, if it isn't a celebration, if it isn't like -- like Russell Thomas, this little boy of six, dancing around and shouting, "It is very good," and withdrawing from all his specializations during the week, and being the whole man again, and therefore starting the next week with more power, and more emphasis, and more go, they'd better give up the Sunday right away. Now if a president in America of a good college -- Colgate College, Hammond, New York, you -- who

knows this? If he imprints this, gentlemen, that the Christians in this country just idled away their days, or they went -- were -- were idle on -- he said, on -- on Christmas, on -- on the Sabbath, and on -- on Easter. No Pentecost, of course, no other holiday -- then there is a total confusion of values.

It's all gone. And we have to rebuild it, gentlemen. You have to rebuild it. When you marry, you must have holidays to celebrate. It can be your birthday, it can be your wife's birthday, it can be your children's birthday, or your grand- -- your own parents' birthday. It can be the 4th of July. Whatever you pick, gentlemen, you have to know that these days are making your marriage possible.

Give you a very practical example, gentlemen. If you get a -- as a homemaker, or a home economist, or a social worker, or a doctor, or a teacher -- a family problem, you have a poor family in the slums -- man is a drunkard, they say. And then -- you come and you have -- they have $80 a month to live on, and so your first idea is: now we must tell them how to use this money and how to have something still on the -- February 28th. And therefore they must divide it up. Every day they need $1.50 for the -- just for food, et cetera. And that's not very much to go around, and so they -- come out of course with the fact that barely they can live 365 days if they divide it up by $1.50 a day, some such -- and that's the rent, you see, and then extras, and so. It looks very -- bad. It is very bad. As long as the home econ- -- maker -- or the -- the social worker has such fancy ideas about life, the family -- the man will go on drinking. He will drink more heavily. The budget will never be followed, because he'll take $40 out of the 80, and be drunk on it. And the social worker is in despair, and says, "These people can't be helped. They are just -- they are just submarginal." And what -- nobody knows what to do. The children finally are separated from the parents, are put in decent homes. And the family dissolves. Gentlemen, if you want to constitute a family, you must allow the family to get drunk together, officially, once a month. Have a spree. You have to have a celebration. A family cannot live if you divide it up so ridiculously, prosaically as every rationalist, ever man who went -- goes to Tuck School or -- lives by this substituting the computing machine to his brain. This is not possible, gentlemen. If you want to have a human group, if you want to have a fraternity, if you have -- even the Germania has to celebrate its -- its Stiftungsfest in May. I just got the invitation. Who is a member of Germania? Uhhunh. This is a German club here. Well.

This celebration is a necessity. A family without Christmas or one celebration, one thing, is a -- is no family. So gentlemen, in any community, the amount that is given to the festivity is very considerable and far outruns all ration. But if you can get by cele- -- allowing the mother and the children to celebrate with this Irish gentleman -- the father -- the holiday, he'll give up drinking. Now he has to drink, because he must have a holiday and he has it alone. And he hasn't learned

how to do it. But if you can get him and the wife to get drunk together, he doesn't have to get drunk alone so often.

Well, that's an exaggeration, but I'm deadly serious, gentlemen, because drunkenness is the content of a holiday. I am -- can exuberate without getting drunk mechanically and physically. Spirits are only the substitute for the real inspiration of a holiday, of course. When you are in good spirits, you don't have to drink spirits. I mean, you must be -- all very bored because you drink so much beer. I don't have to drink in order to be excited, or to write verse or to -- to -- to be -- I don't understand it. I mean, it's -- drinking, gentlemen, is an additional condiment of good spirits, but first you must be gay and then you must drink. You can never get gay by drinking. That's your mistake. That's why cocktail parties are so horrid, because in five minutes, you -- you want to establish this cloud of unconsciousness among foreign people. And you can hit them, of course, on the head. They are dead after -- six cocktails, half-dead after three, and talk nonsense after the first. But they aren't gay, because the -- it's only the liquor that makes them. You must first be gay, gentlemen, and then you must drink champagne, to celebrate your gaiety. Everybody in this country abuses the good alcohol. Gentlemen, in any society, there -- it is very important that you should use intoxicating drinks, but as a condiment of your own gaiety, of your own good spirits, as an expression of this. Of course, if I have -- go to my wedding, I expect the bride to put on her best gown. But if she isn't in love with me, the best gown won't do. Why does she put on her wedding dress? Because it's the greatest day of her life. If it is not the greatest day of her life, she better not put on the wedding dress. This I -- how {you} should drink.

Therefore, gentlemen, the cure of a sick family group -- and this is something practical for you to know -- is never to rationalize on the weekday, because -- imagine! If this man should stay sober, he would earn more than $80. And that's your whole problem, to get him to work more, and to have a grea- -- a larger income, and not to divide the little income he has in such a way that it will never do, because after a fortnight, the man just will run away and leave the house to the homemaker -- to the -- to the social worker. The -- the plague on both their houses. But that's what you learn as social science in this country, gentlemen. Such nonsense: building up the life and saying that the holiday is leisure, is idling, is surplus, is in addition. First you have the workday, gentlemen, then you have the holiday. Would there be a family, gentlemen, without a wedding? Isn't any family started on a holiday, and then it has to deal with the everyday life? Isn't the weekday always second-rate? But we are all told the other way around, all from the frog's perspective. From the wee, little fragmentarized, special work on the weekday you want to understand the Sunday. You can never do it.

The Sunday is just the wedding day of the human race. That's what it is. Exactly this. And have respect for your Sund- -- wedding days. Make them a little bit more -- cheerful. Don't have these reception lines on a wedding day. People just stand their feet into their stomach in this way. Is this a wedding? On a wedding, you must exuberate. There's no dancing on these weddings anymore. Formerly there were three days of -- of weddings, day and night. Dancing, getting drunk. Wonderful! Spending all the money for the next year in advance. But the -- the marriages -- you never heard of a divorce. You never heard of a divorce. These marriages were concluded in Heaven. Your marriages are concluded in -- within 24 hours at the sheriff. No banns, no expectation, no hopes. All hastily done, then with -- perhaps a reception. Or not even that. Just a breakfast or something. Incredible. I want to eat so much on a wedding, because I can't marry the bride myself. I'm just a guest. You have to recompen- -- compensate your guest for their not being allowed to { }.

Well, really there is no {picking}. I always feel the -- these receptions are imitating the illustrious stranger who lands in America. That's how you treat a wedding, as though it was the reception of Mr. Benes from Czechoslovakia, being -- coming as a visitation to this country. It's a -- you treat the wedding as -- as though there wa- -- the wife was a famous stranger, or the father-in-law is -- usually is the {greatest} stranger. Nobody has ever seen him.

This is -- we have no weddings in this country, gentlemen. I'm very serious. The weddings are imitating something utterly different, the reception of a famous diplomat or a foreign visitor. That's very strange, that the only ceremony, the guest of honor at table with his reception line, is the only ceremony which we have retained from all the variety of way and ways of celebrating a great occasion. Very strange, that at a wedding, at a funeral, at a christening, this reception line, shaking with the paw of a foreigner is the only thing, you see, the corns- -- the {pawshop}, so to speak. Terrible. The wedding has lost all its own forms, except for these unfortunate bridesmaids and photography of the kiss.

This is very serious, gentlemen. How can there be weddings without forms? I don't think they can. I shall never forget our maid in Germany, married after long years of deliberation. She wasn't -- quite sure -- it was the neighbor's son -- if this was the right choice. But then the wedding was like a coffin, nailed, hard -- I mean, the -- that was such a ceremony, and such a day of celebration. We sat at table from 2 o'clock in the afternoon to 10 o'clock at night, and they had to -- they were very poor people, and they had only one set of dishes, so all the guests after every dish had to get up and wa- -- take a walk and then the dishes would be cleaned again, and the next dish could be served. But it was the greatest wedding I've ever attended, gentlemen. And they were really married, because it was the incisive day of their lives. The minister also took it very seriously. He

didn't make an oily speech, of sweet and light and kindness. He told them how hard it is to get married, and how difficult. And I -- this was a very -- very good sermon, all in a little village in Silesia. And I only mean to say this wedding had still the style of a real wedding, whereas I have yet to see an American wedding which doesn't remind me either of a funeral or of a reception. It is not a wedding. It has absolutely nothing to do with the wedding. Some -- one part of the wedding is done for the -- for the New York Times, for the social page, and the other part is done for the photographer or the caterer, but not for the people who take part. They -- they are not exalted. They do not -- are not allowed to come out into the open. Nothing. Who has attended a real wedding? You have?

(No. Not here.)

Where?

({ })

In Germany? Oh, ja. In Europe they -- they take it still very seriously, because they know it's the founding of a new nation, gentlemen. Every marriage is a founding of a new nation. You must -- allow me to -- to -- to say this, although my time is up. That is why marriage -- wedding is the -- you can -- you can read the integration of a society by noticing how the wedding is celebrated. There is no greater event in the history of the human race than a wedding. You can see this. The whole Jewry of the world goes back to one marriage between Abraham and Sarah. That's all.

{ }, thank you.