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

(Clint Gardner: This is a test at 15/16ths inches per second. This is a test of 15/16th inches per second. This is a test of the recorder. This is a test of the recorder. Microphone volume is -- the microphone volume is set at the highest possible now. It's set at the highest possible setting.)

(We have with us tonight Eugen Huessy, who spoke at our arrival banquet. And since that time, we haven't had much philosophical meat in the program. There's been a little bit of other meat, but we hope that as he talks you'll think of questions, because some of these points should be raised constantly during your Peace Corps service, and perhaps even during training. Training in service should certainly not all be technical knowledge, factual knowledge and experienced only { } few tangible reactions. The box is yours.)

(Gardner: Oh well, no, that won't work because of this.)

(Oh yeah, you have to be over here.)

When Dick Wright phoned me that I should come over here, I asked for three nights to speak to you, because if it is to be worthwhile, you must have some opportunity of pondering over this. I want to take you into a frame of reference that holds good for a century backward and forward as well, because the fashions of the Peace Corps are its real dangers. I've seen six fashions from -- since 1912, when I first began to feel that something of this kind has to happen. And we aren't through with fashion. But your Peace Corps is more serious than any fashion and any party system of government in any state, including the United States. It is too serious -- a man has said in France when the Second World War was about to be lost, "War is too serious to leave it to the generals." The Peace Corps is too serious to leave it to anybody official. You would have to restore the Peace Corps even if the government of the United States would abolish it.

Well, that sounds very serious. So let -- me inject a more harmless fact. When we telephoned -- Dick Wright and myself -- it was the same day in which a man died, who can be considered the last and very noble scion of an -- the era which went on before the Peace Corps. The man was Arthur Waley. Very few of you will have heard the name. He is the greatest expert in England on Chinese literature. And the importance of the man, however, will appear to you if I say that one of his last books was called The Opium War through Chinese Eyes. This book was published in 1958, just a year before the Peace Corps was established. It is perhaps the last moment then in human history in which countries went to war for trade, and tried to force the Chinese to buy the Hindu opium. The

Opium War was waged between -- between England and China, because the only income in poor India was to sell the opium at high prices to the people who now use -- how do you call it? LST -- or what is this wonderful drug? Wie? What is it?

(LSD.)

Wie? Ja. It's the s- -- played the same role then, opium. Thousands and thousands of Chinese perished from its use, and the Chinese government took very energetic steps to combat this, and asked the English to comply, and to forbid the import. But Lord Palmerston, the prime minister of England, said, "Then India will starve. They live on the income of the opium trade for the Hindu population."

I think you, who are on the way to India may like to be reminded that every one country, in the last 200 years has been amiss, has overstepped the duties between nations. There is no exception. And it is good, I think, to know -- and I recommend this book to you. It should be bought by the library here. I do not get any percent -- royalties from it.

But we are very blind and deaf and think that these things do not -- do not concern, for example, Asiatic countries. That isn't true. Any one country -- India, as well as England, as the United States, as Germany, as France, what have you -- have always prospered in the last centuries on trade and asking no questions on where the trade went to and what was done with it. It was not the responsibility of a statesman. And you must understand that the Peace Corps is breaking with this. And I will use the rest of my words to eme- -- emphasize how we could clearly see what the difference is, what the distinction is. The superstitions in this -- the Opium War took place in 1840 and '41, and it ended with the English getting Hong Kong, you see, where you now order your cheap dresses from. And Hong Kong was the price paid for the impertinence of the Chinese to fight off -- off the imports on opium. They not only were forced to accept the opium ever since, but they also had to cede the island of Hong Kong to the British.

To tell you -- to show you the degree of mutual ignorance, I may quote Mr. Waley's very fine book, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes, in which he says the Chinese were convinced that the English only brought the opium in because they needed the {roopha}. Otherwise they would have died from constipation. So on this level of mutual ignorance, you see, were -- was the trade of the world directed and established.

Kindly keep this example in mind, that the real, thorough knowledge of another country's conditions was not demanded from any politician, any states-

man, that in no election -- be it in the United States, or in England, or in Sweden, or in Guatemala -- was any statesman even allowed to say, "But these are people like we ourselves. I am responsible for this, too." The only statesman who, to my knowledge, before the world wars, has pronounced the principle that a da- -- damage to another country does not sit well with the statesman of one country is President Theodore Roosevelt. He was asked to mediate the peace between Japan and Russia in 1905. And you may know -- some of you, at least -- that the peace actually was, under his intervention, concluded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, our sister state here. And -- Vermont of course has no harbor. Otherwise I would have taken place in Vermont.

Do you know what the president then wrote? His ambassador in St. Petersburg had suggested this mediation,, and said the Japanese are completely financially broke -- the Russians always were financially broke, so that didn't matter -- but he said that they were exhausted. They had a mutiny on the Potemkin. Who has still seen the Potemkin movie? Very few. That was the most important movie sh- -- shot in my days. And so the president said, "It wou- -- is not to the interest of the United States to allow Russia and Japan to come to terms. It is to our interest as Uni- -- as the United States that these two great powers should weaken each other, because we then would be the laughing third. However," he goes on, "the office of the president of the United States is too high an office to be corrupted by the self-interest just of the United States. I must act in the interest of mankind."

This was a lonely wolf. This was a very extreme voice. And it was never published. You don't find it in the Roosevelt dictionary published by the Roosevelt Society in this country. It's too good even today for these people, for these Yankees, to be published. They are all imperialists. They are all power politicians. They all want not to be blamed by the Birch Society.

But it is true, gentlemen. The world is too small. You fly in 89 minutes around the globe and for this simple reason -- any other country's harm is our own harm. And -- however, this has not been formulated. The Peace Corps is the first attempt to formulate this experience, you see, on a -- on a worldwide level. And there are many implications which I think even leaders in this movement haven't thought through. It will be a -- some hundred years before we are functioning well.

I say all this only to make you see that there is a break, a decided break. After the two world wars, and after the bomb has been -- fallen, and after we shoot to the moon, the self-interest of a government never suffices for justifying any international measure. Why that is so, it is so. And it was not the same way in 1840, when Palmerston could declare war on the Chinese, because they wouldn't

allow the Chinese to be ruined by the buying of opium. That was the only reason for this -- for this opium war, that the English said, "You cannot forbid our tradesmen, our businessmen to import opium into China."

We don't do these things so crudely now, with opium. But I think there are other damages -- going on. It hasn't even been investigated how much harm we do by exporting the New York Times.

This new epoch, the new period of which I am -- try -- shall try to speak, will not be just fair to the Chinese, as this very beautiful book by Mr. Waley, who was the greatest expert on the Chinese in the whole of England, through his life. He lived from 1889 to 1966. W-a-l-e-y. And I think he deserves even your memory, because he stands out as a man of great gentleness, and great sympathy. And he can show the two sides of the coin. In this book, you understand why the English acted as they acted and why the Chinese acted as they acted. Now if -- it is already quite something if an educated person can see two sides of an issue. You people cannot be satisfied with this. As long as China is China, England is England, America is America, no Peace Corps effective. The condition of your existence is that there is something third possible. And what this could be is -- will be my task now to find out with you -- or for you.

It has been my concern to put it into such blunt and such simple terms that even children can understand it, because only if the children -- your age group -- of course you are already senior citizens -- if you don't grasp this, your elders will not grasp it. They have been educated in such a clear-cut map-reading that here are the United States and there is China, that they even believe that God created these frontiers. You know very well that He didn't, that by this terrible mischief that the Pilgrim Fathers la- -- landed in the United States, you see, we now have this -- these separate United States. They didn't have to be separated. In 1608, it was just a part of -- of a general { }. The -- our -- your map is so dogmatic that you actually believe that China is China and the United States is the United States. I challenge you on this. It's just an invention of the devil. God created the globe. It's a very round world, and you have established all these custom duties between them, the parts of it. But wouldn't it be interesting to look what is common at this very moment, without treaties, without laws, without any fuss about our principles, our constitutions, our religions. How can the fact that here are Christians, and there are -- there are ancestor-worshipers, how can this be enough to say that there is China and there is the United States for good, for opium, or for tea? It isn't so simple. God does -- doesn't let us -- get away with murder so easily.

We have introduced something divine into our existence in the last hundreds of years which I think makes Mr. Waley look obsolete, and even the president of

the United States of 1905, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, only a pioneer. And you -- we all have to adopt what he reasoned out, that it was not in the interests of the United States if any other country, you see, came to harm and was weakened.

We have learned to invent inventions. That is to say, down to my youth, into my middle age, when an invention was made, we all believed that the invention was to stay with us. To give you an example: in Vermont, on Sunday the last train carrying persons stops running through Vermont. The train between New York and Montreal. Now in 1890, 10 miles from here, there was a meeting of 3,000 people trying to persuade each other that -- should build a new railroad which has never been built, between Vershire and Tunbridge, on Brockle Bank Hill. Well, you can say fortunately it wasn't built. Probably you wouldn't be here if it had been built. But this was the plan, and these 3,000 people marched up this mountain, had a picnic there, and decided to put out shares to build this railroad. They meant that if the railroad was built, it would go on forever.

The great inventions of the 19th century had all the character of finality. Everybody believed this was, like an automatic razor, going to stay with us, you see. Where would we be? We can't go back to knives, you see, to -- to razor blades. So, this is no longer so. While I -- when I was young, believed that the -- an electric tramway in the streets of my hometown, in Berlin in Germany, was the latest invention and would go on forever -- and my parents moved from this terrible street where now an electric car was commuting, because you couldn't live with this new monster, you see -- today we drive cars. The electric -- you see, the electric train was given up. And the same is true, this -- this train between Montreal and New York ceases to exist. We are waiting for the next invention, when we all have our own helicopter, you see. And nobody will drive a car on the highway, because that's too -- that's too many accidents, you see. I still wait for my own helicopter. It's still a little too expensive. But it will come.

In other words, we have invented to invent. And this is changing the whole picture, because in any community, in any town, in any country, any such new inventions -- invention re-arrange the people. If you have to pump the water from your well, or if you have to draw the -- the water from the town water supply, it makes quite a difference. First of all, the second is chlorine, and it tastes very poorly. And then it may be closed for hours. And you have to ta- -- pay regards to your neighbors with whom you have to arrange things, as they do in the South. If you have ever been in Arizona, there are days and hours where one man can draw the water and the other cannot.

So you suddenly belong to this community of Arizona, and instead of having only to care for your family. But if it goes further, and you pump up the whole Colorado River, as they try to do now, it's {a great} -- will even be more so that

you depend on the legislature in Washington, and on the council who takes care of this interzonal, interstate organization. And what the town can do, or your own -- can do in your own family is nons- -- is -- is of no value whatsoever. All of a sudden, all your familiar ties with people who work with you cease to be important and you suddenly depend on others. When we founded this Camp William James here in the neighborhood, we had to set up a council of nine townships, because the interests of nine townships seemed to be involved. And there was not one town who either cared or would have understood what we were trying to do, establish a Peace Corps, you see, for Vermont. And therefore we were driven to re-organize the po- -- people in this town. We have here two witnesses of this fortunately tonight, Mr. O'Brien from Tunbridge, and --

(Clint Gardner.)

-- Mr. Clint Gardner from Nor- -- from Norwich. It is a great pleasure for me to have two witnesses of our doings 25 -- -6 years ago, 25 years ago. And they know that already at that time there was a leak in our self-government. It didn't function. The village of Tunbridge, or the village of Sharon, you see, could not carry the brunt of this whole enterprise. They didn't understand. And the antagonistic interests were, of course, as they all are in a small town, couldn't be won over except by bringing in fresh blood. People -- the best men in every town will understand something new, you see, but not the majority.

Now every minute today, where something new is invented, we need a new administration for it. If you have electricity in your house, instead of an oil lamp, or a candle, obviously you suddenly depend on the electric power company. And therefore you have to pay regard to the problem of: who is this electric power company? How will they treat me? Thirty years ago, they treated Vermont very badly. The power company situated in Vermont took the liberty of charging higher prices for electricity to the farmers in Vermont than to the block in Boston. And when we talked to them, the power company -- committee of the Legislature -- I had some talks with them on this -- they said, "Well, we sell to one block in Boston more electricity than to the whole village of Vershire together. So why should we not ask less money from the block in -- in -- in Boston, you see, than we charge here?"

Now, I told them that in Sweden they had solved this problem long ago. And that the whole country of Sweden was just one electric block, and you couldn't charge any difference in rates in Haparanda than you did charge in Malm” or -- or Stockholm.

Well, these blockheads didn't see it that way. Well, they made the president of this -- who resisted us, they have made him in s- -- in -- in the meantime presi-

dent of a university. There he can't do any harm, you see. There is so much electricity anyway.

But this is very important. May I ask you to -- to see one great law of technical progress, which is revolutionizing the universe at this moment, and in whose wake what you are doing suddenly is vested with great importance, great urgency, and great dignity. And unfortunately the do-gooders don't know this, the charitable people, that this is not a charity, this Peace Corps business. It's not a -- just a beneficiary. It is inevitable. It is indispensable, because any technical innovation expands the space in which we move, shortens the time in which we can achieve the change, and destroys a familiar group -- a family, or a village, or a town, or a country. This simple rule, which I have preached for the last 20 years, is quite inaccessible it seems to philosophers, who don't see the forest for the trees, but it is also inaccessible it seems to so-called -- well, I won't give names. You can observe it, however, yourself and then you will understand what you are up against: why you have to go to India, why it is not a charity that we go there, because we destroy. Technical progress destroys cardels of life, structures of togetherness, of solidarity. It must, because any technical progress allows you here to put on the lights, you see, without much ado, whereas before you had to -- perhaps to -- to use a stone, you see, and -- and go to great lengths before the -- the spark would occur. This is no longer true. We have in- -- we are inventing all the time things. You call this press-button civilization. I think it's not dignified enough. The term is -- it is a much deeper achievement which technical mankind is looking for and seeking for. It's the unity of all the forces of the universe which we are trying to bring about, which is a tremendous task for which we are speaking, for which we are living, for which we are breathing. That's why we are on this earth, to unify the creation.

Now, would you kindly take down these three sentences? Every invention, or every technical progress, or every technicality -- or you can call it as you please -- every gadget enlarges the space which we dominate; it shortens the time which it takes to dominate this; and it destroys the old group in which this before was achieved. You needed the community to have the water, perhaps, you see. Now you don't know it -- need this community any more, because the company, the water company -- that's the whole Colorado River. It's the whole Mississippi River. So what do you care for the man in the village there? He's a little cog on the wheel, only. But it is true of any other invention. Take the telephone. Obviously, as long as you have to send a messenger -- to the next village, you see, these people are very important. You have to have trustworthy messengers. Even -- even the mail still is a very human thing. But as soon as you get the telephone, or you get radio, you -- it is impossible for you to know to whom you are talking.

We telephoned the other day to Australia. You just ring up and San Francisco

answers, you see, and said, "Yes, I'll go and connect you." And there was Australia, you see, in two minutes' time. It's a good example, you see, of the foreshortening of the time element, you see. It would take two months to go by ship there, and bring the -- ship there by surface mail -- the letter there by surface mail. And it widens the space in which we can act, because within two hours, the answer was there from Australia, and so you dominate this whole space. This is one.

But the last thing is the people with whom you used to correspond and to talk, to converse in the village -- they are very little interest to you, because you can have a conversation with your best friend in Australia. And you prefer this, because he is more interesting to you, and he has more to say to you. He shares your interest. He's another, you see, frustrated poet.

This is very astonishing that a very -- such a simple law has -- is never mentioned. I'll tell you why. All our viewpoints in school, and paper -- newspapers and radio, and Parliament, and Congress of course are restricted to the national boundaries and -- or the local boundaries, or the county boundaries, or the constituency in which we elect our senators. Now all these people are every day diminishing -- give us diminishing returns because our more important acts are always some connection with -- with the universe, with the five continents, you see. Not just this one. And for this, the senator of Vermont can hardly help us. He is in the same predicament as we. He also wants to telephone to Australia, and he has no more influence in Australia than we have. And therefore we both look in the same direction and ask ourselves, "What can we do to live with these -- with these people so that where we really see our tomorrow, we can have some influence, we make -- can make ourselves heard?"

May I repeat quite pedantically this one rule, because I think a new era really will dawn as soon as people -- legislators and educators begin to understand what is happening. When I was young and when Brockle Bank Hill was planned as a railroad, everybody believed that inventions were going to stay. This is no longer true. If you organize the school district of Vershire today, you must be ready to admit that 10 years from now, it may have to be re-organized. It will be all wrong. And every town in this state at this moment faces this fact that you may do something for the next 10 years. You may still go by railroad, or you may not go by railroad. But you cannot be sure that 10 years from now you will not completely -- be completely obsolete.

That is, the future of our own inventions today is in jeopardy, whereas in the 19th century, in the days of the first great inventions of the exhibitions in Paris, when the Eiffel Tower was, you see, disc- -- was built, people thought this exhibition, it's the dernier cri. That's the famous French word, you see. That's the last thing in the world. And you still can see in the French movies that the Eiffel

Tower is still treated as the white elephant, you see, of the future, pointing to the great time of economic progress. Today, when I see Ren‚ Claire movie, you see, with all the Eiffel Towers in the world together, I begin to yawn. That's not my fault. It's not Ren‚ Claire's fault, who is the great -- a great man with his movies on Paris. But it is true that we no longer can rest on laurels and say, "This is the dernier cri." There is no -- no dernier cri. And this is quite upsetting to most people.

We all would like to go from here to there. But then the there, that must be final, you see. And you know how it is in your own life. I mean, now you say you want to reach a certain income, but once you have it, you say then you will have 12 -- children and 20 grandchildren and have a house in Florida. There is no such end, now. I mean, Florida will be obsolete by that time. I don't know where we go from there.

But the very strange thing is, and I think you will bear me out -- you're -- another generation I know, and perhaps this is not so explicit to you. But I have learned in my own life -- is that all my dreams of the future are now dreams of the past. That is, I have to admit that people now have to dream other dreams and they are very much clashing with the technical innovations, you see, which I admired.

They are now -- when I was -- came to this country I studied with great -- with great enthusiasm the romantic story of the Canadian Pacific. That's a great story. You see, the Scotch people have an -- first have the -- they have conquered the British, you see, and now then they conquered Canada. They all call it the "British Empire," but it is of course the Scotch Empire. And so they invented the Canadian Pacific to bring their goods from London or Edinburgh to -- to Yokohama in Japan. And at this moment, you read in the papers that they actually are discussing to abandon the personal -- you see, the personal traffic on the Canadian Pacific. So one of the greatest features of this coun- -- this century, the building of the Canadian Pacific, it's really a tremendous achievement. And I still recommend to you the reading one of the many books written on this. It's like a novel. It's already about to disappear again.

So we live hyperbolically. I don't know much mathematics, but this much I have learned, that a hyperbole enters space from somewhere and leaves it somewhere. Isn't that true? Who knows what a hyperbole is? No mathematics left? Isn't it true? He doubts it. So I will give it up. It's better not to pose as an expert where I don't know enough.

But the inventions today do not last. And this puts us for the first time in a position where change is not a step from A to B, but which -- where it is a con-

stant, even for our political organization, even for our schools, even for our thoughts, even for our church buildings. That is, in the future I would bring -- have to bring up children in such a manner that they do not feel that tomorrow is final achievement, which has been the ideology of the last 900 or 1,000 years; before, there was no change, no progress. Then there came change, but always with the feeling: that's the ultimate, that's the dernier cri. Now I think we have to bring up our children -- and you already live in this manner, of course -- knowing that this is not the next -- or only the next, perhaps. But it is not the ultimate. And that the very invention which you today prize highly will have to go again.

So the story of the railroads in this country has taught me this, to think it out more clearly. And my law therefore is that the human group on which we have relied for the new invention, which we have established -- like a railroad company, you see -- and all the vocations going with it -- the conductor and -- that they will again disappear.

When I came up to this part of the world, it was the 5th of May. I took the train from Boston to -- to Hanover, and I went back again. And I looked out of the window, and there was not a leaf on this -- on any tree. And the conductor sat down next to me. He saw -- he saw that I was very melancholic, and he said, "Yes, Sir," he said. "You can live here now another 50 years, and you won't see a leaf on a tree by -- on May 5th."

He was right. I am now living here 35 years. There hasn't been a leaf on the trees. If you could invent this, that there are leaves on the tree in Vermont on May 5th, then I would think this is the dernier cri.

Thank you.

(Are there any questions or corrections?)

[unintelligible]

(Well, thank you very much. Later this ev- -- you now have probably an hour to study for the three hours that you need -- figure it out somehow. I hope some of you can come back for the program later this evening. This week is going to be pretty rough on your -- adapting your schedule. But we'll be flexible, too.)