Transcript

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

...basis for discussing social history, by taking you back to the issue between warriors and civilians, between war and peace, and by trying to show you that for the last 170 years in this country, the relation of the warrior, the soldier, the -- the time of war and the time of peace has been -- real, to be sure, but has not been realized. That the -- you may say the disappointments, the tragedies of this country, the great catastrophes in it -- of its memories have been bound up with the delay of action upon the experience of a war, and that you again are only held back from forgetting the last 40 years by the cold war. So that -- I think this is a great blessing in disguise, and God forbid that it should disappear too soon, because it is the only way of bringing you, as a younger generation, into the real stream of the American task, and American future. You will miss the future, as mo- -- since most of you try to pretend that you are a generation of despair, or a generation of existentialists, or a generation of I don't know what. But certainly out of history. It is a -- a generation that doesn't enter the problems that have been sealed by death on the battlefield is not a generation at all. It is just a number of individual zoological specimens.

That's what today these gentlemen of despair are. They don't deserve the honorable term of "a generation," because a generation, gentlemen, can only exist in dialectical explicitness towards the previous and the future generations. There is no generation without the power to speak to their ancestors a "no" or "yes," and in the same way a "you must" and "you shall" to their children. A generation that is only talking within itself belongs into the bullpen or the pigsty, but not among human beings.

And that's why they are -- you are -- every generation is by its nature a secret society that has to be broken up by turning their hearts to their parents and by turning their hearts to their children. This is -- perhaps some of you may have learned even in your confirmation lesson the last word of the Old Testament and the first word of the New Testament, that the earth is -- cursed as long as the hearts of the parents are not turned to their children, and the hearts of the children are not turned to their parents.

Now this has to take place explicitly. It doesn't happen at home. It only happens when the children are grown up and when the parents are unselfish enough to look beyond their own noses. And therefore any generation that doesn't speak and judge its predecessors and expose itself to the judgment of its successors is not a generation. And so I invite you first of all to keep from this explici- -- statement on society this first rule that nothing is social, nothing deserves the honorable word of "social" that does not act in the face of the past and

of the future generations. You become a generation by doing that. Otherwise you don't. "Generation" is not a biological term. "Generation" is not a zoological term. Turn it as you like, all these people who write about a generation -- the lost generation, the {game} generation, the lost-and-found generation -- they all speak. They all sell books. They even want to write bestsellers. Now the bestseller is a caricature of a good book, it's true, because it only wants to sell. And nobody should write a book for sale. He must write a book because he must write it, and then wait for those who can find it out and read it. But even if you write a bestseller, it's still a claim on somebody else's patience, and ears, and understanding.

And therefore, any author is older than his public. You may be 20, but if -- when -- once you be -- are an author, you try to be a teacher. That is, you belong to the older generation. And the readers who come are more na]ve, they are the younger ones. I mean, even I -- when I read a book now by -- written by a 20year-old, I am taught by him. So he acts the teacher, and I am his stu- -- pupil. Any moment, old and young change places by speech.

I had a Catholic friend, who visited a -- a great priest. And the young man working in a factory, like the lay priests in -- in France -- worker-priests, felt provoked to show this old man that the laity also had a voice in the affairs and so he said, "Christ be with you."

The priest was taken aback, you see, and -- taken aback, but he acted the layman and said, "And with --" how is it? What's the formulae?

(And with you also.)

Wie?

(Pax vobiscum, you mean? Et in spirito tuum.)

Wie?

(Pax vobiscum et in spirito tuum).

Ja, ja. So the -- the priest had suddenly to -- had suddenly to say the layman's -- you see, answer to -- the layman's response, you understand? And the -- the charm worked. And at that moment, the priest changed places, changed roles with the -- with the lai- -- layman. And as you know, the word "priest" means nothing but the "elder," the "old man."

And so in any moment in society, the roles between the young and the old

must be restated. Society is that place, or that field of force, or is this entity within which the roles between old and new, young and old, have to be restated every moment. Never sure. Your child may give you a great act -- piece of wisdom, and you then become its student, his student, but only if you have spanked the child sufficiently so that it can distinguish between folly and wisdom.

Society is this role of constant interchange of functions. It's a fluid state -- what we call society -- very different from the government, and very gov- -- different from the Church. Society is neither state nor Church, but is the opportunity for asserting the true relation between past and future by speech, by explicit declaration, by taking upon you to say to somebody, "Leave this alone. Don't do this," you see. Or by saying to somebody else, "Do this," and also by being able to receive such orders, you see, or reject them.

Now peace and war are the -- therefore the greatest male functions of such social process. The alternation between peace and war is the most profound secular problem of society. And therefore, where this isn't in order -- as it isn't in American history -- the history of America is still searching, so to speak, seeking its balance. The American history is unsettled. We will see in these years what is going to happen. I think your senator, Mr. {Knowland} is a case in point. In his na]ve self-seeking, he has had no idea that in 1960 the issue wouldn't be Mr. {Knowland} for senator, or for -- or for governor, or for president. And so he lost out in the real social issue of 1960 which is: shall the conclusions of World War II and World War I finally be drawn or shall they not? That's not Mr. {Knowland's} issue, with his Chinese lobby.

I mean, it's very low, this kind of politics with which this country is flooded. Here, you have a very coarse example, and the people of this state have looked through it. But it's everywhere, the danger that a self-seeking politician only thinks of his term of office. But the issue in 1960 before this country, gentlemen, is nothing of 1958, nothing of 1959. It is nothing of Mommy and Mama, but it is only something of "Shall the two world wars from 1914 to 1945, you see, these -- these great catastrophes of mankind, finally recreate the interdependence of the United States after 150 years of pretended independence?" That's the only issue that's important. All the rest may be important for some people in the electorate, but they will not benefit even if they get the candidate for their private measure, because their personal interest -- measure will not serve them, you see, well, as long as the framework of all this is not established. As long as you call the aid to the allied nations still "foreign aid," this country is in a bad way, because it still speaks of Americans and foreigners in good isolationist terms. You cannot speak of people who -- who have to harbor your bombs, and your airplanes, and your ships, and your soldiers, and your Marines as foreigners. Formerly it was called an "empire." Now that's forbidden in America, but how do

you call the situation that we have in Spain, and in Maroc, and in Abyssinia, and in Berlin, our own soldiers? Are they -- is this foreign soil? If it is foreign soil, you have to take them away, what the Russians tell you, you see.

The integration, in other words, the interpenetration of this country with the rest of the world has gone much farrer than you care to admit. You rule this country as though it was an independent nation on -- between the Pacific and the Atlantic. Where are the frontiers of America at this moment? In 23 other countries. And you co- -- speak, when you send money and -- and weapons to these countries, you call them "foreigners." Do you think they like this? They -- you treat them worse than colonies. You don't even allow them to be colonies. They are nothing but "foreign soil."

And there is not even a political party in this country that remarks on this, that criticizes this state of affairs, which makes enemies everywhere. The Americans as you know have very low stock of -- of sympathy at this moment in the rest of the world for this very reason, that we do it both ways. In one way, we are just a nation, not caring for any gains for anybody; and on the other hand, our soldiers rule England, and they rule Morocco, and they rule Spain, and they rule Abyssinia as I said, and they rule Berlin. But the talk of the town is that we will help the Berlin people. Gentlemen, you can only hope that the Berlin people will support your airplanes, the other way around. Your prestige is -- at stake, not theirs. They are little people. If they are overrun, God help them, but at -- is nothing -- no loss of political power. But if the Americans are -- are -- des- -- desert their position in Berlin, then good night with America.

But wha- -- for 15 years, intelligent people have tried to tell the Americans that all the -- this talk here about we supporting foreign nations is -- bunk, is nonsense. And yet it's going on -- of course. And -- and as I said, the -- the Congress is so isolationist, the Democrat or Republicans, that in order to please the ladies at home, they have to whittle down $500 million, because it's called foreign aid.

We are sleepy, gentlemen. Nothing has been digested from this war except the outer military problems, you see. But they are not the real problems. The military is an expression of an unsettled political situation.

Well -- this may be, my point is that at this very moment, if you want to look at it, we are exactly back to 1788, one year -- or two years before the Constitution was adopted, you see, which concluded this -- the revolution war. It took exactly the same number of years before the Constitution admitted that there were no longer 13 colonies, but a federal government. Very similar problem of today, you see, the world -- the world order is the -- corresponds to the problem

of a -- one government for the continent consisting on the one half of 30 independent states, and on the other of this vast territory -- I just have to remind you of the Northwest Territory -- Oregon and the Louisiana Purchase.

Ever since 1776, the society of America had this problem of Uncle Sam in Washington administering in a -- in a territory that was even larger than the organized states, you see. And I think at this moment, it's exactly again: you have 49 states at home, and a much vaster territory to police and to administer outside Washington -- outside these -- these borders, you see, beyond the ocean. But this has been America's social situation all the time. Comes war, the frontiers are suddenly thrown open. And the result of 1783, as you well know, was not just that 13 colonies became independent from England, but that they, instead of the British Parliament, could write the ticket for the East- -- Western frontier, you see, beyond the Alleghenies. So David Boone, when did he go? -- to Kentucky? Well, exactly at the time of the Civil War, what did he go?

Well, you should know. I -- I don't have to know this. I didn't go to school here.

(17- --.)

Well, when was the long trail into -- over the Alleghenies into Kentucky first undertaken? Oh, yes. You may be examined in this today.

Well, you know this was the decisive step. But all our history books, you see, never mention the social problem of America, that the 13 colonies were not freed in 176- -- between 1776 and 1783 as such, but that the administration of the crown lands, you see, beyond the Alleghenies, the free West, that this suddenly shifted from the British Parliament in England to the Congress in the United States. This is the issue, that for any red Indian -- it was now -- the white father was in Washington, and not in England.

And so the American social situation has always been that after the war, the -- the realm to be administered was much larger than the Constitution said. It was larger than the Constitution said, you see. There was always something still which had to be given as homesteads or to railroads by a central government. So this is not in the Constitution. The Constitution says -- tells you that there are 48 states, today. And now it's Alaska, that's -- well, one-tenth of a state, but let's call it a 49th state. And -- it will never be -- be a real state. That's just vanity, the end of an era, so to speak, this 49th state. And -- but the 48 states, gentlemen, always -- since the world wars -- are only half of the story. That's the organized part of government. But there is then another sphere in which the central government, the Senate as the ambassadors of the various states to Washington, in tune with

the secretary of state and the president, sets the tune for the rest of the world that has in -- in the meantime ope- -- been opened up to American influence. You only have to think of our oil companies in Saudi Arabia to know very well that even before the Second World War, there were spheres of influence, you see, by which you could then become secretary of state.

So we have a triangular result after every war. The explicit territory governed in -- by free -- in -- in the form of free states, and the territorial situation, open to the gifts of cen- -- the central government in Washington. This has been true since 1783. You remember that in 1787, in the Northwestern Ordinance -- what was -- well, what was this ordinance? What did it settle?

(The territory of { }.)

What? Well, for the whole territory of -- for -- in O- - Ohio, et cetera. Everything goes -- lies west of the Alleghenies. What did this Northwestern Ordinance settle? Why is it so important?

(Because the newly -- lands that belonged to the -- to become new states rather than be colonized.)

Yes, and slavery was excluded, but not in the South. It was the opportunity, you see, by which through the two -- the absence of the two senators of New Jersey, the opportunity was lost to abolish slavery. Only by two votes was this mis- -- did this miscarry. That's why it is an important ordinance.

Well. This you'd never know or find in the books, because state and society are different in -- different aspects of the same thing. In -- when we speak of social developments, we speak of the fluid, ever-changing functions of life. Sometimes the president can act as a pope, or as a priest, and he has -- leads common prayer, or when he publishes the -- the message for Thanksgiving; he -- obviously he does this in a spiritual or a religious, you see, function. And functions can change. The pope in the Middle Ages was a political -- a state, as you know, political power. Never be blinded by terms. Any man in any one moment can play a role that isn't, so to speak, on his caller's card. You at this moment, as I said, can become my teacher; at the -- next moment you can become the Good Samaritan; at the third, you become -- become a scoundrel. And that you are William Smith then means something different in every minute, because the function in society which you fulfill changes.

Now, as I said, the central government and the 48 states now, or the 13 colonies and the central government in -- in -- in -- in Washington, always had this double role of established peaceful society and of an expanding force into an

infinite space. As a matter of fact, this expression of mine is taken from the sources in -- 1800, when the Louisiana Purchase became known, people wrote to each other, "We are rushing into infinite space." You may be interested that this term of "infinite space" doesn't belong only to our own stratospheric space era, you see. You would hardly believe that the United States already were warned in 1801 that they were rushing into infinite space. I think that's quite important.

It is so important, gentlemen, because the social aspect of history in America has always been bound up with this problem of infinite space. And it comes about that after every war, the situation with regard to this space differs. There was a free frontier in 1865, as you well know, which drew people in- -- for -- instead of going home, the veterans didn't go home to their homelands, to their -- native states in the East- -- on the Atlantic seaboard. They simply went on west. And you all have heard of the -- of the end of the frontier in 1898 and immediately we go to war with Spain. That's an immediate outcome of the closing of a frontier. And we have Puerto Rico, and Cuba, and the Philippines on our hands, and what-not, and on it goes. And each time, the United States then are faced with a new geographical, you see, circle around the nucleus in which they are already blessed with a civilian and free government. There's always a relation between the military and the civilian. You just have to think of all the Indian wars in the '80s, you see. Who was a victim of this famous battle?

(Custer?)

Wie? Ja. Custer, isn't it? And so I come now back, to make myself very plain. The military problem remains after the war, but in an unsettled, unorganized part of the United States' sphere of influence.

So it is very blinding to the child that reads an idealistic history of the United States, that only hears in 1783, the 13 colonies, you see, were recognized by England and that was it. But the military problem, of course, after 1783 -- only remind you of the whiskey revolution which Washington had to put down -- was the problem at the frontier, the open frontier, with Indian warfare, you see, with the British outpost from Canada threatening, and such things. You read any correspondence of the years 1783 to 1789, one of the main concerns of these people was of course: would the Indians again conspire with the British? And the curse of the Jay treaty in 1795, you see, was ameliorated because the people -- the adherents of Adams and Jay himself -- John Jay, who signed this treaty was -- with England said, "Otherwise we cannot pacify our Northwestern frontier," you see. And the other people shouted "treason" because they seemed to help the British against the French.

So in every moment, the military remnants remained with the people of

this country as a social problem still unorganized, unstated, until 15 years later, so to speak, it became to be acknowledged and recognized and something was done that the legal construction of coping with this new territory, you see, of acknowledging that it had to become organized, and that Uncle Sam no longer could act on the discretion of the Senate, and the -- as a kind of coalition of -- of states with regard to the outside world, but that this outside world now had to be brought into the fold in some form or other. This is our problem today again. Th- -- that's why I attach such significance to your use of the word "foreign aid." As long as you hear this word "foreign aid" bandied around, we haven't made peace, because we have not recognized our allies as essential parts of our establishment.

You cannot go to war with England and France twice in a lifetime, you see -- you cannot -- without drawing some conclusions from this. But of course, that's still hated. Perhaps there will be later opportunity to come back to this. All I have to say today that the military regions, of merely military might, abound after every war in the United States, and are never recognized by the schoolteachers who teach government or history. And therefore, since the people believe more in schoolteachers than in anybody else, the next war is inevitable, or the next unrest, and the next dis- -- dissociation, and the next surprise.

But we have this unsettled condition again. And anybody -- like Mr. {Knowland}, and I say this without -- you may understand, just as an example, because you may know more of him than of the other -- any local politician today who tries to carve out a position for himself inside the politics merely of the 49 states betrays you. He is not a statesman, because the problems between the 49 states -- even the water between Colorado and California -- is of secondrate importance. And you cannot make a man president who's only concerned with the -- with Reno, and Nevada, and Arizona. This is not -- this has nothing to do with the issues before this country. And the day in which you will appoint such a man, you see, it will be a very unpleasant awakening. When Grover Cleveland was president, he had never been outside the United States. He didn't understand anything about foreign policy, and after his term was over, the war with Spain had become inevitable. That's interconnected. He had executed a criminal, as you know, in Buffalo. But that's all the execution he had done.

There is a -- a merciless justice in history. If you omit the unformulated problems and retreat into the legal shell of a lawyer who only knows what is already written down in the Constitution, you'll always be surprised. And this is, I think, the tragic story of the consciousness of this country, that it always has -- if it -- as long as it could, retreated behind documented phrases, of "good will" and "peace loving." Take the situation today, gentlemen: do we really have to stand it that our president is forced to -- to say every day that we never will

attack anybody? Isn't it scandalous? How can a sovereign nation know whether it will not have to attack somebody someday? Isn't that a key question of our freedom and of our surprise? As long as the poor president has to say, as -- as -- as Roosevelt had to say in 1939 to the electorate, "There will no -- be no blackout of peace in -- in America," and as long as Mr. Eisenhower has to say the same nonsense, because the -- the ladies of this women's club want to hear that, there can be no political freedom in this country. How can anybody know this? Mr. Forrestal {has thought it for} 1948 that it should be done right away, then and there. The episco- -- the Catholic episcopacy sent word to Mr. -- Mr. Truman and in -- that at that time they had no objections against an immediate war on Russia -- and here -- now everybody officially has to talk nonsense.

This is absolute nonsense in politics to say any -- to make any such commitment. And perhaps one day we will -- yes?

(Would you be in favor of a war, then?)

Not at all! Don't you see? That -- it's the opposite. It's the opposite. You make for war if you say such nonsense. It's childish. Childs -- children are called -- talked into being good, and the -- result is of course murder, because no child can be treated this way even -- I don't wish to hear that I shall be good. Then I say -- I must cry out, "Is not to be good." That's a temptation. To be good is nonsense. Nobody is good but God alone.

[tape interruption]

...you can't do this, because they have {sheltered} you against it. A man is only free as long as everybody believes that he is free. As long as everybody seems to know that I only can go one way, I'm no longer free. Freedom means that you are surprised. God has created every man as an improvisation, you see. Nobody knows of himself what will happen to him, and what he has to decide tomorrow. Ask Sam Houston from Texas. He didn't know that he would have to -- lose his governorship of the state he founded because he had to resist cession. It's a great case of human freedom. I always have -- taken up cudgels for for Houston. He's -- he is villified in the North today, but he was a very great soul, because you ne- -- he never to the end, you see, was known beforehand for his action.

That's freedom. Every day is different. And why you should treat the gr- -- this great nation as less free than you are yourself -- how does a young man -- {gentlemen}, may I appeal to your own experience in -- in life? Gentlemen, any young man who is on the tragic way to becoming engaged will -- will fight it off if he is really in love and if it is really his fate to marry just this girl, and if it is not

just accident and a whim. He will fight it tooth and nail. My own brother-in-law came to me the evening -- one evening and said, it was tragic, he would stay unmarried for the rest of his life, et cetera. Next morning he was engaged. That's how we live. { } we have to surprise ourselves. We have to convince ourselves that no other way is possible. So tooth and nail, we cling to the conviction that it won't be necessary. We still can -- for example, marriage. It's better to remain free. We -- but we can't. That's just it.

Now I'm serious. Don't trust people who {live} and say that they know ahead of time what they are going to do. They are all wicked. Their heart is just lead. They are {stopped}. They don't live. Nobody can know what he's going to be. Take a father who'd curse his daughter, because she -- comes with an illegitimate child. Well, don't you expect him to recant and forgive her tomorrow? And he has to -- leave this road open. He may curse her today, but not tomorrow. And woe to him if he is a man of principle, and says, "Because I said this, I can never go back on this," you see. Then he is -- has a sick soul.

Take all the examples of your real experience, my dear man, and then you will see that I'm only trying to treat Uncle Sam as a -- as powerful and as free as I treat you. And I think that all these moralizing people demand from the United States to be better than human beings, or to be less good than human beings. Certainly to be less alive, less vital, less free, less real.

You have a -- you {build} a government that consists of -- of -- of ribbons, where there is -- one ribbon is blue, and the other is lila -- and the other is red, and all {reads} faith, love and hope. That's -- are not human beings.

But to me a li- -- government of living people is itself a living process, and nothing but this. And this is why I come back to the fact that the life of a community in the secular realm is made up of the relation between war and peace. And the military problems in peacetime are the remnants of the war experience in peacetime which represent -- which should embody to the {softfoot} civilian the fact that the war is still with us. If you go around and see what is the money-making proposition in Los Angeles, it's not the movie industry; it's the aircraft industry. This means the war. That's military, and these 60 percent of our budget which go into the military should finally wake you into consciousness that the military is a part of the Constitution of the United States, and that this military is found abroad on the seven seas. The Sixth Fleet is in the Mediterranean at this moment, is it not? That's where we are, you are, I am. Everybody is. And there are not in the debates between states' rights and such things. That's why the -- the -- the question of the South is -- is antiquated, because it prevents the acknowledgement of where our real problem is today, you see. That's why it's so dangerous.

It has to go by the board, you see, because otherwise everybody's attention is deflected from the real issues. And I -- I think the antiquatedness of the problem of the -- the Southern question is the only thing we have to stress. The solutions are everybody's business. And certainly they are not my business at this moment. I know enough of the -- question of the races is treated very seriously. But it is all in reverse, you see. They speak of racial purity after they have, as you know, corrupted it for 250 years. And -- obviously the races in the South are now withdrawing from each other, and not -- the mixing is not the proposition; that has taken place before, through the charms of the white man.

Why is this all lying? You see, why is it allowed, that the discussion about races goes on in this way: "Do you wish your daughter or your sister to marry a -- a black man?" -- when the only question is that should be asked: "Why did your grandfather give birth to all these black men?" That's the only question interesting. But again, you have this evasion of the historical sense, that the past is with us. If -- if people would see that -- that the -- 90 percent of the Negro population has -- in the South has white ancestors, the whole debate would suddenly shift, and take on different forms. It would say, I mean: under what conditions now can the races keep from blind intermingling? That's probably the issue much more.

I feel that at -- and why do I say these things? I feel that the de- -- space inside the settled territories of the United States, these 49 states, are held up before you in school, and press, and movie, and broadcast, and what-not in order to soporify you, to -- to -- to narcotize you to -- from the real issues. They -- I have nothing to do any longer with the problems of the 49 states. And that's why the problems of states' rights are no longer interesting. Uncle Sam has to pay everything, just the same, as you know. The states have no longer any financial independence. And that's the reason why they are empty and hollow. But as long as the -- our editors will give all their headlines to any such little particularism, and stress this, how can you expect that the people of this country know that they are between the settled conditions of a legal socie- -- legalized, you see, order at home, and the unsettled condition of a mighty -- ja, global order? If you prefer this to the term "empire," and I think it is right to avoid the term "empire." I myself don't use it.

But it is obvious that we -- we live in a world with intertwining, with dovetailed frontiers, where the -- nobody can hold a line -- a paper line, of tissuepaper line of -- called "frontier," because our airplanes fly one, you see, over the other man's territory. And so we are dovetailed into each other. The whole problem of state sovereignty is finished; as soon as we circle the moon -- circle the moon, or circle even the earth only, the world has become one. And any constitution that doesn't acknowledge this fact is an incomplete constitution.

You see, it is burdened with an excessive military establishment for this very reason. And our whole budget, you see, bears witness to the fact that the children should not be taught any longer about foreigners, and foreign aid, and 49 states, et cetera, without including a very careful map of the air bases of the United States.

You -- I -- I really feel that geography, the pictures which you get, you see, plays a great part in this dumfoundedness of the public, that as long as you see the Ameri- -- United States only on -- between the Pacific and the Atlantic, you do not know our mortgage on our establishment, the mortgage being this rest of the world, you see, which is -- hangs onto us.

Well, all this is only to say that the relation of war and peace, of civilian and -- and wartime order, constitution, distribution of power is that which makes a nation's history. Everything else is subdued by this question and the Society of the Order of Cincinnati should be kept in mind by you as the first attempt to keep this unity, this identity of war and peace in evidence. That's why this General Henry Knox has struck me as a real genius for his founding this society. He was immediately attacked by the people who said this would be a -- give a hereditary order. The Order of Cincinnati provided that the sons, and the grandsons, and the grand- -- great-grandsons should, you see, be -- native members of this society, and the old sense of -- equality was aroused, and people decried this society until it collapsed. It exists still today in a revival manner, very -- as a very effete and nominal group. But it has no influence, and hasn't solved the problem which later on then the Daughters of the Revolution tried to solve, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and innumerable later associations of which we will not have to speak in detail. If you keep in mind that this Society of the Order of Cincinnati has from the first declared the problem of a nation explicitly, and that it has been rejected, because this country remained a vast territory and only partly a settled order. The 13 colonies I think would not have rejected this -- you see, this order. But the frontiersmen, and the newcomers to this country -- they, of course, had no interest in -- in upholding the experiences of this one war. They went on to new experiences.

And so we come, with the rejection of this society, to the second social problem of the United States, that the memories of any -- no one event could penetrate into the hearts of the newcomers of this country, and the new settlers. This has been, of course, of such impact on American history that we got the Know-Nothing Party, you see, the nativists, all the people who declined to accept any man from the outside as a citizen before 21 years would be up, or 25 years. As you know, the nativists have won, finally. We have now a know-nothing law in the Walter-McLaren law. This carries out exactly the principles laid down in a speech, Senator of Mississippi, Mr. -- Senator {Clark} in 1856. And again, without

your knowing it, the president has vetoed this bill. This Walter-McLaren bill is a belated fulfillment of an American nativist dream. It was delayed, and delayed, and delayed by vetoes and the -- of course the influence of the newcomers. But since 1921, immigration has whittled down to such an extent, that this law was passed over the veto of the president of the United States. It -- creates two kinds of citizenship.

I'm a second-rate citizen. I -- I'm a citizen now for more than 20 years, but I can't leave this country without losing my citizenship -- {all Albanian}. There is no process of law. If the state department declares that I have forfeited my citizenship, I cannot go to court and sue it. I am not allowed to know the reasons why they take away my citizenship. That's all in a law that you have -- your Representatives have voted for. That is, the -- there are citizens with due process of law, and there are citizens in this country at this moment without due process of law. There's a book -- 1440 cases under the Walter-McLaren Act by {Edith Lowenstein}, which I -- it's a -- very interesting reading, because she gives these 1440 cases, the incredible injustice and nonexistence of any law for naturalized citizens as -- as of this moment. And her last sentence is, "A new consideration of citizenship is in order."

I say this to you, because I -- again you see that this has very much to do with the constant fight of the soldiery of -- who fought a war against the newcomers who have no memory. I see both sides very clearly and I can understand the know-nothing policy of the -- of the Know-Nothing Party, you see, or the nativist American parties. But you see also the tragedy when -- that we are between the devil and the high sea, so to speak. If you insist that only memory can save the country's policies from error, then you will have to say that native newcomers cannot be trusted and cannot be made into citizens. If you still base the tradition of this country on immigration and say, "Everybody after all has come to this country, and we cannot exclude newcomers," you see, "from the right of citizenship," then you have to cope with the problem of historical tradition with -- in a -- in a different manner; and cannot rely, so to speak, on automatic continuity of government.

The one thing begets the other; but my point at this moment is this, what I wanted to lay down as a real fact of life in America: that the relation of war and peace is the critical and unsolved relation in the Constitution of the United States, and in the historical experience of the people of the United States, and that this distinguishes the United States from any other nation in the world. In any other nation, because of the last, much less fluctuation of the people, you see -- much less increase, and much less new territory after every war -- there is a greater continuity. The Fran- -- French, and the Germans, and the Poles, and the Swedes, after all, they -- they live with the same frontiers more or less now for a

thousand years, you see. But in this country, the establishment of new government has been always one-half of the results of any war. And I think this should be recognized as putting the Ameri- -- United States in a new and -- and singular category and position.